Thread: Spritely's Dream Journal

Other Things I wish to Remember
That which has appeared since I re-started my dream journal, 3/9/07.

Dream Characters:
Interesting people in my dreams who have no apparent waking-world counterpart. Information in parenthese indicates how many times I've seen them.

-The Cousins: A group of silent, pale-faced children, six or so in total. Their ages seem to range from seven or so to sixteen. Tend to be present whenever an audience for my actions is required. (Since writing this: 2)

-The Fiddler and the Piper: A thirty-ish man with straw-blonde hair, and a thin woman with close-cropped red hair, respectively. Last time I saw them, they were playing a polka called 'Dennis Murphy's.' (Fiddler: Reoccuring. Piper: 1)

-The Queen of Underground: A dark-haired woman with an unremarkable face. NYC legend says that very few people meet her and live to tell the tale.

-My brother: A boy, a year or so older than I am, who was not actually born in real life. Have yet to actually meet him, but aim to.

Dream Locations:
Locations with no apparent real-life counterpart, but are still interesting or reoccuring.

-The Victorian House: An ornate, white house with many winding staircases and turrets. Usually feels faintly menacing, haunted, or forboding. (Reoccuring: Suspect have dreamt of this house for 5+ years. Since March 12th: 1)

-The Essex Stationhouse: A wooden building painted sage green, very long and busy-looking, in the English countryside, next to an open-air train platform. (1)

-Waite Road Library: A strangely-shaped library near my house. Haven't actually got to check out the library part yet! (1)

-Middletown: A faintly gothic-looking town that slightly resembles a town near my home, though it is far more old-fashioned and has lots of chic boutiques and things. Is usually misty and cool. Has at least three different coffee shops and one theatre, as well as a man who sells soup from a streetcorner cart. A dream character once told me I was the rightful princess of it. (Reoccuring, have no exact count. Since writing this, at least 2.)

-The Trestle Bridge: An old, disused railroad bridge that spans a gorge in the next town over. I know I've dreamt of this place many times before. (1)

Dream Objects

-My sword: I remember dreaming when I was about eleven that I was in a shop that sold weapons. The owner told me that I'd need to get myself a sword. I ended up with a sword that simply felt 'right': a solid shortsword, with a subtle bloodchannel, leather-wrapped hilt, no handguard, and a small crosspiece. Since then, it occasionally appears in dreams that feel menacing. With it, I can easily dispatch threatening DCs, but it doesn't pop up too often. I think it's awesome that my subconcious invented a confidence symbol for me at a time when I was very emotionally vulnerable, and I'd like to be able to summon this sword at will.

Dream Signs
Things to be on the lookout for!

-Strange-looking money (3)
-Buses/Trains (13-ish, appear almost every night)
-Unfamiliar, nonintuitive/frustrating computer software (8)
-Messed up text/digits (8)
-Locks/light switches not working (quite a lot)

March 12th, 2007

Antiimagineering

(Went to bed late, slept poorly. Suspect that Neal Stephenson's novel 'Snow Crash' had an influence here. The word is silly, but I really like it.)

Figures in my dreams show that there are over one million recent refugees living on the southeast (?) coast of France. No one can speak to them or figure out where they came from, since they only seem to speak in tongues. It's my job, in this dream, to 'antiimagineer'-- to use the evidence and imagine how the situation came about.

I find myself using a map on 'smart paper,' which has a sort of computer interface built in. I know that the refugees are from a mediterranean island that sank, somewhere, but nothing else. A hunch tells me that I should look at the ocean around Turkey's coast.

Melting Matches

(Took an afternoon nap and attempted to WILD. Unsuccessful.)

I'm in my high school chemistry lab, trying to get a match to stand upright in a stand and then melt. The wire frame I'm using to support it is too large, and it keeps falling over. Everyone else in the class is done with the experiment but me, and they're idly chatting with each other.

I notice that I have a bucket of ashes mixed with sawdust. Part of the lab is to get this substance to melt, I know. I start dropping lit matches in. Some of the ashes and sawdust melt into a little pool, like candle wax, but my technique only works for a little bit. I get very mad and decide I'm just bad at science.

Beachside Bar

(From the same nap, after a brief awakening.)

I'm sitting at a bar, somewhere near a beach in summer. A woman with a beach bag made out of transparent red plastic sits down next to me and tries to strike up a conversation, but I just stare into my drink. I think, I have a purse rather like that, don't I? The thought startles me. I realize that in this dream I'm male, which is not right. For that matter, I'm not really old enough to get served at a bar, either!

I think angrily, "oh, this is just silly hypnagogic imagery. I'm done with this." (Note: it wasn't HI, I just thought the phrase fit in the dream.)

I then drift into deeper sleep.

March 13th, 2007

The Queen of Underground

(Dream recall was espescially bad last night, despite me sleeping for about 10 hours and waking regularly. I suspect that a sore throat, nausea, and fever upset my sleep.)

I'm on a subway platform, somewhere in New York City-- maybe Penn Station. It's fairly late at night, and springtime. As I wait for my train, I realize that time has stopped, and that someone has built a small room around me out of what looks like gray cardboard. I dimly realize that the Queen of Underground (?) travels this way.

The little room has three other people in it-- two men in old-fashioned, wearing black-and-white livery and holding enormous pikes, and a dark-haired woman in a plain gown. The woman greets me, and I respond in kind. We talk for a while, and I then find myself back on the subway platform.

...Later in that dream, or maybe in a different one, I remember that the Queen of Underground is supposed to be crazy and homicidal; few of her visitors make it out alive. I triumphantly scrawl a symbol on a piece of paper and show my companions. It looks sort of like an I Ching hexagram, but it means Princess of the Underground. Anyone who survives a visit to the Queen's travelling court is entitled to call themself that.

Locking Doors

(Score! Remembered this dream later in the day.)

I'm trying to lock the door to the back hall, but every time I tug on the handle to check it, the door swings open again. I re-lock it, shut it, and test it again. It swings open. I repeat this a dozen times or so, getting more frustrated with each attempt.

Violet Cupcakes

(Another late-recall. Better late than never.)

I'm hosting a slumber party in my living room. KB and L are sitting on an air matress, and both are rather upset. I know it's K's birthday, so I offer to make her cupcakes to cheer her up. She demands chocolate ones with cinnamon on top.

I agree, even though I know there's no chocolate in the house. To my surprise, the red package of coffee beans I'm carrying turns out to have chocolate and butterscotch chips in it. A female DC and I taste some, but they don't taste like much.

We wander out, searching for more ingredients. I want to decorate the cupcakes with violets, which are growing near the chimney. I think, "wow, the flowers are awfully tall and vivid-- and it's only March!" I pick some and take them inside, and the DC congratulates me on choosing to decorate the cupcakes so creatively.

Nice journal you've got here. I especially like your recurring characters/settings and the Snow Crash influence of your Antiimagineering dream. I think it's time to read that book again; I think about it whenever I order pizza.

Looking forward to reading more.

Originally Posted by oneironut

Nice journal you've got here. I especially like your recurring characters/settings and the Snow Crash influence of your Antiimagineering dream. I think it's time to read that book again; I think about it whenever I order pizza.

