Recent DJ Posts

Aug 23 2018

Woke up at 3:30 am, remember bits of a long NL. I was a female (possibly jewish?) in some sort of relationship/society/sisterhood. My best friend or leader was dismissing me from the group sternly but also still loves me and was sad to see me go. I remember the words "Is it possible to always be a mama bear?" with no context (hey -- they made sense then). I also remember a DC from earlier in the dream that looked like an old (current) Seinfeld with white hair. I think I was returning to my family.

Was moderately relaxed but again had some trouble getting back to sleep*. Got up and went to the bathroom, then came back. Figured since I still couldn't get to sleep I would try to relax and WILD. No success after some time (although I had some pretty great hypnagogic imagery), so I SSILD'd and laid on my side**.

I eventually got to sleep about 45 minutes or an hour after waking. I didn't notice it, but my neck was strained because of the pillow's position. I then had a series of FA's where I would wake up in my bed and talk/move around, but my fiance would angrily tell me to go to sleep each time because she had work in the morning. Between the second and third FA, I woke up briefly and realized was happening. I resolved that if it happened again, I would take advantage of it.

Success! The next time I FA'd, I saw apple peelings on the bed, and went downstairs to get some apple juice from the fridge, and I thought about tryptophan and realized I was dreaming! I didn't immediately look at my hands and clarify the situation, but I was able to stumble through the dark dream living room (my movement felt somewhat staggering). There was a terrifying old (demon?) woman's face on the couch, so partly out of fear I decided to leave this dream. I pressed my dream head down into the "pillow" to change dream scenes and vaguely thought of a giant tree as a new destination.

I think that when I used this technique (pressing head back into pillow), I somehow became more conscious of my WL body and realized I was lying on my side with my neck strained and my left eye being pressed in by the pillow. As the new dream scene materialized, It came to me in portrait format instead of landscape, if you can imagine that -- and it was letterboxed (black bars on the left and right). This effect worked so well because I could only see out of my right "dream eye", so I didn't have the advantage of binocular vision to "3D it away". Because of my awareness of my neck strain, I also couldn't move my head at all, and the only thing I could control was zooming my vision in and out.

The dream scene wasn't a giant tree, but rather another, smaller version of the previous living room, only bright this time (with daylight coming in through the window and the indoor lights on). There was no one in the room. I understood that it went back some ways behind me and was dark that way. The couch was similar to my childhood couch (old and scratchy, had diagonal woven textiles, like thick yarn) but was grey instead of tan. There were some objects strewn about the couch. As I zoomed in closer, objects would "pop" out of existence, sort of the opposite effect of the Object Fade setting in video games; when I zoomed out, they would return. There was a largeish button, a cylindrical something, a box, and some other miscellaneous vague items.

I should have tried to change dream scenes again, but I think that would have been difficult considering I probably would have had to press left instead of back to fall into the pillow, and who knows if that would have worked. The dream faded very slowly and I probably could have held onto it longer.

Later I had another FA but failed to convert it. When I awoke I was feeling more relaxed and thought I'd casually try to WILD for a bit again. It was nice because I could feel the waves of vibration flow over me. I was doing LaBerge's "1. I'm dreaming. 2. I'm dreaming. 3. ..." method, trying to be a passive observer and let the dream take me in. Had some very vivid HI again and let it play out before me. I think I got partway there, because I remember my HI started integrating into moving imagery, then mini dream scenes, then almost a full dream scene. At the height of it, I was a point in space rotating around a stadium that looked like a giant thimble. I think I was fully aware, enough to at least call it a semi-lucid, but I don't think it was a dream as much as imagery; it didn't feel dreamlike, and I didn't feel as if I was really "in it" as much as I was just "seeing it".

Later in the night I had some more FAs and in some of them I was semi-lucid but not fully there. Once I was trying to WILD again, but got interrupted by a sudden and powerful fear of an intruder.

Overall, a pretty good night! I'm intereseted to know if anyone else has had this kind of "locked view" experience in their dreams, lucid or otherwise.



*I'm not sure why this is happening lately (waking up earlier and can't get back to sleep); I always considered myself a heavy sleeper and never have trouble getting to bed. Also, I haven't been setting alarms or autosuggestions to do WBTB, I think just possibly raised nighttime awareness after meditation is causing small disturbances to wake me. Any advice appreciated.

**I tend to lie on my back most of the time, which helps with vivid dreams and recall, but seems to be causing problems with getting to sleep and staying asleep if I'm not already tired from the day. It also makes me hyperaware of early morning hunger.

