non-lucid

Can't Wake Up

I realize I'm dreaming, and there are a bunch of people surrounding me that I think mean me harm. I try to wake myself up, but I can't! Every time I try, the best that happens is that I change locations, but those people are still around me, coming closer! I start to panic

Friends in Barcelona

I discover that some of my friends are also in Barcelona for a short trip! I manage to track down their group to a tour bus that's about to leave. I jump on board and the doors close behind me. But I just stand there awkwardly at the front of the bus for a while, trying to decide how to admit to them that I've been stalking them and hoping to hang out. The terrible part is, they all know who I am, and they'll have recognized me by now. Seriously awkward.

Later, we're all in a bar. Someone points out an amusing Spanish translation of my last name. Later we're trying to decide where to go next, and unfortunately the group has broken up into various smaller ones. One guy (who speaks about five languages) is looking at a poster with a naked male torso on it--obviously an advertisement for some kind of gay bar. He seems interested in going there, but I'm not sure if that would be my first choice.

Previous hours:
Mar 11, no sleep

For Science

Darth Vader switches roles with some other character. Somehow one of them learns how to be a mysterious new creature. I'm playing the game as a character that learns about the creatures it fights by punching them. Some kind of physical absorption of knowledge. I need to punch it again because my old knowledge is bad now, incomplete, watery. Later I use a cheat code and cast a time-freezing spell, but it doesn't affect the two main opponents, who are at this moment locked in combat. As their spells and swings come into contact with the frozen soldiers around them, they start coming back to life. It's interesting to watch a sort of wave of motion spread outward through the battlefield.

Previous hours:
Mar 8, 1:54-8:32 "living on mtn, powerful entity expects me to leave/kill myself"
Mar 9, no sleep

Family Musical

I'm sitting with my family in a shopping center, looking around at nothing in particular, when I hear a strange sort of music from the group behind me. Turning around, I see that my family is using coins and glass cups to make ringing noises with a definite rhythm and melody. Delighted, I pull a coin from my pocket and join in. It takes me a few tries to figure out how to hit it to get a clear bell tone, but once I figure it out, it's really fun!

At another point I decide to try out my tap dancing skills. Although I'm wearing tennis shoes and I've never practiced this before, it goes pretty well. Except then one of my relatives notices my efforts, smirks lightheartedly, and shows me how it's done. Her shoes are much better than mine for the purpose, and I recognize that I've been put in my place.

Another cousin, a boy of about eleven years, goes over to the nearby piano to play something. But by now, the passersby in the mall have noticed our little show, and they all flock around the piano, expecting great entertainment. To give him a little breathing room, some of us come over to the piano and shoo the other people a bit farther back. His dad sits down with him and they start playing a piece together. Mostly it's just the little boy, but the dad sometimes has to play chords in the high register because the boy's arms aren't long enough to reach that far. In the middle of the performance, a stranger who knows the piece comes up and starts pointing out mistakes in the boy's version, interrupting the father. How annoying.

Grandparents' House

I'm hanging out in my grandparents' house when Mom tells me to go fetch Grandma. I do, and when I come back I find out that Mom is going soon, leaving me to stay here for the night. Just me in the house with my grandparents? I'm uncomfortable with this prospect.

Dramatic Entrance

I'm at a ballroom dance behind a glass wall from the main dance floor. I decide to mischievously break the glass, but I'm not sure exactly the best way to do it. I try it multiple ways, rewinding the scene every time to play it over again.

Quests Galore

I decide to play an old Harry Potter game for nostalgia's sake. I finished the main plot long ago, but there are a bunch of bonus quests that never did finish, and none of them are easy. You have to save up a lot of gold before doing them. After collecting some money, I try starting one of the quests that I've heard is particularly hard--not because of difficult battles, but because the quest is sort of a mystery and it's hard to guess where you're supposed to go next. Indeed, a glob-like creature rises out of the darkness, eats most of my gold, and vanishes without a trace. Well, that got me nowhere. So much wasted time gathering that gold.

I decide to give one of the other quests another try. It involves defeating a ghostly horse-riding warrior. I've tried it before, earlier tonight, and I know that he does a lot of damage, but at least the objective is straightforward. I ride down into his canyon lair and we immediately start fighting, repeatedly charging down the canyon and passing each other like we're jousting with swords. If I hold down one of the trigger buttons on my controller (like the R2 button on a PS2) it will charge my attack, so that if I release the button at the right time, the slash of my scimitar will do lots of extra damage. The trouble is, he's doing the same thing, and we're both losing health at about the same rate. In fact, I'm about to die!

