memorable

I've actually not yet gone to bed tonight. Or more like "tonight". It's already morning. So let's delve into another classic. This is a short one mainly because I'm lazy. The Formula One fans here will enjoy this one. I can imagine that there's like two of you in whole Dreamviews.

Michael Schumacher Formula One Showdown
Date: April 16th 2009
Lucid: No

So I was watching Formula One on tv. Schumacher, who at the time of the dream was retired, had made a comeback to the races (as he later did irl). Barrichello was his team-mate as had been in the real-life as well. Schumacher went to the pits and there was some trouble, but they managed to deal with it and get him back on the track.

Just as Schumacher exited the pits, Barrichello smashed right into him! Schumacher's car didn't seem that damaged, but Barrichello's car was obliterated. Despite Schumacher's car being seemingly okay to go on, he parked to the trackside. Instead he jumped out of the cockpit and headed straight towards Barrichello.

It seemed like Schumacher would go to console his team-mate, but instead he grabbed Barrichello, ripped him out of his cockpit and started beating the hell out of him!

That's it. Amazing scenes. It was amusing to me when I woke up and it still is.

Last night was underwhelming once again in terms of dream recall - or I should say last day, and I only slept 6 hours. I have been struggling to sleep at night and it's interfering with my recall. Compared to my usual recall this has not been at all worse though. I am still struggling in cultivating a habit of actually making notes of my dreams right after I wake up. I should just do it. On a brighter note I have remembered at least fragments on five days in a row. Probably doesn't sound much especially coming from a guy that has been into LDs for three years, but my record stands at mere 27 days in a row. I hope that I beat it come the end of the January.

So anyway that means that you're in for another "classic" dream. As always I'm only rewriting the lengthy or otherwise memorable dreams here.

Zombies vs. Christians
Date: March 5th, 2009
Lucid: No
I was playing some kind of a hack 'n' slash multiplayer game - except that in my dreams, games are never games but rather I'm really in their worlds. There were two sides - Zombies and Christians. Your standard match-up... not. I was fighting with a battle-axe and our team was fighting along some ramp, slaying our opponents. I was obviously on the zombie side as I'm so vehemently anti-christian.

The main group of opponents started coming up the ramp. There was some kind of fence on the ramp, but that would have been easily surpassed should they have wanted it - but I guess they didn't see us, as they went into some mansion through the door behind the ramp.

I followed them. Inside the mansion there were coffins. I presumed that there would be zombies inside the coffins, but no. The zombies were lying on the tables in the next room, where I noticed one of the Christians crouching and "defusing" the zombie with his cross. Similarly how the bomb is defused in Counter-Strike. WTF? Zombie Counter-Strike? I'd play that. It's a bit odd though, usually in games and movies zombies are just shot to pieces, not "defused" with a cross... Well, whatever. Anyway I was in control of these lying zombies. At some point they got up and started walking whenever I was looking.

I took something that look like a pancake, inserted it into my mouth. I needed to speak into it to command the zombies. I hadn't done that earlier because it would have given off my location. Now the room only had some woman with my zombie. I put it into my mouth and commanded... "Kill me." Oops. I don't know what brainfuck happened there, but even the zombie looked surprised. Then it started to walk towards me. "No no no, kill the woman", I corrected myself then.

The zombie took it's time on killing the woman and she didn't look at all happy about my command. She started walking towards me ominously.

I retreated outside, constantly repeating the command "kill the woman!" through the pancake, or whatever. The zombie and the woman kept following me. Once I was outside, some of my teammates, who for some reason were just idling outside, came to my assist.

All the sudden some guy comes up to the zombie and says that he is sick of it doing things so slowly. The guy kept talking and I don't remember what he said in between, but somehow he managed to shift the subject to some new law, that said that you couldn't play more than 250 hands of poker a day anymore. He told that it was frustrating, especially for a pro like him, given that he had to meet the betting requirements of bonuses etc.

I just looked at him flabbergasted. I had forgotten about zombies and all. The I collected myself and just answered: "I'm not obeying that law."

