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Fragments

Outside the old apartment I lived in childhood. It's dark. I see a leather jacket on the ground, looks like a biker jacket. A spirit lives on it?

In a funeral home, it's very shadowy. It's a place where you can leave your bodily fluids on the coffin to feel closer to the dead. I go down a cramped elevator, my hand it wet with goo and it feels disgusting.

I see Homer and Marge from the Simpsons and an alternate version of them. They are a lighter color and have totally different personalities.

In a hypnogogic state, I feel a cat jump on my back and walk up to my head and falls asleep on it.

Morning of October 7, 2015. Wednesday.



I am in the living room in Cubitis, seated at a large wooden table in the southwest corner. My computer is set up in a similar way as with my desk in real life. My wife Zsuzsanna and our children also live here (though in real life, they have never been to America), thus my dream self is at least partly aware of my current conscious self identity. It seems to be morning.

Our pet chicken (fictional, though my father raised chickens in Cubitis until we moved in 1978) is sitting on the table to the left of my computer keyboard. It seems to be an Araucana or Ameraucana hen. My sense of touch is enhanced. I vividly feel weight and motion as I try to make sure that the hen does not hurt herself by quickly jumping or flapping her wings.

Our black-and-white cat (Franco) eventually emerges from the hallway. He jumps up on the table and bites into the back of the hen. This alarms me because I know he will probably kill it. I try to push him back and I whack my hand over the animals, but our chicken is taken to the floor by our cat.

I get the odd impression that I may have accidentally detached either the hen’s head or the cat’s in an attempt to separate them, or possibly both are severely injured. I am not sure what to do, as our two pets may both be lost. I get the impression that a griffin will be the result of this situation though possibly weak until fed, as it is lying on its side, looking a bit fatigued.

---

What does it mean to dream of a griffin? At the core level, a griffin is a flight symbol. A flight symbol is rendered in a dream in subliminal anticipation of the hypnopompic waking start. Additionally, a griffin is a mix of unrelated animals, which is likely to be a unique precursor factor of the coalescence of the preconscious and emergent consciousness.

---

Some of my other dreams that feature griffins (links): (1) Griffin vs. Grandfather Clock, (2) R Brand, (3) Malfunctioning Griffin Game, (4) The Temple and the Tomb

---

I just woke up from this one.

It started out at the property of my old elementary school, I remember seeing the principal outside near the building and then I quickly turned a corner to avoid him. It was apparent that I was not allowed to be there, and I was avoiding being caught. I ended up sneaking into one of the buildings and going up a narrow stairway and opening a door to the stands of an immense stadium, there were kids on the seats and from what I could see, there were also kids on the grass below, competing in something.

I don't think I can stress enough just how huge the stadium itself was. Seriously, the place was massive.

I met an old friend of mine, Johnny, except he was only like 10 years old for some strange reason. Anyway, a bunch of the kids in the seats started throwing a ball around and kept trying to hit me with it, so I left. Johnny followed me, and I kept reminding him to stay quiet because I wasn't even allowed to be at the school apparently.

We were sneaking around various areas of the outside part of the school. There was one point where I thought he got noticed because he just said "Run" and ran ahead into some bushes.

I guess we weren't caught though? We kept moving forward into a forest area, which eventually somehow formed into a dark room with shelves in the middle.

There was a fox in it for some reason, and I remember petting it. Johnny found a fox too, and we had them sitting together in a basket before I heard my mom's voice from outside, and she said something like "I wish they'd have me here (volunteer teacher probably) when my son isn't here on Friday, when he's at FESS."

So... I was supposed to be there? No... The bell rang signaling the end of the day, so I picked up a fox, and went outside to show her. Only when I went to show her the fox, it ended up being one of the cats that we left behind at our old house a few years ago in real life, Silver.

We were both surprised that it was him, and so she gave him some food to eat, and I'm not sure what happened after that.

Morning of September 25, 2015. Friday.



This is dream five of six relating to clearer dreams of this date.

---

An unfamiliar cat had been injured, possibly by being hit by a car, though the injuries are not extensive. I am able to heal the cat with the miraculous healing abilities of the dream state (with non-lucid dream control, my dream self not aware of it being a dream).

The cat’s presence is vivid, with clear perceptions of purring and movement, including my enhanced sense of touch when I pet it. The cat lies near the center of our bed as I move my hands about above its body and mentally affirm its health and well-being. (This bed is presumably in our present home as my dream’s setting yet is in the wrong location by association, seemingly where the narrow wall between the south side of the kitchen and the small hallway to the back door is, though my dreams have never rendered the exact same setting, of which are typically unique new composites.)

My wife Zsuzsanna brings in another unfamiliar cat. This cat seems to have died from possibly being hit by a car, as at least one back leg (possibly both) is missing and there is blood. Still, I move my hands about and above it and it apparently comes back to life. It moves slightly and purrs and meows. I can see it breathing. It does not seem fully aware, so I continue with my healing affirmations.

Soon, at least one back leg grows back, the bone expanding firstly. However, the bone continues to grow until it becomes a miniature elk horn. This is unexpected. I am concerned about how the cat will get around. Another miniature elk horn grows from where the other back leg would otherwise be. I am not sure what to do or how to continue, yet I do not want to end the animal’s life even though it is in such a strange condition at this point. I can resurrect dead animals in this dream, but in this case, the essence of other animals that have died become a part of it, as I assume that an elk had been hit and killed by the same car that had killed this cat. It may also grow wings, though still will not be able to walk or roost properly. I am unsure what to do, though I become vaguely aware that I am dreaming. It remains somewhat misshapen as my dream fades.

---

Key points:

• Although some healing dreams relate to actual healing energies and a more viable focus or intent, they also sometimes result from simply achieving more awareness of the physical body in the waking transition.
• Resurrection has occurred in many past dreams since early childhood and in some cases, is based on becoming more aware of my real physical body’s breathing in contrast to my fictitious dream self’s body, therefore, in many cases, it is a simple factor of the emergent consciousness.
• Cats are associated with higher liminal space (between dreaming and waking) for a number of reasons, including the idea they “always land on their feet” (waking transition inner ear dynamics, that is, linked to the falling sensation that commonly occurs with waking and is purely biological). I associate cats with being most active at night and linked more to circadian rhythms symbolism of the dream state. They sit on a fence, the division between dreaming and waking. They are said to be “guardians” of the “underworld” (dream state analogy).
• In this case, the antlers (growing from where the cat’s legs would otherwise be) seem to be a metaphor for expanding neural energies (in real time in growing more aware in the waking transition), which are required to wake and use the physical body to walk, especially as the common preconscious embodiment is not otherwise present in this dream. This is easily proven by looking at a human anatomy chart to see the imagery is the same as from my dream. The dream state indicator of the bed (usually just the subliminal awareness of being asleep) additionally validates the overall meaning as does Zsuzsanna’s presence near the bed (as we sleep together).
• Interestingly, this dream also had the typical prescient layer (as the majority of my dreams have had since earliest memory, in fact, the main reason I developed an interest in recording them). One of our cats in real life, Franco (though which did not look like the cat in this dream) somehow injured his back leg and was not able to walk normally again, having damaged the muscles and nerves (which curiously did not seem to bother him as he got around as fast as ever, though I have never seen this happen to any other cat I have had in my lifetime.) Thus, even when a dream can be metaphorically analogous to the dream state itself and fully explained as such, some of the dynamics may still be literally precognitive, as I have found out thousands of times since early childhood.

---

After writing down the dreams from earlier I took a nap. Note: The dreams from earlier happened in five hours, and the nap occurred ninety minutes later.

I don't suppose that I have been working hard enough to set a lucid dream intention, because even though I had a LD it was disappointing, in a way. Almost because of my nightmarish personality in it, and not because I didn't get done what I wanted to (I can do that good stuff tomorrow).

