non-lucid

[Notes]:
- Although it was a bit spotty, this dream felt very epic. If only I became lucid!!
- My recall has been pretty great lately! I've been recalling a lot of old dreams as well as new, so that's probably helping.
- This dream was packed with that epic, euphoric feeling of adventure and exploration; haven't had that in a long time.

[Dream begins]:
I'm talking to Mr. Benjamin. He's in a buckled top hat for some reason, and his room is very Christmas-ey with decorations all over the place. I don't know why I'm taking to him, but whatever. We get off the subject of academics and he tells me about something I might be interested in, that I should do. He hands me a bag of coal (a kind of payment I guess) and tells me about magic, and about these people in town that I could join up with and help out.

I soon find myself wandering in the suburbs near the city center, and I'm with this group of people. Antonio is among them. He's wearing a scarf. So I'm with these people heading south (I think; you know how dreams are). There are quite a few dilapidated houses, and we decide to stop at one. The walls are practically falling apart, and there's an uneven dirt floor. A dividing wall blocks us from the kitchen to our right. t's full of these members of some other clan. We walk in and the tone changes immediately, like we're about to fight. We invite ourselves into their conversation (we might have been there to steal something) and blend in for a little while. Then things get heated and we're shooting magic at each other (i.e. blue bolts of light). I get out of the house from the kitchen pretty quickly and get to the corner on the opposite side of the street to regroup with my people. The other clan kinda shouts us out and we start walking northbound. Eventually, I find myself in some city center at a hot dog joint eating (I only remember this in first person at this point).

[Dream ends.]

[Notes]:
- Sadly, I couldn't really remember much of this dream once I woke up.

[Dream begins]:
I'm on this highway northeast of my house in a trashy white sedan from the 70's. Every quarter mile or so, there's a woman walking on the shoulder of the road. My dad makes some comment about wanting to get a girl, and when we get to the next one, I look her in the face. She had an interesting face... in my dream I described it as the most basic face, devoid of features. She was Asian. I talk to her for a little bit, and obviously she doesn't talk much but it wasn't really awkward. I go to a party at her place where 12 pack boxes of soda are stacked to the ceiling everywhere. I weave between a wall of Coke and a wall of some other soda. We pose for a picture next to a bunch of "tropical" beer packs.

[Dream ends...]

[Notes]:
- I was pretty exhausted the night before; I was surprised to have any dreams at all.
- I stupidly missed a dream sign (thunderstorms), although it was subtle.

[Dream begins]:
So I'm in my basement with my parents. We're preparing for a coming storm. We open up the Wundermap on my mom's iPad and take a look. For some reason my house was in Michigan, but there was a humongous storm coming for us. There was a little issue with the map where the storm appeared spotty and scattered, but we realized it was because it was in the gap between our weather station and the one in the town a couple miles straight west of us. Here's a picture of almost exactly what I saw on the iPad:


I noticed that there was this massive (~3 ft. tall) glass bottle (in the shape of a classic Coke bottle) full of "wine" (my brain told me it was Cognac), which really looked like tomato sauce with huge chunks of peppers and cabbage in it... It had this kind of film on top that acted as a cap, and when I just lightly touched it, it would make an incredibly loud banging noise, like a firecracker! I asked why it was there, and my parents told me that they got it as a wedding present and that they never opened it. I tapped the top a few more times, then opened it and went upstairs.

[The dream fragments...]

[Notes:
- Yeah, I dunno. I have nothing to say but the following:

[Dream begins]:
Driving with Ricky Remedy somewhere.

Hot sauce on the rear windshield going on the roundabout.

Something about loving someone more (fat version of LE; was in college) because their hot sauce was better.

Two girls gave me their hot sauce, and one of them was sriracha so I knew I would love the other one.

The frozen-air can that had a carbon chunk touching a metal plate on the bottom.

Shoot it into a pool of hot sauce and you get serpents.

Laughing at people swimming in the hot sauce and getting beat up by frozen-air-hot-sauce-serpents.

[The dream fragments...]

