Thread: RealIllusion's Journal

Fri, June 30, 2006
So, my friend called me just as I was waking up and disrupted my memories of my dreams, so I don't have too much today. Here are snippets I remember:

-People were building some sort of handicapped access ramp for me, it seemed to have rollers or something I could slide along. They seemed annoyed to be doing it. I was trying to explain that I didn't want to burden them, but I really needed to get around. (In real life, I am not handicapped, and I don't remember any physical limitations in my dream).

-I was at school in some sort of dorms, and there was a sign on one door recruiting for an RA. Later on in the dream, this Indian man applied for the job (I was just watching) to the owner of the building, who looked like Annie Lennox dressed for the Sweet Dreams video. He kept insisting that he didn't want to do anything, and wanted the job because it's just an easy position. Annie got mad and said, "You know, I'm the owner of this building!" and I think maybe it even thundered behind her.
-Went to a nightclub for my birthday with friends. It was very loud and we were sitting in there trying to eat dinner.

Well, some interesting stuff actually, now that I've got some down here. I actually remembered more as I was typing.

Saturday, July 1, 2006
My dreams seem like they're just at the front of my memory but there's some kind of haze over them and I can't get quite to them. All I can remember at this point is that as I was waking up, there was something having to do with the number 5 - five reasons to do something, or five steps of something that I was going through one at a time. I know Richard was in my dream too, which makes sense because I was hanging out with him last night.

I think I actually had pretty active dreams last night, so I'm pretty frustrated. If I remember anything during the day, I'll come back and add.

Sunday, July 2, 2006
Tried to WILD last night but had some insomnia, probably due to the oppressive heat in my room (oh man, need to buy a fan), the noisyness of the street outside my window, and the fact that the previous night I went to bed around 5:30 (changing my sleep schedule does that to me!) Here's what I remember:

-Something about a hamburger, and how we shouldn't just expect cows to be eager to jump into the bun for us.
-I was driving with my sister Kathleen in my car, and someone hit us. I was fine, but worried that she had suffered a concussion, so I took her to the hospital, which was part hospital, part the elementary school were I teach. I checked her in and started to make photocopies. Looked at the clock, and I was five minutes late for the start of the school day. I hurried up and kept preparing, and ended up at my classroom ten minutes late. I don't remember teaching all that much but I think the kids did an art project, and I remember them saying goodbye, especially one student who gave me a card.
-Not sure if this is a different dream or part of the previous. I was attending the final class of a class back in college in Chicago, but it was being taught by one of the teachers I used to work with at the elementary school. We were sitting on the floor and watching a video, which she would stop occassionally to say something. There was one part where the narrator said something like, "the execption is for the midwestern girls, for whom use of their posterior doesn't end with reproduction" (huh?) and I turned to my friend Jennie and teased her, "Ha ha, midwestern girls are sluts." Afterwards, we went on a boat ride, and some college friends and some coworkers were there. I moved from the middle to the front section, and remember being surprised at how quiet it was there.

Monday, July 3, 2006
Had my first successful induced lucid dreams last night! (Not my first LDs, I've had several spontaneously in the past, but always just through dumb luck.) Didn't exactly happen the way I intended, but still! Two different LDs... I'll start putting LD in italics to mark them.

-Was driving my car and accidentally turned off into dead end with a little cul de sac at the end. Another car, a minivan, had apparently done the same thing first and was turning around as I approached the end of the road. Then a man got out of the car and started doing something strange. He was kind of wild and dirty looking, and had poorly kept dreadlocks. He was blocking my ability to turn, so I got out to talk with him, and he starts throwing gasoline all over his car, the street, all the way up near my feet. He tells me, "you had better hope that the [something] is turned off!" (apparently, he was going to use some sort of electrical wires to start a fire). I protest, and he throws more gas, this time landing on me. I'm very scared, I try to run, and it feels like I'm running through molasses. Two seconds pass maybe, and I'm like, hey wait, this whole situation is pretty weird - I'm dreaming! I stop running and just walk away instead, and I am watching over my shoulder as he keeps trying to light a match, and looks puzzled as none of them work. So, unfortunately, this is as much as I remember here, but I think that the dream actually continued for a bit. Not sure.

-New dream. I'm with college friends, not sure where, but get invited to a party (at the gym down the street?). I show up, but I decide to leave and return to the apartment (not my actual apartment.) There's a whole thing I don't really remember with some guy who keeps losing stuff, and I end up having it several times. Well, eventually, a bunch of my friends and I are all in a very large room in the common space of a big apartment building, and someone is telling us about the bottom level of this tower they have in the room. The tower supposedly has the key to all kinds of mysteries of life, and scientists are studying it (I think maybe I can actually see the scientists in the other room doing sciency stuff.) Suddenly, these people show up and tell us "We've found the other levels of the tower!!!!" They set them up in the middle of the room. Each level is a circular shape, smaller in diameter than the last. The peope who were explaining the tower to us become very excited - "Amazing! To find all seven of the other layers at once! This will solve all the mysteries of life!" One of the presenters is walking around giving people pot brownies, (because, of course, we should all get high if we're going to discuss the mysteries of life.) I don't want one, and I tell him oh, no thanks, I'm vegan. He says its not a problem, and gives me a piece of vegan pot banana bread instead (haha), which I eat slowly. I can't remember the discussion, but I do remember at the end looking back and there are two towers, but the new one is made up of different bottles of liquor.

-New dream, I think, but I am still remembering parts of the previous at this point. I'm living with my parents in some very large, pretty posh apartment. It seems that they've lost their house for some reason. I come in the door and they start berating me about joining the soccer team. "It's time to elevate yourself above this!" my dad keeps telling me. I am really puzzled because I haven't joined any soccer team and tell them that. "Oh, yeah, then why did we find *this*?" and he describes in detail a really weird uniform that included a necklace - you know those necklaces that have a flower preserved in a piece of plastic or glass? One of those. "Oh! That belongs to [the guy in the last dream who kept losing his stuff]." My parents don't believe me and continue to disapprove angrily, now more pissed off because I'm "lying" to them. I'm even more confused. "Look, I haven't joined the soccer team, but even if I had, I could certainly stand to get a bit more exercise, and I don't know why would care so much. Furthermore, I'm way too old for you to be talking to me this way." Dream continues, but is fuzzy.