I'm not sure how I became lucid; all I know is that I was in the dream and just was. In the dream my mother, Dakota, and Jon all lived together (which is correct). I was in my bedroom doing . . . something, but then the rest of them all went with one of Mama's co-workers for their birthday party. When they were leaving out I looked out a window and Dakota had nailed a fake book to his finger (it was like a piece of jewelry, so imagine it like a very little book that was a ring) and wrote a long message on the ground. I don't remember what it was, but I remember that Jon was telling him he should probably be really careful to make sure that the "ring" didn't get infected.

When they were gone I proceeded to choke a cat. Seriously. The poor kitty was terrified but I kept going . . . and then when I guess it just got too scared for me and I felt guilty I turned it into my own dog and kept holding him. He was scared, too, but I kept trying to hold him and comfort him. It worked a little bit, but not much.

I believe it was at that point when I wasn't quite sure if I was dreaming anymore. I knew all of that had been real, but I wasn't sure if I had woken up. The more I walked around, however, the heavier I felt, and the more convinced I became that I was indeed still dreaming.

I went back into my room to put on a skirt so I could be a whore outside ???????, but instead I went into the girl's bathroom. It was fairly big and was more like the kind of bathrooms that schools and Wal-Mart have. There was a sign at the door that was written to parents about their children acting up, but I didn't pay too much attention. My mother called me, and so I woke up.

All of this actually took place in a Wake Back To Bed. I had another non-lucid dream before this, but all of its content is lost to me now. I only vaguely remember something having to do with Marcus saying something about math. I recall waking up at around 6:30. I woke up from this dream at 8:00 so I guess that was my last sleep cycle.

I was at a country resturant, eating out with an old guy in a ship captain outfit. He was really short with this big beard and all of these curls coming out of it. I remember thinking, even as I was talking to him that he reminded me of the captian crunch mascot. He even had the big hat.

I remember he had this monocle or sighter device over one eye, kind of like an eye-patch with three lenses that would rotate depending upon what distance whatever he was looking at was.

I can't remembered what we had ordered/were eating. The food was fairly good though.

I held the expectation that he would be an unpleasant character, but he was actually extremely nice and had interesting stories to tell involving giant space monsters and the likes. (Yeah, giant space monsters. Turned out he wasn't a boat captian, but rather he had a spaceship that looked like a boat like the ships from Treasure Planet.) He had his quirks though. I told him some of my stories too.

I remember I told him I had to leave because I had to go to my taekwondo class. I walked out of the restaurant and found I was in the hardware store near my friend S's house. But the one big hardware store had been replaced with several smaller stores. One of them being the country restaurant.

I went to the taekwondo studio that turned out to be in a grocery store. We decided to practice by the freezer section since there was a lot of open space, and the freezers would help to keep us cool if we got too hot and sweaty.

Everyone lined up. Right before my taekwondo master started class, he decided instead that I should teach. (Something that happens quite often in real life). He then told me that when I taught I had to remember something:

"When is a number just a number, and when does it mean more? What does the number 9 mean to you? Also, try the fried chicken. It's good."

I had a false memory of him saying this before and it being some kind of trick question. I tried to remember what the correct answer was.

He then opened the freezer door and walked into a big pile of boxes of frozen fried chicken and disappeared. I tried to follow him in. I thought I found him but all I found was his disembodied floating head. He smiled at me then receded behind some boxes.

...

I had finished teaching class without anything interesting or memorable happening. I had to head home. It was a beautiful summer night. I started to walk toward my friend S's house. In the dream, I was living in his house because my house had met with some kind of disaster.

I walked a good distance and remembered that I had left my wallet at the country restaurant. I turned and started to walk back. I walked into a flickering streetlight and saw something move. I wished I'd had my hidden blade gauntlets because I thought it might be a criminal or something. I then looked at my wrists and realized I DID. Knowing it was a dream, I locked the blades out and advanced on the threat ready for a fight.

It came into the picture. It was just a small, skinny, feral black cat. It hissed at me. I locked the blades back in and realized it was no threat. The cat calmed down and walked into the light, where it proceeded to begin rolling on the concrete and purring loudly. I gently petted the cat for a minute then (partial lucidity talking here.) realized I still needed to go back and get my wallet.

I headed back into the hardware store. I opened the door to the country restaurant and...

Spoiler for NSFW:

People having sex. Everywhere. Everyone had blue eyes, blonde hair and pale skin though. But there were people of a wide spectrum of ages and sizes all getting it on in this restaurant. Mostly girls, but there were some men too.

Since there was a shortage of men, some of the girls approached me and asked me if I wanted to join in. I remember I was approached by three of them. Though the one in the middle who was tall, thin and very busty was easily the most attractive. I told them no but they kept trying to seduce me.

I didn't want this to end as a lowly sex dream. I willed the woman's breasts to shrink and they did, all the way down to a completely flat chest. She looked down and screamed. Her limbs flailed around randomly kind of like a cartoon or a garry's mod animation and she floated in the air screaming in terror. She spun around the room two or three and flew out a window. The other girls ran away too.

I found my wallet right on a table next to three people humping each other.

I tried to go back outside but instead find myself in another room. The entire room looks like a large square sauna with mats all along the edges. There are four big square pots filled with bamboo in each corner. There is a step or terrace all along the wall with mats layed out it. There is a back door that is well hidden in the motif of the wall, but I can see it there.

Three more girls approach me in the same kind of formation, but they're actually wearing clothes this time. What they are wearing actually looked like a version of Manei's tribe outfit, only white with blue details. Or at least two of them were. She too had blonde hair and blue eyes and looked like a younger version of the girl who's boobs I had removed a minute ago.

The one on the right was very short and had buzz-cut hair. She couldn't have been more than 13 or 14. The one on the left was short, but she looked much different. She had black hair and green eyes.

"Hi, we're your fan club. I'm the president." Said the tall one.

"What are all those other people out there?"

"They're your other fan club. We are better because we celebrate you for your philosophy and beliefs. They only celebrate you for... well... other reasons. "

The black haired girl got cheery and said she wanted to show me something. She pulled out these paintings she had made of me on parchment. They were really good. All of them had chinese/japanese/koren characters on them. I asked myself for a moment why dreams seem to associate me so closely with oriental culture.

I then rememeber while we were along the back wall someone opened the not-so-secret door. It was another blonde haired blue eyed girl. She had some black hair in her hand.

"I have some of your hair." *giggles*

She slowly receded back into the shadowy room that lay beyond and slowly closed the door.

"Okay, you're not creepy at all..."

The short haired girl came over to me and started tugging on my arm. She was much shorter than me, to the point where I had to get down on my knee to look her in the face.

"If eyes are windows into the soul, then what do I see in yours?" She asked.

I was about to say something back and I woke up.

Spoiler for Long Side Notes:

So I've been thinking a lot about lucid dreaming lately. Though I didn't expect to actually have a lucid dream last night. (much less recall anything.) I did not go to bed until around 1:00 in the morning. (So a pleasant surprise to wake up to something like this.) I've been trying to get in the habit of both meditating and practicing Taekwondo every day.

That considered, maybe this is why dreams choose to represent me as an oriental? It makes sense in the regard.

Additionally I consider the fact that I began Taekwondo lessons at right around the same time that I first began learning lucid dreaming techniques. When I was in that early phase of heavy learning, I might have made an unconscious association with the two. This may explain why other aspects of my personality are not as often represented in dreams.

It could also be more representative of my philosophy, since I don't abide by any one religion or philosophy, though most of my principles were founded on Buddhist ideas. I remember last night my friend S spent the night, he was talking about how upset he was at the thought that we might one day never be friends. I told him that from the day I met him, I had accepted the fact that one day we would not be close anymore. I allowed myself to be attached to him, but never to the point that the loss would seriously hurt me. He apparently hadn't done the same thing, but was understanding of me, as good friends should be.

I explained to him how everything in life is just a phase. Nothing lasts forever. One day, I will stop coming on Dreamviews. One day, I will move to a new home. One day, my parents will pass away. Etc. Even when I was a young child, I simply accepted the fact that I would one day die.

