All DJ Entries

I'm driving through a familiar IRL location, semi-lucid - aware I'm dreaming but still just automatically following the dream storyline. While thinking about this being a dream, I go fully lucid and remember a lucid goal, one that involves traveling to a particular building, so I set out to find it. I'm at a crossroads, and I think to myself, oh look, there's the road that leads to that place! I drive down that road for a while, and the scenery gradually stops resembling IRL.

Eventually the road curves, and rather than turning with it, I drive off the road, directly through a dry yellow bush, although it gives my car no resistance at all. I drive through the forest for a while, without a road, and I pass construction crews - men in hardhats, bulldozers, and a vast number of tree stumps that they've cut down. I begin to have trouble with visuals, things start going black and I worry that I'm waking up, but I'm able to clearly see a tree branch against the sky as I drive up a hill, looking upward, and I keep focusing on that vivid image, wondering why I can see some things and not others.

I exit the forest, away from the construction crews, and am now at the top of some rolling hills covered in green grass. In the distance, I can see a blue building flanked by white pillars, and I decide that must be the place I've been looking for. As I get closer, I see that it seems to be a school - which is not what I'm looking for - but I keep heading for it anyway, figuring it'll work out when I get there. I cross a bridge, and looking down I can see some land covered by a thin layer of water far below, a sort of web-like network of tiny streams. The place I'm looking for has a vague connection with water, so I think of this as promising.

I park in a small parking lot, a good distance away from that building. You have to walk from here, this place is the official entrance. There are a few other people around heading toward that building too. I hear sea birds. Over to my left, the opposite direction from the building, there's a low wall; I walk over to it and look down into a bay. I can smell the sea air. The bay is filled with fish - some of them are on the rocks instead of in the water, but they seem fine with this, and I have the feeling it's a visual trick to allow me to see them clearly. Similarly, there are giant versions of some sea creatures that would normally be much too small to see from this distance. I think of this as something like an aquarium. I can hear triumphant-sounding orchestral music.

I walk back to the entrance that leads to the building. The 'entrance' mostly consists of a large wooden message board with various things posted on it, including a place where people have left written messages about their visit to this place. I look it over briefly and continue on the path towards the building. At the other end of that wooden board, someone's left a backpack behind. As I look at it, I realize I'm waking up.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a man who's conducted a study of the languages in his country, who's so far cataloged over 300 languages and dialects. He's currently walking down a dirt road with a lot of foot traffic. Ahead of him, some people are setting up a kind of gate. A man who he's meeting here arrives through that gate, accompanied by a small escort of soldiers.

Now that they've met up, the soldiers move on ahead, leaving the researcher and this man a little separate. One of the soldiers says something to the man, and he starts to address him as 'my captain' or something similar, a title involving rank, but he catches himself after the 'my' (or the equivalent rather; this wasn't in english). This man isn't his captain (or whatever the rank was) anymore. Both the soldiers and the man are a little sad about that, though none of them show it, but walking together with the researcher rather than with the soldiers sort of rubs it in. He'd served with this group of soldiers for a long time, and he was just recently forced to resign from his post due to something that was revealed about him. It wasn't any action on his part; it was some inherent quality that he had been unaware of, something he thinks of as something like a taint, although as a disembodied observer, I believe it's not actually a bad thing in itself, whatever 'it' is.

Addressing the researcher, he identifies himself as 'language group 246' - that is, although he doesn't expect the researcher to remember him, they've met before, when he'd participated in that researcher's survey of dialects. He takes some food out of a bag - a corn cob sliced into halves - and he offers one to the researcher, who's surprised but accepts. The man is reflecting on the opportunity for conversation with this researcher now, versus with the soldiers he used to command.

I am in a large banquet hall. It is well lit, but somehow seems dark. There are round tables placed around the room randomly. We are celebrating something for the music school. I am with my friend, Jim. He takes me to a table to sit across from a British girl. I think she's really attractive and we talk, but she wants to introduce me to her friend. There is a shift from the banquet hall to a lobby. It looks like a lobby of a cheap hotel. My old bass guitar is hanging up on the wall. I take it down and try to play Chicken Scratch, a song I played in jazz band in high school. I can't figure it out at first, but then I change the strings I'm playing on, and I slap it out like a boss. My old band director is there standing in front of me. He tells me that I can have his rehearsal bass guitar. I tell him that I already have it. There is a shift from the lobby to outside. I am in a long line of people. It seems to never stop in front of my nor behind me. We are standing on a ledge about two stories above the base of a mountain. There are only a few feet between the side of the mountain and where the ledge drops off. The girl the British girl was going to introduce me to is in front of the person in front of me. The person in front of me is on a horse, as is the person behind me. There is a very loud announcement. A man standing on a pedestal as tall as the ledge we are standing on makes a speech about reviews. The man is very tall and looks like Uncle Sam on stilts with blue and white striped pants. He says that each person will either have a 5 second review and a 5 second slide off the ledge, or will have a 10 second review and no slide off the ledge. Many people are happy and joyous, but many seem hopeless and sad. I see the slide appear next to me me and someone goes down it, then it disappears. I continue to follow the horse in front of me. The horse behind me starts to nudge me with its head. I don't want to fall off, so I try to get to the girl in front of the horse in front of me. I can't do it no matter how hard I try. I wake up.

