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There was a train on a very linerar track that moved automatically on autopilot. It moved through a dark city. Unlike many other dreams of mine that have trains I had a little bit of control over this one. I could not steer it or make the train deviate from its pre-programmed route but I could use the brake to slow the train down or even stop it, which I had to do several times because there always seemed to be people on the track who would not notice the train until it was very close. I managed to never hit anyone by slowing the train down and sounding the loud horn.

At one section of the route, which seemed to be the edge of the city, the streets were tilted and twisted and very very oddly placed and I had to stop the train to avoid it crashing into a building or something. I got off the train and it continued its automatic route without a pilot. The twisted streets defied gravity and were on steep angles yet all of the buildings stayed in place and looked like they had been built to accommadate the twisted and angled streets.

There is some more to this dream, something about being on or near a warf by a large bridge that spans a river or something, but I cannot remember any of it.

Just started back up on Lucid Dreaming. Figured I'd post some of my dreams from the past year or so.

Going down Town (Sometime last December, when I was practicing LDing during winter break)

This was the first lucid dream I'd had in a while. I was on the top level of a parking garage. For some stupid reason I'd pulled a prank on a cop, and called him names, or something along those lines. He arrested me immediately. I was stunned that he was detaining me simply for pissing him off. I began freaking out immediately, begging him to let me go, but he did not falter. I only received a stone-cold stare.

I thought luck was on my side at this point. As we were driving down town a Train was derailed, and fell off the tracks and landed directly in front of us. We crashed directly into it. I managed to hop out of the car and run a few yards and the cop caught me. Apparently my luck was double crossing me-- even though we'd crash, we were directly in front of the station, and he dragged me in.

The inside of the station was, strangely enough, half police station and half gym. I was at the desk, talking to a different officer, pleading to be released. I gave up, but not before a few snide remarks at the officer.

I was looking around, considering escape, and saw some other people on benches, and a guy running on the track of the gym-side. I became lucid as soon as I saw this girl. She was dressed in some sort of modern indian clothes. Half jeans, half leather with tassles, and a couple feathers. She had a faint smile, and was looking directly at me. I had a distinct feeling that she was there, yet NOT part of the dream's scene at all. (I've assumed that this was my dreamguide)Her presence soothed me, and gave me clarity, and I realized I was dreaming.

I got too excited to actually speak to her, and instead tried to fly around. Yet, I found that as I flew out of the side of the building, I actually warped back INTO the building from the opposing wall. Just like on Asteroids, the old arcade game. I was trapped, and shortly after woke up...

After this, I managed to DEILD, and was enveloped by an image of my old church, under construction however. I woke up yet again, but this time it was a False Awakening. I was in a combination of my freshman dorm room and my sophomore dorm room.

I realized I was dreaming when I looked at my clock. I jumped up and flew through the building yet again, but as I did the dream began deteriorating. I was left in a WILD-like state with incredibly vivid hypnagogia. It was a lot like an acid trip. And I thought I woke up.

I had another FA, but I missed it this time =/

I am on an ornate cruise ship that is designed for common people to meet with royalty. I am with a friend of mine that looks like a girl I used to know in highschool. We are all stood around in lines in our finest gowns, waiting for one of the royals to walk by and pick from us whomever they are interested to meet.

Some sort of prince goes by me and I am not picked. I am not really surprised at this as I feel rather old compared to most of the others. As this round is over we are told to move up to the next level, which is actually up a few floors. Here we are sat down in what looks like theatre seats. Again, a royal starts working his way down the line. For some reason I decide this is a good time to put cream on my legs as they are feeling dry. The cream has a look and texture similar to chocolate pudding. I get it done just in time.

I think I must have been picked because now only a few of us are leaving the group to go up a few more floors. Here, in a line again, we are faced with a young girl. She goes through each of us, first tapping us on the shoulder then pulling us forward, mocking us and laughing. She thinks we're pathetic. When she does it to me, I laugh too. She picks me.

I'm pulled forward into a space in front of the crowd and I see the royals. It's more like one prince and his friend/servant/advisor. He's sat beside the prince and he looks very bored. He frustratedly tells us that we should "dance or something", so we do, and he likes how the girls dance sexy. Suddenly it's over and the royals are whisked away.

It's time to get off the cruise ship, to find our train, but I don't know where my son or friend is. I start going down levels, searching. I am questioning whether it was level 9 or 7 that I was originally on. Some random guy is trying to help me but it's slow going. He's asking people if they have seen my friend. We come across this crowd and someone tells me to watch out, there is a massive spider on the wall nearby and they know how I am terrified of spiders. I see what they are pointing at, it's a bubble of fabric on the wall that is moving in an irregular way. It frees itself from the wall and I see it's really just a leather jacket. I tell them their mistake.

A massive gorgeous moth lands on the floor suddenly and someone grabs it. S/he starts breaking pieces off of it like it's made of some sort of brittle taffy and handing the pieces out. I freak out at the cruelty of this, but there is no reaction so I move on.

I go into a lift and down another floor. There is a frustrated couple in there with me, trying to get to their floor. I finally find my son and ask him where his Papa is. He says Papa is by the car, and I ask him where the car is. He just says "down", so down we go in search of him. The car is parked in some of the many decks below, rather like a ferry. I am overwhelmed with the idea of searching blindly for it.

Type: Regular dream.
Lucidity: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Vividness: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Notes:
I think I did a mini CAT (cycle adjustment technique) this morning! I always get up at 7:00 in the morning, but today I set my alarm for 6:30 because I wanted to get up early to work on my speech for school elections. I was woken up by the alarm, but then I decided to sleep in some more. I fell asleep and had two dreams, the first of which was rather long. I'll write them as separate entries.

Dream 1
Flying the Plane, Dodging the Train, and the Young Thieves

It was early in the morning. The sunless sky was casting a yellow glare on the scenery. I was outside my house, facing the road perpendicular to the driveway, which I was standing on. This driveway was situated off a small crescent road, of which came off the side of a three-lane road in a quiet neighborhood. The driveway wasn't in very good condition; the concrete was smashed in some areas, there were a few cracks, and there were also bits of rock and stone in places. The grass on either side of the driveway was clean and a nice green color, and the sidewalk crossing the driveway looked relatively normal, almost perfectly in line with the road.

