Thread: Through the Looking Glass--Alice Doll in Dreamland

Mog Lamach--the prison on the hill

I am imprisoned in an elaborate fortress complex on top of a hill, along with about two hundred other people. I am in high school again, and all the other prisoners are my age or younger--some much younger, like elementary school age. The people keeping us captive are adults, and they run the prison like a concentration camp. We are constantly divided into different groups, pitted against one another, and generally kept from forming alliances amongst ourselves as much as possible.

However, I quickly become a leader of the underground rebellion against our captors, and try hard to foster unity and strength in our ranks. I make sure that we all share our blankets and food rations, and quickly a sense of community forms. I am allowed to keep a journal and spend a lot of time writing down, in code, what is going on. The prisoners greatly outnumber the captors, and so it becomes easy to smuggle secret messages along ourselves.

At one point, a guard comes into the room where my group and I are being held and tells us we are no longer allowed to communicate in English. I begin speaking rapid Spanish to the other prisoners and smile at the guard as if to say, so there. From that point on, a great deal of my time is devoted to teaching the other kids in my group Spanish, which is difficult.

There are always rumors and whisperings about what is happening, what will happen next. There are recon missions where we sneak around in the dark, under staircases and in cellars, our hearts pounding as we listen for footsteps. The adults have aircraft and vehicles which they use to come and go from the prison at will, and one day a plane returns with a huge load of about a hundred sixth-graders dressed in school uniforms and carrying band instruments. They seem to be under the impression that they are on some kind of band field trip. These are the newest prisoners.

The prison camp expands more to include these new arrivals, and the sense of community among us is stronger than ever. We become close friends and cling to one another, all the older kids helping to care for the little ones. At night I walk around the camp and pull myself up over partitions to see the other groups of kids lying around in their blankets talking, and I tell them, "Good night! I love you. I'll see you all tomorrow." Meanwhile I despair that we will never be rescued, while also enjoying the sense of community that has cropped up among us captives.

One day the prison is reopened to the college students who use it as a campus, and they are allowed to come and go at will, though we captives still are not. Two other girls in my group and I become brave enough to attempt an escape, and we take piles of books to disguise ourselves as college students, and follow a group of them out of the front gates. We can't believe it--after all this time we are free, we've just walked right out of the prison complex.

We stand around in front of the complex, shocked, chattering, laughing, relieved. Suddenly I realize that I don't want to leave my fellow prisoners, who have become like my family. I turn around and race back towards the doors, lunging to catch one of the heavy doors before it swings shut, locking me out forever. My fingertips are in danger of being crushed, but I remember thinking, "It doesn't matter as long as I get back to them."

I open the door and race back into the giant front room of the prison. Where a moment ago it was filled with children lying around in blankets and sleeping bags, now it is completely empty, and all the bedding is gone. I am desolate. I race around yelling, "Prisoners! Prisoners!" but everyone seems to be gone. Then I come into one of the back rooms, where a group of about seven or eight prisoners remain, sitting at a picnic table playing cards. It is all my closest friends that I have made here at the prison, and they're very glad to see me. "You came back!" they say, and make room for me at the table. I explain that I realized I didn't want to leave them. They agree, explaining that everyone else escaped, but they didn't want to either. I tell them that it felt like a dream, when I was running around yelling "Prisoners!" I said, "It felt exactly like something that would happen in a dream." (Yet I didn't think to do an RC, I just assumed it was reality. Grr.)

So they deal me in to their card game. They are playing an inexplicable, incomprehensible, rule-less game with multiple incomplete decks of cards. Some of the cards are chopped into small pieces, but are still used for game play. I begin playing with them and comment that this game is ridiculous, and I feel like I am at the Mad Hatter's tea party. Everyone laughs, and I feel at home.

The dream flashes forward to some years later, and I am explaining my adventures to someone who is either my child or my grandchild. I am drawing a picture of the prison complex and in elaborate, Arabic-looking script I label it, "Mog Lamach--the Prison on the Hill."

From now on, I will put dreamsigns in bold.

Elbow Weather

It is daytime. I am walking along a trail in the forest with my sister and her childhood best friend, Kelli. I am reading, as we walk, a children’s book about these strange humanoid plants called the Roundtree and the Soundtree. The plot of the book involves a woman at a restaurant, and a strange man keeps sending these plants over to her as gifts, through the waiter, and she refuses the gifts over and over, in the repetitive manner of children’s books. At one point, the book uses the phrase, “congelere de heurre,” which it says is French for “elbow weather,” meaning pleasant springtime air in which one can comfortably wear clothes that display the elbows.

Kelli is skipping dreamily along the path, her long red hair trailing out behind her, and I think how she has not changed since we were children. I comment that she reminds me of Anne of Green Gables, and my sister agrees. Kelli says that the weather is delightful, then giggles and adds, “It’s congelere de heurre.” I get excited and tell her that I literally JUST learned what that phrase means.

