Good morning, everybody. Dream #1 I was possibly with my brother and sister at night. It was pitch black outside. We may have been driving a car around, possibly a black SUV. But we may have needed another car, which my mother may have had. We may have been angry or impatient with our mom because she wasn't bringing the car. We got some call from or about our mom on one of our cell phones. Our mom was either sick or injured. I suddenly felt very worried and sad, but also ashamed that I could have been so impatient about my mom when she had actually been injured all along. Dream #2 I was with my friend H. We had been attending some kind of lecture. Now it was over. We were standing in some side room, off to the side of the lecture room. The lights were mostly off in the lecture room and the side room. A little bit of fluorescent light seemed to be coming from somewhere else. The lecture room was kind of big and square, like a dance rehearsal area, but with low ceilings and full of folding chairs. The side room was much smaller. It had something like two workshop tables in it. On each of the tables, long sheets of paper were rolled out, more than one sheet per table. H and I stood in the side room with a white man with red hair and a red beard. The man was something like a professor. The man's hair was kind thinning back from his forehead. He may have worn blue jeans and a sweater with dull green, yellow, and red striped and designs on it. The professor had given a lecture on something like Buddhist mandalas. The papers all rolled out on the table were Buddhist mandalas. But they were all laid face down. H was talking with the professor, asking a few questions about Buddhist art. I got a little distracted from their conversation, and I was wandering around at the other end of the side room. At some point H and the professor decided it was time to go. They started heading out the door and told me they were ready to go. For some reason I told them that I would just be a second, that I just needed to put my shoes on. As he walked toward the door, the professor began telling a story, apparently directed toward me, about how he did research on certain monkeys using certain chemicals. The chemicals might often create certain blood conditions in the brain, like hemorraging. The professor said, "Of course, the monkeys run around and play all happy. But they have no idea that if the chemicals make the blood conditions in their brains, I'll have to make them fall asleep." The professor then explained that he would then sell the affected brains to the researchers. The professor and H had walked out a door, into the next room (a stairwell exit?) which was lit with fluorescent light. I stood there for myself for a second. For some reason, it took me this pause to realize that the professor was purposely infecting these monkeys, then killing them, cutting open their skulls, taking out their brains, and selling their brains to interested parties. I may have tried to get the professor's attention (he and H were still within earshot) to ask him if this was really what he was doing. Dream #3 I was possibly walking back home. It was late afternoon and a clear day. The air was cool and pleasant, and the sunlight was dim, pale gold. I turned left and walked down a sidewalk bordered by lawn. It seemed like I was either at the boundaries of some park, or possibly the lawn of a complex of very tall apartment buildings. The road, to my left, was wide, but it wasn't very busy. The whole setting seemed very clean. But I wasn't familiar with it, and it didn't feel like my neighborhood at all. Somehow I now needed to cross the street to get to the sidewalk on which I had already been walking. There were two black boys, about ten years old, one of whom may have been sitting on the metal housing for a transformer. The kids saw me crossing the street. I passed the kids. One of the kids stayed where he was. The other kid kind of followed me. I had a feeling that the kids were going to try to jump me or steal something from me. But I wasn't too worried. The only thing I had with me was a CD version of Philip Glass' opera Akhnaten (why?). The kid who was following me kept edging up, as if he were going to walk in front of me, then falling back. I just kept ignoring him. But now I saw a big group of black kids walking down the street. The kids were maybe in their late teens. There were seven or eight of them -- enough to block up the entire walkway and small strip of lawn by the curb. The kids looked like trouble. So I decided to just cross the street right away, to get out of their range. But, crossing the street, I saw a huge fence, maybe 6 meters tall, possibly bordering another lawn-type space. On top of that fence there sat an even bigger group of black kids. They were already looking at me, and they looked ready to jump down from the fence and attack me as soon as I passed them. I veered to the right, to head back toward the road I had been on before turning onto this road. I could tell that that road was much more populated, and that a lot of cars ran down it. I figured it would be better for me to just hang out on that road and avoid these gangs of kids. But, for some reason, I was really flustered that I had to do this. I felt like things hadn't been like this before, or like in the neighborhood I thought of as my neighborhood things weren't like this. I wondered why things were like this now or here.
Good morning, everybody. Dream #1 I was with my family in some kind of parking lot in the mountains. It was early morning, with pastel blue and pale gold light of dawn and cold dew still coating everything. The parking lot was set in two levels. But the levels were separated by a big hill. My motheer had driven me, my brother, and my sister here. We were apparently waiting for something else to happen before we left the parking lot. But somehow I was now in another car, driving around in the upper parking lot while the rest of my family was driving around in the lower part of the parking lot. For some reason, I felt like this whole thing had been dreamt, and that I was now awake and out of that dream. I rehearsed the elements of that dream in my head while I looked down at my family. My family drove past some kind of small path which had a little foot-bridge that went across a tiny stream. Dream #2 My mom was driving me through some neighborhood at night. My mom was probably taking me to the airport. But we ended up driving in some weird pattern that took us up into some totally wrong area and then back to where we'd started from. My mom mentioned something about six hours, like it would take us six hours to get to the airport, or like my flight didn't leave for another six hours. My mom stopped at a fast food restaurant. I may have stayed in the car while she went in to grab the food. Dream #3 My friend H and I had been driven to some place by a man, possibly my old friend D. The place seemed to be a cabin or shack out in the middle of a huge lot of barren soil, possibly somewhere in the mountains. The sky was grey, and the air was chilly and damp. H and I were in a bedroom in the cabin. We were in bed. We'd just arrived here, but the man was thinking of taking us out somewhere, either for a fun dinner or to pick up some stuff we needed. But now H wanted to have sex with me. I was already laying on H, making sexual motions with her. But I told her we couldn't just up and have sex while the man was waiting outside for us. I was now outside, by myself. I realized that H was still inside. The man was now somebody like H's old boyfriend, C. I realized that H could be mad at me for not having sex with her. She could end up convincing the man to have sex with her, just to spite me. I was walking on some kind of line that had been drawn on the soil between the two cars. The line was a double-line, like the yellow lines in the center of a road.