I started to walk off the driveway, and then I set foot onto the crescent. As soon as I took my third step down it, I was stopped by my mother, who had come up from behind me. She grabbed me by the arm and shouted accusations, including "get back in the house now or I'll tell everyone what you did!".

Although I wasn't lucid, I exhibited some form of dream control. I hissed at her and immediately proceeded to shapeshift into a red, traditional-looking Chinese dragon. I didn't feel the transition, but I did see my arms and tail curl around, from the corner of my eye. I growled at her, and pushed off the ground, shooting into the air. I made an arc that was around fifty feet long, and then landed back on the ground. For some reason, I "knew" that I'd lost her, and she wasn't following me at the moment because she didn't know where I was.

I was now on a country-like gravel road with normal city houses on either side, which almost made it look like a normal street. There were a few tall, gray, 40-story or so buildings in the back, mostly with large glass windows like you'd see in a big city such as Minneapolis. I didn't turn to see what was behind me, as I was looking ahead - there were telephone poles and their wires on either side of the street, going parallel to it (like they would do in real life). There were also some wires that criss-crossed and ended up going from one side to the other. A few wires were even hanging loosely down; these wires were so (impossibly, given the distance between the two sides) long that they were right on the middle of the road.

Ahead of me, there was a small yellow plane, facing directly down the road and away from me. It looked like a Seagull Models "Yak 54". It was about four feet tall, not quite big enough to fit a person. However, the cockpit wasn't really in the plane but sticking out. I stepped into the plane, and when I was settled in the cockpit, only my waist and below was inside. My upper body was sticking out on top. The plane had a black-and-silver steering wheel like that of a car, but it didn't have just a few large connections between the outer ring and the inner circle; it had many thin connections. It reminded me of a ship's wheel. But this wheel was also pretty small, only two thirds the size of a dinner plate. I grabbed it, and the plane took off by itself. I didn't need to push any buttons or anything.

I flew down the road, and I had to dodge a telephone wire that was hanging vertically downwards, a bit to my right. It didn't seem to be hanging from anything, it was jus suspended in air. I veered left, and now there were two wires crossing the space where I was about to fly. These, too, didn't seem to be connected to anything. I pulled on the wheel to raise the plane up, and I flew just over top of the wires, almost hitting them.

After two or three minutes, I landed. Between the initial takeoff and landing, however, was a seamless blend of location. I was no longer flying down a road, but I was going down a train track along the side of a rocky cliff. Rugged mountains dotted the area; there was also one mountain especially close to the left side of the tracks. The rocks were grey with some brown, and the ground was also brown rock, somewhat dusty in areas. My plane had changed from being yellow to a deep orange color with a few indiscernible black accents. I was going down this track, flying just a few inches above it. I knew that my mother was coming after me on a train. I knew the train was yellow with black points, and some silver and grey; it looked like a CN Railway train except with the different colors.

I also knew she was right behind me. I came to an entrance to a sort of "valley" on the cliff, and I jumped off my plane (which continued to veer down the tracks by itself) and ran around a big tall boulder to hide. I knew if my mother went through here, she would continue down the tracks without realizing she'd passed me. At this time, my sister came out of nowhere and knelt down beside me, behind the same rock. I told her, "Stay here, she won't find us".

I knew the train was coming. The train itself made no noise whatsoever, but I heard metal vibrating on the tracks, which was almost like a thumping noise. My view had now changed from first-person to third-person; I cannot tell exactly when this happened, but it did. I saw the train, which consisted of at least five cars, turn sharply and come around the boulder to where we were. Instead of crashing into us, however, it veered right off the side of the cliff.

My sister didn't exist in the dream anymore, so I went around the boulder toward the railway tracks. My plane was sitting right there for some reason, as if it hadn't gone flying down the tracks earlier. It was missing the seat and the wheel, though. I looked down the tracks, and the mountains/boulders had now changed to a more brownish rock, and there were tall buildings on either side, almost like an alleyway. The atmosphere got a bit foggier, as well.

Looking down the tracks, I saw two boys. They were wearing clothes that looked like they were from the 1800s - grey pants and shirts, with jackets and messenger hats. I also noticed that one of them was holding the two missing parts of my plane. I ran at them, and they started to book it. The boy who wasn't carrying the parts ran faster, but the other one was rather sluggish. It was easy to catch up, push him forward a bit, and grab the two parts right out of his hands. "You shouldn't do that!" I scolded.

The dream skipped again. I was now walking down the inside of a hallway. This hallway was probably five feet wide - not that large. However, it was very long. There were polished wooden doors (to dressing rooms, in particular) on either side; each of them were spaced about thirty feet apart or so. The lighting was dark, and pale greenish-blue, which cast a weird glow on the very pale, dark blue tiles spaced by white grout. I remember seeing small glowing yellow balls of light around the ceiling that provided some illumination, but not much. As I walked down the hallway, the doors turned into dark blue tents that were actually inside the walls. Basically, the entrance flap on the front of each tent was on the wall, and when you'd go through it, into the actual tent, that part was inside the wall.

I passed these tents as if everything was normal. After a few moments of walking, I started to see people in huge, extravagant costumes. These costumes mostly consisted of a small white masquerade masks. Attached to the masks were huge, long, detailed feathers of many colours that spanned out and hid the shape of peoples' faces and upper bodies. On peoples' legs were heavy, baggy pants, which looked almost velvety. These pants were dark blue and black. Overall, these features made the people look a bit scary, but I wasn't afraid in the dream.

I just kept walking.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was possibly in a classroom. All the desks were arranged in a circle. The room was lit with kind of dull, greenish, fluorescent light. The class or meeting had ended, and everybody was headed out of the room. The room was empty as I left it.

There was a boy somewhere behind me. He was blonde, well-groomed, with a kind of effeminate bearing and voice. He had said something in class, and now he asked me, "Was I rude when I said that?"

I wanted to say yes, but I thought that would be wrong. So I said, "Well, you work so hard that nobody would think you were just plain rude. But people might think you were defensive."

Dream #2

I was walking along a sidewalk in a residential part of town. It was a sunny day, but there was snow on the ground. The snow had been cleared from the sidewalks and streets, but it was still piled up around the curbs and the grassy areas between the sidewalks and curbs. The snow piles were all wet and slushy from the sun.