Kelli skips around a bend in the path and comes to a little cottage. She stops, and we catch up with her there. There is a family standing out on the porch, watching their large dog lick the face of a young woman who is lying the grass, laughing. I stare at the young woman and realize that it is my friend Andrea, who moved away, and then I realize that we are in fact walking on the trail behind Andrea’s house in Virginia. We talk briefly and agree to meet up later, neither of us very surprised by our random encounter.

The Book Review

I am an intern at a prestigious publishing house, and my boss is a powerful, businesslike, no-nonsense woman. She is working on a very important book review for a top journal, then gets an emergency call and must go out of town. She tells me that I am to read the book, finish her review, and then analyze all her conclusions. I have only a day or so to do this. I try to tell her that I am not qualified to take her place on such an important assignment, but she dismisses my fears of inadequacy and tells me that she expects me to do it, and do it well.

I panic, then decide to just do my best. I begin to read the book and it is a history of the Virginia trails, written by Andrea. This part of the dream fades and I don’t know what happens.

Fifth Grade Reunion

Someone has organized a field trip/class reunion for all the members of my 5th grade class. We acknowledge the fact that we were in 5th grade more than ten years ago, but somehow we all end up being the actual ages that we were back then, so we are all temporarily about ten years old. We are walking around in an empty school building and our teacher takes us to the gym. The other children gather around excitedly, talking and laughing, and I feel very shy and embarrassed (as I was in my real childhood.) I don’t know who to sit by or talk to. We begin to play a rambunctious game that I don't understand involving multiple balls, and as we throw them to one another we are supposed to alternately count out loud and shout random words. I try to ask what the rules are for the random words we shout out, but everyone just laughs and tells me to shut up and play. I feel ostracized and inadequate.

Then a ball bounces off a large pile of metal tubes, like those used to construct tents, and the pile cascades down. A boy named Mark is covered in the metal tubes and becomes unconscious. As I am closest to him, I immediately begin clearing the tubes off of his head and chest. He is also covered in ice cubes and slushy cold water, which I clear away from his mouth, nose, and eyes. He is slowly coming to, and I feel like Ariel in The Little Mermaid when she rescues Prince Eric from the shipwreck.

...I've found that one of my biggest dreamsigns is when I make comparisons, either in my mind or out loud, to children's books or movies...

Very cool so far, you have a great dream recall. Good idea on highlighting the dreamsigns.

Hope you have many lucid dreams to report back.

thanks, dreaming zombie! i hope so too.

The Awful Shopping Trip

Note to readers: this dream is almost excruciatingly boring, save for a couple of celebrity cameos. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I am out shopping with my parents, my sisters, my uncle, my aunt, and several of my cousins. We are in a very fancy jewelry shop in the mall, and the salespeople look nervous to have us in there. On the walls are lots of blown-up photographs of white cats in tropical underwater locations, like coral reefs, and I spend a while looking at these pictures, trying to figure out if they are real or fake (i.e. whether the cats were actually underwater, or if they were Photoshopped in). I decide they are real and ask my dad how he thinks they got the cats to pose underwater for them. He doesn’t answer me. There is a large set of windchimes hanging over my head and I ring it. “Look, Claire,” I say, wanting my little sister to turn around. When she does, I point to the three-tiered arrangement of rocks at the top of the windchime, hoping that she will mistake it for a tribal mask, something she is very scared of. She does, and it startles her, then she realizes it isn’t one. She laughs. I tell my uncle, who is nearby, that Claire doesn’t like tribal masks. He laughs and begins to plot ways to scare her with them.

There is some sort of uproar involving my mother and a set of very small, finely wrought matches made of glass—the saleslady behind the counter seems to think my mother has broken them, and everyone is concerned that my mother will have to pay the ridiculous cost of the glass matches. Then it is revealed that she did not actually break them, she only wondered aloud what would happen if she broke them. We are relieved. The jewelry shop is very small and crowded, and I am nervous because the salespeople obviously do not like us. I want to leave, but everyone else is content to mill around. At some point my father and I crouch behind a curved glass partition and there is a sudden popping sound, like those toy poppers that kids throw against the ground. I realize that my father is holding a small sort of toy gun, and is shooting off into the air. “Dad! What are you doing?” I ask, horrified, but he laughs and says, “Your mother said we were staying in this store as long as I was behaving myself, so I figured that if I start acting obnoxious, we’ll have to leave.” I tell him to stop, that he and I can just go wait outside, but he seems determined and begins shooting the small gun again. It seems that my uncle has one too, and is using it in the same way my dad is. The chaos grows and I notice movie star Brad Pitt in our midst, in a green tie-dyed shirt, walking around laughing and eating something like a burrito. I am not surprised by his presence, but instead I think about how his characters are often eating at inappropriate times in movies, like in Fight Club and Ocean's Eleven. I am annoyed that he is contributing to the general chaos instead of helping to calm it down. The salespeople call the security guards and order us to leave the store. All of us file out of the small space, except Brad Pitt, who has disappeared. I comment sarcastically on the fact that my cousin Jack, usually the worst-behaved one, is acting responsibly while all the grown men are being obnoxious. I feel very embarrassed of my family.