That's it, now to wait when the Zombie Counter-Strike gets published.

Nothing particularly worth remembering last night, so we'll delve into "classics" again. In case somebody's confused, I do have a dream journal where I obviously write every dream down, in finnish - I just translate only interesting/lengthy entries into this one.

Dark Future
Date: January 28th, 2009
Lucid: No

This started with a fragment of me fondling some girl's breast, thus the header. The girl just laughed at me for being so gentle. I guess girls like it rough. Soon enough the whole dream transformed something completely different and one of the most memorable non-lucids I've ever had.

I found myself in some kind of electronic control system for laser turrets. My brother was in the cockpit of the next turret and in the sky enemy fighters flew all around. I've written that it was the final battle between good and evil, so perhaps that's how I felt about it at the time.

I managed to recall the controls of the turret quite accurately. Two joysticks moved the turret around, though I don't know why they needed to have two of them, one would suffice you'd think. Moving and firing was easy, but the problem for me was aiming - there was no way for me to actually see into the sky while I was in the cockpit. In the end I just decided to pull the triggers and keep the laser firing blindly into the sky. At least there's a distant chance of hitting something.

That wasn't a good idea though. I guess the turret's mechanics couldn't take such continuous firing, as the it jammed, or something like that. It ceased to fire. I pressed all the buttons, but nothing worked. It was time to bail out of there as I had no means of defending myself.

Outside the situation wasn't much better, as there were dangerous human-destroying robots looming all around. I just knew that, I don't remember actually seeing one immediately after leaving my turret. I was still wandering the streets and I thought to myself, that even if I hide into a basement of some building, the robots must have some kind of life-tracking device and they'd inevitably find me. I felt like I was already dead. Despair filled me.

I didn't see these terminators around, though. Somehow I still felt threatened. I soon saw and old, abandoned warehouse. A classic place to hide. I didn't hesitate when I walked in there. Maybe I should have, because there was some addict/drunk - a guy who seemed dangerous anyway. He wasn't angry though, but since I was in this threatened headspace already, I was suspicious of him.

We began talking about something. I don't remember what it was about. All the sudden I grabbed the guy's arm and tried to twist it. First one way, then I switched to the other. It didn't work. The guy just got upset and shot himself with some syringe. Then he attacked me. The details of the fight are out of my recall, but I did manage to knock him out - perhaps even kill him. Makes me kind of seem like a villain as I was the one who attacked first, but still, he did seem dangerous. Better to strike first then.

I wasn't out of the trouble yet, though. While fighting I had seen another addict in the next room, but he was apparently so high or something, that he completely ignored us. I was leaving the place when three other addicts came in from the same door I had come in. Well, now I was in trouble. They saw the body of their buddy behind me and they weren't happy.

The addicts surrounded me. I was scared to death by this point - remember I had no idea that this was a dream. It felt very real to me. I was only thinking that I had to survive somehow. I was thinking about performing some kind of wall-jump to go around them, but I guess I was a little bit desperate. This time they were the ones to attack first. One of them threw a punch at me. I managed to partially block him, so that my face only received a touch. Still I let out a loud "Oof" sound as the fist hit me.

The same guy seemed to stop and think for a moment. Then he threw another punch. This time it got nowhere near to me. Yet again I let out the "Oof" sound, even it didn't hit me at all. All the addicts started to laugh at me. I still felt very threatened and rightly so. I guess the laughing distracted them enough and I took the chance; I ran out between two of them.

While I was running I already knew I had survived, unless they have guns or something. I was, and still am in at least a solid shape. I can outrun some addicts any day.

The outside of the warehouse was similar to what it was when I went in. I've described it as being similar to the opposing side of counter-terrorist's starting point in the map cs_compound in Counter-Strike: Source, without the containers. Wow, that was a terrible sentence. Anyway, let's move on. I was going around the warehouse clockwise, but I again ran into trouble - two addicts coming right at me! I supposed they were all buddies of each other. I turned back to round the house counter-clockwise. The addict still at the door of the warehouse behind me shouted to them: "Throw a bottle at him!"

