All DJ Entries

Awake, Non-lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm on a strange version of the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland. Instead of one continuous waterway that meanders across solid ground like a real river, it consists of a series of interconnected, rectangular pools that are separated from each other by waterfalls. They're all still surrounded by jungle foliage, though, and they all have some kind of animatronic animal in or around them. One of them has an animatronic person swimming in the middle. It's nighttime.

I'm navigating these waterways all alone, in a single-person canoe. As I paddle my canoe along, I think, I hate going through this ride by myself. There's no one to do the spiel for me. I try to do it myself, but I'm not as good at it as the regular skippers are. I go over at least one waterfall in my canoe. There's no impact when my canoe hits the water; it just calmly transitions from one pool to the next.

I reach a particularly tall waterfall, with a bunch of gray rocks between the pool I'm in and the one below it. I'm tired of putting in the effort it takes to paddle, so I give up trying to canoe my way through the ride and just climb down the rocks. When I reach the lower pool, I decide to go swimming in it.

When I get into the pool, I start treading water. I move very quickly across the large, rectangular pool by this means, keeping my head completely out of the water the entire time, and feeling very proud of the fact that I've mastered the skill of treading water. [Which I haven't done in real life, by the way; I can sort of do it, but I'm not any good at it at all.] Being in the water feels really, really nice.

[Recall is a little hazy here. I think I remember the following two things:] Two or more people pour more water into the pool I'm in, making it colder. I get into and out of the water at least once. [I definitely remember everything from here on out:] I'm now in a smaller, but still rectangular pool, right next to the bigger one I initially got into. The shorter ends of the two rectangles are right next to each other. I look around in this smaller pool for a way to climb out. At first, I'm disappointed because I don't see one, but then I see it. There are some metal steps leading out of the pool, attached to the interior wall near the far corner. There are two girls I don't know in the water near the steps. I also see the B. brothers crouched down near the other short end of the pool, looking at me. [They're acquaintances from real life; I've mentioned them in my dream journal before in this entry. They're the two brothers who sang with the Parrish girls.] I'm naked, so when I see them, I imagine a bikini, and it appears on my body. [Despite this, at no point did I ever become lucid.] Then I climb out of the pool.

[Different dream.] I'm at home [or possibly in a hotel room; it didn't look like any of our houses], lounging around on a bed, doing something on my laptop. My parents want to go out somewhere, but I'm not ready. My dad jokes, "This battery-powered computer is called a 'wait-for-me device!'" I laugh a little, then stop what I'm doing, get up, and go to finish getting dressed so that we can go. Then my alarm went off and I got up.

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, Dream within a dream, [Commentary made while awake]

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from December 24-27, 2010.]

Night of December 23-24

I'm playing Neopets, and I somehow obtain an item that makes a particular level of a particular Flash game easier.

I'm with P. in a hotel/bookstore. It's 12:30 A.M., according to an analog clock. [That's what my handwritten notes say, anyway.]

I'm at my high school, once again visiting the second row of portables located a little distance to the west of the main campus. [These portables don't exist in real life, but did appear in a previous dream, namely, the last dream in this DJ entry.] I'm walking around with no shoes on. As I climb up the steps into one of those distant portables, I wonder whether I'm going to get in trouble for that.

Night of December 24-25

[I only have a very vague memory of this dream, especially now that I'm reconstructing it from handwritten notes this long after the fact (1/15/11). I've reconstructed it from my handwritten notes as best I can.]

I'm at dream!Disneyland, watching a video in a theater. I also have a lucid dream within a normal one. When I first realize that I'm dreaming, I try to fly, but I can't. There are three DCs there, one of whom introduces himself to me and to the other two, and says something about how he isn't sure if we've met in reality or not. [Hmmmm... very interesting.] I actually tell the three of them that I'm dreaming. I get a second shot at completing a mission, and this time, I succeed. The mission involves saving the son of some teacher from someone. To complete it, I have to go into a room full of computer workstations and press a red, rectangular button that I find on someone's workstation. I couldn't find it the first time. At the end, when everything around me is blowing up [I think], I'm lying face down, going, “Please be a dream... please be a dream...” because I'm convinced that it's reality.

I wake up out of my lucid, back into the regular, non-lucid dream I'd been having before.

Night of December 26-27

I'm riding along on my bicycle. A mechanical arm attached to an overhead conveyor belt grabs my bike and pulls it into this big, elaborate, two-story construct that's a combination of a maze, a play structure, and an amusement-park ride, with me still on the bike. I think, I thought things like this only existed in dreams! I didn't think anyone had actually built one as a ride! [LOL, more dream sign fail...] I'm excited to be going into it, though, because I know it's an amusement-park ride/activity and it'll be fun. The conveyor belt goes up at an angle, taking me up to the second floor. When I get there, I get off my bike and go inside a room. Other people are there, including some real-life friends [I think; I don't really remember who now]. We're all role-playing that we're scientists in a laboratory [I think], because that's part of the ride.

The next thing I remember is realizing that being put in [artificial] danger is also part of the ride. I run toward the double doors through which I came into the room and open them by punching them. They swing outward, and I see that I've opened them just in the nick of time – just after the doors open, I see a locking bolt on one of the doors shoot out automatically. If I hadn't opened the doors when I did, we would have been locked inside.

[I don't remember the transition to the next scene.] I'm in a large bike repair shop. My red bike [the one I have in real life right now] has been taken here, and I want it back. The female DC who runs the bike repair shop gives it back to me, along with a brand-new pair of long black-and-gray bicycle shorts, which are lying in a particular spot on the floor, waiting for me.

[Fragment] Something about a [different] female DC who is infected with some kind of microbes that, when active, cause her body to become excessively warm.

Awake, Non-lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

[This is a catch-up post. This dream is from the night of December 22-23, 2010.]

I'm riding in the back of my parents' car as we drive to the home of a friend of mine in Wrightwood. As we drive along the winding mountain road [which has appeared in at least one dream before this one, but I don't think I bothered to write it down], I notice that a Walgreens has opened in this remote little mountain town, and I am bothered by its presence there. I feel that it spoils the natural, rustic ambiance of the place. As the drive goes on, I start to feel sleepy.

