The Fourth Factor

I’m in a green hilly area dotted with groves of trees, alongside a group of people. It seems like we’re all traveling somewhere together and have been in this general area for several days.

Nearby is an enormous skeleton horse with leathery wings. I think it’s cute and have been making friends with it. (My waking-life sense of what is cute is pretty broad by most people’s standards, and it seems to be even broader in dreams.) The horse is really enormous: it has its head down at my level, and it would probably be big enough to inhale me if it breathed (which seems unlikely to happen).

Now it wants to give me a ride: it lies down, leaning to one side so I can get on. I seat myself in the ridge between two of its vertebrae. This part of it, like the wings but unlike the head and neck, is still covered in skin, which is dry and stiff, rather like a drum skin in feel and color. It takes off, and we fly around the area for a little while.

When it lands again and lets me down, I rejoin the group, which has been occupied with something else up until now. Before long, though, as we leave the area on the next phase of the journey, I take to the air again, on my own this time. I have one eye on the rest of the group and the other on the road ahead as they walk towards a pass through taller hills.

28.12.20 [I’ve been meaning to post this for a while….]

(Note: The longer my dreams are, the harder it is for me to remember details, particularly conversations, and this was a long one. There’s several hours’ worth of material here that I can only remember happened at all because I can remember remembering it in a later part of the dream, and this does raise questions of whether they ever actually played out. But, for what it’s worth, it doesn’t feel to me as if that’s what happened, and I do have many cases of knowing dream memory is working in that way to compare it to.)

The earliest part I can remember is of a disaster taking place, a flood sweeping through a public building of some kind. Everybody is trying to get out. I’m one of the last out, but I wait, holding the door open so that the waters don’t forcibly close it and trap the one person who’s still there. It took him a while to believe this was actually happening (understandable, considering how weird it is), so he didn’t get out as quickly as everyone else.

After this series of events is the biggest memory gap, which seems to mainly consist of meeting up with a large group of people and preparing for some kind of expedition together. I become lucid not long before we’re going to set off, although it’s not so much me realizing that it’s a dream as it is the unconscious knowledge that it’s a dream, which I’ve been acting on this whole time, becoming conscious. And this sort of makes it feel as if I’ve been lucid the whole time, if that makes sense.

I’m looking out the window of a house onto the rolling fields beyond as it happens. I still have some preparation to do here, though, so I’m still here packing as everybody else is leaving. I’m taking my hiking backpack, the black one with yellow trim. It occurs to me to wonder whether I need to do this in a dream, since I can just make things appear if I need them. But I have the impression, based on earlier conversations, that I might not be able to do that in some of the places we’re going, and so I’ll want to make sure I have essentials with me, at least. The last thing I grab is my brown aviator-style jacket, which I fold and pack into the backpack before buckling it and heading downstairs and outside.

I can just see somebody disappearing past the other side of the house, down a broad stone staircase. That’s where everybody’s gone. I try flying part of the way, but perhaps because of the hiking backpack—even though it doesn’t feel heavy—it’s hard to get more than a couple feet off the ground. But flying seems to be slower than running anyway, so I just run around the side and down the stairs.

I’m now in an area with several platforms rising a distance above the ground. Next to one on the far side is a cliff wall with a small tunnel partway up, a little above head height. A young women is nearby – it seems she had to stop to do something before going onward. I jump onto one of the platforms, where I see some piled-up clothing. I recognize it as a kind of uniform for us to wear. It looks a bit like a karate gi: loose pants and a shirt that ties around the front, white, though a little discolored with age and threadbare in places. On some of the edges, flowers are embroidered in pale colors. I put it on over my clothing.

Jumping onto the last platform and up to the tunnel—taking off the backpack and pushing it in first—is practically effortless, much easier than it would be in waking life, which makes it kind of fun. The tunnel is not tall enough to walk in, and it narrows considerably not far ahead, so I push the backpack in ahead of me. It barely fits, and I can see it slide down once it gets past the narrow point, where the tunnel slopes downward. I barely fit, too – I actually have to turn my head to the side to squeeze through. But soon, it’s large enough to where I can crawl again, and then walk upright.

The tunnel is made of squares of some smooth material, solid black in the center but with a stripe of red-orange around the edges that glows, lighting the way. As I walk, it slopes further downward and eventually drops me into a corridor with a grimy, institutional feel to it. All dimly and artificially lit, as if I’m somewhere underground.