The other of the two guys that just came at me turned around and started going around the warehouse clockwise, apparently trying to meet me at the other side and surround me again. When I emerged from the other side of the house, I continued straight after the wall ended. The guy coming from the other side appeared a little behind me. He threw a bottle at me. It was a small bottle of 7up, you know, plastic bottle. Seriously? I doubt plastic bottle would have caused much damage to me. There was even some liquid in it still, so I even considered picking it up so that I'd have something to drink. I decided against it in the end.

"Hahaha, you didn't hit me", I mocked him while I continued to run away. I shouted some other insults as well to him, but I don't remember those anymore.

So I got away. While I was easing my step, I was visioning myself returning there to revenge. Someday... Apparently I thought myself as some kind of action hero.

I ran into the "City". Now City was an interesting place. Only the Chosen People were let in there, and I wasn't one of them. So as I approached the place, the special forces started firing me. Gee, I'm really not having good luck. From danger to danger. From addicts throwing plastic bottles at me to special forces firing with guns at me. Some "getting away".

Somehow I survived being fired at. All of these Chosen People of the future dressed exactly alike. They had long black leather-coats, sunglasses and they all were bald. The coats were open and the clothing beneath it was dark as well. So it was hard for me to mix into them. I wonder how the hell I didn't get found and shot.

I figured that if I just shaved my head (I have long hair) and dressed alike, I could fool them. That was my long-term plan.

I don't remember why - or how - but I went to some hospital. There some professor started telling me all kinds of things. I guess he was the exposure needed at this point so that I'd know how this world works. The professor told me about "The Perfect Race of Humans", that they had created. Apparently the Chosen People. On the monitor there was 3d-model of the head of these humans of the future. They had long skulls and small noses. Big forehead. Those were the details I noticed particularly.

For some reason I started to think about what would be the perfect amount of humans from which the current (as in future as the dream was set there) segment of the humanity had descended on. For some arbitrary reason I figured 10 000 would be good amount. Then I proceeded to think that that's why the killer robots were probably around. They were used to get rid of rest of the humanity, so that the Chosen People would be all there is eventually.

That's pretty grim vision of future, but at least I survived. It was nightmarish dream, but at the same time it still was totally awesome. One of the best I've had ever.

It ended in a false awakening where I was in my room, but after that that part is boring. So let's end it here.

Last night didn't produce anything special dreamwise again. I remembered some fragments, but not enough to merit a proper entry here. So instead we are going to delve into another "classic".

Jakro "Classics" II: Weird Mansion and It's Angry Owner
Date: January 9th, 2009
Lucid: No

I was keeping a fire in the fireplace, but for some reason I somehow removed the burning contents of the fireplace and took them with me outside, next to the shed where we keep our firewood. It was winter and I took the fading fire and placed it onto the snow. Like I said I have no idea how I transported the fire from within the fireplace to outside, nor I know why I did it. The fire wasn't burning very brightly, so I poked the wood a bit to make more space for it to take air - it worked as some old wooden door that was beneath the fire burst into flames like I'd poured gas in it.

This was the time when I realized that it probably isn't the smartest thing to burn wood next to the shed. If it would have caught fire, that would have been catastrophic. The fire did indeed spread to the wood that was inside the shed. I panicked a bit but managed to put down the fire. The fire was out, but I was still nervous in case there was some smoldering.

I switched back inside the house all the sudden. There was my brother and some random buddies of him. I felt like I knew them, even though afterwards I had no idea who they were. My brother gave me his phone, so that I could call our sister to watch the shed in case there's still something smoldering.

For some reason I called my brother's number, which is odd considering I was using his phone! Funny enough, some unknown dude actually answered the phone. There is no mention of the contents of the call, so I take it I didn't move forward much in that discussion. I forgot about the shed as there was a bigger problem.