We arrive at my friend's house. I meet their dog, and I'm nowhere near as afraid of being met by a new dog as I used to be [in real life]. Inside the house, there is a party going on, with lots of people. I eat dinner with some of them in the living room. The topic of conversation is how people who move out here to the mountains do so because they want to be 100% original and avoid letting big corporations influence their lifestyle too much, which is why the presence of a Walgreens is so offensive to the people who live here.

I wander into another room of the house, where I find a dog and a cat. Oh, great, I think. Now I'm going to have an allergy attack. [This is exactly how I would react to this situation in reality, by the way.] There are a whole bunch of different games set up on two different tables in this room. One of them is a stack of bowls, each with a vocabulary question and answer printed on it and a logo that reads “OKWords.” Another is a fallen phrases puzzle whose solution is an invocation to some mythological (possibly Norse?) god of death. There are quite a few people in this room, too. One of them is wearing a purple dinosaur suite, and another has some Pokemon dolls. As I'm walking around in the room, someone sends me back into the other room to find out what everyone there wants to drink. I walk back into the first room to find out. There is a large tray of cookies and other goodies on the table in that room; I eat a blueberry off of it.

The dream shifts to a new dream. Now, I'm in a movie/book titled Tron. [It has absolutely nothing to do with the real-life Tron.] The story I'm in involves an alternate dimension, which is accessed through a big, hidden doorway. Said alternate dimension is a typical epic fantasy world, and the story that takes place there has a lot of the universal mythic feel of the original Star Wars trilogy. I can understand why people are so insulted by the lightshow that is the new Tron; it has none of this mythic feel at all. [In real life, I've seen the original Tron, but not the new one. The content of this dream was based entirely on Internet hearsay about the new one.] There is a very clear scene in which the bad guys get through the aforementioned hidden doorway, and watch the good guys' actions on giant magical screens that are really interdimensional gateways.

The scene shifts again. Now, rather than being in the scene from the old Tron, I'm watching it with a group of people I know in real life, including Guy and some of my fellow students from his classes. As I watch, I realize that the scene we're watching was shot at Disneyland, due to the disguised but clearly visible Matterhorn in one broad shot of the landscape. I say aloud, “Wow, awesome! I won't say it, I'm just thinking it very loudly.”

The scene shifts again. Now that same group of people and I are on the train that goes around [this particular dream version of] Disneyland. We pass several other park landmarks that have been disguised to look like other things, like the Matterhorn was. The train passes behind a large, white, curved, several-story office building. I am shooting ahead of the train, flying on hover boots. As the train and I approach the Tron station (where we started our train trip around the park), I tell the boots to slow down, because my legs are starting to hurt from being kept bent at a 90-degree angle at the knee so that I can stay upright while using the hover boots. I say aloud, “Slow down, boots. Please?” They don't slow down. My alarm woke me up out of this scene, which disappointed me, because it was a really cool dream. I was also dismayed to realize that meeting the dog and not being afraid of it had been a dream.

Awake, Non-lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

[This is a catch-up post. These are dreams that I had between December 16 and December 20, 2010.]

Night of December 16-17

I discover that every time the “Looney Tunes” theme music is heard on TV, it's always being played live by real live musicians, even nowadays. I tell one of the live musicians how awesome I think it is that Warner Bros. [yeah, yeah, I know, “AOL Time Warner”] still does that.

There is a research project going on. The goal is to research people with innuendo-y names, but without using the Internet. I am asked to make the necessary phone calls because of my “dulcimer” voice. [Um, I think the word you're looking for there is dulcet, brain.] Several of my friends, including Brianna G., are also involved in the project. We're all on vacation together, so, to help us out with the project, my mom reads silly names out of the newspaper every morning.

Night of December 18-19

[Fragment] My mom is entered in some kind of radio station contest.

[Fragment] To get a particular piece of e-book reading software to work right in Firefox, I have to install some Firefox extensions. The e-reading software works after I've installed them, but I discover that they've taken up all the remaining free space on my hard disk.

I'm going out to dinner with my parents. I don't want Mexican food for dinner because I've just had it recently. We're having dinner near the Starbucks that has taken over the cafe and adjacent motel that had originally occupied that particular building in Cayucos.

[Fragment] I'm pulling my car out of the garage when my cell phone rings. I answer it and talk to some salespeople.

I'm reporting in to work for a marketing agency. Usually, my job is to give out free samples of food in stores [this was my first real-life job, by the way], but today, my assignment is to go to Knott's Berry Farm and evaluate my experience there, like a mystery shopper. I'm running late, and I know I'm going to fall behind on the schedule the agency gave me, which includes seeing a show in a theater near the entrance to the park, but I'm still happy to be going there.

Night of December 19-20

[Fragment] I'm in line for Star Tours with P.

[Fragment] I'm in an underground complex of preschool classrooms.

I watch a full-length opening sequence for an animated show that is a fusion of “Bewitched” and “2 Stupid Dogs.” The animation looks like it was done by Hanna-Barbera. The opening sequence is followed by a behind-the-scenes clip of the Animated Actors who played some of the dogs. This clip was interrupted by my real alarm.

Night of December 3-4

I'm in a house or apartment somewhere. A friend [no one I recognize from real life] is holding up a gallon-size plastic bag full of pieces of cantaloupe and honeydew melon. I say that honeydew melon always gives me stomachaches [true in real life]. She says that we should take all that fruit and put it in our lunches, which are at the bottom of the hill, on the school playground [the playground of my elementary school]. I answer that if I'm going to haul myself all the way down there to get our lunches, I'm going to take my computer down to the school while I'm at it. My computer's hard drive needs to be reformatted, so I do that before I leave for the school. The computer's hard drive is stored within a big, black AC adapter box [like the one on our electronic keyboard, not like the one for my laptop]. When I finish reformatting it, I unplug it from the hard drive and say, “Congratulations: it's a hard drive.”

I'm sitting at the kitchen table in House #1, working on my old laptop (my first one). P. has been using it. She's opened up a whole bunch of windows with video clips in them (VLC, or Quicktime, or some program like that that shows video), and a video editing program called Star Producer. She shows me how to get to the folder Star Producer created for her videos. There's someone else there in the house with us [I don't know who, exactly, but I got the impressions 'young' and 'female'], looking for her sweater. I point her sweater out to her; it's lying in a heap over the arm of one of the two pale green armchairs in the living room. [We actually did have those at that house.]

