Harlequin
Member

Color Code
Dark Green = Lucid
Brown = Partially Lucid
Anything else is nonlucid

Notes

• Sleep quality: pretty good though interrupted a few times. Stayed in bed for an hour after waking up thinking I might sleep more, but there was too much activity in the neighborhood (the house construction was not so bad, but when the leafblowers began I knew it was over for me).
• Sleep time(s): 11:00PM-(?)-1:30AM [woken by cat but didn't check time], 1:45AM-(?)-5:30AM [I think I woke up since the fragments I remember feel separate but didn't note time], 6:00AM-7:15AM
• Before bed activity: drawing (animation) while listening to black metal (Kyprian's Circle - The Nightwind Tunes demo), finishing a crossword puzzle, then doing some stretches to relax
• Goals or intentions: if I became lucid, I wanted to work more on stabilizing and changing scenes.

Architecture and spider fragments

• Awakening time: 5:30AM
• Before the dream: I didn't remember any dreams when I woke up, still made myself write a note in my phone since I think getting lazy with that might also negatively affect my recall. Had some water and tried to focus on remembering at least something of my next dream, doing the "fishing" visualization.
• Level of detail: #fragment
• Lucidity: #nonlucid
• General mood: a bit apprehensive but somehow entertained

Like I wrote above, I have the feeling these two fragments were from separate dreams. I didn't check my phone for the time or notes in between, I just remember waking up and reciting some keywords of the fragment to myself. So it //might// have been a false awakening, but it certainly did not feel like one (I was just where I had fallen asleep, it felt like I fell asleep rather than entering any strange situation, and the fragments have no connection).

Concrete house

I am in a forested area. There is a wide trail made of steps carved naturally into a large tan rock. With another woman, I am planning out the layout of a one-storey concrete house, and as we argue about what should go where, the house changes with our commands (like we're building it with our minds, we're not actually using the material with our hands). We have a disagreement about where the front door should go, if it should be in an alcove. She is also adamant that the eaves should **not** overhang around the whole house.

Dancing spider

I'm in the hallway upstairs at home. I see a black spider, a little smaller than my palm, with a kind of bright red bulb-shaped body that sticks straight up. It's lifting two legs and dancing, swaying the red body back and forth. Every few moves, it jumps a little closer to me, starting on the top step and moving into the hall. I'm a little freaked out so I go to hide in the bathroom.*

X. is in there shaving. I tell him about the spider and check that it hasn't crawled under the door - I think the space under the door is too small for it to crawl through.

Then another woman comes in with a plastic bag of chicken cutlets that she is marinating. She sits on the toilet and starts talking to us. I'm confused because I have no idea who she is.

Florida and the Void

• Awakening time: 7:15AM
• Before the dream: Again, tried to refocus on remembering dreams, telling myself that my dreams are important to me, but trying not to put too much pressure by recalling that I still benefit emotionally from them even if I don't remember them. Focusing on being active and grounded in dreams and experiencing them as real.
• Level of detail: #detailed
• Lucidity: mostly #nonlucid with #partiallucid to #lucid in the middle (DILD)
• General mood: curious, at first frustrated then calm after lucidity

Seeds, glasses, and marsh

I'm visiting my family in Florida, though the house I'm in isn't their waking-life house. It's like their house and neighborhood from waking life have expanded almost in a fractal pattern.

I'm walking around this huge house, as people are doing things in other rooms, and get to the kitchen. I remember the kitchen as blue and purple with flourescent lighting.

I see a purple plastic food dish on the counter, like a combination of a child's lunchbox (with different food sections) with a watercolor palette (many small sections). I think it's clean and grab a towel to dry it and put it away, then notice it was dirty and I was wiping some of the food away. I wonder if I should wash it, but it seems to be a lot of food, and I think maybe they wanted to save it. I shake it a bit to even out where I wiped the stuff away, and a bunch of chia seeds spill out of one section onto the counter. I wipe them up with my hands, feeling the fun and gritty texture.

Baby keeps stealing my glasses.** When I get them back, I notice that the screw holding the right arm on is loose. I ask if anyone has a glasses repair kit, and H. says yes, but I can't find a screwdriver in it. I ask L. and she gives me a regular screwdriver, which is too big.

Everyone is sitting around a table that is like a bed - the top is soft and the things on the table get lost in the covers. I push them around, finding jewelry hidden - necklaces, bracelets, and two rings. I give them to people and they discuss without me what belongs to whom.

I don't know exactly what makes me aware that I am dreaming, maybe the frustrating glasses situation or maybe the weird table, but I know now. I don't do any reality checks, and maybe because of that I feel "less" lucid than other times, and my memory does not feel as strong. That includes my memory of this dream for when I wake up, and also it seems my access to my previous memories within the dream is less than usual.

Once I know I'm dreaming, I casually walk out of the house and into the neighborhood. It's full of candy-colored Victorian gingerbread style mansions surrounded by pale yellow marsh grasses and connected by gray boardwalks. The sky above is gray but it's not raining (yet). I try to walk calmly. To reassure myself and keep from a chase scene developing, I make almost like a cut-scene where back at the house they're not sure where I am and don't know I've left.

