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This dream fragment tricked my memory: I thought I remembered already writing it down, but I clearly did not!

This dream fragment during nap time was about dreams and censorship, and how dreams elude censorship, and how dreamviews is also free speech.

I think I remembered more than that right after the nap, but as I said my mind tricked me. Out of some reason both this and the previous dream fragment show that my subconcscious mind does not want to bother with writing down dream fragments any more, which at this point in my dream recall I cannot afford! Yikes!

My dreaming mind wants to know why bother with dream fragments. My waking self is shocked that this is not clear.

Too groggy now to type.

EDIT:
This dream fragment indicates that my subconscious mind is becoming impatient with dream journal and dream recall, and would like to cut some corners. My conscious mind says "No!" First of all right now most of the dreams I remember are dream fragments, and it's still way too early to take dream recall for granted and not to work on it as hard as I can. Also a lot of my dream fragments have been gems in my opinion: I greatly enjoy and treasure them, so not focusing on recalling and writing down all dream fragments would be a bad idea.

Oh this is so fustrating. I just had it! And it was cool, and kind of a combination of previous dream fragment, but different. I thought I had stabilized it, but then when I shifted and got IPad it was gone!

Definitely airplanes, this time military ones (after the fragment earlier tonight the mental image I got was of a large commercial airplane). Definitely also standing in for dreams.

Well since I can't remember what, I will improvise: dreams are like airplanes because ...

Flights of fancy
Flying is common in dreams

Why military airplane this time?

Getting ready to fight? The enemy? Myself? My low self-esteem (which is not nearly as low as it was two weeks ago)

I don't know, don't remember. Argh!

In this dream I remember discussing with someone about dreaming. He or she (don't remember) was saying that they need more dreams of X (unfortunately forgot what between wake up and writing). I remember saying that I have lots of that in my dreams, and suggesting they borrow some from me. Sort of like someone borrowing sugar from a neighbor.

Upon waking I found the concept of borrowing dream elements from others to be an interesting fancy that my dreaming mind came up with. The X could have been airplanes I think because whenever I try to recall what I get a mental image of an aircraft. Though in my dreams I do not actually dream of air planes, so it would be hard to lend my dreamed air planes to someone else. LOL

Upon waking my iPad brightness wouldn't adjust, so I did an RC but I seem to be awake. Still feel very groggy though.

I remember in this non-lucid dream fragment realizing that in dreams it matters less what my mind finds objectionable, but it matters mor that My mind still have issues with the dream.

I dreamed about how successful I am at fishing and at dreaming. My mind may be new to this hobby but do I expect success right away?

In this dream fragment I remember looking for non-catatonic fish in the petstore, but during the dream also thinking that fish may stand for dreams (!).

Note: This was not a lucid dream, but just another example of a dream about dreaming, which I have been having a lot of.

Also note that Fishkeeping is another hobby of mine, and looking for new fish is a regular occurrence right now (about once a month), since I am in the process of slowly stocking my aquarium. When looking for new fish, one looks for lively ones, and thus non-catotonic kind of makes sense for fish, though it is an odd choice of words.

However if fish stands for dreams, and the choose off odd word matters, here is an online definition of catatonic from word.com website:

"1 : of, relating to, being, resembling, or affected by schizophrenia characterized especially by a marked psychomotor disturbance that may involve stupor or mutism, negativism, rigidity, purposeless excitement, and inappropriate or bizarre posturing

2 : characterized by a marked lack of movement, activity, or expression"

It makes sense that I would look for dreams that are non-catatonic!

Frqgment: In my dream a real life acquaintance mine whom I usuelly see about twice a year were in a dream competition of sorts.

She was trying to learn how to "suck out" the nightmare part out of dreams.

I was trying to learn how to "suck out" lucidity out of dreams.

Upon waking I was struck by the odd use of the word "suck out". Did we mean like a succabus?

Meanwhile, my son was the one who had woken me up (at 2:30am) saying that his leopard and some other plush toy were stuck together and he did not know how it happened. I suggested he bring them to me, and I would look into it. He said he did not know where they were. Realizing that what was bothering was probably a dream fragment, I suggested he go back to sleep, and we would look for them in the morning.

This dream fragment was about dreaming. Upon waking it occurred to be that it was a chicken or egg type dilemma. But that that's all I remember.

