ZAD's DJ

Sep 14 2018

On couch - cousin & wife are facing away from TV while fiancee & I are facing towards it. I wanted them to flip around like we were but they were going to sleep or something (she had some kind of problem). Some discussion between my fiancee and I about how flat the layers of the 36-layer cake (cookies and cream, but it had a special name like "seminole" - not that but close) had gotten (I tasted one of the thin layers, it was good). This layer cake desert was from a previous dream fragment. In this dream I'm trying to accomplish something and it becomes a big deal. C&W are stretching out on couch in front of us w/ our dog and their dog, W is trying to take pictures of ours but they're coming out blurry. Posts on facebook with a picture that missed him, people posted sympathetic comments below about how hard it is to take a picture of a dog these days and she liked the comments and posted a better gif that captured him yawning.

Walking through town at night - look through window and see lights inside, people. Go in, brightly lit, fancy upper class dinner party. There are white tablecloths and food trays and servers. One of us says "These are not our people". Lots of middle-aged women in bright, colorful, but elagant dresses (all one color, some blue, yellow, maybe one peach). Vivid dream, walked through main room and some hallways.

Vivid and long dream about my fiancee and I (we were at this point in the dream teens who didn't know each other). We were attending some kind of religious boarding school. We were assigned to make love to each other in a small room with a glass door (reminded me of group study rooms at the campus library). I think we got to pick, so as lots of students were walking down the hallway, we reached out to each other and held hands and picked each other as partners. After that we entered the glass room. I'll spare the details here. The dream has several smaller scenes spliced together to make it feel like years passed; we grow up together (in the dream we were allowed to find other partners instead but we both stuck with each other). There's a third friend or one of our siblings, a midget with an adult face who is someohw our age. My fiancee and I are in a side hallway by a door or a water fountain, and we look up as a crowd of students and faculty in sort of acolyte robes with red chef hats are passing through, some of them crying. The midget brother I described breaks off from them and comes over to tell us the news; I assume someone has died and say "who is it?" and he says something snobbish.

It's years later in a separate dream from the previous dream and I'm watching in third person now. My fiancee is still with "me", but the version of me I'm looking at doesn't resemble me at all (kind of look like a pudgy Elvis impersonator). I'm under a bridge, trying out my new unicycle/stilt that has a "Cuddler" attached to the top where I am -- a Cuddler is one of those chairs that's a cross between a recliner and a loveseat, big enough for two people. Anyway I think the chair is white or black. "I" am standing on the chair's seat cuhion, rocking it back and forth to increase the height of the stilt/unicycle. If I rock back and forth in the opposite direction it will go back down. Fiancee is sitting on the curb watching irritatedly, we both have to go somewhere and I'm holding us up (I say something like "go without me"). The dream self is clearly more focused on reaching the top of the bridge before coming back down. He seems like a bit of a deadbeat (is wearing all white and has a pompadour). I think he's a struggling performer.

Sep 12 2018

I woke up and color-coded my dreams in a weird order (Red, then Blue, then Green instead of RGB or ROY G BIV). In my first NL, I'm in a strange competition where the teams of two have to come up with a piece of art and a story (but it can be derivative?). My parents and some older relatives (aunts, uncles) are also playing. I'm ambitious and want to try something we've never read before and reinterpret it and create something original from it within the timeframe (we have 1 day, or maybe 1 night, to complete it). Everyone else is cheating and making really simple art, which I'm frustrated at because I'm trying to create something good. This is all taking place in a long room with tables and chairs/stools set up, with large windows that have whitish light coming in. The entire room has a blue, overcast tint to it (it's been rainy lately, I think lighting in dreams could be an important dreamsign).

The scene transitions and I'm in a brighter (incandescant) hallway looking at posters and diagrams. There are displays with black and white etchings or line drawings or diagrams of a man who reminds me of Nietzche in pugilist attire. The display (or a DC) says "engineers have been fascinated with the human body for hundresds (or thousands) of years". I get through the hallway and reach a balcony opening up on a room below (sort of like an operating theater but no separation). There are people in the room below, maybe related to the competition.

I'm now in a blueish comic book store. It's dark outside and in front of me in line, there's a guy trying to buy a macbook. He doesn't pay (or should have in advance) and the cashier scolds him and shoos him out, giving him a warning. Me and the cashier go way back, and he mentions my competition. He suggests a pairing of characters from a fictional anime, and we debate eastern vs western art for a while. He shows me some pictures of the characters for reference. This all felt like one long connected dream.

I'm in my childhood home backyard with my fiancee, we're playing ping-pong with some drunk guy. It's me and her against him, he has a big beard. The ball is bright orange and there's a black trash bag on the table. I miss a couple of balls (I might be drunk too) and feel bad. Suddenly the table is thinner length-wise (maybe it collapsed?). We keep losing balls and there's something on the ground (an unfamiliar dog or other creature?).

Sep 13 2018

I went to bed at 12:30am. The first NL I remember a variation of my reocurring intruder dream, but instead of the intruder, I walk into the hallway from my bedroom and see that the bathroom light is on. Our apartment's maintenance man is finally fixing our sink, but it's the middle of the night. At some point I have a fragment about the server that I've been working on for work.

I wake around 3:50 and move my dog so he stops scratching his collar. Fall asleep and have some NLs. In the next one I remember, I'm in a play place. Think McDonald's with tubes and such, but along the floor only, much too small, and made out of those pop-up tents that resemble windshield sun shades with holes in them. I'm with my fiancee, we're crawling through on hands and knees through the holes. She's ahead of me and I have to expend a lot of effort to get through. There are cobwebs all around, and some small items are stuck in them. I remember vividly that there were a lot of bees/wasps on the ground. As we crawl towards the back, my fiancee finds a large blue crystal ring. We get in a fight about it. A female therapist appears, and she sides with my fiancee. I become irate.

I'm now walking into a room with some old ladies. It's a slightly dim, carpeted, beige room with the curtains drawn but light still filtering in around the edges. I'm naked, and the old ladies, who are sitting in chairs along one of the walls, are looking at me out of the corners of their eyes. I'm standing behind my fiancee (or another DC) after entering the room to try and hide. Eventually something clicks and I realize how ridiculous the situation is, and I look at my hands and become lucid! The old ladies' chair positions have moved, their backs are to the windows now and they're looking directly at me. Some old men (more men than there are ladies) are standing behind them looking upset, and looking away. I shake their hands and tell them I'm dreaming, but they're looking away from me, and each time I shake one of their hands it's like I intercepted them trying to shake someone else's hand. I walk around the room a bit (I didn't write this down immediately so I'm not sure what else I did here), and I remember thinking how lucky I was to be lucid so frequently these past weeks (waking life awareness!!). I then decided to try spinning again. This was my first time spinning from a standing position, and it was at least mostly successful (I had thought about doing this in the night while walking my dog). I wanted to visit my incubated dream world, so I said nonverbally "waterhouse" (I meant bathhouse). My intention was vague and unclear, so it took a while longer to form the dream scene and the dream must have latched on to some floating thoughts to form something coherent out of the word.