When I was meditating, I thought for some unusual reason, about Jonathan. I was asking myself about what he was meant to represent in my dreams. I'm not sure why I was putting so much thought into a dream character who is no longer really around. I guess I figured that just because a phase of your life is over, doesn't mean you cant still learn from it.

I couldn't figure out of he was just a dream nemesis or a dark dream guide with a sort of tough love philosophy. I figured the idea was that some dream guides can be like very close supportive friends who are at your back while others push you and challenge you by opposing you. But how is that helpful to someone like me who often very frustrated with their own underpreformance and is always pushing themselves? People like me don't need that kind of support, it just frustrates us more.

Regardless of what role he was meant to play, it never seemed like Jonathan 'clicked' into it. If he was a dream nemesis, he didn't do a very good job of making me dislike him or afraid of him. If anything, I was intrigued by him. I wanted to know why he did what he did. If he was meant to push me, then his purpose was undermined for the reason stated above.

Jonathan was, if I recall correctly, some kind of vampire or demon. He was meant to represent something evil or unlikeable.

I always judged the rate and memorability of a dream characters' appearances as a gauge of their importance. It only makes sense that a dream that shows you a character more often must mean the character is more important. This is why I spend so much time on Manei and comparatively less on the other characters. (I probably spend more time considering her actions than those of all other characters combined.)

Though if we use the rate of appearance to judge how important a character is in a dream, then I am neglecting one very critical fact. I am a character in these dreams as well.

Anyways, at this point, I feel like I am just rambling in the sake of rambling, and other activities are calling to me. If you can find a point in everything I just said, then that's better than I could have hoped for.

Morning of July 22, 2015. Wednesday.



This title is not that relevant - as the cat itself does not glow, but for some reason it just came into my head as the title (and who am I to “argue” with self-titling excursions into the surreal).

Yet again my dream alters the features and layouts of real locations. This time our bed that is in real life in what would otherwise be the dining room (head to the west) is now in the front computer room, which is adjacent to our older children’s rooms; the head to the east (though feasible, not that likely to be as such - especially as our oldest son’s room has a window in his wall into the room). At the same time, the computer desk is near the window (where the bed was).

I “realize” that I am at 611 North Monroe Street (in America), which I rarely dream about anymore, especially considering I have not lived there since early 1968 (before moving to Cubitis off Highway Seventeen). My cat Tiger (long gone in reality), an orange tabby, is walking about. I “realize” that I am about seven years old but am concerned that Tiger has stepped in paint and is tracking it around the room. He is hesitant and shaking each leg in rotation, just as in reality when a cat steps in questionable liquid. However, the footprints are like a light and almost like a “hole” as well, somehow.

I “remember” after the tracks are giving off an annoying amount of light, that I can “turn off the footprints” (that is, anything glowing in the room) with a special light switch. I move my hand around to feel for it but cannot find it. I vaguely also recall (real memory) that there is a stack of about six or seven comic books on the left side of the toilet tank in the bathroom and am wondering if they will be knocked into the toilet as a result of the cat’s actions. I am trying to remember if this already happened at a previous time and if as such they had been there for several days thus far (which makes no sense of course).

The cat walks up the wall, leaving an even pattern of footprints (which start to look more like upright five-pointed stars than cat paw prints), almost to the ceiling. “Come down from there,” I command. The animal comes down and starts purring very loudly on my chest but seems eventually to be my own breathing (and likely Zsuzsanna’s as well).

My thinking falls into the slightly abstract. I realize that a “star pentagon” is not a pentagon at all but a decagon (as it has ten sides and angles, not five sides and angles). I feel a strange uneasiness over humanity being “wrong” yet again, then realize everything in the world is misnamed and misunderstood anyway, so it does not matter that much.

I approach three (unknown) girls in somewhat plain dresses (sitting on the floor in the form of a triangle for the most part) who seem to be speaking Portuguese and involved in an occult ritual. There is unexplainable luminosity in the setting. Looking more closely, I see they are actually playing Jacks. However, looking again, I see the game box looks suspiciously like some sort of ritualistic system with the box shaped like a hexagon. I then confirm this by the fact that, even though they are playing Jacks, it is on a hexagram painted carefully on the floor. Then I get annoyed once again as I realize that the “hexagram” is actually a type of dodecagon, as it has twelve angles and twelve sides, not six angles and six sides.



“No one knows what anything is,” I say calmly. One of the girls (to the left and closest to where I am standing) turns and looks at me curiously though smiles in understanding and seeming familiarity (with a vague thought she is my wife when much younger). She says, “A minha estrela guia” (“my guiding star”) and I am not sure if she means me or the game piece (Jack) she is holding. Then I realize she may not have said “A minha estrela guia” but “I’m in Australia”, which sounds the same (and it slowly dawns on me that this is yet another “missed clue” or “confirmation”, of millions, about finding Yin incarnate, yet I recall I already have).

I feel slightly nervous and enter a more luminous state of “quivering” (where the foreground and background quickly shift inversely to each other) and see a large electric fan (all white, including the blades) where the rotary keeps changing in diameter, smaller and larger, but somewhat randomly. The fan blades sometimes curve out as if in attempt to touch or at least reach me (with a perceived sense of care and compassion, not as a threat). The imagery shifts in unusual ways. Every now and then, a small narrow crocodile head emerges (again, with no sense of threat, and the mouth remains closed) horizontally and evenly from the center and is seemingly pulled back in. Other things the spinning fan blades become is a cycad palm, a sunflower, and some sort of floral kaleidoscopic design. I watch it for quite some time (with a vaguely perceived buzzing) and eventually shift into a dream where Steve J (an old classmate) and I are walking just below rafters on roof support beams and ceiling joists in a large building. The rafter patterns become more and more complex. This last part, Zsuzsanna says she also dreamt of - though she was the one walking mainly on the hanging beams (without any actual reason or prior cause to dream as such, though this shared dreaming happens fairly often). (However, I did have a lot of similar dreams when about thirteen.)

Gawd. This is gonna be my 600th DJ entry. What am I doing with my life...? I remember I changed my color code when I was at around 300 DJ entries and it took me three four hour sessions over the course of five days to change the color code over to be consistent. It was maddening and it took me weeks to weed out the odd dj entries with the old color code. Hopefully I don't tire of this one. The 5-fold color scheme has actually held up well.

I was at my moms' mothers' apartment building that she was the landlord of. It should have been a dead giveaway that I was dreaming, since she passed away four years ago now, and she was a lucid trigger a couple times. I had an odd semi-lucidity that really leaned to the low end of the spectrum. Nasty yellow color code, go.

I remember relaxing in her apartment. She was talking about making cookies with me. As cliched as it sounds, that's what I always did with her when she was still alive. Iwl she had a gray cat named Jasper who had no claws.

In the dream, Jasper was much larger than he had been in waking life. Much larger than any domestic cat; about the size of a medium sized dog. He also had white belly and paws. But he seemed just as friendly and talkative as always. He always used to meow at me constantly (though not really in a mean way, he was just a noisy cat.), and he did so in the dream.

She took me out back. IWL there was no way to make your way around to the back of the building because there was another property. But in the dream there was a wooden scaffolding/walkway that ran along the backside at the level of the second floor. Also, the building, that had been two stories IWL, was three in the dream. In fact, it was two buildings, and had a small courtyard in the middle.

We walked along the walkway and she asked me to use my lucid powers to fly up on the roof and turn on the air conditioner. I went up there and there were these two fat old guys that I had never seen before. They told me to go back down that I wasn't allowed on the roof.

I remembered one of the businesses there was this store that sold crystals, incense and all this other new spirituality age stuff. This store was in the dream too, but it was a third building, and was rotated 90 degrees to its regular orientation. (Most of the businesses in the building she owned were actually taken by things like churches and psychics and stuff.)

