1/2 pt non-lucid Three Step Goals: 1.Advanced Flying 2.Element Manipulation 3.Mass Telekinesis New Dream goal: Go to the Moon Old Dream goal: Go back to Venice Non-lucid: I was with my twin daughters (I really have twins, they are grown & have their own kids). My one daughter Ashley was in a fountain playing with some kids. Her best friend is named Kendruh & she was jumping back in & out of the dream & I demanded that she tell me what the year was each time. It was some sort of time travel thing. It was really strange. Ashley gave birth to June bugs, yep that was really weird. Something was wrong with one of them. ( She's pregnant in real life so maybe that's where that came in). My other daughter was in & out of the dream but wasn't really saying much. I had a really bad day. Had to get up early to watch my grand kids at 6:15 & then had to go get my oldest son to come watch them at my house so I could take my other son to the ER. He seems to have carpal tunnel. But his symptoms were basically from fatigue. Gaming & not sleeping or eating. It was a big mess. Then I get a cryptic phone call from someone. They said they were my son in law, who's in prison but it wasn't him. He's in the hole right now & so is the idiot who helped put him in prison. The said idiot gave out my number apparently & someone was trying to get to him through me. You just can't make this shit up. On top of that I moved wrong today & I think I fucked up my titanium bracket in my spine because I'm in a crazy amount of pain. I wish this day would fucking end already! Non-Lucid-Green Lucid-Red Side Notes-Purple Competition Notes-Teal
Tonight I'm in a hotel and had gone to bed at 12:30am, early for me, after a big meal with lots of wine. I slept for a few hours and it was probably around 3–4am (an estimation, I didn't check) that I started water-cycling. I've found it the best way to avoid a hangover: I wake up at intervals to drink as much water as I can comfortably consume, which inevitably means also having to use the bathroom frequently once the rehydration sets in. I had already woken a few times in the night and this waking seemed no different at first, because dream logic prevented me from realizing how odd it was that I was walking down a long hall to use the bathroom rather than just using the one in the room. Yet from the start, something made me wonder if I was dreaming. I tried jumping and levitating but it was inconclusive. It didn't occur to me to try other checks. I went in the bathroom and noticed it looked just like one I had just been dreaming about before I woke up, which also seemed suspicious, but I still felt very embodied and awake. I even noticed how clean and inviting this bathroom felt, in contrast to the unpleasant aspect they often present in dreams. I felt awake enough and had to pee urgently enough that I was tempted to just go ahead and use the facilities, reasoning that if I was actually dreaming then with careful intention I should be able limit this activity to the dream state and not accidentally release my bladder in waking life. But uncertainty made me hesitate—I couldn't afford to be wrong about this! Something still made me sense that I was dreaming, even if I couldn't seem to prove it. I noticed a woman sitting nearby, which did not strike me as odd, but opportune. I approached her and asked, "Am I dreaming?" "Yes." I was struck by the simple decisiveness of her answer. It was also uncharacteristically straightforward, given the usual evasiveness of my DCs. "Thanks for being honest. Usually when I ask people in dreams—" (I used this phrase instead of "DC" because I was afraid she might it insulting to be reduced to an acronym) "—they say 'no'. Why do they do that?" She shrugged slightly. "They're probably just nervous." I wondered what they might have to be nervous about, but wanted to understand what made her different. "Then why were you so honest?" "I represent your higher functions." I'm pretty sure this is what she said, or very nearly. It struck me as an oddly technical response. This DC really intrigued me. She seemed so smart and self-aware, in contrast to the typical dullness and blandness of those I try to interact with. I looked at her closely. She was a slim young woman who appeared to be in her twenties, pretty, with glossy shoulder-length black hair and an Asian cast to her features. Her demeanor was calm, precise, and assured. I wanted a name to remember her by, so I asked: "What's your name?" She promptly uttered a string of numbers, something like "2166309." Perplexed by this response, I pressed, "I mean in letters." If she couldn't answer, I decided that I would name her "Murasaki." I had just been reading about the names of Japanese colors so the word was fresh on my mind; I knew it meant purple, and the woman was wearing a bright purple shirt and looked like she might be Japanese. I also recalled that "Murasaki" was a name of ancient pedigree, being the heroine of The Tale of Genji as well as the pseudonym of its courtly author. But my deliberations were unnecessary, it turned out. "Meonarra," she said. At least that's what it sounded like. I pressed for clarification: "Can you spell that?" She might have started with an "M," but what followed was not a series of normal alphabetical letters. She specified particular accent marks and chemical symbols that I wasn't even familiar with. Her explanation of the spelling sounded far longer than the actual name, and at least half of it seemed to be special characters. Even listening closely, I couldn't follow it at all. I wished I had a way to record it other than my own weak memory. I reflected how people in many pre-modern cultures had developed their memories to an extraordinary degree, but we, who can almost always rely on other means of recording information, have very little ability in that regard. I wished I had a notepad to write down what she was saying, but there would be no point: I couldn't keep it with me when I woke up. So instead I just asked her to repeat herself: "Can you say that again?" She obliged, but it sounded completely different this time, and I could swear the new spelling ended with a "D." That wasn't anything like the name I thought I'd heard. I figured if I couldn't spell it, I should at least make sure I had the pronunciation right. "Meonarra?" I asked, pronouncing the first syllables as "mee-oh." She corrected me; the first vowel was more like the "a" in "after," so it sounded like "mae-oh." I realized that I was falling into a rut by obsessing over the name, and the dream was not going to last much