I'm walking around outside, on a street lined with trees, houses, and small, old apartment buildings. It looks like it might be in Louisville, because most of the buildings seem to be kind of old, and a lot of them are made of brick. A woman with long hair (or possibly a veil or shawl over her head? I'm not sure) and long, flowing clothes is on the street, going along it by floating about a foot or so off the ground. I think, Oh, she must be dreaming. [Evidently, I now take for granted that flying/floating is normal when one is dreaming... and yet, it still completely failed to occur to me that I was dreaming.] I start floating, too, but then come back down to the ground [for a reason I don't quite remember now] and continue walking. I see Arthur, Ariadne, and Eames [from Inception] there, also walking along the street. [Day residue; I was reading part of the shooting script the day before.] Eames also starts to float as they go, but comes down after a minute. I walk behind them. I hear Eames say, “I'm a little bit married,” meaning, to Arthur. I repeat this, giggling at it a little. They don't notice me at all.

Night of December 4-5

I'm at Disneyland again, in the old Carousel of Progress building. It has been filled with some really neat ride/exhibit/something-or-other. [I remember that it was much, much cooler than the one that's actually there now, but I don't remember what exactly it was because I was too lazy to write it down.] Later, after leaving that building, I meet my parents at a restaurant elsewhere in Disneyland.

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the night of November 18-19, 2010.]

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm in a theater, watching a film that turns out to be really scary and disturbing. The film begins with one Congressman sitting behind his desk in his office, while another is standing in front of his desk, calling him out on his shenanigans. The one behind the desk dies of a heart attack a few seconds after the one standing up finishes ranting. The ranter then starts an investigation of the one who died.

At this point, the film's narrator says, "The more he found, the more he refused to see." The Congressman performing the investigation stays in one place [I think it may have been the dead one's office, but I'm not positive] for such a long time that he eventually survives by cannibalism. One of the things he finds while investigating is a bag of marijuana, which he goes through, looking for cigarette butts. At the end of the film, there is a message from his family, left in vinyl-cling letters on the window: he got out and is now getting help.

The film ends, and I exit the theater and walk down the long flight of wide steps leading up to it. The theater is located inside Disneyland. [I've been having dreams featuring bizarre versions of Disneyland since I was a child, but this one really takes bizarre to a new level.] It's a beautiful, sunny afternoon. I walk through Fantasyland and into Toontown; the two share a long, open border with each other, with no transition point or hard line of demarcation between them. Riding on a moving walkway, I go past a turnaround mechanism for the Skyway - the big wheel that keeps the cable with all the buckets attached to it moving and allows the buckets to turn around and go back the other way. It is at ground level. The cable is there, has buckets attached to it, and is moving, but there's no loading/unloading station there, just the turnaround mechanism, all by itself.

I walk past Mickey's house. The path through Toontown dead-ends into a section of the queue for the Roger Rabbit ride. I decide I might as well stay there and get in line, now that I'm there; it was only about 4:00 P.M. the last time I looked at the time, so I have plenty of time to enjoy myself. [D'oh! Should have RCed.] I get in line, walking through an opening into the enclosed, indoor space where the queue is. I walk past a group of Cast Members who are singing a barbershop-quartet rendition of "Stray Cat Strut." I wait for them to finish, then tell them that I know where I'm supposed to go to get to the back of the line, and I'm not taking cuts in the line. They understand and let me pass. One of the Cast Members lets me get in line in front of him. This puts me in line directly behind Gary Coleman and some other little people. We introduce ourselves to each other politely; he goes first. I realize that I'm dreaming just as it's ending, when it's too late to do anything; I can already feel my real body.

I'm at a high school, in a room that has chairs in it, but no desks (possibly the drama classroom). One DC is talking at great length to a group of other DCs on the subject of her facial reconstruction surgery. I pull up a chair, joining the group, and listen. I introduce myself to the DC who has been talking. As we're shaking hands, she introduces herself to me as Anne-Marie. She says that she's ugly, and I automatically answer, "No, you're not." [She reminds me a little bit of real-life friend Dawn B. from college, now that I think of it.] She has dirty-blond hair in a ponytail, pale skin, and sunken, brown eyes. She has a black eye on one of them. I know nothing about her appearance is her fault, though, and I like people to be happy with themselves, so that's why I told her she wasn't ugly. In reply to my denial that she's ugly, she says, "Oh, are you another furry?" I answer, "No, but I am an anime fan." I know that she's an anime fan, too. We chat a bit more, and the conversation ends with our agreeing to eat lunch together.

At the end of the conversation, I have another “Oh, yeah, I'm dreaming” moment. The realization comes easily and naturally, the only specific trigger being that I'm in an unfamiliar place. [I had been MILDing again, so when I found myself lucid dreaming, I accepted and realized it readily because it was what I was expecting.] I take a look around. The classroom is irregularly-shaped, high-ceilinged, and sunlit from skylights. Visual clarity is good. I get down on the floor to feel the carpet, which is short, institutional, and gray. I start crawling on the carpet through the room, remarking to myself aloud: “I don't have any energy today. It's my own fault; I should have gone to bed earlier.” My dream body feels just as tired and sluggish as I know my real one does at this early hour of the morning. I've never experienced this in a lucid dream before, so I find it strange, so I comment on it and come up with a logical explanation for it.

“Why am I wearing this heavy backpack, anyway?” I say to myself, because, I realize, I am wearing one. It feels just like the ones I carried in junior high and high school, so it must be full of textbooks. I take it off, one strap at a time, and let it roll off my back and onto the floor. “That's better... a little,” I say. I can feel the absence of its weight, and I feel a little less tired, but not totally back to normal.