*Minor note: I knew in my head that the way we were traveling was illegal.

I walk through a door and come out in my IRL yard, thinking about how to get out of this situation (what that situation was, I no longer remember), when I remember this is a dream. I start flying, which I think of as a useful way of escaping that situation - my first instinct is to continue the dream storyline. Then I realize that since this is a dream, there's no reason for me to continue to deal with that situation at all. I'm looking up at a gibbous moon (it's in a different phase IRL. Also it was night in the dream; and there was no snow on the ground, though the trees were bare; and there was a bush that IRL was cut down years ago). Looking at that moon, I immediately (and accurately) remember two lucid goals that have to do with the moon, and I decide to fly up there. However, I get distracted thinking about those two different goals - the second one doesn't necessarily have to be done on the moon, and I wonder if trying to focus on both at once could throw me off.

Slight memory gap. While flying, I've somehow wound up getting entangled with some Christmas lights my IRL neighbor put up near the power lines - red, white and blue ones - and I've managed to damage the string of white lights. Although I'm still aware I'm dreaming and still intend to fly to the moon, I've lost some lucidity - I think I have to fix these lights first.

But after accomplishing that, I find something else that distracts me - a Bowie album called 'evil on sale' - and lose lucidity entirely.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a child who's the young, orphaned, lord of an estate. He's been asleep or unconscious for some days after some incident that put him in danger, and now that he's woken up he's found that his servants - one in particular, who's also a magician or something similar - have changed things about the house while he was unconscious. This house used to be full of secret, magical things - taking care of them was part of the duty of the lord of this particular estate - and now they've all been removed, for his own protection. The lord doesn't like this at all. He's run down to the cellars, where a locked door used to open onto a place where they kept a pair of unicorns, which are no longer there - that magician servant is here in the hall outside that locked door, up on a step ladder, dusting a lamp. The lord's talking to a young, blonde servant girl who'd been the one to inform him about the changes in the first place, he's desperately hoping that she'll tell him the unicorns are just outside in the fields, but he knows that won't be the case - they're gone.

February 23, 2014

3:33 am non-lucid

I had a dream that I went to Japanese camp to teach, but when I got there together with my husband who was dropping me off, I was having second thoughts. I didn't want to be away from my husband for 2 weeks, no cell phone contact. So I had to confront my employers, who knew me since I went to Japanese camp as a teen. There was a Chinese male and a white female. Went to the back room offices to talk. At first small talk, but the Chinese man could tell something was wrong. I hugged him at one point since it's been a while since I've seen him. When I mentioned how I didn't think this was going to work, he said not all marriages work out. Then I said hold up, no, I'm talking about the job. We were confused over the word pre-meditated, or a word similar to that, which caused the misunderstanding. The word's definition in the dream eluded to something not working out, not the definition in waking life. He told me to reconsider working there and how it is only two weeks and my Japanese would improve a lot.

The lighting was very dim, like nighttime throughout the dream. I remember going out and reminiscing over the camp. Then I went over to a bunch of children's books that were about mythical native American or Inuit creatures in the snow. Theme of heritage, culture being passed down. I read one of the books, which had a theme of pride in one's culture. The book had a few foreign words in it, but not in Japanese. It could've been a book about the same content, but in Japanese, yet it wasn't. I didn't understand why.

Before I confronted my employers, there was another worker in the dream who when found out about the cell phone rule, also felt she couldn't do that. She was short, I think her hair was pulled back, dark hair. Not a language employee, instead another kind of staff. Her face kind of resembled my piano instructor's. She was encouraged to speak up after hearing that I wanted to and has a husband too. She's older than me.

I remembering arguing to the Chinese man that if only my husband could work that summer too, but couldn't because of his job, implying that he should hire him and pay him to solve things.

When contemplating, I was leaning my head on a wall or pole.

I was having second thoughts before we even left to go to the camp, which is states away, but still decided to drive there with my husband.

I felt sad to be conflicted. Loved Japanese camp so much, but had to choose between keeping my marriage strong (which could end up fine even if I did work at the camp) or working at a place I loved and grew from. Reminiscent, though setting not at all like the actual camp, as usual in dreams.

