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    1. Bed, Sheets, Blankets, and Pillows (Dream Journal Reference)

      by , 02-01-2018 at 02:51 PM
      Afternoon of February 1, 2018. Thursday.



      It begins like this. A person gets undressed for bed. Perhaps he or she sits or lies in bed for a time, while undressed, before going to sleep. Perhaps they watch television or talk on the telephone while undressed in bed in their preparation to go to sleep. They might think about recent social encounters as they sit or lie in bed, while preparing for sleep, while undressed. Later, they might have a dream of being undressed, perhaps in public, and then after waking, wonder “what it could mean”. Still, it is neither my place nor purpose to make light of society’s unfathomable buffoonery and shortsightedness in my public dream journal.



      This entry focuses mainly on first-level dream state indicators. In this case, beds, bed sheets, and pillows are the focus as a reference entry to link (viable dream journal websites only, as on other sites it will just remain as a singular post).

      Because dream state indicators of this nature occur in over twenty percent of my dreams, which I consider as quite natural and obvious, I have created this no-brainer reference entry for people who might otherwise puzzle over what this or that means in my dream journal. Still, there are specific threads of meaning depending on when and how a dream state indicator is rendered, especially if it is separate from other elements. (For example, although I often fly with a bed sheet as a “cloak” or “cape”, a bed as a flight symbol is uncommon.)

      A bed could easily serve as either induction symbolism or waking transition symbolism. I do not consider it as pure autosymbolism since I relate autosymbolism as non-literal factors within the dream state (even though liminal space symbolism is analogically literal to real-life liminal space settings). For example, a bed in a parking lot (as I have actually dreamt a few times) would be a dream state indicator rendered into liminal space autosymbolism, even though this is a form of composite redundancy, where both factors, bed and parking lot, are indicative of being between dreaming and waking.

      When I was very young, I used to see dream state indicators as a minimal form of RAS mediation (even serving to subliminally ground me to my real environment) to remind my dream self that my physical body is unconscious. In a way, that is still true, though I tend to see it more as a biological factor that carries over into the dream state, as impressions of one’s real environment often carry over into the dream state, especially the tactile nature of pillows and bed sheets. Even so, it could also just be a residual subliminal memory of having fallen asleep (assuming a deeper state of unconsciousness where environmental factors are not as influential).

      I have often used a bed sheet or blanket to cover my body (when otherwise nude) in both lucid and non-lucid flying dreams (and certainly not because of modesty, as who cares about modesty in the dream state, but because of the realism of certain environmental factors in dreams, such as twigs and roof features). This validates that my dream self is aware of the status of my physical body, at least to a degree. Of course, in lucid dreams I do this on purpose, though in non-lucid dreams, it is a carryover factor, unrelated to waking life since the carryover is by habit of dream state awareness, not waking life focus. (One would assume this as obvious, but as I have learned, especially since 2013, empty-headedness, especially when it comes to understanding the dream state, is a dominant factor in many people.)

      Pillows are in contrast to bed sheets as a dream state indicator in some dreams due to their association with vivid hypnagogia in childhood dreams. I saw pillows, mainly only those of one pale color, as a sort of hypnagogic “television” (even before I ever watched much television in reality.) By shifting my dream self’s gaze from pillow imagery to my dream’s much larger environment, I could vivify my dream and in contrast, by pulling the dream content in my dream’s larger environment “back” into my dream’s pillow, an implied threat becoming smaller and two-dimensional, restricted to the surface of my pillowcase, it became far less of an implied threat. This may be why I have rarely ever had significant nightmares other than singular examples when biologically premonitory.

      Beds in unusual locations are as so, because a dream state indicator is typically unrelated to the rest of a dream’s content other than in the redundant example given above; bed in parking lot; though a bed in a lake is induction symbolism (as water is autosymbolism for entry into the dream state, and as a result, even a glass of water splashed in the face can vivify a dream).