There is a full-length mirror on one side of the room. I stand up and go to look at myself in it. My hair is wavy again, and this time, it reaches all the way to my waist. “Oh, cool!” I say. “That's so pretty! I've always wanted it to be like this!” [While it certainly was pretty, I know very well that actually having hair that long would be really impractical... but, yeah, there evidently is a part of my mind that misses having long hair.] I'm wearing a bright sky-blue T-shirt with pink hearts and gold and silver swirls and sparkles on it, and a long, blue denim wraparound skirt. While looking at my reflection in the mirror, I reach for the outer flap of my skirt with my hands and try to touch it, but I can't feel anything there. When I look down at the skirt itself and try again, though, I can feel it. [That's a pretty cool and interesting difference between dreams and reality, and more (anecdotal) evidence that whatever you concentrate your direct perception on, your mind works harder to create.] I woke up after that.

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, Commentary made while awake

I'm at Disneyland, in a large, covered outdoor amphitheater, watching a new stage show that consists of Sorcerer Mickey waving an oversized magician's wand around (the black, cylindrical kind with white tips on both ends). Mini-fireworks, red foil streamers, and red confetti shoot out of the end of the wand in turn while the “Fantasmic!” theme music plays. [The part of the music that played in my dream starts at 1:41.] [I don't think I've ever heard an existing piece of music that clearly in a dream before. Awesome!] A few minutes into the show, the wand stops working. Looking between the seats and the other guests at the floor where Mickey is standing, I can see that there's an extra wand there, waiting to be picked up and used if needed. There's also an entire bundle of replacement wands descending from the ceiling in some sort of holder. The show stalls while a replacement wand is selected. While the show is on hold, Cast Members start giving out free stuff by passing it around through the audience. One of the things that gets passed to me is a small basket full of pin-on plastic name tags that are shaped like, and designed to look like, license plates from Cars. They all have different organization names and titles printed at the top and bottom of the name tag, surrounding a blank space to write your name in. I read each one, looking for the one I like best [I could read them in the dream, but I don't remember what any of them said now], so it takes me forever to choose one.

Dreamskip. I'm in an elevated, landscaped parking lot to the west of my high school campus. I can see the brown car, and I'm walking toward it. I realize that I'm dreaming and decide to get to my car by flying, instead of just walking. I try to take off by kicking off the ground and jumping up at the same time, but it doesn't work very well. The move takes me a lot higher than it would have in reality, maybe a couple feet off the ground, but I jump up and then float right back down again in a symmetrical, parabolic arc. [I don't remember how I did it, but] Somehow, I end up flying. I say, “Screw the car. I'm going to fly.”

I'm flying over the west side of the high school campus, but am now facing toward the center of campus rather than away from it. The view is panoramic and beautiful from up there. However, I find myself only flying sideways and backwards. I can feel myself being pulled in those directions through the air. Why am I not going forward, over the campus? That's the direction I want to go, but apparently, I can't. I don't understand this. I think, “There's going to be a wall behind me for me to kick off of and start flying forward.” The next moment, there is one. I'm being pulled backwards through the air until I feel my feet hit the wall, which stops me. I kick off the wall, propelling myself forward. I fly forward for a little way, but I still find it difficult to do. I end up getting pulled sideways again.

[I think some other stuff happened at this point, but I don't remember it now.]

I wake up and I'm lying down outside somewhere. It looks like a park. It's bright and sunny there. There is a cartoon dog looking at me, dressed up in a Halloween costume to look like some other kind of animal. I say hello to it, calmly and happily. Then it dawns on me, Oh, this is a false awakening. I'm still dreaming. I'm going to wake up for real soon. Then I did wake up for real.

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Side notes:

Last night, I listened to the first 15 minutes of the Subliminal Lucid 3.0 mp3 as I was getting ready for bed and going to sleep, while doing MILD affirmations at the same time. I also had my cardboard-square wristband on my right wrist. I did not listen to the binaural beats file at all. Therefore, I can conclude that the binaural beats file is not a necessity for me to have a lucid dream. I'm pretty sure that the most important factor is the focused affirmations and the desire to have one.

I'm pleased to see that I still have my previously-discovered ability to make things happen or appear in dreams by quietly, passively expecting them to happen or appear. I'm a little disappointed that I didn't have better control over my own flying, but admittedly, I am out of practice. I actually have a large backlog of handwritten notes on my dreams that I haven't had time to type up and put into my dream journal. I'll get around to it when I can.

(Good morning, everybody. I remember one dream from last night.

The character in my dream definitely looks like a person I know from waking life. I don't know him personally, but he goes to certain art events I also attend, including one last night.

He's not at all like the person in the dream. He's really cool and insightful. So I don't know why I dreamt of him being this way.)

Dream #1

I sat at an anime fest, in a place like a basketball arena. It was like everybody who had come to attend the festival were sitting in bleachers, looking down to a stage-like area that would be where the basketball court was. The seating section, as big as in any pro basketball arena, was completely packed.

I sat near the front row. The row I sat in had a big, wooden bannister before it, which kind of reminds me of the front railing in the public area in a court room, or of the balcony area where the public sits during government sessions in capitols.

The area where the basketball court would be was full, probably with artists' booths. But the festival patrons weren't going down there.

We were all watching some presentation given to us by some white man who was apparently a manga artist. The man may have been tall, a little overweight, balding, with red-brown hair, and red-tan skin. He may have been wearing a kind of old, green sweatshirt and blue jeans.

When the man's presentation was finished, the man announced that we could all come down to his booth. He had a black binder full of his manga art, and he informed us that we could each choose our favorite female manga character out of the binder and take the page for free. He might also have said he would sign the page.

An overweight, black man about my age, with thick glasses and wearing a dark blue sweatshirt, sat to my left. He said, probably to me, in a joking-confiding way, "Well, everybody who's in line behind me better get ready to wait a long time. Cause I'm gonna take my time going through that book until I find my favorite anime girl."

Some announcer called each person down by name. They called the man. Right after that, they called me. I stood behind the man as he slowly flipped through the pages of the binder.

The binder was huge, full of pages. The pages were probably all in individual plastic sleeves. The art looked very pencil-y but very professional. Some of the art was in grey pencil. Some was in blue pencil.

The man pulled something out of his pocket that looked like a cell-phone-sized laptop. He checked the time, put the device back in his pocket, and went back to leafing slowly through the pages.

