All DJ Entries

Non-lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

Night of December 5-6

I'm attending a service at an unfamiliar church. I'm in the choir. The bishop is there, and he shushes the choir, ending the song we're singing early. Two other famous people are there: Arnold Schwarzenegger and H. [a writer who is on the Internet and likely to search for himself]. The two of them and the bishop pose for a group picture. H. is wearing a big, floppy USC baseball cap. We all tell him to turn it around and wear it so that the logo is showing, or else there's no point in having it on at all. He actually looks more like my real-life friend Victor K. than he looks like H.

The service also involves honoring some military people. There is a man in a very highly decorated, green military dress uniform there.

Night of December 6-7

[This was a long, fun, interesting dream with a really cool setting and particularly good recall, especially for dialog.]

This dream is set within the world of a TV show called “Cruiser Island.” Cruiser Island is one of a small group of small, tropical islands, very close together, located just off the coast of Florida and connected to each other and to the mainland by bridges. One of its neighboring islands is called Alo Island. There is a large, single-story building there that says “Alo Island Public Hospital” on the sign on the front.

House #1 is located on Cruiser Island. My family is hosting a sort of sleepover there. I'm in my bedroom, in the top bunk (which is mine), wearing pajamas, ready to go to bed. A boy who's maybe 8 or 9 years old climbs up the end of the bunk bed to get into the top bunk, and we talk. He says he's afraid of some kind of wild animal, and I reassure him by saying that we're in the middle of downtown, and no wild animals are coming here. The rest of the conversation goes something like this:

Me: What's your name?
Boy: Thomas.
Me: Yeah, I thought you kinda looked like a Thomas. I'm (Emiko). (we shake hands)
Thomas: You know that guy who sings with the Parish girls... I'm his younger brother.
Me: Oh, you're Dom's brother!

I decide I enjoy spending time with kids.

[Note: In the dream, when Thomas mentioned his older brother, I knew who we were talking about and knew that he shared a first name with, but wasn't, the protagonist from Inception. In real life, both brothers sang with the Parish girls, but only once, two days ago. They also have different first names in real life.]

I'm standing on the floor next to the foot end of the bunk bed. There are two Vietnamese women, a mom and a grandma, who are sleeping on the lower bunk. Two more Vietnamese moms are standing around in the room and in the hallway, along with a whole bunch of their kids. One of the moms says something about how she doesn't have magical Japanese eyes [I don't even know.] and then sternly commands all the boys to go and brush their hair, now, so that they can go to bed. All the girls have their hair in braids or pigtails, so they'll need their moms' help to comb it out. I think, With all these people in the house for the sleepover and all this excitement, my sleep cycle is getting completely thrown off. I'm not going to get a chance to try to lucid dream tonight. That's too bad. [And yet, I still somehow managed not to realize that I was dreaming at this point. I laughed when I remembered this thought upon waking up.]

I go into the bathroom to toss a few of my stray hairs into the trash can. I don't just toss them on the floor because of all the guests we have in the house. While I'm in the bathroom, I see that my gold cross necklace has fallen into the toilet. Also, I find some bedbugs somewhere in the house, crawling all over some white paper thing. I take it outside, showing it to my mom and explaining to her, as we walk along a sidewalk outside, what they are and what it's like to have them in the house. I say that I'm pretty sure I just got rid of all of them.

My mom and I continue walking through Cruiser Island's downtown, which looks a lot like San Luis Obispo's downtown, until we reach a small light rail station on the street. We look at the big, dark-blue metal signboard there to find out what its schedule is. We continue walking along the streets, turning at least one corner and passing one more light rail station. The street signs are white on blue like in L.A. [not white on brown like in the real SLO]. I talk to someone I pass on the street about which of the streets will be closed for the parade that's going to start soon.

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.

Last night, I remember waking up post-sleep cycle and thinking, Man, that dream was awesome. I don't wanna sit up and write it down, though. I already stayed up too late and am not going to get enough sleep tonight. I'll do it in the morning. And, of course, now I don't remember what that awesome dream was about I really need to start going to bed earlier and writing dreams down as soon as I wake up from them again. Since I couldn't remember that one, I decided to enjoy some time thinking about dreams by spending the morning getting caught up on DJ entries from the past two weeks that were still only in handwritten-note form, and now I'm all caught up.

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

Night of November 26-27

[Fragment] I'm listening to one of Guy's lectures in person and/or via cell phone.

My parents have remodeled our kitchen. The color scheme is the same as before [the same as it currently is in reality], but the stove and the sink have switched places. [Also, the layout is totally different from how it is in reality.] My mom and I are in the kitchen, making tea and coffee. I look through a canister of little packets of coffee and tea for something I like.

[Longer dream begins here] I'm driving down a street in my mom's car, with the top down. [My mom's car isn't a convertible in real life.] I'm in an old residential neighborhood that's apparently somewhere in the UK. Throughout the rest of this dream, all the environments are incredibly detailed and realistic. I turn around and drive back up the street and through an open gate in a stone wall, into the old center of town, which I explore on foot. The plaza is made of stone. There's a castle on the right and a bell/clock tower on the left.

I take the train to get up to the next town. The train car is full of old, plush couches and seats. An old man on the train starts telling a story. Looking out the window, I see fields, trees, a sign that says something like “You are now leaving (town name),” and a train on another track that looks just like the commuter trains I'm used to here in the US.

The train reaches its destination. I remember visiting this town once before. The train station there is inside an enormous hangar complex, which is also an airplane museum. Several small, old airplanes are on display. There are a fairly large number of people there playing tourist, but it's not crowded. There are also several restaurants in the complex, including a pub and a taco place. I think of getting something to eat, but I know I have no cash on me, and I worry that my credit cards won't work.

Night of November 27-28

I drive through the mountains and enter something that appears at first to be a half-underwater base, but later turns out to be a big ship, by going through an underwater airlock. There are lots of other people on the ship. There's a storm going on; big, pretty snowflakes are falling, and big chunks of ice are falling from the mountains onto the ship and into the water around it. We can't sail out in this storm, so we'll have to spend the night on board. I see Tracy F., who is in charge of the ship and all the people on it, bustling about on the deck of the ship. Either I or somebody else [I don't remember] says, “Poor Tracy's so busy she hasn't even had time to notice the storm, much less make an announcement.” There are bathrooms on board; I absentmindedly wander into the men's bathroom, which gets me some weird looks.

I'm at M.V. High School to watch an athletic meet. I've left campus, so I have to sneak back onto it by hopping over a gate in a fence. I have a shopping cart, but I abandon it somewhere. I explain to some sort of security officer what I'm doing on campus. I also meet a big, omnivorous alien that I recognize in the dream as belonging to one of the Siglerverse alien species [but who doesn't look anything like any of them], who tells me a story about something.

