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Morning of April 27, 2019. Saturday.

Dream #: 19,122-02. Reading time (optimized): 3 min.



Water induction and the Naiad/Oceanid factor changes into a fishing scenario. Despite the former process beginning at least one dream each sleep cycle for over 50 years, the continuity and outcome are always unique.

Zsuzsanna and I are sitting on the shore of a lake, though it seems to stem from associations with El Jobean, which is near the ocean and the area where I fished as a boy, close to the bridge. It seems to be afternoon.

Two unknown men are present. One of them is cheerfully fishing. The other, the preconscious simulacrum of this dream, is sitting on our right. There is a brief, vague concern that someone might throw something from the bridge high above us, but no one does. (It is subliminal anticipation of vestibular cortex activity, which is a common dream perception.) I soon attach the hook to the end of my line, and I also put the reel on the rod. At first, I snag a sunfish carcass (on its dorsal fin) floating on its left side (as analogous to my sleeping orientation) on the lake’s surface. The preconscious is holding a pair of scissors. I am wary, as I think he intends to take them while claiming someone lost them. Looking down, I see another pair of scissors that is nearly the same and belongs with the other. There are small rust marks on the handles of each. I comment on how similar they are and pick up the pair on the ground. I take the other scissors from the simulacrum (with no protest on his part, which is atypical in RAS mediation, especially as the scissors indicate potential separation from the dream state) and put both pair in the tackle box.

I verbalize loud, sarcastic remarks about people sitting near people who are fishing. He soon leaves (thus allowing me to sustain my dream). So does the other male, though it is getting later and is almost too dark to see. I ask Zsuzsanna if fishing at night is allowed and it seems that it is. (This process, regarding nightfall with enhanced awareness, is sometimes indicative of the return to slow-wave sleep, but I maintain my dream state awareness without direct lucidity.)

I do not have live bait and consider digging in the ground with my hands, but I find a live worm with at least two hooks through it in a small paper bag that someone left behind. I think it is artificial before it starts moving. I attach the rig to my line.

When I cast, I accidentally snag a cluster of plants halfway across the lake’s distance from our side. I see an unknown woman off to the left near her car on our side. She had also cast. I find the situation somewhat amusing but not that frustrating, especially when it seems I had also hooked a big fish. However, it turns out that she is reeling the line from her end, causing the little island to move toward her.

I hook onto something big. Upon reeling it in, I see that I have snagged a seal, with the hook in its bottom lip. “It’s a seal,” I loudly say. The woman and I agree that I should take the hook out and release it, which I do.

When I cast again, the hook ends up near the woman’s car. She decides to leave but ends up falling in the lake almost up to her neck. She swims out, gets into her car, and it accidentally backs up into the lake, sinking completely.

I dive into the lake. I swim to the end of the lake to the right of my original location, underwater (being able to breathe underwater as in all my dreams since early childhood). The woman is sleeping in a small dry cave underwater, as the water remains as an impossible “wall” at its entrance. I maneuver into the cave through the “wall,” without disrupting the impossible vertical water barrier. I ask the woman if she needs me to rescue her. She shakes her head and shivers slightly, with her eyes moving as if in REM sleep. I ask her again, and she nods.

My feet push against the water “wall,” and water starts to flood the cave, but I wake around this time. I see that Zsuzsanna is sleeping in the same position as the woman had been.

---

This dream renders the same processes as usual, but also unique as always and very vivid and enjoyable.

---

I was Googling REDACTED with my mind (a controllable hypnagogic hallucination), to find out who REDACTED's significant other is. I only found the (useless) Dutch version of Wikipedia, which didn't have what I wanted to know.

In another scene, I'm in the middle of a fight between two rival groups of super-powered mutants. One group of mutants even had tails (!!). At some point, I forced a guy to the ground, and stabbed him in the face and forehead a pair of scissors. It went through his skull. I was furious, and kept stabbing him again and again, and again... even after he was obviously dead.

I'm with REDACTED in an outdoors area, like a park. There's a long (white?), wooden gazebo, which is where I was standing. I faced REDACTED (who was on the grass), picked up two ends of electrical wire, and brought the two ends together. I was electrocuted, the electricity traveled through the ground (was it wet?) and also electrocuted REDACTED. He was knocked to the ground. I approached him. Suddenly (still on the ground), he pulled his gun on me. I was glad, because this was a sign his memory was returning (he had forgotten everything, who he was, and that he had a gun). The camera moved elsewhere, and the sound of gunshots sounded throughout the park. I knew he was just popping off a few shots in the air, not at me.