Sex in the void

On the boardwalk, I call out loud for a dream guide from the void, who I will call Typhon.[1] This is more successful than my Kali attempt last night. I call a few times and enter darkness.

Actually, at first there is a filler image in one of my eyes. It's a nonsensical cartoon, mostly with blue and purple characters. I defocus my eyes to try and get it in both, but there's still a ring of blackness around it (like in previous dreams). Then I realize it's kind of like those TikToks where they edit in someone playing a mobile game below the main video because people can't even focus for like 30 seconds and think "wow that's bleak" and stop paying attention and don't see anything.

Anyway, while that's going on, first I feel my legs lifted and swaying side to side and my body lifted. We have sex while floating in this void - I feel his body pressing against my back and him penetrating me from behind. I reach back to feel his chest with my hands, and turn my head over my right shoulder so we kiss, first softly and then with tongue and teeth.

At points I feel I have trouble breathing. I move my head, either by shallowly waking up and forcing it or maybe convincing myself that I did (still not sure which - I was sleeping on my chest).

Then I feel this sudden pain and ask what's going on - and realize it's my cat in waking life jumping up onto my ass, and I'm feeling her nubby little paws. I definitely can't move enough to throw her off of me without completely waking up, so I try to dive further and immerse myself in the dream-sensations over the sensations on my body in bed. As a result, my lucidity fades.

Return to the marsh, with swords

Someone (one of my younger cousins?) comes into my room to call me away from my bed. I think something also comes through the window by my head? I go down and I'm back in the same place with the same people as before I was lucid. Typhon is there with me, but nobody else can see him.

Downstairs, there is a large room with multiple levels (connected by short flights of stairs) full of beds or sofas in nooks, with windows along one wall looking out on the marsh and the water. There is also another huge kitchen, with multiple rows of long counters, like a factory.

In the big kitchen, I hear M. and R. talking jovially about how they have to cut off the turkey neck before frying it because B. doesn't like how it gets gray and rubbery. Then the rest of the group starts ordering drinks and cocktails for the evening, and there's more chaos with people looking for each other and so on. I go outside and have to step into a marshy area for a family picture, standing behind X. and our grandmother sitting in an adirondack chair. I feel the mud and the hummocks of grass on my feet, how the ground sinks slightly beneath me, which is pleasant.

I have just a low level of lucidity, just remembering that I wanted to change this dream. I return to the big bed room, looking for Typhon and maybe to escape. While I've been away, Typhon has made me a weapon by sharpening the handle of a mop.

He is sitting on one of the sofas, and others come and sit next to him. He's still invisible to them, but I can feel him as I sit on top of him and he tells me that I have to use the mop-weapon.

I then see everyone else has two swords. Everyone's swords are of different kinds. Some are straight, some are scimitars, some are plain and others are made with pink resin and decorated with jewels. Everyone crosses their two swords to prepare for fighting.

I have to fight against a beautiful light-skinned black woman, with her hair styled in loops framing her face and ornate tattoos along her jaw. She has two swords made of wood. Somehow, with my mop, I manage to chip them away bit by bit, from the tip down to the hilt. When the blades are nearly gone, she tells me they're done and I can stop. But something tells me to keep going. As I cut away more, I see that she has a little blade hidden in each, like the blade of a razor or box cutter. So I keep hitting them until those too fall away.

Side Notes

I'm still having a lot of trouble recalling dreams, more than feels normal. They feel faraway when I wake up. Like comparing with my older entries my last dream is definitely detailed/full not a fragment, but feels patchy compared to others. Hopefully it comes back, maybe I should return to some of the meditation things I was doing to help before going away. It is annoying though, like there are traces but nothing I can put into words or pictures. Like the places I still remember from dreams from before I started dream-journalling.

*This evening, when I returned from walking in the storm and took a shower, a bunch of pieces of flowers fell out of my hair and all over the shower. Without my glasses I thought they were little spiders and got creeped out and started washing them all down the drain. Later I realized they were just plant pieces and I thought to myself "if this was a dream they'd be spiders."

**She kept doing this when I was visiting last week.

Summer Competition 2023

Remember a Non-Lucid Fragment - ½ point
First DILD of the Night - 10 points
[1] Basic Summoning - 5 points
+5 points if it is a fictional character from a book/movie/TV show/anime or Dream Guide

Notes

• Sleep quality: pretty good. It was nice and cool and breezy. I woke up earlier than I wanted, getting less than 6 hours sleep total, but didn't feel I could fall asleep again (maybe because I was used to getting this little sleep over the trip? I think I kind of psyched myself out not wanting to forget details of my dream, and knowing my alarm was coming in less than an hour too). I just laid in bed for an hour and let thoughts run through my head. So I'm kind of tired now and hope to go to bed earlier tonight. But also thankful to wake up and go to sleep somewhere peaceful.
• Sleep time(s): 11:30PM-(?)-3:45AM, 4:15AM-5:45AM [Sleep was interrupted some time in there by unusually loud sirens.]
• Before bed activity: took a shower, checked DreamViews to remind myself of the Summer Competition tasks, did some stretches and tried to calm my thoughts.
• Goals or intentions: My main goal was to remember a full dream, since I hadn't really done so while away. I thought it would be nice to try and become lucid for the Competition but I was careful not to emphasize this to myself too much, since it might mess with my main goal if I got too excited or fixated.