In my dream, I was single. I went to visit some friends out of town, and decided while I was there I was going to get laid. I was out walking to a club when a group of guys surrounded me (much like happens in superhero movies) and started harrassing me. One of them tried to reach up my skirt, when a guy shows up. "What's the deal, guys? Can't get it without taking it? Pathetic." I immediately decide to bed this guy. Many of the details early in the dream are fuzzy, but at some point, he said that he didn't agree with premarital sex and I agreed to marry him. After our brief, private ceremony, he took me to his place, where a bunch of his friends had crowded in. "Excuse me, what are you all doing here?" I indignantly exclaimed. "I heard there was a party!" One guy shouted. "Well, there's not! Get out!" After everyone had left, I sat down on the bed and tried to kiss my new groom. He dodged me. "I can't make love to you." He said. I stopped. "Are you a virgin, because that's okay, we all have to learn somewhere..." "No," he said, "I'm not a virgin, I lost my virginity a while ago, and he was really sweet." "Well what is... wait, did you say 'he'?" He grinned at me sadly. "I'm gay." I stared at him, bewildered. "Why didn't you just say so? Maybe before I married you?" "I didn't think you'd actually marry me. I was trying to get you to lose interest in me. I can't let me friends know, they'll never see me the same. Just do me a favor." He grinned sheepishly. "If anyone asks, we divorced because I was too much for you tonight." I rolled my eyes. "You ought to tell them the truth, but whatever." The next day, I went to my mother's house (except it wasn't her current house but the last one she lived in before it), and she there was a wedding in her backyard. I pulled her aside and told her what had happened. After she finished laughing, she said there were plenty of lonely groomsmen here waiting to be taken advantage of (yes, my mother is like this IRL). The last thing I remember beofre waking up was heading for the buffet.
Good morning, everybody. Dream #1 I was in a movie theatre, sitting near the front row. The theatre was kind of dim. The show hadn't started yet. I looked behind me and over my left shoulder. A little girl sat beside her mother. The little girl was somehow dressed up as Wonder Woman. But her costume was actually more like baggy pieces of red and blue fabric. The fabric may have had stuff written on it, such as the name Wonder Woman or some kind of statements indicative of Wonder Woman. I looked forward again, waiting for the movie to start. A little while later I looked behind myself and over my left shoulder. The girl and mother were now sitting in those seats. The girl was still wearing her costume. But the mother was also wearing a Wonder Woman costume. The mother's costume still didn't look like Wonder Woman's outfit. The suit was tight in certain places, but in other places, like around the chest area, it bulged out, almost like a football player's shoulderpads. The outfit was mostly a dark, almost gloppy, cobalt blue, with squares of some kind of white, stony material poking out of it. The mother also had her face painted in some kind of deep blue, almost black. For some reason, I was still turned on by the way the mother looked. I thought she had the same kind of sexiness that Wonder Woman has. At some point, the mother stood up to leave the movie theatre. She told her daughter she would be right back. I wondered if it would be safe for the little girl to just sit here all by herself. The little girl stared forward with a look of sadness and disappointment. I could tell that the little girl knew what was really going on with her mother. Somehow I came to understand that the mother was going out into the lobby to meet some boy. She and the boy would run off and have sex somewhere. The girl, I understood, had been abandoned in situations like this before. She was kind of depressed that it was happening again. Dream #2 I was at "my office," which was apparently in some kind of building like in an office park in a suburban area. I believe I was on the first floor. I sat in a big cubicle right next to a window, which let in a decent amount of natural light through partly opened blinds. At some point, I got up and walked through a long aisle of cubicles. I walked past a small area that had a tall, round table. On the table were a few styrofome bowls of bite size Reese's peanut butter cups. I grabbed some of the candy and walked into another big room full of cubicles and offices. I was surprised by the peanut butter cups. They came in all different flavors. Some were in dark chocolate, which I really liked. I was back at my desk, looking at something on the internet, possibly some kind of shopping or fashion page meant for women. Some girl co-worker of mine had been standing way high up on a partition behind me and spying on me while I looked at the internet. The woman was now something like my boss. She had decided I wasn't doing any work. So she hopped down and asked me to look at a number of different things that were apparently related to work, but which actually weren't too far different from the shopping and fashion stuff I had already been looking at. I was now walking past the table of candies again. I walked into the second big room of cubicles and offices again. Then I headed back toward my cubicle again, passing the tall, round table of candies. I had been thinking about the peanut butter cups. The bite size ones were so small, I'd thought, that one or two just wasn't enough. I'd wanted to take a whole handful, but I didn't want people to think I was a pig. I'd wished there was something on the table that was big enough so I could take only one and still have my hunger satisfied. I now looked in the styrofome bowls. There were now packages of Pop Tarts in each of the bowls. I was happy to have something big to eat. But, I thought, Pop Tarts always only have sweet flavors, like Strawberry. But, to my surprise, I now saw a bowl with packages of Reese's peanut butter cup flavored Pop