      There are times when dream state indicators of this kind are prescient, for example, in foreshadowing an illness. This includes cloaked figures (though not always) as a bed sheet or blanket association. There were two recent dreams about two of our sons, both related to them being in bed and somewhat tired, and both prior to a serious (though short-term) illness. One of these dreams included a cloaked figure of our youngest son’s height. However, such dreams also have a specific mood, which I hope to learn to hone in on to a more viable extent. Additionally, actually being tired in a dream (not necessarily being in bed) is an entirely different concept than just being in bed or seeing a bed incidentally, and usually indicates actual physical tiredness (at least for me).


      Categories
      side notes
    2. Walking in Northside La Crosse (Silas Weir Mitchell Appears)

      by , 08-05-2017 at 02:05 PM
      Optimized 1 minute 30 second read.

      Saturday morning, 5 August 2017.


      Walking in Northside La Crosse (features Silas Weir Mitchell)


      Dream # 18,492-02.





      There are a few repeating scenes where I walk west in daylight down a sidewalk on Sill Street, on the south side of it, in La Crosse, Wisconsin. I had turned right at Loomis Street and am near the intersection at Wood Street.

      I am nude except for a blanket hanging down, wrapped around my shoulders. I feel no embarrassment or sense of displacement.

      At times, I see the actor Silas Weir Mitchell walking on the opposite side of the street, about a quarter of a block behind me. He appears to be happy, but we do not meet. I get the impression he knows I am only out for a walk to pick up something to take back to the Loomis Street house (even though my dream self does not focus on what it might be).

      I consider checking the contents of a green dipsy dumpster in the parking lot of a Country Kitchen restaurant (not a real-world setting). I wonder if it might contain something valuable someone had discarded. Instead of going near it, I circle it from a distance and return to where I was.

      Because I am "walking with intent," I sense there are many other people in the area even though I do not see them. Silas does not appear in this location.


      Causality details:

      The names Silas and Sill underlie a typical dream state hodgepodge, both beginning with "Sil." I do not corrupt this detail by pretending it has "meaning," only television influence.

      Celebrities occur in my dreams as personified protoconsciousness primarily because dreaming encompasses a similar state of sensory deprivation as watching television in waking life, with minimal attentiveness to my real-world physicality, cognizance, and immediate environment.

      Ultimately, that is also why "walking with intent" sometimes brings about the sense of having an invisible audience, associating the dream state with being in a television broadcast or movie.

      Minimal "slope navigation" occurs in the parking lot scene caused by my vestibular-motor response to REM sleep. A parking lot corresponds with a lucid thread signifying a stage of liminality between dreaming and waking, similar to what it represents in real life.



      Updated 07-27-2022 at 05:43 PM by 1390

      Categories
      lucid
    3. Blanket lady

      by , 07-30-2015 at 12:48 AM
      A series of FAs where I am trying to fall asleep while a DC keeps distracting me so I can't seem to transition. After a few more FAs, I realize the previous ones were actually dreams so should have already acted there.

      Scene change, some on and off lucidity scenario with family members at grandma.

      Inanimate object - blanket lady

      A bit later, I get a wave of really strong awareness and remember thanks to reading other people's reports the inanimate object task. There is a blanket so I lift it up with some sort of thought control and say hello. I begin to laugh and it answers me with a creepy echo laughter. Moreover, it turns and twists and becomes the upper part of an 18th century woman. In the dream I try to memorize the shape to eventually draw it later on.

      Clone

      After this I take quite a while trying to remember any other tasks. I am even overly concerned that all this strain will certainly end the dream, but luckily it doesn't and I recall the clone task. I try to think about myself while turning around but nothing happens. I decide to half close my eyes, risking the dream disappearing while thinking of an image of myself but again nothing happens. Finally, I decide to open the door and expect to see her/me there. This seems to work and I finally meet her. We go into the corridor where there are a number of somewhat harassing DCs and then into the kitchen. I have no idea what to do with my clone though, so we just walk around from room to room until her features change.