Looking forward to reading more.
[/b]

Haha, thanks. I think I got the idea for tracking recurring characters and settings from a DJ I saw over at LD4All a while ago.

Strangely, I never made the connection before. Now I'm never going to be able to order pizza without thinking of Stephenson!

March 14th, 2007

Worshipping the Witch Queen

Myself, a few other adventurers, and K (who is, IRL, a classmate that I dislike), are exploring one of the towers in the white house. I feel faintly nervous, but I know from past dreams and experiences that there are a few rooms at the top of the tower where we will be safe. K isn't moving fast enough, and I think that she wants us to be caught by the malevolent things that live in the lower stories. She sits down on a windowsill and idly starts doodling on the cover of one of my favorite books. I politely ask her to stop, but she ignores me.

There isn't a ladder, so we can't get to the top of the tower and have to go back down. One of the lower stories turns out to be part of my real house. Someone has installed child-sized beds in the front room and the bathroom. I'm desperately afraid of something in the house, but I can't quite articulate what that is. I begin to argue hysterically with K, who retreats into what should be my father's room.

I follow her, trying to calm myself so I can explain why I'm so upset. The room is painted the wrong color and is slightly bigger than it should be.

"Look," I tell her, trying to control my sudden sobs, "I don't have a problem with you yourself. It's just that I've had nightmares about the Witch Queen for years, so when you go around invoking her of course I'm going to freak out." (Note: I've never had a nightmare about this, nor have I been rereading any Narnia books. Weird! )

K still thinks I'm overreacting. I yell at her for having hung up a picture of some malevolent entity on the bedroom wall, but she assures me that it's just a picture of a Greek goddess of the harvest.

Wizardry 101

(Sort of hypnagogic, very close to lucidity. Have been rereading Diane Duane's "Young Wizardry" series, definately an influence. I really want to remember the egg-- I wonder what it could hatch into?)

I'm sitting in an empty cafe near Penn Station, taking things out from a messenger bag and laying them on the table. I have a naval orange, a piece of crumpled cellophane, an egg made out of what seems like dark blue marble, and a heavy red book. I know it's a wizard's manual when I open it up, but I can't read the passage I want to see.

March 15th, 2007

(Ha! At least half of my MILD worked last night. No lucidity, but I woke up and wrote down a dream, and then recalled a few more upon awakening. Score&#33

A Critque

The members of my track team and I are sitting in one of the English classrooms, writing essays about lucid dreaming. One of the underclassmen is reading my essay, and he remarks that while it's decent, my transitions between ideas are pretty awful. I agree with him. Another of my teammates is working on a story about a man trapped in an endless chain of false awakenings. "It's very good," I think to myself, "but the assignment was to write an essay, not a narrative!"

There is no friend, anywhere.

I'm in a rambling group of people, perhaps seven or so in all. We're walking around on the outskirts of town, and we try to cross the highway near the ice cream shop and the antiques store. Apparently we're walking too slowly for the likes of some eastbound motorists-- a man in a car begins berating the last person in line. I walk on by, trying to ignore the ensuing argument. The motorist threatens to call the police on us for jay-walking, and we all get scared and run for the bus stop (which, IRL, does not exist) and board a (likewise nonexistant&#33 city bus.

Around this time, I realize I'm in a group of crazy Discordians, like in Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus! trilogy. I decide that I'll recruit a few people into the Legion of Dynamic Discord. I sit next to a random person and begin chatting with him. He looks terrified, which I find utterly hilarious. I'm terribly self-satisfied and good-humored-- I realize that I'm either drunk or high. (Note: I've been tipsy all of twice in my life, and never high.) I pass my seatmate a slip of paper that reads 'THERE IS NO FRIEND, ANYWHERE.' He flips out, looking around the bus for possible enemies, asking me what my motives are, and generally embarking on a paranoid trip.

A man that I can't help but thinking of as Hagbard Celine, even though he looks nothing like the character from RAW's book, passes my seatmate a paper that reads 'THERE IS NO ENEMY, ANYWHERE.' All the Discordians laugh, but the man acts like his brain is about to short out.

More Busing Woes

The scene warps. Instead of a city bus, I'm now on my ordinary school bus, along with a bunch of elementary schoolers. The bus driver misses my stop, so I get up to complain. She grumbles and finally slows down, letting me off at a house half a mile down the road from my home.

Two other DCs, who look like some of the kids I work with at my summer job, come along. At this house, there's another familiar-kid DC. I'm horrified, though-- the kid DC has a dirty face, and her clothes are all torn. I realize I'm carrying a bag of water balloons, which she asks me for-- this house has no running water!

I pour water from a cloth bag for a Boston terrier I find in the yard. After it drinks, I pick it up and walk down the highway to my house. When I get home, I let the dog out into the garage, along with my mom's cat, my cat, and an unfamiliar one. I edge towards lucidity, thinking, "that's really weird-- Cinder isn't a kitten anymore, and George should not be bigger than a dog! What's wrong here?" My thoughts get interrupted when a lady comes from what might be the SPCA and asks for the dog. I let her take it.

Ewige Blumenkraft.

Back with the group of dream-Discordians. It's summer, and dry and sunny out, so we're camping in my front yard. We have sleeping bags and things set up, and, as not surprising with the Legion of Dynamic Discord, everyone is in an *ahem!* altered state of conciousness. A policeman happens upon our encampment and insists that we get up. He calls us 'hippies' and 'squatters.' We all find this hilarious, and cat-call at him. I yell, "Ewige blumenkraft, man," and fall onto my sleeping bag, laughing. I know our leader can get us out of this, even though he hates exerting authority.

When I next remember, we're now camping in my living room. The man I tried to recruit on the bus is there, but he still looks confused and scared at our jolliness. Our stoned leader and I are leaning affectionately on one another, talking nonsense. The new recruit asks, "are you guys together, or something?" We respond to him by laughing.

March 16th, 2007

(Slept poorly, due to working late on a project for school. Am beginning to think that anything involving track should be a dream sign to watch for. It's not surprising that I think about it, since it takes up a good two hours or more of my day.)

Running Drills

Ramtha the Enlightened One, a stranger, and myself are all meant to give speeches at a school assembly. To pass the time before we start, we're doing running drills in the elementary gym.

Thanks, bro. I think.

(This dream is totally due to bro's 'Sleep Naked Dream Lucid' topic. I must've been thinking about it in my sleep. WTF?)

I've stumbled onto a website for nudists, of all things. It's not perverted or anything. The main thing that bothers me is the website's layout, which is confusing and childish. Most of the buttons and icons look like they were made in MS Paint, with the airbrush tool.

The website announced that local nudists have a weekend convention at a nearby amusement park every year. Another part lists dating advice for nudists.

Quick march!

Am rushing around my room early in the morning, frantically throwing random things into my bag. I'm wearing a uniform and trying to catch the bus to a paramilitary academny that I'm visiting today. If I like it, I might start going to school there. I really want to make a good impression, but I don't know what I should bring along.

Oh, really?

(Don't recall this one. I do recall waking up around 3 AM and thinking, "oh, I'll remember it in the morning!"

March 17th, 2007

(Whoo! Two brief lucid episodes in one night.)