Tarts! I went for the peanut butter Pop Tarts. But as I did, a male co-worker lunged at the bowl. He didn't grab anything. He just blocked the bowl. He didn't say anything regarding the Pop Tarts, but as he spoke to me he made it clear that he was keeping me from the Pop Tarts because he knew I wanted them. I acted like I didn't want the peanut butter Pop Tarts, like I didn't care about them at all. After a few seconds of looking at the bowls and trying to figure whether I could actually get at the peanut butter Pop Tarts somehow, I finally just grabbed a handful of bite size peanut butter cups and walked back to my desk. Dream #3 It was either late night or early morning. It was pitch black outside. I was near "my work," but I was in some kind of place like a red-brick sidewalk "Main Street" area in a small town. I was looking for something to take with me to the office for breakfast. I couldn't quite remember the place I always went to for breakfast, and I now couldn't seem to find it. Instead, I walked into a nearby restaurant. Inside, the place reminded me of a Pret-a-Manger. I thought to myself, I can't get breakfast here! This is where I get lunch! But, since I couldn't remember how to get to my breakfast place, I just decided to stick with this place. I went to grab a coffee. But the coffee area was set up really strangely, in a really small place. A stout, older, black woman was making herself a tea. She was completely blocking the coffee. I had to wait for her to finish. When the woman finished, I quickly moved to the spouts to make myself a coffee. I had to rush in, because some other guy was already starting to jostle against me to get to the coffee. For some reason, I was making myself a tea, not a coffee! I was even pouring honey in the tea. Somehow I convinced myself that at a certain point, the tea-appearance of my drink would change to a coffee-appearance. The guy next to me was really jostling against me now, trying to freak me out and make me leave before I'd finished making my coffee/tea. I looked the person in the face and was surprised to see that it was a co-worker of mine! He'd followed me to a restaurant again! (IWL, this co-worker times his lunches, and sometimes even his trips to the bathroom, against mine. It kind of creeps me out.) I elbowed my co-worker in the stomach really hard. I didn't even know why I did it. He seemed really hurt. I was kind of happy that he was hurt, but I didn't want to get in trouble at work for having done something like this. So I apologized. But as I apologized, my co-worker got up in my face, as if he thought he was going to freak me out. For some reason, I grabbed both his arms. I had both his arms in a grip that he couldn't get out of. I kept trying and trying to break my co-worker's arms. But I couldn't. The whole time, my co-worker just stayed right in front of my face. He didn't say anything. I started yelling at him that I was tired of him taunting me at work, that I was tired of him spying on me, and that I was tired of him following me around when I go outside or go to the bathroom.
Good morning, everybody. Dream #1 I needed to go to the bathroom really bad. I was running into a public restroom. Some woman, possibly a pretty, young woman and possibly my mother, was using the first stall I saw. I was apparently wearing a pair of pink panties under my pants, and I didn't want there to be any chance of the woman in the stall seeing me. So I ran to a set of stalls at the far end of the restroom. Two stalls were inside a larger, stall-like area. One of the stalls didn't have any lock, or even a handle, on its door. I had gone inside it, but now I ran out. I ran to the next stall. The lock on this stall's door was really loose. But I decided it was good enough. If somebody tried to push it open, I'd have enough time to reach up and push the door closed. I sat down on the toilet and started peeing (?). Before my eyes I now saw a list of films by Werner Herzog. They all seemed to star Claudia Cardinale, as if she were Herzog's main actor. Each film would have a description below it. The descrption was in a thin column. Some descriptions were just a small paragraph. Others were almost a page long. I caught sight of a few descriptions of some films. The films all had a theme of a woman sinning or doing something to betray somebody, usually a man, and then having to go through retribution for all this, apparently from fate, by being put through all kinds of weird, embarrassing, or painful situations. I couldn't quite remember what the Herzog films were which I'd seen starring Claudia Cardinale. But it didn't seem like this was the theme of those films at all. So I scanned through the list (how? It seems now like the list was just some image scrolling in the air before my eyes), looking for the films I was familiar with. Something I read said that Herzog's later films with Cardinale got weirder and weirder, and that the women characters kept being put through more and more absurd situations. I saw some later films, some as late as 1986. But then I saw "one of Herzog's first films" listed. It was called Yvonne Rainier, and it was from 1910. Apparently this film had something to do with a nun who'd betrayed a man, probably a priest, and the trials she'd had to go through as "fate's retribution" after this. I now had a vision of a black and white film, almost as if I were watching from some place within the film. There was possibly some old, small chapel that had something of a medieval style to it. Some nuns were standing outside the church, talking to each other. The film was a sound film, and it seemed like the setting was America in the 1950s. There was a nun in white. She was the main character. Now a couple of priest-like men walked past the nuns with a group of schoolchildren. The group walked into a spacious, lawny cemetery that was right next to the chapel. The priests stopped the students in front of what was an apparently important grave. The grave had some kind of tall, church-shaped marker. Before the marker were two rows of small, stone markers.
