Recent DJ Posts

Morning of June 11, 2017. Sunday.



My wife Zsuzsanna and our children as we are now are at a carnival, though curiously, a group of people are in our house at one point (mostly in our lounge room) who are apparently waiting to enter another area. I do not see them as imposers and even consider how there are not that many people around. There is the typical ambiguity of the setting being an unlikely essence of indoors and outdoors at the same time, a common factor of my dreams since early childhood.

A photographer is present in a few different scenes. He reminds me of Al, the Italian manager of a pawn shop in La Crosse, who I have not seen in nearly twenty-five years.

Although some of the photographs he takes seem okay, many are very poorly done, often cutting off the person’s face below the nose. I have the strong impression that the photographs he takes that turn out well are the result of random coincidence.

Zsuzsanna and I sit to the right of an unknown family. I sit to Zsuzsanna’s right. I assume the photographer is going to take a few good photographs of the scene. However, when I look at them later, I see that my face is only visible above the mouth and in one photograph, the one I look at the longest, both my eyes are closed. I show Zsuzsanna and relate my opinion of this photographer as not being very good. I notice in the last photograph, my right eye is closed and my left eye is open.

---

The photographer is of course this dream’s personified preconscious. He is not really confrontational here as in many other dreams. The purpose of the personified preconscious is to initiate the waking transition and in some cases, as here, to give evidence that the dreamer is dreaming. The subliminal anticipation of the hypnopompic jerk is only one of several factors in this waking symbolism. The preconscious is more of a biological necessity, though not always personified (for example, is sometimes an animal, sometimes an event or feature of a setting, but always fairly obvious if one understands dreams). The nature of how the preconscious waking factor is rendered, and what character plays the role in a particular dream, sometimes seems completely random. However, looking more deeply, there is usually more than one layer.

In this case, the photographer is played by a man who worked at a checkout. A checkout is a form of liminal space waking symbolism. (The analogy is that a person is done shopping and ready to return home as akin to leaving the dream state, or “checking out of the dream state”.) This type of hybrid characterization, though always unique, has occurred in thousands of my dreams, with the same waking symbolism and implications.

It is not that common for me as my personified subconscious (temporary fictional dream self) to be The Sleeper. This element is typically projected as something else, even faulty technology. In the last photograph, one of my eyes is open, which is an emergent consciousness factor. (My mouth is not visible in the photographs as I cannot speak coherently while sleeping.) Zsuzsanna and I are oriented in my dream as we are in bed in reality (that is, she is to my left). There seem to be a few types of instinctual dreaming (non-lucid dream control). In addition to the state where the dreamer knows he is making the dream (and yet does not even remember or know what a dream is), there is the state as here, where the dreamer is more passive to events, yet where there is the subliminal knowledge of being asleep but not direct or creating viable lucidity. There is also a sort of halfway point when I am next to Zsuzsanna, my dream attaining real environmental orientation while still within the dream state (more common and sustained in my childhood dreams).

Of course, a carnival symbolizes the dream state itself (that is, a place not relevant to the usual day-to-day reality, though my family had been to one recently).

---

Ritual: My LDs have all but vanished now that I am not actively working on it (not for lack of interest, but work is way too busy right now, and I'm not playing any computer games either!) However, when I got up before dawn to feed the cat and realized I was wakeful enough to call this a WBTB, it occurred to me that I didn't even know what the October TOTMs were, so I looked them over before returning to bed. I tried to do some counting but had no focus and fell asleep. I did end up complete one of the tasks, but essentially within the context of a non-lucid dream! The distinctions between LD and NLD used to seem a lot crisper when LDing was new to me, but I would call this an example of agency without dream awareness, which I'm not sure has happened to me before. I always thought dream awareness was the prerequisite for agency, but apparently not!

NLD: I was in a community that was preparing for a special festival. They had a great deal of maguro (lean tuna meat) and slices of it were lining a long stone staircase that cut through a wooded park-like space. I wanted to marinate the maguro like I had done at last year's festival: it had been a big hit. I tried to remember the marinade recipe, and knew that it was very basic: pretty much just soy sauce and cilantro. Soy sauce was easy to come by, but I was out of cilantro. I had a limited time before all the maguro went bad, so I had to find cilantro right away.

I went into town to see if I could get any. While walking down the sidewalk, I saw some women holding cameras. I assumed they were photographers for the festival. This reminded me of the TOTMs, so I tried to remember the one I had prioritized. Oh right: if I see a DC, I should follow him or her. I picked one of the photographers, a black woman with her hair bound in two pigtails, and started shadowing her as she walked down the street.

The DC only walked about fifteen feet before she turned around again, so I turned as well and continued following her. She walked back to the place where I had first spotted her and stopped again. What was she doing? I studied her closely, trying to understand her behavior. She wasn't taking any pictures; her camera hung ignored around her neck. However, she seemed to be posing to display her fur coat to best advantage. Suddenly I understood: she had put on a gorgeous costume for the festival, so now she was walking up and down the sidewalk in order to be seen!

I decided that continuing to follow her would be redundant if she was just going to hang out on that same stretch of sidewalk, so I went into a local bookstore to ask about the cilantro. There was a guy who had a piece of paper with pictures of the various types. Right now only the cilantro from China was available, he said, but it didn't have the best flavor: they had picked it too early. I told him I'd settle for that if I couldn't get anything else.

