• Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views




    View RSS Feed

    Recent DJ Posts

    1. Wine and Cheese + Navriela (DILD + DEILD + FA)

      by , 04-17-2015 at 08:29 PM
      Ritual: WTB 2:30am, woke 7:15. I was stressed over something and felt too awake to go back to sleep right away, so I got up and put some time into a project for work. Returned to bed at 8:45am, no techniques, though I wondered if the WBTB would make lucidity more likely (happily it did) and woke again at 10am. Recall: 6/10.

      DILD, "Wine and Cheese": I'm walking down a footpath outdoors, carrying a cat in the hem of my dress. That is, I've folded up my hem to make a kind of pocket with the cat in it. She is an orange tabby short-hair that doesn't resemble any cat I've known in WL. I think she'll probably want to look around, so I try to arrange the "pocket" in such a way that she can rest her paws on the edge of the hem that I am holding and peek her head out. This works for a while, but then I notice that my black inner dress feels too tight around my legs, hampering my movements, and I think I must have accidentally caught it up together with the hem of the outer dress (which is a sheer light brown fabric). In trying to rearrange it so I can walk unimpeded, the cat falls back down into the "pocket," but I figure this isn't so bad, since the outer dress is translucent, maybe she can still enjoy the view.

      However, the cat is getting restless, and I remember something I read the other day on the forums: that if you just keep walking or wandering in a particular direction, the dream will destabilize. Well, such a thing has never happened to me before, despite numerous opportunities, but now I've caught a touch of schema infection from reading about it. [I agree with FryingMan that as a community we should try to be more conscientious about making claims that might infect other people's schemas!] So of course now that I'm anxious about it I start to feel destabilization coming on—I need to do something, quick! I notice that I am walking past a little wine-and-cheese shop, so I decide to duck in for a snack.

      Almost immediately I start to wonder if this was a bad idea... sitting down for a whole meal seems like a very drab and tedious way to spend my precious dream time. I decide to keep it short and just taste a few things; there's no need to finish after all. So I order some white wine and a cheese plate. The lady running the shop insists that we also try a certain specialty of theirs, which turns out to be a kind of spread that you put over toast. I see that all of these menu options are also listed on a small chalkboard hung over the doorway to the kitchen, though she prepares everything from behind a counter that is in the dining room. She serves us two types of their specialty spread, together with wedges of three kinds of cheese. It looks like very high-quality cheese, and I'm surprised (and a bit dismayed) to see how big the pieces are.

      The only seating in the place, which is very small, is a long communal table. I sit down and don't find it odd that I have a dining companion who sits to my right, though I didn't notice her before and my impressions are so vague that all I can really specify (uncertainly) is her gender. The orange cat I was carrying before is on the floor at my feet, and I hope the proprietor won't mind if she sees me feeding the cat little pieces of cheese. I take a sip of wine and a bite of some cheese and I am pleasantly surprised. Normally in dreams my sense of taste is dull and muted, but the taste and texture of this cheese is identical to the real thing. It is a sharp, tangy cheese with a firm, slightly crumbly texture like certain Spanish or French cheeses made from ewe's milk. I feel more enthusiastic about being here now, since I can enjoy a delightful snack without worrying about any extra calories! But on my second bite of cheese, as I concentrate on enjoying it, my perceptions accidentally shift to my real mouth—which of course is completely empty and tastes like night saliva. The dream fades and I very nearly wake up.

      DEILD, "Navriela": Luckily I realize that I am not fully awake but just below the threshold, so I think I can probably DEILD. Initially I try to DEILD back into the dream I just left, but it has fragmented beyond retrieval. So I just focus on getting the dreamstate back. Visuals kick in first: I see what looks like the vantage of a movie camera tracking steadily from left to right over something that resembles a grim, minimalist palace interior, perhaps an empty throne room. Everything is smooth and metallic grey and vertical. Probably because I start to wonder what was supporting the camera for this shot, which is too smooth and gravity-defying for a human cameraman, I now hear a male voice off-screen saying, "It is difficult to make a movie like this." I listen and continue to hear voices conversing about the film, so with both sight and sound back in play, I know that dream is kicking in.