I was trying really hard to think to myself who my favorite manga character was. All I could come up with was Jasmine from Disney's Aladdin. I thought I should be able to come up with a character better than that. But I figured that maybe Jasmine from Aladdin really was my favorite manga character.

The man had flipped all the way to the end of the binder. Then, saying out loud that he didn't see a manga girl he liked yet, he began flipping backward through the binder.

As I watched the man flip through the pages of the binder, I saw a number of drawings of Jasmine. I figured I'd be happy with just about any of those drawings. Seeing all these Jasmine drawings, I was starting to get impatient with the man. I could have had a perfectly fine picture and been gone by now. But this man wouldn't stop taking his turn!

The man pulled his "phone" back out of his pocket and looked at the time again. The phone indicated that he'd been flipping through the book for 20 or 22 minutes by now. (The phone may not have been showing the time. It may actually been timing the man as he flipped through the pages.)

The man nodded approval at the time, put his phone back in his pocket, and began flipping slowly through the binder again. He may have gone all the way backward through the binder and started flipping forward again.

Awake, Non-lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

[These are all my dreams from the past week or so that I hadn't gotten around to typing up and/or posting to this DJ, until now. Most of them are pretty fragmentary because I wrote about them from notes long after the fact. None of them were lucid. My most recent dream, from last night, will be in a separate post, because it's longer.]

Night of November 10-11

I take a lengthy tour of a camp I've been to several times, answering questions asked by people who have never been there before. We're all there for our organization's annual fall conference. There are two cabins up high on a ridge, and a big meeting/dining hall on the low ground, right near the entrance. [I knew it was that camp while I was in the dream, even though it has a completely different layout in reality. This was a pretty long dream, but I can't remember any more details now.]

I'm with Ariel from the Disney version of The Little Mermaid. We're finding our way through a Little Mermaid-themed maze. It's one of several mazes at Walt Disney World.

Night of November 11-12

Mom, P., and I are out to dinner at a restaurant with an outdoor patio. P. asks me if I got any gumbo the last time we were there. I answer that no, Dad ate it all.

I see a two-year-old girl on the street. I walk with her back to my grandparents' house. The front door of the house has two separate sections that can open and close independently of each other. We get into the house by opening the top section of the door first. When we get inside, we discover that my grandparents have a new, upright, Scrabble-like electronic board game in their house. It involves a countdown timer.

Night of November 12-13

I'm in my current house, and I listen to a voice mail from a publishing company. I return their call and talk to them. We try to organize a live interview in 30 minutes' time. They're even willing to give me directions to their office over the phone. We don't schedule the interview for 30 minutes from now, though, because that's not enough time for me to shower and get dressed. They put me on hold for a bit. When they come back, we agree on next week instead. They expect me to bring a completed, polished novel manuscript with me to the interview so we can talk about it, and I don't have one, so I think, Okay. I only have one week to finish one of my novels. My hair is long and in a French braid, and I decide to leave it that way and not wash it before the interview.

I'm with my friend Jane R. She's trying on a cute dress made out of a towel-like, terry-cloth material, and I'm helping her adjust it.

I'm watching an episode of “Rugrats” in which one of the babies helps teach another how to use the potty, and they are found by one of their moms.

When I woke up, I went, Oh. I guess I don't have to have one of my novels finished by next week. Although that would be nice. I think I had that dream about the interview because I was worrying about how I was going to balance writing, studying, and job-hunting just as I was going to sleep.

Night of November 14-15

A Christian band sings a song about their dying dog.

I'm watching the pilot episode of a superhero TV show. The show will have a superhero team consisting of 5 boys and 3 girls. I will be one of the girls on the team. I know this from watching the show's opening.

Night of November 15-16

I'm at a church camp, standing outside the little trailer where the leader of the camp is staying. His wife is sitting on a chair outside the trailer. She tells me that I can't talk to him right now because he's sleeping.

I'm getting ready to leave the camp. I'm in the process of moving my stuff out of the space in and around a twin bed in a cabin, but I'm not done yet. I come back into the cabin to continue packing, and there's another girl already lying in my bed. I tell her that I was using the space, but I'm vacating it and she can have it now, but she has my permission to play with my teddy bears. Three of my teddy bears are lying on the end of the bed [I own all of them in real life]. She answers that no, she'll take the responsibility for cleaning the place up.

A third girl who is also in the room asks me, “Can I at least do your makeup?” I look at my face in the mirror next to the bed and see that it has red blotches on it, and several large zits, including two on the left side of my jawline. I agree to let the girl do my makeup, and we go over to another wall of the room, where there is a dresser with various cosmetics on it. I see that one of the bottles of makeup is labeled inception, and I think, Oh, cool. I didn't know that was the brand name of the makeup I used. [*facepalm* Oh, dear. That really should have clued me in that I was dreaming.] I reach for this bottle, but the girl who offered to do my makeup chastises me, snapping at me to spray myself first with an alcohol-based antibacterial cleanser that comes in a pale teal bottle. I do so, wiping it over my face with a cotton ball.

[This is a catch-up journal entry. This dream is from the night of November 8-9.]

I'm at a live performance that [somehow] involves stuffed animals. The show is over, and everyone in the audience is walking in a long line through the amphitheater-style auditorium to return their stuffed animals.

I go outside to get some kind of chicken and some kind of appetizer from an outdoor food stall. The recipe for the appetizer is on the side of a box of Ritz crackers. One of the steps in the recipe is to cut up some kind of food by pushing the two halves of a kitchen gadget together. The guy running the food stall has this gadget and is working on preparing the appetizer [I think; I'm writing this from notes an entire week after the fact, so I don't really remember]. I ask him, “Zucchini wo tabete mo ii desu ka?” [Translation: “Is it okay if I eat the zucchini?”] I use those exact words because I can't think of the word for “zucchini” in Japanese. [Other than that, though, my dream!Japanese was perfectly correct and accurate to real!Japanese this time.]

[Fragment] Something involving Tinkerbell being able to “grow” to human size, e.g., to be played by a human, in another live performance.

[Fragment] I'm in dream!Las Vegas, passing behind the back sides of several of the large casinos. There is a wide strip of empty desert between me and the buildings.