Lucid acid diethylamide?

I'm in the living room of dream-version of my mother's parents' house, which has more bedrooms and higher ceilings than the real-life one. It's Christmas, and my grandparents keep urging me to have some of the bell-shaped chocolates they're passing around. The chocolate is cheap, waxy, and colored green and red.

My paternal aunt and uncle come into the room, and I wander out to the kitchen. My sister, grandfather, and mother are cooking. Something prompts me to do a RC. I try to count my fingers a few times and realize I have an extra one. I go lucid. I amuse myself by zooming up and down the hallway for a bit, but I realized that dinner will be soon, and I should go back to my normal dream since I don't want to be rude to the other people eating. (WHAT?)

I land in the hallway. A boy who is either my cousin or ZJ, a classmate, asks to talk to me. He hugs me and tells me that he doesn't know what to do with his life. I pat him on the back, feeling sad for him, and tell him that it's normal to feel like this.

My English teacher steps out of the room at the end of the hall, and ZJ and I jump. We half-heartedly fake a few swing dance steps, to disguise our embrace. Our teacher laughs, and we follow her down the hall and into another setting.

ZJ comments that it would be interesting to see what effects LSD would have on lucid dreaming, and that I should try it the next time I find myself in a LD. I say, "I'd rather try it first in real life." "That's impossible," he says sadly. "I only use it out in the thorn bushes were no one can see." He shows me some scratches on his arms, and I nod.

I remember that people talking about LDing was one of my dreamsigns. We're now in a Wal-Mart type store, so I try to read the cover of a magazine about birds. Its cover story is something like 'Bird Jumps New Record-- 61 Feet!' I try to read a sign over an aisle. It reads 'here dere try cheerioes new.' It doesn't make sense, but I assume it was just written by an employee who doesn't speak much English.

ZJ vanishes, and I find myself walking with my mom. We're trailing behind the rest of my family. We're on our way to a restaurant and trying to catch up with everyone else.

In the parking lot of the restaurant, everything suddenly goes black. There are footsteps in the dark. I want to run away, but my mom says, "Don't move. There's neither beast nor man out there that couldn't flay our corpses in five minutes flat."

I realize that I am dreaming and shouldn't be afraid. Still, I'm uncomfortable and want to wake up, so I do. (I find out that I have too many blankets on the bed, which usually gives me bad dreams.)

Light on my feet

I'm dancing with an underclassman from track in the hallway near my physics classroom. Our other teammates are around, waiting for instructions from the coaches. The kid says something like, "wow, you're really light! How much do you weight?" I retort, "120 pounds-- I'm not that light!"

Moondoll

I'm in a group of people who are trying to rescue a noble woman. The city looks something like Venice-- water everywhere, canals, foreign-lookng boats. In the process of rescuing the Marquise, one of our adventurers dies. I know that if we can con someone into granting him a favor, we can bring him back to life. He must be kept cold, though.

It turns out that someone's trying to kill the Marquise, so she must be hidden. She has to go to the opera later that evening, though, and she can't miss it. Everyone stares at me, and someone comments shrewdly that I look almost exactly like the Marquise. I'm appointed to take her place at the opera.

We're then in a hotel room, which may be on a boat. A young man with brown curly hair and a waistcoat comes in, looking nervous. I'm wearing a long, heavy gown made out of lime-green and pink silk and waiting to put on my overdress. I ask him what's wrong.

"You'll have to hide," he (I think he might be called Neville) tells me, "they're looking for the Marquise here, and you look too much like her."

I go into the bathroom and look around. I open another door, which leads into a cold, stone closet. The dead man from earlier is hanging up here. I think, 'I'll have to do something about that, eventually.'

My sister and grandmother help me put on makeup. My sister says, "the people in the first row are always photographed. It's usually all silver-haired old women whose fashions are thirty years out of date. You'll be the only moondoll there." (I've no idea what that means, but it's a pretty word&#33

My hair won't go right, and it takes forever to do. I end up in a red dress, heavily made-up and looking pale and faintly Asian.

The opera, when I get there, is slightly interactive and set in space. It's bloody awful.

March 18th, 2007

(Dream recall definately gets messed up when I sleep on a weird schedule. Ack. I did have a neat, sort-of WILD at the beginning of the night.)

It's all the same in Mexico

I'm walking down a hallway in my school with two other girls. We are all dressed in neat, sky-blue skirts, white cardigans, and sensible, chunky black shoes. We're supposed to be ringing out the noon hour, but we only have glasses of water and spoons to clink them with; someone has mislaid the bells.

I smile at a classmate as he passes, and then abruptly feel guilty. I'm not flirting, I think to myself, I'm just being friendly. It's who I am.

I realize that the girls I'm with and I are going to try to train as nuns. I tell them, "I hope this works out. It seriously was this or become a witch."

"Really?" one asks politely.

"Uh-huh. Do you know how expensive that is-- how hard it is to find a good magician-teacher these days? I might have to go to Mexico and study to become a bruja. But I'd still get to see you guys, maybe. There are lots of convents in Mexico, right?"

They agree. We enter the cafeteria, where they're serving hash browns, tater tots, and chicken patties for lunch. I frown, thinking that it's not a very healthy lunch for the track season.

Junior Librarianship

(I found myself falling asleep while aware, and hypnagogic imagery was sort of swirling around me. I remembered that I wanted to play with visiting the settings of novels I read. I've loved the Chrestomanci series since I was about twelve, and I'm slightly embarassed to say that I still read 'em. Ah, well. They're an awesome place to play&#33

I find myself in a small, whitewashed room with thick brown carpet. Sunlight streams in through the window, making the walls bright. I look around, curious to see where I've ended up. The setting seems late-Victorian-ish, or early 20th century. The bed is covered in a fat golden-brown, velvet comforter, and there's a maple wardrobe on the other side of the room with a stylized lily carved on its door.

I laugh, suddenly knowing that I'm in the setting of Diana Wynne Jone's Chrestomanci novels, even though this room was never described in any of the books. I turn to a looking-glass on another wall and study myself. My glasses are rimless and faintly old-fashioned, my hair is plaited and in a bun. I exert some control on the dreamscape and decide that I'm going to be wearing a brown dress (what is it with this room and brown?) with a blue silk sash. It works okay, but the collar is a little lacier than I would prefer, and I seem to have petticoats showing at the hem of my dress. (Ha&#33

I leave what I've decided is either a guest or a staff bedroom and walk down a plain flight of stairs. Eventually, I find myself in a dining room that looks out onto some immaculately-kept grounds. Just like in the books! I'm psyched. The table is set for many people to have breakfast, but I sit down, not bothering to wait, and take a roll from a basket on the table.

A young, friendly-faced blond boy of about sixteen enters the room and gets some food as well from the sideboard. He greets me.

"Hullo. Aren&#39;t you <my name>, the new assistant librarian?"

"That&#39;s the position I&#39;ve been offered," I reply, vague but smiling.

"Welcome. I&#39;m Eric." (Again, a character from the book. Wow, Spritely&#39;s brain, you&#39;re great.) We shake hands, and I&#39;m slightly amused by how polite and formal a kid of sixteen or so can be. We talk during breakfast, and he asks me where I&#39;m from.