It has a distinctly unpleasant vibe – although part of the reason may be because of what I know about this place. It is actually a sentient environment, and not a very nice one, and now that I’m inside of it, it’s going to be tracking my every move and shaping itself according to my actions and reactions. It’s not the destination – just somewhere we have to pass through on the way. There’ll be a test at the end that has to be passed before we can get out – but this place doesn’t like people leaving it and will be actively throwing obstacles in our way.

My backpack isn’t here – the place probably hid it somewhere, and so I’ll have to be on the lookout for it. I turn towards the right, reading the plates on the doors as I go by, deciding which room to enter first. The place looks to be some sort of school judging by what they say.

As I walk, faint, unpleasant feeling-tones arise, like the ghosts of memories with an archaic, dark quality to them, although they definitely don't involve my personal past – not in this lifetime, anyway. Or maybe they’re anticipations of what I’ll find here, behind the doors. Or maybe both. I also see a set of stairs leading downwards, but I don’t want to leave this floor just yet.

After reaching the end of the corridor, I head back, still making up my mind. It’s not terribly important where I go first, but I am aware that, as the first deliberate choice I make here, it will give the place some insight into me, will establish the course of how things will go. I decide on a room about midway between the end of the corridor and where I started from labelled “Faculty Lounge.”

As I open the door, I’m surprised by what I see. It’s a little room, somewhat like the bedroom of a hostel, with two bunk beds, a table off to one side and some assorted furniture – overall, quite nice apart from the lack of windows. But the really surprising thing is that it’s already occupied by two people from the group I started with.

Sam is there—Sam, maker of ukuleles, fixer of anything with strings and frets, host of concerts and an accomplished musician in his own right. His dog is there with him. The other person isn’t waking-life familiar, although he does somewhat resemble one of my coworkers, with dark hair, pale skin and some kind of facial hair, I think. A dog has come in with me as well, a large, black one. I don’t pay much attention to it besides noting that it’s mine and hoping that the room isn’t going to be too crowded now.

Sam greets me – but he uses a different name, a man’s name. They must be seeing this place and this situation differently than I do, I realize. It had been mentioned at the earlier gatherings that it would appear differently to everybody – but I had assumed that we would also be going through it alone, individually, and so it hadn’t occurred to me that I’d find myself in this kind of situation. But I can roll with it.

We talk for a little while. At one point, one of them advises me to be careful not to give this place “the impression that I’m somebody it can f*** with.” Sam mentions that he’s working on a puzzle—it seems to be set up on the table there—and I say I’ll leave him to it. I mention, though, that I’m good with puzzles, and he invites me to come help put it together. This must be part of their test, I realize – and it strikes me that maybe it isn’t a coincidence I ended up here to help them with it, although from everything I’ve heard, it would be uncharacteristically benevolent for the place to intentionally direct me to them.

The puzzle seems to mainly feature cute baby animals, and it is close to being finished. I help assemble the remaining pieces as Sam tells me some anecdotes he’s heard about a 20th century Viennese composer. He can’t remember which one they’re about. I notice, though, that the bottom edge of the puzzle isn’t complete. Sam is stirring some sort of gooey blue liquid, and I realize that that will also be part of it: the tests, though different, all have one thing in common: incorporating two bowls of these brightly colored mixtures into them somehow.

14.7.20

I am hanging out with co-workers and getting to know somebody who’s apparently just been hired. Her name is Marie, and she’s from Canada. In addition to working here, she’s a grad student working on a music degree, which she's now almost done with. She's currently working on the composition that will be her thesis. She shows it to me – via some sort of electronic device, I think.

The music is notated on manuscript paper, but instead of the usual note shapes, there are little horizontal rectangles that stretch out for as long as the note is held, rather like a midi display. The inside of each rectangle is patterned in ways that indicate something about the music. I hear it in my head as I read, with the patterns calling up images and connotations in relation to it.

The first bar begins with two long Gs an octave apart played by instruments in the violin family – I don’t identify them explicitly in the dream, but given that it’s written in the bass clef, almost certainly cellos. The rectangles contain the patterns signifying darkness and light. The impression this makes is hard to describe. Poignant, maybe – a suggestion of a cavernous space vast enough to hold them both at once. It continues, but I can’t remember the part after that so well.

16.5.20

In the earliest part of the dream I can remember well, I’m with a group of people from work. We’re in a house rather than an office, a mostly empty one that’s not in the best condition and which strikes me as reminiscent of somewhere in the past (it's not a vague memory in the dream – rather, my waking self can’t pin it down to anywhere familiar). There’s something in the way everything is happening that suggests we’re maintaining order in the midst of a chaotic situation and extemporizing as necessary. Some disaster has struck the world – although it seems less like this is the aftermath than that it was so bad that what remained of humanity actually had to flee to some sort of parallel dimension.