      Then I spot Gordon Ramsay who looks very tired and I try to talk to him. Fluctuations in lucidity, rises up again while I speak to him. He asks if I can hear him well. There are distortions in the direction of the sound for a moment.
      The alarm wakes me up.
    4. Sleeping in a library

      by , 04-14-2013 at 05:54 PM
      Messed up my sleep schedule again. The only note I put in my notepad this time was "sleepy", this is how I felt, and was in very deep sleep most of the time. Though I have little memory of my dreams, I feel well rested.

      Dream1: I am in a library, trying to find a place to sleep. I have my blanket with me and am getting really comfortable, when the guy working there comes and tells me to go away...Later I go out and find myself in some unknown city, it has been a year since a famous fireman has died and there is some kind of commemorative parade on the streets.

      Fragment2: I am with my friends and am looking at a park, the whole thing represents some kind of fairy tale story, where the park is some kind of far off land jungle?
    5. cutting blanket; king tut statues; frog river

      by , 01-04-2012 at 12:54 PM
      Good morning, everybody.

      Dream #1

      I was in a big, empty room. The room had a grey, concrete floor. There was natural light coming in through a window somewhere.

      A brown blanket lay in the center of the room, on the floor. The blanket was made up of small squares. For some reason, I was now cutting the lower squares off the blanket. But I was leaving a couple of the central squares in one of the lower rows attached to the upper rows. So now the blanket looked like a square with a bit of a lip at the bottom.

      As this was going on, a movie was playing against the back wall. It was black and white. The film was old and scratchy. There were also four or five straight lines that ran vertically, up through the center of the frame.

      The movie looked like an Abbott and Costello movie. But Costello was a kind of serious character, and the other guy was a young, kind of bright, but shy guy.

      The Costello character was telling the man something like, "I don't think your idea for using the edges of the film-frame and putting sound on them is such a great idea. I don't think people will like it. It's too bothersome."

      I now realized that the lines running up the center of the frame were the soundtrack lines that Costello was referring too. I thought that they were bothersome -- if they had to be right in the center of the frame like that!

      But then I realized that those were the lines for this film. The film the man had made had the lines on the outside of the frame, where they weren't visible.

      I understood that Costello's criticism of the man's use of a soundtrack in his films wasn't valid. But I somehow knew that Costello knew this as well. In fact, I knew, Costello even thought the use of soundtracks in film was a good idea.

      But Costello didn't want to let the young man know he thought it was a good idea. He didn't want to support the young man's development. Costello felt that the young man was smart enough as it was, and that the young man would be so successful eventually, that he shouldn't have to support him in his efforts.

      I thought that this was a terrible sentiment on Costello's part, and that the young man was probably in dire need of help.

      Dream #2

      I lay in bed, on my back, in an otherwise almost empty room. It was almost completely dark in the room. The bed was set next to a wall, which was to my right. The bed itself was rather narrow.

      I looked out to my left, across the room. On the wall at the head of my bed was a window. It was pretty heavily curtained, but it let in, at the far end, a tiny corner of orange streetlamp light.

      I noticed, in the corner of the room that was dimly lit by the streetlamp light, three statues. The statues were all Egyptian busts. They were all set on square pedestals, but they were arranged in a really haphazard way.

      I knew somehow -- maybe from some narration in my head? -- that the busts were all supposed to be of the boy Pharaoh Tutankhamen. But all the busts were wearing the ubiquitous headdress of Nefertiti. And one of the busts, the lowest one, facing me most directly, was of a really chubby boy or man!

      Dream #3

      I was out on a beach. It was a nice, sunny day. There were a decent amount of people out on the beach, but not too many.

      For some reason, I suddenly felt like I had to leave. I turned to my right and began heading away.

      But as I left the beach, people began giving me troubles. I'm not sure what these troubles were now. But I think people just constantly kept getting in my way, even though there weren't a whole lot of people on the beach.

      I may finally have thought I'd counter the problem by flying. I may have started flying a couple meters above the ground.

      Now I was moving through an area of the beach with orange sand. Two enormous, black guys now came charging down the beach. It looked like they were just trying to start trouble. They had huge, long dredds and black, Oakley-style sunglasses, with silver rims on the tops.