I'm in some kind of hotel room, or rather "hotel apartment", because it had several small rooms linked by a corridor. I was watching REDACTED on TV, and immediately noticed how gorgeous she looked. Like I do in real life, I REDACTED it. I didn't watch much, I had to turn off the device I was watching it on, because it had to recharge. There was another electrical device already recharging (my PS Vita?). Bored, I tried to think of something to do to pass the time. I went to the "TV room". Something else in that room was making a lot of noise (a radio?), and combined with the TV it drove me nuts. So I turned it off.

Ritual: wtb 3am, around 9am set vibrating alarm for 36 minutes. The first time it went off, I felt like I was already awake, that I had been lying awake for several minutes before I felt the vibration. In retrospect I was quickly suspicious that this was a false memory, but the consequence was that I woke up for real. I reset the alarm to go off in 28 minutes, and went back to sleep.

EILD: I felt the vibration again, and at first I thought it was another failed attempt, that I was wide awake again. But this time I convince myself not to give up so easily, to lay still and explore it. I wiggle my fingers. Actually... that feels right, like dream movement. I wiggle the fingers of the other hand and gradually start to engage my whole body, but soon, no, I can still sense the dream body but I'm convinced that I'm accidentally moving my real body too. (In retrospect, it seems likely that my impressions of moving the physical body were false, as this surely would have broken aphasia.) It feels like the two kinds of sensory awareness are layered together. My dream sense is not broken but I need to find some way to desynch from the physical, to move unnaturally in a way the real body can't follow. I try to bend my arm the wrong way at the elbow, down into the mattress. I find this a bit difficult for some reason, but something else happens: I start to understand that I am creating all this difficulty in my own mind, that it really doesn't have to be this complicated. Upon this realization I simply find myself standing next to the bed, fully in dream. That certainly makes things easier!

My WL awareness was somewhat confused throughout this whole process, since during the whole time I was lying in bed I had the impression that I could overhear a colleague from work talking to her daughter (who I have never met). They were discussing a humanitarian volunteer program that the colleague was doing in another country, maybe Africa. I listened with interest since I had not been aware that she was involved with anything like this (there is no RL basis), but it made sense since she is a very kind and generous person. She was talking about some kind of environmental crisis and said that the local people trusted the "agents," that is, the field workers of this organization, like her, but not the administration or the experts that were sent in to instruct them. The challenge was teaching the locals new ways of environmental management so they were no longer unsustainably exploiting their natural resources. I think it was targeting water usage.

After I was fully transitioned into the dream, I remembered that I had reset my vibrating alarm to an interval of only seven minutes, so I would have to work quickly before it went off again, waking me up. Curiously, now I'm not sure if I really did reset it, and suspect I dreamed that part too. The nice thing about a device like this is that it actually provides hard evidence against which to check my unreliable memories. Nope! It's still set to 28 minutes. So there was one point this morning where I definitely did reset it from 36 to 28, but the later memory of resetting it to 7 minutes—for some reason convinced that I would be able to fall asleep within that time frame—turns out to have been an FFA (false falling asleep), evidence that I was already asleep.

With (so I mistakenly thought) only seven minutes to work in, minus whatever time I had already spent transitioning, I walk quickly through the house and toward the front door, ready to plunge into deeper dreamspace. As I pass through the living room, something bumps into my leg from the pile of wood stacked near the fireplace. At first I plan to ignore it but then I wonder if the dream is trying to get my attention, so I glance down and see a pair of scissors. I'm not sure what to make of this but I grab them and take them with me. I go outside, where the sky is cloudy and half-lit as though it were dawn or dusk. I realize that this is wrong, and recall that it must already be after 9am in WL.

What was my task? I have difficulty remembering, so while I'm thinking about it, I decide to do something spontaneous. I'm still holding the scissors... I know! I'll cut off my hair. As I walk I reach awkwardly behind my head and randomly lift locks of hair with my left hand, cutting them near the scalp with the scissors held in my right. This all feels surprisingly lifelike, which makes me think momentarily: I had better be right that I am dreaming! But then I figure, what's the worst thing that could happen if I accidentally cut off my real hair? I'd have to shave my head? Not a big deal, I even did that once in college.

All this time I'm still trying to think of the tasks I had planned—why is it sometimes so hard to remember? Finally it comes to me. Right! I was going to try to roleplay a familiar character. I decide on Shriven, my WoW character, since I've played her the longest and also the most recently. My tabletop characters are much more psychologically complex, but I think I should probably start with something simpler. Okay, how do to this? I remember that I was going to try the narration technique. I start with something really basic: "Shriven is running," I murmur. My stride changes as I think I remember what her run looks like, becoming more mechanical. That part makes sense, given that she's digitally rendered. I don't have the impression that I look or feel any different, though. I keep trying, and although I don't recall my narrations in detail, I have the impression that they were extremely bland.