I went in, and there were these two women talking. One was this very tall oriental woman, taller than Manei probably, and dressed in mostly black. The other was a short black woman who was wearing purple and looked a little like my moms' friend. She had the same smiling face. I told them I was just dropping in to see how the store was, since I used to come there as a kid. But I felt like I was interrupting whatever they were talking about and I should leave.

One of the women told me I reminded her of a character in a The Alchemist; a boy who got hurt and had to bandage half of his face and hide it. (Having read the book, I know there is no such character.) I think she asked me about my wristbands. I told her that they were something that I came up with so that I could tell when I was dreaming and when I was awake in them, since I would only have them in the dream. I also told her that they also have hidden blades in them in case a nightmare or something comes up and I have to fight.

Two Bslaps for myself. One for not becoming lucid right there. And one for telling the lady about my hidden blades.

I also remember in the store that all of the crystals and stuff looked exceptionally vivid. I remember how I was thinking about making quartz crystals a dream sign, because I feel like I dream of them a lot.

I wanted to go back and meet with my grandmother and finish helping her. But I had to go to some kind of class. My teacher from my tech school was in one of the businesses and it was set up like the computer lab from my old tech school. I had a photoshop project to do.

Morning of July 12, 2015. Sunday.



The first part of my dream is taking place in an unfamiliar home, where there is a large covered-sidewalk-like area and portico in the back of our house that extends along all the outer walls that face the backyard. An older white-bearded male in shorts, who seems like a neighbor in real life (though he is only at his apartment one or two days out of a month or more) is standing there near our house on the covered sidewalk and talking very loudly and continuously on his cellphone (as he often does in real life for an hour or more at a time, never pausing for even a short time, though while on his back porch across the alley from our place). I am not sure if he is talking to anyone or just talking to himself, using the telephone as a prop. Another male is there who seems to know him. I ask him about why he is doing this as the other male does not seem to think he is doing anything wrong. My wife and I, though, mostly are in the front yard the whole time. My perception is somewhat distorted as if I am fully aware of the imagery and sound on the other side of our house the whole time (even though I had not actually been in that area in-dream). I loudly say “How would he like it if I sat right near his window talking loudly for a long time?” In my dream, our (fictional) houses seem to be on the same street, side by side (his on my left when facing our house), rather than having facing backyards divided by an alley and our high fence as in reality. Also, the fictional covered sidewalk area seems almost as big as our house (though that is not really possible; just some sort of typical in-dream perceptual distortion or faulty reasoning, since I am mostly focused on our neighbor’s trespassing and imposition).

No drama ensues, as my dream shifts to something different where my wife is talking about a Ragdoll cat I see in our backyard, which is one my wife had when I first met her. My wife says that the cat has diabetes and because of that, it is somewhat dehydrated as well as apparently bloated on one side near its back (which does not make much sense). It is uncertain how long the cat will live. I watch it closely, pondering its seemingly unavoidable fate. There is a swimming pool with an open cylindrical drain large enough for a cat to swim down through and that is what it does. The mostly white cat jumps into the deep, clear water, moving very smoothly, much as with the motions of a human swimmer, even doing a “realistic” butterfly stroke for a time. I can see its front legs move forward and around, even noticing the flexing of its feet and toes that remind me much of a person’s hands and fingers. I contemplate the beauty of the intelligence of this cat, that is now apparently ready to leave the world in this manner, by swimming as much as possible within the water, enjoying its aquatic journey to peace as if it knows it is too ill to continue on land. I watch it swim directly down into the drain, perfectly and smoothly. However, even though there is not enough room to turn around within the pipe, the cat somehow emerges in the other direction (coming out headfirst) in a short time and seems healed. It no longer appears to have any health issues.

There is another shift and we seem to be living in a larger version of Cubitis, where an unknown younger male drives into our front yard while we are outside. I expect trouble. It seems nighttime as it is dark out, though it does not really “feel” like it is later at night. He pushes my wife but I get his attention by holding out a screwdriver as a weapon in my right hand. He pulls out from inside his shirt or jacket somehow, what I first think to be a knife but is actually another screwdriver the same as mine. For only a moment, it seems as if he has two left forearms (with two left hands) in close proximity (each from the same elbow area), each with a screwdriver (but my dream quickly “corrects itself” and the imagery is then normal with only one left hand holding one screwdriver). I end up quickly jabbing him twice in the chest, once near the middle, once slightly to the right, but then he mostly lies on the ground giggling even though he is badly, perhaps fatally, wounded. Soon, he seems to be gone from the setting somehow as well as the car (some sort of dream “reset”, or a typical way dreams sometimes sublimate or “erase” their own unfolding implications or short-term history). I talk to my wife who seems to be okay.

I was looking under the bed for my two cats, and they were there, but to my surprise I found a third! It was an enormous calico, at least twice the size of any other cat I'd ever seen, and unbelievably fat. Startled by this strange discovery, I pointed it out to my husband. He gave me a suspicious look and said, "That's Crowl," as if explaining the obvious.

"He must have at least fifteen percent of the Internet!" I exclaimed, thinking that there's no way such an unusual cat could avoid becoming an Internet sensation. My husband nodded in confirmation.

"Where did he come from?" I inquired. It seemed like a reasonable question, since I had never seen this cat before but my husband appeared to be familiar with him.

Again my husband looked at me in wary confusion, as if he couldn't understand why he had to keep telling me things I should know perfectly well. "We got him from Donna Slope."

"Who's Donna Slope?" The tension was growing with every question I asked. My husband was now staring at me as if he feared that I had finally lost my mind. I gathered that this was the name of someone we knew quite well, for for the life of me I could not remember a single detail about her.

I noticed that the sliding door to the patio was open, and one of our own cats and Crowl had gone outside. I expressed alarm: ours is an elderly indoor cat, and definitely not allowed outside without close supervision. My husband seemed strangely unconcerned: "It's okay, he'll follow Crowl." I was not reassured. "We'll have to talk about this later," I said, indicating the events of the entire morning, and went out after the cats.

The two were already walking along the side of the house toward the street. To my alarm I saw that the front gate was open, and they went right through it. For some reason after I caught up with them I picked up Crowl first. As I walked back along the side of the house I noticed an assortment of little pumpkins or round gourds next to the path. One green one was rattling violently as if something were trying to get out. This piqued my curiosity, but I could not investigate with my arms full of cat, so I resolved to take a closer look after both cats were secured back indoors. I unceremoniously dumped Crowl back inside the bedroom, making sure to close the screen door behind him, and then went back for the other cat.

I was worried at having left my cat unattended, but reminded myself that he moved very slowly in his old age and he could not have gone far. As long as he hadn't blundered out into the street, he should be okay. I soon spotted him next to the sidewalk chewing on grass... but something was amiss. There were now two cats of his appearance. I studied them closely until I thought I was sure which one was him, and carried him back inside. After he was safely secured in the house, I went back to investigate those pumpkins.

The pumpkins ranged in color from green to orange, and seams indicated that the tops could be lifted like those of jack-o-lanterns. What did I expect to find inside? What if it was a coiled up snake, and it bit me? I brushed aside the fear impatiently: the only reason to be afraid of a snake is if you think it might have deadly poison, but that is quite rare. Most snakebites are harmless. Still, why did I want to look inside the pumpkins? I needed a good reason. "Curiosity," I concluded. "Curiosity is the desire to know more." That seemed like a good enough reason in itself.

The first few pumpkins were hollowed out as I anticipated, but they contained only vague shapes, like something was still buried in the pumpkin flesh. I peered closely at one and I thought it looked lizard-shaped. "Maybe they aren't ready to hatch yet," I concluded. I reached the green one that had been shaking violently. Surely this one was ready! I stopped and tried to imagine what I would most like to find inside, and decided on one of those little troll dolls. Wouldn't be cool to find one that had come to life? I lifted the top and... it was just another lizard. This was vaguely disappointing after I had gotten my hopes up for something more exotic.