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

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

I'm in the upstairs bathroom (mine and P.'s) at House #2, with P. She has really long, pale blonde hair worn in a ponytail, and she also has an actual tail, like a horse's, the same color. She asks me to help her disentangle the two. I do so, once I figure out what she means: the hair from the two tails has gotten tangled up together, and she needs help separating them.

False awakening. I wake up in a dormitory room at my university. It's 6:15 A.M. according to my clock radio, which either didn't go off at 5:45 like it was supposed to, or it did go off and I missed it. Either way, I'm annoyed, because now I'm going to run late for my 8:00 A.M. meeting. I turn on the clock radio, which is tuned to KFI [a local talk radio station] [that I would never choose to listen to on a weekday morning in real life, by the way], figure out how to turn the alarm function off, do so, then turn the radio off again.

Looking out the window of my dorm room, which is on the ground floor of San Nicolas Hall [I lived on the second floor in real life], I see two of my friends, a guy and a girl, walking across the quad to the other dorm building to use the shower in the bathroom there. They're carrying their baskets of shampoo and other shower supplies. I'm annoyed, because I was going to use that shower. Another friend, a girl with short, curly black hair, is coming back toward my building. She tells me to use one of the bathrooms in our hallway. I decide to do so.

Before I go and do that, though, I look through my paper dream journal, which is an old, wrinkled composition book. [This composition book exists in real life, but it belongs to my mom; I've never used it for anything myself.] I reread an old entry, which contains a sentence that says something about having a monkey as a dream sign. I think, This wouldn't make any sense to anyone who was reading it unless they already knew what a 'dream sign' was. And then my real alarm went off, at 5:45. I really did have a meeting to go to at 8:00 that morning, and I really did need to get up early to shower and style my hair. All of this carried over into the dream (probably because it's not part of my usual routine, so it was on my mind), but the dream put it in a different setting. If I could have slept longer, might I have realized I was dreaming based on what I was reading about in the dream journal in my dream? Maybe, but probably not; I'm not very good at picking up on those cues.

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

I'm standing just outside the window of a cream-colored building, looking up and into the building through the window. There is a sort of rectangular tower or column inside the building, wide enough for the name of the building to be displayed at the top in tall, narrow, bright teal letters made of molded metal. [The font is Times New Roman, or something like it.] I'm controlling what letters appear there by typing on a keyboard. First, I type “Walgreens Bookstore.” Then, my mom is standing next to me and rebukes me gently, telling me to put in the real name of the building. I backspace over what I've typed, and the teal letters disappear. I then type the real name of the building, “Public Library.”

Once again, I realize easily and naturally that I'm dreaming. Saying something like “Wait” to my mom, I turn away from the window and look to my left, intending to go and explore. The sidewalk I'm standing on outside the public library runs right along the edge of a river, which has more sidewalks and buildings all along both sides. The dream only lasts a couple of seconds before fading, though.

I'm lying on a mattress on a floor somewhere. There are blankets covering me, and my dad is bending down closely over me, as if to tuck me in. I'm breathing hard, and it feels like I'm being smothered. I start to panic, but then I think, It's okay. It's just a memory. I can't breathe because I have a stuffy nose in reality. [Which I don't, by the way, but it seemed logical at the time. Also, that must have been either a false memory or one from when I was really little.]

Dreamskip. I'm still on the mattress on the floor, but my dad is gone and the blankets aren't over my head. I'm in between two raised platforms [loft beds, maybe?] with shelves built into the sides, and there are all kinds of toys and books and stuff all over them. Someone says something about being in seminary. [I don't really remember this part.]

I find myself looking up at a white stucco ceiling high above me. Thinking I've woken up, I try to DEILD back in, and succeed. [LOL, I just performed a DEILD within a false awakening! Awesome!]

I'm back on the mattress on the floor again. This time, I reach out from the mattress to feel the carpet beneath it. It's brown and semi-shaggy, the kind we have in our current house. I'm not fully immersed or engaged in the dream, though, and it only lasts a few seconds.

When I woke up for real, I remembered and remarked aloud: “This house doesn't have stucco ceilings! All its ceilings are flat!” Only then did I realize that that had been a false awakening.

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Side notes:
I really like that brown carpet. I've noticed that in my dreams, any indoor space where I'm residing usually has that kind of carpet, even if it's not my current house. I think the reason I'm so attached to it, and therefore, the reason it shows up so much in my dreams, is because I helped pick out the carpet for this house, unlike at either of the other two houses.

Also, that public library is so going into my current NaNoWriMo novel. Most of it is set in a dream world version of Louisville, where I lived once and which is by a river.

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID FALSE AWAKENING PRECOG
23:20 GMT

Suicide/homicide attempt
I’m an observer of a suicide/homicide attempt. Some rich kid who owns a fancy 5-star caravan is on his room inside the caravan. A friend couple is there on the living room and he closes the door trapping them and then also closes himself in the room. He had previously put the exhaustion pipe pumping the fumes inside the caravan. His friends are calling for him, asking him to please not do that or at least let them out, but he couldn’t care less. Then I enter the scene, materializing in the room where these 2 are, trying to help them. There are windows, but they are very tiny. Impossible to escape through the, but at least it helps clear the air and they can hold on longer until help comes. My cat also appears, like hovering around and I wonder why.

Family nonsense
At my grandma home, on living room with my cousin Cris watching TV. I feel I have already watched this exact same TV show in this room but with my cousin Rui instead. My mom appears and I go to the bedroom. From there I see my dad sitting on a street bench on the other side of the street. He sees me and gets up, making a sign that he will come in. I go warn my mom, but in the end he never comes. I go back to the bedroom and I’m almost totally asleep when I wake up to the buzzing sound of a wasp. I get out of the room gently but then there are a bunch of them and they escape the bedroom and are about to attack my family members. I then am forced to kill them, but it kills me to do it.
Then I go outside and there’s a beach. There’s a cliff with a waterfall and the Gilmore Girls are there (again). Lorelai looks very melancholic, like waiting for her love and I feel a totally absurd feeling that I am like the real life incarnation of her (?) [although I’m not even like her....]

2:30 GMT

Ugly weirdo dream I prefer not to share

3:40 GMT

Japanese nonsense
I’m visiting Japan with my BF.We’re on some kind of super-speedy panoramic view bus. We go through mountain roads, we see the beautiful hills and the tree colours. I try to take pictures but I ran out of battery. We arrive at some green valley with cows grazing and a few bulls. One of them is on the loose and behaving like crazy. I didn’t feel too scared, instead I tried to calm him down with good vibes.
Later we’re on a karaoke restaurant and we sing Charlotte Gainsbourg. There’s a girl there trying to impress her co-workers, I notice she has amazingly white teeth, I think she whitened to cause an impression.