[Longer dream] I'm in a sort of club with dark-brown wood on all the walls, being followed around by a cartoony-looking blonde girl with pigtails, close to my own age. While I'm there, I get a phone call from the coordinator of our tour group (yes, I'm on a tour as part of a tour group) saying that they're offering me the opportunity to extend the tour for a couple of hours, and if I want to take them up on it, I should meet them at the nearest [some kind of store whose name I can't recall].

So I head for the exit of the club. There are steps leading down from the door of the club onto a large, open space of concrete, which is on a street corner. As I leave the club, I realize that I'm surrounded by several of my favorite actors, who are leaving it at the same time as I am. Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor are there, and I hear Patrick Stewart's voice. I don't speak to them, though, because I don't want to bother them with my fangirling while they're trying to hang out and have fun. I know that I'm in Barcelona, and that the club I'm just leaving is known for being a popular hangout for famous people.

Out on the street corner, I see the aforementioned some-kind-of-store directly across the street from the entrance to the club. It has a green awning with white letters on it. I decide not to go there, though, because I see all the other people from my tour group walking along the street and turning the corner to go up a side street. I decide to stick with the group. The cartoony-looking blonde girl is part of the group, too, but she hasn't come out of the club yet. “She'll catch up,” I say, and start walking up the street with the group. The street goes uphill. We walk several blocks, turn at least one more corner, and end up on an open-air elevated light rail car. I sit in the corner seat on the end of the car that points in the direction it's traveling. It starts moving and goes really fast along the track. It's quite thrilling when it turns a corner, and I cheer and whoop in exhilaration, as if I were on a roller coaster.

Eventually, the track for the vehicle we're in ends abruptly, high above a river that has broad beaches along its banks. Somehow, the vehicle has morphed into one of those circular whitewater rafts, like the ones they have on Grizzly River Run at Disney California Adventure. Our raft shoots off the end of the track and starts falling toward the river. I know that we're not actually falling all that distance, because we're inside a simulator ride. The raft starts tumbling and turning end over end as it falls through the air, but I don't feel the sensation of being turned upside down, and I know that that's because I'm not actually being turned upside down, it's just the video in the simulator ride making it look like I am. Just before our raft hits the water, I realize that it's going to hit with enough force to plunge pretty deeply into the water before floating back to the surface again. I hold my breath just to play along with the simulation, even though I know it is one, and, indeed, there is no real water; I don't feel wet, but I see the deep-green-tinted underwater video all around me. [LOL! Maybe this is what happens when MILDing is only partially successful? ]

[This is a catch-up journal entry. These dreams are from the night of October 30-31.]

My parents and I are visiting Epcot. We're walking to the entrance through a city. There are signs pointing to Epcot and the Magic Kingdom.

I'm at a pizza restaurant. There's an eating contest going on to see how many slices of pizza you can eat in 15 minutes. I have most of a pizza in front of me and start eating it, going through the slices, which aren't very big, quite quickly. When I'm in the middle of my third one, I look at the remaining slices of pizza and try to decide which are the smallest ones, so I can eat them. It occurs to me that this is a form of cheating. I keep track of how much time I have left by looking at the clock up on the wall. [Figures! The one time I actually see an analog clock in a dream, it works correctly! ]

Awake, Non-lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

[This is a catch-up journal entry. This dream is from the night of October 28-29.]

I'm at a meeting of a class I'm in. We seem to be in an upstairs balcony space with cushioned benches along both sides, and no table in the middle. I get out some generic allergy medicine and tell everyone about how effective it is and how often I take it. I go down to the basement of the building we're in to get some water. My Aunt Edie enters the room.

I'm with a group of my peers, and we're all walking to a swimming pool. I'm the only one who's still wearing street clothes, because I didn't bring a swimsuit with me because I don't want to be seen in one; everyone else already has theirs on. As we're walking, I say, “Wait a minute. You guys have seen me in a swimsuit before, haven't you?” I remember when they saw me in my new blue one-piece [that I have in real life, but no one but my family has ever seen me wear it]. I wish I had my swimsuit on now.

My family and I are at Disneyland. The entrance to Star Tours is mostly filled in with blue construction walls, and the space is being used for character meet-and-greets, one of which P. wants to go and see.

Woke up at 5:30, took some notes, went back to bed. I hadn't gone to bed until almost 11, and I now know from personal experience that I have more and better dreams just before getting up. The one I had early this morning was EPIC. Too bad my recall is so spotty, since I waited over an hour to start writing about it.

I'm with a group of my peers, and we're all making our way to a class somewhere. My peers are communicating with our other classmates via cell phone about how to get to the classroom. Someone who's with me says something about explaining to me how to get there. First, we get into an elevator situated on the right side of the entranceway to a building. We have to hold the elevator for one of our other friends/classmates who is approaching. The elevator takes us down into the building complex.

The next thing I remember is being in a little car, still with that same group of friends from the elevator, driving through a parking garage. There's a place where the interior changes from a garage to a white, carpeted room with nurses doing some mundane task in it (there weren't any patients in this room; it was just a sort of prep/administrative area). I say, “We have to drive through that?” I think, This is weird. It's a lot like the stuff I dream about. But I know where we came from and where we're going, so this is real. [*facepalm* Well, to be fair, asking myself how I got to wherever I am is the RC I've been using the most often lately.] The open space in the middle of the room is wide enough for our little car, and as we get into the room further, I see that the path turns to the left and goes out of the room again. We travel through the room on that path, which leads to an outdoor garden patio. There is an old man out there whose irises are all red, reclining on a hospital bed, and I talk to him.