Good afternoon, everybody. I hope everybody is doing well. Dream #1 I was laying on a bunch of blankets on the floor in a living room. I was laying on my stomach. There might have been a bunch of people also laying in the living room with me. I could sense a cat walking toward me. The cat lay down near the right side of my head. It began purring. It felt kind of nice to have the cat wanting to sleep near me, although it was a little annoying that the cat wanted to sleep on my head. Dream #2 I was in some plaza-like area with a woman and her daughter. The mother was youngish, blonde, with pale skin. The girl was maybe 6 years old, blonde, with tannish skin. The mother and daughter sat on some crescent-shaped bench made of concrete. For some reason I had to go to a museum. The museum was just down the street. I was now in the museum. But all the exhibits were kind of terrible, and there was some kind of pervasive, menacing feel to the place. So, disgusted, I left. I was now back with the mother and daughter in the plaza. The woman asked me about the museum. I was telling her good things about the museum. She said she might take her daughter there. I figured the woman wanted me to go with her, like it was a date. But I was too shy to say anything. I sat over on some chair away from the bench. The little girl came and lay across my lap. She lay stomach down and had her shirt pulled up halfway up her back. I massaged the girl's back. I understood from this that the girl wanted me to ask her mom on a date. She wanted me to be part of the family. I figured I would ask the mom on a date. But now I had to go to some thing like a job interview or a medical examination. I went to the examination and came back. The mother and daughter were just about ready to leave the plaza for the museum. I figured this would be good for me. I could say that I was just going back to the museum, too, and that we could all go together. That way it would be like a date, but I wouldn't have to ask for a date. I saw a father, possibly an older, Asian man, with his son, who was a little boy, maybe 5 or 6 years old. The boy was sitting across the man's lap somehow, possibly as the man's legs were fully extended. Dream #3 There was some kind of snake that had some kind of material in it. When the material was taken out, the snake would become invisible. The material could be put back into the snake, but the snake would not become visible again.
I took 800 mg of valerian before bed last night. As often happens after taking valerian, I had some very unsettling dreams. Perhaps not so much what others would call nightmares, but so vivid as to be hard to go through. Nursing Home I go to a nursing home to visit my great aunt. She is supposedly suffering from Alzheimer's, but seems to be bright and talkative. In fact, she is almost a little overbearing. She keeps talking real loud, laughing, and telling stories. I wonder if she really has Alzheimer's, or is somehow cured. Death of my Father My father goes to a doctor's appointment. On the way, he calls me, and tells me that he is dying. There is nothing I can do to save him, as he is having a heart attack right on the spot. For a while after this, the dream is spent in tears. This dream really felt like RL, due in part to the valerian supplement. I go home, and my mother informs me that they found my father's body. I say that I know. We cry together. After a time, I think that perhaps I should try to go on with life as usual. I look up. My father is sitting on the couch. "Enough of this crying," he says. "What are we going to do tonight?" We look at him, and my mother says something about how loved ones will appear after their death when you are in mourning. He disappears, and I go back to crying. He shows up again once or twice, and appears to act like nothing is unusual. I know it is not real, though. A little later in the dream I am talking with someone. We are discussing grief, and how I shouldn't cry too much. I bring up a part I read in CS Lewis' "A Grief Observed" where he talks about giving in to tears as almost a self-indulgant pleasure. I say that an honorable person should not do that. Baseball I am at a basebell game, watching the Cleveland Indians win some kind of championship game. They hit the winning home run, and it comes my direction. I am unable to catch it, and it goes out of the stadium. I get really excited about the Indians winning. Still happy and excited, I walk down the street, leaving the stadium. I look at the yard of a house on my right, which is just behind the stadium. I see a baseball sitting in the yard, and can see a path in the snow running from the direction of the ballpark, as though it had landed and then slid across the ground before coming to a stop. I know that this is the home run winning baseball. I pull it over to me with my foot since there is a wooden fence around the yard and I don't want to trespass. I am about to pick up the ball when I realize that perhaps if it is in their yard it rightfully belongs to them. I debate about this, knowing that the winning ball will be worth something. I think that the honest thing to do is to bury the ball under snow, and send a letter to the owner of the house telling them that the ball is in their yard.
Good morning, everybody. Dream #1 I was in a new deli, which may have been downstairs from my apartment. The deli was still under construction. There were all kinds of things being unpacked. The place had a blue-green kind of feel, as if the walls had been painted a pale blue-green. There were rolls of paper unrolled on the floor. Counters were set out in random fashion, as if they hadn't been fastened to their permanent positions yet. There were a couple soda refrigerators with their doors open. One was on the back wall, in front of me. The other was on the wall to my left. They were both tall and narrow. The refrigerators were so cold that I could feel the cold coming from them. The coolers were so cold that the sodas (or bottled waters?) inside the coolers had been frozen. I figured this level of coldness was natural, since the store wasn't opened yet, so that the coolers weren't tuned to a normal level. There were a few people running around in the store, getting things ready. I saw at least one woman and one man. They were both Mexican. They were talking back and forth and joking with each other in English or in Spanish and English. I knew that the place wasn't open yet, and I felt like I shouldn't be here. But, for some reason, I felt really comfortable here. I figured I'd grab some stuff and then head back up to my apartment. It suddenly struck me that, now that there was a new deli below my house, it would be a lot easier for me to come downstairs and grab some frozen pizza. I thought I would suddenly be eating a lot more frozen pizza than I'd been eating in a long time. Dream #2 There was some kind of television show or some kind of stage performance