Recent DJ Posts

A woman made a deal with one of my kind, a short man in a black suit who irritates me, and so he's placed his mark on her wrist, a symbol in the shape of a sword, representing "Iudex," the judge. This will allow him to possess her, though she was unaware of this. I'm furious. He's well within his rights, but I deeply dislike him and his people who bear that symbol; I'm going to destroy his mark. It's not difficult, any changes to the lines in her skin will do the job. I ask her to choose the method (a knife) and if she wants me to do it for her or if she'd rather do it herself (she asks me to do it), three horizontal cuts distort the symbol sufficiently, and then I set out a bandage for her.

Ritual: I had time to sleep in this morning so I was motivated to get lucid. Went to bed at midnight and woke at 6am to feed the cat. Didn't do a full WBTB, but took a few supplements (alpha-g, choline, l-theanine) plus a tiny amount (between 1-2mg) of very old galantamine. I lay down on my back to delay sleep onset and practiced progressive relaxation, a few SSILD cycles, and counting. Couldn't count very high (usually not past six, my focus is terrible these days) but clearly noticed onset of hypnogogic imagery and managed to put in a number of rotations before falling into dreamless sleep. When I awoke after a few minutes (guaranteed if I fall asleep on my back), I turned on my right side and let myself fall asleep normally, feeling adequately primed and hoping for the best. This "kitchen sink" approach has pretty much become my standard and despite being really haphazard has a decent success rate, often resulting in WILDs. This time I had an NLD or two that I don't remember well, then the following semi-lucid that turned into a DILD.

SLD: I am on a beach. All is not well: there are what look like tiny floating islands approaching from across the sea, and on each one stands a little stone tower and a menacing-looking figure in black armor with a horned helmet. The armored figures to be using the islands as transportation. Though not quite lucid, I remember that I have certain broad powers in this place, so I walk along the beach until I spot a couple empty islands, and try to summon one toward me. It turns into a little white sailboat and promptly sinks. I try to summon the second one, and the same thing happens. So much for island hopping. I turn right and continue to walk along the waterfront.

Something seems oddly familiar about this place—I've been here before, haven't I? I note the urban architecture up ahead, the sprawl of a city just past the beach and I'm distinctly reminded of a particular dream I had once, years ago now. It was here, I am sure of it, though this corresponds to no earthly place. I don't remember much about that earlier dream, except that it started in one of the apartment buildings a few blocks from the beach and then I went down to the parking lot, but saw the beach in the distance. [I think I actually found it, an entry from 12/29/13, but I misremembered the order of events: I was in the parking lot initially, then dropped by the beach before going up to the apartment.]

Various people are wandering around the beach, and a distinctive figure approaches. He is a thin old man with stringy, longish grey hair, carrying three lidded boxes in different colors, each about eighteen inches square. "What do they call this bay?" I ask him. "Sigismund?" he suggests, then modifies it. "Or Sigisroot?" He seems uncertain. I am about to ask the name of the city, but we are interrupted by the approach of a huge wave. We try to scramble up the beach but don't make it in time, and the wave crashes over us. I have to struggle against the pull of its wake, meanwhile trying to reach around to find the old man, to help him if possible. I grab someone's hand in the water, but it turns out to be a short, dark-haired woman. After helping her to shore, I come across the old man again on the beach. He has made it to safety, but lost two of his boxes. I feel partly responsible for the loss of his boxes, so I go back to the water to look for them. I locate the boxes but their contents have spilled. Apparently they contained cassette tapes, so I dredge as many as possible out of the water and wet sand, restoring them to one of the boxes. After I've grabbed as many as I can find, I return the boxes to the old man.

FA-DILD: The dream resets, perhaps a half-waking, and I am in my house again. I start reviewing what just happened, and write down the name of the bay, both variations—not sure I realized at the time I was writing in a dream notebook. As I think over the events of the dream, I realize I must have been semi-lucid at the point where I was trying to summon the islands and then recognized the setting from prior dream. I reason that if I was semi-lucid then, I must be actually lucid now. Dream logic is terrible, but this time it did the trick—thinking about lucidity made me recognize that I was still dreaming. Since I was back in my house, I decided to do the TOTM of walking through the wall. I had interpreted "my room" to mean the bedroom, so I head in there and immediately turn left to look at the wall. I'm pleased and surprised to find an ample stretch of wall between the door and bookcase (surprised because in WL there is no free wall space in the room at all, to the point where I thought I would have to do the task by going into the closet!) Instead, the dream has obligingly provided sufficient room for me to stand in front of the wall, so I press both hands flat against it and concentrate. The wall resists the pressure at first, so I increase it, then watch as my right hand starts to sink into the surface. The wall crumbles under my hand like weak plaster with an impressively realistic texture and sensation. As I continue to push, a whole section about two feet wide dislodges and falls inward under my right hand, and then I push my whole body forward and break through the rest.