      I may possibly have stopped flying. I may possibly have thought if these guys saw me flying, they'd just pull me down and pummel me. But once these guys passed me, I knew that I had to get out of here once and for all. Soon there wouldn't be anything here but trouble.

      I may possibly have gotten onto a bike like the bike I rode in junior high school. Or I may still just have been walking.

      I ended up on a concrete path in a park. I took this park to be a park from my high school years IWL. It was kind of like a trail on a small greenbelt running through a suburban residential area. It seemed like the path descended from here and went under a bridge.

      Either on foot or on bike, I descended under the bridge. Once I got beyond the bridge, I was in a much more forest-like, tree covered area. The path may now have been dirt, rather than concrete. There was a river on my right side. Trees also seemed to be growing up out of the river.

      I suddenly noticed a gigantic bullfrog sitting on the stump of one of the river trees. The bullfrog must have been 60cm tall! It looked pretty intelligent, too. It seemed to register my presence and be a bit worried about whether I wanted to hurt it.

      I acted calm and walked forward, trying not to regard the frog at all, so it would feel less worried. But now, up the way only twenty or thirty more meters, I saw another one of these huge frogs!

      I decided to get off this trail. I think I was afraid of the frogs. But I also think that I thought that if I kept having to act like I didn't see or care about every frog that worried as I passed it, I'd get bored as hell pretty quick.

      But also -- the trail itself may also simply have just ended: being cut off by the merging of a small creek on my left with the river on my right.

      I saw that if I jumped across the small creek on my left, I could land on the opposite bank. The bank was steep, but short, dry, and grassy. I could easily climb up it and out of this park altogether.

      But as I turned left to face the opposite bank, I noticed another huge frog! This one was also kind of worried about me. I was now in between two huge frogs that were all shifty and nervous. And I was afraid that if I jumped, my motions would be so fast and scary to them that they'd have heart attacks!

      I wondered how I could jump without scaring the frogs. The only thing I could think to do was close my eyes and jump. This way, the frogs would see that I wasn't looking at anything at all, and so I couldn't be jumping because I was trying to attack them.

      I closed my eyes. But I couldn't remember what the bank looked like. I didn't want to hit something bad. I tried to open my eyes again to get a good memory of the bank. But when I opened them, they were all groggy and grainy. It was really hard for me to focus on anything.

      Finally, the frog off to my right said, in something like a female voice, "There's actually a good patch right up around here."

      I looked up to the frog. I went to where the frog directed me. I jumped across the little creek and landed on the bank. I started climbing up the bank.

      All this time, the frog was still talking to me, in that kind of female voice. She was kind of friendly, like a really smart scientist, or a librarian. But I had the idea that the frogs really weren't comfortable with my presence here.

      At the top of the bank, I turned around to look back down at the river. The river wasn't there anymore. I was just facing a red brick building, which seemed to be set a meter or so down into a sandy trench. I was out on a road, it seemed, on the outskirts of a very small town in the desert.

      But this didn't even register with me. Down at the base of the building I saw a rectangular slat of an opening in the wall. Two sets of female eyes looked back out at me. I knew these two women were the frogs I had just jumped past on the river.

      I felt bad for not having spoken to them. So I did want to say something to them. But I also felt a little shy, like somehow these frogs were of a higher station than I was, and would thus be put off by my acting too familiar with them. So I wanted to keep whatever I said short.

      I said, "Yeah, I'm sure I'll come back here. So if I do, I'll talk to you guys again. I used to ride my bike up through this park all the time when I was a kid."
    6. Car Robbery!

      by , 06-22-2011 at 05:26 AM
      I am at a high school dance (although I am 20 and in college now). I go out to my car for something and I see a black man come up to me and start to get into my car to steal my things. I am horrified and try to tell the people in the car next to me but they think I'm kidding and that the robber is a friend because of how calm we both appear. I am trying to dial "911" on my cell phone but the calls won't go through and I notice I have been dialing "991" over and over instead.

