non-lucid

I am helping musician Chris Chameleon carry his guitar to a concert which I am about to attend. We are walking down a street towards the large concert building, and the guitar feels awkward in shape. We arrive at the venue, and it's like a school gymnasium, with many tables. I hand the guitar off to somebody else, and spot my Aunty, and her divorced husband (who was controlling/cruel/etc). Just beyond them, however, for the second time in the last week, by (now long passed) Grandfather is standing there. However, he is free of both Parkinson's and Alzheimers. I hug him, and it is joyful - I feel good that I can see him again, and I am old enough to appreciate it.

Well, this was a rather interesting dream. For the second night in a row, I was driving in a vehicle. The dream started off on some sort of downwards sloped, dry grassy hill. At this point, I either hopped into, or was placed into (I can't remember which) some sort of short, yellow, semi-fortified vehicle, which reminded me of a smaller, flatter tractor. Once inside, however, it just felt like a normal car. At this point, I started driving up a dirt road, which then led onto a highway, with cars going both directions (i.e., up the hill, and down the hill). It wasn't a winding hill, as such, it was a hill that went straight up, and then followed around a bend. The road for the main part of the hill was a bitchumen road, and the dirt road I was driving on continued upwards, splitting from the bitchumen road, but staying next to it (only difference being that it was rising). At this point, I chose the bitchumen path, which was a wise decision, as tornadoes started to come down the dirt road, from higher up the hill. The majority of them passed by me with little effect, though some of them started to pull on my car quite strongly. I think I recall one of them nearly pulling the car off the road, though I'm not entirely sure. My memory is blank until the next event:

This is a bit vague, but I recall being back on the original grassy hill again. My cousin was there, and I think there was some sort of watchtower. He was also in a vehicle, though the seemed much smaller now - kind of like vehicles that you could wear around your waist, but still drive. I don't recall much more, except that there was a third person there, and my cousin was at one point significantly taller than I was (in his vehicle), and there were spiders dropping off him and onto the ground, and onto me - possibly biting me, but I'm not sure. It was at this point that the mild panic and fear caused me to wake up in quite a groggy state.

This put the following idea into my mind - breathing based Reality Checks. Breathing is obviously one of those muscles that are both involuntary, or voluntarily controlled. This led me to think, if you're in a dream, chances are, you aren't thinking about your breathing, therefore it's involuntarily controlled, and most likely synced to your real breathing. I thought, perhaps as part of my regular Reality Checks, I could incorporate breathing into it, and think "Is the type of breathing I'm doing about right for the situation I'm in?", with the thought that if I have an adrenaline fuelled dream like this again (tornadoes would be quite scary in real life), that in my dream I may think - "Hey, there's Tornadoes, maybe I should be breathing a little bit quicker?", in the hope of realising I'm dreaming, and then turning lucid.

I was in my house (well, the house was mine in the dream, but not the same as mine in real life). There was one lowered section, where I was, and one raised section, where all the sleeping people were (Mum and Dad specifically). I think it was about 2am. I decided to drive to go eat some pie. I snuck out the house, and went for the drive. It was the first dream I recall having at night time, so that was quite interesting. I drove down the road near my house with the speed bumps, but there were too many people turning left onto the main road, so I went back around the block, and turned left at a different location. I turned in front of a large truck, and had to accelerate quite quickly to avoid it. I don't recall if I ever made it to the pie shop, because the next thing I knew I was back inside, and my Mum was scolding me about needing to book the car in some sort of online form and seek prior permission before taking it out at night. I was being scolded by a post-it-note, rather than in person.

*May recall something about driving near my old school at this point, but don't know specifically*

Emotions Felt:

• Fear (at being caught)
• Excitement (about the pie)
• Frustration (upon waking, at not recognising the weirdness of the dream, and then turning lucid)

Some of my day themes crept into my dream last night. I dreamt that my VPS provider, Linode, had started offering smaller plans for lesser cost (including 78MB of RAM as the smallest). I decided to go for a walk to find their main office, and sign up there (somehow signing up on the web wasn't an option in the dream). I went for a walk, and as it turned out, they had multiple offices along the street - the street was like one out of a "Rocky" movie, where all the houses are kind of similar to apartments, and have stairs going up to their doors. The first office I went into had 3 people lying down on green, flat, dentist chairs. They were being injected with a liquid that put them into a sleep, slowed their perception of reality down by 70 times, and allowed them to recognise that they were dreaming. Effectively, because they were put under for 1 hour, they were being given 70 hour lucid dreams. Once they fell asleep, they had some sort of goggles put over their eyes to increase their visualisation ability. After I saw this, I walked out the building and continued down the street to try and find their main office. I don't think I ever found it. When I walked back past the other building, there were people coming out of it throwing up, presumably as a side effect of the injection. This is all I remember.

Emotions

• None

Setting/Scenario/Atmosphere

• Autumn
• Cool/warm wind (as an emotional feeling/knowing, rather than directly feeling)
• Leaves blowing
• Quiet street
• Mid arvo/early evening (low soft sun)