non-lucid

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the night of July 24-25, 2011.]

Awake, Non-lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm driving my mom's red Honda Fit out past Katella Avenue to spend a weekend away. The rest of my family is already at my destination for the weekend.

I arrive at basic training camp for the Navy National Guard, into which I have just been drafted. I enter the barracks along with several of my real-life friends from college. The bunks are stacked three high and are concealed behind cupboard doors. In between the bunks are shelves with metal label-holders intended to hold labels showing the names of the occupants of the bunks. These shelves are meant to be used to hold boxes of the occupants' stuff. I start settling in. Evidently, I've packed wisely for this experience, because the boxes I brought don't take up all the space that was allotted to me. I change into my new uniform. One of the items I brought was a small pair of scissors with blue handles [that I have in real life]. I realize that it was stupid of me to bring them, because they would get me in trouble if I were caught with them. So, I just fold up the labels with my name on them and slide them into the label-holders.

Later, we're all sitting in a restaurant-style booth, choosing nicknames from a printed list. Mine is “Spider.” The nicknames for the officers are printed in a substitution cypher. I have absolutely no clue what tasks and training activities I'll be doing here, or what position I'll be assigned to. I hope I'll be able to handle it, especially swimming. [I think this may be the first time one of my dreams has accurately reflected the fact that I don't know how to swim very well in real life. I've had tons of dreams where I could swim expertly.]

Basic training is beginning. Everyone is outside, standing at attention in a block, wearing their uniforms. I ask one of my friends to let me out of the booth so that I can run to the bathroom before going outside and joining the block. There is a girl with short, blond hair directly ahead of me in the line for the bathrooms. I think to myself that I ought to be thinking of it as 'the head' rather than 'the bathroom,' because I'm in the Navy, not the Marines. [Which is stupid, because as far as I know, the Marines say that, too.] Then I woke up, because I actually did need to go to the bathroom. [This dream was much longer, more elaborate, more vivid, and more detailed than these notes reflect. What I get for putting off typing this up for so long.]

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the night of July 23-24, 2011.]

Awake, Non-lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm in [what I believe to be] the real-life hotel lobby where the hotel scenes from Inception were filmed. I'm appreciating how special it is to be here, in one of the filming locations for my favorite movie. [But totally failing to make the associative leap to the fact that I'm actually in a dream, myself. ] I even see Leonardo DiCaprio walk past. [*LOL* I fail at recognizing dreams...] I know that this building is located on the campus of a local private university. I look through a window and see a sign above the entrance to another building. The sign reads “(Some last name) Library.”

I proceed through the interior of the building I'm in to the entrance of somebody’s dorm. The dorm is themed to resemble ancient Barcelona, Spain. In the dining area, I meet up with a group of my friends from real life, including SS and SH [who I know from completely different social groups and who don't even know each other in real life, by the way]. They're all sitting at a table, eating, and I sit down and join them. It's a Mimi's Cafe table. Several of my friends order my favorite chicken and pasta dish, the one I always order when I'm at Mimi's. Sean has to leave the meal early because he has other plans, so I get to eat his chicken. (I've just sat down, so I haven't had a chance to order my own meal.) Our conversation over dinner is being filmed for TV, and we all know it. We all get separate checks at the end of the meal.

I wake up in my current room to light coming from under my sleep mask. I'm still sleepy, and I don't want to get up, but I get up in order to check the time. I check my watch, my cell phone, and my desk phone [from work], which is on my dresser. They all show the same time: it's 10:39 AM, which means I'm late for my pre-church-service choir practice. I think, It can't be that late already!, but I reason that if all three timepieces agree, then it must actually be that late. When I checked my cell phone, I saw the numbers in the hour field counting up from 2 to 10 at a rate of about 1 number per half-second, but now I rationalize this observation: It must only update the display to the current time when you pick it up and look at it.

I go out of my house, still wearing the clothes I was wearing on Friday. [I had this dream on a Saturday night/early Sunday morning, and I was wearing the outfit I actually had been wearing on the Friday immediately before in real life.] I'm going outside to take out the trash. “Outside” turns out to be a narrow parking lot that surrounds a shopping center. A mother calls to her daughter, Johana. I think, That's a pretty name.

I find a trash can at the outer edge , and empty my trash can into it. I catch a cold container of french fries as they fall from my trash can, and eat them, because I'm still running late for choir practice and don't have time for breakfast. I walk back home through one of the stores in the shopping center, past racks of CD and DVD cases.

...And then I woke up for real, and was pretty embarrassed. I realized that, indeed, it couldn't be that late in the morning already. If it had actually been time to get up, I would have heard the alarm on my cell phone go off, and I hadn't heard it yet.

