Apachama's Head Space Brain Thing

[apachama]

I'm Not a Nice Person 1 Dreamed: 30/06/2008 Themes: Demon, Sleep Paralysis, Magic I wake up at about five AM, which annoys me because I have to go do voluntary work at this library tomorrow. I don't know when, or if I fell asleep. But sleep paralysis started up. I felt a presence at the end of my bed. It claims that it is the person the library is named after. This doesn't surprise me too much because I'm half asleep. Good for him, he spent his life studying out of body experiences, near death experiences and that kind of thing. He'd probably enjoy being a ghost. We chat for a while. He claims to have just come back from Glastonbury. We chat about weed. I tell him it "makes me feel nice and warm and fuzzy" but I don't understand why people take cocaine. Evey so often, he touches me to prove that he is real. It sends a shiver up my spine. I decide I need to sleep, so I tell him I'm going to bed. He doesn't leave, so I imagine a pentagram where he is to block him out. I fall asleep for a while and when I dream that I wake up, it is claiming to be me. After a while, I realise this is a lie. I imagine another pentagram and I turn into a demon, all claws and teeth. That shape doesn't distract me. More sleep paralysis. The spirit is back. I imagine pentagrams around my bed and sing mantras to Ganesh in my mind. Pretty soon, I hear a drum beat playing along to the mantra and I fall asleep. Then I fell into another dream, which is complex and somewhat separate. So I'll deal with it somewhat separately. Interpretation: Every so often, in dreams I encounter something weird. By my cataloguing system, this thing is a demon. That doesn't mean that I think its real. But if I go through a long period of demon dreams it has a real effect on my health and demons go away if I use some old freaky mojo spells I learnt when I was a Pagan. Hence the pentagrams. I associate this demon with my current loneliness. It wants friendship more than anything. I feel bad for hurting it. I feel like I scared it, poor thing. So, in the spirit of play-acting I made it an offering and told it that it can communicate with me in future, as long as it is polite and honest next time. If not, more freaky mojo non-existent shit for the non-existent monster. Doing this lead me to realise that I need to follow my own advice. I need to accept that at present I'm lonely and spend more time with my friends, making sure that I am at all times honest and polite about it.

[apachama]

Steampunk Marxist Snobbery Themes: Marx, Other Worlds, Campus, Toilet, Magic, Politics, Police I find myself in a parallel dimension. Which is brilliant. Parallel dimensions are amazing. Better, I'm on the university campus. I decide to go explore. I find some old abandoned buildings and eventually find an entrance. The lobby to an old cinema has been turned into a public toilet. Further in, and up the stairs, I see a gaurd. I try to sneak in, but the stairs are too hard to climb. The buildings architecture makes no immediate sense, untill I step back and see that they have built a cube in the building out of balconies and stairs. My next stop is to check on my friend A. Memories of this dimension are coming back to me. Its very Victorian in style, and mentality. A is married with children. As is only proper for a lady of twenty-one. She lets me hold her baby, but tells me to be careful because of his asthma. I know he's fine. She worries too much. Gerald is a sweet kid, smart as Hell too. Not even one year old yet and he's already asking me to explain the finer points of ceremonial magic to him. What I don't tell him is that I'm not a ceremonial magician. Wider Society thinks I'm an Anglican, the counter culture believes me to be a Satanist. I am in fact a member of the Marxist resistance. Some arsehole sees that I'm spending a lot of time talking to Gerald and makes a quip about how Gerald has my eyes, especially when we're in church. Implying, I guess, that I've had an affair with A. I respond that the reason for this is that me and Gerald pray for the same thing. Secret policemen chase me out of the building and through a cemetary. We Marxists meet at the memorial to the Chinese War. Today is special. We are marking the death of a fallen comrade. I also have some business, a new flat I've found is a possible base. Me and a friend go to check it out. The flat itself is very nice. But there's a family of dirty working class people downstairs. The Working classes have diseases, and they are dreadfully loud. Bad to have around if you want to get down to a serious Marxist revolution. So we decide to leave. On the way out, I see the friend who's funeral we'd just held. I go to tell my co-conspirator but he's been cornered by a police man who is engaging him in friendly conversation and won't leave us alone. We run away. I get to the flat and hide. Another friend of mine comes to the door. He's not a Marxist or a Pagan, in fact he's an ultra-conservative dilletante who just hangs around with us because its fashionable. I can't be bothered with him right now. So I kick the door playfully. It hits his face and he gets angry. Starts shouting "Take my money!" Just as the policeman catches up and arrests him and my alarm goes off.