"Oh-- well," I say, feeling slightly awkward, "I&#39;m not really here, you know. This is just a dream body I wander around in while the rest of me sleeps at home."

Eric looks pensive. "Hmm. I suppose it&#39;s not that uncommon-- other people do it, I&#39;ve heard. Won&#39;t you be awfully tired when you wake up?"

"I hope not," I say, getting up from my chair. "And I&#39;m sorry I have to leave, but I can feel my dream control slipping. I&#39;ll come back soon&#33;"

He nods, the dream twists sideways, and I lose lucidity.


March 19th, 2007

(Urk. I really, really need to get more than six hours of sleep on school nights. This week, I&#39;m trying to not rack up any more than six hours of sleep debt-- I&#39;ve already got two.)

Strange garments

The sleeves of my blue and white button-down shirt are slightly wrong. They seem to have slits cut at the elbows. I tug at them, but it does nothing, so I just shrug.

The Subject of Subjectivity

In my bedroom, back when it was painted pink. Someone is using enormous soap-bubbles with text inside to illustrate the concept of subjective reality and parallel universes to me. Each bubble has a different sub-topic in it, but the bubbles themselves are a visible representation of the concepts. The person teaching me is getting very excited, but I&#39;m bored and faintly peeved-- "I already know most of this&#33;"

March 20th, 2007

A Trip East

I walk around my house, hastily gathering things for a trip to New York city. I know that my train leaves at 1:29 PM, but every time I look at a clock, it&#39;s different. I assume that I&#39;m late, and I hurry. Someone is following me around. We&#39;re having an argument about whether I am or am not a know-it-all. I try to pry AA batteries out of a broken CD player to use in my own. I have to fit everything a brown paper sack and my track bag, for some reason.

I&#39;m concerned that I won&#39;t have anything like enough to read on the train. I have a green paperback book that I&#39;m half done with, and a silver paperback that I seem to have about twenty pages left in. The green one is originally called something like He&#39;s Lost His Mind, but as I look its title changes to something like He&#39;s Lost Out There, and then Lord Byron&#39;s Lost Out There With His Mind. I&#39;m faintly puzzled with these weird changes, so I leave the books behind.

I get into a truck with my mother, and we start driving towards the city and the train station. I&#39;m cold, and I realize that I haven&#39;t packed any sweaters for the trip. My mother suggests that I buy one of the dorky sweatshirts from the nearby ice cream shop.

"If you believe I&#39;m going out east in something lstupid ike that," I snarl, "you&#39;ve got another think coming." (Note: I&#39;ve never said this phrase before in my life. Weird&#33; Note that I&#39;m capable of being a bratty teenager in my sleep. Skills. )

(The dream then sideslips into an &#39;alternate universe.&#39; I&#39;m still in a vehicle on the same road, but I&#39;m younger and riding in a different truck with a boy. We&#39;re both complaining about school. I say, "I&#39;d much rather read books or do something else than waste my Wednesdays watching those dumb propaganda films." Dream then slips back.)

My mom and I pull off into a deserted-look library&#39;s parking lot. The building itself is almost shaped like a wooden playground from my childhood. We go up to it-- my Physics teacher is the librarian. While I&#39;m gaping at this strange turn of events, my mother informs him that she needs to plant tomatos. "Plum or other ones?" my teacher asks. "We have the seeds."

The upper level of the library turns out to be a strange convienience store. I look around for snacks to eat on the train. A really popular drink in this store is something expensive and chocolate and comes in glass bottles. As far as I can tell, it&#39;s called &#39;Splurge.&#39; I can&#39;t find anything I want to eat, so I get bored. My out-of-town aunt and my sister are suddenly in the store. My sister and I look at the cookies for sale, making cracks about them. There&#39;s a screech from outside in the road: someone&#39;s ran over a housecat. The road is a highway that should be on the other side of town-- I&#39;m quite surprised to find it here.

March 21st, 2007

(Stayed home from school today, due to the re-emergence of last week&#39;s &#39;aargh, kill me now&#39; sort of cold. I know I dreamt a lot more, but I can&#39;t remember all of them. So close&#33

The Industry

Someone is showing me a sort of timetable or chart. We&#39;re in an office-- they&#39;re sitting down in a cheap swivel chair, I&#39;m standing with my arms crossed. The person complains that post-production usually takes twice as long as the actual filming of a movie. I&#39;m not impressed.

Adventures on Myspace

I&#39;m online, trying to remember something funny that one of my friends once said to me. I check her Myspace, hoping she posted it there. I find a Myspace she made a few years ago, and I&#39;m surprised to find that it has a message board. I don&#39;t remember the website working like this before. I give up, irritated.

The Trestle Bridge

I&#39;m sitting in my living room, wondering briefly why the paint and carpet are those of the room ten years ago. My sister and her friend EK are in the kitchen, watching TV and sitting on a couch there. I&#39;m playing with a &#39;smart pad&#39; of drawing paper: it&#39;s a sort of computerized pallete that can take a picture of something and then render it as a lineart drawing in the style of a particular artistic movement. Every time I try to show them, though, the program errors and wipes itself out.

My sister asks if I want to go somewhere. I jump up and shout &#39;YES&#33;&#39; I think that I&#39;m sick to death of sitting in the house and eating sweets, and that Christmas break (?) can be terribly boring. We leave EK and get into my sister&#39;s car.

As we drive around the countryside, I realize that IRL my sister had her liscence suspended for speeding, and that she shouldn&#39;t be driving at all. Right on cue, a state trooper pulls up alongside us. I hold my breath, and the trooper pulls over another car. I sigh in relief.

We&#39;re driving past a sort of railroad trestle bridge that spans a gorge. I&#39;m relieved that we don&#39;t have to drive over it: it&#39;s really old and unsteady-looking, and planks are missing from its floor. (I swear I&#39;ve dreamt about this before.) Then it turns out we made a wrong turn and have to go over it on foot.

Hiking?

It&#39;s still Christmas break. The snow is very deep outside, and my dad and I are in the basement, dressing up in warm clothes. We&#39;re going to drive up to my summer camp and go hiking. I call ES, one of my camp friends, and leave a message saying that she should call and come along.

When my dad and I get to the driveway, we have to load the truck up with redwood (?) logs to burn, in case we get stuck somewhere. My mother comes out and berates my dad-- doesn&#39;t he know that I&#39;m sick? I shouldn&#39;t go anywhere&#33; We ignore her and get in the truck, only then I realize that I only have one glove on and that my hands are very cold.

We drive up into the hills, and I realize I haven&#39;t eaten anything all day. I watch convienience stores pass sadly, feeling hungry. ES hasn&#39;t called me back, and I&#39;m afraid she&#39;ll be up at camp, alone in the snow.

Originally Posted by Spritely

Junior Librarianship
Wow, Spritely&#39;s brain, you&#39;re great.
[/b]

I agree. That was a cool lucid, nice detail and control.

Originally Posted by oneironut

I agree. That was a cool lucid, nice detail and control.
[/b]

Eeh, thanks. I really like the sort of lucid where the environment tends to look after itself, and I just have to concern myself with my own actions and all that. (Or maybe I&#39;m just not proactive? Huh.) Anyways, I hope I&#39;ll find my way back into this dream soon.

