Thread: Because the Dark Matters

Originally Posted by scottyo

never had a false awakening...yet, but they sound funny and a bit of a nuisance.

They can be fun if you realize what it is and go lucid. Pretty annoying when it's so short though and then you wake up for real!

04-03-10

Dream
Lucid

This is from the day before yesterday. It was another Lucid Dreamer night (Galantamine). No success, but had some pretty wild dreams (not WILDs )

It was just a really crappy night altogether. Had a lot of trouble sleeping. I had decided to go ahead and take Piracetam in the morning and then try the Galantamine at night, to see if it would still work. It didn't. Now I'm convinced you have to give the Piracetam 2 full days to clear out of your system before using Galantamine or it will counter the effects. Well shit... guess I won't be doing the daily regimen of Piracetam then! But I did get this stuff in the 1st place for having lucid dreams... I didn't find out about the memory/cognitive effects of Piracetam till afterwards (and Galantamine is also a smart drug).

After having a hard time falling asleep to begin with, I woke up after 1 hour! Had a hard time getting to sleep again... not because I was excited about using Lucid Dreamer like i was the 1st couple of times I used it, just not having a good night at all. Woke again at 3:45 or so - here's the dream I woke from - I can only vaguely remember it:

1. Night of the Giants
   
   
   Rob stopped by. Did he bring swords? Or I already had one and he brought one? It was like we were going to go have an adventure around town, almost like playing the way kids do. Wish I could remember more details... this was a truly epic dream! Somehow there were 2 totally hot giant girls chasing us around town. They were like 20 feet tall. I don't know how we fought them, but it seems like at times we became giants or they shrank down to our size.
   
   At some point we killed them, or maybe just one of them. We were trying to escape the other one I think, and the streets started getting pretty weird... then we realized we were actually inside the body of the dead giant girl. Now it's like she was hundreds of feet tall... we were walking through a series of long deep trenches in her chest that had metal conduits and bundles of cables running through the flesh. We got separated trying to find our way out.
   
   The other girl caught me as I was climbing out of the chest trenches, but now she was normal sized, and it seems like there was just about to be sex... really kinky sex somehow involving some very serious bright yellow high-heeled stilettos she was wearing. Of course this is when I woke up!
   
   At this point I'm deliriously tired and feel like total crap. And now things suddenly get very weird in waking life...
   
   My fan, which I use for white noise to help me sleep and has worked flawlessly for a ridiculously long time, suddenly started rattling badly. It started right then, while I was awake. Struck me as odd. I had to turn it down from High to Medium, it still rattled slightly, but quietly enough not to bother me. Right after that I noticed a strange sound from the neighbor's yard... it sounded a hell of a lot like a digeridoo! It was actually very pleasant though, and I realized it's a string trimmer. This helped me get back to sleep. Heh... this was all so odd I did several nosepinch RCs!
   
   It had only been 3 1/2 hours of sleep, but I couldn't fall back asleep for a good hour. Decided to take the Lucid Dreamer, as REM periods don't seem to care if you're asleep or not.. they seem to progress at their own rate even if you wake up (or so I think judging by the fact that WBTBs and afternoon naps work). Had some really stupid non-lucids that I could barely remember, woke up AGAIN after about an hour, and decided to take another 4mg Lucid Dreamer capsule because the 1st one wasn't working.
   
   
   
2. ... It's Kool Aid!!
   
   
   I'm trying to sleep in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable place, but someone is talking constantly. I really don't want to open my eyes to see where I am because I'm so freakin' TIRED, but I finally do. The room is unfamiliar, but it's my friend Rob. It seems this is his house and I'm spending the night... again as if we're kids. There are a few other people in the room I don't know, several of them are talking in tired droning voices.
   
   Several times Rob tries to smack me to wake me up... I don't open my eyes but somehow I flawlessly block each attempt! Now THAT was pretty cool!
   
   I think I tried to WILD as I was laying there (in the dream... I DREAMED I was trying to WILD!)... I seem to remember trying to separate my dream body from my 'real' one without success. Then I just got up and walked out of the house. Heh.. rude, I know!
   
   The dream completely changed here. When I walked out of the house it was sunny and there were three kids leaning against the railing of the porch - the next thing I know I'm standing on top of a snow-covered mountain at night on a wet blacktop road. Weird!
   
   Somebody yells "Run!!" (I didn't see any people at this point). I have no idea what's going on so I look around a bit, then I see a few people running away on the road. Curious about what they're running FROM, I walk the other way hoping to see what it is. I top the rise that's the rather unimpressive summit of the mountain (it's really more like a very high, very steep hill) and then I see two --- objects - running up toward me. Can't make out what they are yet, but they seem to be nearly human sized... maybe the size of children or midgets.
   