The white lady resembled my TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) instructor, who is pregnant in waking life and pregnant in the dream. Dream was in English and non-lucid.

I woke up with a song from Animal Crossing: New Leaf playing in my head. I immediately realized I had a dream when I woke up, wanted to record it and jumped to my dream journal.

Time after writing down this dream: 4:01am.

Mantra: 夢を見ることを分かっています (I will realize I'm dreaming) 野原に風で空を飛びたい (I will fly in a field using the wind)

I had asked my husband if he has had a flying dream before, and he said yes, many times. He recalled one in which he was being caught up by the wind in a field and flying really high. So I imagined using that method to fly.

4:07 am Haven't fallen asleep
4:15 am Still not asleep
4:40 am Still not asleep

6:02 am

Dream 1 MILD

I realize that I am dreaming and check through the thumb/palm RC. I am so excited to confirm my thoughts that I am dreaming by seeing my thumb go through my palm. I try to jump so that I can levitate/fly, excited that I am lucid dreaming, afraid to be short on time. The gravity is definitely not normal and I kind of float through the air as I jump, but I don't exactly get far off of the ground. This is probably because I'm inside a building.

Before I become lucid, my dream is set in my apartment at night and I feel there has been an intruder. The intruder is female and I could hear her have a phone call in Spanish and sing from my bed. My husband and I are both in the bed and I try to alert him but he doesn't really think there's any threat and just goes back to sleep. I am extremely afraid and I think at some point my husband does leave the bed and is harmed, but the scenario resets itself. I eventually realize I am dreaming and next to my bed practice jumping.

The dream is in English and was induced with MILD. Along with saying my mantas about flying, I also was a little paranoid about an intruder, though I tried to push the thought away.

Dream 2 non-lucid

I was heading towards a babysitting job for a Japanese family. When I met the mother, she talked to me in Japanese and I replied in Japanese, though I didn't remember any of the dialogue. She lived in an apartment.

I remember walking down the hall to the apartment and seeing her neighbors, who aren't Japanese. Her neighbors were intimate and I remember it being embarrassing to witness, but I don't remember what happened. I think their bathroom was in the hall and one was using the toilet, yet with no shame of being in public and still smiling and waving.

This was non-lucid.

I think I might've woken up in between the 1st and 2nd dream, or if not consciously thought in between the dreams that I need to write down my lucid dream before I forget, but instead moved onto a 2nd dream.