Even though I was careful not to move as I remembered this dream, and I thought I had it, but when I did move, the fragment became even more fragmented.

This was another dream about dreaming. It started out with a question asked on DV. I don't remember the question but it was asked by someone experienced for the sake of helping teach beginners. It had to do with differentiation of dreams, categorization of them.

I remember thinking that the distinction was easy for me, and answering the question.

This was not a lucid dream.

EDIT: after more sleep around 7am did not remember additional dream or fragment, but remembered a bit more from this one:

Question: Experienced dreamers, how do you change entries in a dream journal to help prepare for lucid dreaming? (Note: Upon waking this question is weird to me and has no clear and easy answer, but in my dream I thought it was easy.)

My dream answer: Focus on dream signs. Do not concentrate on what makes this dream unique. (Note: I know there was more to my dream answer, but that's all I remember.)

I believe I remembered the dream that I forgot earlier tonight, and I remembered the Significant Insight that I had reached before. This dream is actually about dreaming even though it may not appear to be!

In my dream I was an actress in theatre, just starting out. And an experienced actor had taken my under his wing and was showing me the ropes. During a break in rehearsal I had been chatting with another less experienced actor. My self-appointed mentor saw this, and afterward took me aside and reprimanded me, saying "Why are you wasting your time with that nobody? To succeed in this trade, It matters who your connections are. It matters who you are seen with, and he is not someone you want to be seen with." I rebutted him with "I am not in this for the usual reasons: I am not in it for the money nor for the fame, and I choose who I hang with."

While analyzing this dream after it happened it occurred to me that this dream was about why I am putting this effort into dreaming now, why I want to lucid dream, why I am here at DV:

I am not doing it for the usual reasons. Or maybe these are the usual reasons for some people, who knows. An important motivator for me is to regain my self-dignity and self-respect, to regain control of my dreams so that I do not do what my subconscious tells me to do. I get to choose who I hang with. For me the an important motivator for lucid dreaming this time around is moral reasons: I want to do what I perceive as being right (which of course does not mean I won't do something like shoot someone in a lucid dream because it feels right to do so , I need to do empowers me, and I need to not let those more experienced than me dictate what is right for me. This is what attracts me to DV is because it seems to be a place where people generally support this kind of attitude, and do not try to impose their way on others.

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Friday March 1 2013 I took NyQuil for my cold, and went to bed early. Around 8:30pm I woke up. I remember having some profound insight into my dream recall or something like that. I remember feeling very self-satisfied with my progress and how it was not just a fragment this time. After all this patting myself on the back, I almost fell back asleep without writing anything in my dream journal. I startled myself back awake in order to write it down, and it was all gone, except for this.

I have been struggling with basic dream recall, but I am up to at least remembering a fragment every time. This one made me grin.

First some background: my other hobby is Fishkeeping, and in Fishkeeping there is a practice called "culling" which is the euthenizing of fish that for example would die any way (putting them out of their misery).

In this dream, I was culling dreams. I was evaluating and sorting them to figure out which are not worthy of recall, etc. this was definitely not a lucid dream, and I just remember a fragment of it, but it made me smile, and hope that my mind is on its way to re-embark on this lucid dreaming adventure.

Meanwhile, in High School (6:59)

I'm sitting at a table in a room filled with tables, working on an assignment, when I see someone out of the corner of my eye. It's my mom, sitting at another table, trying to catch my attention by waving something. Exasperated, I acknowledge her, but she wants to start a full blown conversation. I pack up my things and say, apologetically, that "I just can't right now." Predictably, Mom gets furious. I walk over to her table (Dad's there too) and try to explain that I'm old enough now that she can't expect me to share every detail of my life with her. My voice sounds like maybe I'm about to start crying. Nothing doing, though. Looks like I'll have to pack my own lunch and find my own way to school, today.

I go back downstairs and check the time. It's later than I thought! Forget packing a lunch, I'll barely have time to shower and get dressed. I also think I should do my laundry, but when I look into the basket, I realize that I have more clean clothes than I thought. No need to bother, then. But later, when I actually go to choose an outfit, I have trouble finding clean shorts. I'll have to do my laundry tomorrow, which will be harder since it's a weekday and I'll be busy.