March 22nd, 2007

(Couldn&#39;t remember any dreams at all&#33; I&#39;m starting to see a pattern, though: six hours of sleep equals almost no recall. Seven hours equals one or one and scraps of others. Eight hours equals three-ish. Argh. Now to bed, and hopefully to some dreams that I&#39;ll remember.)

March 23rd, 2007

(Hmm. Maybe last night&#39;s hypothesis is bunk: I managed to recall two and some scraps on seven hours of sleep.)

From Russia, With Love

I get out of a station wagon along with a few other people. I get the feeling that the people I&#39;m with are related to me, and that we&#39;re on what amounts to a family vacation. We&#39;re in the parking lot of the pharmacy in downtown SC, though the store is oriented in a different direction than normal.

We all wander inside, and I pick up a leftover St. Patrick&#39;s day button. It reads something like &#39;Be kind to the Irish&#33;&#39; I decide to buy it and a candy bar. I look at my wallet while I&#39;m in line, and I&#39;m surprised to see that I have more money than I thought. The cashier is very slow. She&#39;s a short girl with her reddish-brown pulled back in a pony tail, and she looks flustered. She speaks in a strange accent when she gets to me, and apologizes for being so slow. She just got here from Russia. I smile and tell her I had a co-worker a few summers ago from there. She smiles.

She doesn&#39;t seem to know how much change I&#39;m supposed to get, and neither do I. . (Money dreamsign.) Eventually I just hand her two singles and she puts the change on the counter along with a pile of other coins. I tell her, &#39;have a nice summer&#33;&#39; and go back to the car.

Groceries

I&#39;m in the grocery store with my father. The store is enormous and arranged oddly: they have the bulk oats/bran/sunflower seed section right amongst displays of bananas and plantains. I&#39;m wearing my silver shoes and dodging between customers, trying not to step on anyone&#39;s toes. The other shoppers are all unusually polite and happy, despite the store being crowded.

Big Savings&#33;

I&#39;m staring at some sort of sign, which might be advertising a sale. The letters are large, blocky, and red or orange on a white background. I try to read it, but the letters keep switching around. I know that this is a dream sign, and I try to commit to memory what the words say. It says &#39;Rare,&#39; and then the &#39;R&#39; turns into a &#39;K.&#39; I&#39;m irritated that this doesn&#39;t make sense, and I don&#39;t go lucid.

(Holy crap, but have I neglected this thing&#33; I need to start again. What&#39;s more, I&#39;m going to post my backlog. It&#39;s a bit silly, but I like having my DJ accessible online, as well as in my notebook. Here goes the massive update...)

March 24th, 2007

(Wow, weekend dreams.)

Consider the Source

I&#39;m reading an article on Google News. A few sites are linked from the article in a way I have never seen before, and it really distresses me. I think I should look at the HTML source and see how they did that. (Messed up software dreamsign.) The article is about a war being declared. I&#39;m distressed.

King&#39;s Challenge

I have been given a series of tasks to accomplish by a king. My identity is rather difficult to pin down: at one point I&#39;m a male who dresses like a gutter punk, at one point I seem to be LotR&#39;s Pippen, and for the rest of it I&#39;m my normal self. There are also three housecats with us, who are sort of psychic-- they talk by flashing mental images into our heads. We are traveling via train, and &#39;civilians&#39; have a hard time seeing us. We stop at a drugstore to fetch chocolate for our task. I&#39;m trying to round up the cats and get everyone back in the car when it turns out that everyone else has been kidnapped and taken to a talkshow.

I&#39;m left to get the goods downtown with another woman and the cats. A horde of little girls in frilly birthday dresses appear. They sit down and demand to play with the cats.

Then we&#39;re flying above the city and through the past. A signpost briefly reads &#39;rOME&#39; as we fly past.

Beautification

I tell my sister that we need more flower in the house. I grab a shovel and start hacking at the carpet in the hallway. Underneath is potting soil. She persuades me to stop, and to leave the part I&#39;ve already dug up as a small garden. She compromises by saying that we can get windowboxes. I agree.

Penkiln what?

I&#39;m trying to tell someone about the Penkiln-Burn website, but I can&#39;t remember what it&#39;s about. I do remember that it&#39;s a Scottish stream, but nothing else.

I then try to show the same person a map of my yard, so I can explain that I can walk anywhere for about half a mile without actually trespassing, but they just laugh.

A Wake

My father mentions that there are lots of cars at our neighbor&#39;s house. She has died, apparently, and it&#39;s my job to make them a casserole for the wake. (Note: She died five years ago, and this exact situation almost happened.)

Not lost, but found anyways

I&#39;m going through a basket of lost and found items in my basement. I&#39;m embarassed to realize that a jacket and pair of jeans are mine-- they&#39;re not lost, I just put them downstairs intending to wash them.

Avacado tile

I&#39;m in my bathroom, trying to pack things into a small makeup case. My dad is having visitors, and they&#39;ll need the bathroom here. I go to my mom&#39;s house.

The bathroom in my mother&#39;s house is set up strangely. It&#39;s at the front of the house and decorated like it&#39;s the 1970s-- avacado tiles, free-standing tub, all that. I gather up my shampoo, preparing to go back home-- our visitors left early.

Later in this dream, there are empty beer bottles sitting on the dishwasher at my dad&#39;s house. They&#39;re brands I&#39;ve never seen before, and the words all look like they&#39;re in German.

Lecture

I&#39;m in a church&#39;s hall. Someone is giving a lecture. The light is dim and green, and the tables are all covered with cheap plastic tablecloths. I steal a binder clip from a pile of papers. A girl, who is listening raptly to the speaker, scolds me. I whisper back, "they&#39;re mine in the first place, anyways, and this is a dumb speech."

March 25th, 2007

Monster mash

(I think I was playing Zork&#33; earlier this day-- maybe that&#39;s where the mailbox thing comes from&#33

I feel that I&#39;m in a shabby, dark alternate universe. It looks a lot like my front yard, just in fall and at evening. The trees are twisted and black. I&#39;m attempting to grab something out of my mailbox. A bus is passing, going east, and I get onto it without thinking. I realize that the bus is going the wrong way, so I use my &#39;dream powers&#39; to stop it, and I walk back home. The wind blows sand and gravel into my face.

The front yard, when I return, is filled with every monster I&#39;ve ever dreamed of, since I was very small. I recognize some of them from old dreams. I start of panic, but I realize that this is a dream. I broadcast love and acceptance, thinking, "you are all a part of me, I am not afraid."

I wake up, unconvinced that I am safe. I have to keep doing RCs to make sure this isn&#39;t a FA.

Mind you mind the baby&#33;

In someone else&#39;s castle, I&#39;m charged with making sure the baby isn&#39;t stolen. I tie a cloth to my wrist and around the baby&#39;s waist, and then to someone else, and to the bedstead as well. "There&#33;" I think. "Let &#39;em try."

March 26th, 2007

(No recall&#33; Ack&#33


March 27th, 2007

Flawed logic

L, D and I are leaving the Physics room. We are all happy because we finally got all of our Physics labs in, so our grades are secure. We walk into the empty hallway. I ask, "okay, guys. We&#39;re done, we have some time. What do you want to do this weekend?"