-False awakening but in a basement bedroom in my parent's dream apartment. I get up and pretty quickly realize I am dreaming and become lucid. I forget what is the trigger. This time, I remember to try to do some things I read on DV. Briefly consider spinning, but things seem pretty stable, so look down and study my hands instead. They're very tripped out, the prints are moving around wildly, and there are little sparkling dots on them. Unfortunately, this is the time that I remember the pot I ingested in the previous dream, and assume that the reason I'm lucid and tripping out on my hands is because of the drug. Unforunate because it leads me to believe I'm high as a kite and diminshes my sense of control over the dream scene. It also for some reason gives me drymouth like a m.f. I walk into the hallway, and it is dark, so I try using verbal commands: "increase light!" I am really croaking because my mouth is so dry, so it comes out in a choked whisper. Nothing happens. I try again, "increase light!" The hallway lights stay dim, but I notice a bathroom next to me with bright lights on inside. I go in and study my reflection in the mirror. Yep, I look completely fucked up, my eyes are all big and crazy looking, I've got a goofy smile on my face. I've very much seeing the whole dream now through the eyes of someone who ate a pot brownie a few hours ago. (My hair is also shorter that it is in real life, which I don't realize in the dream.) I decide to go upstairs to the kitchen to get a glass of water, and that is where I lose my lucidity. My mom starts talking to me, and I still can't stop croaking when I try to talk, plus, I'm making some uncontrollable hiccup/croak every twenty seconds or so. I tell her I've lost my voice and need some water. I decide to whisper instead of continuing the croak-talking because it's so unnatural sounding, but I can't stop the weird hiccups. I'm very paranoid that my mother will realize I'm high. I'm trying to use the sink but can't get the water to come out at the right speed, it's overflowing the glass. My mom comes over to help me and asks if I'm ok a little bit suspiciously.

That's where I woke up! And immediately came back to get this written down.

So, not exactly what I planned for my first induced lds, but hey, at least I'm making progress! I was getting worried that maybe I just wasn't able to do it.

Tuesday morning, June 4, 2006
So after my journal entry this morning I was feeling pretty sleepy, as I spent a lot of time awake last night trying to get relaxed enough to sleep and dream... I decided to go back and try to get another couple hours of sleep. WOW! TWO MORE LDs!!!! I'm so excited right now, you have no idea!

-Dream one - I can't remember how I came into lucidity, the beginning part of the dream isn't coming back to me right now. But it was a much clearer lucid than the ones from earlier in the night. I remember that somehow I ended up at a different house, still belonging to my parents. I was up on the top floor, and looking out the window. There was a screen on the window, I remember pressing my face up against it. I decided to try to fly. I couldn't get through the screen at first, but then I focused on a person outside the window and coming towards them, instead of focusing on going through the screen. Sure enough, I came through the window, but wasn't able to fly yet. Didn't crash down either, more like floated very quickly down and landed on my feet in the front yard. A bit too fast for my taste though, the force of the drop hurt a little, although the actual landing was fine. Oh well, more flying practice another time. My mom came up to me and was distressed because she had locked herself out of the house. I was feeling like a benevolent god in my dream world. "Don't worry mom, I'll help you get in." I looked to the left and located some storm doors (? not sure if that's what they're called? Those double doors that are kinda slanted off the ground and go down to the basement) and started to lead my mom to them. "But it's locked!" mom said. "Don't worry, it'll be fine." Just like mom said, there was a padlock on the door, but was we approached, it was unlocked. I helped mom in and then decided on trying to find a partner for some dream sex. I wasn't trying too hard to control things at this point, I was interested in seeing what my brain would come up with on it's own. I walked across the street, noticing a blonde getting out of her car with brief curiousity, but she seemed to ignore me so I proceded into a house to try to find a partner. There was an old guy in the house - kinda looked like the dad from My Big Fat Greek Wedding - NOT really my type! hehe. So I asked him in a friendly way, "Hey, is he home?" like it was a totally regular occurrence that I would be coming into this guy's house looking for... his son maybe? And he says, "Yeah, he's upstairs" I go upstairs looking for the mystery man, and end up witnessing this whole family drama with the dad's sisters who are living in the house, and one just found out something from the bank over the phone, blah blah blah, long story short, never got to the sex part, and eventually wake up in my bed... (Which is weird, because I slept on the couch last night because my room was too hot.) I'm laying in my bed with my eyes closed, reviewing the dream in my head with the intention of getting right up and posting in my dream journal. I think I'm actually half awake at this point, but I wiggle my fingers and they seem mostly numb. Somehow this propels me into another dream...

-I'm not lucid at the beginning of this dream, lost it somehow between the almost awakeness and going back to sleep. At any rate, it is a bright, sunny day and I'm walking outside somewhere in LA, I'm not sure where. This guy in this hot vintage sports car drives up next to me with the windows down and I WISH I could remember what he said, because it was something profound, I believe. He's giving me advice on dreaming maybe, or on my life. The man is youngish, maybe a few years older than me, Latino, a bigger guy but not fat, very masculine. After he speaks to me, I realize I'm dreaming (again, I can't remember how I realized that). I'm very attracted to this man. I lean into the window and tell him something but I can't remember what I said. He's playing it cool, looking straight ahead out the windshield and asks me, "well, how bad do you want me then?" I reach inside the window to open the door with every intention of climbing in the passenger door and jumping him and that's when I wake up again for real this time. Try to get back to sleep but no dice. Shit.

Well, can't complain though!!!!! I was worried I wouldn't be able to induce lucids, but I had a storm of them last night/this morning!!!

Any thoughts/comments, please post!

Wednesday, July 5, 2006
Well, I had nothing to write this morning because I had to get up early to go to a doctor's appointment, and this damn alarm clock seems to just startle all the dreams right out of my head. Didn't even have a fleeting impression of the dream left after I got up to shut it off. Annoying, especially because I set it earlier so I'd have time to write in my DJ.