The scene materializes (like a squareish shape of white light approaching from the distance) and my full field of vision is focused on a video playing. The video is gaudy, bright, and annoying (my fiancee showed me the new iPhone commercial last night). There were words on the screen in a tacky font, sort of like lyrics although they weren't. There was no sound. Bright neon colors (I remember green and yellow) and images of a woman in a yellow or red dress standing on a stage as if she was singing were flashing on the screen. My field of vision slowly allowed me to disconnect from the screen and realize that it was a phone or tablet that I was holding. I was in a living room similar to my own, with a glass coffee table and a long couch behind me. Although the layout is similar to mine, the dimensions, lighting, and general decor remind me of the house of one of my dad's old clients, a rich Jew.

I look back at the phone again and the screen is dimmer now, and no matter what I do I can't get it to go bright again. I put the phone on the table and decide to do a reality check, so I put my first two fingers into the palm of my left hand. With the two hands stuck together, I decide to try and stick my fingers through the roof of my mouth as well, but I can't. I turn around and look at the couch. There's now a female body on the couch, although it seems like a mannequin. I try to put my fingers through her abdomen/solar plexus, but instead of entering in, the skin flakes off like peeling paint. I peel it like an onion and take off one layer up to the face. The face underneath is different. I take more and more layers off, and each time the face is slightly different. Some parts of the skin reminded me of plastic wrap that sort of warps and has indentations, or like the shrink wrap they use on college textbooks. I start thinking too much and wake up.

It's 5:30am, I color-code my dreams (again with the weird Red, Blue, Green order) and try to stay still because I feel that I'm still in REM and can easily DEILD. I see the white light and almost get into a couple of dreams, but my dog keeps scratching and moving around, other noises keep popping up and bringing me out of it, and I end up just lying there for a while. I try to get back to sleep and maybe I drifted off for a little bit but ultimately I woke up before my 6:40 alarm and DJ'd on my phone.

I'm starting to really believe and understand Sensei's article about catching "the feeling" and holding onto it, trusting yourself that you will LD tonight rather than techniquing yourself to death. Really proud of my frequency lately! But I'm ready for a full night of deep sleep. Work is killing me.

Sep 11 2018

I had two long and detailed NLs during the night, but after waking from each one, I couldn't remember anything*; I was pretty disappointed at my recall. It was around 4 in the morning and I had time to sleep in, at least until around 6:40. I decided to make the best of it. I got up and walked around, did some relaxation and tried to WILD for a bit with no luck. Finally I repeated my mantra only twice and went directly to sleep.

I had a long non-lucid in my childhood home. It was night and I was in the kitchen, looking out the window. I could see a huge field outside. My dad was there, and we were planning something (resistance?). Scene transitions to a more brightly lit room, I have a toy typewriter that types in a brownish color on a clear sheet of glass or plastic; possibly the letters are cookies. I type "how to get rid of giant crickets" and think about cockroaches briefly (fear/loathing of these is starting to become a dreamsign). I think we were fighting against giant crickets in the dark house. I walk from the living room into a long kitchen area. It reminds me of the Oculus Touch VR demo I played about a year ago (with the little robot guy with the cartridges). There's a little kid sitting to the left of the kitchen where I enter; he's sitting and looking at some complicated instruments, similar to a plane or helicopter. However I get the understanding that they're for a car. I teach him about the controls and explain what they're all for. He's doubtful in his abilities and I reassure him.

The scene shifts and the kid and I are in an airplane with the same controls. There may be another DC kid sitting there. I'm telling him to pull up, pull up, pull up! because we're flying really low almost touching an interstate highrise. Finally we're rolling on the ground, the wheels are touching the cement rails/guards on either side of the thing, I say pull up goddammit! He finally does and we're flying again.

Scene transitions and I'm flying on my own, with just my body. Waves of pleasant vibrations are washing over my body and I feel the rushing sensation of the air. I become lucid! I look at my hands to confirm and then look around, and put my hands in a superman pose. I shoot forward! The sensation was insane. I fly for a little longer and then approach another bridge, veering up to avoid hitting it, but slowing down as I consider landing on it. For some reason I hesitate and doubt my ability to land effectively; the dream doesn't destabilize but I remember that I wanted to try spinning in a dream.

I spin counterclockwise, flapping my arms side to control my motion as if I'm trying to spin while swimming. The scene fades and I feel a new one being created although I don't see anything yet. I feel myself sort of fall into a pool of water. I'm in a secluded watery area. All around me there are reddish metal walls with seams and rivets. To the left there's more of an open area. I touch the wall and look closely at the rivets. I walk along the permiter of the wall to my right and then along the wall in front of me, and arrive at a tree with a thin trunk (maybe 6 inches diameter). I can't see any leaves or branches, and the trunk is straight with smooth bark, making me think it's a palm. I try to write my initials on the bark and I can't really see them show up, but I can see them fade (I guess because my fingers were wet?). I remember my coin totem and try to summon it from my pocket. I reach into my left pocket and there's nothing there, but I pretend there is. I pretend to flip the coin with my left hand, nonverbally making the "sheeeeen" sound that it makes when it flips. I catch it in my left palm and slap it onto the back of my right hand, and after a second I feel it there! I move my hand and there it is, looking exactly as it does in real life, except for some fake-looking black rust spots (this could have been because I found an obnoxious amount of mold on my provalone last night). I look at it for a bit, excited that I could actually summon an item from waking life. Unfortunately I forgot the entire purpose of it, to rub it for stabilization. Oh well, there's always next time. Also this whole scene exhibited a huge degree of detail and solidity compared to the flying scene, possibly because I formed it/entered it while already lucid rather than being a preexisting dream. Also, I think that in this area I was in, there was a cover of some kind.

I walk the perimeter to the open area (to the left of where I initially was). I look to the raised area with some pebbles and trees/bushes in sort of a garden. The walls here look like red brick, and there's no cover above, I can see sunlight clearly. I look at a bush and see a doe walk out! She's in perfect detail, and is beautiful. Then she lifts a leg and pees on the bush. I laugh and wake up. As I'm waking up, I realize that there was beautiful, soothing music playing at this place, and I'm able to sort of recapture and hold on to it; then I realize that the music was formed partly by my fiancee's breathing.



*Note: I haven't been keeping a physical DJ on days when my fiancee is working. She's a light sleeper, so the scratching of the pen on paper sometimes wakes her up and she doesn't get enough sleep on working days anyway.

Sep 10 2018

I tried to remember my dreams by color coding them in order of ROY G BIV.
Red -- I memorized the letters MC, for both Minecraft and Main Character (don't remember why for this part). I vividly remember being on a sort of platformer stage made up of blocks. I was walking back and forth and talking to DCs, but walking a thin line either way as I did it. Finally I jumped too far and one of the blocks gave out. I almost fell but somehow "reset" myself. I remember there being cliffs behind me and some long grass or vines/ivy. The sky or "background" was orange.

Blue -- don't remember, but remember I tried to associate it with something.