I was apparently heading to a dance class (?). But, as I crossed a street and then walked past a glass-walled bus stop, I felt a bad headache and decided not to go to class. The headache was like a hard, concrete-like feeling in the back of my head. My eyes also felt sunken in, and I had a real drop in energy.

But I also felt like if I didn't go to dance class I would teach my teachers and classmates a lesson, as if they had done something to insult me and now I was paying them back.

I was apparently walking a few blocks, up a mild slope, to a train stop, possibly for one of the red trains, maybe the 2-train. I walked past either a college campus with red brick buikdings or a block of very nice, red-brick houses. There were tall trees shading the sidewalks.

A couple of tall, young, beautiful people were walking close behind me. The neighborhood may actually have been moderately busy with people overall. The people were joking about something they had done to a friend or colleague of theirs. They had taken something of his. When he got upset about it, they wondered why he could be so sensitive.

I passed another (or the same?) glass-walled bus stop. I now had in my left hand two bags from fast food restaurants. The first bag was from Dunkin' Donuts. It was a coffee. The second bag was from somewhere else. It was food, maybe even a donut.

I was getting close to the subway station. But suddenly I was in a vehicle like a big minivan. I was in the van with a few other people who acted or looked like subway passengers. The van was driving down concrete ramps that looked somewhat like ramps connecting different platforms in a subway station.

We kept going down. The area we were driving through looked like a mix between a subway station and a mall. There were stores like department stores and drug stores all through the corridors.

A big, muscular, kind of pale, white man who looked like a soldier sat somewhere across from me. But he also seemed, at times, to be driving this vehicle.

He told me and a couple other passengers, "When I'm driving a train, and they tell me we have to be delayed, I let everybody know exactly what's going on. I tell them, we'll be here for 28 minutes, and I countdown, and so on. That way people know.

"Some people like to keep passengers in the dark about what's going on. I think dispatch does, too! But I don't. When people don't know what's going on, they feel like the train will never start running again."

The man stopped the vehicle. We were really deep down by now. I saw the subway train off to the left. The front of it had a side door, like for a semi truck, which was swung open. I understood that the man was going to conduct the train.

I jumped out the left side of the van, but I landed outside on the right side of the van. For some reason I was worried about whether I had jumped out fast enough. I thought if I was too slow, the soldier would be impatient with me.

The area down here was also like a mall, and there were a lot of people lounging around like they would in a mall. I saw two big drugstore-like stores, one of which may possibly have been a bookstore. I thought that I might need to go to the store before I got on the train.

Note: These dreams have actually happened over the past few days, but I have been too busy to journal them over that time. A couple of them, I'm not sure which night they happened on, and it isn't really that important, so I am just journaling them all together.

Train of Consequences
I am outside in the desert near my home, taking a walk. It is surprisingly nice out considering it is approaching summer in the desert, a gentle breeze feels good on my face. I walk down my street to where there is a train track crossing it. It's like it used to be, now there is an overpass for cars to drive over the tracks, but before there was a railroad crossing. I don't notice the fact it is once again a railroad crossing. I wait there and watch a train approaching. I have the definite feeling that train should not get past, there is someone on it who is evil. I remember hearing someone say a penny on a railroad track would make it go off the rails. I put a penny on the tracks, the train barrels over the penny and flattens it. Wow, that was a dumb idea. I get in a car that just happens to be parked there, and the keys are in it, and I drive after the train. I use the frontage road and pass the train, then I drive right off of the next overpass and land on the train. There is a train passing on my left going the other direction. I go to a bright red passenger car, where I throw a grenade of some kind down into it. There is a blast, and a blazing inferno fills the train car but doesn't go any farther.


Stealing With Class
I am in a class, I feel it is one of the pointless general education classes at ITT Tech. There are lots of people sitting at the tables, several rows of tables. There is an empty table at the front of the room, and I sit down there. I am waiting for Tigress to come join me, she comes into the class shortly after me. She sits down in the back of the class and starts talking to someone else back there. My paranoia takes over, I am now thinking she must be mad at me about something. That leads to me wondering what I might have done, which leads to me being annoyed because I haven't done anything to make her mad… so why is she avoiding me? She motions to me to come back and sit with her, which dispels all of my paranoid thoughts and now I just feel rather dumb. I pick up my stuff and go to the back table, where I sit beside Tigress. She says she doesn't want to sit in front, we can't sneak a game of paper and pencil Dungeons and Dragons in if we are that close to the instructor. I need a notebook to play D&D, and also to take notes in. I will put notes on the first page and then flip to the notes page if the teacher comes by. I can't find my notebook. I see an abandoned backpack, there is a stack of notebooks there. No one will notice if one is missing… so I take one. I page through it to make sure there aren't any important notes in it, I don't want to steal important information. There is no writing in the notebook, but there is money in a folder in the back. Awesome! I steal paper and I get money!

Parking Lot Chase
I am in a parking lot outside of a mall, I am just leaving the mall and Tigress is there with me. We had been looking around in the mall for a while, but we are done with that and Tigress is going somewhere else to meet with someone else. We are chatting and I find out that she is going to see a movie. I comment to Tigress that she is going to see a movie I also want to see. She makes a comment that really doesn't pertain to what I said, she seems to have ignored what I said. We reach her car, and she gets in and is preparing to leave. I start to tell her I would like to go with her to see the movie, but she starts the car engine in the middle of my sentence. It almost seems like she started the engine deliberately to not hear me ask if I could come along. She says she has to go and says goodbye before driving down the aisle in the parking lot. I am talking louder now, telling her I'd really like to go along, there is no way she could not be hearing me. I chase after the car, calling wait, STOP IGNORING ME!

Non-lucid Healing
I am in my bedroom in my own house, I am completely non-lucid, MoSh is in the room with me. We are not doing anything very interesting, we are just chatting about random things. The topic changes onto MoSh having been depressed lately, he thinks he might just have some negative energy, so I tell him I will be glad to heal that for him. I tell him I just need to focus my energy and I can cleanse that negative energy right out of him. I am looking around my room, just glancing at the shelves and such, when I hear a strange voice. I look over at MoSh and ask if he just said something. He says no, he didn't. His shadow is talking to me! The shadow says there is nothing I can do to purge the dark energy from MoSh, so I might as well give up now. I know I can do it if I can just find a specific song, one I remember putting on a cassette tape I compiled myself with songs I find useful in the dream state. I can't find it. MoSh's shadow is mocking me. I open a drawer and pull stuff out, digging through a lot of junk. I find the tape… I keep digging for the walkman. I find the walkman! But where on the tape is the song? I think I remember… it's on side two, it's the third song. I put the tape in the walkman and search through it, forcing myself to ignore the mocking shadow. I find the song and use it to send healing energy through MoSh. Whew, I did that just in time, his shadow is completely normal now and it is no longer talking.