--------------------------------------------------
Side notes:

This was my first false awakening in my new room, at my new house. It was totally convincing, especially given the fact that I really am usually a few minutes late for a lot of things. The way I totally failed to catch it, even though my phone from my desk at work was in my room at home and the numbers on my cell phone were changing, just goes to show how strong our tendency to rationalize things is. However, on a more positive note, I had this highly convincing false awakening in my new room only two weeks after I had moved into it. I think this bodes well for my mental and emotional state. It may well mean that my unconscious mind has accepted the new room as the place where I'm supposed to be when I wake up, which is great.

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the night of July 22-23, 2011.]

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, Possibly lucid?, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm at a big, old house that is now a tourist site. It's a bit like Hearst Castle, only older, in a different architectural style, and not on a hill. Tourists can enter either the house itself to go on a tour, or they can enter a large theater to watch a movie about the house. The space in between the house and the theater is an enclosed, carpeted lobby. While I'm in that space, I give another tourist directions to the main entrance to the house: “Go down there, turn left, go up the ramp, then turn right and go through the doors.” The ramp is long and slopes gently upward.

In addition to the large, main theater, the complex also has a ride of some kind with seats that are suspended on long bars from an overhead track. Riders board the ride by strapping themselves into the seats when they are within small, circular, mobile theater pods. These theater pods show a movie about the era in between the heyday of the large house and the present day, that is, the house's early days as a tourist attraction, before it had a visitors' center. The pods also can move around on legs and have motion-simulator functionality. I get into one of the pods 'backwards,' by riding on one of the seats as it comes into the pod from the unloading station. Other riders also board the pod, and then the movie begins.

[I'm not absolutely sure, but I think] It was at this point that I woke up for a very brief WBTB (just a few minutes, which is about how long I usually wake up for in the middle of the night). I remembered very well what I had just been dreaming about, and focused on it while I was awake. As I was going back to sleep, I thought, I wonder if I can get back into the same dream I was just in. [Amazingly,] I succeeded in doing so.

The mobile theater pod moves out into the street that runs past the big, old house, which is part of the ride. While it's out in the street, the pod is boarded by small, roundish creatures, Expies of The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything [from “VeggieTales”]. After they've boarded the pod, instead of proceeding to attack and plunder it, they decide to go inside the visitors' center to get some Starbucks. This gives me time to escape from the pod and run for help. I escape from the pod and start walking along the sidewalk. Somewhere around here, I realize that I'm dreaming, but I don't want to interrupt the dream plot already in progress; it's interesting and exciting, so I go along with it. I start searching for the main, public entrance to the tourist site. I pass by what appears to be the main entrance and go to a gift shop. The gift shop is filled with a lot of red decorations and red objects, mainly Christmas decorations. I sit down in a chair and get into a conversation with the store attendant. While I'm talking to her, my thoughts stray and the impact of the thought, “Whoa, I'm dreaming” hits me fairly hard. I am suddenly overcome by a strong feeling of sleepiness, and close my eyes. Then I remember that I'll lose the dream if I do that, and open them again. I'm still right where I was.

I tell the tour guide about the mobile theater pod being attacked by pirates, and ask, “Do you have a security guard?” She shows me where there is one waiting behind a service counter, and sends him back out onto the street with me. When we're on the street, I notice that there are “floating” vehicles on it and feel dismayed that the sci-fi future is actually here. Then I notice that at least the larger vehicles do have tractor treads, in addition to the pink, glowing force fields I see under all the vehicles. The security guard goes to the mobile theater pod and apprehends the pirates [at least, I suppose he did; I don't really remember that part of the dream].

[Different dream.] A man has been captured and locked in handcuffs. A dog brings him a key in its mouth, so he can get out of them. He does so. Then, his captor approaches and, seeing that he's out of the handcuffs, says to him, “I expected you'd be out of those by now.” The man replies, “I already am.”

[Different dream.] I'm showing some guy how to properly arrange the cord for and use the mouse on my computer.

[I may or may not have been lucid for this one, I'm not sure.] P. and I are both making cakes with a little bit of dough, under Mom's guidance. My piece of dough is bigger than P.'s. We mix ingredients into the dough with our hands. We're in the kitchen/dining room of House #1, and the cake pans are sitting on the floor under the dining table. We pick them up from there to put the dough in them. Before I put my dough in my cake pan, I run a little bit of tap water onto it, and it shrinks to the size of P.'s piece of dough. That's good, and a relief; I'd been concerned that I'd initially taken more than my fair share when we divided the dough, and when we added the other ingredients.

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the nights of July 19-21, 2011.]

Night of July 19-20

I'm in the back seat of a car that is being driven by an unidentified female DC. [I think] We're driving on the road that leads past my local casino. [If I remember correctly and we were, then this is more day residue; I had just been there on Saturday the 16th.] I'm talking to her about my idea to put all the information about the casino's parking lot layout and its pricing structure for parking fees up on its website. She says that we've discussed that before, and asks me why I haven't created a test version of the web content yet. I answer that I just haven't gotten to it yet. [On this day, when I recalled this dream upon waking, I thought I also recalled the previous dream in which this DC and I had discussed that subject before. This may or may not be a false memory.]

