• Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views




    View RSS Feed

    All DJ Entries

    1. Cathedrals, hearts, death, and mystery

      by , 01-09-2014 at 02:31 AM
      Just a name: Sven Odinson.

      I've got some government job in which I'm part of a team of people in suits protecting someone, and we're currently in a hospital, when I pass a room where a team of people in red uniforms, EMTs maybe, are preparing for something. Something about them catches my attention as odd, and I mention to a coworker the possibility of a disguised threat. She agrees with me.

      Something about political opposition to dances in cathedrals by night.

      A zombie apocalypse setting, in which someone was approaching the house I was holed up in and we nearly shot each other, wrongly assuming each other to be zombies. She tries to convince me to come with her to some camp and I agree only because I'm fairly confident about being able to escape her along the way if it seems necessary, whereas if I start a confrontation with her here and now I'm fairly confident she'll shoot me. She's traveling with someone who joins her then and gives me a checkup, and she takes a very long time to find my pulse. When she finally says "Found it," I say, "Look at that, I have a heart. That's one for the books."

      A little girl saying "(something) to read hearts, death to solve the mystery." A choice between two different goals, reminding us to match the approach to the goal. This is a girl who I and the people I'm traveling with met a long time ago, and at the time she just seemed like a tragic figure, sole survivor of some massacre in which she watched the deaths of everyone else in her castle and the surrounding village. When I'm thinking about this, I see a memory of one of the people I'm traveling with standing in a pool of water with her, up to his neck in the blood and gore surrounding this girl. The journey we're on somehow involves the spirit of a certain place - either we're searching for it or it's opposing us or something - and we met this girl fairly early in that journey, but now that we've met her again, we realize she's more than she seems; the tragic figure we met originally was at least partially an act, and I strongly suspect she is that spirit.

      Now she's saying, "Sure you shouldn't just make perception your goal?" That's following on the death-to-solve-the-mystery thing she said just before. One of the guys I'm traveling with says, "Sorry, our goal is to take the cat out of the box." A Schrodinger's Cat metaphor; we don't want to just find the answers for ourselves, we want to eliminate the mystery completely.
    2. Fragments

      by , 01-08-2014 at 06:43 AM
      I'm using a tea cup to catch rain that contains some kind of power.

      There's a very important (possibly sacred) torch that I was meant to do something with (I have a vague impression of something involving the sky) but, while standing at the edge of a cliff, I've managed to drop the torch, and I'm watching it fall into the waves and go out. "Oops."

      A group of five people in a car, on a road trip. They stop at a sushi place and one of them goes off to try to pick up a woman he saw outside. Two of the others say something, sheepish, about how they've been hitting the 'family' note a little too much on this trip, it must have freaked him out, and now he's proving to himself how unattached to them he is. They don't mind.

      There's a portrait, tall and very narrow, of a woman standing in front of a Buddhist grave marker. The woman who was the subject of the portrait is standing in front of the painting, looking at it. A strange reptile-like creature steps out of the painting of the grave, and I know this is her dead son.

      There's a memory gap - next fragment I remember clearly is in a dark space with three exits, an entrance to an afterlife, and the woman's talking with her son, who now looks more or less as he did in life - human - although there are shadows clinging to him in a shape suggesting a tail, and he's standing halfway in one of those three exits, with flames around his feet. They'd been saying something about how that exit's not for her, after she tried to hug him and he stopped her. She says, "Mommas hurt, darling. Men die." Then she vanishes.
    3. Fragments

      by , 12-19-2013 at 11:29 PM
      Someone's telling me that two serpents, one that spits fire and the other water, have gone missing from their shrine. I say they're taking a trip, "naught to worry."

      Rumpelstiltskin's hit upon a new-to-him form of magic, something that appears as a white light when he's working on it, and it's some major revelation - but he can't pursue it unless he cuts himself off from distractions like 'the boy.'
    4. Dracula, church ruins and running water

      by , 12-16-2013 at 10:45 PM
      Grayson's come across Mina and Harker in some danger and got them out of it by offering them a ride home in his carriage. Now they're discussing a message he's sent someone to deliver, and Mina's objecting to sending this messenger into danger on their behalf. Grayson asks what danger she's referring to. Why, the war, of course. They're not far from the battlefield; that's part of why they were so grateful for his rescue. Throughout this conversation, Harker has become increasingly uncomfortable and is beginning to regret accepting the ride. Mina, sitting across from the other two, is noting that Grayson's in shadows so dark he can't be seen.

      Lucy in a different carriage, with Lady Jayne riding outside. Jayne says to her, "Don't you think you had better go?" "No. My choice is to stay." "Atta girl."

