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A bedroom

It's, I don't know, 5am? I've got that wild feeling, so I assume the usual posture in bed. I wait. It's sort of like the feeling when you pick up a phone, but for whatever reason, it takes a moment for the dial tone to start. And then you dial and again, randomly, there's an unusual pause before you start to hear the ringback. Like you're waiting to connect, and you're confident it will happen, but there's just an extra beat that makes me think, Hmm, did I make a mistake? But then it starts and all is well. My body buzzes and The Dreaming picks up the other line.

Gingerly at first, I peel my dream body away from the sleeper. I take a deep breath to stabilize. The window is to my left but the window behind me is missing. So it's no longer my bedroom. Let's get outta here. I phase through the window and hover out in the night sky. It is either a blank canvas or a bleak landscape, depending on my mood. An all black sky with just the faintest hint of light. The ground below, a featureless expanse of dirt or maybe concrete. I look back at the house I exited. It is an uninspired starter home, dotted by a few trees, but that's it. Unimpressed, I contemplate my options. Now what? I double check the sky. Nope, not even the moon is out. I scan the horizon. Maybe in the distance there is a low range of mountains. Yawn.

Another deep breath. Maybe this one is more of a heavy sigh. Bored, I become aware of my hovering. Do I bob slightly as I hover or do I remain still? It's entirely a matter of affectation. I try holding still. That's fine. I try a gentle bob. That's kinda cool. I try a different affect, as if I am stabilized by jet thrusters. Eh, kinda cool but too much work. One of the jets slips and I lose my balance. I feel The Dreaming shudder as it starts to destabilize.

I'm back in bed. Serves me right for vain tinkering, I scold myself. Let's go back. This time, I mean to sink through the bed but instead I slurp off the bed like a puddle of water. I think of the "genie" transition effect in Mac OSX. I rematerialize off the floor. If you're going to be difficult -- ! I chide to no one in particular.

I see the same window but stop to contemplate the room. It's rather plain. The layout bares some resemblance to my room, but the bed is different and there's no furniture besides the bed. Who's room is this? I amuse myself with the thought that this is some kind of walk of shame. I've found myself in someone else's bed and now I must discretely slip out and return home. Again bored, I wait a beat. Let's do this properly. I command The Dreaming to restart.

I'm back in bed yet again. This time I sink smoothly through the bed and into a familiar place I call The Field.

The Field

It's an open field of long but evenly manicured damp grass. Above is a slightly starry night sky with the moon looming prominently, large and full. So, the sky is mostly dark but the grass and atmosphere near the ground is rather brightly lit, like the field of a sports stadium for an evening game. But there are no light stands, buildings, or human development at all, at least not for miles around. The quality of the light is interesting. While it is like that stadium analogy, it's not that washed out white light, nor is it moonlight. It's a warm reddish orange like an early dawn. The light contrasts so perfectly with the greenness of the grass as it sparkles off the damp dew.

When I have nothing else planned, I come here to The Field. Sometimes it's a jumping off point to elsewhere, but most often, and for this night, I just linger here and wait for the sun to rise. As it rises, light starts to fill the sky while the lighting of the grass remains unchanged. Gradually, the ambient light of dawn matches the lighting of the grass and it no longer seems surreal. And then I wake with the real sun filtering through the blinds of my window. Ahh.

A lecture hall

Seated at about the middle of the hall, I first notice all the seats before me are empty. I intuit there must be some students behind me, else this is a rather poorly attended lecture. Right? Maybe. I don't bother to turn to look. At the front, President Obama leads the class. He wears black pants and a white dress shirt with no tie. He talks and I hear words but I am not listening. I am just watching him, more interested in how he moves. How he maneuvers. Starting from the center, he glides to the left a few paces with his long, casual stride. This first move is inconspicuous. One expects the teacher to wander a bit, to engage the whole room and to reach either end of the chalkboard. But then he takes another step to the left. More talk. And then another move to the left.