I'm running through city streets now. At one point I notice that the buildings all seem older, eighteenth-century maybe, though this still just looks like one of my typical dream cities rather than a more appropriate setting for what I'm trying to accomplish. I'm still cutting my hair as I go—having started, I feel like I should finish the job. When I finally slice through the last tress, I stop and gaze at my reflection in a store window. Not bad! Although short hair never really suits my features, the haircut itself turned out alright, kind of punk/pixieish. In fact, it even reminds me of Shriven's hair, which is short and spiky and irregular. However, there is no real resemblance, and in all other respects my reflection looks unusually like my WL appearance: same eyes, same face, same hair color. Usually in dreams I see a lot more distortion.

I use the scissors to make a few finishing touches to the haircut before realizing that it is pointless to be so finicky in a dream. In fact, I'm done with the scissors now... I'm just going to drop them on the ground! This always feels so liberating, since I would never do that in WL. I continue running effortlessly down the street and when I come to the end there is a ten foot gap to cross to reach a platform or walkway. Jump—you can do this! I clear the gap, just barely, and feel proud of myself as I land.

Still, I don't feel like I'm making much progress on my task so I try to figure out how to improve my approach. What does Shriven do? Well, she often summons her mount, an undead warhorse. I narrate this to myself, but nothing happens. Every time I do this in game the horse makes a distinctive shrill whinny, so I try to use the sound as a focal point. I find it becomes ambiguous whether I can hear the sound in the dream or if I'm just remembering it.

As I pass through a T-intersection, a blinding light directly ahead causes me to swerve. It is so bright that I assume it must be bleedthrough from RL. I remember the conversation between my colleague and her daughter that I overheard during my transition; with true dream logic I never questioned the impossibility of that taking place in my bedroom, and so now I assume that one of them must still be there, taking flash pictures. Instead of going straight into the light, my initial direction, I turn and take the street on the left, even turning my face away so to diminish the brightness. I can hear a voice from the direction of the light saying, "Don't shoot! Don't shoot!" So I was right about the camera, I conclude. At no point do I recognize the absurdity and error in my thought processes, but I do reflect that it is interesting that the environment made me change the direction I was going—is the dream trying to control my movement?

After this interruption, I go back to trying to summon the undead warhorse. It's still not working, but then I notice that the shop just ahead of me seems to have horse skulls hanging on the back wall. That's an improvement! I go into the shop, which is now a tiny space almost completely filled by a large bunkbed. A bearded man is lounging on the lower bunk, eating a meal and watching TV, while the upper bunk is shacked with sheepskins. I ask the man about the horse skulls.

"That's not a horse skull," he responds.

I realize he must be referring to the giant animal skull on the floor at my feet. It must be about three feet long. "What is it?"

"That's an academic-size magic detector," he answers, hardly taking his eyes off his TV program. Not sure what to make of his words, I look at the skull again. I realize it must have come from some kind of giant lizard, like a crocodile, but it has a small horn at the snout like a rhinocerous. As I study it, I see that it is now green and sparkling, the color offset with pale stripes. I am tempted to compare it to an Elvis suit, but fear that the proprietor might be offended.

FA: I wake up and start taking notes right away, starting from the last scene and moving backward. Fortunately I don't get very far before I realize I am writing on dream paper. I wake up for real and record my notes on my laptop.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #204: Ozone

I’m sitting at a craft table with three other people: a guy in his late 20s (“Guy”), a woman in her 30s (“Lady”), and a crazy-looking woman in her mid-40s (“Crazy Lady”). Crazy Lady keeps talking to herself and acting disturbed as she works on her project.

Lady gets the bright idea to tell Crazy Lady that Guy has a prize for her. “If you get all your work done, maybe he’ll give it to you.” Crazy Lady keeps asking what the prize is, becoming more and more fixated on this prize until she gets out of her chair and approaches Guy. I have a feeling that something awful’s going to happen but that I can’t stop it.

Spoiler for Unpleasantness:

I see a pair of dirty scissors flash in Crazy Lady’s hand. She gouges them into the side of Guy’s neck and then grinds the thick, dull blade across his throat. Blood everywhere. Guy collapses to the ground.

Crazy Lady disappears from the scene as Lady and I rush to help Guy. Now I’m on the phone with emergency services begging them to come help us. They sound very unhurried and tell me that the wait will be “about 30 minutes”. I’m stressed out that they’re going to take so long but I hope they know what they’re doing. I nose pinch reality check in the hope that this isn’t real, and when I blow throuigh I think, No way am I so lucky that this is all a dream. I confirm with a second nose pinch, that yes, I’m dreaming!