"Let&#39;s get drunk&#33;" L cheers.

"Dude, you&#39;re 18," I reply. "No one will sell you alcohols."

Every little detail

The soap dispenser in the upstairs bathroom has the pump ripped out. This bothers me, but I can&#39;t put my finger on what&#39;s wrong.

Fashion tragedy

I&#39;m wearing a very strange purple and green skirt, which is far too loose around my waist. A boy has a laptop set up in the Physics classroom, and he shows me how he can hack his way into sites by freezing pop-ups and bypassing them. I think "script kiddie" to myself.

I adjust my skirt, suddenly concious that it&#39;s been pulled up very high. I wonder why no one told me. "Oh," I remember. "That&#39;s right, they all hate you."

(This is very weird-- I would NEVER think that while waking&#33


March 28th, 2007

Snow, again?

It snowed. I wake up in my bedroom and start getting ready for school. I look outside the window and see everything coated in white. It&#39;s strange, though-- the snow looks slightly melted, like it&#39;s been there a while, and there was none yesterday.

Chores in my sleep

I&#39;m in the upstairs bathroom. I think I should clean it before our guests arrive, but I&#39;m exhausted. I sit on the toilet seat and stare out the window instead.


March 29th, 2007

(No recall. Pfft.)

March 30th, 2007

Long lost brother

(This dream freaked me out, frankly. My mother had a miscarriage between having my sister and I. My sister and I realized a few years ago that we had both decided that, had that child been born, it would have been a boy.)

My sister and I are in the side yard in what feels like a parallel universe. It&#39;s spring-- the forsithia bush is blooming-- and faintly misty out. We wander around, looking for our long-lost brother, who has been stuck here for a very, very long time. There&#39;s a gigantic checker board built into the ground by the garden. Someone informs us that our brother built it to amuse the few people who hadn&#39;t fled this place, when everyone else was running away. We nod. This sounds like something he would do.

I want to pick some daffodils to take back to &#39;my&#39; universe, but my sister stops me. She says they aren&#39;t plentiful enough yet to justify picking them.

The setting changes to the high school gym, which is also deserted and faintly foreign-feeling. My sister and I are visiting nobles to a foreign court. She mentions, while reading a magazine, that now we&#39;re out of the city, we could take up reading the sports papers.

"Why not take up an actual sport, like fencing?" I ask.

"Well," she demands, "where could we practice without Them seeing?"

"In the woods," I reply promptly. "Actually, no. That&#39;s not a good idea. I can see the headlines now-- &#39;Princess Trips on Tree Root, Impales Self on Stick.&#39;"

She laughs. "Why&#39;d you call me a princess? You know right well that I&#39;m a Duchess and that you&#39;re only a Marquise."

"Sure, right. Okay."

One of the nannys for this royal family makes the princesses lie down on the gym floor for a nap. We watch.

I tell my sister, "We need to find out about the word &#39;doll&#39; in this word. There&#39;s some weird connotation to it."

The nanny chases us away. We run into the locker room and out into the hall.

Suddenly, the school is populated again, and looks normal. I&#39;m walking with DG. We&#39;re skipping class, so I decide to go hide in the library.

March 31th, 2007

Wildcat mountain

I&#39;m at my summer camp, and I&#39;m inventing a bunch of ghosts stories to tell some campers and their parents. Everyone keeps interrupting me or wandering away, until I only have four campers left with me. We start on a hike up the hill. It&#39;s dark, and very hostile-feeling here. Grapes hang in bunches from the pine trees.

Occasionally a leopard will leap out at one of the campers, but we fight them off. I&#39;m scared, I have to protect these kids&#33; I make them stop and build a campfire. We finally find our way back down the hill, to one of the campsides. There&#39;s an inground pool here, empty. I&#39;m mad that no one told me they were building one here.

The camp lake is slightly flooded. We go down to the swimming area. I&#39;m annoyed that no one has flipped their &#39;buddy tag,&#39; so the lifeguards don&#39;t know what campers are or aren&#39;t swimming.

Bundle up...

I&#39;m in the basement with CM, and we&#39;re dressing up in winter clothes. My wool socks go up to my knees, which I find very odd. I don&#39;t comment on it.

A chance encounter

I find A in one of the computer labs at school. I haven&#39;t seen him in a while, so I&#39;m happy. I sit on his lap and touch his hair, which is unnaturally soft. I tell him this, and he laughs.

All Hail Discordia&#33;

Something weird happens at school. I mutter "Hail Eris," appreciating the work of the chaos goddess. A teacher gives me a funny look and whisks me into his classroom, where he replies "all hail Discordia." He&#39;s a secret rebel&#33; I laugh and laugh.

April 1st, 2007

Priorities

I find A in the school parking lot, to my great surprise. I tap on his shoulder, and he&#39;s excited to see me. He hugs me so hard that he nearly lifts me off the ground.

KS is also in the parking lot. I&#39;m confused-- I haven&#39;t seen either A or KS in a long time, and I want to talk to both of them, but not at once. I figure that I can talk to KS online anytime, so I&#39;ll hang out with A. KS wanders off. She looks sad, and I feel bad.

My dad suddenly picks me up. There&#39;s a digital thermometer in the car. It reads 23 F, then 33 F, then 55, then 20. It starts to snow.

April 2nd, 2007

Poison ivy

I&#39;m in the woods in summer. I walk to walk towards a clump of flowers, but I have no shoes and I know I&#39;ll walk in poison ivy. No, it&#39;s not just shoes I don&#39;t have-- I&#39;m not wearing anything&#33; I walk around the woods and scurry for a tent that&#39;s set up nearby. I duck inside it.

Some children are trying to catch crayfish and salamanders in a stream nearby. One girl is holding a snake, and I can see another snake coiled in the water. I want to make them put the snakes down, but I remember that this area has no poisonous snakes, though I&#39;m not sure about water moccasins.

One kid wants me to help him finding a &#39;razorback.&#39; I don&#39;t know what he means. He shows me a spikey caterpillar, and says it&#39;s like that but bigger.

A bell rings. The kids go towards the house. I have clothes now. I follow them, yelling for them to wait for me. They ignore me. When we get to the front yard, a woman with a clipboard looks at us, puzzled. "I didn&#39;t ring the bell for you," she says.

April 3rd, 2007

Idols

My glow-in-the-dark Buddha statue is on my bookshelf, along with a few other trinkets I don&#39;t remember owning. I am very puzzled.

Futility

Like I do in real life, I&#39;m trying to stop the microwave with one second left before it beeps. I miss every time, but I keep trying.

It&#39;s good to have a goal.

Hypnapompic:

"What will you do today?" someone asks me. I think for a while.

"I think I&#39;ll stage a hostile corporate takeover of Wal-Mart," I reply.

"Okay," they say, "but what will you do in the afternoon when you&#39;re done?"

April 4th, 2007

Mixed metaphors

I&#39;m in Mr. D&#39;s Global History class, helping him teach. He&#39;s talking about how some historical figure will be less known than their modern-day pop equivalent. I go to the blackboard to write an analogy based on this, but I can&#39;t remember what I wrote when I wake up.

