memorable

As any astute follower of this journal would notice, I haven't quite followed through on my recent resolution to resume dream documentation, however I do like to come back to this journal time to time to document particularly notable dreams (eg the previous post). The following is actually a dream I had a few nights ago and have been toying with the idea of writing down; it was a very haunting, powerful experience that I keep thinking about again and again.

The overarching premise of the dream was that I was dead somehow and in heaven. I want to say that the earliest part of the sequence was me living ordinarily in an area that seemed to be a common room with a bunch of offshoot dwelling rooms adjacent to a hallway that led directly to a hospital where I worked (I'll get into more detail in describing both later on), but I also suspect these may be memories within the dream (I'll clarify this later as well). Anyways, the earliest clear part of this dream took place as I somehow came to be outside the gates of heaven. I was apparently well aware of a conspiracy to keep people out of heaven, and that the primary methodology of this conspiracy was a complex maze system outside heaven's gate with a long line of people that were queued to enter heaven, and it was so constructed so as to keep people trapped, slowly moving nowhere in circles. I was at first able to see a narrative overview of this maze; people in single file line, slowly shuffling forward, many branches and loops ensuring that the people (who seemed completely ignorant of their situation and complacently moved along) were trapped. There were "employees" who seemed to be party to the conspiracy directing the flow of the lines so as to maintain things. As it were, I was just near what I knew to be the actual, true entrance to heaven, which was blocked off and guarded by a line of "employees". As I stood there trying to determine how I was going to get back in, I by chance noticed a bellboy carrying a platter of dirty dishes (I seemed to understand they delivered food to people in line). I watched as he entered an adjacent hallway marked employees only. It was unguarded, so I looked down the hallway; it was tall and wide and reminiscent of the grand hallways at a hotel convention center. The hallway went a long ways back before ending in a group of employee rooms (I assumed one of them must be a kitchen), but I also noticed a hallway branched off to the right some distance down. I looked to my right now towards the entrance to heaven and noticed another hallway opened on the other side of the line of sentries, so I decided I'd try to sneak through that way. I happened to have my messenger bag with me, so I decided I'd pretend to be a writer. I began to walk quickly down the hallway, repeating the phrase, "I'm a writer" constantly in my head as though I thought it would somehow prevent me from being caught. As I turned the corner to the right, I found that the hallway continued for some time before coming to another hallway parallel to the first. I turned another right and headed towards the exit. As I continued down this hallway I came upon a black man in a suit who waved at me in a friendly way and offered to shake my hand. As I shook his hand I only said, "I'm a writer" and then kept walking; as I passed him I could see the look of confusion on his face. I seemed to understand that he wasn't a guard, but that his job was to simply stand there and greet people. I exited the hallway into the hospital area (note this was not the area I'd seen from the other side of heaven's gate previously), which was comprised of square rooms, all hallways, some of which resembled normal hospital hallways and some of which resembled patient rooms with through paths. I knew my way back from here by memory; from the hallway square at the exit of the hallway I turned right into a room square, then left through three more squares and then right to the exit of the hospital area into my living area I'd mentioned previously. As I arrived, I slowly walked further into the room, examining my surroundings. Like the hospital area, the room was familiar to me as though I'd been living there for some time. There was a dining table in the middle of the room along one wall that was cluttered with papers and there was a television suspended on a thick pillar adjacent to the table. It occurred to me later that the layout of the main common room very vaguely resembled the living room at my grandma Isabel's old house in Halstad, and to that theme everything seemed dusty and slightly old as though the furniture, paint on the wall, decorations, and even the television were from the 80's. There were a number of people intently going about there business in the room also. As I examined my surroundings I became increasingly distressed with my disposition. I then lashed out verbally, asking if this was all I had left now in heaven, that I'd spend eternity trapped in this dusty room with some other people from the 1990's (a woman nearby in earshot glanced at me and rolled her eyes as she continued doing something), complaining that there wasn't even much of a proper internet yet. I continued, suddenly realizing that I was due to take the MPJE tomorrow but now couldn't because I was dead, meaning that I'd never been successfully licensed as a pharmacist and thus the last several years of my life spent training to that end was wasted. This angry diatribe was cut short by the realization that I'd left Laura behind and could not be sure when she would arrive or if she'd arrive at all (at least we'd already returned to her hometown, I hoped she'd find happiness again, etc.). In this strong emotional mix of anger and sadness I realized that my situation could not be real, but I could only think of ending the dream quickly instead of allowing it to continue post reality check and instantly managed to wake myself up.