Sep 9 2018

I was walking through a large paved road which felt like a walkway through a large park. It was a sunny morning or afternoon. The lawns on either side were lined with large oaks with twisting branches. There were passerby walking in either direction. Suddenly I became lucid and started running! I looked back and saw a DC. I turned around fully again, expecting to see a coworker from one of my college jobs*, and she was there! I was running backwards at this point to let her catch up, but for some reason couldn't stop or change directions, and instead had to run backwards, slower. When I reached her I made some conversation about the fact that I was dreaming, and she seemed thrilled. I took her hand and we started running together. We passed a few trucks (possibly ice cream trucks or food trucks) and signs, and I was able to read them clearly. I asked her whether she had ever flown before, and she responded that she hadn't, all she had ever done was float. I told her that that was a good start and we lifted off.

I can feel the wind on my face and body and we're still holding hands (platonically). We weren't doing superman poses or anything specifically to indicate that we were flying, just setting my intention on a direction and going there. It was a great sensation. The oaks stretched even farther up now, and I bobbed and weaved through the twisted outstretched branches. I had a few near misses but overall had pretty good control.

I decided to go higher than the trees and went skyward. At which point I could see in the top of my field of vision three or four wooden planks arranged like ceiling blade fans. I passed above the planks and at that point there were flat planes rushing past us. I looked down at my hands and while still holding my coworker's hands, I pushed my finger through my palm -- I felt some resistance at first but asserted "I'm dreaming" and was able to do it. Then I felt the dream stabilize a bit.

As I looked back up, I saw that it was approaching dusk with a sunset in front of us. Underneath was a large wooden building with multiple levels with wraparound balconies. It reminded me of the restaurant I worked at for a while. I approached it and landed on the roof (it may have just been me at this point). I saw a small shack/building on the roof. Upon further examination it looks similar to a dollhouse made of craft wood -- I can clearly see the seems and the semi-gloss finish on the wood. The dream fades quickly.

Note: I woke up from this dream at 6am on my left side.

Summary of other NLs:
I'm in a kitchen by a white door with glass panes near the head and the foot. The house reminds me of a classmate from my high school band's house. There were multiple locks that were complicated and kind of hard to turn. Once I turned them, my anonymous DC sidekick switched some small levers which had clear writing on them in a row. There is a silhouette outlined in the door and I think what lies behind it is a dark garage. I have a serious talk with my DC sidekick. We open the door and go through, and pass through the dark garage (felt ominous, there were other silent DCs there).

I'm in a garden/walkway with a girl. We look up and see bright flashing in the clouds above. It takes a triangluar shape and turns into a spaceship with clear writing on it (reminded me for some reason of the writing on a bus or van). We run over hill after hill and past trees to keep seeing it. Each time we get it back into our field of vision it's more detailed. Finally we see that there is a ledge on the back of it and there are giant women sitting there. They send down some smaller but still giant women who fire beams at us. We run in the opposite direction and become extremely cartoon-like in our actions. I fuse with her and our arms and chest start spinning; there are now two copies of me, one driving the process and one fused with her. We fire beams back at the giants chasing us as we run down a dirt path in the garden. This dream repeats twice or thrice featuring different versions (ages, genders, ethnicities, other factors changed) of both me and the girl. Very vivid and very surreal.

I'm at a store getting various items (I remember some onion bread buns in a bag that I got IWL from Walmart). I get some impulse items that I know my fiancee will be mad at me about. It's a pretty long dream as I go down the aisles. Finally I go down the clearance/general/jam aisle, where I find a stack of fresh papers. Underneath the papers I find some that I've drawn on (during my visit or my past several visits). I try to consolidate them as they're spaced out between blank pages. Someone passes me in the aisle and notices one full-color one I've done, I look up and say it's nothing, then look back down and it's even more polished and is the cover to a small booklet or magazine (maybe a doujin). I consolidate them all and tuck them into the bottom for safe keeping.

I'm in a large bathroom with long white counters and four or five sinks stretching out to the right and left, separated by double doors. I'm at the sink closest to the door on the right counter. The stalls are behind us. There are some middle-aged men holding bags and placing their miscellany on the counters, it looks like stuff you would get in those cap-balls from the 25 cent machines (where you turn the handle). Mixed in are brass gears and writing utensils.



*With my ability to summon DCs, it seems like I pretty much pick them at random; I haven't thought about these people in years but for some reason my lucid mind thinks "Gee, I would love to see X random acquanitance." I suspect that as I get better about remembering dream goals and incorporating my awareness of waking life, I'll be able to make more logical/planned decisions within my lucids.

Sep 8

Long NL. I'm in my apartment complex's front yard and office area. My manager from work is there, along with some coworkers and random DCs. We are in school sdesks arranged in the parking lot, doing work on laptops. I see an email in red letters that says "failed", although I know the test was successful. The email gets sent out again with SUCCESS, and mentions something like "good job everyone", but I notice that it's not just an email, it's a meeting invite. My boss comes around and pats people on the back, telling us to "enjoy the long weekend" and mentioning that we can work from our beds. My fiancee is there as well (either as a worker or just as my fiancee) and calls this out as bullshit as we were already working overtime. Before or during there is also the understanding that I have to assassinate someone.

Dream scene changes and I'm in a room walking towards a door. My dog is there and so is my fiancee. I am holding my dog as I pass through a door. I become lucid! I keep telling myself "I'm lucid" and "I'm dreaming" but don't do any RCs. I see a small door (like a dumbwaiter) and consider using it to teleport to my dream world I've been incubating, but for some reason I hesitate and don't (don't know if this was a conscious decision). Instead I go with the flow of the dream.

The scene shifts. I'm still holding my dog, and I think "he's the best". I'm in a somewhat cluttered room now, and I understand that I need to kill all of the DCs here. I do some jedi mind tricks to make sure they don't resist, and they work. I tell them I'm dreaming and they all react in a friendly way. Each time I go to kill one of them, it seems like they go through the 5 stages of grief for themselves in front of my eyes, always ending up at "acceptance" before dying. I kill 2 of them, and then decide to use ice powers*. At first I was intending for Skyrim ice shards, but it came out as more of a stream of icy powder/wind from my fingertips. My thumb and forefinger are pressed together and the way the stream of ice comes out is something like when you put your thumb over a garden hose to spray pressured water at someone. As I'm pondering this I go into intense visualizations of the streams, and there are 3D mesh outlines of the stream and its "weather patterns" overlain on my vision, like a series of oblong lines. The visualization shifts to a long sawblade with teeth marked with numbers. As I mentally change the number from 8 to 2 and adjust it by notches, I see the angle and strength of the stream change.

The scene shifts to a security cam view, and as I press my left thumb and forefinger together, I can send ice shards from the camera, although they're not reliable. The camera reminds me of the show Person of Interest. After this I'm transmitted into the room. There is a blue tint to the room, and I look around and see some DCs. I walk out of a door behind me and peer into the hallway (very bright incandescent light and white walls and floors), then I go back into the blue room. I tell the DCs "I'm dreaming" and again as I approach them they go through stages of grief. I do this to a couple of DCs then walk through a doorway/archway. Above the archway are two drill bits. I jump up and grab them. I test one on a wall and it drills right through, despite having barely any threads (it was basically an ice pick). I go up to an old lady DC and say "I'm dreaming". She looks at me with sadness and says "We'll take care of each other/ourselves", then I wake up.