Through the Lighthouse

• Awakening time: 5:45AM
• Before the dream: When I woke at 3:45AM, I didn't remember any dreams, but I made a note in my phone to keep up the habit. As I went to the bathroom and got some water, I tried to keep redirecting my thoughts from "oh shit I don't even remember anything and it's already almost 4" to "I have plenty of time to sleep and I don't HAVE to remember anything anyway." When I laid down, I focused on //why// I should remember my dreams rather than just telling myself to remember them - that dreams are important to me for my emotions and memories, that I can easily remember my dreams (and know when I'm dreaming) as long as I am grounded and active in them. When I started thinking about other waking life stuff, I kind of "retreated" from it (like I'm in my head and I'm stepping back away from my eyeballs, is how I can describe it) and went back to those thoughts to fall asleep.
• Level of detail: #detailed
• Lucidity: #lucid (DILD)
• General mood: many strong emotions, mainly fear and admiration

False non-awakening with broccoli

I'm eating Chinese broccoli at a table with some other people, and I drop some on a red blanket that I have on my lap. (There are conversations that I don't remember now). I curl up on a couch with the blanket to get some sleep, and I want to throw it to the side and take a clean one (the white cat blanket that we have), I'm too tired to wash it now and I'll deal with it later, but it feels like an irresponsible thing to do.

Dad comes in - this is his house (does not resemble his waking-life house at all). He asks if I want to watch a movie with him and T. I check the clock and it's 9:30AM. I tell him no thanks, "I've been awake since 3:45AM and got really bad sleep all week, I really just want to rest in a quiet place." I start to tell him //why// I want so much to rest in a quiet place instead of with a movie on (because of all the people talking in the house on the trip last week non-stop), but then I see L. behind him in a kitchen and I don't want to seem ungrateful to her so I cut myself short.

False awakening & public bathroom

I wake up and start to write down my dream with the broccoli and dad. I check the time and it's 11:33AM. I close my eyes and think "No way, that's too late to have slept" then ask out loud "Is it really 11:33?" (I'm sure it's not and I'm dreaming). A dream-character confirms the time. When I open my eyes I'm in a public bathroom, laying down on a formica counter. Even though I'm sure I'm dreaming, I figure it's good practice to do a reality check so I push my feet against the metal bathroom stall wall next to me, expecting it to bend, but it stays firm. Oh well. I didn't really need the RC.

My vision kind of fades and I almost see the back of my eyelids but my vision returns (this happens throughout the dream, I lost track of how many times. At some points I feel my body in bed but push through until I can only feel the sensations from my dream-body). [1]

Lighthouse room

Now I'm in a dim room with reddish walls and a high ceiling. In the center, there is a round table, and on top of the table there is a black and white lighthouse that is maybe 6 or 7 feet tall. I keep returning to this room as a central point throughout the dream.

I can't decide what to work on as far as goals, so I try summoning a guide (with thoughts). Instead, I feel a negative presence in the room, at least two people who want to chase me. They also won't leave throughout the dream, I'll call them the (corrupt) dream-police.

Kali

There is a bit of a chase - I always have trouble remembering these kind of scenes since they flash through so many things and are high stress. I feel things are turning bad, though, and I want a reset.

So, I call out KALI, kind of like a petition to tear everything down and start over.[3]

I see myself sitting up in bed, with my face lit up. Except I have my hair in two braids rather than one as usual. The scene is in a cartoony or graphic style. I'm scared, especially scared to look into my own eyes, it seems like a dangerous thing to do.

I call KALI again and my "self" changes to a black dragon with eighteen heads.[4] The light becomes stronger until I can't see.

Then it's the back of my eyelids, then when I float back into the dream it's the lighthouse room again.

Pigs in a barn

The dream police are still in the room. So I float myself over the top of the lighthouse,[2] ask to go SOMEWHERE SAFE and drop down through the lighthouse.

I am now in a barn with sawdust on the floor. Tiny figurines of pigs wearing clothing sit in rows of chairs in the center of the room, and around all four walls. I laugh because they're adorable. As I look around more, I see humans mixed in as well, wearing similar outfits to the pigs.

One dream character is speaking to another, criticizing his choice of outfit - "If I'm dressing up as a pig, I need to have pink curly hair."