Anyway, with how little sleep I got yesterday, I decided I should have a nap (and I'd be lying if I said the possibility of a naptime LD didn't influence that decision!). I slept on the sofa, because that's where I was last time I successfully LDed, and a few people commented that might have been a factor.

The dream: I was with a friend of mine that I go clubbing with frequently on the weekends, very attractive girl. I don't remember how it started, but she suddenly had her top off, we were making out, and then I looked over and she was recording it on her cameraphone. Eventually, the dream started to take on some dark undertones. She had some magical powers, made one of my college friends disappear into a hole in the sidewalk (were we outside? Why was there a sidewalk?) and another friend disappears into some sort of wall display. Oh, and she was also able to do this weird thing with making time go back and forth. Eventually, she goes away, and I am able to find one of the friends she made disappear. I want to help her, but I'm also really scared. I know there's a part here where I went lucid, but I can't remember what it is. All I know is that I was doing something fun and all the sudden I'm losing my dream and I'm annoyed.

I wake up on the sofa, and there's now a fairly big bar in our apartment. I don't even realize this is strange but I do notice that as I'm looking at a bottle of Tanqueray it's vibrating.. Or maybe, my eyes are vibrating slightly. I think maybe I read this is a common dream sign? So I pinch my nose to do a RC - yep, I'm dreaming! I walk into my room - there's bright, almost irridescent pink sheets and curtains on my bed. The colors are shimmering and intense, like I took mushrooms. There's a man inside my room, almost looks like Vin Diesel. He backs me up against the wall and presses himself against me (so real feeling!!) and tells me that I need to trust him. I agree, and suddenly we're in a field or a park somewhere, very beautiful. There are some other people there, a bit away from us. So Vin tells me to take my clothes off, and I'm kind of nervous. "Here?" I ask him, looking around at the people. They're not paying attention to us. I'm more nervous that my real self will start undressing in my sleep, since I'm on the sofa in the living room. That would be weird for my roommates to come home to. I hope that sleep paralysis will do its thing, take off my shirt and we start making out. There's music playing in the background, (which I can remember for a few minutes after waking up but have forgotten now - so cool that my brain can write background music!!!) A few minutes of that, and I wake up...

My first dream kind of reminded me of the Holocaust but it was set today. My family was hiding in some sort of a hole in the wall apartment, along with some friends. However, it was my younger sister's birthday, and they decided to risk it by leaving the house to go to a bar and celebrate. Everyone was getting dressed up (we were required by law to wear some sort of uniform to show that we were jewish) and
I chickened out and decided to stay home. Everyone left, but then I got really scared being home alone too. I decided to go out and look for them, but I get stopped along the way by someone to challenge why I was not in my uniform. I know I got away, but I forget how. I think I ultimately ended up at a lake somewhere.

In my second dream, I was in a dance class and we were putting on a performance. I couldn't find a costume so I couldn't go on stage, and the dream consisted of me going around looking for a costume so that I could participate, and getting very upset when my friend wouldn't let me borrow hers (she was done with her part, she just didn't feel like taking it off.) I was searching as the dance number continued, and I remember one part holding an umbrella I found backstage and leaping quite far, slowing down as I landed. Huh, that's cool, I thought, but didn't recognize that as being a sign I was in a dream. I did not find any costume and was feeling hysterical. I was very upset because my parents had come to see the show and I didn't get to perform.

Had a pretty cool lucid this morning, and definitely the most control over a dream that I've had yet! Awesome!

I went to bed trying to WILD when I woke up at 5am, but somehow lost it in between counting and dreaming.... At any rate, I ended up in a non-lucid where I was driving all over creation at night because I had promised my childhood violin teacher I would come to her Christmas concert. I was feeling horribly guilty because I didn't know where to go, and I was dressed all wrong for the event. I called my dad and he came and rode home with me (to my childhood home), because it was too late for me to go to the concert now anyway. Actually, I think that I started to realize something was up at this point, because I actually told my dad, "Wait, I didn't really go to that music lesson where she invited me to the concert," but then my dad said, "Yes, remember, you needed help with your audition music." So then I had a vauge memory of going and dropped it. Along the way, we stopped at a rest stop, and ran into a man there who I knew I kept running into places, although I don't have any memories of him besides this one. A middle aged white man, who was there with his family. I didn't see him, but he said, "HEY! It's the girl with the hair!" (my hair has purple streaks) And I made kind of friendly small talk with him while I kept walking. I said, I didn't know you were from NY. And he said, we're not, we're from PA. I got slightly confused about where I was, because then I had a memory of being in California recently, but kinda decided I had been on vacation and wasn't home yet.

So, later I was at my parents house in my old bed, and my mom came in the room and started having this conversation with me that she wasn't making any sense. I was complaining to her how I missed the concert, and I missed the last concert too and now my music teacher was going to think I'm a total flake. She comforted me a bit and started to walk out of the room. At this point, I got out of bed and was walking around my room a bit. I walked over to the wall, and there was something mounted on it, a smoke detector maybe but it was a weird shape. Anyway, I look closer at it because it has a blue plastic tab on it that says something like "IN CASE OF LUCID DREAMS PULL HERE"... Huh, that's interesting, I thought, I've never noticed that before, and I've been thinking so much about LDs lately.. and... Hey, wait a minute... I pinch my nose and do a RC. Yes! (Now I wish I could go back and see what would have happened if I pulled that tab! But I got distracted...)

This time I remember to take a minute to stabilize my dream, using verbal commands. I remember my dream room looking very real and clear, although in my memory it seems kinda fuzzy now. I practice levitating things with my hands, making them fly around the room, and then call my mom back to my room to show her. I'm making something small, a paperclip perhaps, zip around the room by pointing my finger at where I want it to go. "Ah, you're getting good at that, honey," my mom says and leaves, (not duly impressed in my opinion.)

