Recent DJ Posts

12-19-2013 -- [Two detailed lucids today, surrounded by days of nothing even memorable. Sigh! But these two dreams were really cool!] I am in a supermarket that seems familiar, though I cannot identify the exact chain or location. There is a bit with managers and entering through turnstiles or something that seem vaguely reminiscent of other recent dreams, then soon I am wandering the aisles. Eventually I come across an aisle that has snack cakes, and among the various offerings are the Little Debbie Christmas Cakes that I enjoy. But for some reason the packs have been broken up, and the individual plastic-wrapped two packs are being offered for sale, and a few of them are a new strawberry flavor, rather than my usual preferred chocolate flavored ones. Since I don't know if they are any good, I decide to open one and eat it, to test how I like it, so I can decide if I want to buy a bunch of them or not. I figure I will just take the wrapper to the register with whatever else I decide to purchase, and pay for them all at once. I don't really like the strawberry ones that much, but I still want to get some of the chocolate.

Suddenly I find I have left the store, and I don't know why, but I am kind of worried about it. I never paid for the one I ate, and even if I go back, they are going to be mad at me, and darn it, I don't even know why I left! I find myself in an odd blend of California and Omaha that I have dreamed of before. I am on a freeway that is a cross between the 22 in California and I-680 in Omaha. I am trying to figure out exactly where I am and where the store was and get back to it, and I seem to be driving Joe L's Lexus SUV. I am just starting to turn a corner while muttering about pizza, and a nearby cop hears me and calls me over. I am worried about a ticket or something, but no, he just points to an NYPD (New York Pizza Deli) and says it is his favorite. Soon after, some rough looking guys in a beat up van (who look like they could be real trouble) are flagging me down ... to make their own recommendation! Nuts, all of them!

Soon I am back on the freeway, heading north, but the car has disappeared, and I am now flying along. Soon I am flying through a building, and some woman is attacking me, saying something about how because I am flying, I killed her husband. I think my dead mom is trying to argue with her about it. Meanwhile, I am just trying to get away from the crazy woman when I feel a tap on my shoulder. I glance back to find a ghostly angel flying above me. I think it is Louie Anderson [and it took me perhaps 45 minutes to find him on the internet to identify him ... though it turns out he is not dead in real life, like I thought], who apologizes for her, saying she doesn't really mean it, she is just upset about his death. Though I had nothing to do with Louie's death, somehow I help his wife to easily pass on to join him, and the two of them fly off to heaven.

Meanwhile, they have carried me far higher into the air than I usually manage to fly on my own, and I find myself up around maybe thirty stories in the air, and am flying back toward the ground. I am worried about hitting the power lines and such, which are everywhere, and almost forming a net waiting for me, but the positive aspects of the dream hold, and I easily sail through them without getting caught up, until I am back at a level I am comfortable with, 20 to 30 feet in the air. I am now getting fairly close to where I think the store is, but I find myself flying through the middle of a generic shopping mall (not one of the specific ones I often dream of). I am now flying south through this mall, heading for an exit, but there are a couple of sisters (at least I assume they are sisters, as they look quite similar.) They are large women, bulky, but not seriously fat. They remind me of a cross between one of my relatives and a balloon artist named Patricia Bunnell. They are kind of chasing me and trying to catch me for my daring to be different and unique, and having the ability to fly.

I speed up and try to fly to the exit, but they sense what I am doing. "He's trying to escape," they scream, and rush to the doors ahead of me, blocking them off so I can't get through. So I turn around and start to fly in the opposite direction, figuring I will lose them, and find another set of doors to exit out of. Problem is, others start to chase me, more out of interest than the anger the two women were showing. One guy and his wife are close, and he manages to grab my leg even though I am right up by the ceiling, because he is 9 or 10 feet tall, with long arms. Darn it! I keep trying to slip his grasp and fly away, and as they hold on to me, they both figure out how to fly, and are soon able to fly on their own. "How is this possible?" she asks. "It's a dream," I reply. "We're all dreaming?" I don't want to be rude and tell her she is probably only a figment of my imagination, so I hedge and say "I only know that I am dreaming." "Well, how did you get so smart about dreams?" And I start to explain to her how I started making lists of my dreams back in high school, and by now have thousands of dreams written down to learn from. I also hint at the fact that since I know I am dreaming, I might find somebody to have some fun with.