5:00 GMT

Break and enter
With mom, we’re back on that restaurant. She says she wants to investigate something. We pass by a shop with screens playing the X-files and for a moment we both become Mulder and Scully. On the restaurant she takes me to the toilet and I must keep flushing to make noise while she is trying to break into something I guess. But someone comes and we’re kicked out. On passing at the reception, some girl is messing up with the cashier over some receipt.
We walk around the city and it gets night and she decides to try to break in again in the dark. But the problem is the restaurant at night transforms into a bar, so there’s people in there again. We’re at the entrance deciding what to do, I read a poster on the wall, when some guy starts beating some other guy violently on the street. We watch hidden but the violence is just brutal – the guy being beaten is left with no bone intact! His face is unrecognizable and his body just a mass of unarticulated bloody meat. But he is still alive. It’s too unbearable to watch and I wake up.

Long journey through bizarre realms
With mom shopping on a huge 2nd hand warehouse. Also has an organic food section and after clothes we go there. I am delighted choosing among a variety of cookies only 5EUR/kg, but she pressures me, saying it’s time to go, that we’re late for something. I delay a lot, but I finally agree to leave and then we’re almost running. I realise I can actually run high-speed but only later I realise my mom was left behind, cause she couldn’t keep up.
Outside I pass by a group of young people, where I spot Vera. I don’t really want to talk to her right now, so I try to pass unnoticed. But then decide to wait for my mom on some seat on a bench structure (like those in sportsfields for the audience). I am there when a guy I knew from school and who just appeared recently a lot in my dreams, just drops by and says hi. The girls, including Vera are with him – so they spotted me... I push him away, because he is a playboy who enjoys flirting with me, just to tease me and I find that annoying. In front of the benches there was a railroad, but now there is a river and I jump into the water. He comes after me, but then I remember to fly away and I leave him behind.
I keep going forward, not really with a goal and I pass by a strange dark corridor, like an underpass, but it actually has tiny windows and I see it’s on ground level. People go through it like ghosts. I keep flying and moving fast, because this place is a bit unpleasant. The corridor does not end but instead transforms into a canal and people just try as hard as possible to swim out of there, but the current is pushing them back and they keep swimming and swimming, never getting out of there. There are even waves, keeping people just struggling against the current and sometimes drowning just to come above the water again and again. I cannot help to think this looks like some hell realm. At first I was also in the water like them, but unlike other people I manage to fight the current and lastly I fly out of the water and manage to get to some platform that leads to exit, I hope. I encounter a button on the wall and a door. I open the door and it’s just some storage room, but then push the button, a green light turns on and when I open the door, then it leads to a dark garage or barnyard-like place. A few people managed to follow me and as we are crossing this place, we see weird animals guarding the doors, the windows and there’s a door to some other smaller division which seems to keep locked some vicious animal which is trying to get out and attack us. We feel we need to get out of there quickly and I manage to find a very small breach on the right wall. The only problem is that from there it’s a long fall to the floor outside, right in the middle of some enclosure with more weird looking animals. For me it’s ok, cause I can fly so I go and try to find a way for people to follow me. I don’t know what I do, but I manage to save a large group of people and once they are outside and safe in a very sunny large open space, they celebrate. They make a hippie caravan and paint it with rainbows and dance and sing all the way to their next... life?
I don’t know now what to do, but I see a road. As I follow this road, I reach a place I recognize from another dream I had before, but now I’m coming from South and the other time I was coming from North. I become lucid. It’s the scenario from a dream I escaped some gangsters trying to kill me on a boat. It’s that road with some amazing flowered bushes hanging over from very high above. I fly to admire and smell this beautiful flowers and get to the top of this cliff. Up there I decide this place is fabulous to do my lucid meditation. But as soon as I sit, I wake up.

9:00 GMT

I have filled two notebooks with my dream journal entries. This night I started my third.

Tholy's Factory
0427: I'm watching the life of an eccentric tycoon who builds a giant factory. People call him "Tholy". Inside the factory is an artificial lake, and on the lake are built battleships that we will use to beat the Russians. Tholy does all this for his nephew. There is a charitably couple who donates money to build a church inside the factory. Tholy seems interested in the wife. Something about so much money that the banks will delay the transaction for investigation. Other random details about the factory: There are two long lines of floating platforms across the lake which will be used to build the support columns. Then there are large sheets of steel that are bent over to form a roof.

Random Weirdness in Grocery Store
0742: At grocery store with mother and sister. Looking for specific things but can't find them. Maybe cheese and cat food? Something about a lightsaber that should be hanging on the wall but it's missing. Mouse and keyboard don't work. I complain that the store is arranged illogically.

Movie / Video Game
0859: Laying a bed. I hear behind me a movie playing on my computer. It sounds like a typical anime fighting movie. Then I'm looking at a youtube video of a replay of a fighting game. But it takes the person forever to navigate through the menus of the game to start it.

Random Weirdness in Apartment
0940: I'm living with Lance as my roommate. I have a phone connected to the land line. The phone rings. I accidentally have the phone off the hook while Lance is trying to make a call. My bathroom floor has a bunch of hair on it, like I just gave myself a haircut. Lance tells me my shower faucet is broken.

fragment
A friend is pregnant and about to go in to labor. (day residue)

Random Weirdness in a Video Game
1010: Sister and her boyfriend. I am playing a video game in the living room. It's a team shooter like Call of Duty. I'm covered in blankets. Something about grabbing a woman in the game. Then I'm trying to fall asleep in the same spot. Cell phone rings. Something about a horse skeleton.

Starcraft Game
1110: I'm in a game. It's a first-person shooter. The theme and units are all Starcraft. But the game plays more like Unreal Tournament. I start out as a marauder and run around jumping and shooting grenades at the enemy. Then I realize I'd rather be a reaper.

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

I'm at the camp I went to as a kid [Not the one mentioned in the catchup post below, another one] with my dad. The lodge is a Marie Callender's [Cool!], and we're going out to dinner there. We get a table and order coffee and cookies. Mom is already there and tells us to come over and join her at her table. She's mad at us for not seeing her when we came in, or looking for her in the crowd. Dad and I get up and move to her table, bringing our coffee and cookies with us.