Kate, the director, tells us we should all go outside to see something. Stepping out of the house, I can see what looks like a large town square across the street, round-ish in shape, possibly cobbled. Above the old-fashioned buildings on the opposite side, the sky is turning pink and purple in a certain area. In the middle of it, a black spot appears, clearly visible against the light. I recognize it, as does everybody there: this was what happened before, the thing that came and destroyed the world.

But something is different this time: instead of appearing large and far away, the spot now seems to be quite close, in the square itself. Somehow, I know that I can make things turn out differently this time around. I run towards it, the others not far behind.

The dark sphere is floating there, too high to jump for but close to a flagpole on the far side. I scale it. The flag, which is dark blue, isn’t flying – rather, it seems to be tied to the pole, and (on later reflection) entirely too large for it. The thing actually looks more like a mast than a flagpole. But I manage to make it up with no trouble until I'm level with the sphere. It’s very small now, smaller than a cotton ball. I reach out and grab it, enclosing it in my hand.

The moment I touch it, it changes, becoming material, taking on a definite shape. It has become a key on a keyring.

I know what to do now: the keyhole can’t be too far away. I actually find it on the way back down, on the base of the pole. I put it in and turn, and keep turning. And as I do, something is happening to the building closest to the pole: the whole façade is unfolding, revealing a large airplane inside. It looks like a typical jet, but in the dream, it strikes me like something out of another era, concealed here for who knows how long.

A dirty, light brown liquid is pooled near the nose. An inner voice that seems to belong to the plane itself tells me that it needs an oil change. I think that it probably needs rather more than that, considering how long it’s been here. But I’m aware that this situation is out of my hands now. It will be others who fix it up and who make use of it somehow to avert disaster. I’ve done what I can.

10.5.20

In the earliest part of the dream I remember, I'm stepping into an elevator. I seem to be able to see through its walls, into the shaft and the mechanism it runs on, and the rough, dark area around it. I want to go up a floor, but after getting about halfway there, the elevator stops. Then it goes back down, past the floor I got in on – down and at an angle as it follows the track. It seems to be headed down to the basement floors, which annoys me. I hate it when this happens.

I think it must have dawned on me around then that the earlier experience I was thinking of took place in a dream, and that this too was a dream. But it’s hard to remember exactly because once I’m out, the dream turns out to be one of those lucid ones where my senses don’t seem to be working properly. I can’t control the dream; even moving around is laborious. But, knowing that these are problems that often goes away on their own, and that I rarely experience them in outdoor areas, I keep going, trying to make my way up to the surface.

Eventually, I do make it up. I’m in an unfamiliar house with large, light rooms, including a sunporch, visible through a glass window. Since the problems from before don’t seem to be affecting me anymore, I step straight through the glass to the sunporch, then through that glass to the area outside, where there’s a small lake.

There’s ice on the lake, which gives me an idea: I could try ice skating in a dream. But the ice is breaking up and thawing even as I watch, and it doesn’t seem quite right to freeze it again. But this is a dream, after all, so why shouldn’t I be able to skate on liquid water?

I step out onto the lake, surrounding my bare feet with a slippery layer of air, and kick off. It works perfectly, a bit like self-propelled jet-skiing. It’s an exhilarating experience.

The lake is long and irregularly shaped, with small, rocky islands, purple and green with lichens, and beds of rushes and lily pads. It’s bounded by a stone wall too tall for me to be able to see over, not far past the lake’s edge in some places. And there now seem to be a number of cats around, sitting on the rocks – watching me, perhaps. Near one of the wall’s corners, I see one that looks like the feral cat my household took in but who died of cancer the previous week. I reach out and pet him – something he would never allow a human to do – and he responds affectionately.

After making another round of the lake, I’m starting to get curious about that wall. What’s on the other side of it? I circle back, pick up speed, and jump towards it with the intention of going through – and suddenly find myself bodiless in empty space. I guess there was NREM on the other side.

I prepare myself for maintaining awareness in this state – but it only lasts a minute or so before I wake up.

-27.2.20

I seem to be visiting my parents, who live on an island. I’m busy for most of the day cleaning out a cabinet or wardrobe. In only another hour or so, there are going to be guests over for dinner.