about adult women who had romantic relationships with young girls. The stage and background were white. The stage may have been clean and polished, so that it was slightly reflective. The women and the girls wore spandex suits with blue, pink and purple flower designs on them. They also wore something like flowing, white blouses that went up over their heads to become something like hoods, leaving a circle open for their faces. The hoods may have been topped with flat circles, which were slightly tilted. The women and young girls were doing a slow dance, in groups but kind of solo, where they would elevate and point forward their legs and arms slightly. Dream #3 There was some kind of narration about my mother's life. There was talk about how my mother had had such a tough time because she had been a single mother. There may also have been talk about how my mother had been really upset when my father had left her. There was now a view of a car like a station wagon driving up a steep, mountain road. The road didn't criss-cross or spiral up the mountain: it just went straight up the steep slope. As the car drove, the narrator spoke about how my mother worked through a lot of emotional difficulties and survived to this point in life. Listening to this narration made me really sad for my mom. But it also made me kind of proud of her. I felt I had seen this road somewhere. It occurred to me that I might have seen the road in a dream. The surreal steepness of the road and the way the car seemed to be reaching extreme heights on this mountain all reminded me of some tall mountain dream I'd had in the past. I was now in the backseat of the car. My mom was driving. We had approached some place halfway up the mountain. We pulled into an asphalt parking area. My mom, and possibly one of my family members, maybe my sister, was talking about how lucky we were. Some of our more removed family members, my mom said, had died in pretty terrible situations. They had died all alone, sometimes in shameful ways. The closer family members of those people had had to deal with the ghastly emotional impact of those situations. But, my mom said, the closer members of our family who had died had died rather peacefully, with loving families around them. And, right now, all our family members were in situations where, even were they to die suddenly and unexpectedly, they would at least die in a position where they were somewhat comfortable and they knew their family loved them. I either thought to myself or said out loud that that wasn't true. I thought about two of my cousins, P and B. P is a man and B is a woman. I thought that both P and B were in situations where, if they died, they'd be all alone. At least one of them was actually in an extremely dangerous situation, though in my dream I couldn't remember where either cousin was. I was now out on a river bank with my family. I suddenly realized that my cousin B wasn't far away at all. She was actually in this forest. She was kayaking through this river. In my mind's eye I saw further down river, to a wide stretch that was shaded pleasantly by tall pine trees. Where we were, the banks were open and lawny, with jagged rocks for the river's banks. Maybe all my immediate family members were out on this bank. We had a couple of kayaks nearby. We must have been getting ready to go kayaking, although for some reason, I seemed to feel like I was thinking of suggesting the idea of kayaking to my family, as if it hadn't yet occurred to anybody to go kayaking yet. I thought of dipping one of the kayaks into the water, but the water (which was actually only moderately fast) seemed way to rough and the rocks way too jagged for the kayak to handle. I turned around and saw at least one of my nephews, the oldest nephew, getting dressed in an orange life jacket. I felt like everybody was getting dressed in life jackets, as if they were all getting ready to go kayaking. I thought this was great, and I offered my own life jacket to one of my nephews, since I knew they liked wearing my stuff (???). One of my nephews, maybe the oldest, said he'd take my life jacket. But suddenly I realized I'd left it somewhere else. It was like I'd left it in the car. But it was also like I'd left it somewhere very far away. I said I'd have to go get it. I hoped I could get it fast enough so that it wouldn't cause a delay. I suddenly realized that I had also left the life jacket in water somewhere. The life jacket had been in the water so long that it was now beginning to dissolve. I hoped I could pull the jacket out of the water before it dissolved entirely. In my mind's eye I saw the life jacket. It was white, instead of orange, but it had orange flower designs on it. Dream #4 I was walking through a park. It was a clear day, pretty warm. The sun seemed to be going down. The sky was dim, and the light was partly golden and partly cool and dim. I walked along a concrete path in a somewhat narrow curve of the park. There was deep, green lawn on either side of the path. There were a few people in the park, just relaxing. I think everybody in the park was black. The sound of my breathing slowly became more and more audible. Suddenly it seemed to me like my breath was like the breathing sound of somebody in a space suit, like in the movie 2001. I wondered why my breathing would sound like this. It suddenly occurred to me that the reason my breathing sounded like this was because I wasn't exactly in a park. I was in a different kind of place altogether. The only time I could think of when I was in a place like this was in my dreams. I realized I was dreaming. There wasn't a tremendous improvement to the clarity or sensation of the dream, like there usually is when I become lucid. But I was suddenly a lot more aware of the environment. I smiled at a few people. I was happy to be aware, and I wanted to share my happiness somehow. I walked into a wider area of the park. Since there were a decent number of people around, and they all seemed to be peaceful and happy, I figured I'd try to talk with some of them, just to see what things were all about here. There were a couple of boys playing (with a set of blocks or other toys set up to look like a castle?) half on the concrete path and half on the grass. The boy on the path had his back turned to me. I smiled and addressed the boy in some way to get his attention. The boy turned his face toward me. He looked a lot older than he actually was. Something about this threw me off balance. I looked quickly at the boy and walked on down the path. I tried not to let the boy's surprising appearance throw me off balance. I tried to continue acting cheerful. I figured if I could keep the cheerful attitude I'd had as I'd become I could stay lucid. But I could already feel that I was dropping out of lucidity. I could see that I was approaching something like a brick-and-concrete, arched gate that served as an entrance to the park.