After going back in the house I started thinking hard. I realized something very strange was going on today, and I needed to figure out what it was. My husband was acting very uncharacteristically, and I was apparently unfamiliar with major details of my own life. What could it be? Was it related to time travel? My current situation felt very similar to the life I knew, but not identical... could I have somehow "jumped the tracks" to a different timeline, a different possible present?

Later I was shelving some books in the kitchen when another possibility came to mind: I could be dreaming. At first this felt very unlikely, but I knew that apperances could be deceiving, and I would need to test thoroughly. I began by looking at a book on the shelf and trying to withdraw it through will alone. Nothing happened, but I thought it might just need a headstart, so I pulled it out about an inch with my fingers, then tried to finish using only mental strength. This time it worked! I let the book hover in the air above my palm to confirm that I was controlling it with my thoughts.

Alright, so I'm definitely dreaming. Shit. That means I have to remember everything so I can write it down when I wake up. I started going over details from the morning, listing them aloud to better fix them in memory. "Crowl... Donna Slope... lizards in pumpkins..." I'm sure several other things happened that morning that I'm now forgetting, but I lost lucidity and had another long NLD before waking up, so some of the details have faded.

Black: non-dream
Blue: non-lucid
Red: lucid

Dream - parrot and cat
I'm in school, though it looks like my university building (19th century, really majestic as fuck, dark wood and nothing concrete, huge building), and I'm talking to my friend Olly in the hallways. I see something that says '9th of July' and absolutely just go into panic mode... My presentation is on the 10th so I was like "no way! It can't be! it has to be wrong!" turns out it was the 7th of July which is still wrong but it made me feel a bit better. Then I spotted a parrot inside and wondered "why is a parrot inside"... Me and Olly approached it and I told him how my neighbour used to have a parrot just like that one. We decide to take it outside, along with a black cat that had appeared. I carried the parrot and Olly carried the cat, Olly isn't the biggest fan of cats either . We open the doors to go outside and I throw the parrot into the air, it flutters its wings and flies away while the cat just walks off, Olly has a look of disgust on his face and wipes his hands on his shirt. I notice that the bird pooped on me too a bit on my arm and on my shirt but I wasn't too bothered. Me and Olly then went back inside and walked up a few flights of stairs, kind of just wandering around I guess. We end up on the top floor and discover that there's a martial arts class going on, there's a bunch of people swinging 'no dachi' swords around in practice and they're dressed up in black japanese garbs. I think I boasted that I was really good at using these swords and attempted to duel someone, but I woke up around this point too and it's all a bit blurry.

Morning of June 6, 2015. Saturday.



Sometimes dreams are so surreal and unrelated to life and every facet of a person’s personality and thoughts and interests, it is a task to make any grounded reasonable associations. This is a good example. Nightmares are very rare for me and always seem linked to sleep apnea or my lifelong cardiac arrhythmia (which my father also had) though only problematic for a period in the 1980s, but this one comes close with the strange mood (though I still would not call it a true nightmare, as there was no residual negative emotion carried from it).

My recent vampire witch dream had a typical carryover (though it was atypically divided by more than one day) - being embarrassed about wearing clothes in public.

I am seated in a dark movie theater (while the unknown movie is showing) and realize that I am wearing clothes and thus become embarrassed since I “know” that you should not wear clothes in a movie theater, especially this particular one which is also a library. Even more frustrating, I seem to be wearing a clown outfit (with no back story on how this occurred) or at least a white shirt with dark pink pompom (or pompon) clown suit buttons that are about the size of a small fist.

I stealthily leave the movie theater with one hand each on the top two buttons to hide them. I get the impression that someone is laughing at my clothed body. However, I manage to suddenly find myself (as if by teleportation) in a different scene in a library checkout area - which is also somehow the same theater’s lobby - where my shirt seems to be normal though I still seem to be holding pompoms in my closed fists. However, they are moving. I place them on the counter and they are each a small cuttlefish, which writhe around (as if disoriented) a bit and then decide to mate. This in turn is my payment for an overdue fee regarding books I did not even check out, but I do not question it. (I think cuttlefish are metaphorical for human hands as with spiders, because both instantly make me visually associate human hands - in fact, my “Things From Outer Space” childhood dream seemed to feature more of a giant cuttlefish-like creature than an alien spider - though actually recognized in-dream as a “giant” hand with theatrical enhancements - this being the first time I have clearly made that connection even though other creatures, such as the octopus-man, were also ocean-related).

In another scene, I become aware of an annoying (stray?) cat, possibly a darker tortoiseshell. I am not sure who it belongs to. I eventually see that it is only a piece of a cat; the head and front part of the body (with two legs), yet almost flattened into a two-dimensional form (though still with perceivable volume). It cannot possibly be alive, but it somehow is. When I pick it up to check on its status, it makes strange meowing sounds and I consider that it may be just a residual muscle reflex and that the animal is not aware of anything. However, there is slight movement as it meows, but I decide it will probably not live very long so I put it in a cardboard box and into a commercial dumpster in an alley in a business district. I do not have the will or interest to “put it out of its misery”.

After this, I have a very uneasy awareness that the cat will exist like this forever (long after I am gone) and I feel a bit guilty over its immortality as such, as it goes (without any of its own intent) to places unknown (perhaps trapped beneath layers of debris and not able to do anything or to be a “proper” cat and enjoy its cathood). It is a haunted feeling, although the creature cannot move much or walk (and thus cannot threaten me). It is almost like being aware of a human mind being “trapped” in a particular time period or culture (or religion) for endless years.

In a crowded section of New York City, flames erupt from the sewers as Satan himself rises from hell and bursts through the pavement of the road ahead of me, sending cars flying through the air and people running and screaming in all directions. He has a gang of demons around him, all made of flames, forming a painful looking perimeter of death and destruction around the Devil.

I am holding a dark gray cat, almost black, with white on its face and some of its paws I don't remember picking it up, but it seems to like being held. I cradle it on its back like a baby in my left arm, against my side, and hold its tail out in front of me like a cannon. I aim it at the Devil and make my best "Pew Pew!" noises. Almost like a "pshhyeeeoo!!!" As I make my very best laser noises, bright blue laser beams shoot out of the cats tail. They move through the air at about the speed of a jogger, so Satan easily dodges them.

I run toward Satan, aiming the cat's tail a few paces ahead of him and with "Pew Pew Pew Pew!" shoot four slow moving lasers out of the cat's tail into Satan's path. I almost got him this time! With great enthusiasm I go wild with my best "Pew Pew!" noises, filling the streets and alleys with blue lasers. 'If I shoot lasers everywhere, I can't miss.' I tell myself.

Satan dives behind a sky scraper and out of sight. I pre-fire a few laser blasts from the cat's tail down the next street in case he tries to run for it, and then run down the alley to cut him off before he can get away. He gave me the slip somehow, and I haven't got a clue where to find him now. I find myself at a busy intersection, looking every which way as traffic flows through. Next to me is a fire fighter and a cop. They look at me, then at the cat I'm cradling in my arm, and then at how I'm holding the cat's tail out in front of me with my other hand, and then look back to me.
"Check this out" I tell them as I aim the cat's tail in a harmless direction and say "Pew Pew Pew!" sending three bright blue laser beams slowly through the air.
"That's pretty cool" they tell me.
"I know, right?!"
"Aren't you going to film it or take a picture or something?" The firefighter asks me.
"No, I don't think anyone really needs to know about this. Plus I've gotta get Satan"
They both give me an understanding nod, and I start walking away as I think about where to look.

Ritual: It was a great night for dreaming, probably because I went to bed so much earlier than usual, though I've also been especially attentive to my RCs for the last couple days. I went to bed a little before midnight, and I'm also currently on the East Coast, so the clock was three hours ahead of my usual time zone. My sleep was punctuated with the usual half-dozen wakings, though I didn't do any specific night practices other than try to pay attention to the transitions between sleeping and waking, and in this I was not persistant or prompt enough to pull off a WILD or a DEILD. But by around 6am I woke up from the first DILD, spent until 7:30am writing it down, then went back to bed and lucked into a second one.

