non-lucid

Three dreams last night that I remember - much better than it has been lately. None of them were lucid, but they were all very vivid....of course, I've been so busy today I haven't had a chance to write, so some of this will be more abridged than the dream really was.

I am at a wedding, helping to prepare the reception room. There are many people milling about, and I am setting a table. I see my friend from 10 years ago, and start to talk to her. As we are talking, about what I'm not sure, my cousin approaches me. We do not have a good relationship. She starts to call me all sorts of derogatory names, saying that I ruined her life and her reputation. I tell her she did that herself with the choices that she made. Other people at the wedding lead us away from each other, and I find myself walking along a rocky beach, with the reception building up above on a cliff. My cousin follows me down the steps and again starts to argue with me, saying that she is going to tell everyone what I am really like and that she is going to destroy my standing in the family. I tell her that she is welcome to try, and that even if everyone takes her side, I don't care, because I know what is right and wrong. I wake up feeling very, very tense.

Next, I am on the run from someone, something. Very "24"-esque. I am not myself - I am a man, though I don't know my name. I duck into an alleyway and lift up the curtain of a street vendor who is there to see what is going on inside the building I am near. I decide to take shelter in the building.

Inside, there is an auditorium full of people, and the lights are dimmed. As I walk in, there are several guards by every doorway, and one of them hands me a device. It reminds me of the neck of a guitar, though with the consistency of blown glass. There is a larger end on one end of it, and it does not seem to be fragile. As I look around, I see that everyone has one of these devices, and they are all an odd, sickly shade of pinkish orange. I take a seat in the back row of the auditorium and watch. A man stands in the front and the lights fade, and he tells the room that we are about to start the challenge. The challenge is to survive. The devices that we have are really weapons, fired like guns, though they are nearly silent, only making a small, quiet "pop" sound, as though the air has been slightly disturbed. He tells us we are to hunt one another until the last person is standing. At this point, I believe that they don't remember I am here, and duck down so I can not be seen in the back. The man states that if we do not fight, we must kill ourselves, and then commands someone in the room to demonstrate. A spotlight falls on the man, who places the device to his mouth and activates it, but nothing happens. The man at the front tells him he must have his eyes open for it to work as a suicide device - the man opens his eyes, uses the device, and falls over dead.

The melee begins. I do not want to take part in this group extermination. I slip out the back of the room into a stairwell, and climb quickly to the top. There are three doors. I pick the lock on one that leads to a landing over a long drop into a service shaft. I pull the door behind me and hold the knob so that as people approach it, they believe that it is locked. I know this will work, as it seems that the players are abiding by some sort of rules. Several people try the door. After a while, I slip down into the service shaft and hang by my fingers, the odd device held in my left hand, waiting for someone to come through the door. They never come.

I enter the hallway and make my way to the rooftop. There are bodies everywhere. I sense some following me, but they don't catch up. On the roof, a zeppelin flies down, and I climb aboard. Another zeppelin gives chase, but they are weighed down with elephants for some reason and can't keep up. At no point did I ever question this reality or was I able to wake myself up in the dream. Ah well.

And last, this fragment - I work in a pet store, and I am trying to transfer a beta fish to a new tank, however this process is unusually complicated. I have to use a piping tube to siphon the water from his current tank into a bag, chill the water to nearly freezing, and then pipe it to a new tank. Somewhere in this process, it starts to fall apart, and I have to save the fish and the babies that are now in the water as well. I reach in with my hand to move the babies, and can feel them squirming in my palm as i lift them from one tank to another safely.

Trying DIELD again tonight, maybe I'll find some lucidity.

Nothing last night. I recall wondering why my boyfriend's goatee had split into three equal parts. I woke up over and over throughout the night - just couldn't get comfortable - and kept trying to WILD, but I feel like it just made it worse. Normally I can remember my dreams pretty well, but not from last night. I think I actually stressed myself out so much about remembering them that I forgot. Reading more about WILD to make sure I'm not doing something wrong today, and trying again tonight.

Curled up for a nap, mostly just trying to work on better dream recall and making myself write them down - and being more attentive to my dreams. Cat curled up with me, and when I kept starting to feel myself doze, of course she would rub on my hand for attention, waking me back up....so eventually I just gave up my usual mantra of "I am going to sleep. I am going to dream. I am going to remember my dreams," and rolled over to take a real nap.

I am in my old house in New York, the 2 story one. I am on a cell phone with my father...which should have clued me in that I was dreaming, as we didn't have cell phones when I lived there. I remember trying to convince him of something, while my step-mother and boyfriend are running around the house, moving things. For some reason she was trying to put a set of drawers inside another one, and pad it with blankets. She was being very high strung, which is par for the course, and I was trying to relate this to my father. When I would talk, he said he was having a hard time hearing me, and I spent most of the dream frustrated with trying to convey the situation over the phone. At one point, I became convinced that he was not paying attention, and apparently thought that whistling through a straw at the phone would fix that... Thankfully, my alarm woke me up from this nonsensical dream to go on with the evening.

Time for a nap, and as I fall asleep with the cats nestled around me, I feel like I am sleeping soundly. I hear someone call from the other room to come look at something, and when I try to stand, I become tangled in the sheets and start to stumble. I am turned around, backward, and falling slowly. I know that my head is going to hit the ground, but I can't bring my hands out from the blankets to catch myself. The world seems to me moving in slow motion, and i am heavy. Very, very heavy. I can see, and my eyes are open, but I keep trying to pull them open more, as it feels as though my eyelids are being pulled down from exhaustion.

A man (my boyfriend, I realized when I woke up) comes in, because I am calling for help, and I know him, but I don't know him. He watches me fall and when I am resting on my back on the ground, he says he doesn't know who I am. I think, and I realize that I don't know who I am, either. In an instant, my father is there, though I don't recognize him either. The confusion is overwhelming, and I wake myself up. I never quite wake up all the way, but fall back into the same dream. This time when I stand, I'm not tangled in the sheets, I just don't have control of my limbs, and that heavy sensation is there again, as though every point on my body is being pulled to the ground. I try to tell myself that I am dreaming, and when I do wake up, it takes several minutes to gain enough confidence to try to stand up next to the bed.