   They get closer and I realize the front one looks exactly like Kool-Aid, but is made of battered steel and has a pissed-off look on his face. The other one is harder to make out, seems boxy though. I'm totally unafraid of them and when they get near I pick up Kool-Aid and turn him upside-down and place hi on top of the other one. They fit together very tightly and Kool-Aid can only kick his legs feebly and angrily. This makes me laugh. But I begin to sense incredible levels of power building from them and I know in seconds they'll be able to mess me up bad. Oops... shouldn't have done that I guess!
   
   So I dive onto the snow-covered mountainside hoping to slide down it fast... I just lay there. It's a patchy wet snow... no way to slide on it. Damn! So I decide I'm going to summon a rocket sled. Im not lucid, but I seem to think I am.
   
   It doesn't work. So I start running down the mountainside into the darkness. After a while I see a house ahead... a very nice house with no lights on. I go in through the back door... it's very nice inside, as if it belongs to rich people. I step through a green-painted doorframe thinking "There will be a rocket sled in this room". There isn't, but there is a nice collection of rifles and various guns. It seems whoever lives here is a collector. The more I look around the more rifles I begin to see... every closet I open has more in it. Then I begin to notice the really big guns hanging on the walls... looking like they came from the turrets of B-52s or something.
   
   I select a worn old black military rifle of some kind that I really like from a closet and open it... no ammo (in fact there was something jammed inside so it couldn't even take ammo, but I ignored this). I carried that gun as I wandered through the rest of the house still hoping to find that elusive rocket sled.
   
   I never did find one, but suddenly a car pulls into the house (right into the living room) and people get out. I'm not worried about it for whatever reason, I just keep wandering in their house. Two women in fur coats walk up behind me from the car, not seeming very surprised to find me there, but I get the feeling they're prepared for intruders and have been known to do not-nice things to them. One says something like "Wait till my husband gets out of the car..." to me I guess, but I just walk into the next room and ignore them. I'm a real asshole in this dream!
   
   I decide it's time to go before Kool-Aid and his buddy get themselves separated and come to kick my ass, so I go out through the front door, still heading down the mountain. Now though the snow seems nice and solid, as if I could slide on it. I throw the gun back toward the house (getting nice toward the end of the dream!) and I jump into superman position on the snow and go shooshing along downhill at a pretty good rate.
   

04-04-10

Attempted WILD IN THE DREAM
Dream
Lucid

I stayed up extremely late, and when I did go to sleep my mind was very active - I could calm it down to a certain level, but not below it AT ALL. It felt like there was a strong current of unstoppable thought going constantly in my mind. I woke up every hour or so and had a hard time getting back to sleep each time. This was before even taking any Lucid Dreamer... it could be unrelated - I do have periods of this kind of insomnia.

OK - woke up after 4 hours and took a 4mg Lucid Dreamer capsule with 500mg of B-5. Didn't get back to sleep - AT ALL - for a good 4 hours. I lay there wide awake. Counted to 100 4 times and tried other relaxation techniques, finally slept very briefly with no dreams recalled. Decided to take another LD capsule. After this I slept for 40 minutes and had the following dream:

I was laying in bed trying to sleep. It was exactly like the waking reality I had just experienced.. heh at one point I had tossed and turned so much all the sheets were off the bed and I was laying half on the floor.

Interspersed with this were flashes of brief visuals. Example I'd be laying in the dark room and gradually begin to see an area on the desk in front of me. There was an animal skull there (I do have animals skulls sitting around - I live right next to the woods). It was like a dim illumination gradually came up just on that area - reminded me of the discs of pale light that would accommodatingly develop in the dark house wherever I wanted to see in a recent dream (Swingin - the rope that reaches - EVERYWHERE). This is what's known as Dore Lighting (see illustration above - Dore used to very skillfully spotlight the important areas of his illustrations)- a technique I want to use in my animation and that Harryhausen used to use (he's the one who named it Dore lighting). But anywho - on the animal skull was a mouse sitting there looking back at me. It grew slightly bigger (dream sign)... like chipmunk sized. This image only lasted a second or two and faded out again.

A bit later, after more of the 'trying to fall asleep' stuff there was another disc of Dore lighting illuminating a book rack right in front of me (which isn't there IRL) loaded with comic books - I remember seeing a Thor with an incredible cover painting.

Then I started experiencing classic SP symptoms (which I've never actually felt before - even when I had a couple of SP experiences as a child I didn't feel any of the vibrations etc). I got strong vibrations in my hands that moved to my arms and various parts of my body. I noticed I was holding something in each hand - couldn't move to see what it was but they felt like a couple of AA batteries. Heh... guess my mind wanted to explain the electrical-feeling vibrations. Then I started seeing very vivid flashes of light and moving formless shapes of colored light.