NLD, "Drones": I'm standing by a floor-to-ceiling, wall-length window in a big hotel suite, looking out over the curve of a bay. From the height we must be somewhere between the 20th and 30th floor, and to the right I can see another tall building, or perhaps an extension of the same hotel, following the curve of the beach. Ahead and to the left is the flat horizon of the sea. It would be a pleasant view if it weren't for all the drones hovering in our field of vision, each one carrying a sign with a single word on it, white block letters on a black background. The words seem to be completely random.

"It's like some dystopian future," I comment to Peter Dinklage, who is standing to my left. I muse about what it would be like if the drones were weaponized, and turned on us like machines tend to do in science fiction. Though a chilling thought, they are awkwardly constructed without any armoring, and look like they would be easy to shoot down.

Then I notice that although they are not armed with guns, each drone is fitted with a camera, which is just as bad in some ways. Are they conducting mass surveillance on us? The cameras are all pointed directly at us. As I watch, a see a few drones of a different type fly in very close. They are not carrying signs, and they are disk-shaped, topped with a transparent dome through which we can see tiny people inside operating them. The pilots can't be human: even though I am standing next to a dwarf, they are much smaller than him, the size of babies, but with adult features and pointed ears. One of them waves at us, and Peter Dinklage says something like, "This is really disturbing."

FA-DILD, "Smallpox": Shortly after this I have the sense of waking up, though it is not a typical FA; I do not find myself in bed. I feel like I am standing in the same spot, in the same room, only awake now. Everyone else who was in the room a moment ago is gone, and there is no longer any impression of a view. The light has changed, becoming greyer and dimmer: it felt like late afternoon a moment ago, now it feels like early morning.

At once I notice that something is wrong with my body: a dense network of small patchy blisters is completely covering my skin. I look at myself in third person, as though in a mirror, and see them everywhere: covering my face, my chest, my arms, every patch of visible skin is mottled with these raised lesions. I know exactly what they are, too, I've seen them before in historical pictures: these are smallpox pustules, apparently in an early stage, since they are slightly lighter than my natural skin color and haven't scabbed or opened yet.

Immediately my rational mind rejects the scenario: didn't I get vaccinated for this? I realize I don't specifically remember getting a smallpox vaccine, but... isn't that because smallpox is extinct? I can't recall the details but I'm sure I remembered hearing that. Surely it's not making a comeback, like measles, because of all these anti-vaccers? But that can't be right—if smallpox were coming back then vaccinations for it would have become available, and I'd have been first in line.

This can't be happening. I try to will away the pustules but nothing changes. I remain unconvinced. This can't be happening, it must be a dream. If I can levitate, I will know it is a dream: I put my mind to it and though I do not levitate properly, I can feel that gravity is definitely different from waking life. So it is a dream! Okay, that's what I thought. Thank goodness I don't really have smallpox. Now I just need to fix my appearance.

I go into the bathroom and look in the mirror, trying to will my skin smooth again. The pustules are stubbornly persistant, but a lock of hair turns white and I decide to transform the rest of it for fun. It instantly turns stark white, but the texture remains smooth and silky. This gives me the idea to turn my skin jet black, like that of a drow elf. I concentrate and most of it transforms, but there are still pale patches on my forehead and upper cheeks, and when I look down at my legs, they are a streaky grey that is fading out toward the ankles, more like body paint than skin pigment.

On the bright side, changing the color of my skin finally got rid of the pustules, leaving it smooth again. Now I just want to even out the color, but the pale patches resist my initial attempts to darken them through will alone. I try to use my hands, as though spreading pigment over the resistant areas, and this helps a bit, but it is not an easy fix. As I peer closer into the mirror during this process, I notice that my eyes are solid black. I can't remember if this was the correct color for drow eyes, but I really like the effect. By the time I complete the skin transformation, my hair has faded from snow white to a yellower bone white, and this looks better and more natural with the jet black eyes and skin.

During this process my hair has been going through stylistic variations, always long and straight, but hanging down in different ways, and smeared with substances like blood or oil. I figure this makes sense for drow fashion, since living underground they probably don't bathe all that often, making hair treatments like oil very practical, whereas the bloody streaks look impressively gruesome. Although my skin won't stay pure black, it doesn't fully revert to its natural shade either, but retains traces of color, like streaky orange-browns on a muted blue base, while the hair stays yellowish-white.

WBTB: I woke up and spent over an hour writing the report of the last dream, but afterwards it was still early enough to go back to bed. Although I was not sleepy, it was a pleasantly lazy morning, and I enjoyed drifting in hypnagogic imagery. There was a period of ambiguity where it became increasingly difficulty to tell if I was having waking or dreaming experiences, and then I slipped again into full dream.

DILD, "Bed Monsters": I was wandering through the large house belonging to my in-laws where I am currently staying, and I had lost count of the number of bedrooms... there had to be more than twenty. Just how big was this place? At that moment I realized, no, of course it is not so big in waking life, it is because I am dreaming that the size has been exaggerated. Dreaming, eh? Wasn't there something I had meant to do, if I found myself dreaming in a bedroom? Suddenly I recalled this month's TOTM, to make friends with the monster under your bed. Oh! I should get back to the room where I'd been sleeping! I dashed back so quickly I was afraid I would destabilize the dream, but luckily it stayed intact.

I peered under the bed but it was a pleasant open space. It looked like there were a few banal things stored under there, but nothing looked sinister or monstrous. I felt around for something to work with, and my hand closed around a small plush object, which I withdrew and examined closely. It was a small brown teddy bear, only five inches long, with a plump, pear-shaped body and tiny beady eyes. There was a lighter brown oval around the bit of stiching that served as a nose. I was impressed with the detail with which I could perceive it, but had no idea how was I supposed to "make friends" with it. It seemed totally inert, a harmless stuffed animal. I set it on the thick folds of the comforter piled on the bed. "Dance!" I commanded. It just sat there. "Dance!" I tried a few more times, but it remained inaminate.

I walked around to the other side of the bed, setting down the teddy bear on a dresser. I turned away for a moment, and when I looked again it had changed: now it was a sort of bell-shaped plastic structure hanging from the ceiling by a string. I couldn't tell what its purpose was, but it still appeared to be an inert object.

It occurred to me that I had been walking around and standing right next to the bed completely heedless of the space underneath. If there really were monsters under there, I'd have to watch out for my ankles! I wondered if this was the problem, that I didn't really have any lingering childhood fear of monsters under the bed. Perhaps I should try again with more intent.

I bent down and looked under the bed from this side, trying to keep the idea of monsters in mind. I still didn't see much under there: it was a light and airy space, just like in waking life, completely different from the overstuffed space under my bed at home. But I did see a scrap of cloth within arm's reach, so pulled it out. It turned out to be a little crocheted cat, only about three inches long, white with some orange spots. I guessed it must have been made by a total amateur. The body seemed floppy like it was unstuffed, and as I turned it over in my hands, I discovered that it was actually crocheted in a single flat piece with the four little legs sticking out horizontally, so only when it was folded in half along the back did it look plausibly like a cat. The head was the only piece that appeared to have been crocheted with any semblance of three-dimensionality. As I studied it closely, I saw tiny points of bright green contrasting with the dominant the white and orange: there was a little green tuft on the trip of the tail, and projecting from the head was a narrow appendange like the antenna of a cartoon alien, also topped with a green point.

However, this object also showed no sign of motion or life, so it would be hard to say I was "making friends" with it. But then my eye caught a glimpse of orange fur near my feet: my cat had appeared! I wasn't surprised that she had turned up: when thinking about the task in waking life, I had reasoned that she really was the monster under my bed. Though I adopted her when she was about five months old (the best guess of the shelter) she had been living in a feral state before that, and even after five years of comfortable indoor living she still has the edgy instincts of a street cat: she hisses at the slightest provocation, and holes up under the bed for hours whenever a stranger is in the house.