***Also just wanted to note that I've been abstaining from my nighttime tea (it makes me drowsy on weekday mornings) and any supplements (I sometimes use melatonin and/or valerian), but have been drinking half a glass of apple juice each night 30ish minutes before bed. Luckily I

Dream - Lucid

I was at the house I grew up in. My family was there with me, my mom, dad, and brother. It was, once again, the zombie apocalypse. I remember being in my old bedroom with a family member, and them opening the door to check if the coast was clear. They freaked out as they saw a bunch of zombies coming towards the door. If I am not mistaken, through the doorway, I saw that same ponytailed zombie from my last apocalypse dream first before the horde. I went to the door in a panic to shut the zombies out.

Then, we were all packing up to leave, to go somewhere safer. Similar to Fear the Walking Dead, we had a huge boat in the garage we were going to escape on. I was packing my things quickly, trying to only take what I needed, but I was throwing lots of extra things in there; I felt bad leaving anything behind, though I knew I couldn't take everything. I remember putting a lot of clothing in the suitcase.

I then overheard some guys that were doing some landscaping work on our house discussing our boat. I was afraid they were planning to steal it, so I started to frantically hurry my family along in packing up. They didn't seem to get my sense of urgency, but I kept urging anyway. My brother had no clean clothes to pack, so we got his dirty clothes hamper and we started to pack dirty clothes in his room. It didn't matter that they were dirty; we needed to get out of there ASAP.

I wanted to take at least one of our cats. The cats that were there were Pounce (deceased IWL), Ziggy (also deceased IWL), and my current IWL cat, Belle. I wanted it to be Pounce that we took. I saw her sitting under the kitchen table. I pictured myself putting her in my current cat's cage to take her along. For some reason though, we weren't going to take the cats with us.

We then were putting the packed suitcases into the back of the boat, which was now a huge van-like vehicle. In the garage, the landscapers drove by on this huge white cherry-picker-type machine. They said something to us, hi maybe, not sure. But it made me feel more urgent in packing. I stuck my suitcase in the back. All the suitcases fit nicely. I remember someone putting some 12-packs of Coke in the back as well.

I then was getting in the van to sit down. Inside, I saw Jarrod and another person getting things ready to go.

~

I was at the house I grew up in. I was in my room, which was dark save for the closet light. I was lying on the opposite side of the bed from what I normally used to sleep on, and I was giving birth. I was alone. The baby was born, and I cut the cord myself. It was a girl. I then gave birth to many more babies, two who were still-born. The still-born babies didn't seem to bother me, I just knew I had to keep birthing babies. I labored and cut all the cords myself, setting the newborns wrapped up in white blankets on a bedside table. They were all so quiet and sleepy. I had I believe 6 in total, but I kept thinking there were only 5 there. Most were girls and only 2 were boys. The two girls born first I named Alana and Alyssa. I named one of the boys Michael, but I don't think I named the rest.

I then started breastfeeding each baby. I would take them in either the cradle hold or football hold and bring them to my right breast first (the one my daughter IWL preferred). I would them pull my lips over my teeth to simulate some sort of latch? I don't know why I did this, but it made sense in the dream that I had to do it so the baby would latch. The babies succeeded and didn't succeed. There were some attempts that were great, and the baby got some colostrum, and others the babies had trouble latching, but there was never any crying or screaming from them. I remember for one baby, I had to brush my nipple to their cheek so they would root that way to get to the milk. They were all so mild-mannered and sleepy. When I finished the feeds, I would put the babies back onto the bedside table.

I was then explaining to someone in the house that 2 babies were still-born. Again, it didn't seem to bother me, as if it was just a natural thing that happened (which it is, I guess).

I then remember something about a huge dental needle. My mom I think was going to give it to me in my cervix so I'd have more babies. I was done for the day though. I had so many babies to care for already.

I never felt tired or overwhelmed from all the babies either, just a sense of duty and a neutrality that kept me going.

~

This dream was sort of a pick up from the last dream. All the babies were there. I was with my family and some others I believe. Alana was still just a newborn, but she looked like a toddler. She said she wanted to eat some apples and apple juice. She didn't want anything else. I wasn't sure she was old enough for that, but she insisted. I figured I'd get her a bag of pre-sliced apples. Alana looked like she was related to this girl I know IWL, Alicia; she looked like one of her IWL daughters. I believe Alicia was also there.