[apachama]

The Fall of Society and The Rise of Monsters Themes: Politics, Apocalypse, Baby, Old University, Violence, Zombie, Dog, House, This Town Society has finally experienced its long overdue economic collapse. And its brilliant. I'm in my thirties now and I live in an abandoned mansion by the sea. Not far down the coast, a city lies in ruins. Me and my friends are having fun. Thankfully, I am the best thief in the world, so we want for nothing. One of my friends is playing with his ice cream van again. I got it for him years ago. It doesn't have any ice cream in it anymore, but it does have the most up to date integrated ice cream sales computer system you have ever imagined. As we look it over, a salesman arrives. He sees that we are rich and is a little shocked. I see that he steps back and phones the government. This is a problem. The government is made up of corrupt idiots. We're rich and as far as the government is concerned we have no right to be doing well. They'll probably take everything we own and give it to some upper class politician's family who's never done anything to deserve it. It wasn't always like this. For instance, it is now ten years ago and I'm stealing the ice cream van. The person I'm stealing it for asks me "Why did you steal this for me? I regularly bullied you in school." "I know." I reply. "But I love stealing things for people." I hid the van, and thus began our beautiful friendship. I go to campus, then to bed. In the morning I see a circle of men in black on the lawn outside of Old Building, the oldest part of our college. I hide and try to get a photo as they start to riot. When the riot is over, me and my flatmates go outside and set up a stall. We are pretending to sell swords, disguised molotiv cocktails, that kind of thing. Basically, we know that a zombie apocalypse will start in a few minutes. We have a bomb that kills only zombies, but we want to lure them into oldest part of the university and take out as many as possible at once. I run home to get my sword, and think of how my generation has been raised to see monsters as entertainment. We are responding to this zombie apocalypse as a game because thats what we have been conditioned to do since an early age. I have a new home on a hill. And a new next door neighbour. They have just got a rescue dog. A tiny, horrible little creature. Timid as anything, its green fur is coming off in places and its bulbous red eyes are scabbed over. I used to be afraid of dogs and I have to try my hardest not to be revolted. It climbs over their baby and vomits green chunks onto the baby's face. The child gurgles happilly. I get the feeling that those two are going to be friends.

[apachama]

I didn't sleep night before last due to me going to bed late and drunk. Last night my dream recall was hit because I'd smoked a little bit of weed and gone to bed late. Do I Smell or Something I am hanging out with my friends AS and N. We are playing a scary "honesty game" where we have to say what we think is wrong with each other. N claims that I smell really bad. After this, me and AS go for a walk up to this wood with a standing stone in it that was in the town I come from. As we walk around we meet this creature that looks a bit like an elephant with a shorter trunk. It is a magical creature and starts to rewire my head to make me its pet. As it goes on, I'm okay with this. But I do need the toilet. I run across to some shops and find AS and N's old house. They're moving in two weeks. As I'm about to go to the nearest toilet I run into N. She once again tells me that I smell, then invites me to a party. On my way out, there's a market going on. I want to stop and buy some replicas of antique maps. Action: Those two are moving in three weeks. I will try to see more of them. My most immediate action was to finally get around to putting my clothes in the washer.

[apachama]