While we're in the restaurant [I think], I start looking back at old pictures of myself on various camping trips. One of them is of my and several of my Literacy AmeriCorps friends, including Laya, Jen, and Chelisa. The oldest picture is from junior high school. It's a big, panoramic picture with lots and lots of kids and their camp counselors in it. I'm near the far right, next to Erica. [She didn't even go to my junior high.] Those of us who are on that side of the picture are standing near the grassy edge of a cliff; one of the boys on in the picture is pretending to be about to step off.

I wake up in my current bed. I try several times to turn on the lamp next to it, but the bulb just flickers and sputters every time I try. I turn the knob until the flickering stops, tighten the bulb in its socket, then try again. Still nothing. I go out into the hall to look at the digital clock on one of our cable boxes, to see what time it is. It says 7:39, which disappoints me. Aw, man! It's time to get up, I think. Then I look again and see that I made a mistake: it's only 2:39. So, I get my notepad and start taking notes on the dream I just had.

...And then I woke up for real. This time, I remembered to do the nose-pinch RC. I was very annoyed with myself for not doing any RCs before and not catching the FA, especially when I realized that I had missed not one, but two of the classic dream signs, one right after another. My mind is great at giving me clues that I'm dreaming; I'm just oblivious.

After that, it seems to take me a really long time to get back to sleep. While I'm trying to do so, I think, Oh, crap, I can't talk to Cj on the phone tomorrow at 9, because that's when I'm meeting with Frank. I get up, take my laptop into the study, and sleepily start writing her an e-mail explaining that we'll have to postpone our date to talk on the phone because I have a conflicting appointment. I'm working in Yahoo! Mail [which is what I use for my main e-mail account in reality], and press Send. Suddenly, annoying, circus-y music starts to play out of the computer's speakers, and the screen is filled with a weird, old, basic HTML page with a colored background. The page appears to scroll down automatically. One of the first things to appear on it is a single sentence of text that contains my name. This is what makes me realize what's going on: I've stupidly allowed my Yahoo password to get phished by entering it into a fake website, and now my laptop has a virus. I let out a long string of curse words (actually, the same curse word repeated many times). Windows starts scanning my computer, trying to fight the virus.

Mom and P. are coming home. According to the digital clocks on the cable boxes, it's 12:02 A.M. Leaving my laptop on the floor of the study, I go outside to the street to meet them. They're coming home in a red VW New Beetle (where did they get that? I wonder silently), which they're parking on the curb across the street from our house, because our two regular cars [the ones we own in reality] are taking up both spaces in the garage. I come over to greet them as they're getting out of the car. As we walk back toward the house, I look at the side yard and see that there's a bamboo tree that sort of looks like a fountain there. Ooh, that's pretty! I think. P. goes back to put some more CDs in the New Beetle. [Neither it nor the bamboo tree exist in reality, of course, but I didn't realize that anything was strange until after I woke up. :/ ]

I woke up for real at 5:00 and took down more notes. I realized in hindsight that it hadn't actually taken me as long to fall asleep as I had thought; at least part of the process, and everything after that, had been a dream. I didn't actually have any such appointment with Cj, anyway. I was amazed at how completely and totally this dream had convinced me that I was in reality.

I'm indoors somewhere, and I'm wearing a cowboy hat. I look behind me and see my friend D.W. there, riding in a wheelchair. I think, Oh, good, she got a wheelchair. I feel the cowboy hat on my head and think, Oh, yeah, this is a dream. I can feel the by-now-familiar sensation of lucid-dream consciousness. I open my dream self's eyes and look very briefly at my hands, which appear normal, then up at my indoor surroundings. To engage more fully with my dream self and its sense of touch, I reach up to touch the brim of the cowboy hat with both hands, then take it off. I'm sitting in something [possibly another wheelchair, but I don't see it, so I'm not sure]. I stand up and try to turn around and talk to D.W., but just then, I heard my mom talking out in the entryway, which took my attention away from the dream, which instantaneously kicked me back into reality.

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Side notes:
I should choose my MILD affirmations with more care. The ones I focused on the most this past night were “I am self-aware and in control in my dreams” and “I bring clarity, lucidity, and stability into my dreams.” These backfired rather spectacularly in my second dream of the night. It was perfectly clear and stable, and, as far as I could tell, I was just as self-aware and in control of my own actions as I am in reality. And yet, I never realized that I was dreaming. I focused on that aspect more as I was trying to get back to sleep after 5:00, and it worked, if only briefly.

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 6-7.]

[Fragments] Something involving making a delivery of some kind using my car. I remember wondering where my car keys were just as I was waking up from the dream. I also remember riding my old, green GT bike in the rain.

IHOP and Denny's are having a TV commercial war. I'm watching a series of commercials for the two chains, one after the other. One of them [I'm not sure which restaurant it was for] focuses on the repetition of the phrase, “Accurate fries, accurate donuts,” accompanied by images of the two items. It means that when you order fries or mini-donuts as a side item there, they always serve you the correct amount. Later, I'm at Denny's with my mom.

I'm riding in a car, passing by the fields of a local high school. I can see their marching band rehearsing, in their uniforms. Some marching band members from my own high school are there, too, also in their uniforms and rehearsing in a block.

I'm walking through the hallways of an unidentified high school. A female student is there, loudly crowing away about something political. The TV monitors mounted in the hallway are showing political advertisements. There's one pro-Whitman, anti-Brown ad that ends with the spoken line, “Last chance to come together, California.”

I'm in a UCSB dorm room, thinking to myself: What's the date today? April 9? 2 months. Meaning, in two months, I will be graduating and leaving the university forever. I think about how hard I'm going to cry when I have to pack up the contents of this room and leave it for the last time. I remember [or maybe I just inferred this after having woken up, I'm not sure] that I went to Kentucky during fall quarter, then returned to UCSB for the winter and spring quarters to finish up the last of my studies. [As opposed to real life, where it was spring quarter that I missed to go to Kentucky.] My roommate Sarah M. is in the room. I have to be on my way and go to math class without my math homework completed, because I've been goofing off all weekend.

A group of Chinese international students and teachers come into the dorm room. One of the female teachers notices a magnet I have as a decoration. The magnet has five Chinese characters on it. She reads them aloud, in Chinese, but stumbles over the last one, giving two different possible readings for it. As she puzzles over the characters, I say to her, in Japanese, “Imi mo nai na no da.” [Translation: “They don't even mean anything.”] I know this to be the case because I know that this particular string of characters came from Hanzi Smatter. The female teacher understands what I said, and agrees with me. She and the other teachers and international students then start a conversation, all in Japanese. When they ask me a question in Japanese, my reaction is, “Oh, God, now I've started it!” I'm nervous and self-conscious because I haven't spoken any Japanese in a long time. It takes me a second, but I manage to formulate an answer to the question in perfectly good Japanese. [I don't remember what the question and answer were, but I do remember that] At some point during the conversation, I say something like, “Kono kanji wa imi ga nai to itte kumatta desu.” I know what I mean when I say it, which is, “I heard that these kanji don't mean anything.” [But I know perfectly well that those aren't the proper Japanese words for “I heard that...” There goes dream!Japanese being weird again.] [Also, what I meant is that they don't mean anything as a phrase. Most likely they mean something individually, or else the teacher wouldn't have been able to identify readings for them.]