Guy and Lady both disappear from the scene and I’m left along in an empty classroom. I wander outside into a misty nighttime street scene. I feel happiness and contentment to have escaped a nightmare and I peacefully explore the environment.

The bricks on the side of the building fascinate me first, and I bring my vision right up close to them. No matter how close I get, my eyes never lose focus. I seem to be able to look further and further in, zooming into every crack and imperfection. My fingers explore the moist bricks and it’s like I can sense each individual drop of moisture with my fingertips.

I suddenly give the wall a huge sniff. It feels invigorating and seems to bring the scene even more fully to life. I sense moisture and a sharp whiff of ozone when I do this, just like what you might smell after heavy rain.

There are a few DCs hanging around nearby, talking softly about something I can’t make out. I approach one of them, a brown-haired guy that’s facing away from me, and examine his hair and scalp up close. I’m fascinated how I can see down to the individual hairs on his head. The DCs’ conversation ceases as I do this and it feels like I hit pause on what they were saying.

I take another huge sniff, this time of the guy’s scalp. It just smells like a bunch of hair. I laugh self-consciously at what a creepy thing this is to do. Fortunately the DC doesn’t react. I walk onward now through the misty night toward a short stone bridge that runs over some unknown river or creek. Before I cross it, the dream ends.

I was in fetal position in my bed when I realize I need to get up and take a shower even though my body feels paralyzed. Then I realize that my legs are my children and that it would be unethical if I left my children for a month long shower so I weep while I contemplate this, after all I didn't want these two children, then I realized that they are my legs, they can't be children, So I sit up then I see this man sitting there, I walk behind him and blow air on his head because it's funny that his head is the size of my thumb yet the rest of his body is bigger than mine. I take a picture if my thumb next to his head, then I look at the picture I took and the man isn't in it, then I look back to him and he's gone. Then I go into the bathroom and decide to cut my hair, I have these blue scissors in my hand, but then I put the side of my mouth into the scissors and cut my mouth open joker style and then I just go oops, and then cut a chunk of hair and jam the hair into my wound. Then I find a shaver from under the sink and shave most of my hair off and then take off my shirt and put make up on my eyes and then I go into the kitchen and lay on the ground that has cigarettes all over it but I call it carpet and then I take a picture of my self and in it I have a weird face.

Date: 16 May

Pre bed: 3mg mel (needed to fall asleep fast)

Sleep quality and recall: feeling sleepy, fleeting recall

Total sleep time: 8 hrs

Dream1: I picked up the phone and heard an unfamiliar and strange sounding voice. I was wondering who it was, when I had the thought that it was one of the family members of a friend of mine. Then he picked up the phone. We were supposed to meet somewhere. I went there but it was really hot, the sun shining bright (never felt such so warm during a dream), so I left.

Fragment2: Family friends are working on something like a lettuce, discussing my cooking skills. I am trimming dill with scissors, it looks weird , so I stop doing it.

Dream3: A young woman that looks like a not very famous actress comes to our place and behaves improperly. I become enraged, grab her by the hair and drag her outside. She somehow makes her way back and pretends to be hurt, lying on the bed. I carry her out and make sure to close the door well, I don’t care what the neighbours will think.

8:05 am

I saw an old man with a long beard teaching something.

I am playing a first-person game/movie. Someone was following me in that scene. I parkoured my way up a building, so I can catch the person. I also grabbed a hidden bow and some arrows with various effects: fire, poison, and acid. This game replayed a few times before. The person following me is an ally, so I don't want to hurt him. I just used a plain arrow to shoot the floor in front of him as he walks in, and ask him what his business was. The name "Gale."

We were fighting vampires. We were stuck in some sort of house or castle. I knew that a metal with a shape like a cross defeated them, but I can't find it. I kept looking around the place, and tried a few that looked like a cross, but not enough to be one. The vampires weren't affected. One was a spatula, I think. They're more like zombies, hanging outside the house/castle, trying to get in. If I shout "toad" or another animal (hound?), the vampires will flee. But like in any game, it has to be difficult. I see around four words in front of my 'screen' and they change rapidly. I accidentally chose 'tood' so it didn't work. I kept looking for the weapon.

An illusionist ally was trying to scare the vampires away. She uses a technique instead to summon toads. She uses an enchantment to transform the written word into toads (illusions?) to chase away the vampires. She burned the paper with the words into ashes, then enchanted the ashes so they transform into toads. Then I found the scissors! Shaped like a cross, perfect! Some of the vampires were already inside, and for some reason we called their 'parents' to tell them we have them. It sounded like they were our hostages. But we have to hurry, because they'll be here soon. I stabbed some vampires who were inside with the scissors, and they looked shocked and started running out. I chased them a bit, then returned. The ally who was 'chasing' me earlier was there, and he helped get everyone out of the area.