Night of July 20-21

I'm in House #1. I enter my bedroom. [It's much bigger and has much higher ceilings than in reality.] I see that P. has booby-trapped the room: There's a pulley attached to the ceiling with a rope running through it. P. is sitting on the top bunk with one end of the rope in her hand. The other end is tied around a pair of oversized stuffed animals that are sitting on the top shelf of the closet. When she pulls the rope, the stuffed animals will fall onto the head of the person standing in the center of the room. I see and understand how the booby trap works before she triggers it, so that I catch the stuffed animals as they fall onto me. One of them is a giant Winnie the Pooh. When I catch them, I say to P., “These things are heavy. They could seriously break someone's neck or something.” She agrees with me.

I look into the closet. [It's roughly the same wedge shape as in reality, but, again, much bigger.] It has high ceilings and windows on the two back walls. The windows are covered with either blinds or curtains [not sure], but are still letting light into the room. The closet has been mostly emptied of its contents, but a few of my clothes are left hanging there, mixed in with some of P.'s. [P. and I shared this bedroom in House #1, by the way.] My smaller Winnie the Pooh stuffed toy and other toys that I consider to be family heirlooms are sitting on the shelf directly above the clothes. There are also higher shelves. I look at the closet and think, This closet is big enough to be a second bedroom! Why didn't we ever use it as one? [I still have some clothes in the closet of my room at House #3 that I haven't moved over to my new place yet. I suspect that's where some of the content of this dream came from.]

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the night of July 18-19, 2011.]

I'm at my old elementary school. I'm following a little ridey-car through a bunch of playgrounds, which are big, colorful, and elaborate.

I'm at the dining table in House #1, eating a meal with my parents and having a heated discussion of NaNoWriMo T-shirts with my dad. I insist, “If I need a large, you need at least a 2XL!” He's insulted and ends the conversation right there. [Day residue: I had just ordered a new NaNoWriMo T-shirt on the 17th, and I do, in fact, need a large, because their shirt sizes tend to be small.]

My family is staying in a rented vacation house that is up on a slight hill. My mom and I drive up to it in her red Honda Fit [she really does drive one in real life] and pull into its dirt driveway. There are already many other cars parked in front of the house, causing my mom to complain about having to back out through such a narrow space later. We're planning on leaving the rented house later and going and staying at a camp.

[Fragment] I tell my parents about my plan to purchase a Smart Car. [More day residue; I really had been thinking about doing that.]

[This is a catchup post. These dreams are from the night of July 15-16, 2011.]

I'm at a high school football game between my high school and another school called Bell High School, which has white and purple as its school colors. [I'm sure there is a real Bell High School, but I do not know what its school colors are in real life.] At halftime, both school's marching bands combine to perform a semi-rehearsed field show together. It's based on my high school's field show from last year [which I didn't even see in real life; within the dream, however, I recognized the show I was watching as being based on the show they had done the previous year]. Although I could go out and join in performing the show if I wanted to, I just watch it. I would have known how to perform most of the show I'm watching if I had been in marching band last year, but I wasn't, so I don't. Besides, I don't have my clarinet with me. The show involves pushing low, wheeled wooden boxes around on the field and crouching down to hide behind them.

[Different dream.] I'm walking around in a public space naked, hoping not to be seen by anyone. [Yes, again. This time,] I'm in an enclosed, single-story retail mall with a tae kwon do studio in it. [At one point during the dream,] I have some sort of blanket or piece of cloth that I clutch around my body as I sit down against a wall in a hallway. There are people I one of the shops I pass through [it looked like a cafe], but, thankfully, they don't seem to take any notice of me. [There must be some unresolved issue somewhere in my mind. This dream has been recurring a lot as of late.]

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the night of July 10-11, 2011.]

I'm in Sunday school, and we're playing a game-show-style game in which I am the lovely assistant. The contestant on the game show is creating a piece of ceramic art using a pottery wheel.

I'm in a large van that has stone benches instead of regular seats. The van is filled with good friends of mine, and we're watching something good on TV. The van morphs into an airplane, and I disembark.

The interior of the airport where I've landed is windowless, and the walls, floor, and ceiling are all a flat, industrial, dark gray color. The building has multiple, unequal, uneven levels with stairs leading from one to another. There is one very tangled staircase that takes you up, down, around, and across, turning several corners and going in several different directions, as you go from the bottom of it to the top. [It doesn't loop, though; it has a beginning and an end that are on different levels of floor, but it also has a ridiculous number of convolutions in between that make no sense.] I walk this entire staircase, from beginning to end.

I'm walking around trying to find baggage claim, but I can't; I get lost. I'm carrying three plastic tokens, which I'm supposed to use to claim my bags. I pass a large bag inspection checkpoint, and another checkpoint specifically for people who are traveling with marijuana plants. There are lines of people waiting at both checkpoints. Each person in the line for the latter checkpoint is carrying either a marijuana plant, or some cuttings from one. They're not forbidden on flights, they just have to be inspected first. I also pass behind the back side of the security checkpoint.