Marry the Princess Dreamed: 04/07/08 Themes: Flight, Home Education, Girls, War, Fantasy, Farming, Parents, Domestic (in not having to worry about it) Characters: Dream Girl, Gay Guy As far as I can remember, I must have gone lucid early in the dream and decided to take the opportunity to fly high and fast. I dart around for a while doing this before settling down to watch the feature presentation of the night. I am a teenage boy sat in the car with his parents being driven to meet a girl for the first time. Both me and the girl are home educated. Her house is tidy, nice. We have a fair bit in common, I think. I'm trying my best to keep a conversation going. We drive back to mine and my parents leave us to talk. My room is a mess, but we have everything that we want. Food, resources, its nice in a way. Being that we are both annoying teenagers, we expect our parents to bring us anything we want and get angry if they don't get it to us fast enough. My parents let us know that we are meant to get married. I don't want to do this, neither does she. For her, its the fact that she doesn't know me at all. For me its the fact that I am gay. This girl is nice, but really not my type. We do find we like each other, though. We enjoy going for walks. I show her a bonfire near the Pagan Site. One day, we decide to go for an especially long walk, por watch a film. The dream has both happening. We find ourselves at the first battle of men. Our army advances. I am at the back, the girl is in the centre of the army. When we reach the enemy castle however, most of the frontlines get scared. The girl finds herself suddenly leading from the front. After discussion with a dwarf who has hidden himself in a jam jar, I come up with a tactic. Both armies are evenly matched, and the battle will take a while. So we'll only fight with half our forces. The enemy is bound to use everything he has, and after a while he'll get tired. If we can delay him and keep the pressure up while tiring the enemy out, we can win this war. The girl finds herself pushed to the back of the line. Then kicked out of the games the troops off-duty are playing. Then the world's diverge again. In the reality where we watched the war on film, the girl is trying to explain to me from the Bible why Jesus is the son of God. In the world where we saw the battle, we are going back to her house as good friends. She lives in a massive, ultra modern farming community. Her parents even have a supermarket on site for staff, which doesn't sell the Daily Mail. She asks me to marry her. I want to. But my character is still gay.

[apachama]

Some interpretation I was home educated. I believe there is a move towards parents wanting to regulate their children's lives more closely. Arranged marriages would not surprise me too much. Having everything in life is a big thing for me. I have very little. The concept of having all the food you want and someone to look after you and a girl who has a cosy place is all good. But the cost of having this is very high. If I wanted to not be hungry from time to time, I would have to move out of Wales and in with my parents. I'm not willing to do that because I don't want to rely on them. These characters have everything, and it makes them ungrateful. Its not good to take things for granted. The Pagan Site is my favourite place in earth. Its this bonfire site I tidy up every so often. It often appears in dreams. Jesus. I was home educated and went to a Christian school. One of the things I hate is seeing people I grew up with who are still in that community. Its freaky. Their arguments never work. The Bible does not prove God to me, as I don't believe it. Worse still is the arrogance some of them have to think they can repeat the same bits of Christian doctrine I learnt as a child and expect it to convert me. My character being gay could show how eager I am to have a girl around right now. I'm willing to accept anything. But also, nothing. I very much doubt I'm ready for another relationship. Though I'm getting there. I'll rely on future dreams to tell me if I should be dating or whether my hunger for company is superficial. Farming - I need to talk to my ex-girlfriend's parents. I might be able to go work on their farm for a while. Which would be a nice change of routine.

[apachama]

Date: 06/07/08 Living Arrangements Themes: Summer, Domestic, Parents, This town, Money, Summer '07 Flat, My current flat. US elections. Buddhism, my old church, drama I have an interesting life-style going on, this dream summer. I spend some time in my real home, at night I sleep at my parent's apartment. Which is still in town. I have my room from last summer reserved. One day when I come home my mum tells me that she has banned me from watchin TV after 10 PM. I watch very little TV but this still annoys me. I yell at her and she apologises. But I start to make plans to move out anyway. That night, I self harm. When I used to do this, it was always on my leg, but in the dream I cut my lower arm. I then forget to cover it the next day. I feel badd for those people I know who suffer worse with this problem. But in general, I like the scars and the pain and the guilt. This feeling of being okay with this lasts even after I wake up. Looking through my old projects I see the name of the woman who's books I have been sorting out in the library. I remember all those half finished summer projects still going on. My plan for the day is to get rid of my spare room. I haven't paid for it anyway. Its cheapest. But my real house is nicest. I feel like a fool for spending £45 a week on one flat and £20 a week to live with my parents at the same time. I have wasted a lot of the money saved up for the summer simply through indecision. I visit my dad and explain the move. He complains my drawing of an alien fleet has too many alien spaceships in it. Me and a friend sit and play an Alpha Centauri scenario set up as the US Democratic primaries while an old teacher watches. Then we swith to easier games. I go to see a play in my old church. All the characters wear big wooden suits. The Buddha bursts on. I am annoyed by the western preference for showing the Buddha as a fat guy, to the exclusion of the hstorical facts about him. He destroys everything. Overturns the overhead projecter. I try to help the stage hands sort out the mess in a brief intermission. As I wake, I have a smaller dream. My friend AB has put all my clothes in the washing machine on the kitchen table. He tells me I need to get them moved as they are blocking other people.