Now, I take notice that this is odd. He keeps going left. And now he is also gesturing left with the chalk in his hand, emphasizing and exaggerating his movement. He has gone too far. He's at the edge of the blackboard. Or is it a whiteboard? For a moment I unfocus the professor and squint at the board. It's a blackboard, but it's one of those green ones. But enough about the board, I look back at Obama. He is still going left. Another step and he will be out the door that flanks the room. He can't go any further, yet still he is leaning, ready to move once more. Time stops. This can't be real. Him, down there in front, frozen midstep, his leg halfway through the doorway. Me, alone in the center, agaze in disbelief.

At last, my observations become a conscious thought: Why is he going left? My confusion progresses to speculation and eventually to amusement. I can only guess that he is compelled to go left. Or he is being dragged left by an invisible hand. Or the whole world is tipping left and he is merely obeying gravity, but I am oblivious to the imbalance. I cannot know. I can only stare with delighted puzzlement.

Now, another thought enters my mind: That's my left, but his right. He must think he's going right, but not so from my point of view or anyone else's in the room. Is there anyone else in the room? Now I want to turn to look but the world has already frozen and I am too late to move. I can only linger on that paradox that his right is my left, and so my right must be his left, but which left is The Left? It's all because of the different points of view. He and I are victims of geometry. It all seems relative to me, conveniently. But maybe there is an absolute. Sigh, I'm ruminating. My final take is that it's like he is on stage, so his orientation is backwards. Or ours is. Which one is "stage" left? From the perspective of the actors or the audience? I struggle to recall which. It seems as if knowing that bit of trivia in this moment would bring some closure or payoff to this scene. But alas, I cannot remember. Oh well. The urge to laugh is too strong to resist and I can't hold the moment still any longer.

---

This was not meant to be a political satire. What amused me so much, both in the dream and afterward, was that it could be mistaken for one.

It has been years since my last online entry. I am trying to recall if there was a particular reason why I stopped, but I don't think I can. Judging by the date, it was around the time I moved house, after which I fell into a different daily routine and the habit of transcribing my dream journal to the online version was lost along the way.

Now, I intend to resume creating new entries. They will be less rigorous than before. Or, of a different rigor. Instead of a tool for lucidity, my purpose will be a writing exercise and pastime. For posterity, I here retain the old formatting key:

non-dream / dream / lucid
pre-lucid, dreamsign, false awakening / visualization, daydream, hallucination

I had another irregular night's sleep. I waited until I was very tired and then fell asleep right away. I woke up after about 4 hours. I was dreaming but the recall immediately faded. Then I couldn't get back to sleep. So I was up for what turned out to be hours watching TV. I laid back down and I think I got some sleep. I feel OK this morning. Not great.

Randomness
0413: Halo expansion pack for my character. Got it from Hugh or Lance. I show Ben too. Why lie? Good job market now. If lost job during recession, you will be okay now.

Pirates Game
1040: Playing Pirates of the Caribbean game. But also some elements of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. On a tropical island, fighting skeletons, trapping birds, digging for treasure.

Work
1606: I'm building a new tool at work but it's confusing. No one knows how to use it. I scramble to explain why it's working strange.

Here's how to NOT have a lucid dream:

- drink 2 cups of coffee and 3 energy drinks during the day
- work until midnight
- come home, lay in bed wide awake for 3 hours

Unpleasant night on account of the drink. I vaguely sense that I had some disturbing dreams, but just a feeling and no detail.

Cats
Method DILD (absurdity)
I'm indoors, in a room, talking to someone. Maybe my sister? Oreo, my old cat from years ago is here. She bites me arm and stretches my skin with her grip. My skin stretches unrealistically. This is weird. I must be dreaming. I RC to confirm. Ok, I'm lucid. Remember plan: Summon B. I walk out of the room to a hallways. From the hallway, I see windows to other rooms. I try to imagine B in one of those rooms. But I fail to summon her. I wake up.