I try to climb into an area full of junk. I meet a small boy who decides to follow me into the area.

[Separate dream.] P. and I [I think] are fighting over the scheduling of our showers and hair-drying. I apologize for the fact that I have to wash my hair every day because it's so hot. I try to rush through my shower.

----------------------------------------
Side notes:
This night was my very first night in my new place of residence. When I woke up in my new room for the first time and recalled my first dream there, my reaction was, “Hmm. I got lost in a confusing place. That isn't very reassuring.”

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the night of June 27-28, 2011.]

I'm creeping around a parking lot, in the nude. [This has been a recurring circumstance in my dreams lately. Why is that, I wonder?] I'm trying to get to my car without being seen by anyone.

I'm in a room with a small stage, with a full set for a play on it, where people are rehearsing for a play. Nobody is playing the part of Morgan, so I jump in to play that role. In the play, Morgan is a little girl who watches her mom get murdered right in front of her, in their home. The mom is lying in her bed, and the murderer is some guy who shoots her with a rifle while she's lying there. As I'm acting out Morgan's part, I scream and shriek horrifically in reaction to this, and I start crying real tears. When the scene has ended, I tell the director of the play and the other actors that I'll probably really cry every time we rehearse this scene, but then I take it back, saying: “Even I know better than to do that. If I do that, then I won't have anything left for the performance.”

I'm riding in a car with my parents. We're discussing the washing instructions for a baseball cap that my mom has. They say to 'show' the cap to dry it, and I explain to my mom that the intended meaning there was to 'display' it, e.g., to leave it sitting out to dry. We also discuss how my mom recently had to have the password for some online account set, and in order to do that, they had to ship a packet of papers containing the printed password from Florida to somewhere else on the East Coast.

I'm in a big, cathedral-like building where a lot of people have gathered for a religious service, or a performance, or something like that. We've given everyone a password so that those who want to [and who have laptops] can log in to a Web site to see what's really going on behind the scenes of what's happening in front of them on stage. Apparently, the service/performance/whatever-it-is has something to do with Inception, because I have a printed book that is a dictionary of its characters, items, and concepts.

[Fragment] I'm taking all the bedclothes off my bed, and I realize that what makes my bed so soft and comfortable isn't the mattress itself, but the mattress pad. [This has been a concern of mine in real life lately, pursuant to my upcoming move to a new place with a new mattress.]

[This is a catch-up post. This dream is from the night of June 18-19, and it's one of the most fascinating lucids I've had yet.]

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm shopping at the old Toys 'R Us that we used to go to when I was a kid. [In real life, it's been closed for several years.] I've driven up there all the way from my current town, by myself, and I told my parents where I was going before I left. I've come there just to get the purple hippo stuffed animal that I saw advertised. I find it, go to a checkout stand, swipe my credit card through the card reader sitting on the floor near one of the checkouts, and then walk to the other side of the line of checkouts and get in line to check out. There's quite a long line, but it's moving fairly quickly because there are a lot of checkouts open, and all the checkers are calling people over from that one line. The line is in a rectangular, dark, warehouse-like space in the front of the store, separated from the store proper by high, dark gray metal shelf racks that reach all the way to the high ceiling. When it comes my turn to check out, the checker waves me through when I show her my toy and the receipt that was printed out of the credit card reader.

I exit the store and get into my car [our current, brown Honda]. I examine my purple hippo. It's smaller and narrower than the teddy bear I already have [in real life], and therefore not as good a shape for use as an arm pillow, but still, it's kinda cute. I can feel that it has a plastic cup built into its nose, so that its nose holds its conical shape. I set it down on the floor of the passenger seat, start the car up, and drive out of the parking lot via the ramp behind and to the right of the store.

This ramp forces me to turn right, putting me onto a one-way street. “This is why my parents never went out this way,” I say to myself. I end up driving through a neat, clean, inviting-looking urban downtown area, with lots of modern, glass buildings, concrete parking structures, and trees on the sidewalks.

[The dream shifts.] I'm walking the darkened halls of a big, old apartment building whose halls form a continuous square. Stuff involving Muppets, a bird named Gloria, and an alarm clock happens. [This was another elaborate and plotty dream, but I don't really remember the details anymore. I don't particularly care, though, because the next part is the really awesome part.]

[The dream shifts again.] I'm out on the town, in the same cool, modern downtown I was driving around earlier, only now I'm on foot. While walking across a plaza, I see several of my friends from [$SocialClub] [an organization I belong to in real life]. I recognize that I've been in this downtown before, and am very happy to be here. Somewhere around this point, I become lucid. [As usual, I don't remember precisely at what moment I did so. It may have been that recognition that I'd been there before that triggered lucidity, but I'm not sure.] I also pass by my friends from [$Class], who are on their way to class. I think of going with them, but choose to go off by myself and explore instead.