Dream of the Stars
I am in a forest, I am looking around to see where I am going. I have no memory of how I got to be there, I also have no idea how to get back. I think this is really strange, so I do a RC… and I find out that I'm dreaming. Well, I'm at least somewhat lucid… I am trying to think of what tasks I have to do, what are my goals? The only thing that comes into mind is the goal to kiss at least three movie stars… well, that's something I guess. I look around the forest, and it seems to be a perfect area to find Viggo Mortensen playing Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. I search for Aragorn, and I soon find him.

He is looking around, has his sword ready, he seems to be stalking something. It turns out he's stalking a couple of orcs. He kills an orc in front of him, and I nail one trying to sneak up behind him. Aragorn thanks me for my help, but I don't take that as sufficient thanks. I put my arms around Aragorn and kiss him right on the lips, at first he is quite shocked, but he ends up responding. I hear someone speaking in surprise, asking Aragorn who his new friend is. I look and see a couple other people, one of them is Legolas. Orlando Bloom!

He's my second one… I leave Aragorn and go throw my arms around a surprised Legolas and kiss him right on the lips. He is too surprised to reciprocate, he pushes me away and asks if I am completely mad. I say yes, I am. I need one more… but who? Jack Sparrow would be good… Johnny Depp. My subconscious responds again, Captain Jack Sparrow comes running through the trees. He says there are some really ugly guys chasing after him… it turns out they are orcs. We quickly dispatch the orcs. Jack is really confused as to what is going on. That doesn't seem to matter to him when I kiss him on the lips, though. After I am done with the kiss, he pulls me in for another kiss. He says the only thing to make this better would be some rum.

My rich friend and I are shopping in some rich European type store. I tell her I've had enough, I'm tired, and we go to leave. We try to get out of the store by way of this strange exit at the plaza. We must go through the fur coat section, which disturbs me, but I say nothing. We find a ladder we have to climb to get out. As we climb we joke about escape from the privileged life, and she jokes that we are somewhere between many portions of fillet mignon beef. I laugh at this random and obscure idea. She tells me that she realizes now that she was tired of this rich life.

We climb all the way to the top, then slide down some crazy water slide like things that have no water. I get distracted by a girl who keeps going up and down the slides, complaining about her wardrobe malfunctions. My friend is also getting too distracted by the girl. I look at my watch and I'm horrified to realize that it's 19:25, and I was supposed to be on a train to Toronto at 19:24. I was supposed to meet up with my family at the hockey game (strange, as I absolutely HATE hockey) there. I start swearing and having a meltdown.

Me and my friend run full out to the Haubtbahnhof. It's a mess of criss crossing tracks in a very unGerman looking chaotic mess. There are very complex and difficult to understand train numbers which make me feel panic that I won't be able to find the right train. Somehow we find out that I have to wait for the number 10, then transfer to the number 7. We're walking on a glass platform that has a film of water running over top of it, giving the illusion of walking on water. I can see the shadows of fish below me. I take out a small rusk cake and crumble it up to feed the fishes, whispering a spell as I sprinkle it into the water.
Some onlooking French men are curious asking me what I am doing, what is that dust I am sprinkling.

The train arrives now and it looks as though it's passed through a rainstorm. I get the feeling there was a hail storm somewhere. I squeeze into the first very cramped car of the train. It's very dark and close in there. A disabled man in an automated wheel chair departs the train. I manage to find 2 free seats but my friend is sitting a couple of rows ahead, speaking Japanese to some stranger. I didn't realize she was coming with me.

I notice that the train is called "Noodles" rather than whatever it is supposed to be called. I ask the driver and he says we have to get out at the terminus station called Noodles and walk down the train tracks in the underground tunnel to get to the next stop. It's been like this all day, he tells me, perhaps there is construction.

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in something like an atrium, at the foot of an escalator, with a big crowd of people. The atrium was gigantic. The walls were made of glass, and they let in the deep blue sky and sunlight, though somehow shaded, maybe because the glass was tinted slightly. The escalator was also enormous.

Bill Clinton stood near me in the crowd. We may actually have been walking near each other as we had gone down some corridor to get to the atrium. Clinton was wearing a pink polo shirt and kind of pale blue jeans. As we stood before the escalator he said something historical about the atrium, and possibly about the bridge outside the atrium. The bridge was likely the Brooklyn Bridge.

I thought the stuff Clinton was saying was pretty interesting. I tried to stand closer to him as we all went up the escalator. But I felt like I was being annoying, so I kind of backed away from him. We got up to the top of the escalator. There was a small landing and then another, smaller escalator. I think I took the opportunity of this landing to back even farther away from Clinton, to be less annoying.

Somehow I ended up out on the Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge was colossal. I could only see portions of it as I traveled under it, either via car or subway. The road was covered in dark shadow.

I was then on a subway train that was running above ground. This eventually turned into a bus. There were only two other passengers on the bus: both were male friends of mine. We, or they, also knew the bus driver. He was driving us through a kind of quiet part of town, like some area far out in Queens or farther out on Long Island. The sun was shining orange-yellow like it was early morning.

The guys and the bus driver were talking back and forth with each other. The bus driver finally asked me, "Hey, should I be dropping you off at the college with these guys?" I couldn't think of any reason why I'd be going to the college, but I didn't want to disappoint the guy by saying no. I may have been really curled up in a seat, so that my knees were against the back of the seat in front of me.

Dream #2

I was in a department store with Oprah Winfrey. We stood at the end of a bunch of clothing displays, at a wall which was a window looking down at some other section of the building of which the department store was a part. There were maybe one or two other people around us.

We finished watching some event down below. I turned to Oprah and thanked her forf inviting me to this event. She was very friendly, but I don't think she said anything. She was gone.

