regulator

(Nov. 18, 2015).

A couple of snippets.

I'm giving CNG a ride around to places. Not sure where. At one point we are trying to get back to my place, and we park in a sort of half-circle driveway at my house. But it's really run down, almost dirt, and on a hill type thing. The house is a shack.

Her car is already there for some reason. It's a pickup truck, like one my dad had. A little older and smaller, but red and similar. As we walk up to the house, I notice that the driver door is open. And I remember (within the dream), that the door was open last time and I had forgotten to close it. I get worried that someone may have stolen something. But I look inside and nothing looks stolen. The stereo, everything. As I'm shutting the door, I notice that some sort of interior indicator light is on. Something like a "check engine" light, but not that one exactly. So I note that the battery must not be totally drained from the door that's been open for at least a day. I ask CNG something about her cat. I don't remember the question.


It seems like I'm making progress on the WILDing, especially in stabilizing HI while maintaining awareness. There was an episode where I was in a dream-like state -- I think it was after WILDing to get HI, and in the scene I was sitting on a bed, on my knees. I wasn't yet in a dream, but wanted to keep the HI stable while entering a dream. I then thought I'd look in a mirror, and a handheld mirror appeared in my hand. When I went to look into it I woke up. The sleep paralysis was pretty heavy.

A fragment: I'm outside, with a couple of other people. For some reason we're at the edge of a canyon. I'm trying to hit someone on the other side with some sort of cannon that shoots something. Something non-lethal, like a paint ball. At first I aim directly there and shoot, but gravity brings the projectile down and it's not even close. So I aim upward for the next shot. [end of scene].

In another fragment, I'm on a beach with MM and SM, and we're sitting on the beach and it's getting really windy. I'm pointing out to MM that the waves look really big. The wind is coming from behind us, so it is blowing the waves out. Even the ones that look like they'll make it to us don't. Then I notice one really huge wave that is heading towards us. It's massive. We get scared and start to leave. We're not running, but walking quickly. But even that one gets blown out, and it doesn't make it all the way in.

I leave anyway. I'm walking away form the beach. There's a paved road that leads away, and I'm walking on a sidewalk next to an under-construction building. The sidewalk is covered with a roof for safety. And on the side is a wooden beam, like a small log, round and about 6 inches in diameter, that is holding up the roof. Some pieces of paper, flyers, are nailed to it. I notice that they are flapping around in the wind, but that the wind is super strong. Enough so that it really should be blowing the paper off the post.

In the next scene, there's a go kart track thing. It's outside, like a bike path. There are a couple of people, friends, who are driving really fast along the track. And then suddenly we see a woman trying to chase them in her own go kart, like she's mad at them or something.

I consider putting something on the track so on their next lap around they'll have to slow down and she'll catch them. But I don't. But when they come around on the next lap, one of the guys is going slow, like something happened. Like his go kart broke own or something. I couldn't see the other two.

No dream recall last night. But I was trying to WILD, and managed again to get some solid HI. Though still as soon as the HI gets solid and dream like, I lose awareness. It's like the two are mutually exclusive.

There was one event where I felt my watch tap my wrist right at the beginning of a dream or something, but I didn't RC. It was almost like I was still half awake in my bed, adn so just blew the RC off. Not sure if I was awake or not when that happened. But I need to resolve to take the RC's seriously after a watch tap.

I'm with a couple of friends, not sure who (maybe Mark M and Mark B). I have a big pickup I'm driving in with them. I'm behind the wheel. In one fragment I'm trying to leave a parking lot but the exit is very narrow. It is almost like a cement hallway I need to drive down, but I'm convinced I am going to scratch up the sides of the truck. But I manage to get out without any scratch marks.

In another scene we're in the backyard of my parent's house. The truck is parked there. My glock is in the truck, locked in it's gun box in the back of the truck. The ground is covered with lizards. And there are a bunch of trees, but they are covered with insects, and are eaten away by termites. I'm worried that I need to get to a class I need to teach on time. I need to be there by 10:30am, and it is getting close. There's a gate I need to drive through. Somehow I need to simultaneously hold the gate open and drive the truck through. It is like a spring-closing gate. As I get into the truck, one of my other friends (MM?) is trying to get in, and we hear a big cracking noise. A huge vertical branch breaks off one of the trees and crashes down. It's like the size of half the tree. It becomes clear that there are termites or something eating away at the trees. I get them both in the truck and another tree breaks and cracks. We've got to drive out, and I'm trying to drive the truck out and hold the gate open at the same time.

Then we have to make a detour back to my house, and I'm trying to get my stuff together and get ready so I can get to where I need to be by 10:30.

[end]

Interestingly, there are a couple of things in that sequence that are reflections of what happened before I went to bed.

1. I had seen the movie Spectre and there was a scene with a lizard on the window, and at some point I remembered that scene before I went to bed. I think that might have been related to the lizards all over the ground.

2. At one point when I was going to sleep I was thinking about trees and tree back. Not sure why -- it was like spontaneous hypnogogic imagery before I went to sleep. But it ended up playing a role in the dream, since the bark of the trees was very prominent since it was clearly being eaten away by insects.

3. Also, I actually did have to be somewhere at 10:30 that morning, and was thinking of that before I went back to sleep, and that go incorporated into the dream.

Two scenes from a dream. In one scene I’m looking at a list of teaching assistants and instructors for my university that goes back a number of decades. It's written on paper, pen and pencil. One entry per line, one year per line. My name shows up a number of times, both as a grad student and as faculty. There are other people who are there and around, and they are envious because I’m on the list so often, and there is (part of the background idea of the dream) only 1 departmental TA per year.