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      A species of small creatures which, as they grow up, take on masters and will instinctively fight the servants of other masters if left alone together - which often results in fighting their own siblings, sometimes to the death. Later, when they grow into masters themselves, they see the other side of that, with the responsibility and grief of killing. (The dream logic was inconsistent about who was actually the one doing the killing, the servant or the master. The main point was violence without thought of consequences in the young, servant version, contrasted with the grief, guilt, and sense of responsibility in the older, master version, and a sense of circular time or mythic time, coming back around to the same event but from a different perspective.)

      I'm breaking into the ruins of an old and isolated church, with a cat, carrying a candle; I climb up the stone wall and up onto the second floor, which is mostly open to the sky. However, just as I get there, I see the property owner returning home across the fields in the distance, in a dogsled. I extinguish the candle I was carrying, but it's too late, he's already spotted the light and is turning this way. I climb back down the wall and run for it. However, I'm on foot and he's got dogs; my odds of outrunning him aren't good.

      We cross a river, and the scene changes to 3rd person; now it's a group of children who are running from him, and they dive beneath the water and stay there. As a 3rd person observer, I'm thinking about legends of creatures that can't cross running water, and about the way the scene changed when I hit the water, the river acting as an event boundary.

      A party where I've been looking for a woman, a dressmaker, known for a dress that resembles the sea. I find her, an elderly woman, and I ask her about that dress, which pleases her, but which isn't the subject I really want to talk to her about. We're interrupted by another woman, someone I know, and the two of them go off to talk in another room, behind a closed door. I eavesdrop from just outside. I hear them mention a Joanna - a dead woman who I keep hearing about, someone who left a widower behind, someone powerful. I'm caught listening, and so go away without hearing the rest of the conversation.

      Rumpelstiltskin. I have some guests, people here to do business, but I've just turned away from them and am talking to Belle, showing her the potion I'm preparing and saying "It's designed to attract." The scene switches to 3rd person, and I note that Rumpelstiltskin loses the showman routine he uses with the others when he talks to Belle; I'm thinking something abut the length of time Belle's been around and how they interact, which is something that Rumpelstiltskin is feeling a little bewildered about. He heads up to the tower to get in touch with someone through some magical means. "Don't go listening," he says to Belle. She's indignant - of course she wouldn't!

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      Based on Carmen - she's dancing, I'm sitting in a chair watching her and thinking about the past, about killing for her, feeling sober. (This felt like it was a variation on the servant creatures from before - as if there was something I was trying to work out but wasn't quite getting, so the dream was rephrasing.)
    5. Exorcism, house elves, living book

      by , 10-18-2013 at 08:50 PM
      I'm saying "Amen," the end of an exorcism. I'd been dealing with a demon and got in over my head, and I'm conflicted about whether exorcising it is the right thing to do - seems rude, you can't go around summoning people up and then flipping out at them - but either way it's been kicked out now, laughing as it leaves, which is never a good sign. I float back down the hall to bed, observing the lack of footsteps, and then get into bed, surprising the cat.

      (Woke up, about half an hour after going to sleep. The cat had curled up at the foot of the bed while I was asleep.)

      A fragment with a character who's king of a small people who don't necessarily want him - he's traveling.

      A guy who runs a tavern screwed up a recipe, using potato instead of sweet potato, and his house elf tried to help by offering some spices to cover the taste, so the master blames it all on the house elf, starts yelling at it, then hitting it. I'm seeing this as I'm walking past the door, and I'm thinking that this is a particularly ugly house elf, only one eye and covered in bruises - but then house elves always look a little suspicious. Which makes me think - they're also very traditional, and use the term 'Dark Lord' rather than 'You Know Who,' so I wonder if maybe I could entrust it with a certain thing I need taken care of - but when I start to talk to it, it gets scared and disappears off to wherever it is house elves go.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      Fragment of a scene involving a teenage guy talking to a vampire woman carrying a sword. Now he's home and sitting down on the couch, and the dream switches to 3rd person to focus on his father's husband, who'd been at his desk in the same room but goes to the door now to accept a delivery.

      The guy at the door is a friend, or a professional contact anyway, someone who's personally delivering a book he'd requested. It's a living book. His friend delivering it warns him that he'll need it back tomorrow, someone else had reserved it. The man says that's fine, he just needed to speak with her - the spirit in the book - tonight. Although he doesn't say it out loud, there's something going on tomorrow that he's worried about, and he wants to talk it over with her. He's also thinking about a new room that's being built. The man who delivered the book says she's been reading sheet music lately; although he doesn't need to say it out loud, it's an implied request for the guy borrowing the book to provide her with some sheet music when he's done talking with her, as she doesn't like being left alone with nothing to read.