[apachama]

The big thing in this dream is self harm. I think my brain is finally working on memories from when I was depressed and helping me to sort them out. I guess it helps that this is the summer. I was depressed in the summer, and first self-harmed in the flat I was squatting in back then. Maybe me letting that flat go is a good sign. I always dream of it, often in a positive way. Back then I slept there and spent my days in another flat, where I was happy. But since depression I hardly ever dream of that flat. Funny. Before this dream, my depression was always something I was afraid to remember. Now it still is but I remember the warmth of sleeping all the time, how lovely it was to smoke and look at the street lights, how I enjoyed playing with my rats. Very regularly I have dreams where there is a play on in my old church and something goes wrong. I left Christianity when I was seventeen and have since developed an intense subconcsious hatred for it. I sometimes wonder what I think went wrong here. Maybe I failed to put on an act? But I'm rarely the actor. I am usually a techie or an audience member who ends up feeling obliged to help out. Sometimes I just feel obliged to watch because they lack nothing but an audience. The Overhead projecter is whats wrong with Christianity of the form I was born with. People concentrate on reading the words off the screen like it was an icon. One of the first things that tipped me off that Christianity wasn't for me was working on the Overhead Projecter and realising how little worship goes on. As for the clothes. Some mundane advice from my dreams there.

[apachama]

Things That Leave I am camping with A - who had bought me a pet Tarantula. I don't like it, it spends its time trying to scale the walls of its cage. I know I should get it out and play with it, but its a fucking Tarantula. It gets out of its container, and dashes for the tent's entrance. Because I kind of fear picking it up, I stomp on it and put it back in the cage. Me and A go home and find out that there's a meteor heading towards Earth, so we go to visit an astronomy lab. We find a scientist and sit in his office all day, pressuring him to make culculations on when the asteroid will hit, so that we can try to knock it off course. However, we notice he keeps on getting e-mails. Two guys are brain-washing him into being their slave. We realise they want to destroy the world. This annoys me, I try to tell him not to talk to them. A stays cool. But I end up shouting at him. I end up storming off. As I walk through town, I decide I would find the power to control people's minds irresistable. Just because it would be so interesting. I run into the scientist, and apologise. He says its okay and that he wants to be my best friend. I notice a light on in the lab. A has access to the computers. I go in to help her. Walk past the receptionist, but she starts to follow me. I want to distract her so she doesn't see A. So I point out a cute white kitten to me. The cat tells me its left home. It stays in the lab because there's nowhere else. "You can leave, you know." I tell it. The cat seems happy about this. The secretary can't believe that I'm talking to a cat and believe that its talking back. This gives A enough time to finish her work and get out. As I wake up, I'm on stage in my old church with a flatmate. We were about to sing, but I remember we did that a few hours ago. So I open the stage to the audience, run a kind of karaoke show.

[apachama]

Things that Leave II I wake up fow a few minutes and write down my dream. Then I fall right back to sleep and it continues. I am still in the lab. The two bastards who want to destroy the world are attacking us. They have used the cat spirit to possess my ex-girlfriend, C. She stays in this basket, and kills anything that comes close, while a bigger spirit attacks me and Ali and the two world destroyers help it. I go Lucid and realise a few things; I am about to wake up and I really want to kill these bastards. I lose visual but keep sound as I give me and A guns, a tank, and a personal army led by B.A. Baracus. I hear the beautiful sound of complete overkill. When I "wake up" there are two scraps of paper on my bed. Both say "level one demon". I realise the cat spirit and the other spirit are now so weak that they are invisible. I don't want them haunting me or growing stronger again, so I grab the papers and stumble out of my room. In the hallway, I perform this old banishing ritual I have memorised. AB and C watch me do it. AB makes sarcastic comments. C sort of understands. The pentagrams I imagine end up looking overly complex. I keep on falling over and forgetting names of God, but I instinctively remember a hell of a lot about the procedure given that I'm dreaming. When I invoke archangelic gaurdians, I mumble the name "Michael" under my breath. C's ex-boyfriend after me was called Michael. As soon as I finish the ritual, I wake up properly. I think I may have woken up shouting the last word of the ritual. <a href="http://img262.imageshack.us/my.php?image=pentagamdreamxf0.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://img262.imageshack.us/img262/3346/pentagamdreamxf0.th.jpg" border="0" alt="Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us" /></a><br /><br /> This is the pentagram I generated for the dream, for some reason.