[Not sure if this one is in the correct chronological order.] I'm with my church choir, and we're singing a pretty Advent hymn. [I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist in reality, yet. I managed to record six notes onto my phone when I woke up, and someday I plan to compose it.]

I'm driving up toward UCSB with my parents. We see Dale C. performing live on the side of the road, by the exit off Highway 217 that leads to the airport. He's singing and playing the bongos.

I'm reading a little cloth book that Dale wrote about his music career. In the book, he says that he was more excited about the full-time income he would earn from being a musician than any other aspect of the career. This makes me think less of him.

I enter an unfamiliar house to get something. P. is there, and there is an unknown woman sleeping in the back room.

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID FALSE AWAKENING PRECOG
23:00 GMT

Stormy flight
On a big plane flying into a storm. But just an observer. I think there will be the day when I will be in such situation.

Barcelona
Looking at a map of Barcelona with my BF and asking him what he wants to visit – I suggest we should see stuff I haven’t seen yet, but he wants to check some important spots I already visited and I have to agree to go there for a second time.

Deadly parents
I’m watching some spy thriller movie and then I am inside it. On the margins of a river and someone’s just explained me that in this particular place there are some strange undercurrents, probably resulting from some underwater structure, like a tunnel entrance to some secret facilities. I’m lying belly down on the grass, watching for suspicious movements, when I detect on land some kind of entrance to a bunker. I go check it quietly, think it’s safe to go in but then I’m spotted by some ugly guy coming out of it. He holds a big knife in his hand and then a second guy joins him in trying to kill me. Luckily I also get some backup from a colleague and as we are on pairs, facing each other and waiting for someone to make the first attack, all of a sudden, the enemy guy’s are my mom and dad and my partner is my BF. My mom is holding the big knife and I’m like “Sorry, what!!!?”.


2:00 GMT

Future attached to past
It’s night. I see the city nightlights and against the dark sky I see a spaceship just like Enterprise. That’s when I notice I’m in the future. Day comes and I also see airplanes moving around, but they are different, more like rockets – although totally similar to today’s airplanes, they lack any wings or tail and they lift off and land vertically. Yet, they still look more like planes than rockets. They are everywhere, like they are the buses of this future time. City looks pretty much like current day cities, though. I am walking through a park amongst the buildings and I see an old steam-engine train as an open air exhibit. I meet a lady there with whom I talk about the past and present times. I get from her words that people in this age are very attached to “old” times. They have this incredible new technologies but they avoid being too innovative, because they don’t want to break with the past so quickly. That’s why they make ships resembling planes, they keep their ancient machines exposed on their parks. They are a bit too obsessed. I tell her they shouldn’t be so attached to old days, because everything changes and even that steam-engine will rust out there, for as much they try to preserve it and will disappear from people’s memories one day. She seems disturbed with the idea.
Then I see a guy appearing to be doing a stunt over a monorail sticking out of a skyscraper side. I ask what’s that and I realise they are just testing if it’s safe to ride a bike through these narrow trails up there. They want to implement them between skyscrapers so people can go by bike through them. I say they are crazy – why not simply making some pods that would glide through the rails? Once again, it’s their obsession with keeping it low tech and not go to far from their roots.

Avoiding dad
Seem to be on some sort of Inn on a ranch. The whole place is a big long one-floor building, where there’s a cafeteria, rooms, etc. My father is looking for me everywhere and I’m trying to avoid him at all cost. I see him entering the main door and I’m further away, in the rooms area. I go inside one room and meet my mom and grandpa there. Mom is reading a magazine, I eat some snack with her and we laugh about some picture on the magazine I say could go to Fail.blog. They are announcing an exhibition related to some event and there are some pictures of the event’s mascot and on one, something on the background makes it look like it has a huge phallus coming from between his legs. And because it is a kind of kiddie mascot it makes it even more outrageous. I say I have to leave because my dad will find me there eventually. I pass by the cafeteria, but I spot my dad inside and he seems to be with some kid. I have this feeling that he has a secret family I don’t know about and I don’t want to face it right now, so I go over some handrails and get out of this place before he sees me. I go around the building and exit this area. Then I’m in some other place sitting on a table with two other guys, who happened to be sitting on that exact table when I sat there to eat something. One of them is Indian, they are teachers and they are talking about relationships and how to deal with kids in classes. The Indian guy asks a very specific question: how to deal with a student who is very flamboyant. The other guy just doesn’t know what to answer to that.

4:45 GMT

Alien
Something about a meteorite falling and then it is an alien with tentacles.

ESP and lucidity
Home scene with my BF, my aunt and her kids. We’re talking about or trying out some ESP tricks. Something about robots. Then I’m lucid and decide to write the dreams I’ve been having on my DJ. I forget to wake up and just do it on the dream. I remember the radio was playing and I was thinking about how nice would be to have a radio show on Lucid dreams. My dad was asleep. Then I realise I was still asleep.

7:30 GMT

My mom, me, and two of her sisters were inside of what was supposed to be my Mom's house. It was a little like the house she grew up in. We were all getting ready to walk outside to go somewhere when we heard a terrible wind- one so strong that I thought the house might fall apart. The wind didn't last long though, and soon it was sunny and beautiful outside. I went out to look around. I couldn't see any damage from the wind, and everything looked as usual- except for a strange spot in the air. I was like space was distorted in the shape of a 20-foot-tall jellyfish. I could see through it, but there were streaks of "air" that were smeared and slightly opaque. I grabbed my camera and started taking pictures of it. It seemed familiar to me in my dream, like I had seen or heard of this phenomenon before, so I wasn't afraid. I attributed it to the large wind that had just ripped through, and assumed it would dissipate over time. I laid down on the ground to get a shot of the sun rays piercing through the anomaly and as I was focusing my shot, I saw that the thing was moving, and that it was much much larger and farther away than I had initially thought. Almost immediately after this realization I saw that it was a giant light bulb, the size of a house, and then it crashed to the ground, glass shattering everywhere. I was far enough away that only tiny shards of glass showered me, but didn't cut me as they probably would have in real life. Still in shock, I got up, and looked farther down the road and saw a giant lamp shade and lamp base (both the size of skyscrapers) crash from the sky. I ran inside and explained to my mo what had just happened. I told her that I wondered if the recent creation of tiny black holes by the LHC was responsible for this. All I could imagine was that reality as we knew it was breaking down or universes were colliding, expanding, shifting, distorting…something very serious.