Notes: Since I stopped doing active dream practice, not only my recall but even the content of my dreams has degraded. The more epic and story-like elements have dwindled and my dreams currently seem to be pieced together primarily from waking life residue. This one is full of it: I ate similar slices of maguro on Sunday night; on Monday I attended a lecture where the speaker used a fur coat as a metaphor; and in the back of my mind I had been wondering if it was true, as someone recently told me, that cilantro can lower the raised mercury levels one can get from eating too much maguro. Even marinating the maguro has a precedent, a very delicious form of sushi called zuke.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #255: Narcissus at the Symphony

I’m standing in the kitchen with Wife and my two boys E and R. I feel incredibly tired, like I can barely keep my eyes open or even stand. The exhaustion gets the better of me and I collapse, falling flat on my face. “Oh my God! Are you okay?” asks Wife, rushing to my side to help me up. I feel embarrassed that I’ve worried everybody when I’m only tired… surely I could have stopped myself from falling like that!

I stagger over to the sink, noticing that I’m wearing glasses (extremely rare in waking life.) I lean against the sink, noticing odd patterns and spots in my vision. Something’s definitely wrong with me, but I feel like it’ll all be better if I can just fall asleep. It occurs to me to look for the dream and when I hit the nose pinch reality check, I become lucid.

I’m shocked that this is all a dream, and I say out loud, “That countertop right there -- that looks exactly like waking life.” I run my hands over it. It’s in a different configuration from waking life, but the texture, the look, it’s all perfect. Amazing. I catch my reflection in the mirror. I look like me, but my movements are just a bit delayed from my dream body’s movements. I wave my arms above my head and watch in amusement.

I remember Jenkees’ dare to play an orchestral soundtrack. I raise my arms in the air, willing one to arise. I hear something! But it’s very faint, sounding like nothing more than an orchestra tuning up before a concert. Yes, that makes sense, cool soundtrack will come from doing cool stuff.

I walk toward my den but now I’m somehow in the hall of a building, walking past a big mirror. Hey look, I’m shirtless! I look just like myself but with just that little added bit of dream buffness. I flex for a little while, shamelessly indulging in vanity. This goes on for much longer than it should and then I continue along the hall out into a balcony where well-dressed DCs go wandering by. Hey, I bet that I’m at a concert hall! I decide that I should attend a symphony concert to complete Jenkees dare.

I find another mirror and think to summon Dreamer. I don’t want to get too fixated on immediate success, so I say, “Hey, [Dreamer], you can join me if you feel like it!” And in the mirror, Dreamer appears next to me! She sports the usual purple hair, but a heavier build than waking life. I look to my right to catch a direct view of her, but instead of Dreamer, I see my friend “Topspin”! He bears not the slightest resemblance to Dreamer in appearance or personality, being a dude of a completely different height, race, face shape, and demeanor from her. I look back and forth from Dreamer to Topspin. Both of them are smiling at me in amusement and I laugh, saying something like, “Okay, follow along with me if you like!” (Nobody does.)



I walk further along the balcony and see a brown-haired woman in her mid-20s pretending to take pictures by forming her hand into a camera shape. She points her “camera” at me and I’m caught by surprise when it flashes and making a picture-taking noise! I laugh at this and say “Nice one!” She springs up and does these amusing, highly exaggerated photographer poses while taking a few more pictures.

I think she’s hilarious and attractive, and I kiss her. Things turn sexual, but as we head this direction I notice that her reactions are almost precise mirrors of my own. The experience is fun but feels artificial somehow, and I decide to let the dream go in another direction. We’re on a crowded street at daytime now. I give the photographer a hug and afterward she turns around and wanders away. I start down the road, but after a little bit, the dream ends.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

Two women were side, by side, embracing each other at the waist. The women were either soap opera stars or movie stars. They were probably having their pictures taken by the press. They were in the middle of a huge crowd, probably at some kind of really classy party.

Both women looked glamorous, with tan skin and long, black hair parted on top and pulled back. One of them may have had long eyelashes. Both women wore shoulderless, black dresses. One of the dresses may actually have cornered up at one shoulder. One dress had feathers or leaf-like designs on the front. Either one or both of the girls may have been wearing a big, diamond pendant or necklace.

Dream #2

A commercial or an infomercial. A middle-aged Elizabeth Taylor, possibly wearing a kind of shimmery, blue and silver dress (or a dark blue, velvet dress?) stood in a chest-up shot, addressing the camera.

Taylor's chest was decorated with a few big (6 or 7 cm) diamond pins and pendants, in a kind of random fashion. Taylor was talking about how beautiful her diamonds were and how she wasn't ashamed about living with such extravagance.

Taylor said, "But now you, too, can look like you live as glamorously as I do, with new fake diamonds. These diamonds look just like my diamonds do. Why look!"

A kind of short, bald, skinny, white man with a thin mustache and wearing a tuxedo walked up to Taylor. The man was probably a butler. He held a framed backing of blue velvet, against which were set a selection of huge pins and pendants, like the ones Taylor wore. The idea was, apparently, that Taylor was going to compare her diamonds to the fake diamonds on the display.

Taylor continued some kind of speech before the butler interrupted her. The butler cleared his throat and told Taylor that he was holding the real diamonds, and that Taylor was wearing the fake ones.

Taylor gave a look of surprise to the camera, as if to say, "Incredible! Even I can't tell the difference!"