I was in a different area. There's a horse. A woman arrives riding the horse. She brought the werewolf guy's pet dog (looks like a smaller version of 'Lucky,' RS's pet dog). He carried him and ran really fast to bring him home. Then he ran really fast back. The woman was surprised. She thought that he'll bring him home using the carriage.

I saw them cross a stone bridge. There are a lot of trash on that bridge. People are cleaning it. It seems that it's their area. The place is used as a 'school' and when the school is out, the area is used by those homeless people to sleep or do business in (selling stuff). All proceeds go to tax, but at least they get to use the area for free when school's out.

I was in some sort of training complex for all sorts of stuff. How to shoot a gun, how to use a sword, how to drive some fancy type of vehicle, etc. It was outside, and extended to a low, gray, brick wall. In the background, people where driving fancy vehicles that looked like a mix between a jeep and a golf cart, and was made for one person. Others were fencing with very nice looking swords, ranging from rapiers to katanas. Some people were kneeling and shooting automatic weapons at bags of flour.

I was in a line to be assigned to one of these activities. People in front of me were being handed guns and swords and whatnot from a military looking man with a clipboard. He was obviously some sort of marshal, though I was not sure that this was a military complex. Worried, I felt around my head, and found with much jolliness that I did not have a buzz cut, and at the moment, that convinced me that I was not actually in the presence of the military.

When I reached the marshal looking fellow, the looked me up and down briefly. His eyes stayed on my left hand for a moment. I looked down at it to notice, for the first time, that I was holding a pair of scissors, with a shiny blades at an angle from the black scissor-handle-doodad. I looked at the man in front of me. He pointed to my right and grunted. He then walked grudgingly elsewhere, as I was the end of the line.

I found a group of six or seven other people, one of them an adult man with black hair and a coat, an instructor of sorts. The other five were the same group of people more or less than my age that seem to follow me around on the weekends. ( :O )

If I remember correctly, there were three men including me (But not the instructor) , and three women, and all of us had scissors with black scissor-handle-doodads, but not all with shiny angled blades.

The instructor instructed us, though I do not remember any specific thing he said. We seemed to be a group of elite scissor ninjas, and proceeded to go through drills such as scissor tai-chi, scissor dueling, and snipping at the necks of training androids with fake flesh. At the end of the training, I twirled the scissors around my index finger, feeling rather pleased with my skills in scissory. Then I woke up, and felt disappointed with the tiny blunt scissors I got in kindergarten.

BiscuitHappyz's Dream

I was in some sort of training complex for all sorts of stuff. How to shoot a gun, how to use a sword, how to drive some fancy type of vehicle, etc. It was outside, and extended to a low, gray, brick wall. In the background, people where driving fancy vehicles that looked like a mix between a jeep and a golf cart, and was made for one person. Others were fencing with very nice looking swords, ranging from rapiers to katanas. Some people were kneeling and shooting automatic weapons at bags of flour.

I was in a line to be assigned to one of these activities. People in front of me were being handed guns and swords and whatnot from a military looking man with a clipboard. He was obviously some sort of marshal, though I was not sure that this was a military complex. Worried, I felt around my head, and found with much jolliness that I did not have a buzz cut, and at the moment, that convinced me that I was not actually in the presence of the military.

When I reached the marshal looking fellow, the looked me up and down briefly. His eyes stayed on my left hand for a moment. I looked down at it to notice, for the first time, that I was holding a pair of scissors, with a shiny blades at an angle from the black scissor-handle-doodad. I looked at the man in front of me. He pointed to my right and grunted. He then walked grudgingly elsewhere, as I was the end of the line.



I found a group of six or seven other people, one of them an adult man with black hair and a coat, an instructor of sorts. The other five were the same group of people more or less than my age that seem to follow me around on the weekends. ( :O )

If I remember correctly, there were three men including me (But not the instructor) , and three women, and all of us had scissors with black scissor-handle-doodads, but not all with shiny angled blades.

The instructor instructed us, though I do not remember any specific thing he said. We seemed to be a group of elite scissor ninjas, and proceeded to go through drills such as scissor tai-chi, scissor dueling, and snipping at the necks of training androids with fake flesh. At the end of the training, I twirled the scissors around my index finger, feeling rather pleased with my skills in scissory. Then I woke up, and felt disappointed with the tiny blunt scissors I got in kindergarten.