I could just move my fingers very slightly but nothing else. I remember trying to roll my dream body out of my sleeping body without success. Was I lucid? It didn't feel like it... there was no "Aha!" moment and I never did any RCs or anything.

Suddenly I started hearing sounds - voices singing and talking and weird noises. I could tell it was 'in my head' but at the same time it seemed totally real. The sounds all coalesce into singing and then I see a happy 50's family skipping and dancing in front of me.

Ah..don't you hate it when you're trying to sleep and you don't realize you already are asleep? WILDs within the dream are great though! Always something interesting.

Apparently that's very common when you take the Galantamine. It's happened to me several times when I've used it. I'm starting to dislike it. The lucids I have from it aren't as good as the ones without, even if they're easier to have. It's like training wheels for lucidity.. make it a lot easier but just don't have the same freedom. I think I'll quit using it for a month or so - go back to my average of 1 lucid a month.

What would be really cool is if I could SUCCESSFULLY WILD in a dream!! I've done it without success a couple times now, always while taking Galantamine.

I felt like crap all day yesterday after 2 nights in a row of very little sleep. Had a headache and just was all grouchy. But a very cool thing happened very late last night that I want to share... not related to sleeping or dreaming, though it was very dreamlike.

I'm a night owl - completely nocturnal. I always say "last night" when I write my dreams just for the sake of expediency, but the truth is I always sleep in the daytime (a good set of blackout drapes and nice droning fanhelp). Around 5:30 AM I was sitting here in the basement in front of my computer, chillin' on DV when I hear an incredible caterwauling just outside. I live in the midwest in a heavily wooded area, we have a lot of wildlife. It's common to walk out and see ten deer strolling through yards and across the street - raccoons, possums - even occasionally a fox or a coyote. Apparently there was a Lynx or other type of large wildcat in the area a year or so ago that a lot of people saw. So it's not unusual to hear some crazy things especially late at night. I love roaming the streets in the dark when the people have gone to sleep and their artificial boundaries are destroyed by darkness... the wildlife takes over then.

Anyway - I've heard this particular sound many times. It's pretty chilling - a combined grunting huffing screeching sort of a thing that occaisonally changes into a monkeylike chattering. Me and my friend used to think it might be a wolf or coyote (he used to say it was a werewolf when we were kids). In more recent years I figured out what it probably was, but had never actually seen the animal to confirm it, so some doubt still remained. And keep in mind - it's a terrifying sound out there in the darkness.

One of them seems to be sitting _right_against_my_basement_window! And I can hear another one answering from a few hundred feet away. This instantly stopped the pleasant chorus of toad calls from the small pond in the backyard. At hearing it I became filled with the sense of wonder... I had always been curious about what makes this sound and this time it was sitting right up against the house, so I was going to go out and see it. First I flipped back the curtain but couldn't see anything there, so I grabbed a little booklight and went trooping out there hoping we were wrong about it being coyotes or wolves. I went out onto the wooden deck that overhangs the edge f the fishpond - hoping whatever was out there wouldn't venture up the steps.

This felt totally dreamlike! By now it had move into the neighbor's yard. Throwing caution to the wind I walked over there. I could now tell the sound was definitely coming from high in a tree. Well, that's better... no way it's a wolf or coyote! So now I was confident it must be an owl as I surmised. Actually I was pretty sure of that for a few years now - I wanted to really get across the sense of excitement and possible danger as I crept out there into the unknown. And wow... this is getting long!! But what the hell... it's worth it. What happened to me out there was an exhilarating experience that deserves to be told right.

It's the perfect time of year for this... warm enough to just stroll around out there without needing a jacket, but the trees are still bare enough to see clearly against the moonlit sky. Because of that I was able to see every branch of every tree clearly - and after a while I thought I could see a big lump that might be the owl. It didn't seem to mind me standing so near it - I was within 20 feet of the tree it was in. And then it swooped down from the tree in absolute silence!! The wingspan was 3 or 4 feet across! Awesome. It moved to a nearby tree, and its partner moved a couple of times too. They kept calling to each other. I was standing there aiming my little booklight at the one near me (uselessly) and suddenly wondered if owls ever attack adult people. I figured probably nothing bigger than a rabbit or small dog.

After a while i started heading back to the house and kept looking back at it over my shoulder. Again in total silence it dropped gracefully from the high branch and this time came swooping DIRECTLY at me!! Good thing I was looking back... the silence was eerie! I ducked convulsively, thinking about those razor sharp talons, and it passed within 4 feet over my head to land in the edge of the woods in front of me... right next to my house. I had to walk within a few fee of its new perch to get back inside.

Ok I'll cut this short here. I actually grabbed my camera and a broom (for fending off any further dive-bombing attempts) and went out and recorded the calls, but by now they had stopped the really intense call and were doing a calmer one. I then started googling to find owl calls typical to the midwest and decided they're Great Horned Owls. I had to post the pic above to demonstrate what swooped close enough to touch right over my head in the darkness last night - guess it kind of spoils the surprise element I worked so hard to create huh?

