Recent DJ Posts

Ritual: Went to bed at 2am, much later than I had intended. Wanted to wake up between 4-4:30 if possible so I could make a sandwich for my husband to take on his flight. Didn't set alarm, only intention; if it didn't work, that was fine. Woke up promptly at four so got up and went to the kitchen. Then I realized if I didn't stay up to give him the sandwich he would never know it existed, so in the end I didn't go back to bed until after he left at 5. I repeated my tasks aloud a few times to make them easier to remember, using simple keywords: "eyeball, calcifer, fairy tale." Wanted to give SSILD another fair shake after recent lack of success—been falling asleep too easily. After this hour-long WBTB I arranged a ramp of pillows to elevate my upper body and settled back to do SSILD, supposing that the half-reclining would help inhibit sleep. It did—and I realized I had been semi-dozing rather than really sleeping when I got up again at 5:40 and decided to dismantle the pillow-ramp to get some proper sleep. I didn't notice REM during any of these sleep and half-sleep periods so I wasn't optimistic, but I did a couple SSILD cycles on my side before drifting off to sleep fairly quickly. It was 6:30am when I woke up for real (after FA) and began this account.

FA: "....it ignored me, and I felt silly talking to a fire."

Okay, guess now I have to start over. Wrote half of the account up in FA. Which is funny, because when I woke up I did sense that I could probably re-enter the dream state but decided not to because I wanted to write a solid report on what I'd done so far. And here I had felt so responsible and industrious! I wrote down quite a bit but only remember the last line word for word, so I reproduced it above. It's interesting that it is worded in the past tense. My dream reports often swap randomly between past and present tense but the present tense predominates.

DILD: I was in my bedroom in the half-light of early morning, and I heard voices outside the room. This confused me, because no one else should be home right now. One of them sounded like my brother, but he shouldn't be here. And I could hear another voice, a man's voice I didn't recognize. I grabbed my phone from the nightstand, thinking I'd dial in "9-1-1" and have the call ready to go if needed before I investigated further, in case it was burglars or something.

The phone wasn't working. It seems to be stuck on the calendar app, and even this is in some weird and confusing format. I keep pressing the main button to try to get back to the home screen so I can reach the page to dial from, but nothing helps. I still hear the voices and worry that the intruders might come into the room before I can get the phone working and then I'll have no recourse. Should I go outside to the back patio, so it will be easier to run away if necessary? At some point the absurdity of the whole scenario finally strikes me and I wonder if I'm dreaming. Since no one is around to see, I do a quick nose pinch. I can breathe easily. So I am dreaming! Oh good, there were tasks I needed to get done! I realize that since this was a DILD, I'm probably already fairly well-integrated into the dream state and check my impressions. A bit of roughness as I begin to move but not too bad, and the dream feels stable. I don't feel the need for further stabilization as long as I can avoid letting the paranoia of waking wake me up, so I put it out of mind and walk rapidly to the kitchen.

I've brought my phone and figure it might come in handy at some point later on, so I try to slide it into the pocket of my skirt. Trouble is, I'm not wearing a skirt. I make the "sliding into pocket" gesture a few times, intending a long skirt with pockets to manifest, but it doesn't and the phone falls to the floor. Whatever. At least the pattern is in place, so I feel confident that I can get it out of my pocket later if I need it.

I grab the bread from the kitchen counter, noting that it is a packet of round pita bread rather than the sandwich loaf that is there in waking life, and head out to the patio. Which task first? I love the idea of Howl's Moving Castle so I decide to start with that one. First I try to summon the castle directly, not through any special method, just willing it to approach on its own legs. It doesn't appear promptly, so I start with plan B: conjure a fire, call it "Calcifer," and feed it until it becomes strong enough to build the castle from the ground up. The first part should be easy; I've practiced conjuring fire before in this very spot. So I hold out my right hand and concentrate on creating a flame in my open palm. There's just one problem. It is raining, quite heavily actually. Typical dream perversity! I'm trying to fill my palm with fire, but meanwhile it is filling up with water. I ignore the dream's little joke, and keep concentrating on the fire.