I then was at the store with my husband, one of my best friends IWL Cherie', and a girl named Meghan that I don't hardly talk to IWL. The store resembled a "super" Kroger that I don't frequent IWL because I don't know where everything is there, as it is so big. I was not shopping with them I don't think, but waiting for them to finish. When they came back to me, I was standing in this lobby-type area on the second floor of the building. Apparently, the grocery store was not the only thing this building had. It was kind of like a huge shopping center with different stores and activities on different levels. They came to me and they hadn't gotten apples or apple juice. They had gotten cheese though, which I thought Alana wanted. I forgot if she wanted cheese, apples, or apple sauce, but I KNEW she wanted apple juice. I got pissed that my husband had picked out all the wrong things. I headed down to go shopping. I had to go down this weird, metal, roller slide thing. If you ever went to Discovery Zone as a child, picture the rolly slide they had there, only silver metal instead of multicolored plastic. There were areas on it that were bigger, darker rollers and you had to do something to put more of your weight down on those, and they would lower you to where you needed to go. I remember sitting on it backwards and not being sure how to trigger the big rollers to let you down. I did it though.

We were then shopping again, and this time, we STILL didn't get apple juice. We walked down the aisles looking and my husband picked out these canned mandarin oranges in a sugary juice. We checked out and I was, once again, so pissed that we still didn't get apple juice. We were on the second floor lobby again, and I asked my husband if he was stupid and went back down to the store with Meghan and Cherie to actually finally get apple juice. We wandered around the store, and I went to the aisles that I thought for sure the apple juice would be on, but nothing. We finally asked an employee, and she pointed down an aisle and told us it was there, and at the end of the aisle. Well, we went down the aisle and it was just these big containers of I think cereal, no juice of any kind. I was getting frustrated and worried about Alana, as she was back home and needed to eat. I came to the end of the aisle, and we were at the back of the store where they keep a lot of cold items in coolers and freezers. I didn't want frozen apple juice, but I didn't know that we had another choice. I opened a cooler and there was unfrozen, refrigerated apple juice in a HUGE container. The container had written on it on the left-hand side: "0% orange juice, 100% apple juice, 0% (some other fruit) juice". I thought about how much juice Alana really needed, and pictured her actual size. She was as tiny as a fairy and was floating around, but still looking and acting like a toddler. She definitely didn't need a lot of juice, but this was the only container I could find, so I put it in the cart and we started heading back to the check out. We ran into a girl I knew when I was going to school named Kris. She and Meghan exchanged a greeting, as they had been best friends apparently at some point. They called each other their apparent old high school nicknames, one had something to do with the name Jasmine. We passed them and went on to this weird, almost blacklight looking area in the store.

We then were at checkout. We were going to this line where you had to get this weird machine with a long cord so people would check you out. There was a big, younger black man there with the machine wrapped around him, which he had apparently broken. The cashiers or someone was getting onto him a little for it.

~

Now THIS is the recall I'm talking about! Hell yeah. I woke from my first dream and immeditely took notes in my phone. The second two I didn't take notes for. Getting that recall back up to par! Yay! Also, the hormones during pregnancy really drive up the vividness factor in my dreams so that is a HUGE plus to being pregnant, you know, besides the obvious growing a new life thing.

Recall: 2/10 upon waking, 5/10 after finding the thread. It was hard to remember anything at all when I first woke up, but I persisted until a few details came back, and that let me pin down a few detailed scenes at least. The overall plot remained vague. There were a lot of additional fragments from earlier sequences or prior dreams that I've left out.

I'm hanging out a woman who is at least a generation younger and we're getting dressed to go out. I have a vest in grey and black hues that swirl into one another in a cloud-like pattern, resembling the soft color variations of tie-dye, but subtle and not at all gaudy because of the dark colors. I'm wearing it over a thin long-sleeved, collarless knit shirt. I don't remember the color, maybe sort of mustard or yellow ochre. Then I try on a few pairs of pants to figure out which will match best. I decide on the dark grey corduroys but now I can't find them... where did I put them? I was just trying them on! I go through all the drawers of the dresser and they aren't here. Now I'm stuck wearing dark blue denim pants that don't match at all. I go into the next room and am relieved to find the cords on the bed... not sure how they got there since I didn't remember coming into this room, but I assume I was just spacing out and don't think to RC.

Some unclear sequences. The young woman and I go into town, and meet up with a third woman, who involves us in some kind of conspiracy. There is a fourth woman visiting town that she wants to engage in conversation under the pretext of just being friendly, but she has some more complex, sinister plan (that I don't remember in the slightest). We follow the visitor and after she ducks into a cafe, we follow suit. It has gotten cold and rainy out, so we pretend we've just stopped in for a hot drink. We hadn't intended to engage the visitor yet; the conspirator wants to do so but the young woman and I are afraid it will come across as too abrupt and awkward, so we are frantically trying to communicate across the table with our eyes and subtle shakes of the head that she should not go approach her. (The interior is small and no one else is here, so we can't speak aloud about our plans.)