Great story!
Wow! Owl calls in the night are spooky, aren't they? So are mountain lions! I've had nights camping where I was terrified. That is amazing the thing swooped right over your head! Amazing creatures, huh?
I don't know if I shared this or not, but I used to walk through the woods every evening playing my flute. There was two barn owls who flew above me EVERY night to check me out. I think they could hear the flute from far away. And it is neat because when you are playing flute and walking through the forest you are breathing a lot, which gets you kind of high. Very neat experience.
I found out that those owls lived on the roof of the only tall building in town, the historic Marc Antony hotel. It had gargoyles and such on it. But it went out of business and someone bought it and the new owner poisoned the barn owls!!! Arrrgh! I was sooo mad! And I still am!!!
One name for owls is flying cats. And that is a subject of a dream I had once that you inspired me to post to my DJ when I get a chance.
Thanks for the Owl story!

Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut

Great story!
Wow! Owl calls in the night are spooky, aren't they? So are mountain lions!

Damn, Ill BET!!!

Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut

I've had nights camping where I was terrified. That is amazing the thing swooped right over your head! Amazing creatures, huh?

Yeah they are!! I wonder what would have happened if I didn't duck? I think it was just a feint to scare me off. The other day I stepped out on my way to work and saw a group of 7 Turkey Vultures circling over the woods just behind the house. Crazy looking things, and also huge raptors like the owls:

Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut

I don't know if I shared this or not, but I used to walk through the woods every evening playing my flute. There was two barn owls who flew above me EVERY night to check me out. I think they could hear the flute from far away. And it is neat because when you are playing flute and walking through the forest you are breathing a lot, which gets you kind of high. Very neat experience.

Wow, super-cool! I wish I could walk through the woods at night playing a flute or something. There isn't enough wilderness here for that - I'd definitely get arrested for disturbing the peace! But how cool - that the owls responded to your playing! I had something kinda-sorta similar happen once, but without the wildlife... I was playing Iron Man real loud on a crappy electric guitar (and very poorly I might add) and suddenly somebody somewhere out there - across the woods in another subdivision - plugged in and started playing the lead!! And he didn't suck like me... he was really good. It was an awesome moment of long-distance connectedness. I never knew who it was or even quite where it came from, but I'll always cherish the memory. We jammed on it for like 5 minutes.

Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut

One name for owls is flying cats. And that is a subject of a dream I had once that you inspired me to post to my DJ when I get a chance. Thanks for the Owl story!

Awesome - looking forward to that one! Yeah, another name for the Great Horned Owl is a Tiger Owl. Easy to see why from that pic above. I hope I hear them again tonight... if I do I'll grab my camera right away and go out and record the calls... maybe I can post them here. None of the ones I listened to online are nearly as wicked as what I'm hearing out there.

One of these days I need to draw up Monkey Chow. It's a strange unidentified creature that lives near here, apparently under someone's porch. Some kind of hairless small dog, but it has a long prehensile tail and the paws look more like hands. The front legs are longer than the back... it all adds up to make it look more like a monkey than a dog (hence Monkey Chow - looks like a cross between a monkey and a chijouha. Damn, how do you spell that? ~ Chi- wow - a.

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

One of these days I need to draw up Monkey Chow. It's a strange unidentified creature that lives near here, apparently under someone's porch. Some kind of hairless small dog, but it has a long prehensile tail and the paws look more like hands. The front legs are longer than the back... it all adds up to make it look more like a monkey than a dog (hence Monkey Chow - looks like a cross between a monkey and a chijouha. Damn, how do you spell that? ~ Chi- wow - a.

What?!
Are you pulling my leg?
BTW, it's chijuajua.
Monkey Chow?

nope - it's 'chihuahua'

Originally Posted by cygnus

nope - it's 'chihuahua'

That's it! Would have never come up with that spelling on my own. Thanks Cygnus (that's a great Rush song by the way!)

Not pulling your leg one bit! I saw this thing run across the street one day as I was riding my mountain bike. I freaked out bad. There were a couple of people standing outside nearby and I asked them if they had seen it... they didn't but had seen it before and knew what I was talking about. One of them said it lives under the porch of a house down the hill... not sure if it's somebody's pet (though I assume so). I tried searching for hairless dogs but didn't find anything that looks quite like it. It was really bizarre!! One day I might have to knock on the door of the house where it supposedly lives and ask about it... they might even show it to me if it's still alive (this was 3 or 4 years ago and I haven't seen it again).

