Summerlander

31/05/2021

2am—6am

At a party, my father asks Donald Trump if he can have his drink which rests on a table. Trump gets annoyed and moves away from him with contempt. My father, with the same grouchy mannerism and frowning, takes the drink anyway while Trump is distracted with other people. After the party, during the clean-up, I'm required to get sugar. There is a bag by the feet of a tall statue with a hole in it. When I lift it, all the sugar leaks out and falls through a gap on the floor landing on the lower floor of a dark basement.

I access the basement via stairs to find Mamph, an old acquaintance, working there and ask her if she can find me some sugar. She wears headphones and appears to be listening to music. Initially, she seems to know me but when it's time to leave she treats me like a complete stranger and asks me what else she can do for me like I'm just a customer. I question her mental competence to myself. As we leave the basement I think that it is a good thing that Mamph works there by herself.

Outside, it feels like we are in daytime central London and there is snow everywhere. We meet Stacey and Mamph immediately recognises her. I'm no longer a stranger as a giggling Mamph tells my wife that I'm sweet for asking her for sugar. I feel uneasy about her mental state but nevertheless we agree that she's driving us home. I get in her car and sit in the back. Outside, the sky quickly darkens. Stacey barely sits in the front seat when Mamphs drives off. The door swings open and my wife falls out, rolling numerous times over the tarmac stopping next to a kerb. I scream to get Mamph to stop the car and rush out to grab Stacey. She looks unconscious as I try to get her up. As I hold her up, she seems groggy and possibly concussed. I need to get help as I fear for my wife's wellbeing. I feel extremely sad and desperate at the thought of losing her.

I wake up from this emotionally charged dream. I am relieved and glad to see that my darling is okay and sleeping soundly next to me.

Date: 02/02/2021
Bedtime: 3.30am
Awakening: 6.50am
Return to bed: 7.10am
Awakening:
Recall: reversed

*Ozzy Osbourne is a lone hero seeking to exact revenge upon the forces of evil that, through witchcraft and black magic, have victimised people with rape, torture and murder. The demonic dark shadow is on the prowl and its crimes are literally sketchy—ranging from cartoon images to fully-fledged film-like scenes. A song that appears to be sung by David Bowie plays as Ozzy hunts the demon. I wake up a few minutes before 7am to use the loo.

*Three people around a table summon a dark demon as tall as a tree constantly whispering the unspeakable. This demon possesses through their feet if they are dirty and touch the floor, cursing them forever. I am one of the three, but I remove my feet from the floor at the last minute as I watch the other two get devoured by supernatural evil. I run away.

Date: 03/02/2021
Bedtime: 3.40am
Awakening: 8am
Return to bed: 8.05am
Awakening: 10.30am
Recall: sequential

*An armed terrorist is plotting to blow up a church run by unpleasant people. I know about this when I befriend him. Eventually, the dream plot turns into the set of a film where we are playing our roles. Drunk Barry is now the armed terrorist ad-libbing off-script which upsets the other actors. He is also shooting characters when he's not supposed to and for some reason the director cannot cut. He shoots me which means I have to pretend to be injured. Then he tries to do it again to kill but I grab the gun as he wields it and make him miss. He gives up on me and sets his attention on other victims playing their roles. Channing Tatum is the next target.

*In London which resembles a Dickensian era and streets have French names. I work for a company in an office job with geeky colleagues who resemble the comedians from the Triggernometry podcast. One of them is trying to impress a female co-worker by getting naked and walking past her workspace. We are all laughing at him because she is clearly not interested. We go to a pub and I see a man that looks like porn star Ron Jeremy, wearing an unbuttoned shirt revealing a hairy chest, ordering a beer.

Date: 04/02/2021
Bedtime: 1.15am
Awakening: 2.30am
Return to bed: 2.35am
Awakening: 5.30am
Return to bed:
Awakening:
Recall: sequential

*Hitmen are after me and try to kill me. I'm a great fighter and manage to murder them and disguise myself in order to evade authorities. I am tracked down to a public swimming pool with a massive slide which I end up using during a fight. Massive muscular men come after me and I continue to fight them. A colossal Mexican man who works as a chef is defeated and I make fun of him afterwards. Suddenly, Zanguief from Street Fighter—who happens to be the strongest man in the world—challenges me.

*I'm walking through a desert and I start filming a fast-moving UFO darting across the sky towards the horizon. Suddenly, I notice a peculiar saucer-shaped drone apparently observing me and subsequently bumps into my camera. Looming over the horizon, I notice a huge mothership. I feel like the world has been invaded by aliens and hordes of frightened people are running away from the spaceship. But I notice that they are running from military men on the ground who begin to capture some of them and enslave them—as though they are forming a dictatorship on the go. They come after me, too, and they get pretty close. They look like cartoons that escaped from an arcade game. The situation feels nightmarish and I wake up.

Dream state:

I go to bed around 2am and set Lucid Dreamer app's delay time for a sleep cue at 180 minutes.

A horrible quasimodo arrives a
at a party and starts murdering everyone. I notice a girl is scared and hide with her in a bathroom.

For a moment, I think a dangerous triceratops is coming and an image of one flashes in my head. I peek outside, it looks like an aquarium, there is music redolent of a Jurassic Park show, and the murderer is coming. Now we hide in a basement (no longer a bathroom).

The quasimodo has a flat, deformed head, as though missing part of his brain, but he is a large human with an indifferent facial expression. He enters the basement and I jump on his broad back to stab his deformed head with a sharp object.