We’re out of the house now for some reason. Mother is concerned that I’ve been exerting myself so much, and I should drink some water. I’m not particularly thirsty but say I will. My father and I go off to a sort of convenience store-like shop nearby to buy a bottle, but the water is very expensive – almost 10 dollars for a water bottle (though I can’t swear it wasn't some other currency). That’s right, I remember – there isn’t any fresh water on the island, so it all has to be shipped here, and that makes it so expensive. My father asks if it’s OK if I don’t get the water, and I say I’m fine with it. Again, I don’t particularly care either way – I just want to keep them happy.

Not long after that, I step onto what unexpectedly turns out to be an elevator – a floating glass elevator, à la Willy Wonka. It rises up and flies partway across the island to a large building, then down several stories into its basement. I briefly see the various underground floors on the way down. I consider getting off and heading back – I don’t want to be late for dinner – but rumor has it that the headquarters of the secret police is on one of those floors, and I have a history with them. Just walking through their headquarters would be asking for trouble.

So I wait as some other people get on the elevator and it continues to the third major hub on the island – it isn’t very large, and so there are only the three. This one is on the other end, farther away – a place I’ve never been before. The elevator flies over lawns dotted with groves of trees. It’s dusk now, and we approach and pass a blue light – some sort of decorative sculpture marking the approach. This whole area is like an estate, or a place that was one at some previous time.

Once we’re there, I get off. There’s a tower there – perhaps I have to climb down the side to get to the ground, but one way or another, I wind up climbing on it. It’s a fairly small building, though tall, made of square, grey stones, each of which has a shape cut through it large enough to make a foothold or handhold – circles, squares, stars, etc. Each stone is also marked with two sets of letters, one a capital letter, the others one or more lowercase ones. As I grab hold of one hollow stone, I feel a switch flip on the inside edge, causing the opening to light up. The whole thing is a giant cipher key, I realize. I don’t have any messages in need of decoding – but if I happen to find any, I now know exactly where to bring them.

I climb around for a bit, playing around with it to make sure I know how it works. But once I’m back on the ground, a woman starts yelling at me for climbing on the tower. Guess I wasn’t supposed to be doing that. I stay calm. What she’s saying doesn’t make much sense – really not a coherent accusation against me at all, just anger. I ask a couple reasonable questions. She answers, still in an angry tone. But then, having lost her momentum, the absurdity of it seems to dawn on her, and she starts laughing. I laugh, too. It seems like everything is OK now.

12.2.20

I have arrived in a green area shaded by trees. It seems that I’m traveling somewhere, and this is a stop along the way. The dream doesn’t make it explicit, but this seems to be the Czech countryside in the early 20th century – more or less.

Gradually, other people arrive. I converse with a woman there as we wait. A couple large dogs arrive as well and are running around getting in people’s way. I order them to sit, figuring that they’ve just run here ahead of their masters, who won’t be far behind. They obey. One of them lies down, then rolls over on its back, obviously looking to get pet.

The car arrives – a distinctly old-fashioned one. (Although there is some uncertainty there, as if the dream can’t quite decide on what sort of vehicle it should be. They all tend to be more or less interchangeable in my dreams.) There isn’t enough room in the car for everybody, but since I was there first, I get to be on its first trip. The woman I was talking to has to wait for its next one.

I look around as we ride. The man next to me in the backseat is choosing the music that plays in the car via something rather like a touch-screen tablet framed in brown leather – much more aesthetic than the modern ones, I think to myself. Out the window, I see a turquoise river pouring over an oddly shaped stone formation into a lake – a place I’ve seen pictures of before but never visited. I turn around to continue to look through the back window as we drive by.

I’m aware, as I look around, that in the not-so-distant future this area will be devastated by war. It adds a poignancy to being here in this beautiful place.

The train – sure enough, it’s decided it would rather be a train now – approaches a platform, stopping under a curved wooden roof from which flowering vines hang down. An invasive species, I note. Parasitic to boot. But quite pretty, and so you can understand why people let it grow like this. In the future, there will be more of a push against it – but not so much here as in other places. A brief image comes to me of the future, of its yellow flowers filled with ash.

It now seems as if the woman from before is on the train too, and along with another passenger, we continue our conversation.

When I woke up, I remembered the following melody:




I don’t think it was actually playing during any part of the dream – my impression is that it was connected to it somehow but happening on a different level of awareness. I find it rather odd that it’s in C# major since that’s not a key I ordinarily have much to do with. Maybe I waited too long before transcribing it and my pitch memory was off? Or maybe it was just in C# major.