Ok this got me curious again so I did a little googling. It looks like it might be a Chinese Crested Hairless:





It looked a lot like the little grey one... it did have hair on the head and paws and the tip of the tail exactly like that, but the hair on the head wasn't that long. Maybe they kept it trimmed up. But I swear Monkey Chow was thinner and more supple than that and looked more monkeylike!

Here's something else kind of similar found in a trap in Texas:

In some ways this one looks more like MC. That long prehensile tail especially. Heh... this one looks like a fox mated with a chinese crested hairless.

Dream
Lucid

Ok, back to the dreams. Had a rare 2 days off in a row thanks to Easter. I was sorely tempted to take the Lucid Dreamer again, but after 2 sleepless nights decided I need to just get some good recuperative sleep instead.

And this is actually very ironic... I didn't remember until I went upstairs and got my journal, but I dreamed of being a FLYING CAT last night!!!

Here's Dannon's dream of owls transforming into flying cats. This is so strange... synchronicity in action. Recently I was interested in what kind of wildcats had been domesticated to create house cats, and yesterday I found a nice big Wiki page about it (the original wild ancestor looks just like a regular house cat!)

That, coupled with learning that Great Horned Owls are also called Tiger Owls might have given birth to this dream (part of it anyway). Not as cool as Dannon's though...

1. Wait what... ~ I'm a... FLYING CAT??!!!??
   
   I'm riding around Fairview Heights on my bike at night enjoying all the city lights. I'm on a little road that runs parallel with the highway where all the strip malls are, usually IWL I'd be on the highway instead, but it felt cool to be exploring this little quiet road I'd never been on before. There are apartment buildings lining the road and it curves through a large arc before opening back onto the highway. As I'm back there in the quiet among the apartments a pretty teenage girl in black concert shirt and lots of black eyeliner runs from one of the buildings, obviously wanting to stop me and talk to me. She seems troubled... and also seems like trouble, if you know what I mean - druggie runaway type.
   
   She needs a ride, and now my bike has transformed into a car. What can I say - I'm easy! I give her a ride. To a donut shop or something.
   
   Then I'm in a big building with my sister and a friend of hers. They want me to take them somehwhere but I say I need to wait for the girl to bring my car back ( - not good!!)
   
   Now I'm flying slowly over incredibly beautiful landscapes... vast Northwestern vistas of heavy forest with huge lakes reflecting the glowing indigo sky. There's some kind of modern city under me... it's what I think Ontario might look like, but in the dream I still think I'm flying over Fairview Heights.
   
   I'm amazed by the beautiful detail... the lighting and the feel of the air... this is awesome!! After passing over one of the lakes I'm flying beside a huge building that I think is a bank. It's got very modern architecture, like it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright or something - big slabs of wall supporting a cantilevered roof, surfaces all pebbled and with nice decorative elements. Somehow without meaning to I fly right inside... one of the wall slabs is just open along the edge and I sort of get scooped in by it. I'm laughing about this as I turn around and fly back out to resume my journey.
   
   Now I have a sidekick... a flying house cat that I can apparently communicate with telepathically. We fly on for a while, then my awareness transfers into the cat. Now I've BECOME the cat and I'm flying alone.
   
   Some kind of statue below me comes to life as I fly over it and it flies up to chase me. It's a statue of some kind of monster - it's incredibly powerful and can't be stopped. Somehow I just know this. It's much stronger than me as well as more maneuverable and faster. The monster statue is so confident in its ability to kill me it's singing a happy song to taunt me, biding its time.
   
   And still the landscape is impossibly beautiful - the architecture has pools built in at various levels in a terraced formation that blends harmoniously with the terrain. I plunge down into a pool to try to escape the pursuing creature but it doesn't throw him a bit.
   
   I wake up - as usual I tend to wake at the end of each REM period (which is a good thing as I usually remember the dreams). I have a weird headachy feeling.. lingering effects from the two nights of insomnia, but I feel better now. There was at least one dream I've completely forgotten, but just before waking up for the last time I had this one, that I consider a wish fulfillment dream:
   
   
   
2. Wish Fulfillment dream
   
   
   I'm working at the restaurant (where I actually do work). There are only 2 of us working, me and the manager Mary Beth (manager we had many years ago who was cool as hell and favored me - those were definitely the good old days!)
   
   I'm sitting in the office doing a drawing using colored pencils and various other mixed media, including the white-out from the desk drawer. It's looking really good. I'm excited about it and want to show Mary Beth. I find her sitting on a stool in the kitchen with a TV on (hah... as if we're allowed to have a TV!) and reading the paper with a big smile on her face. I peek out into the lobby to see a bunch of customers waiting patiently. I tell her about them and we go calmly to take care of them... there's no pressure or anxiety at all.
   
   Now I'm Conan! Ridiculously muscled and bristling with broadswords and shields and daggers etc.
   