Hurriedly, I pause the game and try to find a health potion in my inventory. While looking around in there, I realize that I also still should have Armageddon's Blade, an epic weapon that I received for completing the main storyline all those years ago. I drink the potion, unpause, and run away from the ghostly warrior to give myself time to search for the sword. I'll also have to ensure that I'm suitably fireproof so that I don't kill myself as well when activating the sword's epic power.

Somehow I end up in a village with a friend of mine, a girl, accompanying me. While I'm talking to some NPCs, she sets off to do a different quest. The NPC remarks upon her departure, saying in a commiserating tone of voice that "women are ever unfaithful." Irked by his sexism, I try to explain that women are people too, and this one just happens to be busy at the moment: "There are only ten slots in our inventory, and we're each trying to do about twenty quests at the same time," I say.

Circumlocution

I'm hanging out with my dad's friend's son, whose father is there as well. The father makes a casual remark that I respond to at face value--then I realize that between the lines, he was actually saying that his son is gay and he thinks I ought to start going out with him. Apparently he thinks I'm gay as well. I'm impressed that he can say this much without actually saying any of it outright: it's the only logical interpretation of his comment. [I can't remember the exact wording of the comment, but presumably it wouldn't make as much sense in waking life anyway.] I add something to my previous response, hopefully making clear that now I understand his second meaning and I'm actually not interested in guys. The son does indeed interpret it that way and hurriedly responds, "That's fine." I suppose he probably feels a bit uncomfortable about his dad's attempt at matchmaking.

Previous hours:
Feb 20, 0:00-8:31
Feb 21, 3:40-8:30
Feb 22, 0:25-8:33; frag: doing touristy stuff

Underworld

I'm dead. There's a sarcophagus down here in the underworld with me. I'm not exactly sure what dead people are supposed to eat, so I try eating some dead flesh. Then I try eating a pebble.

Suddenly my roommate arrives. It occurs to me that since the underworld is the great equalizer, he could be from literally anywhere in the world. I'm not sure what language I should use to introduce myself. For that matter, I'm not sure what I should give as my birthplace. He probably won't know of my hometown, so should I mention my state? Maybe just my country?

I leave the room in search of my keys and my shoes, neither of which I currently seem to possess. I find two of my high school friends in a common area, acting like they're in the show Doctor Who. They're trying to simulate a thunderstorm. Such weather never happens in the underworld, and I feel a sudden wave of pity for them: they must miss being alive. They succeed in creating a clap of thunder, and to my surprise a portal opens that can only lead back to the living world. Who would have guessed that being a Doctor Who fan could be so useful? My friends celebrate their success for a moment, but before they can go through the portal, another voice speaks. It introduces itself as Robert Downey Jr., and some how he found out about their plan. Now he's betrayed their plan to the authorities, and they won't be able to escape.

Correct Change

I'm trying to find the right change to pay for my groceries at the local supermarket. But what I thought were bills turn out just to be a bunch of green coupons that are good for 2% off something or other. I try to figure out if I can use one of them with this purchase.

At another time, I'm trying to find all the loose change in my room and organize it. Just when I thought I'd found all my little copper coins, I find an entirely new stack of them that I hadn't remembered existed. I feel overwhelmed by all the pennies. Too many pennies!

Previous hours:
Feb 8, 3:48-8:30
Feb 9, 0:08-7:45

Virginity

I'm at a party talking with a girl I sort of know when somehow we begin making out. Surprised, I think I want to stop this before it goes too far--this is not how I envisioned I would make my "sexual debut." But no, this is fun! That's what sex is about, right? Sex is just fun and there's no need to memorialize the first time. So I go with it.

Some time later, we're naked in a bed together. I realize that despite the obviously sexual nature of our activities, absurdly, I'm still technically a virgin. But then the girl takes the initiative, and, shifting her position, slips me inside. I'm impressed that she managed to do so without using her hands, but I suppose she knows more about this than me. Anyway, yes, it feels different; I'm not sure how I imagined it would feel.

A few minutes later, we're still going. I'm impressed with myself for lasting this long. In fact, we never actually finish. Eventually we just stop. I realize that this whole time, we've been clasping ourselves together like we're hugging, with our chin over the other person's right shoulder. I'm not sure we ever did any kissing. In order to rectify the situation, I slide my cheek back along hers, and we kiss. As I draw back, she gives me a strange look (or so I think), so I panic and wonder if that was too romantic a thing to do after a one-off fling like this. But when I explain my concern, she laughs and says that kissing is absolutely fine.