-31/1/20

I am on a computer, looking through files. I’m trying to find papers from an earlier part of the dream where I’d stayed after a math class drawing, and the teacher had brought over a stack of graded assignments he’d apparently been working on while I sat there. I’d just glanced at them and seen that’d I’d done really well on them before taking off, but now I want a closer look, and this was apparently where they were.

I scroll through small pictures, some of which began to move. One has expanded to fill the whole screen. It shows a house on fire, people running out. It scrolls past a small stage on which two double basses stand, one the traditional sort, another more metallic – electric by the look of it, but still a roughly double bass size and shape. It sits in a sort of flower-shaped metal pad. It catches my attention, and I’m struck by the level of detail.

I am now – not sure in what order – both present in the dream and lucid. I’m in a park-like area, a clearing with groves of trees and some woods not far off. Another stage is nearby, this one a roofed circular platform on which sits another of those big electric basses. I consider giving it a try – that could be fun. But it occurs to me that I’ve never produced frightening scenarios in lucid dreams before, and I should try it at least once.

Surrounded by demons is the first thing that occurs to me for some reason. That’ll do. I will them into being. As I focus on the intention, everything around me grows dark, swirling and immaterial. I’m floating, moving vaguely backwards. But nothing else seems to be happening. Oh, well. Maybe I’ll give that bass a try after all.

I let go of the intention. The original scene immediately returns, and I walk back towards the area I started out in. But not far from it, by a ridge in front of a forested area, I spot a strange figure. Its head looks like a skull, bovine in shape, with horns that curl around to the front and knot around each other, and it’s wearing a black and white herringbone tweed blazer with a thin purple scarf and a long grey-black skirt. It looks like I managed something, at least, although I can’t say it’s especially scary.

As I approach, it waves its hand, causing a small sphere of darkness to shoot towards me. This startles me a bit, but it doesn’t seem to have any effect. I keep walking towards it, ignoring its attacks. As I pass the pavilion, I notice the instrument sitting there looks different now. There are also now a number of cats up under the roof, lying in big cat piles that seem to extend upward into tunnels. They seem to just be waking up. The grey and orange tabbies stay where they are, but a few black cats stretch and jump down onto the stage.

As I turn back towards the figure, I see that it is now a cat as well – a small black one. I pick it up. It doesn’t look happy with being held, but it makes no attempt to escape.

At that point, I wake up.

9.1.20

I had a couple dreams with music in them last night, and was able to transcribe some of it. I had forgotten almost all of the dreams themselves by the time I'd finished, but here's what I have:



And, from a later awakening:



Couple interesting things about these: first, that they're both in D major, which is the scale I've been practicing speedwork on for the past three weeks or so. I don't have perfect pitch, so this suggests some kind of residual pitch memory at work.

Also, they both seem familiar, particularly the second. I want to say it's from a rock song? But it's hard to tell whether music in dreams only seems familiar the way things in general seem familiar in dreams or because I've actually heard it before.

The dream begins in large building of indefinite function—mostly a large, open space with various rooms branching off, somewhat like a mall, although it doesn’t have the feel of one. At one point, I enter one of these rooms. It’s filled with plush toys of various kinds. On top of one cabinet is a series of small narwhals. One of them is gray and fuzzy, with a string going around it. On it are a few metal beads with letters on them spelling out a name. It’s exactly like one my friend Nina made for me when we were children, and it occurs to me that seeing it here can only mean one thing: I’m dreaming.

I walk back out into the larger room, where I take a look around. The floor is made up of black and white tiles in a checkerboard pattern. I could have some fun with that. In response to my intention, the black tiles glow red, blue, a whole series of bright colors in succession. Then I decide to change things more dramatically. I simply intend for the floor to change, not specifying how, and in response, it shifts into an abstract pattern, tendrils of color curved across a white background, made out of smaller tiles than before—like a mosaic. They’re predominantly salmon pink with subdued green, as well as tiles in darker colors, which give the patterns depth and contrast.

Looking across the large room, I see a wall of glass windows. Beyond it, the sky is visible, and a bit of the landscape below, as if this place is located somewhere high up. Some people are gathered out on a landing on the other side. I decide I’ll go over there next. But the floor is changing again: this time, into blues, greens, yellows, touches of orange. It’s a map now—specifically, a topographical map. I didn’t do that.

Rather than heading over to the windows, I examine the new floor. There are words written over locations, like they would be on an actual map, but there seems to be more written here than just names. However, the language is an unfamiliar one—possibly Spanish. But, I think, that shouldn’t be a problem for the place names since those tend to stay much the same between languages.