Next scene, part of same dream. I’m in a house that is connected to my job somehow. I’m outside and PMC drives by. He’s upset about something, like I’m not working enough or I’m shirking my job. He says something like “Say goodbye to your house.” There’s a kid in the back seat, but that is irrelevant to anything that happens. I yell at him to stop. He needs help with something, like he’s overworked about something. Maybe it has something to do with cooking? Or a party he’s hosting? Anyway, I say that if he needs help with X, just ask for X. He drives off and I get him to stop again, and I say ‘If you need help with X and Y, just ask for help with X and Y”.

That’s all.

Only some fragments from a dream.

I'm in a large indoor environment that is so big it seems like it outdoors. There is something going on like a political campaign that I am following around. There is a political candidate that looks like Fiorina, I'm not sure what she's running for, but I think it's president.

In one snippet we're riding from one location to another, in a Jeep or something in the back. There is a black bent metal bar on the roof of the Jeep that I'm holding on to (random detail). Part of her platform is to give everyone a free college education. I ask her: what about early education? Why don't we give everyone free early, like elementary school education? (In my dream I didn't realize that IRL we actually have free K-12 education. In the dream apparently that wasn't the case.) I pointed out that that is probably more important than college. She gave a reply but I don't remember it.

In another scene, I was lecturing students in logic, and was teaching proofs to college students. Somehow this was part of the same scene as the previous political campaign thing. I was a bit early for class. I had some examples I wanted to work through, a sheet of paper that had 4 problems on it I wanted to work on a blackboard. It was a large lecture hall, but it was sort of dark, and had a kind of dark brown color scheme.

I started doing proofs on the board. The first one was an easy conditional proof. It was a pretty easy one. I remembered looking for the big chalk to do the proof.

A third scene was a small reception. There were some desserts that were being given out. They were on a table. They were like pastries, and you had to smear a berry topping on it, and then there was a cream topping you had to put over that. When I went to put on the berry topping, there were a couple of people waiting behind me and there wasn't a whole lot of the topping left. As I was trying to put it on my pastry with a spoon, it was sticking to the spoon and not coming off very well. So I kind of pushed a glob of it off the spoon with the thumb knuckle of my other hand, trying to do it so that the people behind me wouldn't see that I basically was touching the topping with my fingers.

There was a young girl who was hanging out near the dessert table. She was like 7 years old. I'm not sure if she was the candidate's daughter or what. As I sat down in a recliner to eat the pastry, she came over to the side of me, and started rubbing the side of my neck like it was a massage. She was pushing her fists into the side of my neck. I leaned my head sideways in the opposite direction to stretch out the muscles on that side of my neck as she was rubbing them. It's similar to something my chiropractor does to stretch out my neck muscles before an adjustment. [end]

There's a house that I own, or maybe it's owned by my extended family. It's on a lake. Knd of near the corner of a rectangular-ish lake. I'm driving there. Along one side of the lake is where there's a lot of public parking, along a dirt road. A lot of people park there and then go to the lake, swimming and sailing and stuff. I could park at the house, but the public road is a better parking situation. But it's full. I drive back and forth a few times. There are a couple of spots that are kind of like open spots, but they're really small, to the point that it's not clear if it counts as a spot, or just an empty-ish area of a larger place someone else is parked in already. I would have to be kind of intrusive to park in any of them, so I don't.

So I park by the house and go to the house. The house has 2 stories. The bottom story has a little water-driveway where there's a boat parked that can just go out into the lake.

I go inside and greet everyone. My sister-in-law is there. I say something, I don't remember what. I joke around a bit with her, and then say something to the effect that a couple of years ago when would have taken offense at some of the joking around I was doing. But now she is cooler and has a sense of humor.

I suggest to everyone that we go to the lake. But it's really cold in the lake. [end]

I'm with two friends, SDS and SAH, and am talking with SDS about our phones in a big warehouse type room. We are having some witty banter about whose phone is better, like my phone is funny and hers is sad (I don't remember the details of the conversation). SAH comes over and wants to look through my phone for something. he asks for the password, but I blow that off. I hold the phone for him and he's going through things, and there's something on facebook. It's a video ad for a krav maga (martial art) school owned and run by a friend of mine (which is real, that friend does have that school).

In the video there are some vignettes of people getting attacked and defending themselves. The first couple of them had defenders doing really acrobatic kicks and stuff (which is actually not part of krav maga). In the last one someone comes up to someone else with a assault rifle (maybe a shotgun?) The guy got hit in the shoulder, which was an odd thing to put in a promotional video.

I was watching this with my friend SAH, and when we say that, I told him that whenever you have an assault rifle, you always want to keep some distance between yourself and the person you are holding at gunpoint. (BTW, this is odd. I teach krav myself, and I know that as far as defending yourself if someone has an assault rifle trained on you, you're way better off is the assailant is close to you. Somehow in my dream that got turned into tactical advice for my friend is he was ever the weapon-user, which IRL he never would be).

We were instantly in a place that looked like the school owned by my friend, and then AT (a different friend who is also a krav instructor) walked by and said and overheard the conversation, and said "You need to be two rifle-lengths away at least". That's when I woke up.

This is really weird. A few weeks ago I had a dream where all of a sudden everything froze -- not got really cold, but everything stopped completely. I don't remember what was happening, but I do remember that I was more of an observer than a participant. As soon as everything froze, one of those little spinning "buffering" icons came up in my dream, like you get when you're watching a video and the data download speed isn't enough to keep up with the video in real time.

I woke up pretty much right away after the icon came up, so I didn't get a chance to see if the action started again.

A sign that I'm watching too many videos, I guess...