Time after writing down these dreams: 6:22am

This dream starts off in a cave. The earth is dark brown. There is lava pouring out of holes in the walls, and there are puddles of it about every 10 feet. The cave isn't open; it's more of an underground tunnel. It seems to go on forever in front of me and behind me. I had no idea why I was there. Then I was in a pharmacy. (I work in a pharmacy in real life, but this one wasn't anything like the pharmacy I work in). This pharmacy didn't get medication from any manufacturer, we made them in the pharmacy itself using various roots and leaves. The pharmacy was built like this: only one floor; think of a small, old schoolhouse, except it has a flat roof; the whole front side is made of glass and there is a sliding glass door; the walls are made of small, brown bricks, the the inside walls are flat and white; after walking in, there is a white table to the left just big enough for two people to sit across from each other (probably for consultations); there is a counter half way into the pharmacy that starts from the left wall and runs to the right wall until there is only enough space for people to walk in and out of the work area; the back wall was made up of, I'd say, about eight rows by twelve columns of brown baskets that were separated by the same, white material as the wall, into cubby-like spaces (if you've ever seen Spirited Away, it was similar to the way the Boiler Man organized his herbs and spices); there were two computers near the rear, left corner of the work area, and one computer on the counter. I was sitting at a computer in the corner typing, but there was nothing on the screen. Then a man and his boy sat at the one to the left of me. I wondered how he got back there and why he was there with his son. I said something philosophical, but I didn't get a response from him. Then I tried to say something funny, but he still didn't say anything. Then there was a lady who wanted help at the counter behind me. She had hair like Bozo the Clown, but it was grey instead red. There were streaks of black in it as well. She was very old. I'd say about 60 or 70. She also had a severe case of kyphosis (hunchback) and a wide frown. She was yelling and demanded that I gave her a sheet of paper hanging on the side wall. I looked up and there was a stack of papers nailed to the wall. I looked closer at them and noticed that they were blank prescriptions already signed by the physician. I told her that there is no way we can give her one because she will use it to write a false prescription. I turn back around to work on what I was working on on my computer, but then I heard my mom, the woman, and a doctor talking to the woman. They had one of the sheets of paper and were helping the woman write a false prescription. I couldn't believe my eyes. The next thing I knew, I was in a dorm room with two of my friends. Let's call them Bob and Jim. The place we were in was a massive, two story hotel/dormitory. The front side of it was made entirely of glass, and there was a small door on the bottom left of the building. The inside was like a log cabin, but it wasn't made of whole, round logs; they were cut and the walls and floors were flat. Straight ahead after entering there was an activity room that had a pool table in it, and to the right of the entrance against the wall was an office room. The office room was walled in, but from the waist up was an area of glass, so you could see in. Just beyond the office was a hall way that went deep into the dormitory with doors on either side of it. The room Bob, Jim, and I were in was the last on the left. I knew in my head that we were in a dorm room, but it looked like a stereotypical hotel room. There was one bed and a TV in front of it. The carpet was magenta mixed with dark blue and green. Yaknow, stereotypical hotel room. Bob had his backpack and I knew that he had some form of recreational drugs in it. We left the room and went to the activity room. Bob put his backpack on the pool table, and started to roll a joint. Then we look up and saw two men walk into the building. I personally knew they weren't cops, but Bob was worried and started to gather his things to go back to the room. Jim was like, okay. Then a middle-aged woman entered the room. I then realized that I had no pants on. I started to look for some pants and thought there would be some on the pool table, but it wasn't a pool table anymore, it was a very tall, normal table. The table's surface was up to my chest instead of my hip. I frantically reached on top of the table for pants. I found a pair, but they were shaped as if someone was wearing them. Bob said that they were his, took them, then threw me a pair of big, baggy, green jeans. I thought they were odd because the pockets were just below my knees... not that they were slacking, but that's just where the pockets were placed on the pants. Bob had already left and was probably in the room, but Jim and I stayed behind for a little bit because there was a group of four terribly gothic girls who were playing metal music. It was very simple, but the sound quality was legit, so I stayed until they were done. One of the girls said that I make her sound like a recording she made for her friend on FarmVille. I never played that game before, so I just said, "Oh," and walked on. I sat down and leaned my back up against a wall in the hall next to a large painting. I don't know what the painting was of, but there was a lot of blue, green, and white. Maybe a landscape? Anyhow, I realized that I was wearing earbud headphones and I was listening to a podcast. It was of my friends Jim and Bob talking about me realizing that I'm dreaming and if I will be able to. I didn't think anything of it. Anyhow, when I stand up, next thing I know is I'm in a banquet hall for martial arts. I was wearing a white tae kwon do uniform and I had a yellow belt. Bob had a black and a red belt on. Both belts he was wearing were slanted, but at different angles, so they made an X. Jim was sitting at our table. There were many rows of rectangular, brown tables. The ones you'd see at a family reunion. The one next to ours was a large, circle table. There were many karate people sitting at it. The space between our table and theirs was enough for me to squeeze through, but instead of walking through them, I lifted myself up between them like I would when I was a kid. I did a karate kick and the people at the round table laughed. The next thing I knew I was outside. I was hearing the earbud headphones I had on earlier and was listening to the same podcast... the one of which Bob and Jim were talking about me realizing I was dreaming. I still don't know why I didn't question it, but meh. I was hiking outdoors in a forest-like area. There were large trees on either side of me, and a dirt path in front of me. I walked on the path for awhile and got to a small incline. It was pretty steep, but only a few feet up, so I crawled up it. When I got to the top, the scenery around me changed. Instead of being surrounded by trees, there was a space on both sides of me that was free of trees. It was as if something had drawn a line on a map through the trees and they were gone on that strip of land. I passed it and the trees continued again. The podcast I was listening to changed from Bob and Jim talking to the two guys from Radiolab on NPR. They were talking about someone muscular who was on the run. I knew it couldn't be me because I'm not very muscular. Apparently he stole a ton of money. So, I get to another incline and just beyond it I get to a green truck/SUV. It was a mix between the pick-up truck and SUV. There was also a very large tree to the right of it, and just behind that, a police car was poking out. I was afraid of it because I thought the police officer would think I was the guilty one because I was just walking alone. I approached the cop car and it became another green SUV/truck. The were no more trees near me. I then saw a gas station and a street intersection. I crossed one street to get to the gas station. Parked there was a semi truck facing me. Next to it was another green SUV/truck. Then, another green SUV/truck pulled up to my side and flashed its lights at the semi-truck. The semi-truck slowly pulled forward, I looked up, and I opened my eyes. I was in my room, but it was still pitch black. I remembered the dreams that I just had and wondered why I never did a reality check. I wanted to make a habit out of doing them so I'd do them in my dreams, so I plugged my nose and breathed in. That's right, I breathed in. I had no problem breathing, even when my nose was plugged, and this blew my mind. I realized I had a false awakening. As soon as I put my hand back down, extremely intense vibrations waved throughout my body. My entire body was vibrating, but there was also a concentration of vibrations that pulsed up and down my body. Wherever the concentration of vibrations went in my body felt overwhelmingly good. I felt pure joy, relaxation, happiness, and pretty much every positive emotion and physical feeling. I kept blinking. Eventually, my vision of pitch-blackness started to rip in two. It was as if someone held a black piece of construction paper in front of my eyes and ripped it slowly. Behind it I saw my room, slightly lit from the morning sun.