I end up on a particular street corner where there is a restaurant with a live band playing inside. I enter the restaurant to listen to the band. The restaurant is named “Café Debussy.” [ :gape: Whoa. That is so awesome. That's the name of the cafe where Cobb gives Ariadne her first lesson in shared dreaming in Inception. That is just so cool that I have my own version of it. I may have realized the significance of this name at that moment, or it may not have been until after I woke up, I'm not sure.]

While I'm in the restaurant, I meet and get into a conversation with a female dream character, who asks me who I am. I say the same kinds of things I would say when meeting someone for the first time in real life: that I live and work nearby, what I do, that I'm a member of [$SocialClub]. When I finish, she looks at me with an expression that shows that she's disappointed in me, and that she can see right through the baloney I'm giving her. “Who are you, really?” she asks.

I sigh and start telling her the truth.

“I'm from another world, that's not like yours,” I say. “I only come to visit here when I'm dreaming.” I stop myself short of saying that I'm dreaming all this that's around us.

As I speak, we start rising up off the ground. I'm either flying us up or causing a tower to grow up from the ground under us. [I'm not exactly sure, but I think it was more likely the latter, because] I'm making the buildings all around us grow taller or shorter, or change shape, just by thinking about it. I'm doing this because I want to show my companion the city from up high.

“Because I'm dreaming, I can control the situation, like this,” I say. “It's fun.” [I say a bit more that I don't remember now, and then] I end by sighing again, then saying, “So, here I am, your dreamer.” I extend my hand to shake hands with her.

She takes it. [Surprisingly,] The female DC reacts to what I've just told her with happiness and excitement. She leads me purposefully off in a direction across the city, apparently intending to tell others about what she has learned and introduce them to me. As we go, I realize that in all the time we've been talking, I haven't told her my name, so I say to her, “My name is [$RealFirstName].” I deliberately use the nickname by which I'm known to family and friends in real life, rather than my official, legal name, because I don't want the Fae to know my true name, because that will give them power over me. [Seriously, that's what I thought during the dream. I would never set any store by such an idea in real life.] She doesn't reply, though.

[She didn't introduce me to anyone, though. The next thing I remember,] The female DC and I have walked out to a metal, industrial-looking bridge, from which we're watching the sunset over the cityscape. I ask her, “What's your name?”

“Darla,” she says.

I shake my head and correct her: “No, that's the name of my friend who looks like you. What's your name?” Although she looks like one of my real-life friends, I'm interested in her identity as a separate individual.

From the way she hesitates for at least 15 seconds, going “Hmmmm...” several times while looking all around her at our surroundings, it's clear that she's never thought of herself as having an individual name separate from that of her real-life counterpart before. Finally, she looks over at the setting sun and says, “Umbra.” [She pronounces it “OOM-brah;” it means “shadow” in Latin. Hmmm. Very interesting.]

[Fragment.] Something involving roller coasters that look like snakes.

[False awakening.] I'm comparing notes with my mom about whether or not we just had the same dream about snakes.

[Different dream.] I'm on a ride that has foam seats with over-the-shoulder restraints. The seats are suspended high up in the air from an overhead track in a large building. I've somehow managed to board the ride so that I'm perched in between two seats, rather than fully seated in one of them. While the train of seats I'm on is moving to its destination, I manage to maneuver myself into one of the seats and get the restraints into place.

My train of seats arrives at its destination: directly above a gigantic aquarium tank. That's when I realize what the purpose of this ride is: to allow visitors a chance to be submerged in the tank for several minutes on end. I realize that I was supposed to bring a snorkel or scuba gear with me on this ride, but I didn't, and there's no way to get out of the restraints before I get dunked in the tank. I'm only mildly concerned about this, though.

I hold my breath and the seats descend, submerging me and everyone else several feet underwater. As soon as the seats have stopped descending, I start swimming upward, taking my seat and my restraints with me [I think; I'm not sure]. The moment I break the surface of the water, I found myself awake. I immediately kicked myself for not realizing that I was dreaming and subsequently recalling that I can breathe underwater in dreams.

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the nights of June 12-13 and 14-15, 2011.]

Night of June 12-13

There is a murder investigation taking place in a house that looks a lot like my grandparents' house. I am directly involved, and the investigation is highly elaborate and has a detailed plot, with lots of dialog. [Of course, I can't remember any of the specifics now.] Partway through, the dream morphs from live-action into a Tim Burton stop-motion movie featuring the Grim Reaper, who “kills” me. I somehow know I'm not really dead, though. I fall over backwards from the force of the scythe-blow and land in a sling, suspended from a moving, overhead track; it's part of a theme park ride. The ride takes me through “heaven” and ends with me exchanging salutes with Weird Al, who is standing in for Jesus on the ride.