I turned on the television to find the news. I couldn't find anyone speaking about these events. I couldn't think of anyone else to call so I called my ex and asked him if he had noticed anything. He hasn't heard about anything, but he came over. My mom was making some kind of sugar cookies. They looked already cooked, but she is puts them on a baking sheet and throws them in the oven. She offered one to my ex. He took one and so did I.

My mom's ex-husband was there instead of her current one. We were all in survival mode. I went to the garage at the back of the house and I heard cats meowing, as if they were crying, and it seemed to be coming from the walls. I ran to the backyard where my two dogs had been. They were gone. To my left, where my dog Mina had been, I saw a large 4' X 3' baking pan filled with what looked like a chocolate cake or uncut brownies. There was a face on it, and it looked scared. I was terrified of it, it seemed to be looking at me. I picked up some nearby garbage (packing material or insulation?) and threw it at the thing. The trash was light, so it didn't hurt the thing, but some of it fell in it's mouth. I turned to run and I heard it pitifully ask, "Help?" I turned around, "Are you ok?" The thing was looking at me, and said in a frightened voiced tinged with nervous laughter, "I..I don't know" and it tried to smile. I started to go back and get the trash out of the cake's mouth, but I was too scared to approach it. I told the thing, "It will come out on it's own eventually," and tried to fake a smile.

I ran back inside to tell everyone what I had just seen. My ex was already inside telling my family about the thing, he had encountered it before me it seems. It now was apparent to me that this thing was previously my old dog Mina. I ran back out to it and out to look for Nadja, my other dog. I saw another cake pan, with something pink inside…but before I can run to it, we all saw a small injured white cat walking slowly towards us. My mom's ex says, "I heard that t he cats are "mascots" and they don't change, but they are preyed upon by other things." The cat was very sick but came to us willingly. We brought it inside and looked for food to feed it.

Once we are inside, something started shooting as us from outside in the backyard. My mom's ex, who now looks like a stranger and perhaps isn't supposed to be her ex, was fighting back and had a massive supply of weapons scattered all over the living room floor. I wanted to help fight, so I looked for something I could use. I touched a few guns and knives but realized that I didn't know how to use any of them. One strange metal medieval-looking cross-bow/sword started to move on its own. It had been infected/effected by whatever was happening to reality. I grabbed a weapon that looks like a flashlight, and I pounded the thing until it was smashed and not moving.

My mom screamed as she opened a trunk in the dining area. "Another alligator head!" One of the men in the room grabbed it, it was alive even though it was a bodiless head, and he kicked it outside the front door, where I could see dozens of other live alligator heads chattering around the front yard.

We had to run outside from the shooting, and soon we ended up in an urban city-scape that seemed deserted. Things still fell from the sky, and I knew the reality breakdown was progressing.

A flock of sparrows flew up to us. We threw some bread to them. "They are normal!, they are real!" someone yelled. "Yeeesss, weee are reeaallll…" the sparrows all droned together.

I woke up at this point, wrote everything down, and decided to go back to sleep and re-enter this dream, but stay lucid. I was successful, for a short time:

I was back in the house, but no one else was there. I could see white walls in front of me, and two small puppy faces merged into the walls, as if a small husky and a small bulldog melted into the wall with only their faces left unconsumed. "I am dreaming, so I don't have to be afraid of them," I thought. As I grabbed the husky I saw that he wasn't melted into the wall like I thought, I just hadn't been able to see the rest of his body. I pulled him out and pulled out the bulldog too, and then I lost lucidity.

I saw my mom, and kept trying to tell her about this crazy dream I just had. She was busy with some paper work, and eventually I got the idea that I was being annoying.

Later my littlest sister and I were out riding bikes through the neighborhood, which now looked ravaged. We were trying to help a group of people. Something scary happened at a house…(can't remember what) I woke up again.

[I was lucid throughout both of these dream fragments, but I didn't manage to relax or stabilize them because the house had already gotten up, so I was in a hurry because I knew I was running out of time, and I was sleeping on my side again, so I wasn't as relaxed as I could have been.]

I'm in my current bedroom. I throw two thick, blue foam-rubber mats onto the floor between the end of my bed and the closet, and throw myself down onto them. They land with a gap in between them, which I can feel when I land on them, so I go, “Ow!” The closet doors open, and P. climbs out of the bottom of the closet toward me, with a look on her face as if she were trying to scare me by pretending to be a zombie or a ghost. I think, but don't say, “No. You can't be here. You're not even at home right now. You're away at college.”

I'm standing on the grass in the backyard of House #1. There is no study. [Nor is there a swingset, now that I think of it.] It's nighttime, and the sky is a beautiful indigo blue with a few stars in it. There's an enormous, white full moon, much larger than it ever could be in reality, hanging in the sky to my left (to the north of the backyard). When I stare straight at it, it fades away into the background blue like the contrasting color does in some optical illusions where things disappear, and then fades back into view. I look back down at the grass, and the wooden bench from the backyard of House #2 is there, facing toward the moon. I think, “Wait, what am I doing here? I'm still dreaming.”