I knelt down to ruffle her long, soft fur, which felt totally life-like, but I noticed the color was off. In the dream she was calico, with big orange patches, but I remembered that she was a tabby in waking life. I wondered if she could qualify as my dream bed monster—though right now she was acting very pleasant and relaxed, and I figured it probably wouldn't count because I had already made friends with her in WL.

Yet again I peeked under the bed, and this time at last I found the perfect candidate for my experiment. I felt that it was connected somehow with the tame cat at my feet, as though all her feral qualities had separated into a different animal. This one had a tortoise-shell coat, all the same colors as a calico but in smaller, more mingled patches. Although the fur resembled that of a cat, the body suggested another animal entirely, with a narrower head and tapering snout. I was pretty sure it was a fox. Best of all, it was already hissing and snarling at me! This was the monster I had been looking for!

Now all I had to do was make friends with it. I began calling to it in the cooing, overly affectionate voice I might use with my cat. "Come here... lovely sweetie... lovely sweetie. I have treats for you my love... treats for you my love." The animal reacted as any feral creature would, holding its ground and continuing to hiss and snarl. I could see the tension locked into its body, poised for fight or flight. I reasoned that since it was a dream monster, the best approach would be to hug it, but that wasn't obviously wasn't going to be possible while it was still under the bed. I needed to draw it out first.

I reached under the bed and the animal snapped at the air and threatened to bite me. I considered drawing my hand back for a different approach but decided to let it go ahead and bite, inspired by that wonderful scene in Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind where Nausicaa tames the fox-squirrel by remaining calm and patient when it bites her finger. Plus, since it was a dream I didn't have to worry about physical harm. So I kept reaching toward the animal until it bit down on the middle of my left index finger. The pain was surprisingly clear and sharp, but easily manageable. I kept thinking of that scene from Nausicaa and projecting similar expectations on this situation. I felt the animal relax enough to take a few steps closer to me, but it had not yet emerged from under the bed when the dream abruptly faded. Intriguingly, even after I had fully transitioned to wakefulness, I could still feel a distinct itch in the second joint of my left index finger where the animal had bitten me.

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Ritual: Last night I experimented for the first time with kava kava root (Piper methysticum). I had read many anecdotal reports that it instigated vivid dreams and perhaps even lucidity, so I thought it was worth trying out. I ordered some dried powdered root from an online herb and spice supplier that I trust. I don't have any doubts about the freshness and quality, as the package confirms that it was packed earlier this month and sourced from Vanuatu. I had read many reports of people complaining about the taste, describing it as "muddy," so I was surprised when I opened the package and encountered the most extraordinary and delightful fragrance. The plant is related to pepper, so it made sense that the scent would be peppery, but there was also something delicately floral about it and even a hint of wintergreen.

I had abstained from alcohol all day, since the two should not be consumed together, and my plan was to drink the kava before bed. I had a late dinner, ending at 11pm, so my plan was to give myself two hours to digest, then start drinking the kava at 1am and go to bed a few hours afterward (unless it made me too sleepy before that, which seemed like a distinct possibility). I don't like cold drinks late at night, but I read that you could warm kava gently without destroying its properties, so I adapted a recipe for "Mexican Hot Cocokavachocolate," blending two tablespoons of powdered kava kava (half what the recipe calls for, as I didn't want to overdo it my first time), two tablespoons of cocoa powder, agave syrup, a spoonful of cinnamon, and a generous pinch of cayenne with about two cups of almond milk (I skipped the vanilla extract suggested by the recipe because I didn't want to use even a tiny amount of alcohol). I blended this until it was frothy and then separated it into two mugs, putting one in the fridge—I planned to start with a minimal dose, and work up from there if it felt warranted. The other mug I heated briefly in the microwave, just enough to warm it, and then topped it with a dusting of grated Himalayan salt and freshly made whipped cream.

Okay, I'll admit I have a slightly weird palate (for instance, I *love* the taste of wormwood), but this was one of the most delicious dessert drinks I have ever tried in my life! It was so much better than regular hot chocolate; the spices and kava gave it exceptional depth of flavor and an unusual aftertaste. I didn't even need to strain it: I don't know if my powder was ground unusually finely or if the almond milk held it in suspension better than plain water, but it only added body, not grit, to the concoction.

I'm glad that I had done enough research to anticipate the curiously numbing, analgesic sensation that spread from my mouth all the down my esophagus, because that's the kind of thing that would really worry you if you didn't know it was supposed to happen! I sipped the kava very slowly over the next hour or so, to make sure my stomach didn't have any problems with this new experience. Everything was fine, and the onset of bodily relaxation came quickly, though my mind remained clear. After the first mug I felt like it would be fine to drink the second one I had reserved, so I slowly consumed that too. Despite the heavy feeling in my body, it never did make me drowsy, so I played SWTOR until 3:30am and then read DV and some LD books to prep for bed, retiring at 4:30am. I should note that I never felt any trace of euphoria, either, an effect that some had noted. That didn't bother me, though: my only interest was in enhancing my dreams.

Unfortunately, in that respect, the kava kava was a total bust. It was no different from any ordinary night of crappy dreaming: I was vaguely aware of dreaming most of the night, but my recall was terrible and what details I could specify were mostly mundane day residue. There was no sense of complex overarching plots, just lots of little random scenarios. Lots of people have written that kava helped them sleep more deeply and wake refreshed, but I didn't experience that either: I woke three times in the first several hours of sleep, which is typical, except that I felt much groggier than usual during those brief wakeful periods. At 9:00am I woke up and felt so unpleasantly lethargic, mentally as well as phsyically, and the dreaming had been so disappointing, that I decided to try to clear my head with an ample dose of piracetam. That stuff is amazing: to preserve its efficacy I save it for special occasions, but it always works really well to clear up any "brain fog."

Within fifteen minutes I was feeling complete mental clarity, so I decided to turn it into a proper WBTB. I added some L-theanine, alpha-GPC and bacopa and returned to bed using WILD technique. My focus was still subpar and I couldn't count effectively, so I initially fell into non-lucid sleep, but gradually became more aware of the dream as it progressed. There was no "aha" moment of lucidity, but I was definitely lucid by the end.

In conclusion, the kava kava didn't seem to improve my dreaming in the slightest, but at least it didn't suppress it either. If anything helped me get lucid, I believe it was the piracetam and other supplements I took at WBTB, because those I've had success with many times before. My recall was poor for most of the night, and even after waking up from the LD only the last scene was initially clear; recollection of the earlier incidents revived only after I started tracing back the course of events.

DILD, "Creating a Cat": I was hanging out with a friend, JM, and her young son. [DR: yesterday I had seen a picture of this kid that she had posted on Facebook.] The little boy was telling us a story about a butterfly who took care of him in the place he used to be. It sounded like he was talking about before he was born, and this reminded me of a book I had learned about last night, about a project to compile and investigate accounts of young children who claim to have memories of past lives. [DR: Jim B. Tucker, Return to Life, 2015.] After I mentioned the book to my friend, she told me about the time she took her son to an island off the coast of Wales (the named started with a 'T', something like "Tirnagal" or "Tiriagal") and he had started talking about how he used to live there. As she describes this, suddenly we both turn and stare as we hear the boy start speaking another language with the somber intonations of an adult. I have no idea what Welsh sounds like, but what the boy is saying definitely has the structures of a formal language—it is not just childish babble. The experience is so uncanny that I feel the hairs on my arms rise. Before I leave, I say to my friend, "The only thing I regret about not having a kid is the way it can sometimes provide unexpected insights into the human experience." [DR: This comment might also have been inspired by something I was reading last night, on p.163 of The Ego Tunnel, by Thomas Metzinger (2009), where he describes a toddler who falls and looks to his mother for social cues about how to emotionally react.]