Night of June 14-15

[Bizarre, Disneyland-related dreams FTW! This time,] I'm with a vivacious traveling companion, and we have time-traveled to the year 2011. [Whether backward or forward, I do not know.] We wonder how we know what year it is, until we come up with the obvious answer: “Because that's the year we set the time machine for?”

The entrance to the new version of Star Tours is in a rotating building with revolving doors. [This dream was in anticipation of the upcoming weekend; I was planning to go to Disneyland to ride the new Star Tours the following Sunday, June 19th, and I did.] Inside, there is a loading/staging area for the ride with circular staging zones.

“Abilene!” I say to a 1-year-old girl who is in the staging area with me. “You know you can't be on the end [of the row of seats]!” I take her spot in the staging area, making her and the other little kids move over along the row, toward the outside of the circle.

[This is a catch-up post. This dream is from the night of June 10-11, 2011.]

I'm in the car with my mom. We're driving along dirt roads, checking our location against photos we have of landmarks along the way. We're on our way to JJ's party. [This dream was in anticipation of what I was going to do that evening – exactly the same thing, only without the photos or my mom.]

I'm in the parking lot outside the old Pomona First Federal branch in Ontario. It's a sunny day. I'm picking up many coins (quarters, dimes, and pennies) from the parking lot. I think, It's a bank, so it makes sense that there would be coins in the parking lot. Some real-life friends of mine [I think they may have been T and G, but I'm not sure] walk past me. There are many other people there.

I enter the building. The entryway is a high-ceilinged, airy room with tall windows and a grand, sweeping staircase. There is a freestanding sign at the bottom of the stairs saying that the Joy Laow [I think] room, the meeting room at the top of the stairs, is available for rent for meetings.

I go further into the building. The main part of the building is a large, long, rectangular, carpeted room with a high ceiling. It is a Marie Callender's restaurant. There is another part of the restaurant floor with a lower ceiling. This area has a small stage, where a loud rock band is playing. My family is sitting around a table near the stage, next to the sound-mixing board, which is sitting on another table. I join them at their table. P. orders another Pepsi from our server, and I order a glass of water. Shortly after I arrive at the table, the band takes a break. I'm relieved that I won't have their music blasting my ears out throughout dinner.

I wander off from the table and through the large, carpeted room. There's a lot of empty space in it for a restaurant seating area; there are only a few rectangular tables, arranged in a line. I enter a train-station-like lobby area off to one side of the room, where I see an ad [?] for the Scott Pilgrim video game, in mirror image. I know RD wants to play it. I see a group of people there discussing video games, and I join in.

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the night of June 9-10, 2011.]

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm walking around the downtown area of a city. Every block is covered with tall buildings. Most of one block is covered with a three-or-four-story building with signs that identify it as “Jews' World.” It's their community center and place of worship; it is built around a narrow, rectangular courtyard/entryway with doors to various rooms leading off of it. I look at it and think, Wow, that's pretty cool, having a community center like that.

Directly across the street from this center is a similar, five-or-six-story community center and place of worship for the LDS church. A woman walks out of that complex and walks down the street. We pass each other in the street between the two centers, walking in opposite directions. The woman recognizes me and calls me “Pie [$RealFirstName].” I know that “Pie” is a nickname for [$OfficeBoss] [yes, he is LDS in real life], and that the use of that nickname as a title before my name indicates that I am a member of the in-group associated with [$OfficeBoss]. I'm rather disturbed that the woman both knew who I was and associated me with [$OfficeBoss] in such an intimate and familiar way.

Having realized I was dreaming at some point during this sequence of events [again, I'm not sure when], I decide to start flying. I take off and get pulled in a random direction, backward and sort of sideways. I try to control my flying and start flying forward by concentrating on details of the scenery I can see in front of me and trying to examine them more closely, as I did in my previous lucid [on the night of June 5], but it doesn't work. I attempt this method of control several times. When it stubbornly refuses to work, I just give up. I think, Fine. I'm just going to let myself get pulled along to wherever.

Then that dream faded to black, yet I remained consciously self-aware. I'm not sure if I was actually awake [more likely] or still asleep and self-aware during the gap between two dreams. At any rate, I remember that I knew that I was still asleep [however that works; I really don't even know what was going on here] and that if I just waited patiently, another dream would begin. I did, and it did.

I'm in the central courtyard of a big, old church made of yellow-tan stone. On one side of the courtyard, there is a large, windowlike opening in the wall with no glass, and on the other side of it are rolling vineyards. I briefly think of going flying over the vineyards, but I decide not to. Instead, I explore the building I'm in, and find a large kitchen knife. I pick it up and look at it, reflecting upon it: What's this doing here? We don't do sacrifices of living creatures in my church. We don't have to.

I go into the building, find the kitchen, and put the knife away. To get to the kitchen, I have to go through the parish hall. There are other people in there. I continue to explore more of the building, concentrating on just what a wonderful gift it is to be here in a dream and be lucid. [That's the last I remember.]