Outside, in a sort of department store space, we discuss what to do next. It seems that the security guards are coming after us, and the only way to get them off our trail is to have the saleslady from the jewelry store go out to our station wagon and sit with a large pack of soda that we brought with us. I volunteer to go, since I am not having fun shopping, but no one pays attention.

We split up a bit and begin to wander. I comment on a cute shirt hanging on a rack, then check the price, expecting it to be very high, but the price tag says 6.50. I look again and it says 4.50 (should have done an RC). My mother and sisters become interested and my mother encourages me to buy one of the shirts, but I have lost interest and wish I hadn’t brought it up.

Next thing I can remember is wandering along a beach-like area outside with my mother and my sisters—we are sort of spying on this couple that seems to consist of movie star Alexis Bledel and a handsome boy, both dressed in winter weather clothes. They are walking along and playing in big piles of snow. There is always a third boy with them, but he doesn’t seem like he should be there and I have a hard time determining if he is there or not. I think briefly of the line from The Waste Land: “Who is the third who walks always beside you?/ When I count, there are only you and I together/ But when I look ahead up the white road/ There is always another one walking beside you.” Alexis Bledel and her boyfriend play happily in the snow together, sliding down hills, and the third boy, who looks like a traveling adventurer type, does whatever they do and seems pretty happy about it. We sit on the beach and watch them from across a narrow road. Soon it becomes apparent that we ourselves are sitting in snow, but I ask my sister, “How can this be snow? It isn’t cold at all,” and we press our hands into the white powder, and put it to our cheeks, and sure enough it isn’t cold at all. We decide it is just a different kind of snow, one you can’t feel. We wonder if our body temperature will melt the snow, so we decide to conduct an experiment where we lie down in the snow. But first we have to find a bigger area of snow to lie down in, so we get up and walk along the beach. There are more people outside now. Every once in a while, my mother or sisters will say, “How about here?” and point to an area of sand where there is no snow. I have to remind them that we are looking for snow, and there is no snow there. They become disappointed every time this happens. Eventually we find a spot to lie down in, but by that point the rest of our family has shown up. We abandon the experiment and begin to discuss what we will do next. Earlier we had talked about how my parents didn’t want to go out for lunch, because it was too expensive, but we knew that my aunt and uncle probably would. Sure enough, the conversation soon takes this predictable turn. I become bored and turn away.

I see, on the sidewalk a few feet away, that my father has set up a tripod with a video camera and is filming us. I run to hug him and find myself face to face with the video camera, and wonder if it will look stupid, if I will look like a little kid running to shove my face into the camera. I am embarrassed that I have done this. In a few moments I am pleased to see my older sister do the same thing, because I think that if we are both doing it, I will look less foolish.

The adults make a decision and we begin to walk back towards the entrance to the mall. My mother says something about it being my aunt’s birthday, and I turn around to tell her happy birthday. I can hear my cousin Laura fighting with my aunt while I do this. We pass a sort of carnival ride, not in use, that consists of swings hanging from long ropes that will spin out over the water when activated. I am extremely frightened of this ride and shudder as we pass it. As my mom, my sister and I step into the mall, I see that my mother is crying and she is telling us about how she hates to be caught in the middle of fights between my aunt and my cousin. Everyone else comes into the mall and my mom stops crying.

Very interesting. But I didn't read the last one, you told me not to!

The Ceremony
(another fairly mundane dream... except for the alligators and ghosts)

I seem to be graduating from some institution, either high school or college. It’s like a graduation ceremony mixed with an Odyssey of the Mind awards ceremony and a talent show. There are people from all levels of my schooling present, including Christy, Amy, and Andrew. I consider telling Andrew about my longtime crush on him but then decide that I should probably do it in an anonymous note, or through something like Honesty Box. At some point I am looking at his iTunes account, or something. I download some music from it, thinking that I trust his taste in music, but later I play some tracks by a band called Melody Club and they are annoying, low-quality rap songs. I delete them.

My mom is helping to run the ceremony, and she has organized a group of kids to design a massive banner on yellow butcher paper that contains a cryptic riddle about Gryffindors and Lord Voldemort. When I ask someone to explain it to me, they tell me to be quiet or the other team will figure it out. Later, during the ceremony, someone officially explains it, but I still don’t understand it.

Christy and I pick up tennis balls off the ground after one talent show act, and I become bored with it quickly and start laughing and joking around. She digs her stick into the ground to show me that there are many tennis balls buried underground that I have missed, and I grudgingly start picking them up. There is a lot of saying goodbye to people.