I decide I want it to be daytime, so I focus on that and when I open the blinds again, it is, although not nearly as sunny as I was trying for. I go out of my room and down the staircase, and I remember thinking that this was really cool but I wouldn't remember some of it in the morning (which I think is probably true, I feel like I did some more stuff I can't remember.) I walk around to the back of the house and decide to find a guy that I have a crush on in real life, D. I find him sitting at the table with my dad. He gets up, but his body is all distorted. His torso is far too long, and he has short little stubby legs. I'm annoyed. I tell him to fix it, and he tries, but it's still not quite right. I tell him, "look at my mom, her body's not all messed up! Make it right like hers." and then think for two seconds and add, "I mean proportionate, not actually like my mom's body." He gets it almost right, and we go off to sit in the grass somewhere to talk. Two girls come over to us and remind him that he doesn't really like me, he likes another girl. So D realizes, oh yeah, I *do* like that other girl, and I get up and walk away pissed off.

At this point the dream starts to fade, but I can tell that I'm still sleeping so I start thinking about what I should dream about next. I was watching Rock Star last night and thought that it would be cool to perform on stage in a dream, so I decided to focus on that. Suddenly I can see a computer screen and there is a media player window there with a music video starting. I can see myself in the music video, I'm singing a song with a familiar tune and familiar lyrics that doesn't exist in real life (just googled it). I'm wearing some sort of robe, but take it off as the song goes on. I have a bra on underneath (and my boobs are big! rock.) I can't see the bottom half because it's out of the window. I try to focus on getting back into my body, but only succeed in getting the surrounding window to go away (the video went into full screen mode, basically.) At that point, things went black and I woke up.[/i]

Remembered nothing yesterday, so didn't post.

July 8, 2006
I was writing thank you letters because I had some sort of party, but I can't remember what. The recipients were people from my high school. I was borrowing stamps from multiple people to send them out, and some of the stamps were in weird denominations. I didn't have quite enough. In addition to the thank you's, I had some business that I was also including in the letters, stuffing them in the same envelopes. I remember that I was supposed to also send out a suitcase to a friend of mine, but it had all sorts of weapons, like knives, perhaps some military medals, and an American flag in it (which is ridiculous to belong this person, he's very much a communist and against the US military). I was worried about sending it through the mail because of the weapons, plus my lack of stamps, so I walked into the other room and handed it to him instead.

Different dream: Watching old episodes of Grey's Anatomy, it was supposed to be the pilot, which I never saw. But it wasn't like watching TV, it was like watching their action live. George was talking to Meredith, basically explaining why it shouldn't be Grey's Anatomy, and he should be the star of the show. He had a pretty complicated rewrite of the basic plot. It seems like they were waiting outside in a van for something to happen, almost like they were doing surveillence on something or someone. Later on, I remember eating in some big, fancy dining room, and Meredith comes down the stairs, smoking. The smoke is black, and I remember thinking it was weird that they made her smoke but blacked out the smoke for television.

Another dream: I am in a classroom, and someone reminding me of my 7th grade science teacher is in the room. We have recently took a practice test of some sort for an upcoming, important test. Half the group is going to go over the test, but I am in the advanced group and he tells me we are too advanced to go over what the other group is doing. I ask him to give me my test and the answer key so I can go back an review by myself instead. He says no, and asks our group to clean out the desks instead (they are like elementary school desks, where you store all your books inside, and they are messy but only half full.) I tell him he is wasting my time, but then go to help clean out the desks anyway. (Note: dream sign - people from high school)

At this point, I woke up for a bit, and when I got back in bed tried to WILD. Fell asleep and had this dream, but didn't go lucid: I was in my hometown doing something, and one of my very first childhood friends was there. We were working on some sort of project together at a school, something that required us to change our clothes. At one point, I had no pants on and my one of my old coworkers/teaching mentor came in. I said, I should put some pants on! And then looked down and I was wearing a pair of pajama pants, not even the one I had brought with me to wear. Huh, how did that happen, I wondered but put the thought aside. We had to go home, but wanted to continue working. Carrie (my friend) asked if we could spend the night, but they would not let us because of liability reasons (Ha!) I was driving her home in a minivan, and I offered to let her sleep at my house, but she declined and went to stay at her little sister's house instead. I felt insulted, and she could tell, so she invited me inside her sister's house to show me "an awesome view" that I woke up before I got to see.

Woke up around 6, went back to bed and had a pretty extended lucid, although when I woke up from it, I accidentally fell back to sleep for a few minutes and lost most of it. Grrr... I remember it starting off in the food court of a mall, and my friend Tim (who I also saw in an earlier dream) came up to me. We were supposed to be working on some sort of project, but I whispered to him that I wasn't sure if I was dreaming, although actually I felt pretty sure. I did a RC (pinched my nose and could breathe) and told him sorry, I wasn't going to be able to work on the project. Then I showed him how I could fly around the food court. I'm still having trouble with control with flying though, and it's not really all that fun yet.

Other parts in my dream I remember: dream sex, but I got annoyed with the DC who didn't want to go along with one of my fantasies and kicked him out of my bedroom. (I need to work on remembering that I am in control and *fix* things if they're not going my way instead of getting angry at my DCs, eh?) There was also one part in a school where I got really bored, and eventually went running around the school saying, "increase lucidity" and clapping my hands. At one point, a girl in the school ran up to me, so grateful that I had given her something she said she wanted earlier in the dream (earrings? a butterfly? i can't remember). I hadn't actively tried to give them to her, but I figured it was my subconscious that let her have it anyway, so I gave her a hug and said you're welcome. For some reason that I don't remember, I told her she didn't want to be a mother for a long time, and she said of course not. Another part, I was swimming with two people, a man and a woman that I don't know in real life.

Anyway, kind of frustrating dream, because I didn't do anything I planned to for next time I became lucid, *and* I fell back to sleep afterwards losing a bunch of it. But it is cool that I was lucid for such a long time - in fact, I remember distinctly having the thought "I can't believe I'm still asleep and lucid!" and then RCing again to make sure.
-

July 9, 2006
I was going to some new-agey music festival kind of thing with some friends, but we were going Sunday night when it had already started. I had wanted to go earlier but my friends couldn't go. We arrived, and there was some music playing and people were sitting at long tables. We did some sort of exercise where we were supposed to all look in the same direction at once, in time to the music, but I found it difficult not to look in the faces of the other participants. Then we did this thing where we laid down and were supposed to "tune our chakras" by focusing each one on the vibration of a tuning fork that the group leader hit against the side of a speaker, starting with our right knee (now, I'm not into this stuff, but as far as I know, there is no chakra in the knee.) My knee felt warm with intense vibration.