Weird Weapon
1228: I think I am with H's younger brothers. They show me an interesting weapon. It's a gun. You load it with a coin, such as a dime. It fires the dime and the bullet bounces against a soda machine. It bounces back and melts. It comes back to the barrel of the gun and turns into a bullet. You turn a crank to fire the gun. Larger coins, like a quarter, make larger bullets. I show this to Justin, who is a bit of a gun nut. He turns the crank really hard and the gun fires so hard that it breaks the soda machine and breaks the cycle.

Then there is some religious ceremony that is disturbed now that the gun is temporarily broken. People are upset because they has expectations for the religious ceremony.

Then I am with friends at a football stadium. The game just ended and we are leaving. They want to stop at the arcade to play a fighting game. I would only want to play Hearts, but they don't want too.

fragment
Roommate's mail has a case of beer. It's in his school locker. I move it to the mail slot. Then at a gas station. To activate the pump, you have gesture with a smile and thumbs up.

Had an energy drink and coffee late in the day which made it difficult to sleep.

Wedding, Belt
1130: C. At a wedding. Forgot my belt. Go to a closet to get one. It's too small. It looks like an Ace bandage. I put it on anyway. Lucas is in the room. He's upset about something and he's singing an angry song that sounds like Eminem. I consider asking if he is okay. But instead I just ignore him. Then I go back to the wedding party. An old couple asks me if I have a girlfriend. The man has a small statue in his hand.

1337: F. Two sentences on illegible notes.

0820: Amusement part. Christmas for Hugh's younger brothers. Video game theme. I am announcer of the ride as they go down.

1115: Tom Cruise ... in ... Suggest it is a ...

1400: In math class. Learning about Heydinger Bollinger fields. French teacher watches. I feel like I am not following.

Didn't sleep much and had to rush off to work after getting up.

fragment
I buy a building and fill it with arcade games and stuff to make it a rec room for me and friends. Friends are playing video games on a big screen TV. There's a fridge full of beer and I install a mounted bottle opener in the fridge. Then I buy a different building? Then Ben is showing me this long document he made. He's arranging a deal with his former high school.

Woke up to recalled a few dreams but didn't feel like writing them down. They are lost now.

Like yesterday, several short dreams mostly late in the morning. I woke up more times and recalls some other tiny dreams and hallucinations but didn't write them down.

Fire Breath
0328: D. In a movie/video game. Stars David Duchovny and Jennifer Aniston. Though sometimes I sense the female character is my mother. Fighting hordes of evil demons. I choose one weapon and it's fire breath. It's super effective. Something about smelling like Patchouli oli.

Frisky Girl
0449: C. I'm in a hotel room but it's really big. There are four queen-sized beds lined up. It's dark. I'm on one of the center beds with a laptop, playing some classic game. A couple stumbles in and gets on the other middle bed next to me. The girl is Asian, the guy is middle-eastern or Indian. They start having sex. I feel a bit awkward. I watch for a bit, then turn away. I turn off the screen of the laptop and try to sleep. They finish and then the girl jumps on my bed. She's really friendly and frisky. She straddles me. Again, I feel weird but start to go along with it. The other guy doesn't seem upset. The girl and guy push our two beds together. But the guy lays in his bed while the girl lays with me in my bed. I'm showing her something on the laptop. Then I want to turn it off but I have trouble pressing the right button.

WBTB 60 minutes, B-Complex vitamin

Chasing Game
0753: D. Watching Ben play a game. He runs around a sports track chasing a monster. He is a deer. It's overcast and the ground is covered with snow. He quickly taps one button to speed up but he keeps accidentally pressing the Start button which pauses the game and breaks his rhythm.

Stationary Tactics
0835: D. I'm in the game Counter-Strike. The old one. The map is Office. I'm CT. I think I'm just playing with bots. I don't move. I just stand in the spawn and wait for the bots to find me. When they do, I headshot them with my pistol.

fragment
1102: F. Some cultural debate about Europeans?

Poor sleep this night. Woke up with that temporary amnesia. I struggled for several moments to remember who I was, where I was, and how old I was. It kinda feel like my whole life was a dream and I need a few moments to start recalling it.