The group - me, brother and the other guys - weren't in our house at all. It was some kind of strange mansion, and we were lost there. We didn't know how we had ended up there, but we wanted to get away. We were in some kind of dining hall. There were stairs up, but they were collapsed on the upper end. The upper level wasn't that high anyway. On that upper level there were stairs even further upwards. Couple of the other guys planned to get to that upper level by climbing the stairs to as high as they go and then jumping to the upper platform. It was feasible, as the platform was just about within jumping range.

I took the lead and was first to try the jump. I managed to grab onto the edge edge of the platform with my arms, but then the platform collapsed under my weight. The fall wasn't long and I didn't hurt myself, but the other guys were a bit pissed about the fact that there was no way upwards anymore.

In fact, the others succumbed into despair. They talked pure crazy-talk that we are going to starve there as we were stuck. WTF? We were in a mansion, and in a dining hall no less. You'd think there were some food nearby, even more importantly, you'd think someone actually lives there! I wasn't really concerned about starving to death.

I rallied the rest of the bunch and we started to search for a alternative routes away from there. In some room to the side of dining hall we met a little girl. I asked whether there was any other way out except that broken stairway. The girl then asked us to come with her. She took us to a balcony that was high on the house's side, but it had a stairway going down! We had managed to get out.

Not so fast. We were just about to go to the balcony when we bumped into the owner of the mansion. Instantly I was afraid of him - he just seemed to emit this vibe of pure hateful energy. Like he was about to snap at any moment. The worse thing was that he was actually carrying a rifle when he came to us. It was some old-fashioned rifle that was probably at least a couple hundred years old. I remember the gun in vivid detail - it was beautifully decorated throughout, both it's metal and wooden parts. It must have been expensive.

I don't remember exactly what the guy said, but his message was basically this: "I'm glad you are coming out, otherwise I would have had to kill you." Jesus Christ. This guy is a madman, but I figured that out at first sighting.

We were leaving. Somehow I knew that my dad was on his way to come to pick me up from there. I tried to spark up some conversation with the guy in the meantime, just to keep his occupied so that he doesn't get any ideas about torturing and murdering us. He seemed like a that kind of guy. I was about to compliment him about his nice gun, but I never get to that, as he pulled out a dull and bent butterknife.

Yeah. This was the kind of guy that was even more scary when wielding a dull and bent butterknife. He could fuck me up with that. I had no doubts in my mind of that. I tried to defuse the situation by saying assertively "Do not point that butterknife at me!", but instead that actually blew out the situation. Wrong move.

The guy went absolutely nuts. He started shouting that I won't tell him what he can or can't do. I was terrified. "This is it, my life's going to end. Fucked up with a butterknife by some madman."

Finally he snapped fully and started coming towards me. I tried to survive by starting to run away. I ran the stairs down with the guy chasing me down.

Lucky for me, just as I was on the ground level, my dad's car emerged from the road. He stopped his car some way from me and I ran to get on board. I was barely in when I screamed at my dad to step on it. I guess he saw the guy that was coming after me as he quickly obliged.

But I couldn't get the door closed as the lunatic managed to just cut in. Car was already moving and he had to run along to keep up. The madman and I struggled a bit at the door before we finally managed to shrug him off.

Some way away my it was my dad's turn to snap. I was explaining what happened and my dad got so angry, that he made an U-turn and started accelerating back towards the madman's mansion. I presumed that he was going to try to run over the madman. Wow, I didn't know my dad could get so upset over something that he would cold-bloodedly try to kill someone - even if the madman totally deserves it.

Anyway, I was still scared to death. I managed to convince my dad to turn back away as I told him, that the lunatic had a rifle. It was lucky that my dad listened to me.

We drove away from the mansion and had succeeded to escape. My brother and the rest of the crew were forgotten by now, like they never even existed. I guess the managed themselves. Nonetheless this was an uncharacteristically happy ending for a nightmare.

Hi. I'm Jakro. That's it, let's go into the dream... No, really maybe you want to know briefly who the hell is this.