non-dream - non-lucid - lucid

10/11/10 Party at the top floor, entered via fire escape, dancing as part of a spell, have to leave for a moment, I keep swirling and believeing, Pil is somehow better and more experienced than me, transfer of knowledge through breaking of the spell and the bond shared within, blood bond?, symbolic knowledge, knowledge of letters, someone there, knocking in the ceiling as part of the spell, call Daniel so he knows it is just part of the spell, mette and friends invite me in second time around, bump into Casper/Sauer on the way in second time, they are leaving, I care little, go inside Mette's place and make sure I invite peeps from upstairs, I am offered food, not the cheese as it really taste like cheese and mette thinks that is bad, I try and explain it is ok and she should give it to me, pil says the sameand is eating some of the cheese.
(skip)
I am in the woods climbing trees, the primary part of them are badly mutilated, there is a narrative going and I am being educated about the trees, some trees change as you get closer to the crown, others have parasitic entanglements native to them (and as such grow quicker!). I have a small retractable knife with me and I am cutting in the trees, I don't have malicious intent and what I am doing doesn't seem wrong (this logic later baffle's me and I remember I find it strange that I had to use a grass sort as the perfect wood for a bow). The season is a bit off for learning I decided and exit the woods right out into the streets where Thure is waiting. He explains that I should try and get Pil to teach me Magic as I might get experience and progress I tell him “Hah, so I can become a level ½ wizard!?” in a jokey tone although I contemplate telling him about the surges of energy I have been feeling lately. I say “If it was a fight where anything goes I would probably beat him.”
“Well actually I don't know” I continue sincerely
Thure joins in “Well he is actually quite strong.”
“Yeah and I have lost quite a bit of my mojo since the last time I worked out”
I challenge him to a sprint and he agrees. I almost beat him, but something happens towards the end that make me slip up. Some random guy asks if we are to do it again, I say yes, but I don't really feel like inviting him in so I select a distance that is narrow enough that even 2 people would have issues in certain points of the course. There is a countdown from 3 led by me and we are off again, I am in front most of the time, but Thure beats me towards the end, I just can't seem to be going any faster. The random guy shouts out “Why yes of course” during the sprint and explains that Thure won due to his running economy and the fact that he maintained a vertical posture in the beginning whereas I was flat out sprinting leaned forward the entire time. I look at him intensely as he seems to know what he is talking about and say to Thure “Again!” we prepare for another sprint. I wake up.

…

Being stuck on a tropical island as I had to go back to get my clothes.
My mum was there as well.
Told her I was going insane.
She told me it was because of grandma we were there as longs as we were.
A broken toilet, tried to fix it, disgusting!
Finding various pieces of old clothes I don't know where are now.

Skip or new dream

On Bornholm, somehow it is in a different climate branch than usual.
Driving on muddy biking paths, running too.
There are crocodiles on all sides of the paths.
Driving in a golf buggy, bikers in the way, they don't seem to understand that I am not quite driving a car.
I loose my shoe, which is really a fish and it gets eaten by a baby croc.
This means I have to run through mud and crocs bare footed.

Skip

I am in Africa, on a shore.
In a documentary where they are showing ancient hunting techniques and how they have discovered that they are different to what previously assumed.
They are hunting crocs, and preserving them making sure they don't over hunt.
At a point I have to run across the shore on difficult cave terrain and stamp the crocs out of their caves.
I am a bit scared.
I end up knocking loose a big shield shaped rock, this defines the old king as remainging the king although he was just challenged by his son.
He gives me a set of 3 ancient (or not that ancient) mugs as a thanks.

…

Sisse is coming down the street on a bike.
She tells me about how her mum is cutting up materials and making shirts.
She would like to sell this in Thailand.
I tell her I can help.
Something about Facebook.

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

[I apologize in advance for how much of the page this entry takes up. It was my longest lucid dream to date, though, and I wanted to make the best record of it I could.]

I'm at my old high school, outside the entrance to my mom's old classroom. The open-air entrance on one side of the classroom and the semi-enclosed atrium on the other side are reversed from the sides they're on in real life. I'm listening to an old woman [Betty J.? Aunt Edie? I'm not sure] talk about life. I also remember reading some text about how in the old days, we just lived together with love and respect for one another as a matter of course, without any need for external forces like social programs to manipulate or engineer good feelings between people. [Yep. That sounds like my mind, all right.]

I'm playing PackRat. [Again. I am so sick of dreaming about PackRat, and I know perfectly well that the only way to stop dreaming about it is to stop playing it. That'll happen at the end of this year, I hope.] I discover that the reason an old collection cannot be completed is that they created all the cards, with artwork and everything, but never actually made them available to players.

I'm looking through a rack of envelopes of photo prints, organized by the subject of the photos.

I'm reading a novel on a shiny, black electronic reader. The last page of one chapter has a small illustration of a rolling, bouncing boulder on it [this illustration is from a particular PackRat card]. The electronic reader has small, rectangular “previous page” and “next page” buttons in the lower right corner. It also has readouts in the lower left corner of the screen that show remaining battery life and how many inches from your eyes the screen is. It says that a distance of at least 9 inches is recommended. I see my reflection in its surface and am surprised to discover that I'm wearing glasses. [I don't wear them in real life, but I might have to, someday.]

I go to say good night to my dad. He shows me that he's discovered a way to screw this cylindrical part onto his guitar so that it still has its protective plastic cover.

WBTB at 3:58 A.M. I stayed up for 10-15 minutes, taking notes on the dreams I recalled so far. Then I listened to the second half of my binaural beats file and continued doing affirmations, this time including remembering to stabilize my dream as one of them. I then spent about 45 minutes being kept awake by my coughing and sneezing, but eventually, I managed to get back to sleep. I think I even experienced sleep paralysis for the first time ever; I remember a moment when it felt like my body was vibrating or shaking really fast.

When I find myself in House #1, I immediately know I'm dreaming. [Since I was lucid from the very beginning and can remember a little bit of the sleep paralysis, I think I may have just performed a successful WILD, even though I didn't originally intend to.] This time, I succeed in remembering to stop and take in the scene before doing anything else, in order to stabilize the dream. Once again, I gaze around in awe of the fact that my mind can create such a detailed and realistic environment. Everything looks real, even though I know it's not. I walk around the house a bit, and when I get to the sinks in the bathroom and kitchen, I look at the faucets and quietly expect them to turn on, and they do, without my touching them. [I think that's pretty cool.]

I go out into the study, which looks pretty much just as it did in reality, except that the space inside it is entirely filled with spiderwebs. I turn back and go back into the house, with spiderwebs sticking all over me. When I come back in, I accidentally let a spider into the house, too. It has a big, nearly spherical body with stripes in two different shades of gray. I squash it while it's walking along the wall in the master bedroom. Then I discover another, even bigger, red spider/crab thing on the carpet, and squash that one, too, saying something about how sorry I am for making a stain on the carpet. [The carpet I squashed the spider into was light brown and semi-shaggy. House #1 never had carpet like that; that's the kind of carpet we have in House #3. I didn't notice this until after I woke up, at which point I found it highly amusing that the details of the carpet had been off in one of my dreams and I hadn't noticed. ]

My mom is there in the house. [I don't really remember the specifics of this part, but] I lie down on the bed in the master bedroom and get under the covers so that my parents won't see that I'm quivering and shaking in the throes of SP. [I don't even know.]

I decide I want to leave the house and go explore other parts of this dream world, but I feel obliged to take leave of my parents first and tell them where I'm going, but I want to keep it a secret from them that I'm dreaming. I say to myself, “If I told them I was going to school, would they believe me? Given the setting, they might.” As I say this, what I have in mind is that I'm going to pretend to be setting out on foot for my junior high school. [Funny; that was the only school I ever took the school bus to. I did walk from my house to the bus stop, though.]