      The first of several gods is watching the first humans age, and aging himself to match the oldest of them.

      I'm walking past a shrine on a holiday, and hearing kids sing a song that I recognize as being part of a game like tag or hide and seek. There's a cloud of something floating in the air, I can't tell if it's tiny petals or some kind of dust, but it floats through the shrine gate and where it gathers I see a brief image of some great horned creature.

      There's some futuristic family watching a concert, wearing shoes that let them fly, but the youngest girl can't get hers to work right, can't sit still, keeps flying off in different directions. Finally her mother catches her and makes her turn the shoes off, angry with her.
    6. Photos in Italy

      by , 10-12-2013 at 07:11 PM
      A brief nightmare - I'm at my mother's IRL house, the lights won't turn on, and this is dangerous. I consider whether this is a dream, but decide it isn't. I'm thinking that dreams and waking life feel different, and while dreams might feel real, you can't mistake waking life for a dream. So I don't do any reality checks. I do, however, do my anti-nightmare Apollo trick, but I feel a bit self-conscious about it, since I'm awake, and in my mother's home, and she'll be able to hear me. Afterwards I realize it was just one burned out light bulb, and there's no danger. Outside, it's incredibly bright, even though it's night - the sky is clouded over, and I wonder whether it's a full moon, but it seems too bright even for that. There are incredible gusts of wind, very inviting. My mother comes down to the front door where I'm standing and asks if something has flooded - there are occasional waves splashing over the wall at the edge of her yard. She says she used the incorrect settings on something, and it's caused things to get out of alignment, putting stress on the whole house that will eventually break it down. She needs to go outside and correct the settings. There's a ram standing in the street, looking at us; I point it out, and she says they always come in pairs. A herd walks down the street, from the same direction the waves came from.

      I'm online, reading a conversation between several people, with one of them promising to scan some information about Renfield.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      I'm taking a train from Rome to Boston, going over a map and coordinating plans.

      There's a guy on his way home from a war, making what he thinks of as a 'deal' with whoever's listening, God or whatever else - he just wants his childhood neighborhood to have survived unscathed. If that place was bombed, what was the point to any of this?

      That same guy is at a party, there's talk about political factions, blaming the faction that 'has the princess's ear.' Although this guy doesn't realize it, the princess in question is there at the party, disguised.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      A rich family is discussing inheritance issues after their father's death. His illegitimate daughter from one of his many affairs, a very sweet girl, is the source of a lot of jealousy.

      I'm walking down a street, and through the cracks in a fence I can see statues and ancient temples. I find a way through the fence and walk around, admiring them, wishing I had my camera with me; then I remember the camera on my phone and start taking pictures.

      I walk into a building with a walkway overlooking vast, dark spaces, and I take pictures of those, lighting them up, resulting in beautiful abstract images made up of points of light. One of the spaces overlooks an opera company rehearsing, and there are a few people sitting around here watching, they don't welcome my presence but they don't stop me from taking pictures either. Another space contains a field of snow, and there's a beautiful woman lying there, dead or unconscious, beside some broken wooden boards. As I'm taking photos of her, I say "Nostradamus" - the name of the opera being performed. A woman next to me, one of the ones who'd been watching the opera, asks me how I knew its name; I say I hadn't known until I said it. The woman lying in the snow wakes up, and climbs up onto the walkway. I offer her my arm if she needs it, she looks unsteady - I sound overeager to myself. She doesn't take my arm.

      Outside, the woman asks me how long I'll be staying in town. I'm thinking that I'm stuck here until I can find my portal home; out loud, I say it'll be a few days and I let her know what part of town I'm staying in. She reminds me of a promise I'd made to her, something involving her uncle, and she walks away.

      I go to see her uncle, walking through the streets of a city in Italy, old alleys where cars are off-limits. I want to find a place to stop and go through my phone, delete some photos, make room for more, but most places are closing at this time of day. Finally I find a bookstore that's still open and I sit down. On my phone, I'm looking at a menu for creating shortcuts on your phone, arranged in the shape of a stylized butterfly.

      Updated 10-12-2013 at 07:16 PM by 64691

      Categories
      non-lucid , nightmare
    7. Andromache, enchanted sleep, underground temple, morgue

      by , 10-01-2013 at 08:53 PM
      Someone who's just finished drawing a picture of 10 priests, then a picture of me, offers to draw a picture of Andromache; in the dream I believed that was the name of a goetic demon.

      (Woke up. Back to sleep.)

      There's a witch I put under an enchanted sleep a long time ago, but a girl's come to warn me that she's started to wake up. There are rhymes and charms meant to keep her asleep, but when I see they're not going to work I run for the nearest doorway, to put a few realities between us. The doors I pass through repeatedly change the scene until I wind up in a tiny square room, just large enough for me, with only the one entrance; I get rid of the roof and start flying.