The dream lasted around 2-3 minutes and was very vivid. I was lucid and aware the whole time, but it still felt like a guided/directed dream.

Longer NL -- I'm a young boy who is somehow a vertical venetian blind(???). I am on a quest with a young girl, we're descending into a deep level of some underground building, with a furnace and monsters. Her face doesn't seem real, more like a porcelain doll or something. We arrive and there's a giant hydra in a brightly lit room. It has a "cement burning rocket" that's burning me and melting my armor. The girl is wrapped up in one of the hydra's necks or tentacles. I back away and reach a closet with the venetian blinds. They tell me or some other voice tells me that I am one with the blinds.

I had a few other NLs and fragments. In one, I'm in my grandpa's house and there's a weird square baby with thin, posable arms. It reminds me of BMO from Adventure Time. It was a premature. The parents are proud. There's an old lady to my left who looks like my aunt, who's wearing a white shirt with gold lettering. I note it, it's in different languages (Chines, Latin, Greek) together. At some point I had my midget intruder FA again, but it was very hazy and I yelled "Fuck you!" or "I'll kill you!" loudly and it fades quickly. In another fragment, I'm Dexter and Rita is dropping in the pool next to me. I'm supposed to be enjoying it, but I'm Dexter so I hate it. I say something like "Rita, the water is going like 20 mph". Scene shift to Deb and Quin, Deb's in a room playing with a reclining bicycle for toddlers and Quin comes in and says something while smiling and laughing. Next scene, Deb is driving a bus, Rita and I and the kids are in there. She's taking a risky corner under an interstate high rise. I don't see the bus flip, but I understand it does. Rita scolds Deb in that annoying way she does. Finally, I have the transparent eyelids effect, I can see my room clearly and thought I heard my fiancee calling me, when I move my waking body my head is under the blanket and I go downstairs to find my fiancee watching TV, turns out she didn't call me.



*I don't know if this counts as the "Breathe an element" goal

Sep 7 2018

First dream of night: I'm at childhood home. I'm younger, I think. There is a party or gathering coming up, and we're discussing it in the backyard. My mom wants us (fiance and I) to wear a giant Barney suit. We tentatively agree. I try on the suit and can't fit the headpiece on. It's a rectangular oblong plasic open box (thinka tupperware container, but oblong. It was in no way the appropriate size for my head. On the two, I think there was a felt cap or something (driveR). I think the torso had a separate piece from the legs for the costume. After trying the headpiece on without the tupperware "structural mask", mI found that I could shift my focus and see myself in 3rd person (still non-lucid). I remember it looked nothing like a Barney head or any formed animal costume head for that matter; instead it was like a purple ghost outfit (i.e. loose draped rag with eye holes).

The dream shifts and we're all in a parking lot. My mom's request for us to work during the party has come up, but it turns out she wants us to work for 5 hours each. I say that's bullshit, she wsays "well you agreed, you just idn't specify timeframe or current ball timeframe". We were in some kind of parking lot, I was in a white van I believe. I was trying to pull out of the spot and around the corner. I fought with my momm about this and eventually resigned us completely from doing the ball.

Before getting in the van I believe, I was walking around a version of the parking a lot that was fused with my backyard. Off towards the far right/forward corner of the yard, there's a system of roots that went on for a few fet in either direction. I didn't realize, but some of them are completely rotten. I step over them and they collapse, while the healthy parts remain intact. The rotten roots fall away into a large grave-sized hole.

The dream shifts and I'm inside the house, in a false version of my room. My fiance is there with me, but is playing the role of a sister (posibly step sister or family friend, it was vague). The mood was fierce and rebellious. We are talking about how best to approach the Barney situation and my dad ends up walking around the corner. He has a few guys with him and he cracks some inappropriate jokes, and some of the guys with him say some stuff that's way out of line. My zipper is down. Before this my "sister" and I were watching TV or in the kitchen.

Dream fragment about "how to meet your heroes" or something similar.

Edit: In the main dream, I remember at multiple points having to swat away both lovebugs and wasps.



*Note: Seems like in my dreams, I usually get in huge fights with my mom (way more intense than anything ever IWL), and my dad is always laid back (innappropriately so).

Sep 6 2018

Not enough sleep. Have been having to work late.

First dream segment. There's a guy with a giant (2x2 or 3x3 inch) black square earring. The place is like a video gaming convention, and it's sort of simultaneously indoors and outdoors. I'm maybe drunk or something, I remember talking to a lot of DCs. At one point, I lean over the edge of a display to the concealed camera section (used to record the event or maybe for use with some kind of Kinect-like game) and I say something like "you can't stay here/keep playing forever". I think at some point, coworker A shows up and accompanies me and my group of DCs.

In the next segment, we're on the road with my mom. She's driving us somewhere, an old vacation home maybe, telling embarassing stories. Coworker A is in the backseat driver side, I'm passenger side. There are other DCs shotgun and middle backseet. We talk about various things, such as A being a bartender at a restaurant I used to work at. The subject moves to "romance" novels written by women. Eventually my mom puts an audiobook on or maybe reads aloud a passage, and everyone critiques it harshly, but halfway through I realize due to some turns of phrase and nicknames used that she must have written it. I feel guilt but don't say anything. We pass a couple of very shallow interstate exits (an interesting feature that's kind of hard to describe, but I know it when I see it -- possible dreamsign). Eventually we arrive at our destination.

I'm now in a house, it's an old vacation home I used to visit, but not with my mom. I think in the dream, the other DCs were my "real" brothers, and somehow my mom was a step or non-biological mother; the general feeling was that I had some long-forgotten history that I was reviving. After walking around the house for a bit and looking at different things, I came across some large scrolls! They were proably 2 feet long (including handles and such) and reminded me of a Torah scroll, but less formal looking. When I unrolled one, I could see that the letters were a mix of Chinese symbols (although I interpreted them as Japanes kanji and understood them) with smaller Hebrew and latin characters mixed in and surrounding them. The text was distinctly red. Everything in the scrolls made complete sense to me, and I talked them over excitedly with my brothers for a long time. This was what was meant for my life. My mom was in the kitchen or somewhere else; I could tell that she was happy for me, but at the same time sad that I was so excited about a life besides the one she had given me. Coworker A is in the house but not near and my brothers, off in the kitchen maybe.

Sep 5 2018

I'm in the front yard of my childhood home. It's dark out, a long while before dawn. My parents are there (we're all sitting on ice chests or plastic/yard chairs, I can't remember seeing them) and we're preparing for a party or get-together of some kind. The song "Sweet Child of Mine" is playing, and for some reason I have to learn the solo (I know it vaguely from playing it IWL in high school). This could be from the fact that my parents always wanted me to play guitar at family gatherings and I always hated it. I wrote down something like "just...play it" in my DJ but don't remember the significance. For some reason my high school girlfriend who I dated for like 3 weeks was going to be there, and I remember her name in loopy script. Can't remember if I wrote it or someone else did.