By this point, right as I am considering landing and trying to lose myself in the crowd, we exit through some doors on the west side of the mall, and the couple let go of me, and decide to fly off on their own to their own adventure. I'm pleased to find I am finally free, and am about to soar off and resume trying to find the grocery store, when suddenly somebody else latches on to me. I find it is a tall, attractive, rather Nordic blonde with a thick Nordic accent. "How?" she demands of me, as we drift through the air. I start explaining about knowing you are dreaming as I wrap my arms around her. I tell her she is warm and safe and protected. I won't let anything happen to her. I steal a line from Douglas Adams and explain that flying is really quite simple ... you just have to throw yourself at the ground, and miss. But I stress it's the bit about missing that is important, because otherwise it can be kind of painful. I wrap my arms further around her as she chuckles, very close to feeling her up as I continue this wonderful new technique of seduction by teaching flying.

5-20-2012 -- [This is a slightly older dream, but very interesting, and somebody just reminded me of it, so I decided to post it here - Batch. I've been ignoring my dreams instead of writing them down for a couple weeks, and as often seems to happen when I do that, my mind provides me with one that seems so interesting to me that I can't help but write it down.]

I'm over at Hewitt, a place I worked five or six years ago, but in the dream I was only fired last week. I have stopped by because I want to pick up my final paycheck. While I am there, several of the team leaders and supervisors are talking about how they are short on help, and some of them, when they see me, are hinting I might want my job back. I don't.

Sid (actually the dispatcher at the courier company I work at in present real time) is there, and starts trying to talk me into coming back, but I don't want to. Eventually he leads me to an attractive, and somewhat stacked young lady who is kind of showing off her assets a little to try and change my mind. I enjoy looking, but I still don't want to come back to work here. I'm thinking of how hard it would be to match schedules between this job and my security job [actually I haven't worked security in over ten years.] I take a seat at her desk, and kind of cradle my head in my arms for a second or two, and when I look up, everything has changed.

Almost all the furniture and people are gone, the carpeting has all changed from red to blue, the young lady and Sid are gone, and I find myself sitting at the desk of a young, thin, earnest-looking black guy who kind of makes me think of Carlton from Fresh Prince. I kind of gasp, and he asks what's wrong. "Where am I?" I ask. "I was sitting in a different place at a different desk, and suddenly I'm here. I know this is a dream, but usually things change slightly more slowly in a dream, so you don't realize you are dreaming."

The guy looks at me for a moment, and then says "I don't know anything about this, maybe you better talk to our science department." He then reaches out, gives me a little push on the shoulder, and I slowly start to sink right through the floor and drop to the floor below.

I find myself in a typical office environment, cubicles all over the place and employees wandering around. I just look confused and stupid until one of them asks if they can help me, and I mention I am looking for the science department. They tell me it is further down, and give me a push, and I start to sink through another floor.

This happens four or five times, and the last time the guy who asks me what I need tells me the science department is the next floor down, but he's running around so much and is so busy, he forgets to push me through the floor, so I decide to do it myself. I kind of push myself down a bit, and my feet sink into the floor about an inch before it solidifies, and I find I haven't gone anywhere. Try again, same thing. Then I take a few seconds, concentrate really hard, and sink through the floor again, though only about half as fast as the times I was pushed. I also bang my shoulders on a couple of cubicles on the way down.

The floor I now find myself on seems to have tons of computers and lots of machinery and stuff, and it all looks kind of interesting. I ask if this is the science department, and am told it is. There are a bunch of people who seem to be waiting in a line, and I kind of get in the line as well, then glance out a window. I give a small scream. Out the window I can see I am on the ground floor, and I am looking out at foothills in the distance.

