BenParic
Lurker

Ugh. Have any of you had an experience like my second dream?

Ah. it doesn't matter. This was such a successful night I can't even feel frustrated. I woke up in the middle of the night, no alarm this time, and remembered more than I usually do with an alarm. And I remembered another one when I woke up for reals! And in one of them, I performed a reality check... even if the results of that check weren't ideal...

Dream #1
I have an impression that this dream actually started a while before I can remember it.
I am riding a bus or train with a friend into a station. This has obviously been the site of a terrible massacre; the train's wheels crunch over dead bodies of people who had been fleeing. There is an oppressive dictating monologue Half-Life 2 style coming through the train's speakers... everyone seems to have wrist injuries, or at least my friend does—possibly Pedro, a friend from Arizona. We're wearing... white robes of some sort? The station is full of armed government patrolmen wearing the outfits that Psicom wears in Final Fantasy XIII... you know, with the ridiculous gas masks and everything. Waiting for us. We exit the train, and there is a sudden and nonsensical scene change.

Now I am walking with my mother, and possibly my grand mother and sister, down some sort of paved, ambient pathway. There is a bustling feeling, like we're at SeaWorld or something. My mom is jealous of me that I saw a symphony for some reason... this comment is triggered by a photograph I show her (it's a polaroid, but I don't remember what the picture was of). Finally, we step through the doors of a huge opera house or theater... I don't know, but it is massive. Huge sense of space. The wall is totally covered with an eerily detailed, almost fur-like system of organs (the musical kind). At first I seem to be on a balcony, but then I'm on the ground floor, which is raw and dirty like a cave's.

Now I definitely am with Pedro, and we're playing Borderlands. This is the site of a massive fight, I can anticipate it. While Pedro hangs behind with a weapons supply vending machine, I meander forward only to be stopped by the eruption of three enormous skags from the earth, each easily towering over me and blocking out the theater lights. They charge at Pedro. “Do you think they'll get me over here?” he says ironically as the skags attack. They go down easily enough. Pedro motions at one of their faces. “You can talk to the shotgun like it's a person,” he says. And that was apparently the straw of nonsense that broke the logical camel's back because then I woke up.

I was giddy while I wrote down this dream. It's the first one I've remembered in over a year. The last thing I said to myself while I was falling asleep... "I'm so proud of you."


Dream #2
In this dream, I had a false awakening, performed a reality check, and “became lucid.” That's in quotes because while my dream self was very much aware that he was dreaming and could control everything, I don't think I had any conscious control over him :s

For a beginner, he sure did a lot of complex stuff. He transformed the community college stock piano downstairs into a concert grand, and played something be-e-a-utiful. He made an old fashioned synth pop out of my keyboard and twiddled the knobs, hearing the piano's sound being manipulated in real time. He went back up to my room, where I think “Avatar” was playing on the TV (the lights in my room were on at this point), and he was able to will objects out of the screen—one of which was a piece of bullet shrapnel that flew out of the screen so fast that it totally didn't even make contact with the window on the opposite wall.

I could feel my dream self concentrating. “When I look at the piano, it will be a grand piano.” I could feel him visualize, and feel proud when he succeeded... I could tell when he lost clarity in the dream and spun around to keep himself there. He did everything right without actually bringing me into the equation. It was infuriating. At least he kept breathing through his closed nose, which is an interesting memory of feeling.

By the way, at one point in the “lucid,” I closed my eyes and became fully oblivious again. The scene reset in some sort of storage space with lots of boxes... I think perhaps a building from the Overpass map in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. It was sad and I was crying to somebody else in the room... but I can't remember who, or what I was sad about.