[Later, I had another nonlucid.] A whole bunch of the important businesspeople I know in real life, including [$OfficeBoss], have come over to House #2 for an early-morning presentation that I'm supposed to be giving, and they've all crowded into my bedroom. I wake up late for the presentation. In order to get into my closet, I have to ask [$OfficeBoss] and another man to move aside. I'm embarrassed to be seen by all these people while wearing only my black nightgown. [It was the same one I was wearing in real life that night.] I take too long to get ready, and all my guests wander off.

I go out into the rest of the house and see that my mom has put up all the Christmas decorations, even though it's June. I run the vacuum cleaner in the study; P. is there. I get a second shot at doing the presentation, and this time, it works out. I'm grateful that the first attempt, where I got up late for it and everyone left, was just a dream. [LOL!]

[Fragment] I'm in a house or hotel somewhere with MLT [a real-life friend]. I demonstrate to her the fold-out bed that's built into the wall, and she declares it to be too opulent. The building is cylindrical.

[I have been writing DJ entries throughout June, both by hand in a paper journal and in a document on my hard drive. I feel like working on bringing my online DJ up to date tonight, so I'm going to.]

Night of June 5-6

I'm in a bedroom that resembles the one I had at House #2, but isn't exactly like it. I'm getting dressed, and my mom is in the room. I explain to her that I don't own any khakis or chinos, only jeans and black pants. [This is almost, but not quite, true in real life. I do have some khaki capris, but only one pair.] In a drawer, I find a couple of pairs of khaki capris, one pair of which is a light brown with a pretty, darker brown pattern of flowers and leaves on it. I think they might be too small for me, but I put them on anyway.

Night of June 6-7

A woman is being held in a dark, underground room. She's being tortured by having her hands bound together above her head in such a way that her elbows are being forced to bend the wrong way. She laughs and is good-humored about it, but this is just a facade to hide the horrible pain she's in. Other torture goes on, with torture implements, and other scary things happen [but I no longer remember the details]. All of the events of the dream unfold visually, but are accompanied by ongoing, simultaneous background narration provided by [a novelist whose audiobooks I often listen to]. The events are are all part of one of his novels, which I'm listening to. [I've been listening to his stories all these years, and they're just now giving me nightmares? Actually, I think I know why this might be: Now, I actually have a visual image in my memory to go with the concept of 'torture implements.' I got this visual image from seeing “Limitless;” that scene freaked me out, and I had to look away. That fact, plus the fact that I was really anxious about real-life stuff as I was going to sleep on this night, most likely caused the nightmare.]

Night of June 8-9

I instinctively realize that I'm pregnant, with twins, while I'm out and about, doing something. Later, I go to a hospital because I think it's my time to give birth, but it doesn't happen.

[Different scene.] I'm with a bunch of my friends, cleaning up the mess left behind after some big event in a large, indoor area. Cleaning up includes gathering together, sorting, and storing all the leftover pens and markers that were being given away at the event.

[Yet another scene.] I'm going to the hospital for a checkup.

At some point [I don't remember in which scene it was], I put my hand on my lower abdomen to feel the small bump that's starting there, and think about how I should stop drinking soda and eating unhealthy foods. [This dream felt very real while I was in it, so much so that when I woke up and recalled it, I went, “Wow, all that was just a dream? Whew, that's a relief!”]

[This is both a catch-up post and a repost. Apparently, there was a server crash recently that ate this entry after I posted it the first time.]

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

Some events unfold that I'm not a part of. [I don't remember what they were now, but there was definitely a plotline involved, and I was definitely just an outside observer.] When these events are over, I find myself sitting in a movie theater, watching the end credits of a movie. I realize that all of the preceding events were a movie.

I walk out into the theater lobby, which is long, narrow, and wedge-shaped, growing slightly wider as I approach the entrance. I walk out through the theater's glass front doors onto the sidewalk. There, I meet up with my parents again.

My parents and I are in a strange, [possibly?] open-air, car-like vehicle with a hired driver. I'm showing them around the quaint, seaside downtown of Lake Worth [which, as usual for me in my dreams, looks absolutely nothing like it does in real life; it looks more urban]. We marvel at the awesomely cheesy anti-drug mural painted on the wall of one building.

[Different dream.] I'm flying above M. Road, traveling north, but facing south. I'm being pulled backward by that unknown, unseen force that so often does that in my flying dreams. I realize that I'm dreaming and take control of the situation by concentrating on the details of the scenery around me, as if I were going to stop to admire them. It works as intended: my backward motion slows, then stops. Then, I start flying forward under my own willpower, heading toward home (i.e., south). As I fly, I admire the rich detail of the scene around me and how much like reality it is.

[Dreamskip.] I'm now in a quiet, peaceful, suburban residential neighborhood, on a concrete walking path separated from the backyards on either side of it by fences. I hop along the sidewalk like an astronaut on the moon, making slow jumps that carry me several feet into the air, then slowly floating back down in an arc. I'm enjoying the fun of being in a low-gravity environment, which my dream environments often are.