When I fell asleep again I had a short continuation of this dream where I went to a buffet for food (I was aware I was still in heaven). The restaurant had many people but wasn't too crowded. It reminded me of the restaurant at Bill's gambling hall.

As I mentioned at the start of this entry I mentioned how haunting this dream has been the last few days. The reason for that is that afterwards I've been left with the haunting thought that I may have peered into the real heaven (a chilling thought given the "conspiracy", how drab the environment was, and my emotional observations towards the end). I don't genuinely believe this now (the fact that heaven is historically described as more paradise in nature, consideration that this may represent hell rather than heaven, and my ultimate awareness that this was a dream all heavily discount this notion), however I believe it does represent a phenomenon I referred to previously as "dream bleeding", where elements of the dream have remained strong in my consciousness long after the dream has ended.

Third sequence: this one was longer, but my recall only retained a fragment of the ending. The dream was some kind of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG; it was in slightly dated video game graphics and all the dialogue occurred in dialogue boxes Suikoden style. Some villain (who may or may not have been Shredder, who made an incidental appearance during the villain's escape) was disguised as Donatello. They go into a plain, empty bland rectangular room with wooden plank floors. On the fall wall near the corner there's a bay window. Someone whom I'm not able to recall enough to identify approaches the window, and is suddenly kidnapped as fake-Don reveals himself. He grabs the person, then runs to the picture window, where he teleports away (as the villain escapes, an image of Shredder is projected onto the window. Michaelangelo is devastated, but is comforted by Raphael.

The fourth sequence is another interesting and memorable one, for a handful of reasons. There were several subtle indications throughout the dream that in this particular dream I'm female. As it was, I was trying to infiltrate some kind of evil amusement park (thinking about it now, it's reminiscent of L4D2). At the lines to get in, I'm able to jump over the in order to sneak in. There's a direct passage in off to my right and up some stairs. It leads to an area just off one of the busy pathways in the park. There I met my contact, who happened to be Neil Patrick Harris, whom I was starstruck to see in an unusual, excitably girlish kind of way (subtle hint #1). We walked through the crowd as he explained my mission, but as we were walking I noticed another Neil Patrick Harris casually stroll by. I looked at the NPH who had been talking to me and suddenly realized he was a fake. He knew that I knew he was fake, so he pinned me to a wall and then proceeded to try to rape me. At this point (and I'm finding some more comic irony in how it reminds me of L4D2) the dream went third person, so while my gender in this dream may now be obvious looking back, what with the slim girlish figure, long blond hair tied back in a ponytail, breasts, and a vagina, keep in mind I was going by dream logic at the time so none of this seemed outlandishly apparent. I remember having that odd sort of rape victim psychological crisis where I was simultaneously scared and angry that I was about to be forced into sex against my will and slightly flattered that NPH wanted to have sex with me. Anyways, before it got particularly graphic the dream reset back to the beginning where I was a the line to get into the amusement park. This time, sneaking in I took a pathway to the left. It leads into a backroom/warehousey area. I realize I may have tripped some alarm or that somehow they knew where I was trying to sneak in, because a ways up ahead I could see several strangely dressed girls whom I identified as being with the amusement park's security. I'm able to disable most of them by stealth shooting a barrel that explodes and then a fire extinguisher, knocking them all out but one. The remaining girl looks around suspicious and confused, so I attempt to sneak by her. I make it about halfway through the area she's patrolling when she sees me. I immediately run forward, trying to find an exit while she gives chase. We go running for a little ways down a wide hallway, then up some stairs to a raised catwalk for a ways, then up another set of stairs to a higher catwalk where I find a door. I go through the door and close it behind me. I'm now on a platform jutting out from the building; there's nowhere to go but fall a few stories down. Fortunately, for whatever reason, there's a column of stacked wooden chairs a short distance away from the catwalk and I realize I can jump onto the chairs and then ride them slowly down as they break under me for a soft landing(!?), so that's what I do. I'm now in kind of dusty and sandy area that seems to be a seldom traveled passage around the outside of the park; I can hear music and crowds off in the distance and it's now dusk. Dream ends as I walk towards the amusement park.

Hit quite the jackpot on dreams this morning. This is made somewhat ironic in that I'm in the nadir of an annoying upper respiratory tract infection, so I didn't put any effort into dreaming for the night. Finally, since our alarm didn't go off this morning, I didn't have time to fully write these up in the 10 minutes I had to get ready and arrive at work. Also, splitting the rest into two entries to make room for plenty of tags.

