J.D.

31.12.2010

Death by North Korea (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I'm trying to boost my recall, so I'm going back to recording everthing I remember about the night's sleep!

I was trying to bust my friends out of a jail in North Korea. We were inside the inner courtyard of a castle which was made of lightly coloured stone. It was overgrown and run down, but there were sturdy metal bars at every exit. I was the only one of the group skinny enough to squeeze through a gap between the bars.



As I snuck around a corner, I came face to face with a Korean guard. He was wearing a green uniform and hat, and carrying a rifle with a bayonet. As he saw me, his eyes widened, but he didn't make a sound. Instead, he turned and ran away- towards a guard outpost I assumed. I charged after him, to prevent him from raising the alarm. We struggled through some thick, overgrown flowerbeds and out into the open. Unfortunately I was now in full view of a guard with a mounted machine gun. He turned before I had a chance to react and fired. Everything went into slow motion. I felt the bellets going into my chest, but it was more of a discomfort than actually painful. Next thing I knew, I was back in the cell with my friends. I had respawned.

I tried again many more times, and eventually got my friends out of the cell using a crowbar I found in the guards' quarters. We made our way slowly through the overgrown flowerbed again. There was more than enough cover to conceal us from the machine gunner. The next thing I knew, I had a bow in my hand. There were long sharp bamboo sticks on the ground all around me, so I picked one up and prepared to fire. As I pulled back the string, I lined up my target- the machine-gunner. I let it loose. Headshot! The guard stumbled out of the turret and fell to the ground. This alerted all the other guards in the vicinity. A screaming alarm sounded and they all rushed out of their quarters. A fight ensued. I think I might have been semi-lucid, because I remember thinking that I would find some proper arrows in a quiver on my back if I simply looked for them there. Indeed I did. As my friends fought the guards at close range, I ran around the edges of the courtyard firing arrows and making ridiculous shots which always found their target. Finally, all that was left was one man. I assumed him to be Kim Jong-Il, but he was much taller and more badass. He was also dressed in a black robe, unlike the dull green boiler suit Kim Jong-Il is always seen in. I fired plently of arrows at him, all of which hit him at various points on his cranium, but had no effect. He advanced on me slowly. I had my back to a huge stained glass window. Beneath it was a sheer drop to the front of the castle. When the cloaked figure was close enough (by now his head was like a porcupine), I slipped around behind him and performed a "this is sparta" kick to send him through the glass. He fell, wailing, to the stone ground below.

12.12.2010

This Couldn't Be a Dream (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I had lived out a whole day chronologically. Been to the shops to get food, met my friends for a beer in the student's union building and gone shopping for clothes. Being in a dream was pretty far from my thoughts.

It was in the clothes shop in the evening that I began to get frustrated with the inconsistencies I was encountering. I was walking around shelves with my brother Michael. He was playing a game on his phone and not really paying attention to any of the clothes. I spotted a t-shirt I liked the look of on one of the higher shelves. It was a bit out of reach, so I went to look for something to stand on, or a shop assistant who could help. It was getting a bit dark outside, and nobody had switched on the lights in the shop, so I took it upon myself and flicked a switch beside the door. The lights flickered on. With no shop assistants in sight, I went back to the t-shirt. The shelf it was on had become a magazine rack. I screwed up my face into a "WTF" expression and turned around to find Michael where I had left him.
"What happened?" I asked.
"Wha? I dunno," he replied without looking up. I shook my head and tried to find FHM among the magazines. I thought I caught a glimpse of it, but when I did a double-take it was gone. Suddenly I wasn't sure whether I was indoors or outoors. The light had diminished, and there seemed to be woodland at the opposite end of the shop. It was getting a bit too weird. I said to my brother,
"This is exactly the sort of situation I would suspect is a dream, what the hell's going on?" After looking around a bit more I thought it couldn't hurt to reality-check. Six fingers. "Nooo way," I thought. I couldn't believe I'd been wandering around all day, going about my business and getting things done- and none of it was real. I double checked. There were now an indeterminate number of fingers on my hand.

I asked Michael how many fingers he saw on my hand, but he refused to give a decent answer. We exited the shop through the automatic door at the front, and found ourselves in an underground tube station. There was a train on the platform, which I jumped and glided over to the far side. I paused then, to try and remember some of the tasks of the year. The only one I could recall at the time was the end of the world- which I'd already done. I'm not sure what happened next, I may have woken up.

11.12.2010

Testing Curiosities (WILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I had nothing to do at all today, so I slept in till 2pm. I kept waking up and just closing my eyes again, which resulted in WILD after WILD. My memory of a lot of them has eroded, but I've got a few fragments.

I was on a huge cargo ship, and it was sinking. I was out on the deck, and it was tilted at about a 30 degree angle. I saw a shipping container start to slide in my direction. As it gathered speed, I took up a stance in front of it and tried to stop it with telekenisis. It didn't stop, and hit me directly. Luckily my feet weren't taken off the ground, and I was able to bring it to a halt.