   Standing in front of me is an even bigger barbarian dude that's my mortal enemy. We're indoors - maybe in the restaurant? He wants to fight me, but I tell him I don't want to trash the place - I know I can take him anytime I want with or without weapons, and I know he knows it too. I tell him I could easily decapitate him with one swordstroke, but I won't do it until it's necessary.
   
   I was hearing the song Please Don't Touch by Polly Scattergood as I woke up. Not for real... no radio on or anything, just in the dream. I had just discovered it and I like the surreal almost Beatles-esque sound of it.

In reading this I Just realized the last dream is sort of a reversal of the one before it. In the 1st one I'm being chased by a flying statue that's stronger and faster than me and I know it can't be stopped. It sings a happy song to taunt me. IN the 2nd dream, when I'm Conan, I'm super-muscular and facing an opponent that I know I can easily beat, and he knows it too... plus I hear a song playing.

Another belated realization; the monster statue was probably my shadow. If I had been lucid I could have integrated with it somehow rather than run from it or try to fight it. The idea that it's my shadow might have been reinforced by the role reversal dream - I'm a muscular barbarian and so is my opponent... almost identical.

Alright! Your dream sounds as cool as mine, if not cooler! Anyway, here is another coincidence for you: Today I was walking in a new park I haven't been to before, and this reminded me of you so I took a picture. How neat that you also had that dream!


Imagine if this thing came to life and flew! Coincidences are magic, this may be a coincidence for you, but it is also a coincidence for me! When I saw this sculpture, I took the picture just for you, not knowing it would be even more applicable.

Hah!! That's awesome!!! Yes... even more synchronicity... statues of "flying cats"!!! ... And you hunting a stone owl with a camera... just like I hunted the owls with my camera the other night to record their calls. Once the synchronicity starts to flow, it's amazing what it can do!!!

Well, I said not as cool as your dream because for one you didn't have an unstoppable monster statue chasing you and singing - plus it just sounds so cool to have all those owls transforming into cats and rolling around in front of you! Mine was cool in an action/adventure way, but left me feeling a bit troubled due to the almost nightmare nature of it.

Somehow I missed you speaking about Vultures.
I secretly love vultures! The way they fly effortlessly. How they have no voices. How they can actually see heat thermals to ride. How they clean up after nature. How they don't kill, not even plants.
They are karma-free astral flyers that see the invisible and purify the shadow of nature. A vulture feather in your dream catcher will really help dreaming. Nice pictures!

Spoiler for Yet another damn unbelievably story.:

I was in Oregon and had been camping all weekend at a beautiful secluded spot by the river. I am driving down the mountain and going kind of fast. I go around the corner and a vulture is in the road! I step on the brakes as the vulture takes off. But he is carrying something! I cannot slow down fast enough to avoid hitting him as he is flying at about windshield level! He realizes that he needs to drop what he is carrying in order to rise to safety. He drops what he is carrying on my car: an open can of beer! Beer splatters all over my car and I feel some come through my sunroof as the vulture flies to safety!
Nobody EVER believes that story, but I swear on Buddha as the Earth is my witness, it really happened!

Ahh..flying cat dream for the win!! And it sounds like stones coming to life could be a dream sign for you

LOL, I Just read your dream from yesterday (or the day before?) with 2 cats... was wondering if they were going to fly!

And it sounds like stones coming to life could be a dream sign for you

Definitely! Also things changing sizes spontaneously, like Alice when she eat mushrooms.

Dannon, I LOVE vultures!! Always been fascinated by them... but then again, what guy isn't? Sort of goes along with the childhood love of dinosaurs. Hey, they ARE called Raptors! LOL @ thinking about a drunk vulture flying around!

Dream
Lucid

CASTLE SCHEMA

1st part I recall -

I'm hanging out with somebody and they show me a magazine or a newsletter that at first I think they made themselves - I'm commenting on how good it looks. Then I decide it can't be their work because the photography in it looks totally professional. I say something like "... unless you have access to professional photography?" - they don't respond. The pictures are of a female pop star from a year or so ago who's no longer famous (nobody IRL) but I say she was big "in like 1989" when it should have been 2009.

Then I remember lots and lots of pennies raining down.

I'm in my sister's old room looking out the window at some sunflowers that grow tall enough to be level with the 2nd floor. I remember planting them a few years ago and I'm proud they've grown so tall. Suddenly she's standing in the room with me and Mark is outside under the window dressed as Prince Charming (this begins a castle schema that continues through the rest of the dream). He steps forward so the stem of one sunflower is coming up right between his legs, and this pushes the flower right up against the window. This annoys me because it reminds me of the time when he tried to hit on her.