I get up onto one of the fences and perform several floating glide-leaps from one parallel fence to another, combining jumping with flying. Then, I decide to try to change the dream environment to a different one by closing my eyes and spinning. I think, If I'm going to do that, I'd better start from a standing start. I jump off the fence I'm on and float gently down to the sidewalk. Once I'm standing on it, I think, Neopia, and close my eyes, but forget to spin around.

When I open my eyes, I'm in a much different suburban neighborhood. I'm standing in the middle of a straight street, looking down its length. It's lined on both sides with brightly colored, two-story houses with lush, green trees in their front yards. It doesn't look much like any of the official artwork of Neopia, but nonetheless, I become aware that this is Neopia, and that I've succeeded in my goal of changing the scene and getting there. I'm so excited about this that the scene winks out of existence after about two seconds, and I wake up. [Sigh.]

[Later, different dream.] I'm attending some special event at a theme park on behalf of [the company I've been teaching with]. I'm with SH and TS [two of my fellow teachers]. We're all wearing our white lab coats, and we're walking across a plaza that has a circular concrete beam running overhead, around the perimeter. I see some friends of mine wearing full rubberhead Sesame Street character costumes, also walking across the plaza in the opposite direction. I say to the young man in the Elmo costume who is carrying the head and looking sweaty and tired, “Hi, Mark. Go get some water.”

There are many other people there, changing into or out of costumes. Many of them are hanging their hangers on the concrete ring. TS suggests that we hang our lab coats from it, but I prefer to go back to the trailer, which [only in the dream, not in real life] has sides with panels that open to reveal closets [like my band trailer did in high school]. I want to put my lab coat there because I can make sure that trailer is locked.

--------------------------------------------
Side notes:

That first scene, where I realized that everything that had preceded it had just been a movie I was watching, was a particularly cool example of day residue. I had just been to the movies the evening before I had this dream. The recent article about how dreaming and watching movies produce very similar patterns of brain activity has informed the way I watch movies now; I always mentally compare the two experiences. In the movie I watched on this evening (Limitless), the ending felt exactly like being suddenly, rudely awakened by an alarm clock when you're still right in the middle of a dream. It's not surprising that that experience gave rise to an actual dream in which a movie ended and I suddenly realized, “oh, yeah, that didn't actually happen, I'm just watching a movie.” Both within the dream and in retrospect, that realization felt very similar to the realization, “oh, yeah, that was just a dream” that I've often had just after both false and real awakenings. Therefore, that moment of realization within that dream felt very much like a false awakening.

It belatedly occurs to me that Neopia is an entire planet. If I chose only one specific locale on that planet and made that the focus of my intentions, I'd probably have better success getting there.

I'm in House #1. [So much for recognizing dream signs... :/] I look through a window that looks out onto the patio from the side opposite the dining room [um... in real life, that would be the bathroom window, from which such a view would be impossible...] and see that there's a wasps' nest hanging from the eaves outside the dining-room window.

I'm in the garage, and I say goodbye to P. There are two cool, old, red, elongated, flat-topped cars there (one might have been a convertible). My parents are taking me out somewhere, but I haven't been able to find anything I want to wear, so I'm only wearing my royal blue bathrobe. [I used to have this robe in real life, but I don't anymore.]

[Dreamskip.] I'm driving the brown car into the parking lot where our hair salon and the OSH hardware store are [back in our old town]. I'm naked, so I try to crouch down so that the other drivers around don't see me. When I try to park, the driver of the car that's parked crookedly in the space next to mine decides to back out and straighten his parking job, coming close to hitting my car, but narrowly missing it. I cower in my seat, frightened. When the driver gets out of his car and comes over to talk to me, I look down to check the arrangement of my blue bathrobe, which I'm suddenly wearing again, and make sure it's covering me decently. The other driver tells me that he didn't hit me.

Then, four young boys (10 or so) come to my car and start pestering me relentlessly, climbing in it and all over it and talking to me loudly and annoyingly. I yell as loudly as I can at them to GO AWAY. I'm surprised that I'm capable of yelling with that volume. After I yell at them like that about three times, they finally go away. I'm trying to keep my blue robe on and maintain my modesty, with only partial success. I continue to do so once I've moved from my car to a patio table on the sidewalk outside the hardware store. [I don't recall getting from one location to the other.] People pass me by on the sidewalk as I try to keep the robe up. Next to me on the sidewalk, B.W. and his chorale friends are getting dressed for a performance.

-----------------------------
Side notes:

This was an interesting twist on a classic anxiety dream. It featured the common dream scenario of being naked in a public place and ashamed of it, but it combined that scenario with two stressful occurrences from my waking life: a minor car accident in a parking lot, and the very spirited all-boys class I've been teaching once a week. In the dream, I yelled more loudly than I ever have in real life. Do I unconsciously wish I could yell that loud in reality? It's a plausible hypothesis.