Very vague dream fragment in a restaurant. After that, a vivid dream where I'm on the patio/balcony of my current apartment. I had a "profound sense of acceptance" to quote my DJ.

I woke up around 5am into pretty good paralysis and decided to try a quick WILD attempt (my fiance gets up at 5:30am). Unfortunately my dog got up, flapped his ears loudly, and sat right on my arms/chest, which pulled me out if it. I lay awake for the remaining time and let my fiance sleep, but I heard some weird soft sighing. At first I thought it was her, but as she was leaving I brought it up and she said she heard it too. The only rational explanation is that it was our dog, but it sounded like a human female...

I walked the dog and looked at the stars, pushing my alarm back a little and resolving to get lucid.

In my next dream, I'm on a computer and for some reason I have to download a set of 128 bit pixel smileys. They're coming from a website called Jered/Jerek's World, or Site. The smileys are crude in an "early internet" kind of way. One of them was a picture of exaggerated red lips, another is more orange and is laughing, and my fiance laughs at them. I open up the windows search bar and paste what I had, into the search. It pastes the words "Jerek's World", and as I read the words in my head, the desktop background starts alternating between some tiled images, one tan one saying Jerek/Jered's Site and another grey one saying "Jerek's Billion Dollar Software Company". They transitioned in horizontal and vertical screen wipes.

Next, I'm in a long kitchen stretching out maybe 10 feet to the left and 20 to the right. I'm not aware of anything behind me, but I understand that in front of me past an archway is the living room. I'm standing at the sink, looking for something or someone. Possibly my fiance is there. I was just walking around with a Brita pitcher, and now I see that there's a second, rounder one on the counter. I try to find the lid for it and I see it's in the sink, but the inside of it is covered with a greasy layer of spaghetti sauce.

In my next dream, my boss's boss is giving advice on business lunches, i.e. where to take clients. She suggests some other restaurant, but her favorite is the hotel restaurant. She hands it over to a younger guy who looks annoyed and seems to be a drier, more monotone version of a WL coworker. The room is tinged with blue lighting. He hands out a textbook. We're going to go on a business lunch with him, which he's not pleased about. I pull my phone out and subtly try to voice-record him, but no such luck. I end up taking notes on paper and draw a vivid picture of lips (was one of the smileys). I think at this point I was trying to record my dreams in-dream! Should capitalize on this. I woke with slight headache.



*Note: Analyzing my dreamsigns from the entries I've posted on DV, I think I can safely say my strongest ones are a) childhood home b) fiance c) family members. Hopefully I can add trying to dream journal as a new one, we'll see if it keeps manifesting.

Sep 3 2018

Woke 3:35. In a fight with parents and grandpa about cooking or setting up something (possibly speed-reading). Daylight outside, long tables (possibly crawfish boil).

Woke 5:05. Long fragment in a stadium, receiving some sort of business presentation from coworker. After it's over, I'm picking up my laptop bag and I stand out of the way for a coworker and an unnamed DC, who say that they have a "merge request in the morning". The presenter (another coworker) is kicking us out.

Awoke directly from FA nightmare. My dog barked and I could tell instantly that it was serious, not just him barking at another dog. The door to the bedroom is thrown open and the midget from Twin Peaks season 3 entered with a small gun. He approached the bed, not looking directly at me or anyone, just at the wall behind us. He said something vague and I tried to lean up in bed asking something to the extent of "What do you want?". As I tried to move, and in some sense solve the problem, my vision blurred and the dream started to fade. He was wearing a blue shirt with the pattern of "I (heart) N Y" but the letters were "? (eye symbol) T Y" in white. The room's layout was completely realistic and accurate unlike other false awakenings. I woke up and said "holy shit" aloud. Very scary experience, but very vivid -- would have been invaluable if I could have gotten lucid and converted it.

Before that, I was in my childhood home, on the phone with my manager about something that needed to get done. The screen was black with red nubmbers and dial-screen graphics, and an orbiting globe outline. The call got dropped. I was worrying about this with my parents but they seemed to think it would all work out (it was nighttime). My sister was in my room on my computer, looking for the first book in a series my fiance is currently reading. I suggested that she can just read my fiance's copy rather than buy it herself. I end up also giving her a japanese manga volume and another poorly translated japanese book, I remember the engrish being hilarious in-dream. After this, I went to the kitchen (all of the lights were out). I was trying to write down my dreams in ink on the wood floors. In the back of my mind I knew this was a terrible idea and that my dad would be furious, but in the moment I wasn't worried about it. There were some drops of water on the floor and it was smearing the ink, so I started wiping it up, making the smearing even worse. I was also worried about cockroaches.

After the ink, I found myself in a distinct dream scene. I was on the ground looking up at the side of a cliff maybe 4 or 5 stories high. There was a good bit of dirt caked on and I thought to myself how nice it would look if I could get the dirt off. I grabbed a wedge-shaped piece of reddish slate and scraped as much dirt as I could off and stepped back, and noticed how nice the geometric patterns were. I remember the thought-phrase "cliff face". When I looked again, one of the rock formations sort of looked like a nose, and the one below looked like a mouth! When I started examining the rest of the cliff, the whole thing was taken up by face structures (abstract and Easter Islandish). The ground went from being solid dirt and rock, to having some cracks in which curved red boards were shoved and prying the cracks apart. In the cracks were green cylindrical vegetables (I thought of okra or fat asparagus stalks). As I moved forward towards the cliff, I noticed a mesh oyster bag of sea urchins, which were moving around each other in the bag, sort of like you expect spike balls to in a metroidvania or platformer. This was a really vivid and overall nice and creative dream that's simple but feels profoundly peaceful, the kind of nonlucid you generally want to have. So of course this scene transitioned directly to the nightmare FA.

I woke again at 8:59. My fiance was in trouble. We were in some sort of college sign-up, car buying, or other related scenario. There were DCs everywhere, and specifically several DCs with deep blue eyes and short hair meant her harm in an insidious way (they were outwardly friendly). I became more and more adversarial over the course of the dream, eventually hitting them and throwing things at them. We moved from the student union/indoor car lot into a side hallway which transitions to a long house with lots of corridors and small rooms arranged in pretty much a straight-shot, but almost labyrinthine at the same time. I was thinking somehow they were hypnotizing her, and she was getting more and more bruises on her arms and abdomen. Eventually I get in exaggerated physical fights with them and I somehow manage to get 2-4 of them to defect to my side as allies and stow her away under a sliding hole in the kitchen (sort of a drain hole in the floor, like you see in restaurant kitchens). She escaped succesfully.

I'm unknowingly in an FA but think I'm fully awake. I am having the "transparent eyelids" effect, and I'm looking around my bedroom at the closet door, but it's the wooden closet door from my childhood home. I'm etching a human face in it with my mind.