Baby Ghost

I'm playing a video game. There are five main sections of the storyline and they all have a specific name.

I've just finished a quest involving a baby child in a crib, the heir of a royal family. Somehow I start watching a trailer for the game, which I slowly realize is a cinematic retelling of a later section of this same storyline! Spoilers! But on the other hand, who really cares about spoilers, and the story is interesting. Apparently the baby later dies, and his ghost comes back to haunt the crib. I'm standing in a corner of the room at night when the ghost appears in that corner of the room. It attacks me, and I have to defend myself with a magic sword. Later on, Snape is having a conversation with someone when the person betrays him, stabbing a dagger into his side and cutting all the way around the outline of his body.


[I've decided also to add a star rating system to the titles of these entries, since what's the point of titles if not to give some indication of how interesting the content is:

*: fairly uninteresting
**: mildly interesting
***: unusually interesting (e.g. unusually long, unusually detailed, or unusually important)
****: interesting in content and impressive technically (in dream recall or control)
*****: life-changing, awe-inspiring, and the like]

Previous sleep hours:
Fri Feb 1, 2:23-8:30

No recall.

Torture

A naked man is strapped to a chair. They're torturing him. In the course of three brief scenes, they basically cut a tunnel through his abdomen. It's nauseating.

Some Salsa Dancing (5:53)

I'm messing with the wiring in my car so I can do a power cycle on it and fix something. Then I realize I've been doing a lot of extra work. [My dream journal says that around now I "park and check car" and "Mom strikes," but I don't know what this means.] Later, I'm with my sister and we're trying some salsa dancing. We manage some really cool flips and barrel rolls. I feel like I'm inventing an all-new kind of dance.

Basement

I find myself in a crawlspace with periodic rectangular holes in the floor, leading to staircases that descend into darkness. I'm trying to find a lighted staircase so that I can escape from here. Eventually I find one, but there are other problems. I become lucid somehow, and risk looking into the darkness. The dream fades palpably, and in desperation I try to turn it into a sex dream. I suppose it works, after a fashion (no visuals), but I wake up soon afterwards.

Takeover

A villainous man takes the whole building hostage. Most of us are penned up alone in small rooms, separated from each other, but we can see what's going on in the building by looking at the various TV screens on the walls. Against orders, a naked woman in one room talks to the man. Smirking, he pushes a button that blows up the room she was in. I'm scared that there will be gore all over the room when the smoke clears, but fortunately, there is not. Then there are some explosions along the outside walls of the compound, and I know that the outside resistance movement is trying to break in and depose the villain. I wish they wouldn't try--they have no realistic chance of winning. But I leave the room to try and help them somehow.

I meet up with someone on my team and we run into a problem. There are no nearby enemies, so we try to solve it in a few different ways. After the last attempt, I say, "It's no use, we tried this last year." (This enemy takeover is a yearly occurrence, one we are cursed with until we find a way to escape it.) Suddenly, a door opens above us and an enemy comes out. When we get a clear look at his face, we see that it's "The Law" (from Rocket Jump's VGHS). He smiles nastily.

Invasion of the Seanchan

I'm looking at a plastic model of a hay-filled wagon. Bumping it accidentally, I realize that the hay was manufactured in multiple layers. You can take them off one at a time! This is the coolest thing. Underneath the final layer is a model of Nynaeve. (It's a reproduction of a moment from the Wheel of Time series [except it's not; that I've read, Nynaeve never hides under a haystack].) There's something wrong with Nynaeve's face, though; the proportions aren't right. Oh, well, you can't win them all.

In the hay is a small hair clip with an exquisitely delicate decoration of a flower [or something]. It's part of a set of three that the Seanchan are secretly distributing; when they attach one to your clothing, you come under their control.

Suddenly, a Seanchan voice starts speaking from the platform in the middle of the room! Basically, it's a holdup. They're blocking all the exits and they've come to invade. Many of them lift their staves and shoot a sort of heat-distortion bubble towards one side of the room. Their target is a dark-haired man, who gets up from his chair to catch all of the spells into a pulsing, floating black circle, like an eclipse or a black hole, the size of a soccer ball. I've no idea what it will do, but it looks powerful. The tension builds. . . .

Suddenly, the whole thing breaks out into what seems like a silly, dancing commercial of some kind.

Island

[My notes say something about a grocery store at the beginning of this dream, but I don't remember what.]