After the ceremony, my sister and I are outside in the parking lot of our church, packing things into someone’s car. She becomes angry with me, saying that I am lazy and never do anything. Then it is nighttime and I want to ride home from the church in the back of my dads pickup. Somehow when I go to actually do this, it involves sitting on a very low raft in swampy water, the raft actually sinks down a bit into the water and it is dark and there are alligators. At first I am kind of excited about the prospect of seeing alligators, but when the truck starts dragging me through the swamp, I see the writhing shadows of the big alligators out in the water and become terrified and immediately begin howling to my mother and my sister that I changed my mind. They stop the truck and let me climb into the front with them.

My friend Chelsea comes to stay with me from another school and gets mad because I am too busy hanging out with my other friends to spend time with her. When I get home, she has left several pairs of her shoes in my bed, and I absently remove them during the night. I awake with a start the next morning because I have realized that I’ve left all my clothes and belongings in the town where I went to college; I was so busy with the awards ceremony that I completely forgot to pack everything up and bring it home. I get out of bed and am writing myself a reminder note on my bedroom door that says something like, “Collect belongings Georgetown” when Chelsea walks by and into the bathroom, carrying a baby. It is my baby sister (although I do not have one of those in my waking life.) She is no longer mad at me, just sad, but I tell her that I will be better about it, and we play with the baby together. She shows me the present she got me for graduating and it is a big, fold-out black metal picture frame about the size of three big posters. It has three panels and each one fits three long, narrow photographs. I thank her but wonder where I am going to find pictures that shape and size to put in it.

The baby begins to walk around our house and I follow her, saying in a sing-songy way “No no! Baby can’t have that, baby can’t touch that,” because she keeps picking up important papers and bunching them up in her little fist. I follow her into my parents’ old bedroom, where my mom is, and I pick the baby up and tell my mom that I feel bad because I’ve been away at school and haven’t really gotten to know this new baby sister. My mom takes the baby and says that she knows, she feels bad because she’s always too busy for the baby. I wonder if my mom loves us more than the baby, but I don’t say anything.

At some point I am at my grandparents’ house and I open a door I’ve never seen before. An old orange sheet is hung in the doorway, and prevents me from seeing into the room, but when I open the door and see the sheet, it begins to billow, like there is a wind blowing from inside, and a musty smell comes from the room. I get scared. Someone says that is where they keep my grandpa’s spirit. I shut the door.

Various things on television in this dream:
There is an old biography of Shirley Temple—her beginnings as a little girl, apparently started out as a gospel singer, and she was good at matching things together, like clothing and tastes and home decor. There is lots of old black and white footage of her.

Someone is watching an episode of Full House, in which the three sisters are sitting on the dirt floor of a barn in pink cowgirl clothes, cracking open pecans. I say, “Oh, is this the Thanksgiving episode where they go to their Grandpa’s farm, and ride a rollercoaster with Fabio?” Whoever is watching it doesn’t really know or care, and they say, “Maybe.”

Haha, thanks Jarrhead. I mean you can read the boring ones if you want to, but don't expect anything exciting.

Congrats on your successful LDs! I've been following your efforts... any tips to pass on?

Hmm. My heads kinda messed up right now so I can't really think of anything off the top of my head! haha.

I don't think I've LD'd since tuesday.

The Blue Bathroom

WBTB: Almost Lucid!

My sister and I really have to pee. We are running around a school looking for a place to go to the bathroom. We run into the boys’ locker room on accident a couple of times and then we find the girls’. At the brick entrance to the girls’ locker room/bathroom, the walls are painted a deep bright blue, and there is a bright blue cat sitting on the floor near the wall. It startles when we run in, and runs away. I think, “A blue cat? That’s crazy, I should do a reality check,” and as I head into one of the stalls, I try to pass one finger through the palm of the other hand, but it doesn’t really work because I do it halfheartedly, and I forget about it quickly because I have to go to the bathroom so badly.

Once into the stall, I am trying to take my pants down to pee, but I suddenly feel very crazy and weird in the body, like I am on drugs. I am sort of lurching around the bathroom stall and can’t control my movements very well. I try to remember where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing that might explain my feeling this way, but all I can remember is being outside of a pizza place a little while before this, when I stopped to get a soda. Maybe someone drugged my soda.

My jeans zipper has two pull-tabs, which should be another sign I am dreaming, but I am focused on trying to pull my pants down, and trying to converse with my sister in the other stall as though nothing is going wrong. There is an informative plaque about trilobytes on the wall of the stall. I manage to get my pants down and sit on the toilet, and I am focusing on making myself pee. I can see my reflection in the reflective metal of the stall door, and I look very closely and intently at myself, remembering that I have read somewhere that reflections look different in dreams, and maybe I am dreaming, but my reflection seems normal. (!!!)

Eventually I start to try and tell my sister that something feels wrong and weird. While I am trying to talk to her, I stare at the trilobyte plaque on the wall and it slowly becomes the poster of a girl that hangs over my bed in my waking life, and I am waking up, and I am in my own bed.