I leave my friend's apartment and go outside. Now I'm on a beach. This is one of my most distinctive and common dream signs, despite the fact that I have little interest in beaches in WL and rarely visit them. I think it is related to the tide, a phenomenon that has always unsettled me. Despite the frequency and distinctiveness of this dream sign, for some reason it is one that I always have trouble recognizing as such. On this occasion I already have some degree of dream-awareness, but I lack awareness of that awareness, the metacognition that is characteristic of true lucidity.

As I'm walking along the beach, the sand looks soft and warm and comfortable, and I can't resist the temptation to lie down in it. Initially I am lying on my stomach, but then I roll onto my back, and feel as cozy as a kid making snow angels. I pause to reflect, why do you never hear of kids making sand angels? My comfort is soon disturbed by rippling in the sand... I notice that the whole beach is now billowing and subsiding, the dunes rolling like great waves. "Is it supposed to do that?" I vaguely wonder, and then a particularly large dune threatens to bury me, forcing me back on my feet to keep my balance. Though not quite lucid at this point, I have instinctive awareness of my mastery and control in this environment: I find it easy to "surf" these sand waves as they roll by underfoot. But they are getting even bigger, and I have the impression that the water is now rising rapidly as well, so I decide to find higher ground.

At the edge of the beach I find a stairwell leading up into a building. Getting into it takes some creative climbing, as there are various panels of transparent plexiglass serving as barriers, but I manage to circumvent them and get inside. The stairs emerge into the center of a dim, semi-industrial space, with narrow walkways on all four sides surrounding the wide pit formed by the stairwell in the middle of the room. No sooner have I gotten my bearings than a round hatch covering the end of a large pipe poking through the wall opens, and a humanoid creature crawls out. It is gollum-like, with huge bulging eyes. I don't want to be spotted, so I hold still and focus on being invisible. I feel a moment of relief as the creature initially descends the stairs, but it comes back promptly joined by a second person, a male human. As they approach the spot where I'm standing, I retreat into a corner to avoid them: even if they can't see me, they might blunder into me by accident if I'm not careful. On the bright side, having to strategize in this tense situation is improving my lucid awareness.

I reflect that my "invisibility" is just a mind trick: I am willing the DCs not to see me, and from their lack of reaction I assume it is working, but I can still see my own body plainly. This bothers me—at this point I'm a fairly experienced dreamer, so shouldn't I be able to dispense with a body? I've had no dearth of NLDs where I'm just a disembodied perspective, so surely I should be able to accomplish the same thing in my LDs. I decide to try to eliminate my dream body.

My body does obediently disappear from my field of vision, but the trouble is I still *feel* like I'm in a human body, with two legs, two arms, and two eyes located frontally in my head. If I have really transcended the body, I should no longer feel like I am mapped onto a human being. I conclude that I should begin subverting the pattern, and my first attempt is to try to shift my visual apparatus to floor level. This seems like it should be a fairly easy, basic task, but I find that I have trouble with it, maybe because I get caught up in questions like, well, if I'm not seeing out of physical eyes, then shouldn't my vision be even more radically different—unconstrained by frontality, for instance?

Meanwhile the man and gollum-like creature disappear into a side door, still apparently oblivious to my presence. I retrace my steps to the top of the stairs and examine the hatch that the latter had crawled out of. I consider going in there to explore, but decide that from the look of the creature and the size of the hatch, it will probably just be a cramped and uncomfortable network of tunnels. Instead I decide to follow the two through the side door.

I find myself in a large, open exhibition space with various vendors and booths. I pause for a moment to wonder why spaces like this are so common in my dreams. I don't know if this was a product of false memory or else better access to dream memory than I have in waking life, because at the time I was under the impression that I encountered such rooms on a regular basis; now that I'm awake I don't feel like they're especially common. At first I was just wandering around with no specific purpose, when it occurred to me that I shouldn't waste this opportunity to work on some tasks. There are a ton of things on my docket, but nothing especially pressing, so I thought over a few possibilities and decided to work on my Ars Magica forms and techniques—the other day I printed out the whole list of combinations and decided I should make it a long-term goal to try out all of them eventually.

I recalled that "creo animál" was the first one on my list that I had not tried, so I started intoning, "Creo animál!" I lengthened the syllables in a resonant voice, putting emphasis on the first syllable of "creo" and the last syllable of "animál." I repeated the invocation a few times in this manner, staring at an empty patch of floor. I didn't have a clear idea in mind of what kind of animal I wanted to create, but I thought I could leave that open for the dream to surprise me. However, nothing was happening. I thought perhaps I needed some raw materials, so I telekinetically lifted a nearby booth (hoping this wouldn't be too much inconvenience to the vendor) and pulled it into the space where I was working, then focused on compacting its form and shape into something suitable to my purpose. It folded itself up obediently until it was much smaller. However, I felt like I needed to impose a pattern on it since the dream wasn't responding with anything, so I arbitrarily chose the form of a cat. People started gathering around to watch the show as the booth finished its transformation, and now there was a short-haired black and white cat sitting stiffly on the floor. [In retrospect, the technique was closer to "muto" than "creo," since I adapted existing material rather than conjuring it from thin air.]

The newly-created cat was not moving, and did not seem capable of movement; it was like an empty shell of a cat, a living doll. This made sense, since I had created the body but not endowed it with sentience: I concluded that this would require a separate effect. Luckily this concurred with another task I needed to work on. "Creo mentem," I said, directing my words at the cat, and this time the effect resolved quickly: now the cat seemed to be capable of moving and perceiving its environment.

I wondered if "mentem" alone was sufficient: wouldn't that create something with the bland mental workings of a robot? Wouldn't I need to add "imáginem" to endow it with emotions and imagination, the "spark of life"? I wasn't sure, but I thought I'd better throw that in for good measure, so I intoned "Creo imáginem," focusing on giving the creature the capacity for emotions and inner life. Immediately I had doubts about whether this was wise. I don't know if my doubts were caused by the cat's behavior or if the cat's behavior was conditioned by my doubts, but whichever it was, the creature did not look pleased. It was lashing its tail in the way cats do when they're annoyed, and its face was contorted into a savage snarl. I wondered if throwing in "imáginem" had been overkill—emotions are not always pleasant, after all, and a creature so unexpectedly brought into existence might well be feeling upset and disoriented. Plus, I didn't even know if "imáginem," was necessary for a complete being; perhaps sentience was sufficiently specified by "mentem." [Consulting the Ars Magica rulebook now, I see that I misremembered the scope of of the Form: "imáginem" deals with sensations and illusions, not emotions and imagination. Though actually that makes the whole Form seem superfluous to the dreamstate, where there is no obvious difference between creating a thing and creating an illusion of that thing.]

I knelt down to have a closer look at my creation, and felt even more disturbed. There was something awful and abject about its face, a wound or rot-like distortion of its jaw that left the teeth clearly visible through its cheek. [DR: I realize this might also be day residue, because recently I was reading articles about the so-called "zombie cat" which came with graphic pictures of a similarly disfigured animal.] I decided that I should try to understand what this cat was experiencing, so I said, "Intéllego animál." I felt impressions of fear and rage coming from the poor creature, and guiltily realized that I must have screwed up somehow. It made it even worse that it was a cat, a kind of animal for which I feel a great love and sympathy.



With a sweeping gesture I willed all the effects I had invoked to disperse, effectively uncreating the cat. I didn't have a clear visual sense of the result (did the body simply disappear or did the vendor's booth revert to its former shape? I'm not sure), but at least I felt that the spell had ended. I looked up at the spectators who had been watching the whole event and sheepishly apologized: "It didn't want to be a cat. I'm sorry. It just didn't work out."

One woman spoke up in reply. Her words were uttered very calmly and slowly, emphasizing each of the adjectives, and I felt like she was subtly criticizing my actions: "People want to be fair, and dominating, and controlling, and diverting."