The waitress comes over to see what we want to order. I see a drink named "Raksiteli" on the menu that I'm sure I remember having here before: I recall it is served hot in a tiny glass, tastes like honey mead but is strongly alcoholic. (I think the dream was merging "rkatsiteli," the name of a grape used for Eastern European amber wines, with "raki," a strong spirit that I did once try in a delicious honey-flavored version.) However, each glass was priced at $22, which seemed way too high! I remembered having four or five in a row last time... did I really pay that much? I thought maybe this time I should just get some coffee. I spent so long browsing the menu indecisively that I started to think I must be annoying everyone, so I told the waitress to get the orders of the other people at the table while I made up my mind.

Meanwhile, the cafe was filling up quickly with other people. The whole time I was inspecting the menu, I was also glancing up occasionally at the woman, the one we were targetting, sitting across the room at the bar. I thought it might help if I caught her eye a couple times, making it seem accidental, so that it wouldn't seem so random if we did decide to approach her. I was startled when she began walking over to us, but it turned out she was joining some people who had recently sat down at the table to our right. This worked out well, because overhearing their discussion (the tables were very close together) we made some comments and soon joined their conversation.

They were talking about apples for some reason—probably also deciding what to order—and I commented that I really don't like apples, especially cold from the refrigerator. "You should warm them up, then," said the woman sitting on the bench just to my right. I admitted sheepishly that the one way I do like apples was to hollow out the cores and fill them with butter and brown sugar, then bake them in the oven until wrinkled and brown on top. After I confessed my sweet tooth, the visiting woman, our target, now sitting across from me but at the next table, took a plate of whipped cream from their table and offered it to me. I couldn't tell if she was just being kind or if she suspected our plot and was getting ahead of it... might the cream be drugged? Was it intended to knock me out? But I thought it would look suspicious if I didn't accept some. I exchanged some silent glances with the people at my own table while we tried to assess her motives and decide what I should do. Without saying a word, we decided that I would try some of the cream, but that my companions would not, just in case the friendly gesture was something other than it seemed.

I used an online program to try to create the floorplan of the cafe. I didn't get the proportions quite right, so there should be four seats at the bar in the upper left corner, and two seats across from the wall benches at each of the small tables (allowing them to seat four people each), but this gives a general sense of the layout. I was sitting with the two other woman at the table on the bottom left side of the room, the younger woman to my left and the conspiratorial woman sitting in the chair across from us. The visiting woman was sitting at the bar at first, then moved to one of the chairs facing the table just to the right of ours, where two or three other people were initially sitting.

28.01.2015

1-28-15 Fragments - Strange diet (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

Dream Fragment (0.5 pts)

Something involving a diet with both green and red apples that my wife wanted to start.

I really need to better adhere to my 10:00 bedtime if I ever want to become lucid.

I was partially lucid observing this dream where there were ten or twelve robotic spiders. They were all identical and they were all made out of rusty die-cut metal beams (I think that's what they are called; the kind of beams with the holes drilled into them at regular intervals to reduce weight.) They all have glowing red/green eyes. (Half with red and half with green.) and a large platform on top of their bodies with a spring beneath it.
And on the platform was an apple. There were six green and six red apples in play. The spiders would bounce them into the air with the spring loaded platforms, sometimes to themselves or sometimes to their neighbors. Of course the spiders were moving as well, and they were preforming these increasingly intricate 'dances' with themselves and the apples.
The setting kept on changing as well. At first, it was a badlands type area, then it became more abstract with a black ground plane and a white sky. The spiders began to look more like a cartoon and less like real life. Toward the end, the spiders were just two tones of grey and the apples and spider eyes were one shade of red/green with a black outline.
...
This somehow led into a dream where I saw a bunch of grey three dimensional shapes in a line. I recall a pyramid, cube, cylinder, sphere and cone.

I think there were some dry dreams about college in there somewhere, but I don't recall them.

I'm standing by a light switch in pitch black darkness, and the lights won't turn on. I question whether this is a dream, doubt it at first, but then realize yes, it is. I have a sort of false awakening in which I still realize I'm dreaming, but now I become aware that I'm lying on my back in a bed in the guest room of my father's house (no resemblance to anywhere he's lived IRL), with his cat curled up against my legs - nothing's changed visually, it's still pitch black. I look up at where the ceiling would be and think about stars, and about a previous lucid dream where I removed the roof and floated up into the sky, and debate whether to do that again. I feel like there's something else I want to do here first. I can hear my father and his girlfriend watching TV in the next room and talking to each other. As I listen to them I forget that this is a dream.

