reflections of a forest in a concrete puddle

If you are not me, and you are reading this: Hello and thank you for your interest. much of what is written here contains notes to myself for future reference or exploration. i apologise if that makes it difficult to read. the writing about the dreams in particular will lack formal paragraph and writing structure simply 'cause, well, that's how dreams happen ~;)


Good morning. and Dear Journal
A tumultuous night last night at a christmas party made me rely upon my homing signal to return home (i still haven't dared to go and check if everything made it home with me). Yesterday was one of those days that just seemed to work, y'know? those days that just feel right. alcohol makes me a social butterfly it seems.
my head is still ringing. however, this continued state of inebriation, still not being baseline at the time i type this, has allowed my morning of oversleeping to be very fruitful.

"to sleep, perchance to dream"
ah, what loving repose.

I dreamt of many things this morning (i generally refer to it as the night before, and as such i note it on my dream calendar). but this morning i woke for an hour to fill myself with water and to listen to 'centripetal' by EKKO, an ambient, dubby, ethnic chillout cd (with Adham Shaikh in the group). WILD has always had the best results for me on my dreaming.
Oh, for science's sake (and my personal tracking of how substances and behaviours affect my dreaming, my dreaming influences were:
Caffeine, 3xHTP capsules, 1xginseng, 2xginko biloba, alcohol (red wine 3/4 bottle, 2 revs, 1 rum and a gin and tonic), and some cannibis (2-3 puffs)

Ok, so here's a brief mention of my dreams to get me going again:

1. I was in a downtown area, with other kids. I felt young in age as they were. We were walking about aimlessly, almost felt as if we were on a field trip or something. I almost became lucid.

I have decided that rather than do RCs (which I disagree with for existentialist premises for denying reality) i wil rely on dreamsigns to become lucid/realise i am dreaming. my major dreamsigns that i have thought about are:
-the feeling of being pursued
-violence (it doesn't happen by me in RL)
-wandering around in buildings or areas with inconsistent architecture; well, specifically, certain rooms and routes don't match up as one would expect based upon basic geometry.

In this wandering around in the city, i don't remember precisely what it was, but as i was looking down an alleyway i realized that i was dreaming. i 'woke up' of course. but this was weird, i have had this before and i believe i shall refer to it as Lucid2 (may need to do a find and replace if i create a relational map later on). So, it felt as if my body 'fell up'. my mind awakened to a semi conscious state and that familiar mental shockwave of your senses realizing reality happened. the weird thing was, i could also feel my physical body in my bed. so, my mind was getting two sets of sensory information; tactile from my bed and visual + auditory from the dreamscape. it was a bit disorienting. i tried to move my hands about, my right (i think, don't remember exactly which side i was lying on) was able to move about freely, but the motions felt as if they were having an effect both in the dreamscape and RL (synchronized). when i considered moving my left, i could feel it with blankets lying on it. i was not sure what this would do, a thought that since there were no blankets in the dreamscape it would break my concentration if the two worlds drifted too far apart. i decided not to move it. soon thereafter, the dumpster started to grow in relative size and as i approached it, the rest of the dream lost focus and disappeared.

2. I was in a coastal town, with californian-style low income, pre-fab housing. my father was there at one point to stash an appliance or something full of manure in this one guys house. i've been to this neighbourhood before, there is a single residence that the entrance is an archway and inside there are cobbles stones in circular patterns, punctuated by gardens that the male owner is working with everytime i see him. my father goes to speak to him sometimes, i have not to my recollection.

i sort of moseyed around, chatting, looking for stuff. after a while, i ended up near the boat launch and the dream turned into 'spectator mode'. It was like watching a documentary, my self dissolved into little more than the camera necessary to view the scene. the camera angles kept changing from one to another, with two basic scenes: both of this male character who was answering interview questions. in one scene, he sat, wore a beret with hippy hair poking out from underneath, looked decidedly french and had some impressive facial hair. in the other scene, he was standing, had short hair no facial hair, a trenchcoat that was open with a casual collared shirt underneath.

The topic of the interview was his culture. he spoke of some history. the main thing that i remember right now is that in their 'coming of age' all in his culture receive a guitar. they also spoke english, french and native american languages fluently. he frequently referred to himself and his tribe as a "dying breed". he spoke a bit of spirituality, but i do not think i am ready to experience that part yet. a nice fella. i think i awoke from the dream because i stuck my hand under the pillow again <<i always do that on my old pillow. it has become quite flat, and although i have stuck blankets and currently the afghan that my late dear grandma made (bless her) i still have the insistent habit of putting my arm under it to lift my head up to a comfortable height. however, the blood gets cut off quite quickly nowadays and it sucks, because the blood flow is still reduce the entire night...sigh. oh yes, all of these dreams happened on my normal pillow, not the orange and white cubist silk pillow that i bought and make a conscious effort to use as my 'dream pillow'>>

there may have been an environmental transition between these two dreams separated here, but their themes were distinct

2. the last of my dreams this morning. I was playing HALO 2. It was violent and racing around in vehicles, trying to tip PT cruisers with my Spectre (a type of Covenant jeep) rather unsuccessfully. most of it was vehicles and the surroundings were outdoor canyons, much like that large CTF field map (the bright one). despite motion, pursuit and violence. i did not catch these dream signs. at the end of my dream, when i jumped out of my Spectre to beat down a particular person who kept finding hidden green laser turrets. i came upon a patch of what looked like a Thyme. it was very purple and very upright, forming a mound like those you would find in a spruce bog.

Hmmm, something just occurred to me in regards to this last dream and the lack of dreamsign acknowledgement. perhaps it was a sign that i do have violence in RL, even though it is fictional and arbitrated through a nonphysical medium... may have to revise the violence dream sign...i'll stick it in my head to wash around till it comes back out later.