Now I'm walkig down some dark stairs made of stone - as if in a castle. I've got Dusty and Star both with me (my old sheepdogs) and they're all happy, wagging their tails and sniffing each other's noses excitedly (which is awesome because Star was always very unsociable and suspicious of other dogs). It seems like I'm going to take them outside and this makes them very happy. We get to the bottom of the steps and I open the door onto bright sunlight, they both jump out ---

And fall into a moat! It looks like a regular front yard out there, except for the big rectangular pit dug right in front of the door, which is filled with water. I'm shocked... why would there be a moat here? How bizzare!!

I leap into the water to pick the dogs up... the sides of the moat are straight up and down and way too high for them to climb up. I now can't see them anywhere, though the water is totally clear. I'm getting afraid they might drown if I don't find them very quickly. Then I see a dark shape moving across the bottom... but it's not a dog... it's a huge alligator!! Damn, now the urgency to find them fast is getting intense.

I see that the alligator has something in its jaws... and I'm afraid it's one of the dog's legs, but a closer look reveals it's the tail of ANOTHER ALLIGATOR!! Oh shit... this is one of those dreams where you see one dangerous thing, and then you start seeing more..... crap!!

Then I see the 5 or 6 big sharks swimming around. I'm getting REALLY worried now, but suddenly I catch sight of the two dogs trotting happily across the street, shaking water out of their hair. I have to struggle mightily up the muddy far side of the moat to try to join them.

But instead I find myself standing in front of a steep-sided ravine (seems to be the moat but in heavily modified form). There's a lazy stream flowing in it, and the far side of the ravine is much taller than my side. Suddenly a bunch of people come jumping down from the top of it, where I couldn't see them before. They're all laughing and having fun. Some of them jump directly into the water, some hit the slanted wall of the ravine and bounce into the water, and the last few stragglers seem afraid to jump so they just slide timidly down into the water.

Now I'm walking next to some kind of cobblestone paved path that I know leads back to the castle behind me... somewhere far behind. There's a bridge running parallel with the path, which also leads back to the castle. I'm alone at first, then I see a tall broad-shouldered guy walking fast along the path, coming up from behind me. I know he's my brother (I don't have a brother IRL). Behind him, unseen by him, I also see our father (not my real father - it's like I'm playing a character and they're also characters). He's running silently toward my brother and carrying a huge powder keg on his shoulder. I know instantly that his plan is to drop the powder keg on my brother to kill him.

But I also know that if I don't intervene my brother will turn and see our dad coming at him with murderous intent. I distract my brother by talking to him. Just before he gets close enough for the kill though, our dad loses his footing and drops the powder keg too soon. It's still big and heavy enough to kill my brother though, and is rolling ponderously toward him, and I know if I can just keep him distracted long enough it will still kill him. For whatever reason (wasn't made clear in the dream) I want that, so I get all excited and start shouting to prevent him from hearing it rolling. He begins to turn anyway, so I throw him down in front of it - it rolls very slowly over him, flattening him like a cartoon.

I also remember what seem to be long stretches of dream with no visuals, that consisted entirely of hearing Please Don't Touch by Polly Scattergood, which I also heard in last night's dream. Yes, I'm obsessed with this song! For the last two days it's been running incessantly through my head while awake AND while asleep. It hearkens back to the heyday of great female-led alternative bands like Belly and Tori Amos.

Heh.. Castle Schema is the perfect name for this entry - the castle (representing the royal family) seems filled with scheming! Me and my dad conspiring to murder my brother -

I suspect the scheming/suspicious theme started the moment Mark made the obscene gesture toward my sister, reminding me of my suspicion and anger at him back then. That gave the whole dream a rather bad flavor.

Also, in reference to the first part - about someone publishing a newsletter - my sister did publish one years ago, and I drew the covers for it! That didn't occur to me until just now. Heh... how rude of me, to dream that it couldn't be her work because the photography (cover drawings?) are too professional! Also, I watched a brief stopmotion film yesterday made by a friend of mine which featured a lot of pennies raining down all over his puppet.

More associations that just came to mind - A Prince Charming costume is appropriate for Mark... he was a bit of a player and the girls all went for him... fortunately not my sister though.

A rectangular dirt-sided pit... reminds me of two things, both relating to Star. One is the fish pond that me and my real dad dug in the back yard many (many) years ago, when I was a tyke (I'm back in the same house now, helping out my mom who otherwise would have to go to a retirement home). A few years ago I came home from work one night and asked my mom where Star was, and she said "outside". I asked how long she'd been there, and she said "wow... a pretty long time I guess... maybe an hour or more!" This was unusual, Star generally only stayed out for 15 minutes or so at the most. I walked all around the yard calling her and heard nothing in response, was about to head up the street, when a thought occurred to me (I think I might have written all this in another entry?) - I checked the fish pond, which is 3 feet deep (Star was about 2 feet tall). I didn't see her in there, but there's a wooden deck which overhangs a corner of the pond, and she could have been under it.