Second sequence (note that this is #2 following the short sequence in the previous entry): I was driving in a car with my family again. We were turning onto University Drive from 19th avenue north. For some reason we were discussing Oblivion/Morrowind mods. We were apparently headed to the Fargodome for some reason. We parked and got out to go inside. Inside I spent most of my time at the food court there, ate a meal and loitered about. When my mom was ready to go we went out to the car and then pulled up to the entrance to wait for my dad and brother to come out. They came out just as I was getting impatient. As we turned back onto University Drive the dream transitioned into me physically playing in one of the mods we were discussing earlier (everything seemed real and not as though it looked like video game graphics). I enter some random house. As I walk in, a thin, thugish looking man comes to see who entered and meets me. Surveying the room, I notice he has a desperate-looking woman naked and tied down (I'm not sure if I realized it at the time, but I recognized after the fact that she strongly resembled my wife). Inferring that the man was about to rape her, I immediately slew the man. I turned and was about to leave without untying the woman when I figured I might as well not waste an opportunity and stripped down to have sex with her. At this point she didn't resist as though I was going to rape her, but she was very inviting and willing and quite turned on as well. It was very sensual and amazing sex; I entered her slowly and completely at first and then held it there, feeling her around me. She reached down to play with her clit as I held there, which was very erotic. After a short while we begin to have a good old aggressive, animalistic fuck.

Unfortunately it ended before it reached a climax. I have a reflex I've developed over the years that wakes me up from some sex dreams before they finish in order to avoid having to clean up the aftermath. This time it was mildly disappointing, but not in that it at least left me with the memory. Though the dream wasn't lucid, it is a memory I enjoy recalling and it's something I need to remember to perhaps emulate in lucid dreams in the future. It's also worth noting that my dream avatar is much thinner, allowing for some unrealistic actions during sex.

Got quite a good haul tonight; 3 decent-sized sequences that I'm going to split between two posts to denote a break where I woke up and wrote down some notes.

This first one may have been longer on the front end, but this is where my memory picks up: I'm living in a house with just my dad. I'm in the back yard enjoying the beautiful weather. I'm sitting at the top of a hill, looking at the sky. As I look back down, I notice the back yard is a mess, stuff is scattered everywhere and there is dog poop and urine stains all over, on the ground, and on the walls. I notice my neighbors' back yards are nice and neat, they're all separated into distinct sections by a short chain-link fence. I go inside and it's a mess inside as well. Pissed, I call for my dad, who shows up quickly. I yell at him for letting the dog shit everywhere. I tell him I'm going to go to the store and that everything better be cleaned up by the time I get back. I get into my car, but I decide instead of going to the store I'm just going to run away and live somewhere else. I try to plan where I want to go, I decide I'll fly to Alberta, Canada, then from there to Vancouver. I figure my dad might still be able to find me there and he'll be mad, so I decide I should keep going to Europe. I pick an arbitrary spot to land in Europe, so I pick Budapest (I had to check Wikipedia to verify Budapest is even in Europe and apparently my subconscious knows exactly where Budapest, Hungary is on a map; I should also note that my starting location was in southern California and as I was planning it I was seeing the path I was planning to take on a map with a line for the air route Indiana Jones style). So I go to the grocery store, which had an airport on its roof. I go up to the roof to get on a plane.

This dream may have transitioned into the following one; my memory of it starts (as I'll describe shortly) with flying as the previous one ends with it, and the sky in both situations was yellow as though it was dusk.