[Chameleon]

Hi apachama Wow! I’ve just started reading your dreams – they are amazing. I love the way you portray them – makes for an enjoyable and interesting read. Are these conscious dreams? I like the way you interpreted the first dream – I’m quite big into interpretation. And I love the rapport you had with Gerald – that was really touching. Sometimes, my dreams are telling me stuff. Other times, I believe I’m in a reality other than the physical. I also believe we are able to visit deceased friends in the dreamworld – and have had two conscious dreams of this nature. However, I also have the random nonsense everyday bleedthrough dreams. I have to log off now, but I’ll be back later to continue reading your adventures. Cham

[apachama]

Hi, its really nice of you to comment. I appreciate it a lot. I can see what you mean about another reality. Its an idea I'm always kind of uncertain of. But I find it fits the material best and provides a good basis for interpretation to at least entertain the idea that there might be contact with other planes in dreams. ---- Interpretation of last night's dream. As this dream has features that are similar to Demon Dreams, I decided to begin interpretation by looking for a being with its own will acting inside the dream. The closest thing I found was the symbol of Leaving. I had pet rats, but I had to give them away. One of them died last week. The way they act was similar to the spider. One house I stayed in had a stray cat. But he stopped visiting. Maybe the cat relates in some way to that whole house, and all those friends from last year who just vanished. I had been thinking of tranformation before bed, so a cat spirit thing seems like an obvious symbol. Obviously C is an ex-girlfriend. I love her very much. She's like family these days. But sometimes it hurts when she talks about Michael. They got together the day after we split up. They broke up a year ago and she still hasn't gotten over him. Its funny Michael would be associated in my dream with the archangel. We've become good friends in the last year. Maybe that bit of the dream could be interpreted as me called on him to look after and protect C. Maybe what the dream was trying to get deal with is the residual memory of last year. The central battle could be a conflict between the rational mind and the feeling of wanting to give in to base desire.

[Chameleon]

Its an idea I'm always kind of uncertain of. Hi apachama Yes, I was like you for many years. I was reluctant to take on any beliefs, due to the fear of being wrong or deceived somehow. It’s only recently that I’ve allowed myself to believe in an afterlife that can be visited via dreams. I still keep an open mind (in that it might be imagination), but I quite like these beliefs. I have come to the conclusion that ultimately no one actually knows. And therefore buying into a belief system is more about being happy than anything else…at least for me. And so I choose beliefs that make me happy. But also, they are based on experiences, however shaky those experiences are. I don’t just believe in the purple goblin that created this earth for its own entertainment – that would be potty – but I have had a few experiences that have really made me wonder (not about the goblin, but about an afterlife ). In time, I will post them in my Dream Journal. I think I became so sick of being unsure about everything, that I decided to allow a few beliefs to enter my life – and I’m glad I did. Cham

[Chameleon]

After discussion with a dwarf who has hidden himself in a jam jar That is awesome. What a wacky dream. Cham

[apachama]

Yes, I was like you for many years. I was reluctant to take on any beliefs, due to the fear of being wrong or deceived somehow. It’s only recently that I’ve allowed myself to believe in an afterlife that can be visited via dreams. I still keep an open mind (in that it might be imagination), but I quite like these beliefs. I respect that. Its hard for me because I'm a philosophy student who lives in a culture that is still dominated by logical positivism and materialism. I guess I spend a lot of time trying to strike a compromise between what I feel and experience, and what I know and can proove. Hence, almost no beliefs. I hope this changes at some point.

[apachama]

How Am I Supposed To Know What You Consider Food? I'm with my friends from next door and some other people. They're all outdoors types and we are in the woods. One of them passes me a lovely, cute bunny rabbit. I hold it in my arms. "We're going to eat that" he tells me. I'm not surprised, last time I went camping with them they ate a squirrel. I pass the rabbit along and I'm handed a baby. It gurgles at me, and says "friend". Its so adorable. Someone tells me "we're going to eat that too." I don't know when these guys are kidding or not. So I go see my friend CA and ask him. He starts to cry. He's trying to find someone to adopt the baby, he tells me its not lunch. Part of me would love to adopt, but I'm 22. I suddenly feel very scared that I'll never have children of my own. This hippy turns up, and starts organising us into a training exercise like the ones we do at the drop-in centre I volunteer at. I'm not impressed. We run a listening service. But she's obviously not listening to anyone. Back home, I ask CB about two furry communities. He says that the UK one is just people doing escapism to forget abut their real lives. The US one is mostly people with no real lives, so they just want to be furries for the sense of belonging. He says that community probably has more flame wars. Neither of us have ever been on these sites before. But when I check his predictions I find that he was right.