After I woke up, I did an RC to see if this was a false awakening, but it wasn’t. Failed RCs are apparently a big dreamsign for me. From now on, I’m going to do an RC everytime I have a failed RC... haha.

But man! I got so close to becoming lucid! I’m almost there!

Well that was an odd dream!

Oh, and whenever you go to relieve yourself, DO A REALITY CHECK!

I learned that the hard way. >.>;;

I didn't really recall any dreams from Day Six (night before last), but I didn't try very hard when I woke up because I was feeling depressed and didn't feel like bothering. But the weird thing is that last night, as I lay down and prepared to go to sleep, memories of the previous night’s dreams came floating back to me... the cracked ice that covered the ground, the strange Alaskan territory, the small room with maps on the table.

From Day Seven:

Fragments:
a crowd of people milling about on the street
Paris Hilton and a trash bag
a man rejects or mocks her


Bubb Rubb’s Twilight Beer

An old friend from high school has invited me and my sister to a club in Houston for some kind of Twilight launch party with Bubb Rubb from the whistle-tips video, who has apparently invented some kind of Twilight beer. My sister doesn’t go, but I do. It is at a very “hip” club downtown and upon arriving, I see I am not dressed for the occasion at all. Other people are wearing cool clothes and I am just wearing whatever, like jeans and a t-shirt. I feel embarrassed, and get the feeling that people are laughing at me. The club is fairly empty when I arrive and I sit on a tall chair alone in the middle of the dance floor, somewhat near the entrance, but facing the stage. Bubb Rubb and a woman (not Lil Sis) are onstage, testing out cameras, microphones, and a fog machine. I see nothing Twilight-related, which makes me sad. I am already bored and wish the party would start already.

For some reason my mom is there, and my aunt. They are with a group of friends, and I am surprised to see my mother looking happy and relaxed in this strange setting. I decide to go up and talk to them, since everyone here already seems to think I am a dork. I am introduced to her friends, most of whom are male, and I can’t get their names right, a fact which embarrasses me. One of the men is named Dane, and he tries to get me to remember it by saying, “What kind of dog is Great?” It doesn’t work and I keep calling him Joshua.

Within the dream, I “wake up” in the old bedroom I used to share with my sister, who is there and sleeping in her own bed. It is morning. I am listening to Sleater-Kinney on my old stereo, and the music is fairly loud and raucous. I keep turning it down. My sister becomes annoyed with the music because she is trying to sleep, and asks me to turn it off. I try to, but somehow it keeps playing. She is mad and I am embarrassed that she doesn’t like my music.

Embarrassment is one of my biggest dream signs... I hardly ever get embarrassed in real life, but in dreams it's a different story! Weird.

Day Nine

I don’t remember any dreams, don’t even have fragments to report. I took melatonin in hopes of increasing vividness, but it doesnt seem to have worked. Or at least, it hasnt helped with recall. All right. I’m going to try and stay awake for 30-60 minutes, then WBTB and WILD. I will do puzzles to keep my brain engaged, and read about LD.

Morning: well, it turns out that melatonin just wrecks my recall no matter what, and also makes me sleep way more than I should. So I won’t be taking it anymore.

Hair Braids
Rachel, me, and maybe Melissa are taking a shower together, and we take turns braiding each others hair. Rachel has cut her hair very short, in like a chin-length bob, and I try to braid it, but its really hard. My hair is longish and I have a decent braid for awhile.

Summer Camp
We are at a sort of summer-camp like place, except its at my parents' house, on the back porch, and there are picnic tables and lots of people. I go inside every once in a while to sort of clean up and get people more drinks.

New School
I have transferred schools. I am back in high scool, and have transferred to the other high school in our town. There is a strange segment where Brent wants to tell me a secret and swears me to complete and utter secrecy, but I never actually find out what the secret is. I am following him through the crowd and at some point he becomes another boy I used to know, and I am lying on my stomach on the tile floor of a busy walk-through area, laughing uncontrollably. I keep trying to get up but I can’t. I feel like I am not quite in control of my body, which should have been a sign to do a reality check, as I have felt that way in dreams before. At one point I am sitting on a picnic table inside with some other kids, and I see or hear my old friend Christopher behind me. I get up and jump into his arms and hug him really tight and it’s like we’ve never been apart, like we’re still friends from high school, only he seems a little bit grown up and more masculine. Eventually I see Ellen, my ex-girlfriend/ex-best friend. She is smoking a cigarette inside the school building. We don’t talk much.

I am in a math class and it’s very basic math, like algebra, and I find it amusing that I am as old as I am, taking such basic math. I become good friends with several of the cool, tough girls from my math class and they call my house after school, which makes me feel cool and grown up. For some reason we bring pillows to class.

Day Ten: no recorded dreams

Day Eleven

Fragment: a rapper named King Dundee, an entrance to a room with his name written on it in lights.