Some guy who looks a lot like James Spader walks up to me, and he seems to be in charge. He asks me why I screamed, and I mention that I was in the ground floor of a building in Florida, got pushed through the floor several times to go down a floor, and suddenly find myself on the ground floor of a building in California, and it kind of startled me.

He says that sounds interesting, but doesn't make any sense, and asks me to explain what I am talking about. So I explain to him that I am dreaming, and start to tell him the entire dream (same one I'm typing out here for you). There are parts I get wrong. In the dream, I can't remember Hewett or the benefits job, so I refer to it as West Telecommunications, and customer service for T-Mobile (when actually West was Cricket. T-Mobile was APAC.) He is wearing a T-Mobile hat as I am explaining this to him.

He is really busy, and keeps wandering around the entire department, talking to other people, while still urging me to tell him my story, so I talk through the whole thing and it seems to take quite a while. "... and then I glanced out the window and saw the California landscape and the foothills in the distance, and I gave a little scream of surprise. And if I keep going, this is going to get boring and repetitive, as that's when you came in and I started telling you all of this."

He doesn't make me go on, and I ask him where I am, and he mumbles something about how I am now in a prison. This makes me angry, and I grab the nearest desk and throw it over, computers and equipment falling to the floor and breaking. I throw over another desk and another, and at first the Spader character doesn't notice, but eventually he catches on and asks me to stop. I ask if he really said I was in a prison, and he says yes, but that it is a kind of friendly one, and I keep overturning things and breaking stuff.

We move into what almost seems to be a kind of television studio, broadcasting news or something, and as he asks me why I am doing this, I start to destroy the tv equipment. I tell him I figure if I do enough damage they'll throw me out, and he tells me it will never work. I find myself in an office with a large plate glass window looking out on the outside, and I throw a desk through it, but before I can run out the window, the James Spader character stops me. I run into another office, do the same thing, and he blocks me again.

Soon he's wrapped around me, holding on tight, making it much more difficult for me to move, and he seems to be rubbing against me and coming on to me. I explain to him I am straight, and he lets me go and comes on to somebody else for a couple of minutes. I ask the guy his name, and he tells me it. It isn't James Spader, but whatever it is, I can't remember it. That kind of info is hard to remember in a dream if you don't already know it in real life.

Soon I find myself looking out at the California landscape through almost a sort of viewing platform, but there doesn't seem to be any glass or anything, so I start running toward what I think is freedom, the Spader guy doesn't seem to care, and explains I can't get out that way. I suddenly hit some sort of invisible shield, which he expected, but I start to 'sink' through it just like the floors, but on a horizontal plane, which he didn't expect. Since the shield isn't stopping me like it is supposed to, other barriers are dropping, much like the barriers they drop at night to close off the individual shops in a mall when they are closing for the night. I manage to get an arm under before they drop completely, and force them back up just enough for me to squeeze under, and as I stand on the outside, free, I wake up.

Very cool dream!

07-28-2012 -- I am driving down a road, in Omaha, I think. It is late at night and I am hungry. I am hoping to find something to eat, and as I drive along, I find a New York-style pizza parlor. The name is something like Giovanni's or the like. I stop and enter, and find the place does seem to be open, but shelves and cupboards and displays are almost empty. I realize the place has either just opened, or is in the middle of selling everything and shutting down. They only have something like three choices of topping, cheese, pepperoni, or sausage. I really push it and ask for all three on my pizza. The guy is making me a very large pizza (at least 18", maybe even larger) but doesn't seem to know what to charge me. I offer him $15, but keep wondering to myself if I might have offered too much or too little.

As I am waiting outside the apartment-like parlor, there seems to be somebody hunting me. I spot a figure in a nice suit who seems to be following me, but is trying to stay out of sight. He keeps dashing around corners or hiding behind walls. He is trying to shoot me with bullets or poison darts, and soon seems to be trying to build some sort of explosive mine or something, but it falls apart. I gather up as many pieces as I can to try and keep them away from him, then run off.