Then we interrupted the exercise to take a break while people went to get beer for the group. I thought this was pretty funny. One of my friends came over to me and complained that the vibrations from the exercise were too strong to the point of being painful. We walked around the street a bit. I said something kind of playfully sarcastic to one of my friends (in real life, I didn't know this person) and then she turned around and it wasn't her. I was scared of this other girl and recognized as her being someone from a local gang who was not to be fucked with. She had a tattoo of the silhouette of a naked woman on her cheek. For a minute, I was terrified, but then she kinda gave me a playful tap on the shoulder and walked away. My friend was there standing behind where she had been, and I said, "oh there you are." She looked like a younger, more innocent version of the other woman.

When we returned to the building where the festival was going on, the whole group sat down to watch some kind of inspirationational performance given by local students. Some of the students were mine and some were not. They read as a play what I recognized as one of the stories my real life class had read over the year, although when I woke up I realized this is not true. I know the title had "Abuelita" in it, but I can't remember more than that. The girls who were performing it were all different ages. They were using scripts, but were not good readers and were reading slowly, tripping over words. Then I woke up.

July 10, 2006

Had problems with insomnia last night and also couldn't remember a lot of my dreams. I know I was lucid in parts, but they're totally gone. I think they were related to apartment hunting (as I am in the middle of a stressful apartment search at the moment.)

My non-lucid dreams:
(This is gross, be forewarned). I am looking in the mirror and there is pus undernearth my skin where I recenly had a cyst removed. I squeeze it and it pops. I am repulsed, but also glad to have gotten it out of my body. Later on, I am looking in the mirror again and another pus-filled thing explodes without warning, this time from in my mouth. I'm so disgusted and can't believe that all this gross stuff is in my body. This time I am worried about my health.

There is an older woman in my dreams, not decrepit or ancient, but probably mid 60s. She is white and has shoulder length hair. She is a seperate character at times, but at times she is myself. It's confusing to try to understand outside of the dream. She is getting surgery for some reason. I am with the doctor who is operating by using computerized controls. (I have seen this done on television before in the real world.) He is outside in a separate room. There are also doctors in the operating room as well. They report that she is starting to come out of her anesthesia. The doctor from my room reports back in medical jargon that they should keep going, it's only a minor physical reaction and she is not conscious. Then he changes his mind and decides to ask her to do something instead to test her level of consciousness. He tells her to touch the lip of one of the doctors in the room and tell him that he looks young. From the monitor in the room we are in, it appears she is lying still, but my point of view flashes to the other room and I can see she is trying to sit up in bed and follow the instructions. She can't reach the doctor, so she tells him to come closer, and when he does, she touches his lip and tells him he looks young. She looks ghastly, kind of bluish and evil, like a horror movie character. The doctors start in with some operation, they are putting these big stitches in her lip and she keeps saying "ow!" "ow!" but they ignore her and continue. Finally, she jumps up out of the bed and strangles one with some iv tubing that was hooked up for the operation. He's struggling to breathe and everyone is shocked. The woman starts going on a furious, indignant rant about how she was asked to abstain from smoking cigarettes for eighteen hours before the surgery.
My perspective changes back to my own body in the other room. I am struggling to cut a piece of the same iv tubing. It is very thin and has a whitish fluid in it. I think perhaps this will stop the woman from killing the doctor(?)

I don't remember anything until later, the head doctor is scrutinizing me because of the pus things from earlier in the dream. He starts feeling the back of my neck and can feel there is more pus under my skin. He decides to x-ray the old woman (remember, we are kind of the same person in two different bodies at times). This appears to provide new insight into the case. I don't remember anything more about this, although I know I wandered the hospital for a bit and ran into some other DCs.

New dream: President Bush is in the news, he's done something or other horribly incompetent and one-by-one, his former political supporters and allies are coming out against him. I am with my parents watching tv, and they comment, wow, there is really nobody left at all who stands with Bush anymore. I understand that his presidency is pretty much dead but he is making desperate grasps to stay in power and avoid impeachment. Somehow, I am transported without noticing the change into a meeting or a press conference of some sort that the president is doing, trying to do some damage control. I scribble something down on a piece of paper, some sort of reaction to what Bush is saying, but he comes over and reads it. He ends up asking me and the person I'm sitting next to (a friend of mine who is a lawyer, I think? I have no such friend in real life) to write a speech for him for the evening when he addresses the nation. I am torn between thinking it would be really cool to get to write a speech for a president, and not wanting to be part of Bush's team. I spend some time going around asking other dream characters what I should do. Some suggest not doing it, some suggest sabotaging the speech or writing a resignation speech for him. I get easily distracted during these conversations.

There are some other little dream snippets, but nothing worth writing about...

All I can remember today is that there was a pigeon featuring prominently in my dreams.

I was so tired, I just crashed hard last night.

Ugh, insomnia again. I did fall back to sleep around 7, so I have a few dreams to report.

-Was planning to go to a fair or an amusement park with my friend Jennie.

-I was at my parents house in New York. My ex-boyfriend came to visit and I was nervous about him being there. He went outside and started to build a fence around the house. Part of the fence was white and did not match with the cedar. My dad came home and was slightly upset about this. I remember that my ex was wearing a baseball cap that said #1 on it. (I went to sleep incubating the thought that when I saw my parents in a dream, I would do a RC, but didn't remember to. Of course, considering my level of sleep deprivation, perhaps this was not a realistic goal.)

-Was traveling to the airport. On the way, I picked up two friends from college, Callie and Leo. Callie got in the drivers seat and started to drive. Leo sat in the backseat, and I was in the passenger seat. On the way, we stopped at some carnival (?) There was a giant, kind of scary ferris wheel. When we got to the airport, they left and went somewhere, but I realized I forgot my ticket at home and did not have time to go back and get it.

