side notes

Bedtime: 1:30
Bedtime snack: a cup of hot chocolate with a large marshmallow
WBTB: 4:45
Aids (during WBTB): Mugwort tea (1 tsp. mugwort, 1 tsp. chamomile, a pinch of cinnamon)
Recall: Medium
Vividness: High
Awesome factor: Medium


Dream 1 (fragment): I was walking through an art gallery, looking at pieces that were for sale.

Post-WBTB:

Couldn't fall asleep for a long time, but remained relaxed enough for lots of hypnogogic images/sounds. One was really strange. I was looking at some kind of scene from right to left, but it was choppy, kind of like playing an online game with lag. I had another vision that is part of a series of visions I've been having for almost a year, which seem like they could be (oh please, can they be?) prophetic. Interestingly, mugwort is believed to induce prophetic dreams/visions (though I wasn't under its influence during any of the past visions).

Dream 2 (fragment): My sister had connected her laptop to a large widescreen TV to conduct her online classes.

Dream 3: I was K's house (didn't look like it does in real life). W, I, D, and Aunt J were there. They were telling me about a large green parrot they had seen on TV. They wanted to know what it was called. Someone there had a type of Amazon, so I said that if it looked like that, it might also have been one. But if it was bigger -- everyone agreed that it had been bigger -- it could have been an Eclectus, at which point W had something to say about Eclectuses.

K was in the kitchen, doing something by the sink. At this point, I spontaneously realized I was dreaming. NO RCs or anything memory-induced. I just suddenly became aware that I was dreaming (like I did a few times during a nightmare as a kid, at which point I would force my eyes open). So what did I do now that I realized I was dreaming? Told myself I had to wake up, of course!

I don't know why I decided the best course of action was to wake myself up, even though it wasn't a bad dream. Maybe it's just hardwired into my brain because that's what I always did when becoming lucid during a nightmare as a kid. I thought I was smarter than this!

Key emotions: none, really

Bedtime: 11:45
WBTB: 5:30
Bedtime snack: cinnamon & sugar rice pudding
Aids: None
Recall: Very Low
Vividness: Low
Awesome factor: Medium

Dream (fragment): I checked my the DreamZ app (was inspired to start using it again IWL) upon waking up, and it listed symbols I had dreamed of. One of them was a bunch of grapes (I had to find grapes in a scene in Gardens of Time right before bed IWL).

Key emotion: excitement

My recall continues to be dismal. I'm starting to think that maybe the vividness and recall I enjoyed early this month was caused by SSRI withdrawal.

On a more positive note, a lot of the fragments I recall are false awakenings. Guess the SSILD is working its magic.

Fragment 1: I was very pleased about some crystals I got that worked extremely well, with obvious results. I think I got them from Judy Hall (author of a few crystal books I own IWL).

Interestingly, I had placed a double-terminated quartz I had once dug up in Arkansas under my pillow after reading that those aid in dreaming, and ended up having more dream/fragment recall than ever. I've slept with various other crystals over the years to no effect. Hmm.

Fragment 2: I was cutting/texturizing the ends of my hair, not even looking into the mirror, just grabbing the ends and snipping little triangles.

Fragment 3: I found out that Merlin was going to continue. It wasn't even going to be a sequel picking up where the finale left off, but stuff that happened between Arthur's death and that shot of Merlin in present times.

Watched the season finale on Syfy last Friday and was very disappointed in it as well as about the series coming to an end.

Dream 1: I was at a place that was a cross between a warehouse, a grade school, and a thrift store (IDK!). I had to help organize stuff and was annoyed about it. There was a guy who seemed around my age who owned or ran the place. I also passed by some schoolgirls while carrying stuff.

Dream 2 (post WBTB): I was sharing a dorm or hotel room with two other girls. It seemed like a school setting, and I don't know where the other girls went, but I was preparing for my upcoming audition.