      Later, a girl who I sense is evil has a crush on me (I myself am a heterosexual girl). The girl bites my lip and makes it bleed. She starts to shake as if she is possessed and says that blood makes her crazy. I make out with her with intent to have sex with her but I never do.

      -At this point I "woke up" and wrote the above in my journal but when I woke later, nothing was there. I believe this was an out of body experience as I have been practicing this a lot lately.-

      Later, I am at the water park and a little black boy sprays me and my mom with a spray gun full of orange liquid. I assume it is orange soda (delicious). People around me are shouting and happy. As the boy sprays me I lift a blanket I am wrapped in to shield the spray and laugh.

      Later, I am in my recent ex's room wearing a blanket again. He is sweating and asks, "aren't you hot?" I take the blanket off, say, "no," and put the blanket back on.
    7. subway platform and kitchen

      by , 05-20-2011 at 11:41 AM
      Good morning, everybody.

      Dream #1

      I was down on a subway platform. There were no lights on the platform. It was like the power had gone out. The only light was from a stairwell leading directly up to the ground. That light was enough to keep things nearby visible, though still very dim. But farther along the platform it was pitch black. There were a few other people on the platform.

      I was waiting for a B-train. But somehow I heard the train was going to be delayed. I figured I'd wait around a bit. To occupy myself, apparently, I jumped up a meter or so in the air and kicked one of the metal column-beams with both my feet.

      I think I came to understand that the train was going to be very delayed. I wondered if I might catch another orange train: maybe the D-train. But I thought that would also be pointless. I thought I might as well get out of here and go to another station. But, for some reason, I still decided to wait for the B-train.

      There was now a little girl and her father. The little girl was maybe two or three years old. She had short, brown hair and was wearing lavender-colored shirt and pants.

      The little girl was showing off to socialize with me. She was doing some weird kind of hopping thing, hopping up and down, as if she couldn't control herself because she was so nervous.

      I liked the attention, so I didn't notice that the girl was getting carried away. She hopped a little too far and fell onto the tracks. She landed on her feet and didn't seem afraid or anything, but I knew it was a bad situation for her to be on the tracks, and I kept worrying that she would touch the third rail and get electrocuted.

      Before I could really process anything completely, a big, muscular, blonde man like a soldier rushed up from behind me. He quckly (and softly!) jumped down onto the tracks, picked up the girl, and hopped back up onto the platform. He set the girl down, standing, a couple meters away from her father. He then sat down next to the father. The father was now apparently sitting cross-legged on the platform concrete.

      The girl may now have been sitting on the concrete amid a bunch of blankets. I crouched or crawled around in front of the girl, to play with her. Apparently she liked me because I had a good imagination and I could play kids' games as if they were real.

      Somehow I knew the girl was already pretending I was some kind of creature. I asked her what kind of creature I was. I figured that I'd then act out being the creature in somekind of wacky way.

      The girl told me I was a bug. I tried really hard to think of a bug, but none came to my mind. Eventually, I crawled on my knees and held my arms behind my back, rubbing them together. Apparently my arms were supposed to be wings, and I was rubbing them together to clean them. This may somehow have reminded me of being a fly.

      I was now in some kind of foresty area, talking with Matte (from DV). He looked a little too skinny, and his face was stubbly and haggard. I worried about him and told him he needed to eat more and keep up his weight.

      I was now in a kitchen. At first there were a young man and a young woman. But the young woman, probably having fixed her meal, left the kitchen. The young man may have been shirtless. He always had his back to me. He was either cooking on a stove or waiting for something in a microwave.

      Matte had been taking a shower, but now he came into the kitchen to cook some food. The kitchen counter was L-shaped, and, as the young man stood at the back part of the counter, Matte stood at the right part. Matte was also cooking at a stove. So the counter may have had two separate stoves.

      Matte was cooking using a wide, flat, square kind of pan with a non-stick, black interior. He was cooking a few pieces of fish, some pieces of bare chicken, and some french fries. He was cooking them all in a ton of grease.