Dad drives me to school. I'm sitting all the way in the back of the car, and I'm surprised to see some orange traffic cones passing by my window. Some road work near the left turn just before the high school's parking lot. Looks like Dad's doing what he's supposed to be doing.

I take a seat in the classroom. I've decided that while I'm back home, I may as well sit in on some Spanish classes at my old high school to get in some extra practice. The teacher, a dark-haired man, begins the class by introducing himself and explaining about the course textbooks. Apparently he wrote one of them--part of a series of textbooks on a variety of subjects, all published in the same format but written by various guest authors. At one point, the teacher switches to English for a bit. His accent is kind of cute. Then we go around the class and introduce ourselves. I don't know anyone there, obviously. When it comes to be my turn, I explain that I'm actually a college student. There's something of a commotion from another student in the class, and I wonder if maybe he's doing the same thing as I am and I should have recognized him? That would be embarrassing.

At one point, the teacher's been talking about something, and he asks the class which of us consider ourselves to be "a member of that crowd?" I'm one of the few who raises a hand. A few minutes later, I realize that he might have been asking which of us have had sex, but with so much circumlocution that I didn't realize it at the time. Oops. Well, if so, I'm sorry for misrepresenting myself, but there's not much I can do about it now. Besides, I'm in college, they'll have expected it of me, anyway.

The teacher starts a presentation, and everyone puts away their drinks. Except one is still on the table, and one of the students accidentally knocks it over, spilling soda pop everywhere. The teacher interrupts his lecture to go find cleaning supplies, and I try to help out by mopping up some with a napkin. I hope that my helpfulness is a mark of being more mature than the majority of students in the classroom. But the teacher holds out his hand to throw away the napkin for me, and I let him take it, even though it sort of undermines what I was doing. Anyway, the napkin wasn't very absorbent, so now there's pop on my hands. I need to find a sink. I find one in the hall only a few feet away from the classroom.

A lot of the students are handing out out here until the presentation starts again. I look around and see an office whose name plaque carries a very strange title. I wonder if high schools can hire people to do things as strange as that because they're government-funded. Someone walks past me and into the office, and I wonder. I also talk to one of the students outside. They tell me they wanted to go to the big concert today, because it featured a big presentation about Mormonism. I had heard about the concert, but I didn't know it was about Mormonism, and now I'm kind of sad I missed it, too. [IRL: The concert is this afternoon, and it has nothing to do with Mormonism.]

When we go back into the classroom, there's a stage at one end, complete with curtains and a podium. A man at the podium tells us that as a surprise, Mitt Romney has come with his campaign team to give a presentation. After this introduction, a few people walk out on stage. I'm not sure which one is Romney [although IRL obvs I know what he looks like], and the introduction kind of trailed off, so it's not surprising that the applause is slow to start. It's also very quiet, and peters out quickly. One of the campaign people says "Wow," loudly and sarcastically. Well, I'm not sure what Romney expected. We're mostly Democrats here at my university.

They launch into the presentation, which is an animated, rhetorical speech delivered while the campaigners circle and crisscross the room, making sure to invite each audience member personally to agree with what they're saying. It makes me feel a bit uncomfortable. Somewhere, I've found a pillow, and I clutch it to my stomach like it's some kind of security blanket. I stare at the floor, only half listening. I feel like I've read this argument before, somewhere, anyway. Something about how the Democrats are trying to convince you not to vote Republican because of what the Republicans /won't/ do, but when election day comes, you need to vote based on what /will/ happen. And so on. One of the campaigners notices my aloofness, so he gets up in my face and tries to engage me by giving me a manly punch on the shoulder. I look at him expressionlessly and say in a carefully controlled voice, "Please don't do that again." The man puts on a mock-surprised face and looks around at people nearby as if to invite them to start bullying me, but in the end he just leaves.