The longer I stay the less cozy it feels, the lighting seems to become colder and I'm bothered by barely anyone or anything moving.* I start to float up and out of the lighthouse again. Then halfway through, I wonder if I should have maybe tried to interact with one of the dream characters. I go back down and see Brian, a guy from some of my Russian literature classes at college. I try and go talk to him but he doesn't move at all. Then I remember and say out loud, "Oh right, you're just here because I saw you when I was cleaning out my contact book before" (I was doing that the evening before while awake). I leave again.

Final chase

When I get back to the lighthouse room, I try summoning a guide again. I kind of feel him with me, behind me and to my right, but can't see him. The dream police are there and chasing us again.

Again, the flash of scenes is unclear. At one point I try bringing us into the woods to crawl into the hollow of a tree. However, I can't find a break in the tree-bark. Then we are in a garage, and one of the dream-police has weapons. I try to shield myself by bringing a forcefield out from the center of my body, but I can't tell whether it works or not - the guy is not deterred, at the same time I'm not hurt, just vexed. I try to make him disappear by turning away from him, but he stays.

I let go of lucidity a bit, and watch as some people pack into a car into the garage and have a conversation. I feel I will be waking up soon, and just roll with it, getting back a bit of lucidity but stopping trying to control things.

Forest and stream

I feel myself falling through darkness. Then a shift and I am floating horizontally, backwards, under a cover of beautiful trees away from the bright yellow sun setting over a field. It is beautiful and I want to stay, but I keep floating away. Back behind the trees I see just blackness, and I'm scared again, but go through it.

I come to a stream, one bank on a green grassy field and the other covered in trees. I feel a presence with me, again a person that I don't see.

I see people wading in the stream, with friends and with dogs, and one group has a boombox playing an acoustic country (old style, not like country pop) version of the Christmas carol "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," despite it being clearly summertime. I don't mind the music. I start wading up the stream myself, and I'm just sobbing like a maniac because it's so beautiful. The water is very shallow, flowing over gray and gold pebbles, and throughout the stream I see fallen cut flowers - red, yellow, and other colors.

I notice the bottoms of my pant legs are getting wet - I briefly think, it's ok, this is a dream, they aren't really getting wet at all, then I remember/decide that I do like splashing around and getting wet, whether it's awake or dreaming. I'm enjoying the feeling of the cool water on my feet and legs.

Near the top of the stream, I see another dream. It starts to go past a building, then there is a beach boardwalk, and three dream characters hanging out there - they are young country musicians, one looking like a 1960s Dolly Parton, the others are a woman named Arlo and a man named Frog. But I feel I've been dreaming for hours (not really the case I found out) and it's time to wake up instead of going into another, so I float up and back into bed. My eyes are actually wet when I wake up.

Side Notes

*My sleeping mind being based and redpilled, safety is overrated and only for pigs.

This dream seemed more difficult to remember than my previous lucid dreams (not that I've had many. Maybe because I'm still pretty disoriented from traveling?

Summer Competition 2023

First DILD of the Night - 10 points
[1] Reality Check / Stabilization - 1 point
[2] Fly / Telekinesis / Change Gravity, should count for one of those depending on your definition - 5 points
[3] Basic Summoning or maybe just Unspecified Dream Control - 5 points
[4] Theme: Dragons - 5 points

Notes

• Sleep quality: sleeping in the office again. As with previous nights, not great - not much time, hot and stuffy in the room, but I was pleased that I was actually able to fall back asleep this morning for once!
• Sleep time(s): somewhere in 12:00AM-6:00AM, then 7:00AM-8:00AM
• Before bed activity: earlier in the night I went to the cemetary with M. and X., when we got back J. taught me how to play a Puerto Rican card game which is very like an Italian game I know - everyone else was too tired to play and we were up late.
• Goals or intentions: still given up on setting any during the trip.

Various Fragments

• Awakening time: 6:00AM
• Level of detail: #fragment
• Lucidity: #nonlucid
• General mood: none

Ocean and wedding

I float out of an old stone mansion into the air over a gray ocean. I'm flying up and down and skimming the waves. I realize I'm naked and other people are there - I think my hair should be enough to cover my chest but I "make" myself underwear for the bottom.

I float to an enclosure like a large version of the chicken coop, filled with people who are there for someone's wedding. Instead of dirt/dust, it's filled with rocks, and naturally carved steps lead down into the enclosure. A.S. and R. are there.

Inside, there is a tall structure of wooden decks connected with metal ladders, and I am climbing with some others, trying to find the highest point.

I had gifted someone a picture book about a city-state (I forget the name, but I remember the silhouette was shaped kind of like Maryland) and I point out where they can find some specific piece of information they wanted.

Cars and monster

I'm walking with a group on a rocky woods trail covered with snow, with houses fairly close together (like a suburb) on either side. We're knocking on doors looking for replacement car parts because some of ours were stolen.*

One of our group is a strange creature that looks like a Troll doll dressed up as Daphne from the Scooby Doo cartoons. I see her in a clearing, and shut my eyes as the Creature from the Black Lagoon jumps out from behind a stand of grass to grab her.**

Later, I'm making budgets with B. using crayons. I pick out a teal crayon and a pinkish one called AQUAMARINE RED.