[apachama]

Oh, interpretation. This would be a "meats not food" dream. I had a lot of these when I started being a vegan before my diet adjusted to not eating meat. In this one, meats not disgusting, but cute. Which I guess is an improvement. If I were to guess, I'd say I'm dreaming of food because my food ration is running really low this week for financial reasons. It could be this is my brain trying to reconcile my desire to live in harmony with living things with my repressed desire for a bacon sandwich. Also, I imagine I have a repressed desire to see my friends from next door, and to explore new things. Furries being a fairly archetypal "group of people who are kind of fun. But that I don't have much to do with."

[apachama]

Moving To Mars: Part I I go to a departmental committee in The Religious Studies Department. The other student there starts talking about a big whig in the Student's Union; JP. She knows nothing about him. She even thinks that he has blond hair. But she says he told her that his university experience was a tough time for him that he has now put entirely behind him. Unfortunately, I was his friend back in those days and would have done anything for him. I feel slighted that he now sees that time as ill-spent. After that I go and hang out with the other union big whigs. Then I go on a walk and end up in this American small city. It has a beautiful medieval African style mosque. The muslim quarter of town grows out of it organically. It looks largem diverse and vibrant. I get the feeling that the middle Americans in most of the town really wish there wasn't a large multi-ethnic, ultra-liberal, predominantly muslim section of their city. At this stage I realise I am dreaming. So I summon A and tell her she's my PA for the dream. We get our personal army to stop the traffic so we can cross the street. Then we go to a shop on the corner. It sells a lot of Hindu and New Age regalia, so I ask A to give me a bank card with a quarter of a million euros on it and let her go off and buy whatever the Hell she wants with an infinite amout of money. The bank on my card has the acronym "UFO". I decide to pretend to be an alien pretending to be a human. I call a shop assistant over, it turns out JP is the shop assistant. I buy myself a nice colourful jacket and a white shirt. After months of summer slobbiness it feels good to be well dressed. I go to the counter, my friend Rooster is working there. JP and him hate each other in real life. But I'm dealing with JP before he became so up-tight about things. They seem to get on well here. "Get on the ISAAA!" Rooster says to me when I present him with the card. I tell JP "I'm sorry, I don't know much about modern fashion. I have been fighting in one of your Earth Wars... Where are the major Human conflict zones at present?" JP starts calmly listing places American troops are deployed "Iraq, Afghanistan..." I lose interest and remember I should be doing more than just shopping. I assemble my friends around a table. A, LF, JP and Rooster. God, its so nice to see them all together relaxed and having a good time. I tell them that I'm dreaming and that I plan to go to Mars. I ask if any of them would like to come along. They say they're okay with small town America for now. I respect that.

[apachama]

Moving To Mars: Part II So I have to figure out a way to Mars. I try drawing the invoking Mars Hexagram in the air, but I can't remember how that one goes. In the end I decide to walk out onto the street and pretend I'm on Mars. After a while, I hear this loud wind over-head. Damn. I think It didn't work. There's not this much wind on Mars. Then I realise whats happening. I've teleported the city to Mars. The high air pressure of the city is being blown out because it landed in an area of typical low pressure Martian atmosphere. I see red sky breaking through the clouds. And I'm so excited I bound towards the city limits. There's traditional Martian sand and pebbles. There's also puddles. Which confuses me. Unfortunately, the low gravity cuts in right at that minute. I find it really slow to walk. Easier to fly. Even then, I'm used to flying on Earth gravity. I tend to veer upwards until I adjust to it. I reach down and touch the puddles because they confuse me. Then I notice a traditional Martian van, and car repair shop. Ah! So I'm in the future and Mars is partially terraformed. I see a mountain in the distance and think about how I'm love to see a Martian mountain and canyon. So I fly towards it. After a while, I'm flying over foot hills, and I come to a little village in a valley. The grass here is green and sat on a precipice I see a young girl with her parents, the girl is stuffing food into her mouth with a bread knife. I think about intervening. I don't want the poor girl accidentally cutting herself. But then I remember - these are Martian hill-people. Descendents from the first colonists. This kids been using knives competently for just about as long as she's been able to walk. Another interesting fact about Martian hill-people. They believe in demons. In fact, they teach their children how to use several banishing rituals as soon as they can talk. As I'm flying over, I stop and say "Hey kid! I'm an evil spirit! Show me a banishing ritual!" We both know this is just a game. I'm not very threatening looking in my ill fitting brightly coloured suit. She tosses the table over and shouts a line from a nursery rhyme. I am flung right out of the valley, laughing as I hit into the side of the mountain I was flying towards and wake up.