(I just ended a highly frustrating apartment search, to give a bit of context for this dream. There are some big holes in here, my memory of this dream was fuzzy when I woke up, and I haven't had a chance to journal until tonight.)

July 15, 2006
I was in an apartment with some people that I don't know, and I cannot remember the reason. I was discussing my apartment search with one person, a blonde, short-haired male about my age. He offered me a room in his apartment (not the one we were in). I had already put a small deposit down on another place (in real life, and I knew this in my dream), but I considered that it might be worth it to just lose the deposit because his apartment was better. I told him that I would think about it. He left and two girls came over and sat next to me, and asked me what I thought of the guy. They thought he had asked me out, but I explained he had offered me a room in his apartment.

New dream: I went to see some sort of play. My dad and my sister were there, and they knew one of the actors. This is pretty fuzzy.

Also: I was sitting using a computer at what seemed like an internet cafe. Two Black males, pretty large guys about my age, were standing near me. One tapped me on the shoulder and asked me if there was something wrong with his eye. It appeared he had some sort of infection and I told him so. He kind of shrugged it off. I told him he should really see a doctor about it. The other man became angry that I was telling his friend what to do and that I should mind my own business. Then he told me he was "even going to beat him up later" even though his eye was infected. I was puzzled.

I woke up and could feel my body on the sofa (slept there again last night due to heat), but kind of felt like I was still dreaming so decided to do a RC. I reached over to pinch my nose very slowly and carefully so as not to wake myself up, and I was dreaming. I laid there for a minute and tried to ground myself before opening my eyes. I opened my eyes and sat up, saw my living room, but when I turned around, we had a humongous television, so I was sure I was dreaming. Then I was suddenly laying on the couch again with my eyes closed, not sure once more if I was dreaming or awake. I reached to hold my nose again with my eyes closed, and found I could still breathe. It was a very strange sensation because I could feel my dream arm and my real arm at the same time. I knew I was still dreaming but felt that if I opened my eyes I'd wake up. A minute passed and I woke up for real.

I am in a city looking up at the sky. I notice that a spaceship is launching and stop to watch it. Suddenly, it levels off and the starts to crash back to earth. As it lands on top of buildings, it bounces a few times and then finally comes to rest on the ground. This puts the city into a state of emergency. I think perhaps we have lost our house, this part of the dream is not clear.

At one point, I am forced to wait in a very long line for a public restroom. I am very angry at the people who keep cutting me in line. I am confused because I don't know where they are coming from, but I keep insisting they move to the back and getting into arguments. Finally, I break away from the line (this is a very large public restroom!) and find someone coming out of a stall, taking their stall right away.

Parts of the dream are as though I am playing on a video game screen. Parts, I am going on some sort of ride. I feel like a lot happened in this dream that I don't remember.

Scary dream: I am on some sort of retreat, along with many other people I know. We each have our own very small little room (more like a closet actually) that we are living in, and we attend classes, workshops, etc. I forget what is the theme or purpose here. I was walking around with a friend from college when suddenly a very dark presence passes us (I think it was on a horse). I tell my friend that I sensed something very evil, and he didn't really believe me, but I was trying to tell him that the shadowy figure filled me with terror and dread just by passing by.

Later on, this figure would come and kill someone in the night while we were in our little closet rooms. It was terrifying not knowing who he would come for. We all somehow understood that the figure would come back for us one by one each day (there were perhaps one hundred or so people at this event.) They canceled the classes but we were still hanging out there because it was difficult to leave for some reason. I was trying to call my mother to get her to ask my cousin to come pick me up, but the phones weren't working. I borrowed someone's cell that I found on the floor, but couldn't get it to go through. I pulled my own cell phone out of my purse and it was vibrating incessantly and smoke was coming out of the ear holes. That's all I remember from this dream.

All I can remember is there was lots of lesbian sex with a girl I knew all through childhood/high school. (She was an adult in my dream though.)

Dammit, with the not remembering my dreams again! What's going on with me these days?

Failed WILD attempt this afternoon, I started having visuals (HI?) and then my heart started pounding and I guess I woke myself up. Boo

I was playing some sort of game that I could control by moving my finger along a board. It would cause a small car to move along the world in a video game (I think a video game or some sort of virtual reality.) The world was a bigger version of the board and in color, 3 dimensional. The board was shaped as a plus sign and was on a grid. At the end of each point, there was a circle. If you went into the circle, you'd go off the main screen and into the world. In this dream, I was just learning how to play the game, so I was not yet performing well, and kept forgetting to heal up or stock up on some sort of supply before going into the circles. I also had to be careful, because I quickly realized you could fall of the edge of this world if you moved carelessly.

In another dream, I was serving wine to people on television. There were about 8 and they were seated around a round table. I knew it was wine, but it was the wrong color, had ice in it, and I'm not sure but I think it also had Boba in it. Hahaha!

Woke up for a bit, went back to sleep. I dreamed that I was holding a baby, I think it was probably supposed to be a cousin or nephew of mine. It was definitely not my baby. Some of my family members were around. The baby was quite squirmy and I was having trouble hanging onto him, and at one point he fell. I couldn't really see from the angle I was holding him, so I asked my cousin if she could see any bruises or cuts on the baby from the fall. She said yes, and I brought the baby over to the mirror. He had a cut that was bleeding on the bridge of his nose. I wiped the blood off with a tissue. I was concerned to return the baby to his mother, so I started carrying him downstairs. I was also embarrassed for dropping the baby, but nobody seemed angry with me. While I was carrying him, he kept changing sizes, sometimes he was big like a 2year old, sometimes small like a newborn.

Alright, the forum's finally back up! I had a couple of lucids while it was down...

July 20, 2006
During the day, I had found myself in the car with D and L, and that night I was back in the car in my dreams. I cannot remember what triggered me to do a RC, but I was pretty surprised to realize I was dreaming. L was in the backseat, talking about something, and I felt resentful that I couldn't get some time alone in my dreams with D. I turn around and tell her that she is going to disappear when I turn back away from her. For a moment she is silent, but then starts talking once more and I'm angry. I don't remember what happened after this.