Dream interpreters... got any idea what this is about?

[Notes]:
- Although the dream itself was stressful and sad, when I woke up I was immensely relieved after a few moments.
- First cohesive dream I've had in several days. All thanks to a good day and dream binging!

[Plot 1 begins]:
So I'm taking the SAT with a chemistry teacher. It's really informal, and we're talking about the questions when we got confused with them. I'm with a few other friends in the room (which seemed like a strange protrusion from H/A building). So we get to one of those questions and I decide I'll take a bathroom break. I get up and move into the empty hallways and I look over. There are these bunches of fire alarms grouped on the walls weirdly, and I notice that several of them have their plungers pulled (there were these strange toilet-plunger-like buttons that indicated if we were in a fire drill or not). Immediately I wondered if our sound wasn't working in this building.
So I take the chance (better safe than sorry, right?) and go and pull one all the way out and follow my SAT group to the outdoors. We end up in a place that's a strange mix of the school and my house's lower area. There, the teacher tells us that our SAT is cancelled now, and he shows us the scores we would have gotten through this cool UI. I learn that mine was better than my old one, but it wouldn't be counted because it was cancelled.
So we chill out outside and realize that they're going to do a witch hunt to try and find out who pulled the alarm, because there wasn't actually a fire.

[Plot 2 begins]:
I'm somewhere, and I've learned from my doctor that I only have less than 24 hours to live. There was something about driving through the forest... It's two thirty in the morning and I'm in my house. I'm wandering around trying to figure out what I should do. Should I send an email to all my contacts? Call J? Talk with my parents about my legacy? I scrambled around for a while trying to think.

[There's more to it, but it all fragmented...]

Notes:
- Yeah... really wish my recall was better. Life's been hectic lately, and it's eating at my memory. I'd love to try WBTB or something soon.

[Fragment 1]:
I was in this grandiose courtyard in the center of a big mansion/castle? And J was sitting on a bench, reading or something. I went up to him and sat down. We talked a little, and eventually he said something to me and it didn’t make sense, like I didn’t hear him.
I said “whattt?” and he said it again.
“I’m sorry, I just can’t hear you”.
“Nevermind, it’s not worth it”.
I felt bad and began walking away, and made a joke about my “auditory difficulties”.

[Fragment 2]:
A friend, S, decided that she was going to smoke weed for the first time downtown with HB (her parents were ok with it, although they're completely NOT in real life), next door to where I was….

[Fragment 3]:
Mom was going to UK or Bergen again to take a picture/selfie in the forest with the camera being in the city. She had extra time on her flight from the Taiwan airport to NYC?

Notes:
- I've been really busy lately, so my focus during the day hasn't been on dreaming, so no lucids and my recall's down at the moment. Hopefully this weekend I can have some fun.

[Fragment 1]:
I'm playing GMod (but I'm physically inside the game). I'm in this big house with tons of rooms, and I have this NPC pack that includes one called "Morgan ____". I can't remember the last name now, but the name was burnt into my memory for a good while afterwards. I decided to spawn her. She walked around like a Witch from L4D, but then I provoked her somehow, and the silently but violently began pursuing me. She was very anime-esque, with pale white face, black holes for eyes, and blonde hair and a black & white striped dress (very Tim Burton-ish overall). I ran away, but no matter where I hid she would find me. I get tired of this and a little creeped out, so I go to the Client Options menu and delete everything I've spawned. She disappears. Then she comes back. I do this over and over, until I get really freaked out and think she's a computer virus or something (shoulda seen it; that's one of my dream signs). I open up the main menu and reach for the disconnect button, but she grabs me and tries to keep me from it. I finally press it and reload the map. SHE'S STILL THERE.

[Fragment 2]:
So I'm going up the stairs in my house and my dog's sitting on the landing. There's some other person's dog in the house, and it's looking at her. They're both wearing neon-ish accessories. Then, the other dog mounts my dog and I wrestle him off.

Notes:
- Feels kinda stupid that it had to happen this way in a stupid dream.
- Very immersive.