Amy's House
I drive up to my friend Amy’s house, with Mom in the passenger seat. I roll down the window and speak to her housekeeper in Spanish. She tells me that Amy has returned from “Danes” meaning Denmark, even though in waking life, Amy is in Spain. I park the car and go inside, and do not see my mom again.

Inside, the house is very large, with rooms upon rooms leading into one another. There is a stuffy, feminine atmosphere: tousled unmade beds, whose posts are draped with scarves and skirts and necklaces. I am looking for Amy. I finally come upon her room, where she is asleep in her bed. I climb into bed with her and wake her up. We cuddle.

The Storm and My Sister
Then I am somewhere like a college, and it is exam time. There is a large store on the second floor of the main building. I am in charge of the store at one point, and then at another point I am just shopping there, and then I am sneaking in after it has closed. There is a wall of realistic-looking dildos tied up in colorful sequined mesh (WTF subconscious?). I am trying to avert some kind of weather-related disaster that will affect the store. It is very windy and stormy outside, and at some point we (?) realize that my sister has gone missing and we must find her. At this point I become terribly distraught and have something of a nervous breakdown. I tear through the store in a fit of hysteria and despair. Eventually we find her and I am beyond relieved.

Day Twelve

Teleporting to a Lake
I am at some sort of festival place with my older sister and our parents. We go from tent to tent, sampling foods. I am offered the chance to teleport myself somewhere (I think this was influenced by Jarrhead's dream) and I accept. I end up on a boat in a small lake, somewhere in New Jersey. I think I was aiming for somewhere else, but I have ended up here. The water is choppy and almost completely white, like milk. I am on a raft sort of boat that sits low in the water, and, like the day with the alligators, I am frightened that I will fall off. I look around at the lake’s shoreline to see if it is landlocked, and it is, but I think there might be whales anyway. I am alone on the boat. I look ahead and see that there is a golden light cresting the tops of some of the white waves. I think to myself that this light is exactly the sort of light one would see in a lucid dream, but I don’t think to check my reality or become lucid. Eventually the boat makes its way (I am not controlling it) to a grassy shore and I get off. Here, I find an easel set up with art supplies and I make a fairly accurate rendition of my surroundings. Somehow I am able to bring this sketch back with me to my parents' house, where it is revealed that my father has visited this same lakeside shore in a dream and drawn his own picture of it. He goes to get the picture out, to show me the similarities, but when he shows me, it is a childlike drawing of an elaborate monument in a graveyard. He compares our two drawings, and I see mine has changed to a drawing of a gravestone monument as well.

Subscribed. Cool dreams. I would recommend Banhurt's DJ program...gives your DJ a real visual flare.

Good luck!

Babysitting

My sisters and my cousin and I are at our grandma’s house, taking care of a bunch of kids. At some point one of the toilets explodes while I am in the bathroom, and there is little-kid poop everywhere, it is very gross. There are tons of children and we feed them, bathe them, put on movies for them to watch. Joseph’s house is part of Grandma’s house and it is actually his toilet that explodes. At another point, I am trying again and again to park the suburban in grandma’s driveway. The car keeps rolling backwards out into the street and I try to put on the parking brake, but it doesn’t really work. I pull forward and park in her backyard.

Then I am at a weird hybrid of my own house and Grandma’s house, and Joseph is there, and Zeke. I ignore Zeke and pretend he is not there. Someone has been randomly writing on the walls. At some point there is a bar in the house, complete with a bartender, who says something crude about me, and Joseph punches him. I go upstairs and on the wall of the stairwell, I write with a Sharpie, “Joseph punched the bartender.”

Feeding the Ducks
I have driven to my old college town and I pull over near the Motor Court. I am planning to go feed the ducks at the Park, and I see from a distance of about a hundred yards a group of girls walking down the road. A couple of them appear to be overweight. I think it is some of my old friends, so I call Natalie on my cell phone. I ask her a series of convoluted questions like, is she in our old college town, is she with Emily, is she walking to the park? It turns out that she is not, and I explain that I was excited because I am in town and I thought we could go feed the ducks together. She laughs and says, “Aww, you sound so true,” (meaning sincere) and I laugh, feeling exuberant, and I say, “I am true.”

Later I am parked outside a large, old brick house. Actually I am parked across the street from it, next to a lake where people periodically gather and gaze across the water to the other shore. I think the brick house might be Natalie’s house, and I spend a long time staring at the front door, trying to remember the color scheme of her house and determining whether or not the colors on this house match those. This house keeps changing, though. The front door is a deep maroon, then it is all white. This part of the dream lasts a very long time, but eventually families start coming out of the back of the house and I decide to leave.

Then when I drive away from there, there are children playing in the road and I almost hit one. I am driving my sister's car, but instead of her real car, it is a crazy-fast, sleek black sports car. It is so fast that it is difficult to drive, as I frequently lose control of it. I change lanes without meaning to and I miss exits. I have this long stretchy scarf thing that I use as a safety mechanism, by throwing one end of it out the window and having it anchor itself to something outside; this way, if I want to go back to where I just was, I can pull on the scarf and sort of slingshot myself back around to the anchoring point. It’s ridiculous.