February 22, 2014

6:15 am
Woke-up remembering scary or mystery themed music from my dream and not remembering much else. Felt like another thought process dream in which I am just thinking, like in real life, but when I wake up forget what I am thinking about. The notes went lowest note - highest note - second lowest note - second highest note repeating again and again. It didn't feel special enough of a tune to go to my computer to record the exact notes, and I don't remember the exact tune anymore.

Got up, brushed teeth and hair. Went back to sleep.

Mantra: 夢を見ています　(I am dreaming.) すごい夢を見ています (I am dreaming an awesome dream.) 嬉しい気持ち (happy feelings).

I thought maybe if I did my mantra in Japanese, I would dream in Japanese. I've had dreams in Japanese before.

7:08 am Haven't fallen asleep.
7:45 am Still not asleep.
9:59 am Just woke up.

3rd Dream - Part 2
Had a dream about Japanese school life (second time since watching the drama Limit). All of my classmates are Japanese, including me. I'm not really in the dream, seeing through a different girl's perspective. We're all at a restaurant. Then the police come to say there's been a murder. My friend, a guy, and I try to run to the back and escape because we're scared, but we end up sitting down at our table with our other friend, a girl. We learn that the murder has been committed by our other friend, who is often bullied. She killed her parents. I'm so shocked and wonder why. If she could kill her parents, she could kill her friends too. I can now picture her face clearly at this point in the dream. She's not really there, just my dream self remembering what she looks like. She looks like the manga artist from the drama Limit. I also remember being sad for her. I hear her screaming in my head, "来なくて" (go away) again and again, through it is grammatically incorrect and should be 来ないで. I run to my friend, a guy, sitting at another table. His presence feels like Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec. I hug him and he comforts me. Aside from that one line, the dream is in English. It wasn't scary, more like a movie. Last scene, we are leaving the restaurant in a car and I remember seeing a police van and wondering if our friend is in there.

3rd Dream - Part 1
Before this dream changed into a murder scene. I remember mixing a drink at the table with my friend, a girl. The presence is the same girl who was at the table in Part 2 of the dream. At this point we don't have distinguished ethnicities and I am myself. The drink was an orange-colored smoothie. We came to the idea that we want to pour orange-colored cough syrup in it. It tasted disgusting, like curdled milk. The cough syrup absolutely ruined the smoothie, separating the fruit juice from the cream, turning it a gray color with lumps. We realized it was a bad idea.

2nd Dream
My mom and the girl I nanny and her family. My mom wanted to plan some sort of event. I was in my mom's kitchen at one point and Nila's living room at another point. I asked my mom at one point if she was going to cook for the event, perhaps turkey. She had eating out/bringing in food from outside more in mind. I suggested a specific restaurant, but she didn't like the idea.

**Note: I know the name of the specific restaurant and wrote it in my physical dream journal, just leaving out that detail since it might reveal where I live.

1st Dream
I might've been at school. Hallway, elevator. Perhaps Japanese club. I think a presence like Michael Scott from The Office might've been there. Group of people.

All dreams were non-lucid. By the time I finished writing down my dreams it was 10:24 am.

Reflections: I want to meet the girl who looked like the manga artist from Limit (dream character) while lucid. I have a lingering feeling of wanting to know more about her.

This morning my husband woke me up to say goodbye before going to work. I got up and brushed my teeth (don't like the bad taste) then went back to bed. Like usual, before falling asleep I thought about the possibility of an intruder and worried I'd have another intruder, false-awakening, paralysis dream in which I knew I was awake.

I fell asleep with my cat on the bed and the cat was still sleeping with me in the dream. I remember seeing my window, which has brown curtains, and knowing that I was still sleeping. I could feel myself paralyzed in bed and wanted to wake up. At this point I was half paralyzed, as I was lifting up my arm, stretched out towards the window. In my thinking in the dream, I was half awake, but in reality it was all a dream and my real body outside of the dream wasn't moving at all. I thought if only I can move enough, then I'll fully wake up. Finally, I struggle off the bed and onto the floor, then hear a tune very audibly. It was unfamiliar to me. A few seconds later I wake up. When I wake up, I wonder if the tune was coming from outside the dream or fabricated in the dream (often I rely on cues from reality to help me wake up from false awakening dreams, like the radio or an alarm, but I didn't this time) and realized it was in the dream. I knew I didn't know the tune, but I wondered if it was the song from Helix that my dad sent me as a ringtone recently. It wasn't perfectly like it, but it reminded me of it. Now I don't remember how the tune goes. This is the first time that this particular reoccuring dream has had a tune in it.