After this, I'm in my childhood home and members of my family as well as random DCs are dressed in "starship troopers armor" -- white and blue, and white and red. It was a long and in-depth dream, but I don't remember much of it. I finally escaped the fray and sat back on my bed, but then my father entered my room with his gun held high, and I remember thinking "oh good, you'll just be my bodyguard". When I thought this (non-lucidly), he changed his course of action from running forward to attack me to climbing in bed next to me with his rifle held out (think Fullmetal Jacket "This is my rifle"). I got up from bed* and started walking towards the hallway. Almost instantly I became lucid! I didn't say "I'm dreaming!" or do any RCs or stabilization unfortunately. I walked down the hallway towards the bathroom, and it was daylight outside, maybe early morning. I walked into the bathroom and looked at the mirror, seeing a girl in a dress instead of myself. In this moment, I started to think of the "bad guys" in the starship troopers armor and then banished the thought from my mind, knowing that if I thought of them I would encounter or summon them. So instead I took advantage of the situation -- although I was seeing the girl in the mirror, I felt my dream body as my own physical body. So I turned away from the mirror and decided that I would become the girl in the mirror. I turned back around and I was!

Spoiler for nudity:

My body had changed competely and I was naked. Naturally, I touched my arms and chest to test sensation (it was dull, sort of semi-numb as my dream body sensation usually is). I did a little twirl and

inspected my face further in the mirror -- my face was sort of ugly and homely**, and as mirrors in dreams usually do, my face shifted quite a bit. I leaned in further to inspect myself and kissed the mirror (it was cold). I then leaned back out and decided to try my "Clear sight. Clear sound. Clear touch. Grounded. Calm, confident. I can stay here as long as I want." stabilization phrase. However, as soon as touched my thumb and forefinger, I accidentally said "Clear mind" first! It rejected me from the dream instantly. As I began to feel my waking body, I realized my thumb and forefinger were touching here too; maybe this triggered the waking?

I laid awake for quite a while after that, as I had already slept more than usual for the night, and for the whole weekend basically. I was also still excited about the lucid and hoping to drop back into it. Eventually I went back to sleep and had some more non lucids. In the first, I was with my fiance in a rest area/cabin in the woods. In the next, I felt as though I dropped into the dream as a visualization from waking, but it's possible I was only visualizing from an FA. I was imagining tall waves, and how my body bobbed up and down in them. It felt incredibly nice and peaceful. I was at a beach, and my sister was standing on a board of some kind zipping up a life jacket. I think my fiance was bobbing up and down in the water too. When I looked at the shore, I couldn't quite see the sand but I could see tall buildings above the waves, which I identified to be my apartment buildings from WL. A distinct black shape was swimming towards me, and I thought it might be a shoe or a fish (I thought it could be a dangerous fish but dismissed the thought instantly). After another waking, I had a final dream of being in a wood panneled shop with an old woman who was offering the shop to me (inheritance?). Her wares were laid out on a long wooden table, which after looking away and looking back turned out to be a giant Knorr pasta packet. I believe this all happened in 3rd person.



*I think getting out of beds in nonlucids is a lucidity/awareness trigger -- will have to investigate how to encourage this).
**This is actually the second time I've transformed my body into a woman's in a mirror while lucid, but for some reason I always turn into butterfaces. Also not sure why I keep doing this. Why, lucid mind, why?

Sep 2 2018

I went to bed with strong intentions to become lucid, as well as a solid plan for what to do once I became lucid. I was trying the anchoring method I mentioned in another thread, anchoring positive and confident memories with the sensation of touching my thumb and forefinger together. I had a phrase burnt into memory to repeat nonverbally once I became lucid (to replace "Clarity now!"): "Clear sight, clear sound, clear touch. Grounded. Calm, confident. I can stay in this dream as long as I want" (in retrospect this is extremely long, but I think I'll try it out for a few new nights anyway). I also used my standard mantra "I will become lucid in my next dream"/"In every dream tonight" in combination with "In my next dream, I look at my hands and realize that I'm dreaming". In the future I will stick with only "IWBLIMND" since it's more succint and sets a clear intention for the immediate future, rather than a broad concept of "every dream".

I awoke at 1:18 am in a somewhat strong paralysis with extremely vivid imagery (not dreamlike, more like imagination). There was a man, possibly me, conjuring lightning circularly all around him. The lightning was blue, white, and green. I awoke again at 2:47 am. I remembered several dreams involving my fiance and my dog. In the first, I was at the elementary portion of my high school (it's K-12) and I swerved my car to narrowly miss my dog, who spontaneously started running out at me in the street. I got out of the car and was rubbing his front leg and paw. I noticed that his paw had too many joints and was curled in too much. Somehow this felt connected to a drive through.

In the next dream, I'm in a living room with a wrap-around bar counter. I think I've been here in a dream before. I'm watching Bob Ross on TV painting thick brushstrokes -- X's, C's, and U's -- over an already finished landscape. My dog jumps off the counter. I'm trying to remember what to do tomorrow, two important things in the morning and night.

My next set of dreams came after WBTB. In the first, one of my cousins was referred to as "3". There was an interesting story about diving, and D&D. I vividly remember descending in a well, looking up as the light was blocked out by the silhouette of a monster (Demogorgon?), although I didn't feel fear. Next, I was in an arcade or bowling alley, some sort of indoor entertainment place. I left my fiance to go to an adjoining room from the lobby and get ice cream. There was a girl there who was going in the same direction as me, and called me a "creeper" jokingly. She was trying to be funny or cute in the way she was getting her ice cream. I was friendly but not overly so. I got maybe 4 flavors of ice cream, in sort of a flight. In the next dream, I'm an intruder in a man's house. He has a lot of weapons strewn about, some intricate compound and traditional bows, swords, guns, blowdarts, etc. I go through room after room and find the man, he's in his mid 50s or 60s. He threatens me with a long, thin, metal pole, and I think he threatned to castrate me with it. He transports me back to some memory of 1950's New Orleans with a McDonalds, and a small building with an advertisement to "teleport you to the Science Museum". The visuals are faded, blackish, and all the buildings look like plywood.

In the next dream, I'm at Sonic at night/early morning with my fiance. She's handed me a cup, but I threw it away; there are two crumpled cups beside it. I understand it to be sonic, but it's more like someone's backyard, there aren't any lights or servers or menus, just the standard sonic table and trash can, as well as an overhead cover. A group of foreign men walk by, talking about wanting some cervezas. In the next dream, I'm going over some train tracks covered in water, in a swamp (I've been here before as well). The waves are rounded like tiled hills -- at certain points they are covered in grass, at other times they're just water/waves. I see the sasquatch.

My old boss is giving me cryptic hints about something, laughing about it. We're in the woods, sort of. Something about eating a spider/the dust that comes out when you crush the spider. Possibly my fiance was warning me not to eat it. I eat the dust, and then eat the crumpled spider husk too.

Next I had a dream about DreamViews! It was something about inline comments/spoilers; I remember red and purple text. There were other sites too -- DreamBattles and DreamWars (reenactments, maybe I read about this before).