[Plot 1 begins]:
So I'm with this girl I've been talking with a bit lately. OK, I might have a little crush on her, but we haven't dated or anything of the sort. We're chilling out on my couch, about to watch a movie, and we've got blankets. We're talking, and feeling a little flirty. We get closer to each other, and she starts whispering to me. We embrace each other, and we kiss. I close my eyes; enjoy the moment for a little while. Then, I start to feel a little regretful. I imagine my dad saying, "Really? That soon?" And I feel a little bad. It was way too early in a relationship to have this sort of thing happen. I let it happen nonetheless, and eventually we stop.

[The dream fragments... ]

Then I woke up and felt good that I got to have the experience without it actually happening in real life

Notes:
- If this happens again, I'm going to post, because this simply can't continue.
- My dream sign is a bear.
- I assumed reality, just like no big deal.

[Plot 1 begins]:
So I'm in this Jeep Wrangler driving on a residential gravel road with my mom. We're just going along; maybe 20 mph maximum. Then, there are wolves. They come slowly... creeping... from the residential area. They're moving like they're very old, and they're just crossing the street, and I stop.
I get out and to look at one. I observe it; it looks like it's fake, like from a video game or something, as its proportions are just off in many ways and its fur is rather polygon-ish and black and white. Then I see the bear. It's galloping towards us from afar (as usual), and I think to myself "Hey, it's a bear! Is this a dream? ... Nah..." and I went about the dream like all was well.

[The dream fragments...]

How can I fix this? I do consciousness RC's all throughout the day, every couple of hours usually. I essentially take a moment to see if I feel like I'm in a dream, and look around to see if anything is odd; maybe look at my hands. However, as you could see in my previous failure I looked at my hands and didn't notice anything.

Note:
- This dream may or may not have been inspired by the trailer for "The Gallows", but I feel that the general inspiration simply came from the name of the film.
- I can't think of anything different I did before bed, and I can't remember getting cold at any point, so I don't know why this horrible dream happened. Just stroke of luck I guess.

[Plot begins]:
I'm at my house. My parents and I are searching the house, and heading to look out the windows. We know that there's something wrong; that something terrible is happening. We all knew we were looking for a dead, hanging person. I thought they were going to be outside of a window, but I didn't see anything. That's when we went out onto the porch. It was a silent night, and pitch black. We didn't see anything. Then Dad turned on the spotlight.
There they were. Two, dead, pale, hanging corpses strung across the two largest trees in our yard on a thick, grey cable. We gasped, muttering fearful phrases to ourselves as shock overtook us. Chills ran up all of our spines, and the terror began to set in.
An omniscient "voice" told us (seemingly through our minds) that this was the beginning -- and that we would be the end. The bodies swayed in the breeze, cold and lifeless. We ran inside rather frantically. We didn't know what to do. We had to live, but knew we couldn't.

[The dream fragments...]

[Plot continues; change setting to behind house]:
We're running through a small path, looking for an escape we know we can't find. We look up and freeze. Hanging in the trees above was another thick, grey cable. There were two nooses ready for use, waiting patiently for a catch. We all freaked out.

[The dream fragments...]
There's something about my mom getting snatched, but it's very unclear. I get a sense things got better after that point... There was a ransom, some negotiation.

[Plot ends; change setting to bus]:
So I'm on this bus, and I know I'm in Speed, but I think I was taking the role of Sandra Bullock... not sure. However, I forgot the rest.

[Wake up]

Notes:
- I got triggered all because of my bear dream sign. I realize that sounds really spiritual and stuff but it's not; I only see bears in my dreams and I just know to recognise it now. They also come with a certain emotion, a fear of something far away that's coming for you.
- The RC was so pathetic... I think I'm going to stick with the "focusing" RC, where I observe the world and take in every detail.

[Plot 1 begins]
One of the cats and the dog were loose on the porch, and something told me to go get them. So I open up the porch door and see my dad out there. He looks off up into the hills behind me house and says, "There's a bear up there".