I wake up with Lucid Dreamer app's auditory cue which surprisingly sounds exactly like the Jurassic Park tune from my dream. Now I know what it sounds like! The app's visual cue is flashing and lights up the room. It's 5.15am. I record the dream and use the loo before returning to bed at 5.45am.

Lucid Dreamer app's cue set to go off in 60 minutes and sound is lowered.

Waking state:

I return to bed just before 6am, having recorded a dream and used the loo. Lucid Dreamer app's cue set to go off in an hour. I lie down on my back and relax. Soon, dream impressions manifest but don't last. I cycle through brief visual and auditory hallucinations, a process that my wife interrupts as she tosses and turns in her sleep.

I lose consciousness and come too just before 7am with the app's auditory cue going off. I hear white noise in my head. I turn off the sound cue and adopt a sideways position. A pulsatile hiss emerges in my head and seems to get faster and louder.

Phase state:

I aggressively roll out of bed and stand, pulling the cover with me and disturbing my wife. The room is dark and I apologise to my wife who chuckles and tells me she gathered that I was trying to have an out-of-body experience. Suddenly, I'm back in bed realising I had actually achieved a false awakening. I fall asleep.

Dream state:

I'm in a car with a man that resembles Raj, a former local butcher. He is driving me around town and comes close to having a few accidents but the car transmutes regularly. Even though such shapeshifting is impossible in real life, I merely find it interesting and remark to the driver that it's quite 'cool'.

We finally crash into another vehicle and a family becomes argumentative. A teenage girl starts quizzing us about the car and road manoueuvres that led to the accident. I feel like she's trying to embarrass us, as I struggle to address her questions. I don't want to be here.

I'm sitting in a bed with two strangers resembling Iggy Pop and Glen Benton from death metal band Deicide. I am holding my smartphone and listening death metal music. All three of us enjoy the fast drumbeats, menacing guitar riffs and guttural vocals until 'Glen' leaves the room. There is a third party in the room, sitting with me and 'Iggy'.

This druggie-like character is in his underwear and appears to have a semi-erection. 'Are you gay?' Iggy asks. 'No. Honestly,' I hear the reply, 'It's going down.' He covers his crotch and presses down on his bulge. Me and Iggy stand up and stare at him.

I wake up around 10.40am.

These dreams were recorded using the Lucid Dreamer app for the first time. The 'phase state' simply means the hybrid brain state that combines wakefulness and dreaming at gamma frequencies---where, besides lucid dreams, false awakenings manifest. The phase state can be mistaken for the waking state until the person becomes lucid, i.e., recognises it isn't real.

How is everybody using their lucid dreaming practice during this pandemic? I have recently come up with a plan of action consisting of three steps:

1. Visit the world of Minecraft by plunging into the telly screen while my son plays the game.

2. Visit and explore Saturn's moon Titan and fly towards the Milky Way galaxy centre.

3. Summon Dean, a wise 'cave caretaker' I met in a previous lucid dream.

Here is the first lucid dream I had since writing down this plan:

Date: 17/12/2020
Method of entry: dream consciousness
Bedtime: 1am
Awakening: 6.45am
Return to bed: 7am
Awakening: 8.25am
Attempt: successful
Phase experience: Libby and Beano

REM sleep having returned to bed around 7am is characterised by vivid dreaming displaying cues about the illusory nature of my experience: moving house during a pandemic (never); smoking (I quit months ago); being excited about finding a couple of bags of cannabis on the floor (I'm done with its recreational use); organising a housewarming (out of my mind in a silly dream state).

I go to bed (mattress on the floor) with my wife in this strange new house. I hear footsteps and my youngest son opens the bedroom door to say he's not feeling well and needs a day off school. 'What's the matter?' I say while I get up to examine him. 'My back hurts', he replies. His back reveals a strange bruise and I send him back to bed. Beyond the room, I see my eldest son go to the kitchen to make himself breakfast. At the end of the hallway (abode now resembling the one in waking life), Kayci, his girlfriend, has the front door open and she's having a cigarette. I walk towards the entrance to look at the morning view outside, expecting to see the spacious, public lawn which is shared by many neighbours but typically deserted at dawn, only to discover my false awakening situation.

I'm shocked to find a vast park replete with people noisily congregating, and the colossal industrial buildings in the background clearly defying the logic of being remote from commercial areas and living by a river in waking life. 'Is this a lucid dream?' I ask Kayci. 'Yes.'

I push my right hand through the door jamb and watch my limb being engulfed up to my elbow by the wood with barely any resistance. I notice my former neighbour Libby in the bustling park, beckoning to me in her typically risqué manner whenever she had a reefer to share. As her mischievously grinning form wiggles her long index fingernail, I realise the risk of being lured into an ordinary dream state.

I run through the crowd in the opposite direction to beckoning Libby, desperately trying to remember the plan of action I had only just written down prior to bedtime. I frantically run and leap, annoyed that I can't remember one single step of the plan, and partially disturbed at the prospect of a premature collapse of the phase state. I could ask Libby for mnemonic clues, but she vanished, and a demented life-size Beano-like character is chasing me around this crazy playground. I find him very distracting and I feel like it would be impossible to reason with him.

I wake up, content and slightly annoyed, with white noise petering out in my head. I make notes to remind myself to rehearse the plan of action in imagination prior to the next attempt and that in lucid dreams, control is attainable. The Libby and Beano simulations would have bent to my will.

---Looking back now, I wonder if 'Beano' was actually a representation of the memory of the first step in my plan of action (visiting Minecraft). What I found distracting might have been, quite literally, the memory 'coming to me'. In hindsight, Beano looked like something out of Minecraft. I think I made a mistake by inadvertently avoiding what I really wanted.