A couple of miles away I come to a warehouse on the NE corner of an intersection. I glance inside and find it is my warehouse, and there are three small box trucks that I know are filled with explosives or something. There are some incompetent thugs that have been sent to hunt me down that are driving down the street in two larger trucks filled with some kind of ordinance to use against me, but they are stupid, and they really aren't at all sure what they are supposed to be doing.

I convince them that I am not me, but am actually one of their bosses, and I order them to start moving all the stuff in their trucks into my trucks of explosives. Since they are carrying things like detonators, I know this can be a dangerous combination. I wait until they are both out of site in a couple of the trucks, and then go running to the south while they cannot see me. As long as they don't actually see me running off, they won't be worried, and will keep doing as I told them.

I know that when the explosion happens, it is going to be very powerful, and most likely nuclear, so I really want to get at least a mile away, so I can be safe. I keep running south in Omaha, and get a couple miles down to a major street. I knew what the street was in the dream, but cannot remember it now. Dale is now with me, and we are both running. We get to this major street, and find a bus just pulling up. We both board it, and I have .75 for the bus fare, but when I try and put it in a slot, the driver starts screaming at me that it is the wrong place, and he orders me to put the money in a different slot.

He is very rude and obnoxious, and I really find I don't like him. He keeps screaming abuse at me, and I am considering really telling him off, but instead decide to take a seat. As I get a little further back in the bus, he orders me to choose a locker and take the key. Amazingly there is a row of lockers. I tell the driver I don't need a locker, and he just gets more abusive. Rather than fight about it, I pull out a key that turns into a lock in my hands.

Dale and I sit down, nervous, and quietly discuss the upcoming explosion. We keep our voices down because we don't want the other passengers to hear us and report us. Soon the bus has turned into some sort of stadium, and we are in the stands, surrounded by ladders made up of a kind of horizontal window blinds. To get higher up and move to the next level, we have to climb these rickety blinds, but as we get a little way up, they all fall apart and collapse, leaving us to fall on our backsides.

I get to an area with some nice sofa-like benches that seem to be a little higher up, so I hope to have a shorter way to climb, as the blinds-ladders start to reappear. By this time it is feeling very much like some sort of video game, though we're in it, instead of just playing it. I look around and find Dale is gone, so I realize he must have solved the puzzle, and moved on to the next level. I still don't know how to do it, so I pull out my cell phone and call him. There is a lot of interference, and I can barely hear him, but he says something about the lock before the call drops. I start to realize the bus driver may have been an idiot, but there was a reason he ordered us to take the locks.

I wait a few seconds for the blinds to reset again, then start to climb. I go up about twenty rungs, and can just feel the tension as the thing is about to fall apart and drop me. At that point the dream kind of turns into a good news/bad news story. It's good that the driver insisted I take the lock. It's bad that right as I need it, I drop it. It's good that I happen to have a combo lock of my own in my backpack. It's bad that I can't remember the combination. It's good that the combination is printed on the back of the lock. It's bad that the combination is wrong. It's good that the thing opens up, anyway. It's bad that as it opens up, it starts to fall apart. It's good that as it starts to fall apart, it has turned into a lock mechanism like "The Club", the thing they used to sell to kind of lock steering wheels.

The bar that I end up holding is exactly what I need, and I slip it over some sort of stud on both ends of the blinds, right before they start to fall apart. Everything beneath me collapses, but I am able to continue climbing up to the next level. By this point, the dream is feeling like some sort of a competition, as well as a sort of video game. I find myself in a strange, colorful landscape that very much reminds me of the new Runespan in Runescape, but the place is very weird.

People are running around, throwing bowling balls, base balls, basket balls and other objects around, but the rules of physics don't seem to fully apply. Balls swirl down odd gravity wells, or break holes in the walls, and people follow them to try and find paths to the next level. I throw a couple of bowling balls, and they work all right, but when I try and throw the smaller balls, I can't throw worth beans, and always let go of the ball way too late, so it slams into the ground a foot or two in front of me, rather than flying through the air and triggering anything. Somehow I manage to make it at least a half a level further, however.