Updated 02-26-2011 at 03:42 PM by 37466
Good morning, everybody. Dream #1 I was driving through a town. I was probably in the car with my family, and my mother may have been driving. The town was centered somehow around some kind of mining operations, or else it had been in the past. I may have had some "memories" of looking at photos of the town or watching a video about the town. At some point we drove past a young man in a business suit. The man was white, very tall, and very thin, with hair down to about his jaw line. He looked very professional, but also very haggard and tired, almost to the point of a nervous breakdown. My mom drove the car into a parking lot for an apartment complex. As we drove into the lot, I commented how nice and clean this town seemed, but how it had such a lonely, spooky quality, like in a ghost story. Dream #2 I had just finished some kind of task with a group of people. The people were all at the other end of a huge, fenced in field, like a lawn for a number of soccer fields. It was a sunny day. I may have been walking away from the field. But I got distracted. I noticed that I had a bunch of humongous hairs in my nose. I began pulling them out. But there were so many. I walked back into the field and frantically began pulling the hairs out of my nose. A man who looked, and wore clothes, like Orlando Bloom in Pirates of the Caribbean was nearby. I didn't want him to see me pulling all these hairs out of my nose. So I walked between two stone walls, like the walls for outdoor racquetball courts. The Orlando Bloom guy followed me. So I hurriedly walked away from the stone walls. I gifigured I would just leave the field altogether. I was still pulling hairs out of my nose. I had a handful of hairs. They were all about 4cm long. As I approached the gate, the Orlando Bloom guy came up behind me and said he needed to talk to me. He said he was having the same trouble I was, and that he was going to "contact the lady" about it. Apparently the lady had told the guy she could solve his problem. But she hadn't solved it yet. I knew that everything the guy had just spoken about was in regards to the long hairs growing out of my nose. I went into a park bathroom, possibly to was my hands. I was now exiting the bathroom. The bathroom was big, made out of concrete and cinder blocks, and had dimmish, fluorescent lighting. As I approached the door, I could hear the guy talking to somebody on the phone. I could tell from the guy's voice that he was no longer Orlando Bloom, but some guy I had known in college, JP. The guy was telling the person, who I knew was a pretty, blonde girl, that his cover had almost been blown. It turned out the guy had been at the field either to follow me or to keep me out of the way while something bad happened. But since I had put the guy in a position where he'd had to talk to me, the position had been messed up. Somehow all of this was the woman's fault. I stood before the door, not yet opening it. I felt betrayed by the guy. I thought he'd been trying to sympathize with me or be my friend. I lifted my hands up before my face. The backs of my hands were cracked in a few small places. In the cracks was a hard, ambery and red substance, which I took to be scabs. I went to open the door. But the guy, having finished his phone conversation, pushed open the door, almost knocking me over. He now definitely looked like JP. He was tall, with pale olive skin and short, slightly spiky hair. The guy was slightly surprised by having run into me, but he greeted me kindly, in a way I now understood as being completely fake. I greeted him in a fake-friend way too, just wanting to get out of thr bathroom and away from the guy altogether.
Plans: The only plan I had made for today was to meet up with MoSh in a Hogwarts dream, though I really want to increase my lucidity and get my recall back to its normal rate. I really wish I knew why I have been having so many problems with that lately… Sleep In It is time for me to go to bed, I have no idea that I am actually already in bed and dreaming. I am getting ready to lie down in bed when my mother comes into the room and asks me when I am going to be up the next morning. I tell her I'll probably be up at the usual time, of course. My mother says she wants to get going sooner than that. I don't remember where we are planning on going, but I am thinking it is somewhere really fun, and I definitely don't want to miss getting to do it. I tell my mother maybe I could get up a bit earlier than normal… My mother points at the clock and says it's only 11:30 at night, so if I sleep until my normal time, I'd be getting 12 hours of sleep! She says I really don't need to get 12 hours of sleep, do I? I agree that 12 hours is probably overdoing it, I tell her I'll get up around 10 instead, so it will only be around 10 hours of sleep. She seems to think this is still quite unreasonable, but she sighs with exasperation. She says if I can manage to get out of bed a bit sooner, please do, she really doesn't want to wait that late and might just end up leaving without me. This idea makes me a bit nervous, so I decide to set my alarm for 8:00 in the morning and settle for the usual 8 hours of sleep that is the recommended amount. I fall asleep in bed without even considering doing a RC at any point. Rock the House I am going to a concert that takes place in a small club. There aren't that many people there to see the band, and I figure that is because the band rather sucks. There are overly aggressive bouncers guarding the stage, maybe they are afraid someone will attack the band members for sucking so bad. One guy tries to get to the stage, though it looks like he is happy and wants to meet one of the band members rather than like he is hostile. Apparently someone likes the music. One of the bouncers grabs him, punches him hard in the gut, then drags him outside as he is gasping for breath. The bouncer throws him to the ground and shuts the door before returning to his post. Wow… so violent… everyone else sits down in the seats to keep from having the bouncers attack. I really don't like this. On a hunch I do a RC and find out I'm dreaming. I fly from my seat and phase through the ceiling of the club, out into the open blue sky. Ok, so now that I'm lucid, I need to decide what to do. I don't remember my goals… damn… but I do remember that in some of my lucids my dream control hasn't been as strong as it should be. So I fly over the city and start practicing my dream skills. I discover that anything I can focus on and visualize I can create. Of course I can, I am inside my own inner world… it is entirely under my control… I do things such as alter the forms of a couple buildings, I bring a statue to life. It is the statue of a horse that is about 50 feet tall, the horse gallops away, freaking out all of the DCs in its path. I instinctively can tell that all of the people around there are DCs rather than real people. I fly over a park and spawn a huge and beautiful tree with large golden fruits growing on it, I pick one and eat it… it tastes like chocolate. Yay! Chocolate flavored fruit! A DC is beside the tree and staring at me with his jaw on the ground, it is an older man, I fly down over him and tell him if he's going to have his mouth hanging open, put something yummy in it! I break off a piece of the fruit and stick it in the man's mouth where he doesn't even seem to notice it. I decide to go back to the concert to see if I can make it more