[apachama]

Moving to Mars: Part III I wake up, do a reality check, and soon fall asleep again. I have a whole set of dreams set in a dimly lit attic bedroom, often with A around. Although other friends visit and sometimes I dream of spaceships and nuclear engines and all sorts. In all of these dreams, I'm dimly aware that I'm dreaming. But this reaches its peak in the last dream, which is the most coherent. For the last few years, I have been hanging out with a dream Guru. He's been teaching me to lucid dream while we sponge money off of one of our wealthy patrons. But we have new patrons now: NASA. I am working with some of NASA's new Oneironauts. They are testing my abilities by using this shared dream we are in to play a kind of American football in my attic bedroom. I'm losing, but they are still arguing the score. So I take one of them to my guru. He is meditating in his dream garden. Its a beautiful, well cultivated place. And he decrees that the oneironaut must stay here with him. Great. I think to myself. That deals with the Oneironaut. Now how do I defeat the guru? The guru sets me a challenge - to write "in the garden" on the bridge in his garden. Its hard. The last word keeps messing up. But eventually I complete the sentence and wake up.

[apachama]

Some interpretation JP: I used to live with him, but then he decided to move out because his girlfriend was sick. So I had to move out and into the side of town that really doesn't like the guy. I tried to keep in touch for a while, But got snubbed quite a lot and eventually I just stopped bothering with him. He's very important now. That means he has a lot of hangers on to worry about. I still like the guy, I'd do anything he asked if he wanted help. But I don't think he'll ever ask. So I just try to avoid him instead. Mosques and Muslims always seem to signify a kind of quiet dignity and protection to me. My subconscious seems to think of Muslims as dutiful people you can trust. This whole section of town, with its Hindus and loads of other communities, gre out of the protective influence of a mosque and its law. Banishing just makes sense. Its been on my mind a lot recently. Hindu Gurus, in my dreams, always signify a lack of true wisdom and a desire to control and force beliefs on people. The NASA oneironauts were macho men. So I don't like either group really. I think this is my subconscious laying some ground rules for lucid dreaming: I can't be like the NASA oneironauts, who care only about quantity and mark down every dream like they're competing to be the best dreamer. But I also can't be like the Guru, obsessed with quality over quantity, who has perfect control over his immaculate garden and all those impressive dream powers. If I'm right, my subconscious wants to be treated revently. It wants a conversation. Lucid dreaming regularly would be awesome, and every new power is nice. But there's more to dreaming than that for me. Its about applying lessons from dreams to life and being in tune with myself.

[Chameleon]

I love this thread - keep ‘em coming! Cham

[apachama]