I walked away from the window. I was probably heading out of the store. I saw a black woman looking through some clothing.The woman's back was turned to me. But, for some reason, I thought she was Oprah. So I walked up to her and said, "Oprah, I just want to thank you again for reminding me about this event. If it hadn't been for you--"

But now the woman turned around. She was really short and round. She had very dark skin, and she wore dark sunglasses. She looked pretty mean! She wore a pale denim jacket, jeans, and hat. She yelled at me, "Why are you calling me Oprah? Just because I'm black, I have to be Oprah?"

I was scared, and I backed off pretty quick. I didn't know how to respond. I kind of forgot whether I'd thought the person I'd thought the woman was was Oprah or my old friend and co-worker, CL. I figured it must have been CL, even though I couldn't remember her name. But she didn't look like the mean woman either.

I had walked back to the window I had stood at with Oprah. I think I had figured out that CL had reminded me about this event, and that I had met Oprah there. I figured that if I really wanted to thank CL, I could write her a letter. I either held a letter really close to my face or saw a letter in my mind's eye. The letter was on notebook paper, in pencil, and in really big, loose, scrawly handwriting. I may finally have seen CL's name.

Dream #3

I was in a bedroom in the dark. There was, for some reason, a towel rack right near the light switch. It was my blue towel. In the dim light I saw a bug crawling across the towel. The bug was either a smallish roach or a gigantic bed bug. I was really grossed out, and I wanted to see what kind of bug it was before I killed it.

So I stepped back and flicked a switch on a small wall a couple feet away and in front of the bedroom door. The bedroom light bulb flickered, popped, and went out. To solve this problem, I walked a little bit into the room and pulled a string from the ceiling to turn the light on. The only thing that happened was a little bit of plaster falling on my head.

So I went to the closet to see if I could find a light bulb or some other source of light. I flicked a light switch in the closet, but it didn't turn on, either. But then, somehow, I found some source of light. This light source became like a light bulb inside the closet.

I was looking directly into the top shelf of the closet. There were a lot of lamps, all arranged as if in a shop. The lamps were all small, wooden, on a square base, with a candle-like, wooden cylinder running up about 8cm and ending in the metallic fixture for the bulb.

I grabbed a couple of these, figuring that if I placed these lamps strategically, I could get decent light in the room, though not so much light as I'd get if I had the ceiling ligjht working.

I then saw behind the lamps. There were all kinds of canned foods -- things like SPAM, cocktail weiners, and corned beef hash. I might have seen other provisions. I suddenly realized that whoever had put this room together had put it together as a kind of shelter in case of some kind of disaster, possibly including nuclear war.

Dream #4

I was sitting at a table and eating with my friend H. The table and the lighting of the room remind me of a fast food restaurant or a cafeteria in a place like a school. We may have been eating something like fries and mayonnaise.

H said, "You talk about -----'s (can't remember) movies so much, as if you were such a big fan of Japanese film. But when was the last time you actually went to the theatre to watch a Kurosawa film?"

For some reason I kept getting ----- confused with Ozu. But this director was much more recent. But I also wanted to tell H that I actually had seen Kurosawa films lately. I may have had images from Ran and The Hidden Fortress in my head, though I couldn't actually get their titles correct.

I may have felt, in some way or another, like I was shrinking, or maybe hunching over more and more.

[B]06.04.11[/B][COLOR="royalblue"]

I was standing on the platform on a train station. It resembled, or at least in my mind it was a train station i know from real life.
But it wasn't the way it usually was, this time it was curved, and there was a staircase that lead down into a tunnel to my left. The staircase was in the right spot, and there was a platform on the other side of the rails, just like in real life. Difference was that the staircase lead downards, instead of up.
The train arrives. Me and a pair and perhaps a few others realize that we're on the wrong platform. I started running, down the tunnel to get there. I think I notice some people in the tunnel, but I don't remember what was different about them. I think it might have been a litle girl and some man talking on a phone.

When I get up on the right platform, I see on a sign that the right train arrives in 1 minute, and then realize that it's actually already here, and not only that, but it's already started moving. For some reason, it stops and lets me get in. There are 6 seats in every row, with still quite a lot of space to walk in. Looks more like the interior of a plane than a train, it has seperate seats with seat belts.
I'm stressed out from being in such a hurry, so I'm not thinking clearly, so I just quickly scan the room and sit down on the seat that's farthest away from the window and closest to the space where people walk past. I realize that there's a little girl sitting in the seat by the window, which makes me uncomfortable and anxious. Somehow we end up in a tickle fight, and another little girl joins in. No idea where she came from... [/COLOR]

I was on a train. Two guys noticed that they both had Swiss Gear backpacks. I showed them mine, and they laughed when they saw I had one, too. I realized one of the guys was Eric Weller.

“Eric?” I blinked. He pointed at himself as if to make sure I was talking to him.

“Yeah, I’m supposed to be Eric. Who are you supposed to be?” The phrasing of his question was bizarre. I replied in a manner that struck it down.

“I’m Josh.”

“Oh! Right!” Awkward silence followed. We got off the train and came to a room with strangely shaped windows… It was painted purple throughout. I thought about how much I wanted to realize I was dreaming. Then, confused by the origins of the thought, I looked around. I was dreaming! I grabbed Eric by the shoulders.

“Dude, we’re in a dream. What do you feel like doing?”

“I dunno…”

“Neither do I! Let’s fly!” I threw him out the window forcibly and jumped out after him. He didn’t know how to fly, so he just tumbled toward the rugged mountain valleys below us. I swooped down and pointed a finger at him to levitate his body in the air.

“What are you doing?!” he cried, waving his arms.

“Try moving. Float up.” As I spoke, he drifted upward. He panicked when he couldn’t change directions, however, and I had to bring him down with my magic finger. “You’re bad at this…” I brought him down to a boat on the side of a mountain. I gave my intent to summon Nicole, and voila! There she was, standing on the deck. She looked around, then at me. “Welcome to my dream,” I said. “Is it really you, or are you just ‘supposed to be’ Nicole?” Eric didn’t seem pleased by my teasing question.

“I’m me…” Nicole said. “So hold on, we’re dreaming?”

“Yes. I saw a portal while I was flying around. Let’s go into it!” Nicole agreed, so we flew up to a purple vortex in the sky. Darkness spiraled into it as it seemed to spin. We were both sucked in. Hopefully, dream Eric didn’t starve in the middle of nowhere – we left him behind. The vortex filled my vision.