From behind, a woman crooks an elbow around my neck and good-naturedly shakes me a bit. Addressing herself to someone I can't see, she asks, "Is this called 'egging?'" (as in, "egging someone on"). Ah, so she's playfully imitating the campaigner. The person says yes, it is, so she laughs and releases her hold on my neck. Pressing herself against my side, she murmurs, "There's someone touching you right now, and you don't seem to mind." Bemused, I try to think of a socially proper way to respond that it's okay because she's a woman. But before I can, she lets go of me, and I can finally turn to get a good look at her. To my delight, I definitely recognize her from somewhere. While I'm snapping my fingers and trying to place where that was, she just introduces herself again as [XXXX]. Surprised, I tell her I remember her as a campaign assistant for [XXXX]. She laughs and says no, then dances off to the other side of the room with another girl. I'm reminded of the friendship between Meekakitty and Nanalew. Suddenly, the dream ends, and I wake up. For a moment, I think that it's only been about two and a half hours since I fell asleep. But that must have been a FA, because it was more like six and a half.

Supermarket (8:15) (LUCID)

I'm in a supermarket, and at some level I'm aware that this is a dream. As I walk through the crowded checkout lanes, I look closely at all of the faces that I pass. Each one is unique and distinctive and interesting, and I wonder whether they all come from people I passed on the street in waking life. I read somewhere on a forum that that's where they come from. The dream seems pretty stable, but I feel compelled to keep moving, or else it will fall apart. I walk up to a cashier and ask her for the credit card that a customer just gave to her. "Sure, one moment," she says, and then she hands me something, but it's not a credit card. I leave the checkout lanes and continue through the store. It crosses my mind that this counts as a lucid dream. Cool; I haven't had one of those in a while.

I decide to call Mom on my cell phone. I worry that maybe I'm actually sleep-calling her in waking life, too, so I try to think of conversation topics that wouldn't sound too bizarre. Meanwhile, I'm still walking quickly down one side of the store, looking around at everything. The store's wide entrance is coming up on my left. I can't think of anything else to talk about, and Mom seems more confused than anything, so I just say goodbye to her and hang up. I leave the store.

Somebody's angry at me for turning out into the road in front of him, but I'm sure I wouldn't have done it close enough that you would actually call it "cutting him off." I decide to play out the scenario to see what actually happened. I get in the car and start driving toward the hilltop road that passes near the supermarket's parking lot. Indeed, there's almost a solid line of cars coming that direction, with one little space in the middle that perhaps I could grab if I timed it right. But there's something strange about the road configuration that makes me think I wouldn't be able to accelerate quickly enough to avoid pissing someone off. Okay, better to avoid that.

I stop the car and get out. There's a mid-sized lake to the right of the road with a big yacht anchored near the shore. A bunch of sailors are walking around over there, presumably on shore leave. I start walking along the narrow path between the lake and the side of the supermarket, going over to see what's going on. But then one of the sailors starts walking along the path toward me, shouting something about me not being allowed to come this way. An irritating fellow, but only doing his job, I suppose.

I keep walking, but suddenly I need to poop. I remember how in the past this has always made me panic and wake up, only to find that I didn't have to use the bathroom at all. Well, I know better, now, so I'll just go to the bathroom in the dream. I squat in the middle of a grassy lawn and start doing my business. The sailor is still walking towards me and shouting, so I interrupt him to warn him that even though I've avoided behaving "beaverishly," if he keeps it up, I may have to. (Apparently, in this situation, "behaving beaverishly" means that I'll strip totally naked just to annoy him even more.) Going to the bathroom is taking a long time. Some of the sailors are running close nearby. I hope for their sake that they don't accidentally step in any of the poop. The sailor still won't leave me alone, so I carry out my threat by pulling my T-shirt over my head. This makes my vision go completely black. Oh, darn.

I wake up to a confusion of covers. After a moment, I figure out that somehow I've come into a squatting position. Uh oh. Looking down, I see that my worst fears have come true--there's quite a bit of poop on my covers. Despairingly, I try to wrap up some of it using the sheets, but it's not enough. This will be hard to deal with. Then it occurs to me that there's something distinctly nightmarish about this situation, and I tell myself exasperatedly, "Come on, wake up for real." And I do. [No, I never did have to go to the bathroom. Why my dreams always do this to me, I don't know.]

Pop Quiz (9:42) (LUCID)

A smart math major I know is pacing the front of a classroom. He's quizzing me about details from my previous dreams tonight. I know I definitely missed a few when I wrote them in my dream journal, so this will be a perfect opportunity to recover them--my unconscious itself is telling me what they were! He mentions something about a homework assignment, and a few different people named Erik. [Ironically, I can't remember the details of these details.] It occurs to me to wonder if he's even telling the truth. I have no recollection of the events of which he speaks, so he could easily be inventing them, and I'd never know. Still, I wake up and write them in my dream journal. Only, it was a FA, and when I actually wake up, I can't really remember them any more.