longer. "Can I see you again?" I asked Meonarra. "I'd like to have a conversation sometime." She shrank back with a stricken look, as if I'd suggested something completely inappropriate. "No! That's _____'s territory." I didn't quite catch the name, but I think it was two syllables, might have started with an "I," and sounded male. Similar to "Isaac"? But it wasn't exactly that; I don't think it was a waking-world name. I wasn't sure what was wrong with my request, but I tried to reassure her. "I just mean to chat, like we're doing now. I'd like to see you." I realized that I was drawn to her. I couldn't tell if it was the stirrings of a romantic attraction or if it was just that I found her so interesting. But the thought awakened a sensuous impulse and I put my arms around her. I recognized that it was the dream state itself that made it so easy to slip toward this sensation, and I asked her why dreams had this quality. I can't remember how I worded the question, and can't remember her reply, if she had time to make one before I woke up. Writing this up it perhaps sounds more bland than it felt at the time. It was one of those dreams that felt really significant, even if nothing much happened. I regret that I got so pre-occupied with her name. Although my waking mind really likes to have names for things, a tendency that bleeds over pedantically into lucidity, I'm not sure if naming things is especially useful or meaningful within dream itself. It is becoming clear, at least, that the kinds of names things have in dream are not always as clear and straightforward as our ordinary linguistic appellations of waking life. Instead they appear to operate much like written text in dreams, characterized by the shifting instability of dream logic. So it might have been better if I could have thought of more substantial questions to ask her, instead of wasting the whole dream just trying to pin down her name. I do like having something to remember her by, but what else might she have told me if I had been able to come up with a more introspective line of questioning? It is now 6:43am (it was a few minutes before 5:12 when I started so I've spent over 90 minutes writing!) and the sky outside has blossomed into an unbelievably beautiful pink sunrise. I'm going back to bed.
Updated 12-21-2014 at 03:48 AM by 34973
Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake] I'm flying through a large, rectangular, exhibit-hall-like space with an entryway connected to one end of it. Every time I make a complete loop through the exhibit hall, out into the entryway, and then back into the exhibit hall again, the scenery and displays in the hall have changed. While I'm flying through the entryway after a couple of iterations of this, I catch on to the fact that I'm dreaming. I remember that I need to stabilize and ground myself in the dream, so I will myself to go down. I sink straight down, in an upright position, until I'm standing on the floor. I immediately walk over, reach out, and touch one of the walls, then squat down to touch the carpet. The thought of licking the floor to bring in that sense crosses my mind. [I was reading a thread on DV before I went to bed that mentioned engaging all five of your senses in a dream.] I decide not to, but thinking of things you should do in a dream brings to mind the current Task of the Month: spell “November” backwards. While still squatting down, I start tracing the shapes of the letters on the carpet with my finger. R...e...b...m...e...v...o...n. I get all the way through it, and feel very proud and pleased with myself. I feel just as alert and self-aware as I do in waking life, but I notice that it's slightly more difficult to keep track of the letters and what order they go in than it would be if I were awake. Then, I suddenly find that I have a ballpoint pen in my hand [a plain black Bic pen with a grip, the exact same kind I'd just been using in real life to do my homework for a class]. I take the pen and print “Rebmevon” on the wallpaper on the nearest wall. It's still a little hard to focus on spelling. At first, I write an “e” in place of the last “o,” but then I cross it out and correct it. I write it a second time [I think] because I can, but then I think, Okay, now you're just doing it to be a smartass. [There was more, but I only have time to write the part that has to do with the Task of the Month right now.]
Updated 11-16-2012 at 08:36 PM by 37356 (fixing a color tag)
Morning of April 7, 1971. Wednesday. In real life I had shown a young female teacher, after class, my “How and Why Wonder Book of the Moon”. When she asked “Can I have this?” I thought she meant that she wanted to borrow it for a short time for another class so I said “yes”. Unfortunately, I never saw the book again (so I guess she thought it was a gift). I did not ask her about it and I did not tell either of my parents about the event. (I did have most of the “How and Why Wonder Books” of the time period). I was not angry. I just felt rather strange about the situation. I thought perhaps that I would get it back at the end of the school year but did not. I was always quite passive in the presence of public authority, not because I liked, “appreciated”, or trusted authority in any way - in fact, it was the opposite and I was passive because I saw most such people as unpredictable, unintelligent, and unaware (and likely dangerous at the drop of a hat) except for perhaps a few teachers during my school years, but even then, I strongly sensed their shortcomings and overall incompetence given the circumstances, which often frustrated me but I remained quiet. During this time, I thought of the book being returned on “Moon Day”. I had “worked out” that this was the day relating to the moon and had a false memory that the moon was always full on a Monday. The main in-dream theme that recurred here for a few weeks was the idea that people only got married on Wednesdays. It became “Wedding Day”, the “long form” of “Wed Day”. In reality, I never did learn how to “mentally say” Wednesday. If I do attempt to actually think of Wednesday as Wednesday, it comes out wrong due to the bizarre and atypical spelling of the word. This stems from earlier years where I never once said (mentally) anything other than WED NEZ DAY. This is why I so quickly learned to spell it (even over incorrectly spelling “what” as “hwat”, “when” as “hwen”, and so on when four years old). To this day, I mentally think “Wed nez day” when I want to write it, knowing the “z” is actually an “s” and then write Wednesday…I wonder if other people do this.