      The camera has moved right through a doorway into the upper landing of a stairwell, and now I see a slender woman dressed all in silver begin to descend the stairs. To stabilize my senses I study her outfit, and I'm impressed how clearly I can perceive its details. She is wearing a kind of short jacket over a lower garment that reaches to her mid-thigh. It is not shorts or a skirt, however, and as I study it closely I observe a series of folds that suggest the garment consists of a single piece of cloth that was tucked between and through her legs to form something resembling short pants. I recognize this style of clothing—it looks like jongkraben, a kind of lower garment worn by both men and women in nineteenth-century Siam—but I'm surprised to see it in such an unusual context as this medieval/futuristic palace, worn by a pale, lithe, elf-like woman with white-blonde hair. I think I see some tassles dangling from the front, so I circle my perspective (still disembodied) around the woman to confirm what her outfit looks like from the front, and then continue to follow her down two flights of stairs.

      At the bottom of the stairs she encounters an elderly but vigorous old man with a long white beard who resembles Gandalf. He starts talking to her and at one point asks, "What is your name?" I'm pleased that he has asked the question I was wondering. There is something so youthful yet elvishly ancient about the woman that she strongly reminds me of Galadriel in LOTR, even resembling Cate Blanchett a little bit, and I half-expect her to say that "Galadriel" is her name, especially now that I'm thinking it. But the dream surprises me, and she answers with something that sounds equally elvish, but a name I don't think I've ever heard before: "Navriela."

      I start to think I should embody myself in this dream and work on some task. Had I been a little more on the ball I might have thought to accompany Navriela to a nearby forest to make another attempt my lucid dare, but I am too distracted by my growing attraction to her. I reflect that if I was one of the guys I would surely go "caveman" on her, and this gives me an idea for an experiment: what if I try to become a man? I sometimes identify as male characters in NLDs, but I hadn't attempted this before in an LD.

      I imagined myself as a guy and approached Navriela with romantic intentions. She was compliant as I took her into my arms, and we fell together on a bed that was conveniently placed in an adjoining room. I started trying to make love to her as a man, although it was all rather vague and hasty (I don't even think we took our clothes off) and I didn't notice any differences in my anatomy. Nevertheless, there was something very arousing about it and I quickly orgasmed. "It's always so much easier for men," I thought wryly—overlooking the fact that it is always easier in dreams anyway.

      FA: I woke up and immediately went to my computer to start writing my report, but I was having trouble accessing my word file. First I tried under "Open Recent," in Word since it's usually somewhere in that list, and when I didn't see it I tried typing the name of the file in the search box, but that didn't work either. I resorted to my back-up plan, dropping to desktop and clicking to the alias of my dream journal that I'd placed there, but even that failed for some reason. Since I actually do often have trouble accessing the file when I'm half-awake and hastening not to lose precious seconds of dream recall, it never occurred to me that my technical difficulties this time were evidence of an FA—even after discovering that my computer was in the middle of doing a full scan of some kind, and that my files were all locked until the scan was complete. Instead, I rationalized this by "remembering" that I had updated the OS just before I went to bed, and that concluded a mass file update was part of the process. Fortunately the progress bar was already at 56% and resolving quickly, so I waited it out. The OS shifted over to the new version, and now a new icon appeared on the top of all my window frames. It was a cartoon-like graphic of a noble male face haloed in a bright burst of sunlight, resembling a demigod or superhero. I figured this was the logo of the new OS, the name of which I knew at the time, but I wasn't paying much attention because finally I was able to open my dream journal file and start taking notes. Initially I started jotting down a lot of keywords and short phrases so I wouldn't lose any key events: "Navriela," and "four kittens" and "wine and cheese shop," and then started filling in the details.

      Eventually I woke up again and realized the last sequence had been an FA. Unfortunately my overall recall was now somewhat eroded the delay in waking up properly, especially of earlier sequences before I became aware that I was dreaming. I don't think there was ever a clear boundary or "aha" moment when I got lucid; it just seemed to naturally dawn upon me while I was walking down the path carrying the cat.

      NLD: I can partly recall an even earlier scene, non-lucid, where I was in a store, looking through horse halters. I was surprised to find horse supplies for sale at a mainstream store like this—it resembled a budget department store like a Target. I compared several halters but didn't like their quality or appearance. One that I rejected was covered with pale pink fake fur; another incorporated a fly mask but I wasn't sure if the eye holes would fit properly. I ended up rejecting them all and walking away. As I left, I noticed that the halters were on display in the children's section of the store, which annoyed me: why is horseback riding so often pigeonholed as an activity for young children? Certainly it helps to start young, but it takes years of practice to get any good at it. I think it was after walking out of the store that I was carrying the cat in my dress, where my dream report started, but the transition is unclear. I also now have no idea what the keywords "four kittens" was referring to, among all the notes I had recorded in my dreamed dream journal—so there is probably at least one lost scene.

      Updated 04-17-2015 at 08:50 PM by 34973

      Categories
      lucid , false awakening