I get into an accident with another car, but it is very minor. There ends up being absolutely no damage to my sister's car at all, as if we didn’t get hit. The driver of the other car is a Hispanic man with longish curly hair and incredibly strange orange eyes. I speak to him in Spanish because he doesn’t speak English. He insists on signing something so that I have his signature, some sort of legal procedure, apparently, he wants to prove that he can read and write. I get him to sign the back page of my journal with a Sharpie. His name is something like Elvito Escovedo—both his names start with an E, at any rate. I ask him if I should sign something for him, and he says no, because I went to college. He was going to go to college, he says, but then he started working for American Idol. He smiles and holds out his fist, but with two fingers extended in the “Hook ‘em Horns” sign and we do a fist bump like this. He says something about how we are both “bulls of the road.” We part on good terms. I worry about having to call my parents and tell them that I was in another car accident.

At my own house, talking to a boy I find attractive (like Daniel) about how much I dislike living here. We talk about my waking-life roommates, Leann and Richard, and how they are annoying. We discuss a scandalous episode in which someone posted a facebook album of “our” friends (mine and the attractive boy’s) hanging out at the house, and one of our friends was black, and Leann and Richard flagged the pictures of her on facebook because they didn’t know why there was a “skinny black girl” in their house.

There are also fragments of talking to my sister about the economy and earnestly asking her opinion about "the future of corporations in America" (not a conversation we would ever have IWL), and also fragments of more alligators.

slingshot scarf!!

20.01.2010

Flintlocks and Parking Tickets (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I slept over at a friend's house and didn't set an alarm or write any dreams down or anything.

J and I are in an antique store and I find a red plastic bag of little toy guns--like the little metal revolver on my keychain in waking life--except these are of a lower quality. We laugh about the fact that the guns are all different styles, not just revolvers, and as I hold each one up, I say things like, "Oh, hello, musket; hello, flintlock," in this silly sarcastic voice, and then I think about what a great name Flintlock would be for a pirate.

I am driving three of my old high school friends to the Catholic church that my family attends, and we are in such a hurry to get there that I park rather carelessly. When we come out of the church, I realize just how terrible of a parking job I really did: the car is pulled less than halfway into the parking space, and at an awkward angle that prevents the car next to me from backing out. There is a ticket on the dashboard saying that I owe the city $89 for this bad parking job. I become very nervous and upset, worrying what my parents will say and wondering where I will get the money.

Originally Posted by Mario92

Subscribed. Cool dreams. I would recommend Banhurt's DJ program...gives your DJ a real visual flare.

Good luck!

Thanks! I just started using it and already I like it.

Originally Posted by jarrhead

slingshot scarf!!

lol i know! if i hadn't been so stressed out in the dream, it would've been more exciting/funny.

Any time something bad relating to cars happens I guess. RC

Originally Posted by alicexdoll

Thanks! I just started using it and already I like it.

It looks great.

Cool dream, too. I like the bit where you're talking to the guns.

21.01.2010

Seatbelt Bones vs. Captain Feedme (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I am with my family in our old living room and my parents are watching something on TV. I am looking through a catalog and see an advertisement for a customized wax hand that you order in the color of your own skin, so you can test makeup on it to see how the colors will look against your skin tone. The wax hand in the picture is a pale ivory swirled through with glittery blue, which gives me an idea. I get a mirror and a tub of sparkly blue eyeshadow and begin to carefully color my entire face blue. I am wearing a bright blue dress. the same color as the eyeshadow. My sister sees what I'm doing and says, "That color doesn't match your skin," and I say, "No, but it matches my eyes!" (which are blue.)

My parents see what I'm doing and look at me skeptically, the way parents will do when they see their children doing something not altogether intelligent. I laugh and go to sit with them on the couch, and when I catch a glimpse of my reflection in something, the blue is virtually all gone.

Dad asks "When do you guys get drunk, or stoned, or whatever?"
I reply, "Whenever I get drunk or get stoned."
Then I am nervous because I've never admitted to my parents that I smoke pot, but nothing happens.

My mom, my sisters and I are in my bedroom. My mom is folding my laundry and tells me that I need some "adult lingerie," because apparently all my underwear look like children's underwear. She tells me this in a disgusted sort of way, like she is telling me to grow up. She leaves the room. Then my little sister comes up with this new way to make fun of me, which involves referring to my collarbones as "seatbelt bones," apparently a way to say I'm too skinny, even though she's skinnier than me, and slapping the bones with her hand. She does it jokingly, but it still hurts, so I go and tell my mom that she's hurting me and making fun of me. My mom gets mad at me for causing trouble, and sends me to sit in the corner. She tells me I am not allowed to write, so I find some scraps of wood under the table and begin to doodle on them with a pencil. I draw tiny houses all conjoined like a cityscape.