This particular Dream was very, long yet extremely simplistic in nature.

I was running very fast, at a very high tempo, much like an anime ninja would run. Arms back jumping over people, through lawns, going in and out of first person and third person perspective, which is not unusual in my dreams.

The neighborhood I was running through was my old neighborhood that I grew up in. You head south about a mile and there was my elementary school, you head north about a mile and there was my high school. In this dream I was running away from an old house that I used to live in heading south right past my old elementary school. I remember it being the last thing I saw before I woke up.

I'm writing about this particular dream mainly because it has a large significance on a very troubling time I had in this place. This neighborhood reminds me of the worst period in my life. The fact that I was running away from the house which these remembered horrors came from tells me two things: 1) My Lucid dreaming techniques are improving and 2) This particular dream has a lot of significance with my dream research.

My dream research has led me to the theory that we remember EVERYTHING, yet only a portion is stored in our subconsciousness and the rest in our consciousness. Reality and our consciousness 5 senses fill in the holes/fragments that our conscious mind seems to "forget."

On the other side reality is not a factor on our subconsciousness because we’re very stationary when we enter the subconsciousness. With these facts in mind we are stuck with only what the subconsciousness has stored. Our 5 senses do work in our subconsciousness however because most of us use the crutch that is reality to guide our senses to make sense of our world, using our 5 senses in our subconscious world is very foreign and downright difficult to learn to use.

Also! Our subconscious is where our consciousness "hides" very very bad and traumatic event memories in order to protect our physical well being.

Morning Showers

Groggily, I stumble to the showers of the hotel where I'm staying. I can't seem to think straight or keep my eyes open for more than a split second, so it's a moment before I realize I'm standing under the water, holding a paperback book. A book! Quickly, I walk a few steps away and set the book on a shelf, hoping the water damage won't be too bad. I go back to the shower and stare at the wall for a few seconds. Suddenly I wonder if I'm wearing my glasses--are those its rims that I can see around the edge of my vision? I put a hand to my face. Yep, I'm wearing them. Wow, I must be really tired. I take off the glasses and put them in a basket nearby. I continue with my shower for a few minutes, but something's bothering me. I feel like there's some part of the showering process that I've forgotten, maybe something that I forgot to wash. I look down at myself. I'm wearing pants. Argh.

I [falsely] wake up in a hotel room. While I'm still in bed, my sister comes in to talk with me about lucid dreaming. I tell her that in a dream last night, I was scrolling through tumblr. She seems surprised, but she believes me. "So there really is a tumblr in there," she says. ("There" refers to "the dreaming world.") She's been trying lucid dreaming herself, but apparently she still has trouble believing how closely dreams can imitate real life. Right now she seems to be imagining all of the things she could do while she's asleep, all of the stuff she could get done. "There's so much time," she says. "You could fill out forms." She's always seemed rather results-oriented to me.

My sister starts getting ready for the day, but I keep lying in bed, thinking about how much I DON'T want to take a shower. I know I'm being lazy; I just really, really do not want to take a shower. Internally, I wonder how long it's been since I turned off my alarm at 7:00. [IRL: I meant to get up at seven, but when my alarm went off, I decided I was just too tired.] Out loud, my sister says in a surprised voice that it's already 11:00. Dang, that's late. It's time for me to get moving, whether I want to or not.

I enter the long, windowed hallway that leads from my room to the showers. Sullenly, I consider taking off my clothes and walking there naked. It seems an appropriate punishment for the world that made me get up when I didn't want to. But I don't do it. I reach the end of the hallway, which dead-ends in a pair of double doors. Confused, I realize I must have missed the turn. When I start going back the way I came, I look through a window and see a dome-shaped structure off to the side of the hallway up ahead. That must be the showers. I vaguely recall that the architecture looked dome-shaped from the inside.

Soon after, I actually do wake up. I'm amused to note that I'm actually NOT strongly opposed to the idea of taking a shower. And it's only a little after 8:00.