Edit: I just remembered something else from this dream! I'm standing by a pool and there is a huge harp there. It's playing itself, like a player piano would. I can see the strings vibrate as though an invisible hand is plucking them. I am amazed by the beautiful music my brain can compose, as in real life I can't compose anything! I sit down and try to play some harmonies along with the harp, but it is awkward and I can't get it right. I give up and just enjoy the music.

July 22, 2006
I had a very long lucid dream, surprisingly because I did all the wrong things - I had a few alcoholic drinks the night before, went to bed way too late, and was extremely tired. I can't remember the progression of the dream, but I remember many things that happened. I fell back to sleep after this dream, so I'm lucky I remembered anything!

Anyway, here's what I remember: I did some flying, and it was MUCH better than my previous attempts! I was actually able to control where I went to a high degree, and it was pretty exhilarating! I tried to keep going higher and higher until I was in outer space - didn't make it quite that high though.

I also spent some time working on the lucid task for July (stopping traffic). I walked out into a road and starting blowing cars off the road. I could see the drivers in the car struggling to maintain control of their cars against these enormous gusts of wind!

I kissed D; this was kind of strange because at this point in the dream, it was not very vivid but kind of nice in its floaty softness. It was almost like a very vivid thought, but almost not an external reality. I don't really know how to descibe it better than that...

This whole dream I had several false awakenings, and lost/regained lucidity a few times. At one point in the dream, I had some cuts and sores on my forearms, and I was worried this was indicative of a real-life problem with my arms. I wanted to make sure I was ok, so I said, WAKE UP WAKE UP WAKE UP and closed my eyes, and did indeed "wake up" in my bed, only to find through RC that I was still asleep. I tried once again, one more FA, and I decided to give up on that and continue my lucid dream instead, my arms were probably ok and the dream cuts had gone away.

One time, I had lost lucididty, and a DC showed me a piece of paper that had something typed on it. He pointed to a particular word (I can't remember what it was, exactly, but something like "unaware" or "ignorant" or "unconscious") and told me that I needed to read that word. This triggered me to do a RC and regain lucidity. (Thanks, DC&#33

The other thing that I remember was searching for my dream guide. I was in some sort of office building, and there was a group of people I was talking with. I asked them, "Do any of you know where I would find my dream guide?" and they all pointed to one of the women standing there with us. Her name was Noah, and she had red hair, and red plastic-framed glasses pretty similar to mine (although I wasn't wearing glasses in my dream.) We went into her office to talk, and I realized I wasn't sure what I wanted to ask her, but I just started talking about myself and my lucid dreams hoping she could give me some insight. I had only been talking to her for a few seconds when I lost my dream and had a FA. I maintained lucidity and somehow got back to the office building but had to walk all the way back through and find Noah again. This time she looked different, the same woman but older. I started talking to her again, but immediately had another FA and did not regain lucidity this time.

I remember a lot of random snippets from my dreams last night, but nothing too long.

The weirdest part was being in outer space with a coalition of humans and two aliens. We were asking them for some sort of help. They were turning us down in some sort of formal ceremony where they set two insects on a tiny platter on each of our shoulders. We knew we should not try to remove the insects, we were supposed to sit and listen, but it was gross and we were uncomfortable.

I know I also dreamed about being in a sorority and having to go to their events, and also about my cousins renting a car.

Alright, finally got the internet all hooked up and I'm back online at last! I haven't been keeping up with my dream journal because I've been busy with relocating my life and searching for a job, but now that I've done both, I'm back on it.

I did record one long lucid dream that I had while I was computer-less, so I'm posting it here:

August 3, 2006

I cannot remember the beginning of my dream or how I became lucid. The further back I try to remember, the fuzzier it becomes, so at the beginning there are a lot of big gaps, but towards the end my dream seems to function in a more linear fashion. The earliest I can remember is being in a restaurant. I am already lucid. There is someone working there who appears to be a composite of two of my high school acquaintances. I go into an upstairs room in the restaurant to speak with him. While we have been friendly in real life, I am sensing hostility in the dream, and the more I try to reason with him that his hostility is misplaced, the more hostile he becomes. It is strange, because I know he is not saying or doing anything that could be construed as threatening by an outsider, but I am just getting an extremely hostile vibe. Eventually, I leave and return downstairs, and he becomes openly hostile, screaming at me and chasing me down the stairs. He trips, falls, and is knocked unconscious. I return to my dinner.

Later in the dream, I am outdoors. My dad has given me a present, a dresser, and I am looking at it. I do not want to offend my father or insult his gift, but I notice that it is broken in several places, and missing two sides. I point this out timidly to my dad, and he shows me some very beautiful tiles that are meant to cover up the missing sides. I thank him, give him a hug, and tell him that I love him. My sister Kathleen is there.

Kathleen and I go to some sort of cafeteria and I am playing around, in a silly mood. I decide to start a food fight, because I’ve never been in one (and trying to start one these days when I’m in my 20’s would probably seem pretty foolish). I try hurling some food across the room, and give it a few good tries, but I cannot build up the momentum to throw it very far. It’s similar to the whole running-in-water dreaming phenomenon that I’ve experienced before, (but less alarming since the other always happened in the context of me trying to escape something&#33 My sister comments that gravity must not work in dreams. I tell her that gravity works just fine, it’s my arm that has the problem, and drop a mug on the floor to prove my point. It falls to the ground normally and shatters.

Big gap in memory here, but eventually I am in an unfamiliar apartment with some friends from college. I am aware that I haven’t seen them in a while and am glad to be able to visit with them. We decide to drop some “acid,” although the “hit” looks and tastes like a fennel seed. Still, it’s a dream, so I think it might work. I take one. My friend Scotty eats an entire handful. I inform him that this is special acid with a very quick onset that I spent $1000 on. Nothing seems to happen, (although I notice that the decorations in the apartment are done in a very psychedically-inspired motif, lots of fractals and bright colors on the walls.)