I am standing over the part showing the Aegean Sea. The island directly in front of me is labeled 'Mykonos'—and memory tells me (and Google confirms once I’ve awakened) that it does indeed have that island’s distinctive shape. I look over near the Turkish coast, but the islands there don’t match up nearly as well. They don't even seem to be the same islands at all. I look around various areas of the map until I wake up.

22.5.19

I’m on a trip with my parents and an unfamiliar young man. We were all supposed to go to a casino—and they did actually go. But I didn’t care much for that plan, and so I’ve been off doing something else and only arrived back at the hotel room in time for their last trip there, late on the final evening.

I have the impression that this is a place they’re familiar with, but this will be my first time there. I’ve been told not to bring my purse with me for whatever reason, but I don’t like going around without writing materials on hand, and so I say that I’ll just take my wallet out before I go. But it seems my parents are so eager to get back that, rather than waiting the couple of minutes this will take, they go on without me, leaving the young man to drive us there.

Outside, it’s raining hard, and has been for a while, judging by all the standing water in the streets. As we go on, it only gets deeper, until the car, which is a fairly low one, starts having trouble moving forward. Some light on the dashboard has come on. He curses at the car—and quite probably my parents, who would have had no trouble handling this in theirs. I suggest that we just pull off the road onto higher ground, as some other cars seem to be doing, and walk the rest of the way there. It isn’t very far. He agrees to it.

The next part I remember clearly is being inside the casino, in a large room with a grand staircase, crowded with fancily dressed people. On the upper floor, near a restaurant area, I meet up with my parents again. It’s sort of like a buffet, with tables in a horseshoe shape, each one with an attendant behind them, offering samples of various kinds of foods to the guests. Mother is going to get a chocolate milkshake—apparently, a favorite of hers there—but my father isn’t interested. The idea doesn’t appeal much to me either, and anyways, this is all new to me: I want to try things out before I order anything.

He heads off somewhere else. I get some kind of a soup, and then head over to where they’re serving white wine. I try the sample they have there, which is pretty good—but they have all kinds of interesting drinks here, and this would be a good chance to try things I wouldn’t necessarily want a full glass of. And my mother is trying to get my attention from across the room, so I leave the table without ordering anything and head over in her direction.

Then, suddenly, I feel a spray of cold water—and the people around me do as well, judging by how they’re crying out. It seems someone is spraying people with a hose. I move out of the way, wondering what that was about. Maybe the casino staff themselves are responsible. The whole reason this place exists is to take money from people, after all—I think it’s best not to lose sight of that—and it wouldn’t surprise me at all for one to start charging people to keep things going nicely, once they’ve got them used to it.

Once out of range, I pause and kneel down to make sure the cat is still with me. He is indeed still there and comes to get pet. He’s an orange cat, an adult, though on the small side, and has been here with me this whole time. So far, nobody has noticed him—or else they just don’t care. But it’s still a little dangerous for him to be here with me, and so I’ve been making sure he stays close, waiting until I feel him against the back of my ankles before moving on.

11.5.19

As usual, I seem to have become aware that I’m dreaming without being able to remember how it happened. I’m in a house along with two other people. I believe that they’re other dreamers—not sure now on what basis.

In one part early on, I’m looking at a still scene in front of me, like a picture. It takes me a couple minutes to puzzle out what’s happening in it. A young man is shown looking into a body of water like a lake. The sky is colorful and full of varied light, with a couple odd-shaped clouds in the foreground. I figure out that the cloud that looks like a unicorn’s head is going towards the cloud shaped like a dragon’s, which represents an attack on the sun by the moon, and the man is watching it through the reflections in the water.

When I’ve realized this, the scene comes to life in front of me. The clouds converge, and the sky darkens, with the moon appearing. It behaves strangely at first before taking up a normal course in the sky. The man gets up and heads in the direction it has gone. He’s going to try to fix the situation.

A lot of the dream faded from memory when I woke up, but in the subsequent parts, I was with the two dreamers. I only remember one person well, a guy. He is apparently already familiar with this legend—I get the impression he knows a lot of them.

At some point quite a bit later on, the others are somewhere else, fighting a monster of some kind. I guess some people don’t feel like they’ve really accomplished something unless there’s an epic boss battle at the end—but I just don’t find those things very interesting. While that’s going on, I’m standing near a grove of palm trees, above which the moon is floating in the form of a little, glowing crescent shape. Once we get ahold of that, we’ve won. According to the man, however, there’s something odd about the palm leaves, and a person will die if they touch them. But they just look like normal palm leaves to me, and so I figure I’ll take my chances with them. Anyway, I can fly in from above and avoid the leaves that way.