April 5th, 2007

Save Wilbur&#33;

I&#39;m cleaning my glasses endlessly, unable to get a smudge off of them. G, my sister, and their friend R are all texting my cell phone, offering me advice about A. G suggests that A is a ninja, but I don&#39;t trust her advice.

I go down to the driveway. KB and I get into her car, and we drive off into town, intending on going to the Dollar Tree there.

Then C, G, my sister, and KB are in the car, and we&#39;re driving through a giftshop. It has really pretty dresses, so I ask C to stop so I can look at them. The boutique is small and crammed with fragile things. A walking, life-sized mechanical horse made of of iron tubing walks onto my foot, and I yelp.

We all sit down in the restaurant booths in the shop to try to get food. Someone accuses us of messing up a display in the shop, and they pull a gun on C, who they keep calling &#39;Wilbur.&#39; Everyone else ducks under the table, but I stare at C&#39;s hands, which are spread on the tabletop. Something inspires me to count his fingers. He has seven on one hand. I realize that this isn&#39;t right, and I go lucid. I tell everyone, "hey, guys&#33; I&#39;m dreaming&#33;" All tension diffuses. Everyone laughs, claps, and shakes hands with each other. I jump onto the tabletop and leap off it, spinning in the air as I fall.

The scene changes as I spin. I&#39;m now in a small college classroom that has been flooded to make an ice rink. I&#39;m ice shaking with a few girls here. I use my &#39;lucid powers&#39; to turn the floor back to carpet, but the girls complain, so I make it ice again.

Coach G, from track, pokes his head in the door to see what&#39;s going on. I proudly tell him, "I&#39;m having a lucid dream&#33;" He nods and walks away.

A burly man descends the stairs and stands, gaping, at the improvised ice rink. I magically make him sleep. The ice skating girls cheer. I ask them what I should dream about next. One says solemnly, "your next dream will be a medieval fantasy adventure&#33;" I nod and spin out.

Lucid Dreaming: The LARP?

I&#39;m in a tall, echoy, cathedral-like building. I&#39;m no longer lucid, but I&#39;m still looking for my medieval fantasy adventure. I find a group of fantasy role-players. The leader is telling one man, "your character is an elf... sorry, he doesn&#39;t do much before dying." This group of people tells me that my friends are downstairs. I nod and find a staircase. C, G, KB, and A are all downstairs. A is reading the novel High Wizardry, which I lent him. He complains about the lack of character development. I reply that the book assumes you&#39;ve read the others in the series.

The scene changes to a dark living room at a party. Everyone at the couch I&#39;m sitting on has a camera, so someone dubs it the &#39;CIA corner.&#39;

False awakening

My father calls me early in the morning to ask if I have school today. I answer, "nope, break&#39;s started." I go back to bed. When I really wake up, I have to check my call history to make sure I was really dreaming when that happened.

Guilt-trip

I&#39;m at a party near a pond. People are dancing on a rough wooden dock. A is there, but he&#39;s ignoring my attempts to talk to him. NZ from track asks me why I skipped practice the other day, but I&#39;m still well enough to come to a party.

Beautiful morning... ish

I&#39;m sleeping on the floor of my bedroom. My father comes in, insisting I wake up-- my room is a mess, and it&#39;s nice and sunny outside.

April 6th, 2007

(Was lazy and on vacation, didn&#39;t bother to transcribe dreams.

April 7th, 2007

(Ditto, apparently.)

April 8th, 2007

Junk drawer of doom&#33;

I&#39;ve been given the unusual task of trying to keep a dresser drawer shut. It sounds fairly easy, but I know instinctively (oh, dream powers&#33 that it contains something highly evil, and it will be trying to break through throughout my trial.

I lean back against the dresser and grip the handle with both hands. I remark in a small voice, "you know, drills like this used to terrifying me in school. I mean, drills against evil entities." My companions-- a middle-aged woman with pale blonde hair, and a young Hispanic woman-- both nod.

The drawer heaves and buckles underneath me. To distract myself, I stare out the window. A crowd of woman, wearing cheap orange wigs, dark robes, and masks with birds&#39; beaks, are dancing around someone else. I crane to look and then pull back. Dream-knowledge (man, I wish I were even half this intuitive in real life) informs me that the central character is Death.

I find myself chanting a prayer. The two women join in with me, and the buckling in the drawer subsides some. I can feel myself waking up and know that I am dreaming. I don&#39;t want to leave this task unfinished, so I say firmly, "this task is over. I have succeeded." The drawer stops moving, and I let go.

Bad influences

I&#39;m standing at the plaza in town, trying to huddle against a building. The wind is whipping through the parking lot, and it&#39;s dark and cold. Outside the pet store, a girl asks if she could borrow my compact. I pull it out of my purse and hand it to her. When she returns it, the powder cake is broken and crumbly.

A boy, who is standing nearby and smoking with his friends, is loudly discussing the merits of my appearance. I&#39;m really offended, since he&#39;s talking about me like I&#39;m not there, but also faintly flattered.

April 9th, 2007

Running in the snow

There&#39;s snow on the ground again. The track team is on the porch of the lodge at my summer camp, doing exercises. One of the coaches is attempting to explain a new technique, but we&#39;re all too excited by the snow to listen. He sends us off running, and we jog into a building that looks like a school.

A woman stops me and asks if I&#39;ll watch the &#39;next group&#39; for her. I agree to, thinking that this is somehow part of my summer camp-counselor job. I ask, "will these kids be the counselors-in-training?" She only laughs.

The scene changes, and I&#39;m now in a city at night with my sister. It&#39;s surprisingly warm, and heat seems to rise gently from the pavement. My sister shows me how to buy soup from a street vendor, and she, KB, and I sit down on a cobblestone sidewalk. My cell phone rings. ZB, from my English class, is on the other end, asking if I&#39;m coming to the party in SC. I say yes, but I&#39;m not sure if I can get a ride.

I give a homeless man some money to return my soup bowl to the vendor. I then walk out of this dreamscape, into...

Staff training

...my camp counselor job. I&#39;m at the lodge at camp, and it&#39;s now summer. Dinner is in session, and I walk in awkwardly, feeling conspicious. Someone asks me where I&#39;ve been, and I reply that I ate out.

The dining hall is only about 1/3rd full, and it&#39;s mostly my co-counselors. At one table, two small girls sit, so I start thinking of them as campers. One has straight blonde hair, and the younger one has brown, curly hair. The brunette complains that she&#39;s cold, so I volunteer to help find her a sweater. We go to the closet of spare stuff, and I begin to rummage around. The lightswitch to this closet doesn&#39;t work. I finally find a large sweatshirt and hand it to the camper.

It starts to rain, and the lodge is leaking badly. We all walk back into the closet, which become a tent. We walk out and are in a completely different part of the camp.

The campers become two little terriers. One is pink, the other scruffy and gray. They bounce around the tent, and the counselors plead them to listen and come away from it. They finally do, but they&#39;re being followed by a huge squirrel. One of my coworkers shouts and steps on it, but it&#39;s too late-- there&#39;s a flood of squirrels and chipmunks now, issuing from somewhere. They eat a path through a field as we watch in horror.