Knife

I just remembered this in the car on the trip home.

I'm walking down the street in the town I'm visiting with my knife blade flipped out. Then I remember that they have ambiguous laws about carrying knives and think I'd better put it away, but I have trouble closing it.

I only realized this memory was a dream when I remembered I didn't bring my knife with me on the trip at all.

Birds and loud lucid

• Awakening time: 8:00AM
• Before the dream: got up to use the bathroom, for once did not get jumped by the big dog (only the cat), said hi to J. who was leaving, laid back down on the bed and tried to remember more of the fragments. I decided to just write down some keywords in my phone, even thought I was too tired to type them out in detail, and tried to reflect on them to reassure myself that my ability to recall dreams wasn't totally lost. I heard everyone getting up and talking and stuck my pillow over my head to muffle them a bit... and though it wasn't my intention I drifted off while doing this. They were talking loudly as usual, the dogs were barking, and the baby was also out playing for at least part of the time.
• Level of detail: I'll say #detailed since I cut it short myself
• Lucidity: #lucid (DILD)
• General mood: on edge

Packing and birds

I'm in the dining room at L. and M.'s packing up my suitcase and getting ready to leave. L. calls me into their bedroom to grab the comforters we brought since she just washed them.** I take one from her and there are two more on her bed - I'm not sure which is ours. I lift one up and say "this one must be yours, since it's too heavy for me."

When I go back out their house doesn't look like any house I know in waking life. There is a square deck made of pale tan wood, looking out on a gray leafless forest. Two sides of the deck are enclosed by glass walls of the house. It is a sunny day. M. calls me to one glass wall to look at the birds. "You see that one with the round body?" At first I see nothing, then I see a hummingbird's wings and body, but floating in separate places, not lined up. It's a brown bird with colorful spots. I think the misalignment is just that my eyes are crossed because I'm not wearing any glasses, and manage to turn my head so that the bird's head and body are attached right.

M. gets my attention again - "Look over at that one with the curved beak." I see it - "The woodcock!" It's actually in the house, on top of a bookshelf against the other glass wall, and it's with another animal (a frog?)

False awakening on futon

I wake up on the futon in the office, just like when I went to sleep except it's dark like the middle of the night with the lamp on. I'm happy about the bird dream because it's the first dream I've had all week that feels really like one of "my" dreams and not just a fragmented scramble of the day, and I'm excited to write it down. I try making notes on my iPad but people talking keep interrupting me.

I notice that it's an absurdly frustrating situation, and realize I must be dreaming. To confirm, I turn my iPad screen into a mirror.

I try manipulating the scene a bit - I go over to A. on the futon next to me, but he's laying upside down and his skin is unusually dark. I go back to where I was sleeping, and make a dark window at the head of the bed to drive through.

BUT I have second thoughts. First of all, I can hear everyone talking loudly in the next room, which makes it really hard for me to concentrate on what I want to do and how to do it. I also remember that I fell asleep with the pillow over my head and the air is stuffy, so I'm concerned about breathing. So I'm kind of debating, excited to be lucid but also feeling like it's not the best time. In the end, I decide to quit while I'm ahead and wake up.

Side Notes

*At dinner there was a conversation about stolen muscle cars.

**My nephews were talking about the Creature earlier.

***In waking life, we did not bring any blankets of our own on this trip (just sheets and towels).

I never really thought before about how my senses go into my dreams. I knew obviously about getting woken by loud noises, but this time it was like I could hear the constant conversation outside even while I was asleep. I'm sure it was also top of mind, because all week I've been falling asleep against the night-owls outside talking and waking up to the early-birds talking again so I'm in "fight or flight" with just wanting a quiet place to sleep. So even though I didn't do any interesting dream control I learned more about how important it is to have a quiet and undisturbed place.

Note for DreamViews: I will be transferring my notes about my dreams for the past weeks from my phone to my computer dream journal over the next few days, but won't fill them in here because it looks like I can't add entries on previous days and they're not interesting enough to spam. I have been away visiting my family and sleeping in some odd places. At one point, there were 12 people staying in the same (small) house, so it's been quite chaotic (in a good way!) and not conducive for dreams - not only did I have trouble sleeping, things were usually pretty loud when I woke up which made recalling and making notes more difficult as well! I also had alcohol on a few nights which is unusual for me, but I can't tell whether that messed with my dreaming any more than the rest of the situation did.

I also want to say, that traveling definitely affected my dreams. Because I was in weird situations and seeing unusual things all day long, a lot of stimulation. I often tried to notice things that seemed "dream-like," like really frustrating situations or weird written signs or sights. It feels to me like, because so much was happening, my sleeping mind didn't have much time to reflect as usual, and was just scrambling through processing the events of each day. I can link most of what I saw in my dreams to things that happened that day, which is not typical for me.