I find myself in a cramped, closet like space, empty yet messy somehow, like it was poorly constructed—for instance, there are exposed 2x4s at odd diagonals. There is no visible way out, and I remember back to a time I was exploring the use of mirrors as portals and got stuck in a labyrinth of empty rooms that became ever smaller and more claustrophobic. [The dream I was thinking of occurred on 4/17/14, and the earliest experience of this kind I recorded on 12/18/10]. Simply recognizing the dream's tricks gives me the confidence not to be waylaid by them again, so I turn left and push through that wall too. Unsurprisingly, I am in an even smaller, darker, and more cramped space. I remind myself to remain optimistic and keep pushing forward with the expectation of getting out. I push through a couple more dark, tiny, empty spaces and then find myself in one that is different. It feels like an actual closet, with coats. What catches my eye is the style of those coats: they remind me of the cheap winter coats we wore in the 1970s, made of smooth synthetic cloth in drab colors and augmented with wide fake-fleece collars. I push through the coats and finally tumble free into an outdoor space.

It's one of those transitions that are so striking in dream. I had been struggling in narrow claustrophobic space with poor visibility, and suddenly everything has changed: I'm in open space, the air is clear and fresh, the light is bright, colors are vivid, my vision is sharp, and I feel a surge of ebullience. I remind myself that it is worth it, all the trouble I go to over dreaming, even if dream isn't always cooperative, because of experiences like this. I even notice that little flutter in my solar plexus that I associate with deep dream.

I move forward, on my hands and knees at first. I am at the base of a steep hill, and there are a number of animals sitting on the hillside, placidly watching me, including several ape-like creatures. As I crawl through the grass, I note the distinct texture of it: it might not be grass at all, actually, but some kind of ground cover with stiff, spiny stalks that flatten rather than bend under my hands. When I get to my feet, I see that a number of these stalks have actually adhered to my palms. They look like black tubes about three inches long and only a couple millimeters across, hollow, with a longer thin hair sticking another inch out the end. I try to pluck one out and it won't come off. I have the impression that even if I manage to pull off the outer tube, the hair will be left behind. It occurs to me to wonder if this explains the ape-like creatures, which seem unusually intelligent and anthropomorphic: did other people come here before me, and end up with so many of these hairs attached to their skin that they became furry?

I consider flying, but decide not to: I'm really interested in this place, and flying would destabilize me from this particular scenario, if not the dream itself. So I continue walking forward on foot, reminding myself both literally and figuratively to stay grounded. As I reach the end of the flat terrain at the bottom of the steep hill, I look up at the animals arrayed on the upper terraces, who are still quietly watching me. What should I ask them? I never seem to get anywhere asking the names of things, so I decide to be clever, and call up to them: "What would be a really interesting question for a newcomer to ask?" No answer. I repeat myself, but still no reply, so I start climbing up toward them.

When I reach the upper terrace, things get complex. I can't remember what passes between me and one of the creatures, who is more man-like now, before he pulls a knife on me—though it is unclear if he he is using the knife to threaten me or the grizzled, older-looking apeman creature who is sitting to his left. I wrest the knife from his grasp, which knocks him off balance. He nearly falls off the cliff (which suddenly seems a lot steeper now, almost vertical, than when I climbed up it a moment before) and grabs on to my waist to save himself. I check my moral compass and find that I feel no compulsion to save him—something about his attitude puts me off—so I peel his arms away and he falls to the base of the cliff, presumably to his death. The elder creature has retrieved the knife, which is now lying at his feet, and I go over to look at it.

When I pick up the knife, I find it to be a wide, cleaver-like implement made of thin cardboard with silver foil stuck to it. There is writing on the cardboard side, and I read through a whole confession, apparently by the creature I just sent to his death. The text describes an elaborate scheme that involved getting me pregnant and then killing me after the child was born, because it concludes, "I won't regret killing you when I see your features in the face of our infant." I find this repulsive and it resolves my lingering doubts about whether letting him fall was the right thing to do. I ask the elder creature if I can keep the knife, and he doesn't speak, but I take his silence as assent. I notice that there is a second knife on the ground, made of roughly-forged steel or iron and elegantly curved like a viking blade (the handle a loop of the same metal), that resembles like the one I wrested away initially, so I swap out the mock-up I'm holding for the real blade, and walk forward on the hilltop.

I encounter another man, this one entirely human in appearance except for a strange feature: his face is completely wrapped in grimy white bandages, leaving only a bit of forehead and his hair explosed. The bandages are thicker over his left eye, but seem to adhere closely to his right—I can see the shape of the eye bulging under them—so I conclude that must be the one he somehow sees out of. Despite his odd appearance I feel an immediate affinity for him, in contrast to the last guy. He leads me into a building, where a girl approaches us and asks me, "Who made that knife?" I look at the blade in my hand. It doesn't bear a long text like the mock-up, but there is a row of runes along the top edge that I can't read. "He's dead now," I reply laconically.