Blue Blood. Rural Idiots. My dream opens with me seeing N walking through the docks with people I take to be her parents. She holds herself utterly differently, and is dressed in all manner of riches. She is royalty, apparently. From Japan, I think. I'm an aristocrat too. A duke or a prince or something. We're both leaving our home town. She's going back to her country of birth, I'm going on my first tour of duty as a submarine officer. I boast about my new life and my royal birth. But mostly to her parents. I try to catch her eyes and communicate that this isn't the real us. We are really the people we acted like in Wales; where we were slumming it. Time Travelling With Romance and Impotence I have been sent back through time to my GCSEs, but FO and AS are with me. For some reason my class is doing a best dressed student competition. I am in a suit but I'm not playing their silly games. Its just a nice chance to dress up. We're having a politics class - Pre-September Eleventh New Labour Propaganda. I try my best to sit it out, but AS and FO make me laugh out loud at an inappropriate moment, just as the teacher is explaining education reforms. The whole class stops and stares at me, and I make a comment explaining precisely how this New Labour policy will pan out and why exactly it is that by the end of Labour's time in office they will be more unpopular than Neville Chamberlain after Dunkirk. I go to the library, because they treat me like an adult and need some help sorting things out. Giant bugs are everywhere, they are deformed and dead. A powerful being has been through this way. The story unfolds in front of me. A mad scientist fell in love with a younger woman (I think she was eighteen or nineteen). He decided that she was the most perfect human being ever, so he took her DNA and cloned it a billion times over in different dimensions. The result is a kind of Goddess, who he worshipped. In return this powerful being wrote music for him, and he made millions selling it. He managed to go and see the girl of his dreams, and they hit it off. He was at least better than the man she was betrothed to. So one day, he ambushed the man she was to marry and they ran off together. They got on the first bus out of town, aware that if they ever came back the man would kill them. They both left behind their fortunes and the Goddess. After the story, I'm buying tobacco for a teacher. "Its not for me, I don't want this stuff." I grumble at the cashier. "Why are you even selling this to me? Can't you see I'm underaged?" Back in 1899, I'm worried about a preview stage play I'm watching. I am meant to have a part in the play, thus far they've only got the musical bits together. But its so good. What if I don't know my lines in time? Behind me I am a girl sat with the Doctor. I'm bored of the nineteenth century. There doesn't seem to be much to do. We get onto the TARDIS, which is just a chair, and teleport to an alien pleasure world in the distant future. While in the time warp, the Doctor confides in me that he is impotent. We land in a docking bay skyscraper that opens up like a flower.

[apachama]

Yesterday I spent too long playing computer games before bed. So when I woke up in the morning I was very very tired, and quickly fell back to sleep. Assuring myself that I didn't remember enough of my dream to justify writing it down. The Winners A Japanese couple steps out of the airport after a long holiday away. Suddenly, they are swamped by reporters. "We're from the national press" a reporter says "You have been selected to win a wonderful prize for your efforts travelling abroad and learning about foreign cultures." The tourists look happy, this was the last thing they'd been expecting. "One catch, though." The reporter continues. "You have to write an account of your journey that is funny, insightful, emotive, interesting and helpful to others." Though I'm a disembodied viewer I find myself trying to look back, to see if anything insightful happened. I find myself thinking But... my recalls been awful recently. I can't remember anything from my dream! ---- I wake up right after this. Realising the message is simple: Why bother exploring dreams if you aren't going to remember them? I started to write what I could remember and got three pages woth of dream into my journal.

[apachama]

For Eris I finished my book review for a religious experience research centre's journal this week. And in my dream, I had more to write. My plan was to write an essay called "For Eris". My plan was to write in a cross between how Althusser wrote "For Marx" and Bataille wrote "On Nietszche". Fan-boy obsession with getting the facts right, but also a desire to reinterpret the ancient Greek Chaos deity to make my own points. "For Eris" was being written in its own notepad. I planned to write the whole journal in there, so I hoped not to make a single mistake. Wandering around, I found the lecturer who was planning to teach a purely imaginary course on "The Philosophy of Archetecture." He showed me some drawings of my university redesigned in various styles. His reading list had nothing on it but that I should learn and think about obscure points of astrology. After that I ran into an old friend JP and went lucid just after seeing him. So I decided to take him up with me to fly about. We both flew so fast, it was amazing. I have never made it so high so fast before. I could see the curvature of the Earth. This was remarkable, and it reminded me of the challenge and my goal of making it to Mercury. So I flew up. higher and higher. I couldn't break the atmosphere, but I entered a tunnel to Mercury. The planet was high up. A small section of its surface had been teleported to me. Just slightly too far for me to reach by levitation. So I balanced on JP and reached out, I touched its cratered surface. It felt metallic, looked dark. The moment I had put my palm to the ground, I lost lucidity. and the ability to fly. JP was on the edge of an epileptic fit and tried to get me to let go of him and fall to my death. Thats my mind being harsh on him. I think he's become very independent of late. I hung onto him and told him to concentrate on levitating us as much as possible while I grabbed onto the side of the portal and used it to slow our fall. We land next to a piano in a club. Three guys sit and sing while an old man dies in a chair occupied by two other old people. When the man is wheeled off dead the left-wing guy by the piano launches into a speech about class discrimination. The right-wing guy says he has no right to complain. The third guy is the left-winger's servant. He promises to help the right winger to show up the left-winger. Next I'm in a restaurant, its busy. An old man has a seizure and dies. A while later he miraculously recovers. Tries to tell the waitress about the dangers of suicide. She laughs and makes a joke. She's really not paying any attention to him.