The island is covered in stone buildings, like an old university. I decide to visit the island, so I start walking along the hiking trail to get there. Soon I'm walking over dry, dead grass, and soon the path becomes so steep that I have to crawl upwards. My head faces the grass and I can barely see anything else. I wish I had thought to wear kleats; it would have made this journey much safer.

Later, we are all summoned to the island for a meeting. I go there with a friend. Instead of going straight to the meeting, we wander down a side path, into a part of the island I've never seen before. My friend wants to keep going this way, but I need to go back to the mainland for something. I rise into the air, soon realizing that being in flight means I'm dreaming. I fly out past the island and down to the water. The dream starts fading and to my frustration I'm unable to stop myself from waking up. IRL, some of my family are having a noisy conversation right outside my bedroom door, and I suspect that's why I woke up so inexorably.

Lunchbox

I, a high school senior, am walking to lunch. I pull out my lunchbox, which my mom packed for me this morning. Then I remember that I'm on an unlimited meal plan (in college), so there's no need for Mom to be sending food with me anymore. I tell this to her, but a couple of days later, she's still packing my lunchbox for me.

Frags:

• There's a pit in the middle of the hallway with a small stepping stone in the middle. He crosses the gap by doing a handspring off of the stepping stone.

[I've switched to 24-hour timestamps, just in case my schedule gets really bizarre.]

School Play

I'm trying to find the showers, but there are a lot more people running around the hallway than usual. Pulling back a curtain, I find the place I was looking for, but all of the stalls are taken. The one nearest me is taken by Lord Voldemort himself, judging by the face. That's weird.

Some of my friends drag me out on stage to take part in the auditions. I'm stuffed into the head of a dragon costume. My job is to move the jaws and tongue in front of a light to create a lifelike shadow puppet against the wall. After we read a few lines, though, we're shooed offstage. I don't think the show's director was impressed. At least this explains why someone was dressed up as Lord Voldemort.

In the audience, I spot the actor who played Bilbo in "The Hobbit." It takes me a minute to recognize him, though. By the time I realize how cool it is that he's here, there are too many people between us for me to catch up to him.

I find my roommate in the hallway. Earlier I lent him my toothbrush, but he's had it for a few days now and I want it back. His reply to this request is pretty confusing. I'm not sure what he's saying, and I suspect he's trying to evade giving a straight answer. What a bum.

Number Puzzle

My grandpa's been helping my group of classmates by making a number puzzle, similar in layout to sudoku. When I take a close look at it, though, I'm confused. How is it supposed to work? I start counting the number of numbers per column carefully. Most of them have eight, but I find one with nine. That must be a mistake. I call over someone to point out the problem, but I'm still confused. Here's a column with seven. So if I just shift one number over, that should fix things. But this box has some commas and periods in addition to numerical digits. Am I supposed to count those as well? Probably I should, since they must be there for a reason. I'll have to count everything again. . . .

Self-Haircut

As part of a deal, a girl is using electronic clippers to cut her own hair. The idea is just to go for it and see how it turns out. As she goes along, though, I notice she's taking a bit too much off of the sides and not enough off of the top. If she keeps going the way she is, eventually she'll have to get a buzz cut in order for the haircut to be even. So I try to get her to cut more off of the top. I'm not sure how well it's working, though.

Correctional Facility

[There's a bit of sort-of-lucidity right at the end of this dream, but not enough that I'm willing to call it lucid.]

One of my housemates lends me one of those red-light scanners through the bars separating our cells. I try to use it to give her ID card administrator access through the prison. From the instructions on the scanner's status display, I'm supposed to scan her card first, then scan the device that will grant her access privileges. Suddenly I notice that a guard is coming down the hall with some new prisoners. I have all sorts of illicit papers and devices spread on the floor of my cell, so I just try to lie casually on top of them as the group passes. Thankfully, the administrator doesn't notice. I scan a few more cards, but then I notice I've lost track of my friend in the confusion. I get up and walk down the center aisle of the bus, looking around at the people in the seats. Eventually, I find her [though she's a different housemate now], but the seats near her are taken, so I just grab a random empty seat a few rows farther back.

I'm nervous. This bus is taking us to a correctional facility, where we will atone for our crimes. I know it is the morally correct thing to do, but I'm worried that my time here will interfere with my studies at college.