Time passes. I am driving in a garage having lost lucidity. Actually, I believe that I had a very long false awakening here where I dreamed of getting out of bed and going out, but this may be inaccurate. The car was responding poorly to my control and I was struggling not to hit other cars. I realized that I was probably still dreaming, and started swerving the car around like crazy, just for fun. Then I had doubts, and pulled over and did a RC just to be sure. Yep, dreaming. I’m a bit annoyed at myself that I didn’t do an RC sooner and wasted all that dream time trying to run an errand!

I got out of my car and started talking to the people in the garage. I believe I explained to them that they were my dream characters. A group of us went outside to the sidewalk. There is some hip-hop playing, and I dance for a bit. There is a streetlight with a thin pole, and I see a girl sitting on it maybe 6 feet off the ground, just with her legs wrapped around the pole. I am impressed by this feat of strength, and when she gets down, I jump up to try the same thing. Easy! The others are teasing me that I’m on a stripper pole. I try swinging myself around the pole like a stripper, to see if I can do it in my dream – in waking life, I am not nearly that strong. It takes a few tries to get the hang of it, but I eventually have some success. I get down and two girls get up on it together and start doing some raunchy stripper act. The guys love it! I walk away and leave them all behind.

There is a gap in my memory here, but eventually I arrived at the front of a house. There was a woman on the upstairs balcony. She was dressed in a casual but glamorous kind of 1950s style. She was beautiful, slim, with blonde hair in short curls and was perhaps 30 years old, with the general appearance of an old movie star. My vision at this point was blurry, which I attributed to not having my glasses on, and I was trying to fix this by saying “increase clarity.” It was not working. The woman called down to me, “increase clarity,” and for a second, my vision went sharp. I asked if she could please do that again, and she called it out again until my vision fixed itself completely and I asked her to stop.

This part of my dream is unfortunately fuzzy in my memory. I climbed up some sort of apparatus into a loft in the woman’s apartment. It was a strange shape and very unsteady and fell apart as I climbed up. I was not worried. We started talking about lucid dreaming and she somehow explained that she was not a DC but a fellow dreamer who was speaking with me. (At this point, she looked different, having shoulder length black hair and appearing distinctly less glamorous, but I didn’t realize this difference until I woke up.) I was amazed and we discussed this for a bit. She showed me a print out of a thread from a discussion board she had saved and I recognized her avatar, although I cannot remember it now. She said something about being on some other LD forum, not DV, and I recognized it in my dream but could not remember the name. I was excited and hoped to find her when I woke up. (Upon waking, I remember the existence of no such forum at all.) I also tested if she was a DC by trying to control her actions, but each time I tried, I went mute just like in the cell phone commercial (the one where the calls keep getting dropped). I was watching myself at this point in third person, talking away with complete silence. I know we had other conversations about lucidity, but I cannot remember what she said.

I exited the house and walked down a flight of stairs towards the street. The front of the house was different leaving than when I arrived. I noticed that it was cool outside, like the weather of the fall in New York where I grew up. I normally prefer warm weather, but the briskness was very pleasant and the sensation helped enhance my lucidity. I played around with making the air a bit cooler even, and noticed I was now wearing a hooded red sweatshirt, which I zipped up. I really enjoyed this part of my walk, and noticed the trees were a mixture of the trees one would normally see in NY and in LA.

When I got to the bottom, I met up with some other girls. They were pushing dollies. We undertook to walk up the street to the top of the hill, with the expectation that there would be something interesting there. As we walked, it seemed that the hill was becoming steeper. The women hesitated, but I told them that we should continue on. I figured if my brain was trying to keep me out, there must be something cool hiding up there.

As it was, we reached the top and the other women began playing a game where they took turns bowling the others down the other side of the hill with baby blue bowling balls. The bowling balls had printed on them “Ex-boyfriend.” I thought this was a strange game, but was not worried because I knew they could not really get hurt. It seemed like a light hearted, if weird game. Then I walked over to them, and two were sitting down on a piece of red fabric. One was a friend of mine from high school that I haven’t seen in the dream previously. They were planning to slide down the hill on this fabric. The rest of us walked down the hill together.

We arrived outside in a market. There were stores that were different than ones that I know in real life along the sides of the outdoor vendors, but I noticed a dress in the window that I had seen in real life. I picked up a small piece of fur to examine it, it had some embroidery. I noticed a tag that said it had “raw poison” on it. It was wet. I went to the water fountain to wash it off my hands quickly, handing it back to the vendor. She was soaking other pieces of fur in the poison as well. Two of my companions came with me, a girl near my age, and an elderly man. The elderly man looked sick and I asked him if he was going to throw up. He nodded and I pointed to another water fountain farther away, and asked if he would please go over there so he would not throw up on us. He walked away, and I said to the other girl, “Poor Stanley,” feeling slightly bad about having him leave, but knowing he was not a real person that needed my help. At this point, I began to feel the dream fading again, and willed myself to wake up so that I could record it.

I was at "Disney World" with my mom and sister. My mom was being fussy and didn't want to go on any rides, and I was annoyed.

We walked around, past a soccer field with a tennis net, where people were playing tennis. On the left side, a group of people had gathered near the gate. A woman on from the outside climbed the fence and jumped over into the cheering crowd. We continued on and went into a theater that was supposedly where American Idol was filmed. The theater was empty.

That's all I remember for today!

I am getting ready to travel by plane somewhere, but I have forgotten my ticket. Eventually, I find it or am allowed on the plane without it (?). I am traveling with D and L. After takeoff, the pilot passes out and we are flying on autopilot. I am very alarmed, but D and L think I am overreacting. I pick up the pilot's headset and try to contact anyone who can help us. I am out of range and the person I get on the line is not from the airline and cannot help us. D and L are just hanging out; the pilot is laying on the floor in the cabin. I peek out the window eventually, and the plane is very close to landing. I look down at the pilot and decide to try waking her up. She wakes up right away and lands the plane safely. After we get off, I tell D that I am going to try to get a refund for that flight.

I don't remember the rest of the dream well, but D is the manager of some club. He gives me a job there as a favor, a very easy job that pays well, but I keep forgetting when I'm supposed to show up and I'm stressed out about it.