I swear, at that moment the sky got darker. I get the same kind of feeling from a dream bear that a Dementor from harry Potter would. Same deal, same fear that something is coming for you, and that it will get you.

At this moment, I step outside and grab the dog and the cat and bring them in. I close the door hurriedly, but the other cats had escaped while I was grabbing the others. I freak out; I know that the bear is close, and so I step out to get the cats when I realized, "Hey... could this be a dream?" I looked at my hands and got this really ridiculous FOV effect, and my fingers were all stuck together like a 90's video game. BUT I DIDN'T NOTICE. At this moment, I kinda forgot what I was doing in the dream and everything was ok. My dad and I were just hanging out on the porch.

[The dream fragments...]

Notes:
- After having my last dream on 10/9 by diving in DEILD-style after a natural awakening around 7am, I figured I should try it again! Since then, I've been much more aware of my natural awakenings, and this dream was a result of doing the same dive-in technique as before.
- This dream was one of the most memorable and vivid I've had in recent times; I kept remembering more and more, and never before have I had this much content in a single dream.

[Plot 1 begins]:
The Music Production club is huge, and lots of people are in it; we've got a lot of really skilled and interested people, and I'm president. It’s the second day, and we’re playing music we like. Lots of trap, house, etc., and I was ready to hit them with some music I actually made, but we ran out of time, so I said “Alright guys! It was great getting to hear what you guys like to listen to; sorry we didn’t have time for introductions. We’ll be doing those next week!” And then I saw my history teacher in the front row, and I asked him what he was doing there, and he told me about how teachers have to observe one club every month. At this moment, I flashed back to a very false memory of him observing 9th grade production club, and he was grading something. I asked him what he was grading, and it was my "letter exam". I’d failed (and been given a 1 out of 6) because I started off by calling it "a text message to a friend", and it went downhill from there.

[Change time; same setting]:
At this time, I also ran the “String Club” or something along those lines. Essentially, it’s about modeling, both digitally and in reality. There were a lot of good submissions, like one of my friends showed his classic graphical fighting robots. Some kid comes in with a video of some guy saying “F you”, which was actually part of a series of stupid videos, all of this white, black-haired clay man saying stupid things. I really wanted to cut him off, but I didn't.

[Plot 1 ends, plot 2 begins; change setting]:
I had to drive from the store to home by myself. I’d gotten all the groceries in one massive bag, and put them in the back of the car. However, I made a couple of wrong turns because I was going too fast on these treacherous downhill roads (that were like brick roads). Mom had to drive in and come get me out.

[Change setting]:
I drove down to the cathedral (pretty much on the commons) and checked it out a little bit. Someone I know comes in riding his heelies and leaps into a corner room for some kind of engineering presentation. My ex-Bio teacher was trying to do a magic trick, and she really screwed it up. “Do you have the cards that match this card?” and she puts down the ace of diamonds. “Yes, I have four of them” and I show her my hand. One of my cards (8 of clubs) was from the wrong deck (this deck was black and gold; the 8 was from a blue bicycle deck). Then she had to start over (I just turned in my cards and left). There was some nearly-bald woman leading a bunch of young spear men into battle somewhere, as apparently the town was under attack. It was no big deal. She respawned with her people a few minutes later.

[Plot 2 ends, plot 3 begins; change setting]:
I was outside of someone’s house (mine?) and grandma (fat, long-haired version of a chem teacher) was doing stuff with her will, and wanted to change the house. The patio looked like “the white house” and there was a sunken pit (much like a stage pit for an orchestra) in front of it, with lawn chairs, etc.

[Change setting]:
I was walking on the highway (outside of my house?) and this guy was holding my hand and not letting go. I didn’t know this guy and I did not like him, so I took out my driver’s license to prove my authenticity . I looked up on the hill, and there were a bunch of massive, sunken in cups in some order in the hills; I connected these with my house for some reason… I think my house might have been up there.

[The dream fragments...]

Notes:
- Is it normal to feel skeptical of a lucid dream after you’ve had it? The past couple of times I’ve wondered.
- Is it normal to feel less “awake” once you’ve stabilized a dream? I certainly felt that way this time.