I had a false awakening. I sat up in bed, staring down at my hand. My arm was incredibly long – at least five feet – and each of my fingers branched off into two. I felt like I was going cross-eyed. I couldn’t focus on anything properly. After a while, things stabilized, and my hand was normal.

“I guess we’re not dreaming,” I told Nicole.

Wow, it feels like forever since I last got on these forums! Hopefully I'm back to stay awhile...

So in recent months I haven't really even tried to lucid dream. If I did try it would fail every time; maybe things just got too routine to be meaningful enough to cause my brain to go lucid. I honestly don't know. But I think now that I have spent a decent amount of time away from lucid dreaming, as long as I have a goal in mind I can get back into it.

That goal came to me last night as I watched Inception for the second time. Of course I realized how much of it isn't true to real life, but a lot of things from the movie could work, with some slight modifications. So I decided that in the coming weeks I'm going to try to take as many concepts from Inception as possible and turn them into a real life, working form. At the same time I will simply be keeping a normal journal of my dreams to aid in recall. For the sake of those that dislike people using Inception for real-life lucid dreaming, I'll be including small sections that explain the reasoning behind each part, to prove I'm not mindlessly following a hollywood story.

Last night, being the first of this quest, I had to start small and simple, with something that could work without a few days' practice beforehand. That narrowed things down to none other than the kick. I went with Non je ne Regrette Rien, the song used in Inception, set to an alarm on my netbook (using Easy MP3 Alarm) so that it would deliver the kick right about 4:00am.

I don't recall a lot about the dream I was having, but I do remember that suddenly everything went black, and I heard the sound of a trumpet as if it had been recorded and then exponentially slowed down. It faded in and out, the blasts increasing in pitch and frequency as time went on. After a few seconds, the trumpet was normal speed, and I could hear Edith Piaf's voice in addition to the trumpets. I was successfully awakened by the song.

Why it works: This is up for debate, but I believe the reason this song in particular is effective at waking people up is because the trumpets function similarly to a beat in an isochronic tone. Because the trumpets sound off at a relatively high frequency, your brain's natural reaction is to adjust to match that frequency, which is too high for sleeping, thus waking you up.

After that, I got up, shut down the netbook so I'd stop wasting electricity (I'm no environmentalist, but that stuff isn't cheap! ), and then got back in bed, hoping I'd remain conscious enough to reach lucidity.

Next time my eyes opened, I was laying on a mattress without sheets, looking up at a roof of blue-tinted steel, and a very bright light. I sat up and walked out of my chamber, finding the whole building to be made of the same blue-ish metal. The architecture was odd--not based on squares and rectangles like normal buildings, but rather everything was based on a hexagonal shape. The hallways were also lined with screens that were embedded into the walls. They were displaying games and programs currently in testing. As I continued walking down the hallway, I passed a room where I could see the people who were actually doing the testing. I got the feeling that I was in the headquarters some software development company, or something of that nature.

When I got outside, I saw a group of my friends, but before I could even say anything to them, they had grabbed me and pulled me behind some weird structure, telling me that I had to be careful not to be seen by the police. Apparently I had accidentally committed some crime in regards to the software company, and false memory caused me to believe it. I also wasn't alone; one dream character had done the same thing as me, and had to hide as well.

After a while of just sneaking around trying to find our way home, I heard loud machine noises coming from behind me and turned to see a train driving along an elevated track. The track was horribly damaged and out of repair, and swayed back and forth as the train sped along, trying to cross the weak section before it gave way. It didn't happen; the tracks began to fall apart shortly ahead of the train, and within a moment the train had driven off the end and landed in a (very realistic) explosion.

Something about that explosion and its realism drew me very strongly into the dream, and everything took on a greater depth and clarity. I really felt like I was there, and perhaps I even had a sense of being in a dream, but it didn't register enough for me to truly be lucid.

At any rate, with the train drawing all the attention of the police, the DC and I no longer had to worry about sneaking around. In fact, we were primary witnesses of what happened, so the police and news reporters all wanted to ask us questions instead of turn us in.

I walked around and talked to some people after that, but the dream was pretty much over from that point; nothing very interesting happened thereafter. What I do find interesting is how my mind translated my desire to really be in the dream--as in, a dream that I'm in deeply enough for it to be clear and have the depth of consciousness to it--in the form of an explosion. Usually I would have thought such a thing would cause me to wake up, but it seems that something surprising and highly realistic does the exact opposite. I'll have to remember that...maybe it could come in handy if I'm ever lucid and the dream is fading! Just make something explode

Well, I'm going to work on a totem today and see if I can apply that principle to reality checking. Wish me luck!

22.3.2011

Moonlit Mafia (Non-lucid)

★★★★☆

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

Tall grass blows gently outside the locomotive, as the passengers spill onto the tracks. The train has stopped, some sort of malfunction the conductor says.

We have no choice.

By the end of the night, this dark, gravely track must be drenched in blood, deep and red.

“But who?” we wonder amongst ourselves, three groups, one innocent, the others not. In time the answer becomes clear: we'll vote, and the one we vote for will die by all our hands.

My group, my family of mafioso, begins planning, talking in hushed whispers within compartments, between train-cars. Our plan is a complex one, and it'll be hard to pull off, but the potential benefits outweigh the risks.

Step one, talk with the leader of the other mafia group, our enemies, convince him to join us and vote for the charismatic innocent riling up what would otherwise be sheep to our slaughter. He agrees, and the plan goes forward.

Step two, put forward our votes, and make contact with the leader of the innocents. Let him know we're on his side, as long as he votes for the leader of our enemy. He does, and before it's too late, we all switch our votes.

It's done. I think, grinning, as our victim is forcefully dragged away, into the swaying grass, where soon he'd struggle no more.

______________

I'm shot.

Dragging myself across the city street, I feel the hole in my chest, my lung. I sense the wet blood on my back, seeping through my blue dress shirt, mixing with the dirt and dust, still falling to the ground.

“Boss. . .” I spatter, reaching my hand up to the man in the purple suit and fedora walking away from me, revolver in hand. He turns, as I violently hack up blood onto the cold rocky ground. A raise of the arm, a pull of his finger, and another piece of molten lead fires into my back.