I looked under it, but it was too dark to see anything there. I called her name, and then I heard something big move down there. I figure it HAD TO BE her, so I took a deep breath and reached into the darkness - to feel wet dog! I curled my arm around her and pulled her out, dragged her up onto the brick patio. She was shaking... she must have stood on her hind legs under there for an hour too afraid to move... she would have had to put her head under the water to get out from under the deck - what a terrible ordeal it must have been! Heh... I toweled her off and spent about an hour with a hair dryer getting her all dry.

The other rectangular dirt pit is the grave I dug for her a few months after that, not too far from the pond. Rest in Peace, my faithful canine companion!!



Here's Star, on the deck over the pond where it all happened. I'm absolutely astonished at how efficiently dreams can compress a complex set of ideas into a very brief set of images.

::: DARKMATTERS DREAM CLASSICS :::

The Brick Pit

No lucidity in this, so I won't bother posting the color key. I was probably about 15 when I had this one. Reading Juroara's post The Dream Pipes tonight inspired me to post this old dream.

I dreamed I was awake in my room, looking out the window at night deep into the heart of the woods. Way out there somewhere, in the deep dark of the wilderness in between the visible strings of lights representing streets and subdivisions there was a powerful white spotlight beaming straight up out of what seemed to be a hole in the ground. I was mesmerized by it - utterly fascinated. Somehow I knew it was just for me, and that I had to go directly to it right now.

It's hard to remember exactly how parts of the dream went, but I *THINK* I just sort of drifted through the dark woods like a ghost. Or maybe a more appropriate term would be like a moth drawn toward the light. As I drew closer to it I could see that it was huge... bigger than any spotlight beam I've ever seen.

Indeed, when I reached it, it was emerging from a round pit several hundred feet in diameter - a straight column of brilliant light blasting straight up into the sky. I think I drifted slowly down into the center of the pit. Now I could see quite clearly here, as if the brilliant light was no longer on - I guess now that it had brought me it had served its purpose. The entire pit was lined with bricks... a perfectly round pit sort of like a small coliseum. The surrounding wall had a series of arches, and through them I could see another brick wall.. sort of an arcade in circular form.

I walked up to the wall of arches and saw that behind the arches were a series of openings in the other wall... not lined up directly behind the arches but interspersed between them so they couldn't be seen until you stepped through an arch. The arcade was like a large-diameter circular walkway of sorts, the arches opening along one side into the pit and the dark rectangular doorways in the opposite wall opening into corridors that radiated outward like spokes.

I knew I was supposed to choose a tunnel. They all looked identical, and from down in the pit I could no longer get my bearings on the landscape above. I strolled around the circular arcade for a while but couldn't find any difference from one tunnel to another, so I picked one at random and started walking along it. I knew once I had chosen I was committed and couldn't return and choose another one.

There was a diffuse illumination coming from nowhere in particular.. no light fixtures visible but it never got too dark to see. As I progressed along the tunnel nothing changed much for a long ways... the brick was fresh and new, as if just laid recently and perfectly clean. It was a nice wide tunnel with a high ceiling. But after a while I noticed it was getting smaller, and the brick didn't look so new or clean anymore.

I kept going, and the tunnel kept getting smaller and grottier. Soon it was almost brushing my shoulders and the top of my head, and now the brickwork looked like it was maybe a hundred years old... edges rounded by erosion, a lot of cracked and broken bricks, and little roots growing through here and there. It stopped getting smaller, but kept looking progressively more ancient and broken. Now there were huge cracks in the walls and moss growing on the bricks... the roots were bigger and it was getting drippy and slimy.

Now the tunnel was no longer straight - it twisted and turned like a maze, and there were narrow dizzying stairs going up and down and back up... after a while I had no idea how close I was to the surface anymore.

I think it ended like that. Really wish I could remember it better, but that's the gist of it anyway.

Yeah sometimes dreams are like .rar files. Just packed with information. Amazing really.

Hah! .rar files... that's CLASSIC!! (BTW, I hate .rar files!)

Speaking of coincidences, I saw two Great Horned owls today. One had one eye open and the other was sleeping. And two bears.

Cool! Our friendship is now symbolized by Great Horned Owls!

And two bears.

Holy crap!! What kind of bears? Were they close to you? I'd be scared shitless!!

I haven't heard the owls for the last couple nights... I guess they have a big range and are only occasionally in the vicinity. But I'm keeping my camera and a bicycle helmet close by for next time... I really want to record their calls! It occurred to me though... a broom for fending-off might be a really BAD IDEA! I imagine if something stops an owl cold in its flight it'll start flailing in desperation... that's when I'd get hurt (and the owl too). Probably best I don't get so close... the mic on the camera is good enough to work from a few hundred feet I'm sure.