Wildman

So last night I went to sleep with the intent of waking up after every dream period. It didn't work perfectly, I only woke up after a couple, but in the early morning when I woke up I went back to sleep trying to count myself into a dream ("1... I'm dreaming, 2... I'm dreaming" etc), using a snooze on my alarm to regularly wake myself up.

It didn't work directly in the sense that I didn't ever consciously transition to dreaming, but I had a strange sort of lucid dream. Lucidity fluctuated a lot, but it seems like I re-entered the dream twice, but I don't recall if I actually woke up between re-entries or not, so I'll just mark the places I think they happened. Also a lot of other dreams recalled.

#996:
Date: May 30th, 2011
Length: 8 minutes


I began in some kind of house, where I quickly realized I was dreaming. I ended up walking outside, just stabilizing things for a few moments. I wanted to meet someone in particular, so I yelled out her name, hoping that would summon her. Instead, a sort of plot developed where she had been kidnapped and was being held in a building in front of me. My lucidity here was pretty insignificant, but I went inside the building. It was a sort of inn/bar, and I went upstairs to a room.

Now something to understand is that this dream had odd shifts in perspective to a game of Starcraft. My mind was interpreting the concept of lucidity strangely (second time this has happened lately...), as if Starcraft was the real life I would awaken to after this dream. At times, I had flashes where I was seeing my base in a game of Starcraft being attacked, and afraid that this would wake me up. I was asking my allies to help defend me.

Anyways, the person I was looking for was in the room, but my vision shifted to Starcraft mode and saw that she was "infested." I decided to just leave the room and head back outside, having to fight through some people who wanted to stop me.

Back outside, my mind was a bit clearer and I think I was more conscious of my dreaming state. As I walked, the dream began to fade, however. Everything turned dark, but I tried to concentrate on my sense of touch. <Re-entry here?> Eventually, I was back in the dream. I decided to try to use all my senses to stay anchored in the dream, so I walked into a nearby shop and found a bizarre glass container which had some kind of perfume in it. I smelled it and poured some on myself, and also ate two sort of black sort of "rocks" that were inside it. It tasted pretty disgusting, but I kept chewing on it for quite a while, happy about how real it seemed.

At this point my notes read that I was in a room packing up some stuff into my backpack. I vaguely recall this, but I don't know why I was doing it. Anyways, I think the dream faded here again, and I had another re-entry (maybe). I found myself in a wooden shack near a body of water. I looked at myself in a mirror -- I looked basically like myself, though a few features were somewhat distorted.

After a little more stabilization, I stepped outside. Below me was a pretty steep drop down to the water, and in the distance I saw a few hills and islands. I decided to go check out what was over there, though it didn't look like much. I launched myself into the air and flew down towards the water. As I did so, everything felt so real and crisp for a moment that I was completely exhilarated. I tried to calm myself, fearing that this would wake me up. Unfortunately, my flying slowed to almost a dead halt and I had a weird false awakening: the Starcraft game appeared again, with my base being attacked. I typed something like: "can you believe it! I was having a good lucid dream and just then this woke me up!"

I also wrote something in my notes about a checklist, but I don't remember what it had to do with the dream. It had an entry on it that said "pre-fight bosses."



#997:
Date: May 30th, 2011
Length: 4 minutes

I was in a class that was taught by one of my former History professors. It was the first day of this class. For some reason, there were a bunch of pool tables all around the room. I was eager to meet people, and quickly introduced myself to a few. People were told to assemble around the pool tables for some kind of group work. There was some confusion for a moment as some tables got deserted and others overcrowded.

After a while, something odd happened and we were suddenly in the middle of a zombie invasion. I was strangely calm (felt sort of like a game) and ran towards the class entrance. We weren't really in a building or anything -- the room was just sort of merged with outside. It was night time, and I followed a group of people across a small brook and to a sort of checkpoint. Once we made it there we knew we were safe.

Somehow I ended back in the classroom before the zombie thing happened. This time I walked towards the front of the classroom and then beyond it, to a seashore. There were a couple boats there, and I just enjoyed the view for a few moments, when the zombies came again. This time, however, it definitely felt real, and I was scared. I was with a group of journalists and we sprinted towards the same brook we had crossed before. This time, however, there was a problem and we were unable to cross it. Instead we had to take a long bridge to our left.

One by one people fell behind and died, until it was just me and another guy. We ran as fast as we could. For some reason we were suddenly being chased by two cars, and we ducked out of the way just in time before they lost control and crashed horribly, blocking the zombies from catching up with us. I thought I was safe as we stopped a moment to catch our breaths, but then I realized the guy with me had been bitten and was turning into a zombie. He started approaching me aggressively, and I backed off. Soon he was charging me and trying to bite my face off. I fought him off desperately, but I was weaker than him and terrified. I frantically tried to prevent him from biting me while also somehow mentally accessing a menu, trying to stop this "game" (though nonetheless it felt like my life was at stake), and managed to just in time. I don't remember anything after that.


#998:
Date: May 30th, 2011
Length: 3 minutes

Basically just a dream of playing soccer. I was playing defense at first, then switched to attack, then back to defense, then back to attack. It all made sense at the time. After a few uneventful plays, I suddenly started to play much better, just sort of naturally sensing where my teammates were and making good passes. Then I got the ball on our half of the pitch, and suddenly found myself able to dribble their entire team. I fell just short of scoring a goal, tapping the ball a little too far in front of me and losing control at their last line of defense. Still, I was really happy with how I was playing.

We reached a break in play, and some guy kept complaining about how the online system for this soccer league was broken. I asked him why he was so concerned over this when it wasn't even playoff time. He explained that there was a team called "The 300 Spartans" whose name had caused a glitch in the system, somehow resulting in gif images of the car in Back to the Future to be placed above each team's name. This was apparently a very big deal.


- I also had a dream about being in some kind of underground facility, and meeting a ton of people I haven't seen in a really long time.