The place was really cluttered. Still, I thought I should hang up my coat in the wardrobe. On my way, I passed a closet and something inside it moved. I concluded that I was being haunted.

I stopped dead in my tracks because between the wardrobe and the closet I had just passed was a mirror. I've heard many stories throughout my life of people seeing scary figures -- or even looking demonic themselves -- when gazing into the mirror, so I was afraid. But I didn't want to let my fears get the best of me and I also remembered that finding a mirror in my dream and describing my reflection was one of the TOTMs, so I proceeded boldly.

I stopped to look into the mirror, except now it looked like a somewhat distorted 50s style television. At first I got kind of scared because there was something definitely wrong with my left eye. I looked closer and realized that it was swollen (though it didn't look like a real swollen eye would). I figured it was related to the discomfort I've been feeling there due to my recent migraine.

While I was not aware of dreaming in that last dream, my thought processes before looking in the "mirror" resembled my waking thoughts more than the majority of my dreams do. Usually when I make decisions in dreams, it doesn't involve a drawn-out and coherent thought process. The summoning of will and courage in a dream is also something I don't remember experiencing in a dream before. Then again, I was terrible at recall until this year and especially these past two weeks, so maybe I'm just not familiar enough with my dreams.

Also, that last dream is my first successful dream incubation Wish it had been a more pleasant experience, though.

I've decided to stick with one bedtime routine and combination of techniques for the entirety of June. Last night was night one.

I ended up going to bed an hour later than I outlined in my routine. Less than an hour after that, I woke up from one of those dreams I've been having all the time lately, where I'm trying to yell at someone and my voice just isn't coming out. This time it was my sister, which is a first.

After that, I lay awake for hours. It didn't help that I had to go to the bathroom every ten minutes.

Throughout the night, however, I remained aware of a lot of auditory and visual HHs. Many more than is normal for me.

I also remember that some point I was having a dream or detailed HH, and I thought about doing an RC, but I was afraid it wouldn't work. Something along those lines, anyway.

So it seems that, at the very least, my will to become lucid has been imprinted on my subconscious; I think that as long as I am disciplined with my routine, this is going to be a very interesting month indeed. And, hopefully, as the excitement fades just a little I'll actually be able to sleep.

It was a long night and I kept waking up periodically and remembering fragments of dreams. They were too vague to be worth writing down, though, and I ended up forgetting most of them.

Only Fragmet I remember:

I was in Arkansas with my family. There were quartz crystal points lying on the ground and we were picking them up. They were all clean, unlike the ones you dig up from the mines.


Dream in the morning:

I was seated in a large building, I'm guessing as a member of the audience. My sister was sitting to my left. I had my iPad and was looking at everything through the camera view. At first I saw that there were what looked like thousands of people in auditorium seating. I think there was some sort of graduation ceremony, and a small group of people sitting in one corner were dressed in green dinosaur suits. They were picking up their awards or diplomas or whatever.

The next time I looked around the space, however, it was more like a library than an auditorium. A gorgeous, ornate library like one would expect to see in a royal palace or the Vatican. The atmosphere also changed from what had seemed to be educational to a more political one.

I was watching Peanuts on my iPad. Snoopy and Woodstock were leaving the house by sitting on plants that would stretch out their leaves to get them out the door. Woodstock's plant didn't stretch nearly far enough and he fell. He was starting to try again, with the plant closer to the door this time, when from behind him, Snoopy's plant grew a very long leaf and Snoopy was able to get out of the house (no idea why they couldn't just walk out!)

A Polish man who looked to be about 50 sat down in the seat to my right. He asked if it was alright if he lit his cigarette. I don't like smoke, and also didn't think it was legal for him to smoke there, but it seemed easier to just say he could. My sister appeared annoyed that I'd let him smoke next to us.

Next I was in a smaller group of people and the same guy joined the group. Apparently he was somebody important.


Note: this is the third time in two weeks I've dreamt of dino suits. First it was my dad, then my parrot, and now these strangers. Weird.