It's the future, but it's a zombie apocalypse. But not quite an apocalypse; there's pockets of humans living comfortably and there are quarantine zones. I'm at an airfield near a forest, learning how to fly (the airplanes are these tiny hover airplanes). I watch another student (who is Jesse Eisenberg of Zombieland fame) successfully take off and then do a couple loops in the air to show off. I do my own take-off and continue flying to explore. I wander into a massive city, only I notice that it's conspicuously abandoned (also note, the sky is now blue). As I continue, I suddenly realize I've accidentally flown into the quarantine zone, just in time to just barely miss getting hit by a raising camera bot with a zombie hanging off of it. Since it's the future, and there's some advanced technology, they use automated hovering camera bots to watch over the quarantine zone. However, sometimes one of the zombies would grab it, causing the hover blades or the bot itself to be destroyed, so to solve this problem they programmed the bots to fly up and continue flying up if they get grabbed until the zombie falls off. Looking forward, I see several more upward flying camera bots with random zombies hanging off them, some occasionally falling off. Though I'm filled with some dread, I figure I'm fairly safe up in the sky so I continue exploring. Some ways in I find a series of very large buildings that are completely intact. One of them has a large airport on top of it (what's with the airports on top of buildings in these dreams) and as I continue I can see into some of the buildings. I come to realize that this is some evil corporation who's trying to exploit the zombies. In some places there are crowds of people moving around normally as though they are busy at work and aren't in the middle of a zombie infested quarantine zone, but in other places I can where swarms of zombies are attacking people who are desperately trying to escape. There's places where it looks like there's a special forces team fighting zombies. Another place looks like a grade school; a nervous student answers a teacher's question but is wrong so she is taken to a closet and left outside, zombies burst through the door and attack the girl. At another classroom area, a student lures the teacher closer but then attacks them in rebellion so they can escape. The other students attack him too and knock him out, so they all flee. I find what looks like some kind of vent that's large enough for me to fly down into. I come out in a busy office hallway; the ceiling there is high, so I can hover above everyone's heads so most of them don't notice me. There an intersection, and nearby is a black guy in a suit who is apparently the boss of the whole operation. He's giving some sort of evil monologue. I continue to look around while listening; there's windows into labs where technicians in sterile suits are working on something. The boss guy's assistant has noticed me and is trying to get the boss guy's attention but the boss is too into his monologue to be interrupted. I start to head back the way I came to leave, but as I get back to the vent I notice it's been covered over. While I'm trying to figure out what to do, the boss notices me and approaches me enthusiastically, he shakes my hand and asks me how I've been and other small talk; apparently we've met before. Another guy comes up the stairs nearby, I recognize him as a supervisor that I had for a previous job and I'm worried because I know he'll recognize me and know I'm not supposed to be there. The boss waves him over and "introduces" me to him, then tells him to find me a room. After boss guy leaves, I tell supervisor guy that if he lets me in on whatever the evil corporation is doing I'll keep quiet and won't try to escape or anything. He agrees and we get on an elevator. Inside there is what looks like some sort of special forces team. One of them looks half-zombified and is wearing some kind of special suit. We get off on an abandoned floor, the team goes first and readies assault rifles so I assume it's an unsafe floor. I wake up hereabouts.

I'm pretty sure I just had my first lucid dream. It seemed kind of long at the time but I may only remember some bits and pieces now, gonna try to get down as much as I can. And it's weird, it feels so foggy now. Was a very intriguing experience. There was another dream before it but I want to get down as much of the lucid as I can so I'm writing it first.