Memory gap - some time later I'm standing in a different room, again trying and failing to get the light switch to work. I hear the sound of my stepbrother coming home and going straight to his own room. This light switch has several different switches and dials that I can't see in the dark, and this time I wind up taking out my ipod and holding it up as a flashlight. I can see the switches and dials now, but I still can't get them to work, and then I remember that this is a dream.

(Woke up at 5:30, half an hour after getting to bed. Back to sleep.)

I'm going to visit someone I owe thanks, bringing a guitar to play for them. One of the strings snaps.

At my father's house, some guy is trying to talk to my sister S., he's angry and seems obsessed, and while they're arguing he picks up a knife - not to threaten with, but it's the last straw, me and my father kick him out.

At my mother's house, one of her former students is at the door with some friends, and he's talking to her about some technique that's recently become a fad. Everyone's very impressed by his expertise, and it's driving me nuts because this technique is just a cheap knockoff version of something I've been doing for years that no one's ever taken seriously, and this popular version is much less effective. We get into a really idiotic argument which leaves me feeling frustrated even after I woke up.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

I'm lying in bed in the wrong house, and some boy shakes me awake to tell me I have to go. I apologize and try to explain that I'm not there to do anything bad, I just got the wrong place, but I can't remember the word for 'place' in Japanese and have to fumble around trying to find a different way to say it. He gets the point but doesn't really care, he didn't seem particularly threatened by a stranger in his house to begin with, he just wants me gone before his mother wakes up. I walk out a back door that, aside from a little ledge, opens directly onto the river. The kid tries to correct me, pull me back inside so I can use the front door and actually leave, but I just step out onto the river and stand on top of the water, which is a normal thing for a witch like me to do. The kid's surprised, the water and the light are really vivid, it's all very pleasant. As I'm appreciating the vividness, I become aware that I'm thinking of this as a dream.

I walk a few steps into the sky and start floating, heading somewhere specific. As I float above the river, I pass various people, and I start to hear a song, people are singing it. I pass two brothers sitting in chairs having some fashionable procedure done, a row of string sewn above their lip, to me it looks like they're having their mouths sewn closed. It strikes me as odd, but I remind myself that this isn't my time period so I don't have the full context, not for me to judge.

I reach a roller coaster, and there's a man and a woman riding it, the people I've been looking for. They're also singing that song that's been going on, and the lyrics tell me a little about their history. She has (or possibly had, up until very recently) a life-threatening heart condition. Their song is about the possibility of fixing a heart only to get hit by a bus or something similar, and the way people think they have time. The guy, singing in English with an Irish accent, sings a verse about how if (some name, some guy he knows) died he'd be singing a toast to him.

Song's over. Now that we've all met up in a dream, as planned, the guy asks whether we should wake up now. I'm inclined to agree, mission complete, but I think it's a little ridiculous to waste a lucid dream, there ought to be some fun we could have before we go. The guy leaves anyway, the girl stays. She says to me, "I have questions." I say to her, "I... probably don't have answers." She starts to say something else, but I become aware that I'm consciously thinking up her next dialogue for her, and that I'm waking up.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Forever Knight-based setting, I'm Nicholas, and I'm being posed a question: between Janette, LaCroix, and an apple which represents my hope for humanity, I can only save one. What's my first instinct? I dismiss the apple completely but can't decide between the other two, which is annoying since the entire point of this exercise was only to see which came to mind first, without overthinking it.

Scene changes to an Umineko setting - Beatrice, who'd posed the question, is annoyed with the way I've spoiled it, and she retreats into the other room with aunt Eva. She says something to Eva that I can hear through the door, something about how the only hope is the "good key (name of key)."

No lucids. Some fragments.

[COLOR="#483d8b"]- I was in my old hometown, with 2 of my (old) classmates. We had this assignment, to film the spring. All 3 of us were given a video camera and then we were discussing, who films what and where. Neither of us had eachothers' numbers, I fiddled around for quite a while with my ipod to get their numbers written down (O__o). We went our separate ways, filming stuff. Even though it was spring, there were pretty big apples on the trees :o.

- I am in a room with small trampolines stuck in the ceiling.

- Waidh. He was somewhere at some point.[/COLOR]

Not much today, I was being lazy in the morning again .__.

[COLOR="#2e8b57"]lucids[/COLOR], [COLOR="#483d8b"]non-lucids[/COLOR]