Notes

• Sleep quality: good, not too much difficulty falling asleep, only noticed one awakening
• Sleep time(s): 10:30PM - 4:45AM, 5:30AM - 6:30AM
• Before bed activity: drawing and listening to Trecento music... then I listened to part of the new Deathstars album in bed because it was stuck in my head.
• Goals or intentions: again my main goal was just to get a solid rest because we're traveling today and I probably will not sleep well at all while away next week.

Florida, lucid mazes and room-building

• Awakening time: 6:30AM
• Before the dream: I could barely remember my previous dream (one of those where when I "looked at it" it seemed to distintegrate). I was feeling a little down and also starting to get pessimistic about falling asleep as I heard the birds and saw it getting lighter. Then I thought "that's not worth getting upset about, I'm not a performing monkey to perform this same trick every night, I should just rest, and if I happen to have a dream and be aware of it that will be nice, but I don't need it." I fell asleep imagining A. and I going back to Florence and going to the San Marco monastery, and making up paintings that we might see on the walls.
• Level of detail:detailed
• Lucidity: about half #nonlucid and half #lucid (DILD)
• General mood: nonlucid part was kind of confused and annoyed, lucid part was fun/funny

Subtitle

X. and I are kids, we're on a trip with dad and coming back from being out somewhere to a tiny house with white walls where we are staying. I'm trying to figure out where I'm supposed to sleep. The back door is open, and I see little X. sitting out in a yard, wearing a coat, and laughing. Snow is blowing from outside into the room, I see it floating and dancing over the rug. I feel a chill. I tell X. snow is getting in the house, but he just keeps laughing, so I go over to close the door.

House party

After I turn around from closing the door, the situation has changed. I'm an adult now, and I'm in this house with A. and two others. I have a brief moment of thinking it's strange, but then I find that A. and I are sharing a full-size bed, so I get the sense that I found out what I was looking for.

Something happens in between in the day, but I forget. At night, the house gets bigger, and there's a party. Not the house itself, but the location, looks like our family friends M. & S.'s.

I'm walking on the sidewalk, up the hill and away from the party. I see pale yellow coral fungus with orange tips growing in a hole in a tree, but upside down. I call A. over to look. Then we walk back towards the house.

In a side yard, behind trash cans, two women are standing by a covered hot tub, talking about opening up. I notice someone scrawled REVOLTING COCKS in permanent marker on the hot tub cover, and I ask them "Did someone seriously do RevCo graffiti or am I hallucinating?" They tell me it's real and go back to their discussion. During the conversation, A. has slipped inside, so I go in to find him again.

When I get inside, I realize dad's extended family is there for a party, and I'm wondering why I haven't been in yet - I don't remember greeting any of them, so I feel awkward and wonder if I should say hello now. I see my aunt dancing - she has the same glasses as me, and I walk quickly to not talk to her. I get a bit held up in the kitchen with dad and his brother talking, and I wash my hands in the sink.

I find A. in the bathroom, which is in the center of the house with multiple doors and no windows. He seems upset about something but I can't tell what about. I think he's cold, and wonder why I'm not. I run hot water over my hands in the sink.

Map of the world

When I leave the bathoom, the situation changes again. Now I'm married to a woman I don't recognize. She's really into traveling, and she's sitting at a table with a few other people, showing them a world map with highlights on all the places we are going to travel on a very long journey. She's putting stickers on the map for each country. I tear up some stickers to use as tape to attach some different paper country silhouettes to the map.

I get scared, because I don't remember agreeing or planning to go on this trip (I know that as in waking life, I don't like traveling). As she's pointing to an island in Oceania (whose silhouette I don't remember from waking life), I tell her I'll definitely get seasick going there. She gives me a look, as if to say, "Why are you acting so strange?"

I know that she and her parents own a freemium map app for travelers. In reviews, people complain because the free version has many mistakes in the maps, and you have to subscribe for at least 5 dollars a month in order to get maps that are not misleading.

Scooter boys

I somehow get to leave, and I'm driving north toward home on the usual street. There are two guys on electric scooters in front of me, blocking off the entire lane. I slow down and shout, "Really?!" When they turn, I see they're just teenagers, so I figure I should be nicer. I just say, "I would be too scared to drive one of those on this street."

Lucidity on Florida Island

I blink, and I realize now I'm rocking back and forth. I'm laying on my stomach on a boat. I see B., her family, and A.M. We are approaching a barge covered in metal shipping containers of different colors. I ask them where we're going. They say, "Florida Island, have you ever been there?" I ask if A. is with us, and they tell me, "No, he had to stay behind."

The "island" is in the shipping containers. It's a multi-level maze-like construction, with flourescent lighting and almost no windows. It's also a kind of Christian retreat. I think we go to see a Christian performance, which I (thankfully) don't remember well. As we're leaving, walking up stairs, I'm distressed. I wonder what I'm doing here - how did A. get out of it but I have to go? How did I even get here? Then I remember that just before this I was driving home, and realizing I'm dreaming!