First step: make wings. I’ve been using shortcuts so much lately I figure that this time, I’ll do the full procedure like I used to. I stand facing my shadow on the ground, and will it to grow wings. Immediately, I see them unfolding, and unfolding further, out to their usual considerable span.

But this time—perhaps in response to my wanting to get a better view of what happens when I do this—there are also reflective surfaces nearby, although I can’t say now just what they were. I can see the wings themselves reflected in them—and since I’ve never set an intention for anything beyond generic wings, it’s a bit of a surprise to see how they’re turning out—red-gold in color, and faintly glowing. I climb up onto a nearby object—again, I can’t remember specifically what it was—and from there, hover over to the trees and grab the crescent moon.

In the process, though, I brush the tips of a couple palm leaves. And, perhaps because of that— or perhaps not— I soon find the dream fading around me until I’m in complete darkness. I’m still lucid, though. It feels as if I’m moving forward, but with nothing visible except for occasional faint shapes in the darkness, it’s impossible to tell—or, for that matter, tell how much time is passing. But after a while, I feel like it’s a good time to go back. I open my eyes, intending to be in the previous setting.

And I’m there, as before, and so are the two people. I can remember even less of this later part than I can the previous one—although I can recall the second person definitely being female in this one, whereas I can remember nothing at all about them from the first. There’s a series of events involving a deep pit filled with boiling water that opened up in the house. At some later part, the others seem to have lost lucidity. They're acting somewhat zombie-like, and are unresponsive to my efforts to get their attention. Not long after that, I wake up.

8.12.18

It’s sometimes disappointing to wake up with only fragmented memories of dreams—but sometimes, trying to image what the context might have been is almost worth it.

In the beginning of the dream, I’m walking into a building. Many people are already there—it seems like some event is taking place, possibly multiple events. A couple men are entering at the same time as I am. One of them seems to be able to see me—although he doesn’t say anything to me—and the other doesn’t. I’m keeping track of the people who are able to see me since I’m really not supposed to be here, and I’m trying to keep a low profile.

The space I’m entering is basically a circular building with a separate central area, although the specifics kept changing throughout the dream. The first area I walk through, going clockwise, seems to be a restaurant. I pass people sitting at tables, including one that’s occupied by dreadlocked guys dressed in Jamaican colors who seem to be having a lot of fun.

[Note: today, the day after the dream, I was given a story to work on about reggae becoming a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage—so maybe that’s what they were so happy about.]

There was a lot that happened after that, most of which I can’t remember very clearly. But, towards the end, the space was like an auditorium, with a lecture area in the center and areas for students to sit all around it and higher up. I had put the table I had surreptitiously borrowed from Nancy Pelosi among the tables in the student area while I went and did some other stuff, but in the meantime, students had come in, including my friend Dirk. And somebody, noticing that the table is more wheelchair-friendly than the standard tables there, which have metal bars crisscrossed underneath them, has set him up with it.

Now, I had totally been intending to give Nancy Pelosi her table back. It’s what I came back here to do. But Dirk is clearly getting some good out of it. Also, Nancy Pelosi was more of a jerk than I had expected. I figure she can just buy a new table or something.

1.12.18

I’m in what seems to be a bathhouse—a basic, no-frills rectangular room with a concrete floor, on the large side, with a number of small pools and folding screens that can be moved around. Although the setting also seemed shifty and indefinite in a more basic way—a “I had this dream early in the night” kind of way.

Weird things are constantly happening there, strange figures materializing and disappearing again in a sort of timeless convergence - it almost seems like there's nothing outside of this place, even though in one sense I arrived here at a definite point of time - but nobody else seems aware of it. But this is normal: I hadn’t been able to see them once, but I had been through a long process—all of it, every stage. I go over it in memory: some parts of it had been unpleasant or even frightening, but there’s nothing frightening about it now that I can see the whole of it instead of just pieces. It’s familiar—it even feels like home somehow.

I seem to have come here with two young women, and at some point—it’s very difficult to say what order things happened in in this dream—I say to one that this is a special place, that you can feel it in the atmosphere. I’m curious if she can feel it too, on some level. At some other point, perhaps earlier or perhaps later, one asks me if there’s anyone here I’m interested in romantically. I say that there is one person, but I’ve only spoken to him a couple times. And he hasn’t shown up here for a couple hundred years now—but I feel it’s best not to mention that.

Also, at one point, one of them is arranging stuff around a pool we're going to use. There isn't enough space for two people to do it without getting in each other's way, but I don't want to just sit there, so I clean up some of the central area at the same time.