This was all with the knowledge in my dream that this same scenario happens all the time, and when it happens an intruder will come or my husband will come home early. I want to wake up so badly because I don't want to face the intruder. This time I didn't face him at all. My last encounter with the intruder I was trying to block him from opening up the door and suddenly woke up (I wasn't aware I was dreaming in this instance). I've also seen him in person in the dream, an Asian man (my husband is Japanese), but looks nothing like my husband. But it didn't seem like he is going to hurt me.

Usually, I'm really scared of this dream happening. But now I want to face it and talk to the intruder. So I hope to post more dream journals here and track my progress on this particular dream.

I'm someone who's investigating a woman, and my partner and I are searching her apartment. I'm going through old chat logs on her computer. As we leave, walking down the stairwell, we talk about something I found in those logs. I'm saying to her something about "the desire to feel someone else can understand your experience, your point of view. The internet can be great for that." I'm thinking that I'm starting to understand this woman we're investigating, to know how she thinks; I can relate to her. I'm also thinking that the internet's never worked out that way for me - but then I think, feeling alone in something is a universal human experience in itself.

Connecting directly to that feeling-alone-in-something thought - we get to the bottom of the stairwell and walk out the door, and outside, we're in the ruins of an apartment building where I used to live. Everything I can see is covered in debris. We're standing in front of what used to be the indoor pool on the first floor - there's no water, there's a layer of debris at the bottom, and there's no wall or ceiling, the pool is the only recognizable part of the building left. This is a memory of where I was when my wife and daughter died. I climb down to the pool ladder, trying to recreate the moment. But I'm shorter now than I was then, the perspective's wrong. Getting the right eye level means putting my feet on a different rung of the ladder than before. It's not quite right.

Looking around, I find something in the debris. It looks like a cartridge for an old video game console; from the pictures and words on it, I get the impression it's not a game itself, but a soundtrack. My partner takes it from me and looks it over and says, yeah, if you don't know what you're doing it'll just be a soundtrack - but this contains a hidden emulator.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Fantasy setting loosely based on ancient China. As a disembodied observer, I'm watching a man teleport into a large tunnel or cave, only to immediately crumble into dust. I'm thinking, whoops. Let's retry that.

Earlier, a woman showed that man a dark green and glittering substance kept in a small, rectangular, light green bottle, and explained that to use it you simply rub it over the palms of your hands and clap them together. Having seen him crumble into dust, I can tell she was tricking him, deliberately leading him to his death, but I'm also aware that this substance really is something of value - this man only asked her about it because he's seen her use it before. There's an old man listening to their conversation, and when she's left that old man catches the younger man's eye and takes the bottle himself, tucking it into his sleeve. The scene skips ahead to a moment when those two men are surrounded and need to escape in a hurry; the old man produces that bottle, rubs the contents over his hands - which causes them to look claw-like - and claps his hands together. Both men are teleported to that tunnel - this time around, the original teleporter lives, and the old man crumbles into dust.

I'm in a store that sells various forms of blades, among other things, and my attention's caught by an iron mask with a strangely curved dagger set into it, removable. (After I woke up I realized the dagger's shape was inspired by F/SN.) The mask's face seems very narrow, but I believe that the mask's features will fit themselves to the wearer. The eyes are particularly narrow and I don't see any holes to look out of. There's a long and narrow stylized beard that reminds me of ancient Egyptian art, which would cover the wearer's neck, and the mouth is designed to look as if it's been sewn shut. I like it.

I'm distracted by the sound of more people arriving outside. There's a brief confrontation but they dismiss me and the people I'm with as not threatening, which irritates me. There's some debate over whether this post-apocalyptic, breakdown-of-society situation we're in will last, or whether things will return to normal in a few days.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There are three astronauts who've said or done something that their bosses wouldn't approve of, and they've ceased broadcasting in a way that implies they're dead or soon will be. But when I talk to someone who wasn't watching their broadcast live, I find she's got a different impression of events, she believes everything's fine, and some reasonable-sounding excuse has been given for why the astronauts are no longer broadcasting. Their previous broadcast has been censored or changed.

I'm playing a piano, using sheet music for a jazz tune I'd never heard before. The sun's going down, and the light gradually darkens until I can't make out the sheet music in front of me.

I'm about to open a portal for someone, and I'm trying to explain the difficulties of this type of teleportation to them. I'm saying, no, it doesn't have to be a place I've been to before, but I have to be able to keep the precise location I 'feel' in mind. Things like direction or distance from here to there, those matter - what the place looks like doesn't.