To confirm, I lean to reach a small stained glass window over the stairs. It's set deep in a recess, but I can just reach it with my fingertips. I drum my fingers on it, and realize the sound is not matching up with the feeling in my fingers, so I'm now certain this is a dream.

Once I'm certain and turn back around, people become fuzzy, and I have some trouble speaking as I say "This is a dream," but the scene stays and somehow resolves.

Search for phone service

Now that I'm lucid, I think it could be interesting to go to the monastery as I was thinking when I fell asleep. But I have to escape this hell-scape somehow, so I decide the best way would be to call A. Of course, I have no phone service, so I start walking quickly to find any place with a signal.

I realize that was rude, so I go back briefly to try and say "goodbye and nice to see you" to B., but when I go back her face has changed into a different dream character. Oh well. I continue wandering through the island.

I come into a library with blue walls and low shelves, where people are studying at tables. This place seems to be in a basement. I unlock my phone and I can't find the phone or contact apps, so I use the voice assistant instead. She and I have a whole conversation.

"Call A."

"Some advice: don't try anything that goes too against your experience of reality."

"Okay, so that means I can't make phone calls in this room" (I'm thinking about how it's both underground and a library - bad place for cell phones)

"Exactly."

So I ask her to just open up A. in my contact list to use later when I find a signal. I continue wandering.

Auditions

I come into a place like a lecture hall or theather, with tiers of seats facing a whiteboard. There's a college-age white guy in a staff t-shirt standing up near the top, shuffling some papers around on a table. I ask him, "Do you know how I can get outside, or somewhere with cell service? I need to call my husband."

"Sorry, the auditions just ended! I just finished up the documents."

"I'm not auditioning for anything. I'm just trying to call my husband."

But he doesn't get it, and thinks I'm putting on a great performance. "You know what, go out to our main garden. Find Retreatmaster Bonnie. You tell her, 'We're revival singers, we're folk singers,' all that, then you launch into your thing. She'll love it."

I give up on him. I somehow have internet, and I search for Retreatmaster Bonnie - I find reviews of her "services" on some S&M website so I give up on her as a helpful source.

Salmon settlement

I continue walking. I'm a bit torn between hurrying to my "goal" and looking around more. I stop and look briefly - the place seems more like a school. I see a poster on the wall that says something like "Hey kids! Get FUCKED UP with STEM!" in cheery blue letters. I even get outside briefly, but no service still.

I step into a small room with rows of chairs. I come in behind a woman standing at the front of the room, writing with a red marker on a tall and narrow blackboard. She looks like my high school guidance counselor L. She is assembling the meeting for the SALMON SETTLEMENT - something about people who didn't get enough fish. The first two names on the list are both my cat, and I see my cat in the front row. When L. calls out her name, she gives an annoying smug meow, and L. instantly says "Settled! For 55 dollars" and crosses her name off the list. I think it's hilarious, and as a result I start to lose lucidity as L. continues through the list of names, whose demands become increasingly nonsensical. I finally snap out of it and leave the room.

Phone teleportation

I continue walking with my phone unlocked. For a second, I see two bars and 5G in the top corner and think YES! Finally! The contact is still open, but the letters are scrambling, so I just tell the voice assistant to call A.

When he picks up, he sounds exactly like T. I ask, "A. is that you?" He says yes, and laughing I tell him "you sound like T." He replies, "I look like T. too, but that's okay." So I reached the wrong person. Oh well, at least I got a phone call. I close my eyes and ask, "Can you help me get out of here? Can you bring me to where you are?" and he says, "I already did."

I have the sense of being somewhere else. I open my eyes and I'm falling through a tall room with wood-paneled walls. I close them again, and open them when I feel that I'm on ground.

Telekinetic redecoration

I'm in an empty house, alone. I know I've been dreaming for a while, so I figure I won't waste more time trying to get to a different location again, instead I think it will be fun to try and change the room by speaking commands.

Some things are easy to change. I say, "there should be bookshelves on these walls" and I see planks of wood sliding over and forming themselves into shelves.

Some things are not possible to change. I want a window in the wall, but it's like my brain can't decide what should be outside the window, even if it's day or night. So again, I don't want to waste time going down that rabbit hole, I turn around and go through a door behind me into a different room.

This room has vaulted ceilings and is decorated in a French rococo style with lots of blue and gold. I decide to try and make the style of this room overall simpler and more modern. I say the walls will be white, and it happens, but with some difficulty - it's like things in the room keep their shape but get repainted. The walls are white but there are still plaster decorations, the furniture keeps the same silhouettes but turns into neon-colored plastic, rearranging and swirling through the room.

I feel myself waking up, and just let it happen since I know this dream has gone on for a while and I think it will be pointless to struggle.

Notes

• Sleep quality: good!
• Sleep time(s): about 10:30PM - 7:00AM, with at least four awakenings I remember
• Before bed activity: drawing (animation) and listening to Trecento music
• Goals or intentions: A. reminded me before bed, "don't think about sleeping" (or dreaming). I decided I was just going to try and be as relaxed as possible to catch up on sleep. This meant not checking the clock or making any DJ notes in my phone.