In the entryway of the building, we immediately go through a door to the right, into what looks like a machine shop. The machines are in the center of the room, and two people are operating them, but I can't tell what they're making. The machines have some kind of spinning disk that either cuts or polishes. The bandaged guy is telling me about a hardware store somewhere. "That's where the first ship came from." I have the impression he is talking about a spaceship, and gather that there is a whole complicated plot behind all of this, but I don't know the details. By the time we finish walking through the room, I am waking up.

Night of March 28, 2014. Friday.



This dream (or connected series) had a lot of unrelated facets without much cohesion, yet still seemed to build a foundation for a different dream that came later.

There is some sort of bizarre event relating to a truck being driven by someone going a fair distance (possibly from one state to another). However, the truck is actually “wrapped” in sections of cloth (all the way around) almost like a mummy - so that the driver cannot see where he is going. At one point, this seems to be because his vehicle needs to be held together as such in this way. What follows is some sort of bizarre argument relating to this and whether or not the truck even has a driver or anyone inside or if someone just did this as a practical joke somehow and sent the truck on its way with either a remote control or some other method. The scene is never really resolved. My brother-in-law Bob is there and seems angry about the events.

After this is a completely different scene. I am at the ocean on a very nice day. Several other people are off to my right, mostly older people. The water off the shore is very shallow, not much more than three feet deep for probably a fair distance. The older men are in the water, sitting down with legs out. No one is fishing. Every now and then, a fish swims by and seems to direct some sort of “energy pulse” to their feet as well as bite off loose skin or supposed toxins. (This is possibly a play on when I was very young and minnows nibbled on my toes from a boat dock.)

After this, I am at sister Marlyn’s house in somewhat of a strange mood. It dawns on me (yet again) that she is “gone from the house” (has died). I end up going to the front door seemingly late at night (that goes out to the porch) for no particular reason. However, it is very different. There is no porch where one should be. Instead, a van is parked very close to the door, lengthwise (facing north). A man and a woman are in the van and mostly in shadow and supposedly there to deliver a package. They ask me if I knew they were there and for some reason, I lie and say “yes” and end up implying to them I had heard something so came to check (when, again, this was not actually the case at all - I just did not want to appear to have been caught off-guard).

I am in this midly lit room with the girl I like at school who I will simply call 'C'. I tell C I need to use the bathroom. Once I use the toilet I notice that the thingy is extremely longer than usual, approximately 20 inches. This prompts me to become (mildly) lucid. Once I am done I tuck the thingy away, somehow it shrinks back into my pants perfectly. I then go back out to see C but all I see in her place are bandages that are wrapped in a way that looks like shes trapped in there. I unwrap them and she is not in there but I do find a necklace. I open the necklace and inside there is a timer. I knew instantly that it is a bomb!

I am suddenly transported outside in the day. I see the main roads out in the distance and cars going by. I look at the timer and there is 30 seconds left! I quickly try to find a place where I can safely throw the thing. Between me and where the main roads are is a big open grassy field. With only 10 seconds left I throw the necklace out there and it explodes. The explosion is pretty smaller than expected. One guy who saw laughs at me. I then walk to a big building which I presume to be where I was earlier.

Before I go in there are a bunch of black military dudes running out of the building. I assume they are going to investigate the explosion but luckily they don't suspect me at all and just go right past me. As I walk inside I notice another girl I know who I will call M. M is talking to C. M says "I knew you needed help" while both M and C are also leaving the building while I am walking in. This place is like a restaurant. I see some people sitting at tables but I don't see any food. I go next to a table of two old ladies. I randomly say "All imaginary people must vanish" and only one person vanishes" one of the old ladies looks at me weird then talks to the other woman.

I then go to a table that has a young black couple there. I say to them " How do you know that those stairs over there are just as real as the stairs of your physical house" the lady puts me off but the man considers my question. The man puts his finger out. I touch it and as soon as I did the dream collapses and I see all of these strange images appear before me before the scene changes. I feel like I am falling into the abyss. I wake up in a fiery place that can be compared to hell but not exactly. This placed is ruled by my health teacher (lol). The residents of this place are chubby purple colored women about 7ft tall. I try to sneak up to my teacher but he catches me.

He calls on his purple women guard. She just stares at me and walks away. Suddenly I am transported back to the outside world and I am walking with a group of people I can't identify. As we walk we see the Akatsuki organization from Naruto doing something but what I have no clue. I then remind myself I am dreaming then wake up.

Notes: Even though this is a lucid dream by definition I was just barely lucid, not lucid enough to feel like I am there, nor did I have full conscious control over my actions.