The bus pulls to a stop in front of my old elementary school. It's almost dark out, and it's drizzling. Everyone seems to be heading around the side of the school, so I follow them. Then I realize there was a fork in the sidewalk a few steps back, and not everyone went the same way I did. But then someone shouts at those other people that they're going the wrong way. We're led into a nearby building with modern architecture (i.e. lots of windows) and up to the second floor. In the hallway up there, I see a number of doors with slots for access cards, and I'm very tempted to test my card on it to see if my earlier experiment worked. But there might be guards nearby, and I'm not sure I'd even be able to recognize one if I saw one. Maybe I'll get a chance to test my card sometime in the next few days, when I have a moment alone. But what if they chaperone bathroom trips? I might never get a chance!

I realize that I'm not carrying my backpack of stuff. What happened to it? Looking around, I notice one of the plainclothes guards is carrying a lot of luggage for the new inmates, including my backpack. I wonder if it would be polite for me to volunteer to take it back, or if he's carrying it because I'm actually not allowed to have any of my stuff right now. I decide not to ask.

After a bit more walking, I reach a big auditorium, where everyone is taking a seat. I sit towards the back. Once almost everyone is seated, the facility workers start explaining things to us. They start going through a list of attendance. One heavyset man with glasses and salt-and-pepper stubble names a person who is supposed to be here, because he was summoned no less than 351 days ago. The auditorium takes a collective gasp at that. There's no set time by which you have to answer a summons, but waiting that long is shockingly rude. Perhaps that person doesn't intend to answer for his crimes at all.

They start going down a list of attendance, but they are interrupted only five names in by one of the new inmates. "None of those people are here; we're all from Bus 84." Apparently Bus 85 got delayed somewhere. Clearly most people here know much more about this process than I do; they must have been committed here before.

Suddenly, people start pointing at the ceiling, which is made of glass. Looking up, I see some indistinct dark shapes flying overhead. Is it an air strike? Are we about to be dragged into a war? It's hard to see clearly enough to say if the shapes are dropping bombs, or indeed if they are airplanes at all. Then one of them flies almost right overhead, then dips downward and out of view under the floor. It was shaped a bit like the Millennium Falcon in miniature. No one in the auditorium is moving, but I think we're all wondering whether we should be running for cover.

The ship shoots upward again past the windows on the opposite side of the room, as if it has looped underneath us. It arches over the ceiling, then drops below view on the other side again, closer to the building than it was before. Has the pilot lost control? What's happening here? The ship shoots into view again, loops over the ceiling--and crashes straight down through the room about fifty feet from where I'm sitting.

One of the wardens shouts, "Good lord!" but they still don't seem to be moving. I guess they're just shocked. Well, damned if I'll be waiting for them. I run for the doors as the building begins to shake underneath me. Some other inmates are ahead of me, but when I reach the exit, there's no hallway: it's just a straight drop three or four stories to the ground. And the entire room is tilting, sliding, falling towards the concrete below. If this were real life, there's no way I would survive this.

I jump out of the door and land on the highway with traffic coming toward me. It's daytime now. I jump on top of the first car, then jump to the second, and continue jumping my way down the line. This is ridiculous, though, so I obtain a motorcycle from somewhere, mount it, then activate the jet engines. This is fun, but I still have to dodge traffic coming straight toward me. I bounce the motorbike into the air and activate the transformation into a sort of metal hang glider. [Interestingly, I don't think the transformation sequence had any visuals, I just sort of imagined that it was happening in an abstract sort of way.] Then the glider's jet engines kick in, and I shoot above the treetops and continue on my way.

Now that I'm out of danger, I pull out my cell phone and dial 911 to report the incident at the correctional facility. As I wait for the dispatcher to answer, I'm gliding over a grass field between two roads. There's a cute girl walking across the field. Tall, with wavy blond hair and freckles. We smile at each other. I'm about to fly onward when I remember that making out with someone is one of my dream goals! Letting go of the glider, I stumble a bit as I land on the grass behind her. This is a bit of a risk because there might not be enough action to sustain the dream--but if dream goals weren't risky, they wouldn't need to be goals.

"Hey, wait! Come back here!" I call.

She stops and watches me, looking a little defensive. I'm a bit thrown off by the fact that she's a little chubbier than she was before. It's like she's a different person, cute now in a different way. "Um, hi," she says carefully.

"I just want to make out a little." She just stares at me. "Please?"

She's still just staring at me as the dream fades to black and I begrudgingly wake up.

[IRL: Last night, I finally took out my dreaming goals sheet again to pick a few lucid dreaming goals. "Make out with a girl" was NOT one of them, though. Also, I would give a lot to know what crime I committed to be sent to that correctional facility . . . but alas, I cannot remember.]