      I thought to myself that it was good that Matte was cooking and eating this much protein. He really needed it. But I knew that that kind of diet would tie my weak stomach in knots. So I'd have to think of some diet of my own.
    8. Pregnant Roommate

      by , 03-31-2011 at 05:12 AM (Trial and Error)
      I had at least 5 fragments, but only remember one

      My roommate L was pregnant. Me and another one of my roommates S were trying to get her to take a sexy picture of herself naked with a blanket when she got further along, for the sole purpose of making her uncomfortable. She says "noooooooooOOooOooo" in her whiny voice, and we keep messing with her and laughing.
    9. Quilt Utopia (World Under a Blanket)

      by , 01-17-1970 at 01:23 PM
      Morning of January 17, 1970. Saturday.



      This is another dream from age nine that I additionally wrote about (compared to typical basic documentation) several times when much younger and even made a homemade “comic book” version about. I tended to have more lucid dreams (mostly late at night) during the winter when I lived in Florida, as I had a smaller heater in my room that was quite noisy and caused me to remain in various half-sleeps at times. It rattled continuously when it was on, with a nice bright orange fiery glow. Sometimes a miniature fireball in the form of an insect, spider, or a bit of dust would go flying out. I always felt very comfortable at the sound and glow, though, regardless of the unusual metallic rattling and vibrating noises on and off throughout the night. I heard they do not make these heaters anymore due to the fire danger. The walls of my room were solid rough “prickly-textured” concrete, though (with a big long mostly diagonal crack on the south wall, floor to ceiling, which was painted part cyan, part dark brown, as if someone had ran out of paint), kind of a sharp contrast to the thin and light plastic curtains I had for a time, which blew all the way up to the ceiling at the slightest breeze during the summer months in a noisy, crunchy cascade.

      This childhood dream was recurring a few times, later versions were slightly more movie-like and this was one of those times when I even “rolled the credits” upon waking as well as starting my dream by showing the titles and opening credits.

      This one mainly involved shrinking and becoming only about an inch high. The first versions I had recorded in my journals as “World under a Blanket”. My later title was “Quilt Utopia” just to be fancy, I suppose. The later “Quilt Utopia” versions were more interesting, as the different crazy quilt patterns became part of the actual dream, such as “roads” or convoluted “sidewalks”.

      The main idea was that when I shrank, I was still under the blanket yet somehow in a different world, complete with buildings and roads and a “blanket sky” way above. However, as my dream progressed, the “sky” would get lower and lower until it was more like I was in a cave. The warlike characters that came after me turned out to be small toy soldiers that were from a box at the foot of my bed. Later versions usually had a more positive theme, yet with castles, kings and queens, and at one point, a very large but eerie lake with distant swamp-like aspects, where you could see the horizon where the blanket sky domed down over the “edge of the world”.

      There was also an “Alice in Wonderland” theme in one version, where I said something near the end like “I’m not afraid of you, you are only toy soldiers…” and being almost my full size with a very small king and queen looking on under the “blanket sky” that was slowly getting lower. The later crazy quilt version had unusual faces in the “sky” that stayed with me in a hypnopompic event.

      There is one point where I am poked with a bayonet, which turns out to be a bed spring, poking through the mattress when I am awake, so there are two main versions - one in which the “world under a blanket” is a dream, and another where I actually go into a sort of other dimension with portions connected to the real world (such as the “blanket sky”).

      There was another much later “version” of this dream as a young adult, but it involved the entire Earth in a giant “pillow case” or “slipcover” (I think the real-life caption was “Earth’s Slipcover” in the magazine I later had). This was later also related to seeing an idea in a humor magazine in real life (such as the many “Mad”, “Cracked”, and “Sick” magazines published at the time) related to fictional horror movies, except the later dream was not really nightmarish overall. The humor magazine drawing showed the world covered by a giant pillowcase or slipcover, I think; a somewhat rehashing of my childhood dream, but not quite precognitive, even though the odds at the time of someone else coming up with a “world under a blanket” idea would be fairly unusual to the individual’s own path (especially prior to the Internet).
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