Everything fades to black.

I entered this in my DJ earlier this morning, but now it's gone. Was I dreaming? No. I really did it. Dang!

I was a captive in a dark rail yard type place. It was covered, about an acre by an acre or so, and it was about 20' to 30' up in the air. I could barely see about 15 people, but there were more like 100 I guess.

We all had to lay down next to rail road tracks, and the area for us to lay down was about as wide as railroad tracks. We were all very cramped. I guess a couple trains went buy, but it wasn't vivid. It was more that I knew they did go by.

I needed to get some more room, so I stretched out on the train tracks where nobody else wanted to be. Very soon, a train started coming and it was a little more vivid. I was kind of scared, but then I started thinking that it would just go over me and I would be OK. It did go over me without harm.

This made me brave and I decided to escape. Everyone advised against my attempt to escape, but I started to go down the tracks anyway. The tracks went down hill to get to the ground.

After my intention to go down, I was all of a sudden down. Now I started running away. I had to go up a terraced hill side. The problem with this was that I was always visible.

I was afraid I would be seen by the guards when all of a sudden all the other captives started pouring out and yelling as though they were rioting. I thought this would take the guards attention off of me, but I kept feeling their eyes on me.

Then there was someone with me. We were at the top of the hill on a plateau. There were two round, cement tables. We each had a peeled orange. Right then, we saw the hill drop off about a foot so that we could lie down and be hidden by the hill. We dove down behind the hill so as not to be seen by the guards.

I reached up and got my orange and two spoons that could give away our position. I signaled with my eyes for my partner to get his orange and his one spoon. He did.

Then I was alone again, going down the other side of the hill. I saw a building that was kind of a movie theater with a carnival atmosphere. There were lots of people around and I wanted to blend in.

I went to the theater type place to get some cotton candy. I thought that I would like like a fair-goer. I never really got it.

The dream shifted to me being in a car with a partner again. It was night time. We were going down the road pretty fast. Here is something really strange. There was a muscle car in front of us turned towards us. I kept thinking it was a game of chicken. We were both revving our engines. The other car was more powerful and would have "won."

The only thing was that we were also driving forward. They were never driving backwards. Whatever.

The guy in the other car held his fist out to the windshield to show his ring of power. This was where I had him beat. I was wearing a special ring.

Side note: My mom used to date a guy who wore a monogram ring. He used to tell me it was a magic ring.

The driver of the car I was in held out my hand and I put my ring up against the windshield. When it touched and scraped the windshield, it created blue sparks. I was much more powerful than the other guy.

Then, their car turned around and was driving in front of us. I saw some lights and asked if a cop was behind us. the guy driving said yes. We were screwed. I almost became lucid. I knew we didn't do anything and there was no reason for a cop to be following us.

The driver started driving really fast to get away. He lost control at road construction and went off the road. We went off a ledge to a road below. It was full of 57 stone. Going really fast, we went around a turn and ended up going off that road to a lower road again on stone.

We lost the cop. The driver pointed out how he was driving by way above us. The driver pulled into a kind of hidden parking place. We got out. The driver asked a third person who appeared to pour gas on the car and set it on fire. He did.

The driver and I started running away. We went up a hill. there were different sets of stairs and we couldn't figure out which stairs to take. They were all wrong. We did choose one set of steps, and they were the right ones to choose.

It was the entrance to a stadium. We were going to a baseball game. The dream was much better now. There were pretty ladies dressed in baseball looking concession uniforms from the 1920's or 1930's. They were giving away great treats on entry. I watched everyone else giving up their lolli-pops so they could eat a free sunday. I did the same. (Where did my lolli-pop come from?)

The End

I befriended a black man named Bob. At first, he seemed pretty normal… I understood that a number of people I knew on campus had warned me not to associate with him, but I didn’t see what the problem was. He said he would show me his house. Instead of taking me to a residential area, he led me to the shore of the Chicago River where he had a mat of old, hardened newspapers set up under a bridge. I quickly observed that he was homeless. Immediately, I lost interest in the friendship; my positive experiences with homeless individuals were few and far between. I stared at the long since faded ink on the newspapers as I pondered a way to lose Bob. He would follow me if I tried a normal method of escape. I came up with a plan – I would take the train! Since he was homeless, he probably couldn’t pay the train fare. While I finalized the plan in my head, Bob asked me about random people. I didn’t understand his questions, but I soon figured out why – he thought the people were standing there with us! Bob was having serious hallucinations. I was glad I had figured out a way to distance myself from him… That wasn’t the sort of company I needed. When I told Bob I was going to the train station, he said he knew a shortcut. Rather than insist on just walking to the nearest one (the Green Line was only a few blocks away), I gave in and followed him.

The dream jumped. I was in an underground passage, following Bob with next to no idea where we would surface. He stopped me before a ladder and asked if I was sure about going on the train. Something about it frightened him. I insisted on continuing. I needed to get somewhere, I said. Bob started growling to himself in rage, but he cooperated. He had to release at least ten trap doors on the way up. These were intended to lock people out of his secret passage. He complained the whole way up about trains. When we emerged, I was stunned. We were on a train platform. My plan had been completely foiled by Bob’s clever shortcut… Of course he wouldn’t pay the fare – he could just skip the entrance! A quick look around revealed that we were on the Green Line, but a bit further west of the river. I wasn’t going to lose him so easily, it seemed… Surely, he wouldn’t be able to follow me onto a bus to the suburbs. He couldn’t tunnel his way into that one. I got on the next train to arrive and sat down close to the operator in case of an emergency. I still wasn’t sure what to expect from Bob. He took the seat next to me. As soon as the train started moving, he burst into sobs. This drew quite a few stares, but I let him cry. I did my best to seem like I didn’t know the guy. This continued for a few awkward minutes before he calmed down. He asked if I liked his new boots. Confused, I stared at his feet. He was wearing sneakers, not boots. He showed me his hands, and I realized he was supposed to be holding something. He was hallucinating a pair of fine boots.

“Oh… Yeah, they’re very nice,” I said in a kind voice. I came up with some kind of oxymoron to describe them, and he doubled over in laughter. I sensed that he might be on drugs. He was one of those people who don’t breathe when they laugh, so his chuckling was coupled with wheezing noises. Another black man walked up to us during this fit of laughter. He was wearing a baggy, black jacket, baggy jeans, and white sneakers. He was also half-wearing a baseball cap; it looked like it might tumble off his dreadlocks any moment.