I've been dabbling with lucid dreaming since about 2005, but only started it taking more seriously in 2009. At first my results were encouraging, peaking in July 2009 when I had 8 lucid dreams in a month. I was like "holy shit, this is awesome, and it's only going to get better. Fast forward a couple of years and I'm like "what happened? It was supposed to be awesome!" During the past year my total lucid count was 14. That's pathetic! Worst thing is, that they've all been short and poor in quality. My last quality LD was probably back in 2009. So what did really happen?

Simply put I started coasting more and more and didn't put in as much effort as in the first few months. I was lazy. I've not made concerted effort for lucid dreams in a while. I've kept dream journal and still am keeping, but my recall has been only so-so. The times I've actually put in some effort have been mostly frustrating due to lack of results.

But that's about to stop. This year, I'm going to have my best year of lucid dreams ever. To support that effort I'm starting to write a DJ here as well. I've been lurking in Dreamviews for quite a while, occasionally posting here and there, but not really being active. I have had a DJ in my own forum in Finnish, but I'm going to make a habit of writing here as well every evening to get my minds focused back into lucid dreams in night.

For the most part I'm going to write last night's dream here, but I still have often nights, where I don't remember much. So then I'm going to instead revisit some of my "classic" dreams from over the years put them up on here.

We'll start with one of those right away, as I didn't remember much from last night.

Jakro "Classics" - My First Recorded Lucid
Date: January 31th, 2009
Lucid: Yes
Method: WILD

It's funny that my first lucid was WILD because I've only had three of them over the course of last three years. This is not really that special dream except that it was, you know, the first one. There have been some short ones before that but I've not recorded them, so this is what you get.

What happened prior it was that I was seriously sleep-deprived from staying up over 24 hours. My sleeping rhythm was completely upside down, so I had to stay up for a long stretch to fix it. In the afternoon I tried to watch soccer while tired, but fell asleep. I woke up four hours later and get up to move to bed to get the rest of my sleep in. I had been reading about lucid dreaming a lot and I was aware of WILD technique. I knew that I was so tired, that nothing was going to stop me from falling asleep (and given that it was still kind of early to go in bed, I wouldn't even had minded if I wouldn't), so I tried my hardest to stay conscious through the stages of falling asleep.

Luckily for me they were pretty short and I did indeed fall asleep. The hypnagologic stage was short and I soon found myself in my bed in complete darkness. I had stayed calm, but a bit excited during the experiences in the hypnagologic state, but I didn't know whether I woke up or not. I had felt shaking during the hypnagologic state and then as it ceased I had seen pictures and thought to myself that "I'm totally tripping balls" (that's the exact wording on my journal).

But yeah, I was laying in my bed in dark room. I got up and felt how everything seemed real enough. I tried turning on the light. It didn't work. A-ha! I had just read that often in people's dreams lights don't work. I was becoming increasingly sure that I was indeed dreaming. But I'm always very careful with this, as the stuff you often do in LDs is either illegal or lethal, usually both.

Not this time though. Looking at the clock and away and then seeing the time transform completely confirmed for me that it was a dream, but I wasn't prepared for this. I didn't expect to become lucid so soon after starting seriously trying! I was so in awe of the dreamworld, that I mostly just observed. Not that there's anything bad in that, I've done that often since and it's fun on it's own, just to look at the vast and complicated world and detail that your brain has created.

As for reality checks, I wasn't done though. I did one final test - the nose test. All the doubt faded... Well, almost all. I ventured to our kitchen and everything looked like there someone was amidst of cleaning the room. Everything was stacked up in one place. I went to my parents bedroom, still not 100 % sure that I was indeed dreaming.

I walked into the room. My sister and my mom were there. They were watching television. Both of them had matching camouflage jeans on and I've never seen anything like that on either of them. My sis was also a few years younger than what she really was at the time. 0kay, finally I was sure that I'm dreaming, stuff like that just doesn't happen. Then I woke up.

Nothing spectacular in the end, but an encouraging start to my lucid dreaming journey that stalled a year later and started stagnating. I have some more awesome dreams to share later and hopefully I'll start dreaming ones as well. Anyway, I'll go to sleep now. This post at least put my mind into the right place for sleeping.