The stream of squirrels becomes a train, and it comes thundering back. It can&#39;t complete its return, though, since the ground is too high where we stand.

We manage to round up our campers again. The group now contains a lot of my classmates as well. I randomly grab a boy from school and hug him. I&#39;m just happy that everything is all right.

I find BJ staring down at the lake. I tell her, "God, I was scared. I know I&#39;m going to have dreams of this for a long time.

Use alternate routes

My Dad needs to drop his girlfriend off somewhere, so we need to take the quickest route home. He mentions going through one specific village and asks me if I can route them through that. I agree cautiously-- I&#39;ve only gone that way a few times.

April 10th, 2007

At school, I&#39;m attempting to gather all of my things and get to track practice. My hairbrush keeps falling out of my bag and skidding away from me, across the tiled floor. AM is pestering me, insisting that she needs six dollars if I&#39;m going to buy one of her fundraiser tickets. I only have a &#036;5 bill, which she accepts.

The lock on my locker is strange, and my combination doesn&#39;t work.

April 11th, 2007

Time travel, for fun and profit

I&#39;m walking around a hillside with the two campers from the Staff Training dream. They&#39;re both carrying bunches of flowers. "See," one explains, "if you press a bunch of flowers down on the right spot of the hill, you can travel back in time." We try it.

I&#39;m suddenly in the middle school, and I&#39;m late for Physics, which is being held in an old math classroom. Everyone glares at me as I try to enter the room quiety. The teacher hands back a test I don&#39;t even remember taking. I seem to have got a 29 out of 30 points, and I&#39;m happy.

A tall, brown-haired man in a buttondown shirt appears in the classroom. He looks faintly bewildered, but also quite amused. He apologizes to the teacher and looks around at the students, as though searching our faces. His gaze pauses on me. I&#39;m certain that he knows that I&#39;m using time travel and that I shouldn&#39;t really be here. He also knows (or so my dream-intuition tells me) that I&#39;m dreaming. It doesn&#39;t register in the dream to go lucid, though.

I look out the window. My mother&#39;s truck is there, and I get the impression that she&#39;s taking care of some horses around here. I note with surprise that there&#39;s a bear standing on the hood of her truck. A bunch of hunters come from nowhere and attack the bear as I watch. In the fight, the animal tears a long gash from the side of the truck.

My mother appears, disappointed at the wreckage. She wonders aloud how we&#39;ll get home. I ask if she&#39;s angry about the car, but she replies, "no, I was meaning to buy a new one anyways."

April 12th, 2007

Crossing the river

I am watching/witnessing part of what seems to be a children&#39;s adventure movie. In it, there is a large, mythical river-- it might be the Styx-- that can only be crossed by a magical floating bridge. From my third-person perspective, I peer down at the surface of the river from the bridge. There are holes in the ice on the river, and one hole is shaped like an enormous star. I know that the people below had to hack through the ice to get water.

The bridge/ship buckles and swings on end. Much like in the scene from Titanic, people start sliding off of it, into the river far below...

...I suddenly realize that this is all a commerical for a Happy Meal. I&#39;m irritated. I spend a while thinking that I should try to chose the lowest-calorie drink, but I can&#39;t read the menu.

Hiss, Fizz, Bang

I&#39;m in the loft of the barn with a dream character named Evan. We&#39;re sitting in the rafters together, and he keeps licking my knuckles. I laugh and pull away, telling him, "stop, you don&#39;t know where that&#39;s been."

We go back into the house. My sister and her friends are packing up, ready to go back to their college.

Modern witchery

(Apparently the dog in this dream is named after the one from Full House. How random&#33; People in my dreams are always calling me by royal titles. I wasn&#39;t much for pretending to be a princess when I was little, so I&#39;ve no idea where the comes from.)

I am standing in a large, desolate-looking field with my grandparents, mother, and sister. It looks like it&#39;s late autumn, because there are no leaves on the trees, and everything is dark from the rain. My grandfather raises a strange gun to his eye and shoots at a bird in a large, looming tree. He misses and hands the gun to my sister. She sights and shoots the bird. The bullet connects, but her technique was bad, so the bird starts fizzing like a firework and randomly flying around like a balloon that&#39;s quickly losing air. We all duck when it comes near us. It throws off sparks and explodes, and when I can see again, the scene has changed.

The new scene is in my school, near the pool. Everything is covered in hay bales. A golden retriever sits on top of a bale. Everyone else is afraid of it, but I go up to it. I remember to broadcast love to things I&#39;m afraid of. I say, "hello, Comet. I love you Comet."

Key Club or some other group is holding a fundraiser, which is why I&#39;m at the school in the evening. They&#39;re raffling off two orphans that they &#39;found somewhere.&#39; I know I should be horrified, but I beg my mother to get a ticket for the orphan with brown hair, on the grounds that she would match the appearance of the rest of my family.

I go to find AM and RD, who are selling the tickets in the cafeteria. The room is unusually busy for this time of day-- the Key Club volunteers are getting food in between helping out with the raffle. AM finds a table, and we all sit down. CM is there, eating her lunch.

We decide we need a bigger table, so I begin pestering a boy at the next table over, convincing him to trade with us. We resort to flipping a nickel. While the coin is in the air, I say, "hey presto&#33; Quantum mechanics&#33;" The nickel lands, but for a moment there are two coins-- one that is heads-up, the other, tails. I&#39;m surprised that quantum mechanics works, but CM isn&#39;t shocked. "I&#39;m a witch, after all," she says confidently, "and you&#39;re-- what, the third-most powerful witch around here?"

I try to shush her, because I don&#39;t want this fact broadcast. She won&#39;t shut up. "That means you&#39;re the princess of Middletown&#33;" she exclaims.

"Where the hell IS Middletown?" I demand. "People in dreams have been telling me about it for WEEKS&#33;"

A few sophomores come to our table to say hi. I get bored and wander around, playing with my &#39;witch powers.&#39; I leave the cafeteria and walk towards the elementary school, thinking vaguely that I need to catch the bus home. My old chorus teacher is on the lawn with a band of kids. A few parents are gathered around, watching the little band/chorus concert they&#39;re putting on.

I touch a key on an unattended piano, and the chorus teacher glares at me. A girl from chorus steps up to the piano and plays along with the chorus. I try to stop her, but she won&#39;t.

Alas&#33;

Hypnagogic:

"It&#39;s probably loaded with saturated fat," someone says.

I sigh. "That&#39;s why it tastes so good."

Rebellion, squashed

I&#39;m walking along a road at the college, muttering to myself. "How do they think that they can shelve us like that? When we get back to the hotel all my troops are sneaking out and completing this mission, once and for all."

My mother drives up in a green car, along with ES, my coworker. My mother drives into a parking lot by the dorms and ushers ES and I into a large red van. A fat, balding man is driving it. The inside of the van smells like stale cigarettes. He drives off with the passenger seat door still open and I have to close it while he drives.

Feeeny... Feeeny... Fee-hee-heeeny...

Mr. Feeny, from Boy Meets World, is on the local news channel as a weatherman. I&#39;m disappointed to see that he&#39;s predicting more cold and snow for the Northeast US.