I walk through the side yard toward the front gate. I find my parents in the corner of the yard, where the wall with said gate in it meets the wall of the neighbors' house, doing some kind of yard work. I say, “I'm going to school. Bye, Mom!”

“Bye, (Emiko)!” says my mom, and it sounds exactly the same as it always does when my real mom says it. [Obviously, an unaltered memory.] “Have a good day!”

“You, too!” I say, or something like it. I walk out through the front gate and down toward the street. The neighborhood seems more spacious and spread-out than it is in reality. Now that no one is looking, I begin flying, taking off from the middle of the street and traveling parallel to it and upward from it at an angle, like an airplane taking off.

As I fly higher into the air, the dream and my dream consciousness start to fade away. Now, having read the DEILD tutorial, I had some idea of what to do. I lay absolutely still in my bed and concentrated intently on the dream I had just been having, willing myself to start dreaming again. It worked. [First successful DEILD, too! I was really on a roll last night!]

I end up in a group of interconnected, upstairs rooms in a building somewhere. I seem to have flown there. The rooms are white, and there are chairs, upholstered stools, and bookshelves in them. From reading a plaque on a wall near a doorway, I learn that these rooms are reading rooms dedicated to a strange alternate take on Christianity, centered around an alternate set of gospels written by different people. [I didn't recognize it as any sect that exists in real life.] One of the rooms has an analog clock on the wall. It doesn't have numbers, just a circle and two hands, all made of the same rough, gray metal. Even though I already know I'm dreaming, I deliberately look at the clock, glance away, and then look at it again to see if the hands have jumped. The first time I try this, they seem to be in pretty much the same position they were in, so I try again. The second time, they've jumped to a totally different position. I am pleased with myself; again, I was expecting that to happen, so it did.

I leave these rooms and start walking down a flight of stairs. The dream starts to fade again, but again, I manage to stay in it through sheer willpower.

The stairs end in a wide hallway. There is a set of double doors to the right, leading into a room. Judging by the decorations and items outside these doors and inside the room, it looks like there's a wedding going on. Am I the bride? I wonder, but when I enter the large, rectangular room and see the retail-style displays of clothing and stuff, I think, Oh, good. Just a fair, then. I see a real-life friend [I forget who] to my right, who says to me, “Cute dress, (Emiko)!”

“Thank you!” I answer, even though I think this is an odd thing to say, because all I'm wearing is a damp, clammy black blanket wrapped around me. It feels like it's made of swimsuit material. I continue further into the room, turning to my left and walking that way. I look down and to the left, between two racks of clothing, and see another real-life friend, Eleanor B. She's wearing a royal-blue bridesmaid dress [the one she was wearing the last time I saw her in real life, which was at the wedding of some mutual friends]. I call her name twice to get her attention. She looks up, sees me, and stands up to talk to me. I come over and talk to her. When I take a closer look at the clothes hanging on the rack we're standing next to, I say something like, “And are these the new Christmas sweatshirts from Target? Cute! I want!” The sweatshirts are white and have patterns on them of snowflakes made up of narrow lines, either in shades of pink or shades of teal. They also have hems and seams in those colors. I take one pink one and one teal one off the rack and carry them with me. They feel soft.

I leave that room and find myself outside. In the distance, I can see big mountains with snow on top of them. I continue exploring and somehow [I don't remember the exact route I took] make it into an old Japanese temple (or residence, or something). It has a very old, very traditional room with tatami mats on the floor. I pry off each of my sneakers in turn, using the toe of the other foot (suddenly, I'm wearing sneakers, I think). [Yes, I actually thought that while in the dream. Now that I think of it, I think I was suddenly wearing regular clothes, too.] Leaving my sneakers (the exact same ones I have in real life, I note) out in the passageways, I enter the room with the tatami mats and walk around in it. I can feel the mats and my socks under my feet. I say aloud to myself, “Wait – we're allowed to walk around in here? Oh – of course we are; that's what I was expecting.” Yet again, something is so because I expected it to be so. [In all my real-life experience visiting historical tourist sites in Japan, we were never allowed to actually enter the rooms with the tatami; we were only allowed to look into them from the outside. I always wanted to walk around inside them, though, so now, in a dream, I got my wish. Cool.]

Outside of this room are some passageways that are all painted a dusty shade of teal, and have wooden signs hanging in them. I walk around in here for a few minutes. One of the signs says “Telephone,” and indeed, there is a pay telephone on the wall in a wooden box. It looks like an old tourist facility.

One of the doorways within these passageways leads into a spacious, modern restaurant that I recognize as the one inside the onsen [hot spring] that I visited while I was living in Japan. There are a few people sitting at tables here and there. I walk through the restaurant, looking for one of my real-life friends [I don't remember which one now]. I don't find her there, so I decide to head for the restaurant's exit and go somewhere else.

The way to the exit is through a long passageway with a wall on the right side and an upholstered bench on the left side where guests can sit and wait for tables, which separates the passageway from the rest of the restaurant. There are two people sitting on the bench. As I approach the door, I think, What shall I do next? Task of the Month – cell phone – oh, yeah! For a split second I think of getting out my cell phone to text somebody, but then I remember the new Task of the Month for November. I turn to one of the two DCs sitting on the bench, the one sitting nearest the door, who happens to be a black, pregnant woman. “Hey, can I tell you what I'm thankful for?” I say to her.

“Okay.” She straightens, sitting forward on the edge of the bench, listening to me.

“I'm thankful for my family, and [something else I can't remember now], and my computer, and for being able to come here!” I say. [Meaning, to the dream world.] Unfortunately, the dream starts to fade again just as I'm finishing my sentence.

FA in which, instead of being me, I'm Cobb. Mal is there when I wake up, the real one. [They're characters from Inception.] We talk about something, probably the dream I just had. [I don't remember now exactly what it was we talked about, but dude. That was a really weird FA.]

FA in which I count my fingers while they're spread out against the legs of my jeans. When I find I have a sixth finger on my left hand, my reaction is, “Oh, damn. Gosh-darn it!” Apparently, I really want to actually be awake. But I'm still feeling sleepy, so I lie down, sprawling over the sides of the white, wooden bench I'm sitting on.

When I woke up for real, I just lay there for several minutes because my body still felt heavy. I recalled my dream and was pretty impressed.

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Side notes:

That was the longest lucid dream I've ever had. I'm also very impressed and pleased with the number of times I succeeded in controlling what happened just by expecting something to happen. I really got the hang of that skill last night. Finally, I'm amazed that I managed to stay lucid for that long, and to force myself to keep dreaming so many times when the dream threatened to end. Wow!