[Scene change.] I'm on a two-lane road that runs in a ring around a huge rock that sticks out of the ocean. It looks a lot like Morro Rock, only it's two or three times as big, both in height and in circumference. The road is elevated up out of the ocean, and is built out from the rock, so there is an open space of ocean between the road and the rock. The road comes up to about a third or a half the height of the rock. It's nighttime, but I can still see everything clearly even with no apparent light sources [just moonlight, I guess]. The ocean waves are surging up unusually high, so that they break over the sides of the elevated roadway. There are at least a couple hundred other people walking on the roadway; we're all coming back from a camping trip out on the rock [I think]. We're all walking on the sidewalk near the outside-edge railing when the waves start, and I watch at least two successive people fall over the rail into the ocean and start drowning. It occurs to me that this is a chance to watch someone die, something I'll probably never have another chance to do, but I can't bring myself to actually watch. As the waves get higher, I step back from the railing so that I'm standing in the middle of the road, where the waves won't hit me, and start calling out to the others to do the same. No one listens. I think, I am going to die, but in a very detached way, with no fear or, for that matter, any emotion at all. The incoming waves rebounding off the big rock start to create smaller, but still scary waves that break over the inside-edge railing. My parents come out of the crowd and find me, and I'm glad to see that they're okay. Eventually, most of the crowd makes it to a tour bus that's waiting near the place where the two-lane elevated road widens and connects to the roads on the mainland, so everyone can get on it and be taken away from the rock safely.

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I woke up just before 5:00 A.M. last night and was disappointed that I'd slept through most of the night, couldn't remember any dreams, and wasn't going to have time for another full sleep cycle before the rest of the house started getting up at 5:30. I decided to try to go back to sleep anyway, focusing once again on MILD affirmations and visualizations. It worked.

At some point between 5:00 and 6:40 [when I woke up for real], I have a false awakening where I'm in my current room and my bed is parallel to the closet doors [not perpendicular to them, as it is in reality]. I'm lying on the floor between the bed and the closet, all tangled up in my blankets. [I'm not sure when this happened relative to my other dreams, so I'm just sticking it here at the beginning.]

I'm looking at the results of a Google Image Search for something involving the terms “japan” and [I think] “front.” Almost all the photos that are coming up are of cherry blossoms, but one of them is of autumn leaves. I say something along the lines of, “There are about ten hundred billion pictures of cherry blossoms, but almost no pictures of the leaves.”

The next thing I know, I'm lying on my back in a wide expanse of grass. Several big, flat leaves in bright red, yellow, and green gently float down onto me from the nearest tree. The sky is blue and the weather is sunny, clear, and calm. There are trees spread out all over this grassy area, all with leaves that are turning autumn colors. Somewhere in here, I recognize that I'm dreaming, but there's no specific moment that triggers this realization. Saito is there with me, and I want to show him a seed pod from a magnolia tree. So, one comes rolling down the hill toward me, and I catch it. It's bigger than it would be in real life, and I say so when I show it to him. He says to me, “It's your mind.” Indeed; by now I'm not only aware that I'm dreaming, but I've caught on to the fact that this is my mind's rendering of what autumn is. I look around for an acorn, but find none. I say, “Of course there aren't any acorns – all my trees are are liquid-ambers.” [That's because that's what most of the trees in the neighborhood where I grew up were.]

This big, tall, flying guy in a blue costume with matching blue makeup, who looks like he came straight from a Cirque du Soleil production, comes and lifts me up in his arms and flies away with me. As I'm being lifted off the ground, the thought of hot-air balloons crosses my mind, and [for some inexplicable reason], I ask myself, “Which city in Canada is the balloon city?” The blue flying guy flies us through a series of very large, rectangular rooms with movie projection screens on all the walls and the ceiling. At first, the screens are showing immersive views of natural vistas in Canada, accompanied by some appropriately dramatic and inspiring music that I don't recognize. I'm not afraid, because I recognize that the movie screens and the guy flying me through them are all part of the Disney theme park attraction I'm now on. The attraction is kind of like Soarin' meets the CircleVision movie at Canada's pavilion in Epcot. The film footage is filmed in a style very much like that of Soarin'; it's obviously intended to make it look like you're flying, except that the shots are designed for the big rectangular screens. The film in the last room of the attraction shows the transition over the border into the U.S., and flies us over Mt. Rushmore and then under a waterfall projected on the back wall. We go under the waterfall by going through an opening in the wall.

Once I'm through the opening, I'm standing on the ground, and the blue flying guy is gone. I recognize the place where I'm standing as the interior of the Snow White's Scary Adventures attraction from Disneyland. There are no ride vehicles anywhere to be seen, though. The Evil Queen is just a little way in front of me. I approach her, and she turns around and says something scary [just like on the real ride]. I scream really loudly and high-pitched. For a few moments, terror completely overtakes all my awareness. While screaming, I think, Wake me up! Wake me up! hoping that the dream will end. [Remarkably,] It doesn't this time. I finish screaming, and observe that the dream hasn't ended, I'm still standing there, and the Evil Queen is also still standing there, turned to face the path where the ride vehicles should be, but is now motionless and silent, as she has finished saying her prerecorded phrase. So I start punching her in the face. I do this repeatedly, but I don't feel anything. While I'm beating her up, I shout at her: “You're an AAT*! I carry more complicated devices than you around on my back every day!” Which is true; she may be computer-controlled, but my laptop is much higher-tech. No longer afraid of her, I walk along the path and into the next scene of the attraction, where there is another AAT figure of the Evil Queen [this is the case in reality, too, but the track layout there is completely different]. This one turns around and starts to shriek something at me to try and scare me, but her words stop and peter out halfway through, because she can see that I'm not afraid of her. I continue walking through the scene. [*My personal shortening of “Audio-Animatronic™,” the robotic technology used to create characters in many attractions at Disney theme parks. I think I shouted more things than this, but this is all I remember shouting now.]

The next thing I know, I'm outside again, but surrounded by buildings this time. I decide to rub my hands together, only to discover that they're really hot. I realize that that's because my real hands are really hot under my blankets. That's the last thing I remember from that dream, but it seemed to take me a little longer to wake up fully. When I did, my face broke into a smile and then a laugh when I remembered the encounter with the Evil Queen. In reality, I had been pretty scared of those moments on that ride when I was a kid, and I still dislike them now. I'm really, really proud of this dream. I think facing something/someone you've been afraid of for a long time and standing up to it is quite an achievement, and a good, worthwhile use of the ability to lucid dream.

Awake, Non-lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

[I remember three dreams from last night, the last one REALLY long and complicated. It wasn't lucid, unfortunately, but it was still pretty awesome.]

[Fragment] I'm at a mall. Even though it's late at night, there are still people approaching the entrances, mostly to get to the McDonald's and the Starbucks that are near one of the entrances.