*Slept for a really long time hoping to get lucid, and kept trying to go back to sleep. After this frustration, I decided to not get bummed out when I don't get lucid. It doesn't help. And there's always tomorrow night

Sep 1 2018

The night started with some visualization of a dream I'm trying to incubate, which lasted probably 30 minutes to an hour. After that, I set my intentions to become lucid and headed to sleep.

My first dream of the night involved some kind of network TV teenage vampire drama plot, which took place in a neighborhood similar to mine from childhood. In the next dream, I was in a trench coat placing high-stakes bets using a 90's era cell phone. At the end of this dream, all of my cronies were in a room, facing forward in rows, and I was facing backward. We were all peeing on the ground (I think it was a power play).

Next, I'm in a huge convention center. I had just seen the newest Avengers movie (I haven't seen it IWL). I was ranting to others about how Thanos had all of the Avengers on his side and wasn't even fighting, but was just using the Avengers to fight. The convention center was huge (should've caught that, since disproportionate structures is one of my dreamsigns). We (a couple of DCs and I) were walking through the ground floor when we ran into

Spoiler for nudity:

three girls in fishnet shirts, whose nipples were poking through the fishnet. I or one of my DC friends picked the middle girl's girls up and examined them like a fine connoisseur, asking "These are same-size, no?". I remember they had a lot of moles and sort of looked cancerous? The girl on the left had red fishnet, but the other two had dark grey or black, and all of the fishnet was thick, like yarn or wool rather than thin like you would typically think.

The dream shifts and I'm walking with some old high school friends and acquaintances. We come across M, who's sitting on the floor in front of some people trying to take a picture. We tell her to get up and stop blocking the picture, and she says "This is a picture?" in a way that for some reason made me give out this awful dolphin-like laugh. I remember thinking in my non-lucid state, "stop that, you'll wake yourself up!". Sure enough I did.

After this dream sequence, I got up as my fiance left for work. I walked my dog so he wouldn't bother me for the rest of the session and drank a little apple juice. I MILDed with "I will become lucid in my next dream" and "The next time I see a person, I will look at my hands and realize I'm dreaming". The first dream had very low lucidity. It was sort of a western setting in a two or three story house. Outside I could see a desert/grassland with tall grass growing and mountains in the background, and the sky was really beautiful (should have RC'd here also, abnormal sky is a dreamsign). I walked around the house and looked out of the windows.

From this dream, I awoke into a false awakening. In the FA, I was trying to get back to bed to LD (didn't catch this). At some point I opened my dream eyes and saw a shallow, long, white plastic sink on the wall. It occured to me that I was dreaming because that doesn't exist in my room, but it didn't "click" until I got up and reached for the knob. At this point there was a shift in my consciousness that almost threw me off balance, like flipping a switch. I walked to a nearby mirror on the wall and experienced what people say -- the properties of my face were changing and twitching, especially my nose, jaws, and lips. I didn't say "clarity now!" like I usually do, and I really need to stabilize. I had some feeling throughout my dream body, but felt numb, so I started slapping my face and pulling on my lips, tongue, cheeks. I was incredibly focused on engaging my tactile senses. I tried to summon my dream totem associated with stabilizaiton, but for some reason I didn't have pockets. I decided I would summon a DC to help, so strangely I called out the name of an acquaintance from high school (I haven't even consciously thought of this person in years). At first I called aloud, and I could only get out the first name since my voice was garbled as it always is. So I used non-verbal commands! I looked towards the doorway and she appeared! It was awesome to see this work, as it's only worked for me in the past in a semi-lucid. I think I told her to give me a massage so that I could feel my body better. She had a serious face on and nodded agreeably. I was wearing a red t-shirt and a thin, dark blue jacket like the band kids used to wear. I started to take this off, and sat back on the bed as she approached, at which point I woke up.

The first thing I did upon waking was an RC (I've been trying to train myself to do these at each waking), but it wasn't a dream. I was really pissed at myself for not thinking of the ways I've stabilized in the past ("clarity now!", breathe in and focus on senses, pry eyes open, etc.), but I was happy to have an LD after about a week-long dry spell. I reflected on what I could have done better and visualized it, then MILDed again and went to sleep.

I had a chain of FAs/DILDs at this point*. In the first, I was in a lit version of my bedroom. I got up, became lucid, and walked around briefly before losing lucidity. In the next, I'm in a grocery store on a higher staircase. I see a lot of DCs around the corner of the opening, and I look at a clock that says "08:00". I become lucid, feeling off-balance like before, and walk around the display, looking at some bread before losing lucidity. In the next dream, I'm on the street of my childhood home looking at a large white column in the middle of NOG's yard (one of our neighbors). There's moss or dirt up to about shoulder level on the column. My sister and mom are behind me and commenting on the small car parked in middle of the yard, trying to make out the license plate. I become lucid and start looking at some huge leaves on some plants that appeared spontaneously. We're looking through the leaves, arguing whether the license plate is UWP 117 or 116. The dream fades slowly out and back in, then fades completely.

From here I had a series of longish NLs:
I have a collection of wood carvings/sculptures. One in particular is of Spyro, the others are small people. The house I'm in reminds me of a previous vacation house.
There is a mouse running around the backyard at my childhood home. It runs up to the door and allows me to pick it up. My parents' dog and mine both just sniff at it when it approaches. It's almost cartoon-like, but is very real. We all fall in love with the mouse. At some point my sister finds a "water snake" which looks like it's breaded with panko bread crumbs until she places it in a bucket full of water and cleans it off (now it looks like bread dough). There is a 1ft dark green toady that walks through our back porch in the midst of all this, as well as some small slugs. My mom is sad/angry, lashing out passive agressively (this is practically a dream sign).
The next dream is in an urban fantasy setting (by this I mean full-out fantasy that just happens to pass through some urban sections, not vampires and werewolves in modern clothing). I am tasked with delivering something. I have to walk around these long, curving, somewhat cyberpunk blue corridors in the middle of the city. I'm wearing peasant's clothes and have a sword. Whatever it is I'm delivering is in a brown sack (possibly the remains of something or someone?). I have to double-back at some point (this could be a dream sign, going down the same path twice). Eventually I arrive at the base, which is a fraternity or sorority house. I meet with the buyer/receiving party, and they say that it's not what they expected. Don't remember much after this and my pen ran out of ink, so the world will never really know.



Overall, it was a pretty good night! Summoned a DC and learned to use non-verbal commands. Will need to practice and visualize how to stabilize VTA (visual, tactile, and auditory) senses more.

*Because of their short nature and the fact that they were pretty much chained together, I'm going to count all of these short lucids as 1 in total, for a grand total of 2 LDs tonight.

Aug 31 2018

I'm in a house that's based off of my current apartment. I'm running around the room, possibly with a baseball bat/umbrella/wooden sword, opening closets and doors trying to find an intruder. I'm yelling the whole time. I'm trying to protect my fiance. After some time I'm outside under the vine-covered wooden pavilion.