interesting. I head back, and I find that for some reason there is now an iron grid around the club… where did that come from? No matter. I focus a circle of heat to soften the iron, then I rip out the circle of iron to create an entrance. Wow, that was easy! Inside, the same band is still sucking, most of the crowd have left. I use a puppet kind of control on the band members, my DCs, and I summon a guitar and join in. Now we rock! We play a song I don't think I have ever heard. But there's no one there to see it. I summon some more DCs to be the audience. For some reason the DCs that appear are dressed as if for a wedding. Weird… but no matter. I continue using the band DCs to accompany me as I play guitar and sing. It is fun. The Perfect Storm I am in a castle like the one in Harry Potter, I am in Hogwarts. There are people around me, everyone seems to be rather huddled together, though I'm not sure why. They have everyone crammed into the great hall, all of the people from all of the houses, and this is creating more than a few arguments amongst the less friendly students. Mostly everyone is keeping to themselves, however, and the talk is mostly about a storm. I listen to some of them, then I go over to a window and look outside… and there sure is a storm out there, it looks like a serious blizzard. The wind is howling outside and looks like it must be blowing at hurricane force. I look beside me and I see MoSh is there. I ask what is going on out there, he says it's a major storm. No shit, Sherlock… I say it seems strange, where did it come from? MoSh says no one is sure, it is the worst storm Hogwarts has ever seen, and it came out of nowhere. The temperatures in most of the castle have plummeted to sub zero levels, there is no way the fires and such can keep things warm at all. The great hall has been placed under an enchantment to keep it warm, which is why everyone is here. Wow… that is one serious storm. I wonder if the storm is definitely natural. I wander around the room more, I see Crabb and Goyle near another window, staring out, apparently fixated on something out there. That gets my curiosity up so I go over to them and ask what they are looking at. Crabb said nothing, they are looking for Draco. I ask why they are looking out there for Draco, shouldn't he be in the great hall with everyone else? Goyle hesitates, Crabb says they're not supposed to tell, Draco said it's a secret. I say I won't tell anyone, so go ahead and share it with me… I'm sure Draco wouldn't mind if I know. Finally Goyle says Draco went outside about an hour ago, before the storm got so bad, and he hasn't come back. Crabb said Draco had been going out to get something to do with the tournament task, but students aren't supposed to go into the forest… and he hasn't come back. Wow… Draco is out in the storm? I decide I have to go out to get him. Goyle says I promised not to tell… I ask how they can keep that secret when Draco could die out there? I add not to worry, I don't need to tell anyone… I'll go get Draco myself. I go to leave the room, but McGonagall stops me and says no one is to leave the room. I had thought that might be an issue. I go to the other side of the room and find a secret passage behind a suit of armor, the passage leads outside eventually. And it is freezing out, though it doesn't feel as bad as MoSh had indicated. Then again, I am used to the cold pretty well. I wrap myself in some cloaks I find near the exit and head for the forbidden forest. There is no point in calling Draco, the wind is much too loud. The sleet and snow is like needles against my face, not comfortable at all, but definitely bearable. Once I get to the forest I find there is a bit of shelter, I look around, not sure where to find Draco. Somehow my instinct guides me, and after I have traveled a short distance, I find Draco huddled under a particularly large tree. He has his robes pulled tight around him, but those do no good… they are soaked from the sleet. I have seen movies and read books about arctic survival… wearing wet clothes is worse than none at all in the cold… and I have enough cloaks around me to share… So I start getting Draco out of the wet robes, he seems too out of it to respond much… I wrap my cloaks around both of us, keeping him close to share some body heat as we head back to the castle and into the passage I left through. McGonagall meets us just a short way in, she says if I thought she didn't know about this passage, I was sorely mistaken… how dare I go outside and risk my… she sees Draco with me… good lord, what happened here? Where did you find him? I answer with the first thing I can think of, I say he was outside looking for herbs and hadn't gotten inside before the storm started. True, but I didn't mention the forbidden forest. McGonagall looks at Draco, mostly naked and shivering under my cloaks, she asks if he didn't hear the storm warning, or if he didn't take it seriously… he should really have listened… but save that for later. She asks for me to help her get him to the hospital wing. We get Draco to the hospital wing, where another spell has been cast for warmth, and put him into a bed to be cared for by Madam Palmphrey. Outside the hospital wing McGonagall says that my going out in the storm alone was very foolish, why hadn't I told someone, told a teacher that Draco was outside? But it was also very brave… she doesn't know whether to punish me for leaving the castle in this storm or reward me for bringing Draco back safely… so she will do neither. She says to get back to the great hall through the hidden passage and no one will know I had left, or at least they wouldn't hear it from her. I head back to the great hall.
I will adopt the color coding convention from here on out, to make my lucid parts more distinguishable from the non-lucid parts. Blue is lucid, Red is non-lucid I am with my mother, walking our dogs. One of them wanders into the neighbor's yard, and we go to get him. My mother starts out first, and I follow along behind. Partly across our field, something strikes me as odd, and I begin to question reality. It becomes clear to me that I am dreaming. At first I am not sure, but the more I question the more obvious it becomes. With that discovery, things begin to fade, and to seem less like a dream and more like a daydream. To hold on, I kneel down and feel the snow. I reach the neighbor's yard, and wonder what I should do I think about Hyu's dreams with Yuya, and how I would like to have that kind of experience. I decide to try again to summon my dream guide. However, the dream begins to fade again, and I enter the Void. I am still lucid, but everything is blackness. I remember what someone told me about trying the "linear acceleration" technique to get out, and try that. It doesn't seem to work. I try spinning, for no good reason. What I am attempting is to become aware of my dream body again, I guess. Then "someone" suggests that I blow my nose. Maybe it was my dream guide, I don't know. I seem to feel myself reaching up and blowing my nose with a tissue. But I think it is my physical body that does this, and I must be awake. I don't open my eyes, but try to lie still and do a WILD. I don't think I really blew my nose and woke up. I didn't have a tissue, and I can't do that kind of thing while asleep anyway. So it must have been a false awakening. Upon reflection, what I ought to have done was open my eyes, do and RC, and continue the dream from there. Oh well, you live and learn.