As Rumpelstiltskin, I'm using magic to sort of scan someone for some information, together with Belle, and Belle is able to feel it - she's surprised by the feel of it. It seems like it's happy; she didn't expect it to have a mind of its own. And it worries her that it seems happy, when the person we're scanning is sick. I'm thinking, the magic doesn't care about the person being sick one way or the other, it doesn't really understand what people or sickness are, it's just happy about the way it's being used - it's got a life of its own to a degree but it's not that sentient.

I'm outside my IRL home at dawn, and there are all these beautiful birds. A great horned owl on a tree stump, a snowy egret walking across the lawn, a variety of smaller birds that I don't recognize in the trees, and four peacocks that show absolutely no fear of humans, I'm standing right next to one and it's not bothered, I'm thinking the peacocks must have been tame.

There are two guys climbing up a rock - they think of it as a mountain, but it's barely a hill - carrying a radio and a guitar. A musician they like died here, and one of them has insisted on making a sort of pilgrimage, to play his music at the place he "breathed his last breath." At the top of the rock they turn on the radio. A female vocalist sings "At last the time fell-" The guys brought their own instruments and are joining in. One of them is on the guitar, but the one who insisted on this trip has some small metal instrument that looks vaguely like a comb, played with the thumb.

Dean and Sam are trapped inside a house they were investigating, something to do with a piano and a song that was being worked on at the time of the composer's death. As Dean, I'd been calling someone on my phone the moment the house trapped us inside, a woman we've worked with before. She'd been having lunch when I called her, and after a while the phone is taken by some guy she was eating with, someone who doesn't understand anything about what's going on and who tells me off for being rude, insists I should "use sir and ma'am" or else he'll hang up. So I call him "sir and ma'am" and piss him off. Thankfully the woman from before takes the phone back. I have the impression that if I hadn't been on the phone already, if I hadn't already had a connection established, the house would have prevented the phones from connecting; if this call ends, we won't be able to contact the outside world at all.

I've got a creature perched on my finger that's something like a crow and something like a bat - it's furry rather than feathered, but it's got a beak. The feeling of its talons around my finger is odd - not exactly discomfort, it reminds me of holding a mouse in your hands. I raise my hand and launch it into the sky.

There are two little girls, elementary school age, who are carrying out some illegal deal, weapons or something similar, something stored in the trunk of a car. They have some mentor who usually does this, he doesn't realize that they're here in his stead, he would have stopped them if he knew about it. This meeting with the customer was supposed to be an initial negotiation, a sample, but one of the girls declares that they're going to do the deal now. The customer reacts badly. The other girl gets shot, the one who'd declared they were doing the deal now takes a gun out of the trunk and shoots the customer, the cops come, they're all put in handcuffs, and the customer is bewildered, he was a good customer and doesn't understand why they tried to change things. The girls escape, go home, and try to cut the chains around their wrists with their father's tools.

Date: 21 Jan

Entry 2/2

I thoroughly review in head the previous dreams and get more insomnia

Vaguely recall these two as I fell asleep afterwards.

DILD: I am in this yard like it was in the past, much wider, etc. Know I am dreaming and think of music. It think there was happiness, confidence and possibly thoughts about something before this part.

I start to sing or expect to hear a song. My subcon picks up a dream remix of "heal the world" by M. Jackson. I concentrate on making it sound like sung by a choir and hear the music loudly coming from everywhere and into me. Notice a few instruments too, really nice. I keep singing with the music but at some point I don't know the lyrics so that makes it hard for the music to continue. In addition, the more I become one with the music coming all around me, the more I lose sight of the yard and the dream and become blind. The dream soon fades.

I may have a micro awakening or so, no review, continue sleepying.

DILD:Don't remember the beginning of the dream. I am in this room, talking to bf and open and close a few doors, where I think about not locking them as it is a dream.

Bf is going somewhere but before I can say anything else, he vanishes. There's a stick that I decide to leave outside, should I need it for defense? I also notice a strange gurgling sound coming from a pipe, find it interesting. I go back to the same room, there were lots of bed there before but now it's a single connected bed the size of four beds is covering most of the room.

I remember I wanted to play with my ipad, so I try to summon it by drawing its shape with my fingers. It's funny because I do this instinctively rather than consciously. While there's a rectangular shape in progress, it isn't working to produce an ipad and on the bed just below my hands is my ipad so I grab it and try to stretch the frame. It happens, just as if I was dragging the image of a frame on a PC. I expand the screen to a TV size, then have to apply a bit more stretching as it does not stay in the desired shape for long. It gets small again. I think about trying to control the image.