      I'm with a group of people in what looks like some underground stone temple, talking to a guy who emerged from a tunnel in the floor, and I'm noting that he looks just like his ancestor. We're returning his ancestor's sword to him, although now it's just a sword - there had been something else attached to it, something we used. As I'm thinking about this I notice that the tunnel has a carving of the Monkey King's head set above it.

      A cardinal arrives at the top of the stairs leading down to the temple, followed by attendants in red and gold brocade. He's been our enemy before, hunting us down, although that's been resolved; still, we're not exactly pleased to see him, and his attendants start to run forward to put themselves between him and us. But he holds up a hand to tell them to stay back. He's brought us a satchel full of papers granting us certain privileges in recognition of our service to (something or other) - none of the privileges granted are actually very useful, this is just a symbolic gesture. I mention to one of the guys with me that I'd rather have another of those papers claiming we were acting with his permission and authority.

      In what looks like a morgue, there's a live man lying down on a slab being examined by a guy in a wheelchair, along with a goon in a suit standing behind the chair, and a man in a white coat standing over the slab. The guy in the chair is looking for someone who's had plastic surgery, and he's thinking the guy on the slab might be him. He's wrong. He's also thinking about peeling back the skin of the face to get a look at the underlying bone structure. The guy on the slab has got the wrong idea about what's going on, he was brought here by the man in the white coat under false pretenses, and he's saying, "So you recognized me on account of my face?" The man in the wheelchair had been gripping him by the chin. Now he starts to reach toward the guy's bare chest, thinking about the heart, and the guy says "Hey, I thought you weren't gonna take anything too-" He looks at the guy in the white coat, who is looking up at the ceiling and moving his lips silently, maybe praying.
    8. Shrine, vampires, vendetta

      by , 09-18-2013 at 06:53 PM
      I'm at a shrine at the top of a hill, and this girl's just shoved me down onto the ground, so I'm lying on my back looking up at her as she's spraying this canister of salt into the air between me and the shrine gate.

      There's these groups of vampires, many different factions, and I've joined up with this one - on the one hand, I'm a little annoyed at myself for not checking out all the others first and just going with the first ones I found, but on the other hand, I'm certain this is the group I would've picked anyway. But there are so many rules I keep breaking, mostly because I don't know what they are - at one point I found a list in my contract, but having a copy of my contract is also against the rules. (Although I understood the contract, the text wasn't written in a real language and seemed like it had too many consonants.) Outside, under a bridge made of bones, I met a little girl looking like something out of Alice in Wonderland, who seems much more at home here than I am.

      The word "Vendetta" being sung.
    9. A graveyard and a possession

      by , 09-14-2013 at 06:50 PM
      I'm walking up the steps to a graveyard. I'm a teenager or young man who lives and/or works in a temple or shrine or similar attached to this graveyard. In the previous dream scene I'd been talking to friends at the foot of the stairs to the temple about hard times their families had been through, and I'd been thinking that I couldn't really relate, my family never having been through anything like that, and I'd removed myself from the conversation - but now I'm thinking about the hard things in my life I couldn't tell them, specifically I'm thinking about an old man buried here whose death I couldn't tell them about. I float over to his grave.

      But there's a guy here waiting for me. He attacks me - though I just float away from that - while blaming me for causing that man's death by convincing him to expose us to the media. He'd been one of something secret, supernatural or not quite human. But it wasn't like that - I hadn't been the one to convince him at all, and I'm frustrated by this mistaken rumor; it had been some pretty girl who'd talked him into it, I'd been completely against it, and I'd hated that he could throw away a lifelong belief in secrecy so quickly.

      I'm sitting outside what looks like a very small cave entrance, too small for a person to get through, and I'm talking with several very small spirits, and a much larger, much older one in the cave. We're having a disagreement about a course of action, and finally the spirit inside the cave decides to force the issue by possessing me and taking control of my body. In doing so, he forces out the much smaller, relatively harmless spirit that usually possesses me, and it's quite shocked by this; it tries to get back in, but there's this glowing blue crescent on my forehead, like a closed eye, which acts like a lock.

      I'm standing on a city street near a warehouse, surrounded by government vehicles, and talking to my boss, who works for the FBI. He wants me to see what's going on inside the warehouse, but I can't do that. I'm tired. The thing possessing me doesn't understand why this is an issue, takes over and answers easily - his answer has something to do with drugs - he speaks using his own accent, very different from mine, some variety of English, but if the boss notices he chooses to ignore it.
    Page 2 of 2 FirstFirst 1 2