Updated 06-01-2011 at 03:31 AM by 31914
I was visiting my mother at her house. I noticed several large crates and boxes sitting around filled with fruit. I asked about them and discovered that my little brother was selling them. I briefly considered buying some plums, but then I noticed one of the boxes had a dog in it. It was an English bulldog who was rather large for her breed, about the size of a labrador. I bought her instead. I named her Missy and started walking home (which is impossible IRL) carrying the box with Missy in it. Outside, the weather was terrible. It was overcast and terribly windy. As I rounded a corner onto the street I lived on, I was walking into the wind. Holding the box, I couldn't walk, so I set the box down on the edge of the street and continued to walk, intending to get my car and come back to get her. (Note: I would never do something like this IRL) A couple guys I know from work (we'll call them S and H) were walking behind me and called me to get my attention. As I turned to see them, I saw a car rounding the corner. The drove wide and I saw them heading for the box. I screamed "Don't run ove my dog!" but the car's tires went over the box anyway. The box tumbled in one direction and Missy in another. I ran over to make sure she was okay, and it turned out her paw was the only thing that was hurt. H offered to give us a ride to the vet, then I woke up.
not really any remembering today. almost, but my mother derest came barging it, pulled my covers off and pulled me out of bed. i was 5 seconds away from recall. mothers, gotta love 'em
I was in someone's house. I was in the kitchen with a heavy blonde haired lady. The kitchen was white, very clean, very cookie-cutter. For some reason I knew her as one of my exes mothers. I was asking her something, but accidently called her Mrs. Coburn (name of my old gym teacher). I apologized and addressed her as Mrs. Ridge. She asked me if I wanted a ride to my mother's wedding. Suddenly her hair turned black and she looked like my old english teacher. I declined, but thanked her anyways. I was at my house with my grandparents. I was packing for summer camp, which I had the next day. I asked my grandmother if I could bring one of her blankets. The one she was folding had some sort of superhero on it. She hesitated and said I had to be careful. I said that I could just get one on the way to my mother's wedding.
Good morning, everybody. Dream #1 I was in a car like a limousine with a group of people. The interior surfaces of the limo may have been black. The inside of the limo was very dim, as if the windows were tinted. But it appeared to be a sunny afternoon outside. A boy sat in a sideways seat, his back against the left side of the limo. To his left was the back side of the driver's seat. A mother-like person may have been driving the limo. The boy made some kind of statement like, "I see the quarters are of all different colors. They won't be good to take." In my mind's eye I could see the boy's view. Against a black background were a few quarters. They all gleamed with flashing color. I remember one quarter for sure being pink. But others may have been yellow and blue. A man somewhere, maybe even in my head, said, "That's a strong statement, a blind boy talking about the colors of things. I suppose that's reason enough not to do the thing after all." I hadn't realized until this time that the boy was blind. I now understood that the boy was slowly being the person in the family who was looked to as the leader. The older man in the family had died recently. The boy's statement had been taken seriously because he had been blind and yet made a statement about seeing. But it had also been taken seriously because it was one of the first times the boy had made an assertion for his family to listen to. The boy kind of felt some anxiety. He didn't know whether he could or even should be a leader. He didn't know if his family really wanted him to be a leader. I also personally wondered how the boy was expected to be the leader in the family. He was just a boy. There were a lot of older men in the family, including the older man who had made such a positive comment about the boy's colored-quarter statement. The car was traveling past some church, which I saw outside the window. The church looked like a tan-bricked, one-story school. There was a kind of big, slightly rolling lawn in front of it. I knew we were heading to the church to go to a funeral. I figured it was the funeral for the leader of the family, who, I'd thought, had been an older man. But it turned out that the funeral was for a young girl. I think, however, that it now occurred to me that the girl had been the leader of the family. I was somehow informed how the girl had died. Her boyfriend had killed her. I saw the boyfriend in my mind. He was white, around 18-20 years old, and kind of a violent, crazy person. I now saw the story in something like an English newspaper that looked like it was formatted in an Asian style. I'm pretty sure that the newspaper was on paper. But the imagery also looks like an online paper. Apparently the boyfriend killed the girl after she had told him she was only 7 years old. He'd thought that the girl had led him into falling in love with her, and that she had made him a pedophile. But it turned out that the whole thing had been a game. The girl and her mother were playing a little prank on the boy, and then, when the boy was thoroughly flustered, to tell the boyfriend the girl's real age. The girl 13. But the prank turned out bad. The boyfriend got terribly violent right away and killed the girl. I think the mother got murdered as well. Dream #2 It was night. I walked into a cafe. The cafe only seemed to be half-lit, as if the store were actually closed down. But there were a lot of workers behind the counter. The workers all wore black shirts and beige baseball caps. They may also have worn aprons. I walked to my left, past the counter. As I turned the corner to the right, I came to another counter. Passing this way, I saw a girl I recognized as a friend from my past. (I don't think I really know her from waking life.) She was really pretty, with tan skin and blue eyes. Her light brown hair was turning grey. This surprised me. I couldn't believe my friend's hair was grey! But, then, I thought, we're all getting old, me and my friends. Behind the second counter a lot of workers were all sat in folding chairs before a television. They were all watching some movie. This was like some kind of recreational activity for them. A man behind the counter stood up and walked toward the counter to me. I may have recognized him as a friend as well. He probably asked me what I would like. I probably asked him for a coffee.