Then something happens outside and now there are two scary zombi-like DCs and they are about to enter the place. I try to close the door although know they will get in anyways. I decide to face them and affect them. Actually, I feel quite confident and no matter how ugly they are (especially one with something coming out of his mouth), I just feel positivity and so spread it to them. They become quite happy and we just hang in there like drunk buddies. I stare in the eyes of one of them, he feels like a phantom rather than real person and is not looking at me with any purpose/driving force. The dream soon fades.

I black out before being able to journal and have a few other dream fragments.

I'm in a house which contains a dollhouse which is an exact model of the house, even containing a miniature version of the dollhouse itself, which in turn is a perfect model with its own miniature dollhouse inside, and so on; the dream camera zooms in through what seems to be an infinite series of nested houses, and I say "It's recursive."

Inside one of these levels of houses, I can hear a woman's voice singing, not a recording or anything professional, it's the way someone might sing to themselves around the house, going "la la la" instead of words. I'm in a hall, passing by a woman's bedroom where there are a few cardboard boxes open on the floor, one with old Victorian clothes spilling out, and a mirror in a gold frame. The mirror catches my attention and I go lucid. I'd been thinking earlier (while awake) that mirrors are often linked with magic and summoning in my dreams and I'd intended to try using that deliberately the next time I had a lucid dream, so I look at this one now and try to summon Julia, who I'd expect to be the easiest character for my mind to summon. After a moment I see a woman moving in the mirror in the distance, too far away to see much, but it's not Julia. I start to try again with a slightly different approach, but then think that I'm a little too close to waking up for this. I lose visuals.

I 'wake up' in bed and reach for a pen to jot this down, but I drop it and have to get out of bed to look for it. I'm irritated by this, thinking I'm going to forget the dream - then I wake up again.

I'm reading a scientific news article. There's a video of a man with a fox, and the fox is crying - as in, shedding tears. Through the use of some frequency, the man is able to induce "conscience." Reading this, it's causing me to rethink the nature of violence in the wild and morality.

Two extremely elegant women I'd been sitting with at a restaurant have gotten up to tango. I remain at our table, enjoying the view. They were the only two dancing at first, but a few other couples join in as the song goes on. The couple from the table just to my right gets up and goes to the dance floor, and they choose to place themselves directly between myself and the women I came with, blocking my view of my companions. I consider this rude.

Date: 05 Jan

Noisy neighbors and dehydration = wbtb

I drift in and out of sleep. There's a short non-ld where I observe and discuss a huge dog, two other large dogs and their owners. We take pictures.

DILD: This one started right after the non-ld as separate dream. I was looking forward to an ld after the neighbor induced wbtb.

I begin to feel the surroundings and hear a gentle tune as if coming from a toy or a music box. I am aware. This time things happen much slower and I notice that indeed, it was dark around me and then suddenly I open my eyes and see. The room is bright and vivid and dream-like liquid. This is supposed to be our kitchen. I'm happy I noticed the opening of the eyes. In this official dream entry/realization moment the melody makes a concluding sound, it then starts again. I find one of those kid toys that produce similar effects and make it play. I still hear the gentle tune plus there is a second layer of slower modern music (like a techno beat) in the background. I enjoy this for a while, having the feeling that I left the tablet on and the music is seeping in the dream.

For my disappointment, I ascertain that there is no one here and I wanted to do the resolution task again. I approach the window and see that the neighbor's place is just below, there is a bed and his entire room is accessible. Without hesitating, I get down and end up in his bed, but then have second thoughts. Things look kind of real, what if this is rl and I am trespassing? I decide to do a nose plug, it fails, but I notice the feeling is somewhat different from rl. I'm kind of annoyed and can't remember any other RCs to confirm. Finally, I conclude that I probably wouldn't be that crazy to do this normally and resume my activities.

My hope was to find the neighbor in his room, but there's no one there so I go around. It's a huge apartment complex in an unknown place. I pass by the windows of a closed store, some really nice sweaters inside and I almost lose lucidity thinking about the brand and design. I continue on my way to see another store, also closed. It's dark on the streets, like the city in early morning with no people in sight, apart for a guy that goes in the direction where I came from. I think he is another neighbor and then the realization hits me that I can ask him. I go back and follow him to his place. He soon comes down being a completely different DC (tribal dots on his face) with two other DCs accompanying him. He claims they are neighbors. I also introduce myself as a his neighbor and ask him about his NY resolutions. He replies he doesn't have time now, because he just met the other neighbors and it's one per weekend thing.

I insist on getting my answer, "don't worry I am not going to bother you, just tell me what your New Year's resolution is". He starts talking but I can't catch the words, the sound is muffled. He mentions something about a woman and then after repeated questioning from my side finally replies "I want to be someone they always remember, always want to know". Oh, that is beautiful, I exclaim and repeat his sentence a few more times to commit to memory. Two other DCs come in. I try to remember my other tasks but before I do, the dream fades.