[Somewhat longer dream] I'm at Disneyland, going on Star Tours. There's a really, really long, elaborate queue for it, but I just walk straight through, because there are hardly any people waiting for it. The first part of the ride is a standard spinner, which is up on a platform with a big painting of Buzz Lightyear and his spaceship on it. “Why would they do that?” I think when I see it. [Sigh. I really need to make serious reality-checking a stronger habit.] After we (the guests) get off the spinner, we walk back across the platform to the entrance to the next part of the queue, where we are handed a seatbelt to take with us when we go and board our actual Starspeeder, which has four rows of four seats each. I try to get into the seat furthest to the right in either the second or third row, but I can't; it's too narrow for me. There's another empty seat in one of the rows behind me, but everyone else has already sat down, so to get there, I have to climb over everyone else. I accidentally kick one person in the head and just miss another in the process.

[Really long dream begins here] I see what look like full-page panels from a comic book: each one is a cityscape at night, and there is a glow of sunlight on the horizon. The point of view moves, moving toward the horizon each time, but every time it passes over the horizon and 'turns the page,' there's still the same distant glow of light on the new horizon.

After the fourth or fifth repetition of this, the scene transforms into three-dimensional live-action all around me. I'm still me, but I know that I'm imagining myself into the universe of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” which is what this place is. I'm in a room, and there are two other people there with me, a man with dark-brown hair and stubble and a blonde woman. They're both supporting characters from the show. [I knew what these characters' names were in the dream, but I cannot remember them now, so I will refer to them as “The Guy” and “The Girl.”]

Outside, it's now daytime, but there's a thick white haze covering the entire sky. This has been going on for several days, and it will allow vampires to be out and about during the day.

The Guy, The Girl, and I all go to a class at a school. I'm not playing the role of any particular character from the show; I'm just trying to blend in as a generic student. We enter a classroom, and all the students hand their homework in to the teacher before sitting down. I try to walk straight to one of the old-fashioned, dark wood desks and sit down, but the teacher grabs my arm and asks me, “Did you do your homework?” I say, “No, I don't have it.” Of course I haven't done it; I'm not actually a resident of this fictional universe. Then it occurs to me to try reaching into my backpack, which is sitting on a chair, and expecting my homework to be there in order to obtain it. I try it, but it doesn't work. [Yes, that's right. In this dream, I remembered to apply a technique I learned here on DV, even though I hadn't realized that I was dreaming. My mind is weird.]

Later, The Guy, The Girl and I are all in a car. We're talking about how I'm going to leave soon (or something is going to happen soon), but it's all right, because afterward, The Girl is going to be just the same. “In fact, she'll be whatever you want,” I say to The Guy. I'm the only one who knows that the role of The Girl is actually being played by Bebe, a fictional character I imagined up years ago [both in this dream and in my waking life, by the way], and when I stop imagining myself into the Buffyverse and leave it, Bebe will leave it, too, because she's part of my imagination.

I look out the window of the car and see, in the distance on the top of a hill, the silhouette of a big roller coaster and Ferris wheel. I think, “That must be Six Flags Magic Mountain.”

The Guy, who is driving the car, says something along the lines of, “Are those guys still following us?” We look into the rearview mirror and see four guys walking behind our car. Our car is driving pretty slowly, because we're on a narrow street with lots of other cars on it that runs through town, but still, if those guys managed to follow our car on foot all this way and through all this traffic, they must be ghosts. The Guy shoots a fireball at one of them, but he dodges it, even calling his attack (“Ghost Dodge!”). There is a fight out on the street, and The Guy, The Girl, and I all get killed by the ghosts.

Having been killed, I wake up in some unidentified location. [Not really! I was still dreaming, but as usual with FAs, I didn't realize it was false until after I woke up for real.] Waking up upon being killed is exactly what I expected to happen. I know that that particular dream/imaginary place isn't supposed to exist anymore – I was the only one dreaming/imagining it and I just got thrown out of it by being killed, so it should have just collapsed – but I think, “Screw the rules, I have imagination,” and imagine my way right back into it. [Note that although the rules being screwed here are the ones from Inception, there was no sign of one of their dream-sharing devices during this FA – everything was powered entirely by my imagination.]

I'm back in the Buffyverse, but not in the same place I just left; I'm walking around in an unpaved plaza. Passing by a particular cafe, I find my Starbucks travel mug [yes, the one I have in real life] standing on the ground outside the shop, being used to collect the water dripping off the roof. The lid is lying next to it, and both the lid and the cup are all cracked and broken from being left outside for such a long time. I say something along the lines of, “Did I leave this thing out here for the last few days?” to the cafe owner. Then I pick up the cup and the lid, take them with me, and continue walking. I find several small, brick structures with audio-animatronic characters in them, activated by motion sensors. These structures are actually trash cans; I use one of them to throw away the broken cup.

The next thing I remember is being in my old townhouse apartment in Florida. I discover that the two sheets of notebook paper I set down on the couch a few minutes ago, the ones with notes from my dreams written on them, are soaking up liquid. I pick them up and see that there's punch spilled on the couch. Annoyed, I say, “I have to read these.” My roommate, Laya, is there, and the following conversation ensues.

Laya: Someone threw a cup of punch at the couch.
Me: We don't have any paper towels in the house, do we?
Laya: No.

So I go over to the kitchen sink and get a cloth towel.

Laya: You should pull your weight around here.

I start trying to wipe the spilled punch off the couch. It's a foldout couch, and I've been sleeping on it. An unidentified male friend of ours is looking around upstairs and sees that none of the bedrooms up there are being used. I'm alerted to this fact when he calls down the stairs to us.

Unidentified Male Friend: (Emiko) never sleeps here. [he used my real first name in the dream]
Me (yelling back): Yes, I do! In fact, this is the only place I've slept at all since we've been in Florida this go-round! It's just that I sleep downstairs!

When I woke up for real, I commented, “The kitchen sink isn't up against the back wall, and since when do any of those apartments have foldout couches?” [Also, “this go-round?” Apparently, in this dream, not only had I gone back to spend another year there, but so had several of my friends from that year. Finally, my memory for spoken dialog from dreams has been really bad up until now, but this time it was really good. That's pretty cool.]