I'm on the phone with my old friend Patrick and he is giving me his mom's email address. He tells me that it's the name of their pet rabbit, which is something hilarious like "Captain Feedme."

I am sitting in my car, which is parked outside the Wendy's in my hometown, and I see a girl who looks like my ex-girlfriend: same short hair, facial features, etc. But she is several inches taller. Then, standing next to her, I see my ex-girlfriend. I get out of the car to tell her hi and she introduces me to the girl who looks just like her, who is her cousin. Then she leaves in a hurry and my feelings are hurt.

So much recall last night!

22.01.2010

Jim the Constellation Guy (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I have long, beautiful red hair. I am brushing it in a mirror and thinking of Roxane Coss from Bel Canto. Then I am in my old bedroom at my parents' house. It is nighttime and I am in one of the twin beds; in the other is Andy from The Office. Jim (also from The Office) calls Andy's cell phone, pretending to be "the constellation guy," a man who sells constellations. Andy agrees to "buy" $500 worth of star formations from Jim. I go with Andy to my parents' old bedroom, where Jim is lying in bed with a sleeping woman. It is dark. Jim asks us if we have the money and Andy hands him five $100 bills. Jim counts the money, smiles, and lays back down. Andy says, "Wait! What about my constellations?" Jim tells him that his constellations are "Orion, Oregano, and Oregano." Andy and I leave, perplexed. This started out as a joke, but somehow Jim has tricked us into actually paying him. When we get back to my room, I make some casual comment that allows me to playfully sweep Andy back into his bed and snuggle in beside him. It is romantic but not sexual. In the dream I am delighted to be in bed with him (even though in waking life, I don't find him attractive.) We are having some sort of silly play-acting conversation and I say, in character, that it was worth it to buy those constellations because of the time we're having now.

22.01.2010

"Honky, Rural, Vicodin People" (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I am online and arrange to meet a stranger at a place called the "Yes! Theater" for some kind of shady rendezvous. I am driving there and I suddenly get freaked out and change my mind. I am turning down a one-way street and the directions are written small, in Sharpie, on signs placed along a fence. I get lost and have to do a U-turn in the middle of the street in a residential area. I see a brown Sheriff's car and worry that I will be pulled over.

The dream transitions into an episode of Seinfeld in which the character Elaine has just been dumped by her boyfriend and decides to move into this woman's house to rent a bedroom. The woman is short, fat, gruff, and funny. Elaine is lying on the couch, eating chocolate and feeling sorry for herself, and the woman makes sarcastic comments that make the audience laugh.

Somehow Elaine transforms into my friend Andrea, who is now living at the woman's house following her breakup with my roommate Richard. I come to visit her and cheer her up. My mom and my sister come with me, and we let ourselves into the woman's house and wait for Andrea on the couch. When she arrives, I am sitting on the floor playing with some awesome thing that my Grandma had invented (which the woman had found in Andrea's bag, and which no one could know about, so when Andrea comes in I slide the awesome thing under the couch.) Andrea is very sad and sits with me and my mom and my sister on the couch. She tells us about how she misses Richard and hates living here with these "honky rural Vicodin people"--I want to remind her that Richard was pretty "honky" but I feel it may be insensitive, so I don't say anything. Then Andrea says, "I just want my love back," and my mom gives her some tough-love kind of advice, basically saying to move on. Andrea feels better and I am proud of my mom.

I ask Andrea to drive me to "work" which turns out to be my senior seminar from college. The professor is the same, but my classmates are three old friends from junior high. We meet in a coffee shop and sit at a tall, round table to work on homework. I feel very unmotivated and complain to my classmates about this. They agree to ask Dr. K if I can switch to band--yes, as in marching band--and Dr. K says that all the seats are pretty much filled up, but she'll see if they can use an extra person somewhere. I get excited thinking about possibly playing percussion. I borrow a calculator from one of the girls in my group and see several small anime stickers on it. I feel surprised that I did not previously know she was an anime fan, and I feel too shy to mention it to her.

22.01.2010

I'm on a Boat (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

It is nighttime and cold. I am on a small ship with Joseph and Bill, my ex-boyfriend from 7th grade. Bill is my boyfriend in this part of the dream, and he acts as goofy as he did in junior high. Joseph is very jealous of us. Whenever I go to the bathroom, he insists I leave the door open and I say, "Fine." I go to the bathroom with the door open. At one point I am thinking vaguely, "Bill's here--this must be a dream" then I somehow talk myself out of RCing, saying this is just reality. The dream goes through some strange transitions that I can't keep up with, possibly involving terrorists, and by the end, I am a lovelorn woman holding myself hostage in an elevator on the ship. I decide that I will turn the elevator into a "human bomb." I spray some kind of compressed gas into the air, then pull a silver lever on the floor to detonate. Nothing happens and I realize that I have trapped myself in here and must wait to die. The walls begin to shrink around me and I am frightened. I wake up.