Later on, towards morning, I have another dream. I’m now in a large house with my bouzouki instructor for a lesson. I have the impression that it’s not his house or mine—that he’s an employee here. There are interruptions to our lesson—we have to temporarily leave the house at one point and go somewhere else in a car.

But we do make it back inside eventually, and he tells me to go get something. He gives me directions to the room and tells me to get #5, indicating approximately where in the room I’ll be able to find it.

It’s only a few rooms away, and I make it there without difficulty. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call this house a mansion, but the room I now find myself in wouldn’t be out of place in a palace. It’s richly decorated, 18th-century style, in blue and silver. There’s another doorway on the other end, and one of the longer walls, to my left, is covered with shelves, all of which are lined with ornate silver music boxes. They’re all individually numbered, and #5 is one of the farthest to the left, about mid-way up.

It occurs to me that people who decorate rooms like this usually don’t like other people coming in and messing with them. But, at the same time, this place has the look of an archive. It will probably be OK, then. I take the music box off the shelf. It has its number and what seems to be some notes about it carved onto the top in a rather messy handwriting.

I open it there—but unfortunately, I can’t really remember what happened then, although the dream kept going. Before carrying it back, I notice what looks like a bone flute lying on the floor, the only thing out of place here. Perhaps a child was playing with it and left it there, I think.

(8.11.18)

I’m at the counter of a coffee shop that looks like one in a town not far from where I work. They seem to be selling small squares of chocolate cake, and I decide I’ll get one with my espresso. I’m hoping that it will be less expensive than their big slices of cake. But the total comes out to a little more than $10—meaning it was actually quite a bit more expensive. The woman behind the counter tells me that, if the total comes up to just a little more, which it would if I ordered a different kind of coffee—but actually, I can’t seem to get her to explain what’s supposed to happen and why it would be a good thing.

After a couple attempts, though, it occurs to me that I’m probably dreaming—possibly just because it was one of those rare scenarios - rare for me, anyway - that’s enough like waking life to where the differences are obvious. I look around the room. I have just enough time to observe that this is actually quite a good rendition of the waking life location before my vision starts fading.

I head for the door, and stepping outside seems to fix the problem. I can see just fine here. I’m now on a street that’s a little reminiscent of the waking life one that I’d expect to be here, but more vibrant and interesting. But I don’t stick around: I start running down the street, then flapping the wings I know will be there when I want them to be, then flying.

I rise higher, above the treetops, then make a strange kind of turn—I ought to be flying straight up, but somehow I’m parallel to the ground in a different location. I seem to be above a forest now, and above me is the evening sky. There’s sort of a natural path here, a groove where the foliage is lower, and I fly along it. I pass a lamppost on my right. It’s an interesting thing, very modern-looking—just a smooth, cylindrical pole with a vertical slit near the top that has purple light shining through it. I note that it would be completely useless from the ground—almost as if this is a real trail I’m flying along, and it's lighting it.

Was there anything I was planning to do next time I had a lucid dream? The only thing I can think of is actually looking at my wings. I never seem to think of it until—like now—I’m already in the air. Oh, well.

In the sky, above and ahead of me, I can see a red light—really, more like a small circle of lights. I figure I’ll go see what it is. That might be interesting.

I fly towards it. Pretty soon, there’s nothing in my field of vision but sky and the red light. It will be harder to maintain lucidity with nothing more solid to focus on, I know, and so I increase my concentration.

Once I’m closer to it, I can see what it is: a meteor, headed down towards the earth. I wonder if I should try to keep it from hitting. I aim myself towards it, but miss and end up behind it. I fly back down towards it, manage to catch up, but miss it that time, too. But, as I happen to glance at the fields below, I spot chunks of broken-up rocks in a few places. They look like the same type of rock the meteor is made of. And it isn’t a very big one—only about half my height. Maybe this isn’t something to worry about, then—this is something that happens all the time here.

I watch as it hits and breaks apart and then land to get a closer look. Among the fragments is a pile of colorful rocks. Some look like red and white crystals, some like turquoises, others like amethyst geodes. I gather them up.

I notice that someone’s nearby—an Asian man, maybe in his 20s. It occurs to me that he might want some of the rocks—and really, I don’t have any claim to them. I was just the first person to get here. I offer him some. He says he’s only interested in the turquoises right now and picks one out—a particularly smooth one—and sets it among a large number of others he has in a bag. I insist that he take another one, too, but then wake up soon after that.

(8.10.18)