I'm trying to recall what it was that triggered the reality check. I think it was that I was laying in bed or on the phone with my wife and she said something absurd (I think it had something to do with her saying she was on her way home from class at university, and I quickly realized she doesn't go to school in reality) that caused me to quickly consider that this isn't real and pull a nose-pinch reality check. I was able to breathe like my nose was just a little stuffy despite the nose-pinch. There was an obligatory, "Holy shit, I'm lucid!" moment. To keep the dream from fading from excitement and to calm down, I closed my eyes and (for whatever reason) pictured a topographical map key. Feeling it was stable, I opened my eyes, did another reality check (marveling of course at how weird it was to be breathing through a pinched nose, and then started wandering my environment. I seemed to be in what looked and felt like my old house on Broadway. I was a little unprepared for my first lucid; I hadn't thought of anything cool to do. The first thing I did was go into the bathroom. I figured since I was lucid I might as well start playing around with how well I could control it. I went to the door of the bathroom and decided I'd summon something on the floor outside and close the door to see if it appeared; I arbitrarily chose cake, and then I sort of glanced up and back down and it was there on the floor, slightly stale and with a big slice missing--I didn't even have to close the door. Happy, I went to the big picture window out front and continued experimenting by swapping between night and day by closing my eyes for a second then looking at the sky. I noted some unusual mixed success, namely whenever I wanted it to be day or night it would literally only be just starting day or night (ie at dawn or dusk). It's a little foggy if there was something occurring between now and what happened next, but the next thing I remember was that I was quickly running out of ideas for things to do, so I thought, "Well, I've always wanted to experience sex as a woman, let's give that a try." So I went back to the bathroom (it's notable that the previous time it was the bathroom from the old Broadway house, but it was now the bathroom from my previous apartment on Oak Street), stripped down, then looked in the mirror. Quick comment after the fact, the mirror worked just fine for its purpose in the dream, but before transforming I started in my normal dream avatar--which is myself as I recognize but much thinner. I was able to transform myself by pointing to the parts of my body that I wanted to transform and focusing on them. I started with breasts, then moved on to my penis. I recall being amused/annoyed that as I was shrinking my penis my foreskin wasn't shrinking with it so I had to do that separate. I started to get a little impatient so I just waved my hand around in front of my crotch and looked up at the ceiling to try to speed things up. Eventually everything looked pretty good, wasn't perfect, and I noticed that at some point I had lost all my body hair without intentionally trying to, but it was good enough for a first attempt. I was trying to decide what I wanted to do first with my new body when I noticed I sorta needed to pee so I decided to get that out of the way first, so I did. Just that was an unusual new physical sensation. There was some toilet paper sitting in the bathtub next to the toilet, so I grabbed some to clean things up a bit (since I was planning to shortly be playing around down there soon anyways); as I was cleaning up the phone rang and I answered it. The voice on the other end was some woman trying to tell me about how there were cloths in the tub that I could use for whatever but to leave them there so she could wash them later (I noticed here that it was hard to focus on what was happening now while I was on the phone trying to listen). I looked back into the tub and the toilet paper had been replaced by dark blue cloth. I shortly regretted flushing a few of them down the toilet. I checked the mirror one last time to see if things were still good and then went back out to the living room. I'm think there may have been somewhere here where I experimented with my new body, but if so unfortunately I don't remember it. Eventually there appeared in my house (as though she was familiar with the place) a thin, light-skinned black girl. Delighted to find another person to help me experiment with my new body, I asked her if she wanted to have sex with me. She seemed apprehensive; focusing on her I first removed her clothes then, noting of course that she too was female and thus would make proper copulation difficult, made her instantly grow a penis. She wasn't very amused by this, however, and she angrily stormed off to the basement. Shrugging, and once again bored, I decided to turn my attention on mentally recreating graphic-update remakes of old school video games I love in my mind for entertainment. I started with what I assume was Final Fantasy 6, though thinking on it after the fact the action doesn't match up properly with the game (though I specifically recall Terra's appearance). At some point this was interrupted with my wife calling, when she called what had been the video game scene taking up my entire stream of consciousness suddenly appeared as though I'd taken it out of full-screen mode on my monitor on my computer at my current apartment. I even had my headphones on, so I had to remove one of side of them to expose an ear for the phone like I usually do. I was annoyed at the distraction but answered the phone anyways. I don't remember the contents of the actual phone message, but I note again after the fact that it started to break my lucid concentration. The last part I remember now was going down to the basement where I found the black girl (who had now been transformed into some sort of small Pokémon-like creature) cuddling on a table with another small Pokémon-like creature. Saying, "Oh, so you'll have sex with him but not me!" and did my own storming-off-angrily upstairs and back to the living room, where I waved my hand and did some sort of mental slash across the table they were lying on and killing them both. My memory of this dream ends here, though when I woke I seemed to think that there was more non-lucid dream that came after this. I awoke just prior to starting this journal entry and did a quick reality check that passed, officially ending my first lucid dream.

Note to self: be wary about answering phones once you're lucid; it seems to help break lucid focus. In fact, I'm going to try to make an effort to start reality checks whenever answering and/or ending phone calls. I'm going to try to remember that the next thing on my agenda for practice when a dream goes lucid is controlling the environment; this time I kind of let the environment do what it wanted around me.

There was a dream sequence either prior to or leading up to where it went lucid. There was a long prelude to most of what I remember, but the bulk of what I remember was that there was this stretch of interstate that I would drive down as though I was in a GTA-ish sandbox type game and try to score points on this segment of highway. The segment of highway was kind of a long straight section with a curve off to the right. I'm thinking I may have lost more memory of this dream out of excitement for the lucid one, so maybe more will come back to me later.

Sex dream, super odd one. Started at some sort of corporate board meeting. Started mostly third person, apparently I was Bruce Willis. There was some sort of drawn out argument over something, other than that I don't remember anything notable.

Cut to what was evidently my house (but not anything I'd recognize from real life), now in first person, with who I apparently identified as my wife, only it was Jennifer Aniston, who had also been present to a quiet degree during the board meeting (and she had kind of a super skinny build). We were sitting on a brownish couch watching TV for a while, but then I caught a glimpse of her breasts and we started going at it, feeling each other up. During this foreplay, whatever was on the large screen TV turned into a handful of number meters representing various aspects of her arousal, so I was half making out with her, half watching the screen to adjust my technique. At some point, she said, "That was the second time I've ever been satisfied!" We stripped down and were just about to get down to business when I woke up.

I've never been particularly attracted to or a fan of Jennifer Aniston.