It occurred to me then to test a little theory I'd been thinking about. Can we have a visual imagination in dreams? I'd suspected- with the visual imagination faculties already maxxed out with the creation of an immersive 3D world- that it might be impossible to imagine something without it becoming part of the dream, or at least destabilizing it. I tried it then. I visualised a friend of mine, and found that I could. Although my attention momentarily switched away from the cargo ship, and back again when I stopped imagining my friend. It seemed a bit like one was put on hold while I imagined the other. I then turned round to look up at the ship's bridge. There was a giant gorilla blocking my way. I ran at it, and pulled off a Halo Reach "armor lock" to defend against each of its swipes at me.



I jumped up to punch it in the face, and it seemed to get a whole lot smaller. I brought my fist down on the top of its wrinkled head, but it didn't appear to do much damage. The ape then became translucent. It faded in and out, and disappeared altogether after a few seconds.

07.12.2010

WILDing to Snooker (WILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I got in from class and flopped down on the sofa, still wearing shoes and a coat. Somebody else was watching snooker, and after a while I lay back and closed my eyes. After that it gets a bit hard to tell what was real and what wasn't.

I felt a light sensation in the middle-front of my head, which I can only describe as "a bit like falling". Kind of a tingle. It came in tiny, split-second bursts, and went away immidiately after I noticed it. It startled me slightly each time it happened- having the effect of making me a tiny bit more alert for a few seconds. I felt like I needed to let it happen uninterrupted to fall properly asleep. I was very careful the next time it happened, and it went on for a couple of seconds, bringing sleep paralysis with it. It felt like my whole body suddenly lost any muscle tension, and my head drooped forward- even though I was sure it was completely supported already.

I had a visualisation then of the crane outside. I looked at it intently, trying to keep focused on what I was doing. I could hear the sound of snooker on TV still, it never seemed to have gotten blocked out. But then it got a whole lot louder. I suspected this was purely my mind playing tricks, as I doubted whoever was watching it has maxxed out the volume while I was sleeping there. It got louder, and combined with a high-pitched whine. My jaw then seemed to clench of its own accord. But it felt like the teeth of my lower jaw were in front of my top front teeth. It was a bit uncomfortable, and I wondered if I could fix it without ruining the WILD. Turns out not. They weren't even stuck in that position anyway.



It struck me then that I had actually been pretty far away from awake. The difference I felt when waking up was like resurfacing after being underwater. During the transition to sleep I thought I had been basically aware and connected to the outside world thoughout, but it certainly didn't feel that way now!

04.12.2010

Floppy Neck (WILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I was about to reply to some of my adoptees' PMs on Dreamviews, but I thought I'd get inspired to reply with something more interesting if I had a WILD first. I was quite sleepy, and feeling the effects of a severe hangover. I predicted a WILD would definitely be on the cards. Before getting back into bed I turned on a lamp in the corner of the room to provide a little light. It's annoying to have a false awakening into a pitch black room- and I hoped having a light on in the real world would affect my dreams.

For a long time I lay on my back, to try and relax. Nothing much happened. After shifting position a few times, I thought I could hear someone talking. It sounded like a radio show. I listened carefully and made it louder. It turned into a roaring vibration coming from the sides of my forehead, then stopped.

The next thing I knew, I was playing Halo. I assumed this was brought on by looking at the new map pack before going back to bed. Although for some reason I was playing Halo 1. The graphics weren't great. I was inside some kind of blue-tinted warehouse, and some maniac was flying around on a ghost. I stuck it with a plasma grenade and jumped out of the way before he splattered me. I considered taking the ghost (which wasn't completely destroyed) for a spin, but I felt myself starting to wake up.

I was back in bed, unsure of whether or not I was awake. The lamp was on. As a kind of anchor, I tried to continue playing Halo with a controller I found in my hands. I kept my eyes closed, so I could still see the game I was playing, and used the "controller" to keep moving around.

I didn't think I could sustain the dream this way, so I gave up and opened my eyes. I thought I had woken up and was disappointed. Just to be sure, I looked at my hand as a reality-check. It was missing. I dropped my arm in disbelief. Getting out of bed was a challenge. My neck muscles didn't seem to work, and my head just flopped back on my shoulders. I momentarily fixed it by pulling my head forward by the jaw, but then I was stuck looking at the floor.

Suddenly I was back in bed. There was someone in the room with me. It turned out to be the dude who lives across the hall. I held out my arm and he helped me up.
"What are you doing here anyway?" he asked.
"Dreaming," I replied. "This isn't real." I knew this dream wasn't very stable, so I abandoned any ambitious goals I may have had. Instead, I stumbled into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. For some reason, I could only see my reflection in the mirror when I looked at it from an angle. There was no reflection at all when I looked straight-on. Unlike real life, I was clean-shaven, and my hair was quite neat.

After another false awakening, I found myself in a supermarket, looking at some kind of media device. It was quite like an ipod, but was more square than my ipod touch. I scrolled through various music tracks, and found myself drawn to one piece: "In the Hall of the Mountain King". Downloaded when I woke up, a good choice. It wouldn't play in the dream though.