Now I am grabbing guns and things, and shooting at weird aliens and targets that seem more like a Buzz Lightyear-type of shooting gallery ride at a theme park. I'm doing a lot better with this than with the throwing balls thing. I shoot my way through several targets and barriers, and kind of fly into the next area.

I suddenly find myself in a swim suit in what seems to be a very colorful water park. I am on a large field with circles of colors with numbers in them, looks like some sort of giant Twister game. I see some odd footwear that is kind of a cross between flippers, snow shoes and skis. I try and get one on one of my feet, but don't have a chance to get one on the other. I have to start trying to run through the fields as different numbers are being called.

If I land on one of the circles before another number is called, jets of water help propel me in the right direction. If I hit the wrong circles, the water is pushing me in the wrong directions, and is liable to knock me over. Soon I have shot into the wrong direction one time too many, and find myself in a red sort of structure seconds before water is going to come at me from every direction and fully soak me. I'm horrible at this part of the competition, but I am also really having fun, and I am just starting to laugh about the soaking as I wake up.

Color-coding: Non-lucid, Semi-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]
Bold text indicates a “dream within a dream,” meaning any dream scenes that followed after I dreamed of falling asleep

I wake up in my current bedroom. I can hear the couple who lives downstairs in the master bedroom arguing. The woman says something like, “I have to get up now and get ready for work!” I can't sleep with them arguing, so I decide, “Okay, I guess I'm up for the day now, too.” I get up and start trying to take a shower, but the hot water keeps turning cold because the woman downstairs is taking a shower at the same time. After I'm done, I'm still feeling so sleepy that I decide to go back to bed and try to get some good sleep while I still can. It's still only 4:15 AM, after all. So I get back into bed and go to sleep.

[All of the above paragraph was a completely convincing false awakening that I failed to catch. I've never heard the couple in question argue like that, plus, in the dream, the residents of the master bedroom were the parents of the girl who actually lives there in real life, and I thought nothing of it. :/]

I'm visiting EM and SM's house in Omaha [something I did in real life recently]. It's morning, and we're all getting ready to leave the house for the day. They have a gigantic, elaborate house [way bigger, fancier, and more high-tech than their real house]. While we're in the kitchen, SM says something like, “You haven't had a chance to eat today.” I answer, “I know. That's why I always keep bananas in stock.” I show her that I'm carrying a banana with me, which I intend to eat for breakfast. SM has an eyepatch over her left eye socket, with a cool outer-space vista on it. It's embedded into her skin, and I can see muscles twitching underneath it. It's kind of creepy.

We get outside the front door when I realize that I don't have any shoes on. I say to EM, “Could you unlock the door for me, so I can get back into the house? I'm not wearing shoes, only socks.”

EM takes out a door key and uses it to unlock a lock in a wall, which opens the front door. “The front door” consists of a zig-zagging wall of metal panels that cross a wide, concrete courtyard. The panels that are parallel to the house swing open, toward the house, when the key is turned; they're the doors. I go into the house and run up the stairs to the room where I'm staying, to get my shoes.

When I come back outside, I find SM sitting on something in the middle of the tall, light-green grass on the wide front lawn, waiting for me. She doesn't have her eyepatch anymore; both of her eyes are normal. [This is the case in real life.]

“Wait just a ding-danged minute here...” I say. This discrepancy has caused me to begin to suspect that none of this is real. To test whether I'm dreaming, I turn to face a low rock wall nearby and start walking toward it, willing myself to pass through it intangibly [something I know very well that I can do in dreams]. I find that I can't pass through it; I just bump into it normally. In the moments that follow, I'm very acutely and vividly aware of the world around me, of my own self-consciousness, and of the fact that I'm not sure whether I'm awake or dreaming at this very moment. [I finally started watching the TV series Awake a few nights ago, and this is what the protagonist experiences all the time, a fact which is reiterated at the beginning of episodes 2 and 3. That is so cool, that I got to experience that personally in one of my own dreams! ]

After another moment or two, I do realize that I am dreaming. [I don't remember specifically how or why.] By definition, that means that I am getting some good sleep now, I reflect gratefully. I smile and decide to enjoy myself here while I'm getting that restorative sleep I needed so much.