[Fragments, fragnments]

[Change setting; plot 1 begins]:
I’m in this rather huge house (40+ rooms I’d say) and there’s this gala/party going on in the main living space. I’m just wandering around as the dreaming mind does, lookin through all the foodstuffs. I find myself in a supply closet nearby, with microwaves and stuff. Then, I remember that I wanted to try and have a lucid dream.

At this moment, I became aware. I was thinking “OH CRAP HOLY CRAP I’M LUCID IM LUCID YAYYYY” but then I realized that I needed to stabilize, so I just tried focusing on the microwave in front of me, taking in every detail. That really helped a lot.

It came to my mind to use dream control, and I tried spawning someone but I couldn’t do it without starting to wake up. Instead, I decided I’d try to explore the dream world a bit, focusing on everything on the way, since I’m still a newb.

And so I walked into the living/kitchen area. I looked at everything closely: the countertop, the donuts, the snack stand, everything. The donut was especially vivid; I could see all the little bubbles in it and everything. For some reason, there was a bite out of it, and someone had put it back… eww… it was still on the stand (a metal, rotating stand) for anyone to take. I noticed after I woke up that there weren’t any visible DC’s in the dream.

I wander over to this hallway and realize I’m losing lucidity, and immediately start focusing on things to retain it. There’s an elevator, and I decide to take it (I didn't actually touch it or physically go in it though).

[Change setting]:
I’m in my high school chemistry teacher’s room (or at least a permutation of it). I’m in there at my own lab bench, and behind me are two other kids, one of whom I know. Obviously, they’re in detention or something and aren’t taking it seriously. I, on the other hand, was trying to figure a way out of there to continue my lucid adventure, but here I would be trapped for the rest of the dream.
So these kids are just kinda messing around with some water in a dish, and I’m getting impatient. From here on, i think I lost lucidity. My teacher was talking about his lifetime goals, one of which was to get $9000 in a day. <- (I think he mentioned it as his “task of the month” )
The kids were messing around, and I wanted them to pay attention, so I figured I’d shut them up by knocking over their stupid dish into the sink. I do so, then my teacher yells at me, saying "What? You think that's ok? Really? In front of me? What do you think you're doing?" and it was rather laughable really.

[The dream fragments... ]

Notes:
- I don't know why, but I only remembered this dream (partially) a couple days afterwards.
- It didn't make much sense in the dream.

[Plot 1 begins]:
So I'm in this alpine ski resort type place, and there's a train track and station there. Everyone that was with me (and more) have been herded over to this train station by metro-cops. We're all confused and scared, cold as well, and we're being forced through some sort of system... hard to explain. But we got in line, and went into these different "garages" for different people. I realize this doesn't make sense but that's how I felt in the dream.

Afterwards, I chilled out in the garage area with some cool people, girls and guys my age.

[The dream fragments]

Notes:
- By studying my most common dream signs (bears and thunderstorms), I was able to have a DILD, even if it was only for a few seconds.
- I was able to fall asleep after this segment, but I returned non-lucid. Such a shame.

[Plot 1 begins]:
I'm in a forest, not unlike the picture below.


To my right was a large building; a concrete apartment building, but it was some rich family's mansion for some reason. I was alone in the forest, moving parallel to the house, going over little knolls and hills and taking cover. I had in my hands an M14-like rifle in my hands, similar to the one pictured below.


I took cover behind a little hill, and peeked over with my rifle. Suddenly, I felt an eerie sense of fear, and out of the edge of the forest 150 yards in front of me stumbles a huge grizzly bear. [ENTER LUCIDITY] I immediately recognized the fear and the bear as one of my dream signs, and suddenly became lucid. However, I could feel myself losing grasp on the dream in less than a second. I tried spinning, but I got tunnel vision and lost control.

[Wake up; fall back asleep]:
For once, I managed to land back in the same dream, but now the bears were trolls, so I didn't really recognize them and I lost my lucidity. The dream continued, but I've forgotten it now.

[End plot 1]