I'm walking with my fiance down some way in an old world city, vaguely European. There is tan, smooth brick all around, reaching up on the immediate rightin a wall maybe 4 or 5 stories high. There's a similar wall far off to the left, with a canal inbetween. I'm walking down the cobblestoned sloped path, and affixed to the wall to my right, and there are stepped/gradated rails along the wall, one high enough for my hands as well as one that's ledge-like for my feet. I climb up and remember the vivid feeling of the thin rails cutting into my hands as I maintained my grip while my fiance just strolled beside me.

Had some more nonlucids during this time but can't remember them/can't decipher my DJ (I write in the dark). I awoke at 5:30, went to the bathroom, walked downstairs and drank some apple juice. Went back to sleep around 6:15.

I'm talking to my boss and the receptionist at my desk. A coworker (D) says "Hey bro," and my boss tells him not to call me bro, but Tyrannosaur. Transition, and I'm reclining in a bed in a warm red room with incandescent light. Either the boss or the receptionist comes into the room (nothing weird). We talk.

Dreams are more vivid after this point.

I'm in the office and a mentally challenged classmate from college is telling the cleaning people not to spray cleaner in our four-way cubicle, because he has "smell sensitivity".

I'm sitting on the floor at the side of the bed from before, showing my sketchbook to D from earlier. He notes how finished everything looks (I internally note this too -- I never finish anything IRL). As I flip through the book, there is a series of 8-15 pages of detailed, beautiful (stylized) waves moving subtly with each picture. As I flip pages, eventually a woman appears amidst the waves. She changes poses once or twice, then becomes a younger (late teens or 20yo) girl. In the dream, I question whether I drew this. D comments "oh wow, lots of girlies in here". As I continue flipping the pages it switches from a paperback sketchbook to a bound hardback, and at the end there are ads (sort of like at the end of a manga volume).

I had a false awakening about writing down my dreams which was also vivid, although mostly I just rolled around in bed.

Awoke for real at 7:25 dreading work. Had some waking images/a daydream of a thin woman with small eyes and a stern look, wearing red and white leaf print dress. I think her name was Riah (short for Mariah?).

Aug 30 2018

Long NL, the first thing I remember is walking up a staircase or ladder and entering a dark basement. It is finished and in some memories it extends lengthwise to my left and right with no windows, but in others it's small and box-shaped, closing in all around with a window in front of me under an eave. In both memories, there are cardboard boxes all around, and right in front of me there is a broken light bulb. I'm yelling downstairs to someone that the bulb is broken (I remember there are two lit floors below me). It felt like several others were in the house with me.

Short NL when I fell back asleep after dismissing my alarm in the morning. I'm at a table in France. I'm a spectator, possibly without physical manifestation or presence. To the left is an american couple, to the right a french couple from another region of france. Both are travelling to this region and sampling some food. The backdrop is empty whiteness. The americans are making fools of themselves, and the french are snooty about it. I remember being both of them, and cutting open some toasted bread. There was also red sauce involved somehow (were these meatball subs?), and the dream ended with the frenchman laughing.

Aug 28 2018

I'm in my childhood church. On the altar there's some kind of human sacrifice of women going on. I remember also being around the sound booth (I was here a lot as a teenager). There are scenes in the youth room and parking lot as well, and they're all very dark, but I can't remember what was happening.

I'm in college again, but my curriculum is changing. I'll have to take a lot of advanced math classes I didn't have to take before. I'm really concerned but my fiance is trying to convince me it'll be easy, she starts drawing squiggles with her pencil on some paper in some sort of parallelogram (squiggles all going out from one point or line). I consider changing my major to Psychology, but I'll have to start with Psych 113 (whatever that is).

Aug 29 2018

As I was falling asleep, I did progressive relaxation, thought about a couple of new mantras* to see which felt right, and then started meditating on my breath, focusing on the tip of my nose. After a while I realized my body was mostly paralyzed. I decided to make the most of it and try to WILD. When I first thought of this, I got some pretty in-depth HI and imagined visuals, very vivid. But after that I spooked myself or something, and I couldn't get it to the same level of vividness for the next thirty or so minutes. So I MILDed on one of my new mantras and eventually moved and broke the paralysis.

In the first dream I remember, I was driving around my WL car. It was hard to handle (like trying to legally drive a car in video games) and I kept bobbing and weaving and turning around. My viewpoint was shifting between first and third person. I was driving around a warped version of the city I live in, and ended up running some stops signs or red lights. At some point some cops pulled out of a parking lot and started following me, but didn't turn their lights on. I lost them and went to an interstate ramp, but I didn't want to get on the interstate for some reason, so I was stuck between the ramp and the exit (it was on the left, whereas they're usually on the right). I had to wait for the lanes to clear out so I could back up and get off the ramp -- quite stressful. I think this happened twice.

In the next dream, it felt like an FA although I don't think it was. My dog was in it, which is odd because although I see him all day (probably more than my fiance) I've only ever seen him in my dreams once. We're in a darkened bedroom/living room combination. I walk downstairs and we're talking about somewhere we need to go. I'm possibly worried about an intruder? Slight shift and I'm going outside, I open the door and my dog almost makes it out but I grab his hind leg and put him back inside. Before or after that I caught him eating some crumbs off the ground.

Scene shift again and I'm sitting on something or laying on the grass on the side of the house, looking up at the sky. I notice some lights in the sky, like heat lightning. Then (separately) I notice I can see lights on the clouds, and realize they're coming from my phone! Even with dream logic I'm amazed that my light can travel so far to the clouds from my phone (I recall a similar experience from my childhood with a high-powered search flashlight). I try to shine the phone's light on a tree that's hangning overhead, and I see the patterns of the leaves on the clouds above! I also notice 2 moons, then 3, some redder or foggier than others, but mostly the same size. I wouldn't call it semi-lucid, but I was seriously questioning the world. I think I should try to add looking at the sky to my dream routine, since most of the time I'm looking at the ground or my immediate surroundings, and seeing these inconsistencies may help with getting lucid.

In the next dream I'm in a fitness center or some similar place. I'm sitting or laying down in these lanes, aiming my feet to sort of louge through the lanes. This is coupled with a video game-like view with arrows showing which direction I should go. At some point I turn around and lie prone, trying to go backwards, but my feet are dragging so I have to manually push myself. I'm sort of in a cobra pose with my back underneath this large pullup bar type thing (black metal wrapped in foam). Eventually I reach the end with a lobby or something similar (carpeted, reminds me of a Chuck E Cheese). I see someone I went to school with who I didn't really know, and I'm sort of embarassed. I say something stupid like "I'm having a Shiatsu massage**". She responds with something nice but is clearly weirded out.

The dream shifts again and I'm in some kind of locker room. Another less-than-acquaintance from HS is there and is trying to convince the coach that he should recognize/remember him. He kept saying "I'm Double-D! Don't you remember me?" and the coach humiliated him. I think my dog may have been eating crumbs off the floor here too.



*"I am a master/natural at lucid dreaming" - meh; "I look at my hands and realize I am dreaming" - solid; "I calmly take control of the world I've created" - good for focusing on stabilization, but it's a mouthful.

**Of course I pronounced "massage" the british way, probably because I just watched S1E3 of Black Books, "Grapes of Wrath", which is arguably the best episode of anything ever.