As usual, all I want to do is explore the dream world, so I start flying up and away from the house. I see SM's car driving away below me, and wave goodbye to her. From up here, I can see the entire city spread out below me, covering the gently rolling hills like a blanket, and it's very beautiful. It's also very windy up there. I think to myself: I've got brains in my head, I've got feet in my shoes, I've got levitation powers in my mind. I can steer myself any direction I choose. [This is a reference to the Dr. Seuss book Oh, the Places You'll Go!, from which one of my contacts in Omaha read a passage to a graduating class while I was there. Hmm. No idea why I thought of them as “levitation powers” instead of “flight powers.”] I try to fly into the wind, which is coming from my left, but can't find the strength to fight against it. I decide to fly with it instead. I think, Why not? When you're going bicycling, you'll probably choose to ride with the wind, if you have a choice.

I end up flying through a neighborhood filled with lots of cute little houses that line narrow, old, little streets that wind around every which way. [Just like in the real Omaha, or, at least, the neighborhood where EM and SM live.] Every front yard has big, tropical-rainforest-looking trees in it that reach across the street, forming the beginnings of a canopy, but not a very thick one. There are exotic, tropical birds in every tree. [Um... not at all like in the real Omaha. ] I fly along, following the streets and admiring the beauty all around me.

[Dreamskip - I don't remember getting from one locale to the other.] I'm still in Omaha, but now I'm in a gigantic, elaborate, multi-story library and bookstore. It has lots of glass walls and ceilings that let in the sunlight, and they're arranged in a square geometric pattern, just like this library. It's filled with lots and lots of shelves of books, and there are plenty of people walking around. I'm still flying to get around, instead of walking. I fly up from one level to another, in search of the section where the most popular books are kept. I want to check one of those books out, but I don't have a library card yet, so I'm limited to buying it. I definitely intend to get a library card when I move there, though. [True in real life, too.]

When I get to that section, I land and start walking. I'm looking for the second book in a series I'm reading. I have to think about it to remember which one it is. It's not the Twilight series; it's the Hunger Games series. [Which I haven't even started reading in real life, but I would like to.] I look through the neat, white, bright shelves and find the book I'm looking for. I pick it up and start walking away with it, reading it. There's a computer kiosk that beeps at me as I walk by. I look on the screen, and it has a written message directed at me, chastising me for cracking the spine on my book. Doing so somehow disrupted the operation of a pacemaker of somebody in the immediate vicinity. [I don't recall seeing that somebody there, though.]

I continue exploring the library, and decide I want to go down one floor, but I don't want to fly because there are lots of people around, and I generally try to avoid using any of my dream powers when there are people around to see me. [Yes, they are just DCs, but I always think like that in my lucid dreams anyway. I don't know why, but I do.] I see a wide, steep, carpet-covered ramp leading down to the level below me, and decide to roll down it.

[Dreamskip. I'm not 100% certain that I was still aware that I was dreaming in this scene, but I may have been.] I'm walking along a city street and see a restaurant that is closed. I'm disappointed to discover this, because it had belonged to my friends. I wander through it, looking at all the debris left in the abandoned building. I walk to a side entrance and go out through the patio, where I see that people have begun seating themselves at the patio tables. I realize that they must have seen me walking around inside the restaurant, assumed it was open, and sat down. I feel bad about it, but I start telling them, “Sorry, it's closed.” They get up and leave.

[Side notes: Heh. I love how my subconscious has turned Omaha into this perfect tropical paradise with an awesome library, a place where everything I saw around me was incredibly cool and gave me nothing but happiness and joy. Omaha really does have a gigantic central library, although it doesn't have that cool architectural design. That part came directly from the library at UC San Diego. I didn't go to school there, but EM did - a fact which I had consciously forgotten about until I told my mom about this dream later in the day. Hmm. Omaha also has a zoo that I didn't actually see, but that everyone tells me is pretty awesome. Okay, subconscious, I get the message: Don't give up on Omaha yet. You may still be able to find happiness there.]