“Shut up!” he shouted at Bob. He continued with a stream of vulgar, obscene name-calling before finally calling us both annoying. I tried again to pretend I didn’t know Bob, but the association had been made. I suddenly realized I was blind. It didn’t bother me much for some reason… I focused on what I could hear of the situation. The vulgar man came over to me and put his hand on my head. I’d rather not transcribe verbatim the ultimatum he gave Bob, but in essence, he wanted me to publicly pleasure him, and Bob had ten seconds to convince me to do it. I wasn’t going to have any of this. I teleported to the other end of the next train car over and pressed the emergency assistance button. I could see into the first car from my current position.

“There’s someone dangerous on the train,” I said. The guy stared at me from the first car with wide eyes. He started walking toward the second car.

“Attention, passengers…” an automated voice began over the intercom. “A dangerous customer has been identified. For your safety, lease be watchful for threats to yourself and others as we work toward removal.”

“He’s on the second train car,” I told the operator through the assistance system. The guy was approaching me in long strides. Instead of attacking me as I expected him to, the guy brushed past me on the way to the next car. “Make that the third,” I said. “He’s trying to get away.” The train stopped at the next station, and a bunch of people got off. I kept an eye out for the guy who threatened me and Bob, but I didn’t see him.

a
March 1, 2011

I think this peanut butter I am eating for increased vividness is not only working very well it is helping me increase my recall. This first dream is very long and is chaotic which is characteristic of dreams earlier in the night which usually are not remembered. Nothing lucid though.

Dream 1 : Train of Destruction
There was some random stuff going on before this.
It was dark at night and I could barely see things happening. This was a place like Alaska in the summer, rural, tons of pine trees, and small town feeling. Me and some of the malcontents of the small rural town created a crazy rail-mega-truck thing. The center was a rail car that had old trucks connected to it on both sides, it was huge and we got it to go really fast and then burst off the track into the woods busting itself and anything in its way to hell. This was done just outside of town and may have killed people but we obviously didn’t care, the town’s people were scum. I felt bad at this feeling after thinking about it, ‘would I feel OK if there was a little girl killed in there?’ I decided to get away from what we had done and the jerks doing it by leaving town.
Under the few street lights I saw police cars looking cars over looking for the people that created that crash in the woods. They saw me but let me pass so I figured they didn’t know me or my car yet.
I am now in the dark metal like room and there is a guy there trying to calm me. He says something about “it taking effect soon” and figure I have been drugged somehow. There is a metal chair that looks like people could be strapped into it and I have to wonder if I have been made to talk about what happened before.
Then I am in a New York suburb in an empty lot. The lot is surrounded by apartment buildings and a typical chain link fence. There is an oldish guy looking like a retiree sipping iced tea in his lounge chair on his tiny back porch. I went over to him and he said something like he was impressed with my progress. Then I feel that he and others have “made me” like I am some kind of clone. I plan to escape. Figuring he may know what I would plan to do I do something totally random and ad lib and I run to the other side of the lot and then hide down under the very tall weeds and crawl to the other corner. When I come up there are 2 women looking for me frantically. The leader of the 2 says regretful “we were stressing him” to make me better. I ran out of the lot at inhuman speeds and out to the street. I had no idea where this was even though the lot I just came from seemed oddly familiar. I took a right and ran up the street than I started walking fast to not attract attention. I knew I had to get more distance between me and those people in the lot. Passing some shops and pubs to my right there was a street corner just up ahead. Then I recognized the guy on the corner [Charlie Sheen], could he be one of “them?” He was talking to other on the corner and turned to see me and nodded at me knowingly. His nod was one of ‘I got your back’ but I was too paranoid to care and ducked in the door I was at when he nodded at me. It was dark in here I could barely see anything but rushed down the hallway. Then at the end the light was visible and I recognized this as what I call ‘proximity light’ which is light that is only visible at a certain distance, a dream world invention and a little extra vividness entered the dream, I was more clear now. I hurriedly opened the door at the end of the hallway and slammed the door shut but it didn’t close but I didn’t care too much I had to get to the phone. There was a guy standing there reading the paper like he was minding the place [he was dressed in 1930s brown pants and suspenders and vertical stripped dress shirt] he just moved out of my way. There was a box on the wall that held the phone I pulled out the one piece ear piece to the old phone and was worried that I couldn’t say something into the phone and put it to my ear and looked for the piece you talk into. Before anything else, I heard a voice on the other side say in acknowledgement “I got the car”. I knew I get my way out and instantly calmed down.

This was in a wooden wall box.

Darkness

Dream 2: 2 Pink Fro’s
I was looking at 2 strange looking guys all in pink. They where white guys with huge pink afros, pink shirts, pink pants and shoes. There faces were made up to look peach colored in an artificial way. They just stood there looking like there was a camera watching them, posing.

Darkness

Dream 3: Washing a Boat
I was washing a boat in a dream world that was very familiar to me. I had some friends that came into a lot of money but never showed it too much but this was a dream world created to express their desire to flaunt their riches. In their driveway they had a Cadillac and an expensive boat up on the trailer thing. I was washing it and getting paid of course but it was ridiculously easy and fun to be around so much wealth. Then the father of this wealthy family came out to see a friend of his [I have no idea who this guy is] and after saying pleasantries,
Friend: “how’s it going these days?”
Rich guy: “not bad, just have some gambling debts to pay off.”
The friend didn’t answer knowing that there was probably going to be a mention of money.
Rich guy: “You wouldn’t mind loaning me some money would you?”
Friend: “No I really don’t have any money after my family.”
Rich guy: Smiles, like a mob boss, knowing that now he knows he can lightly threaten the “friend’s” family to coerces him to give the loan.

Darkness

Dream 4: Gold Tea Strainers
I am seeing gold tea strainers that look a little like little globes of vertical lines. I can feel they are 99% gold and like looking at them and moving them in my hand.

Wow didn't know these existed till I Googled them!
I knew what they were but kept thinking they look like earrings. Getting a good look at them again I can see why.

There were 3 more very short dreams which I didn’t feel were worthy getting up to record.