Sure enough, I shortly begin to feel the heat and see the brightness of the flame. I set it on the ground and start feeding it chunks of pita bread, calling it "Calcifer" and trying to coax it to respond. It grows larger at first, but doesn't show any sentience, and now the rain is causing it to dwindle despite my attempts to feed it. I decide to continue this experiment indoors, out of the rain. I pick up the fire, just carrying it in my hands, go inside and set it down again on a flat stone ledge, about two and half feet in width and height (the interior of the house no longer corresponds in any way to RL). I feed the fire and continue calling it "Calcifer" to try to get a response, but it ignores me, and I feel silly talking to a fire. I go outside, careful to take the fire out again with me so as not to leave it untended in the house, and fly up in the air before releasing it. I instruct it to go seek out Howl's Castle, hoping that it might reappear at some point later point in the dream.

I return to the ground, once again in a place recognizably like my back patio, though it is no longer raining. What next? I realize the eyeball task should be quick and easy, if I can stomach it, so I ought to knock that one out of the way. I consider going inside the house to use a real mirror, but I don't want to waste time so I stand outside the sliding glass door to the kitchen and rely on the faint reflection of myself I can see there. There is nothing unusual about my reflection—much less so than usual, actually. When thinking about this task in waking life I had decided (for the sake of safety and squeamishness) to try to remove the eyeball in a more hands-off way, simply raising my palm and trying to pop it out through will alone, but now that I'm ready to go I don't even remember that idea. Instead I lift my right hand to my right eye and just start digging in there. I feel a momentary discomfort, enough to make me think, "I'd better be damn sure I'm dreaming!" before I feel the fingers slide smoothly into the socket with little pain, and this reassures me.

The eye pops out easily, but it is attached to a surprisingly thick, gross, fleshy stalk. Even at the time I realize that my experience has probably been colored by other accounts of this task I've already read on the DV thread, some of which mention similar stalks. The stalk is inconvenient and ugly so I keep pulling until the eyeball breaks free, then turn it around to inspect it. It looks remarkably like an eyeball. I had been hoping that it would transform into something cool, like an orb of glass or even a jewel. But nope. It is a disturbingly life-like eyeball, with a distinct iris and pupil and even a bit of red tattered membrane where the stalk had been attached. When I aim the iris and pupil toward me, they already look dead and unseeing, so it doesn't occur to me to try to use this eyeball to see with. Also, although I don't take note of this at the time, in retrospect I can report that there was no subjective change in my experience of vision; I was still "seeing" as though with two intact eyes.

I had meant to look at my reflection again after pulling the eye out, but I forget to do so. Instead I'm absorbed in inspecting this very ordinary-looking eyeball and trying to find any notable details to report. I do observe that the iris seems to have changed color: from the initial blue it has faded to a drab brown. It is still kind of creepy to be holding my eyeball, so without experimenting further I pop it back in. Luckily no difficulties there, and only then do I remember to check my reflection. I look normal and still don't notice any changes to my vision. I feel a momentary regret that I didn't remember to try to transform the eyeball into something else before putting it back in, but I feel reasonably satisfied with the task so I'm ready to move on.

Now I'm down to the last of the three tasks I'd planned, and I feel a bit apprehensive. In one way or another, this damned Hansel and Gretel idea has been eluding me. But I still have my bag of pita bread, so I get started: my plan is to start dropping breadcrumbs as I walk, hopefully find myself in a forest, and see what happens from there. I re-read the story a few weeks ago in my copy of Brothers Grimm, but I haven't tried to flesh out the intended scenario because I want to give the dream leeway to respond creatively to my breadcrumb trail. So I start walking across the patio and dropping crumbs, and now I just have to figure out which way to go. My original plan had been to start on the street in front of the house, which had once transformed into an ideal forest in a previous unrelated dream, but now I'm behind the house and want to get started right away rather than have my plans potentially disrupted by a detour. It's okay, I'd planned for this too. I figured the hill behind the house might be wild enough that I could start climbing it and work it into a suitable forest. However, now when I look in that direction, I see a paved concrete footpath that leads between suburban houses with neatly trimmed lawns. Dream is being perverse again. In the opposite direction is a second path, smaller, with a similar suburban aspect. Which one will lead me sooner to a forest? Both look completely domesticated. I figure I'll just start with the first one and try thinking "forest" as I go. I start off, dropping my bread crumbs, but with no warning I wake up—or out of the dream, at least. As mentioned above, I sensed that I could re-enter the dream state but decided to write my report instead, was under the impression that I had gotten up, and wrote for quite a while before waking up for real.