Various fragments

Because I didn't write anything down, I don't know the timing of these fragments and I'm not quite sure which fit into the same dream. The earlier ones I am sure were separate, the others I am kind of grouping in the way I remembered them, all the last time I woke up. None of them were lucid.

Map game

This is what I remembered the first time I woke up.

I'm playing a game where one player gets a blank map of a random continent. S/he has to color in the "evil" countries" on the map then the other player has to guess the continent.* I get a map of Asia and color in North Korea in the colors of their flag.

City park mafia

This is what I remembered the second time I woke up.

After walking through a city in the late afternoon/evening, I arrive at a large modern glass and stone single-floor mansion in the middle of an urban park. Along with a white man around my age, I join a group of people in cocktail party attire. The man and I are one woman in the group's "plus two" for an exclusive party hosted by a suspicious group of wealthy and powerful people. We are here to spy on them, maybe as part of an official investigation.

The house is mostly dimly lit and the floors have dark stone tiles. I remember passing through a large open room with no furniture, just plants.

There are two women in particular working for the organization. There is a kind of haggard-looking middle-aged white woman with short blonde hair and blue eyes, and a well-dressed black woman who looks a bit younger. The two of them are rivals.

We sit at a table. My back is to a window, the sill is at the height of my shoulders. The window faces west and the sun is setting. The black woman directs me to roll my neck so my head hangs back, and the sun is in my eyes.

The man I came with is sitting to my right, at one end of the table. In the course of conversation, he makes a comment about how "some well-regarded people did very bad things, such as [names]" (he lists some people who are connected with the organization, who were under suspicion but never officially accused as the organization could cover things up). This reveals that he is an enemy to them, and he has to run, back the way we came.

Some people in charge turn on a forcefield to lock down the building. It turns on as the man is in the door, turning back and hesitating, maybe to see if I or another comrade is coming behind him. I see the forcefield as black oily drops on his clothing.

The scene cuts to two women in the back. At least one of them is accustomed to this sort of thing happening, because she's complaining about the lack of internet, "oh no, not this again." It seems that all they know is sometimes all the phone and internet service cuts out, they don't know about the part where they trap and kill people.

I see the pursued man's head pop up in a dry fountain outside the house.

They catch him, and everyone congregates in the open plant room. The two women are standing in the middle. The black woman asks the blond woman, "Are you Belinda?" and blond woman nods no. She then asks whether she's supposed to report to her (like a higher rank in the organization, I forget the exact wording) and she nods yes. They've come to an understanding now and they hug.

Dating drama

I'm younger and I'm dating three men at once. One of them is long distance, one of them I'm visiting for dinner. This one has a tiny dark brown kitten with deformed legs. I look at a picture he sent me of the kitten, then I look up and see the kitten itself on his kitchen counter.

This one is a male artist that I follow on Instagram in waking life. I briefly wonder if he got divorced, because I know in waking life he's married.** But he's pleasant and I'm sitting on his couch trying to think if I should break it off with the others, and if I have to tell him about the others at all.

Poem fraction game

I'm doing something like an IQ test. One activity is to "perform the multiplication and write a poem using the results." It's a product of fractions, but instead of numbers it's black silhouettes of animals. There's two lines for the answer, one in line with the numerators and the other with the denominators.

I think it should be easy - I see a seagull, a duck, a lioness. But they seem to keep changing and I'm not sure which ones cancel out. More distressingly, I can't tell what the first animal is. At first I think it's a horse, then it looks more like a monkey, or a seal.

Atavism

I'm looking at my face in a mirror, and I have hair growing up the sides of my nose. I'm wondering when that happened - I don't remember seeing it in pictures of myself. I push the hair back and forth to see if it's really growing, and try to figure out how I can remove it.

Texting A.

I'm in a bathroom that looks like the bathroom in the house at Little Ferry. I change or am contemplating changing A.'s name in my phone contacts to an emoji for his nickname (this emoji doesn't even exist in waking life). I send him a message to ask if I can come over today (we don't live together in the dream), he tells me to pack a bag and just stay.

British schools

I'm driving with the family in Newark. We're listening to KMFDM, which confuses me because nobody but me likes them. Somebody skips Juke Joint Jezebel which is distressing.

We pass by gigantic brick buildings behind a wrought-iron fence. They're to the right of the car, and I'm sitting in the backseat on the driver-side, so I can't even see the tops of the buildings past the roof of the car.

I understand these buildings are boarding schools, I see students in uniforms. A whole sequence of horse-drawn carriages races by behind the fence, apparently bringing school teams to sports games. One carriage reads JOHN CLEESE CHEESE SCHOOL. Another school is named for Julie Andrews. I kind of wish we could stop and see more of what these buildings are like, but we are driving by quickly.

Construction dinner party

I'm in an apartment in a building that has recently changed owners and is to be renovated. There are drop-cloths and tools around. It looks kind of like an office space - there's that crappy white floor tile, popcorn ceiling, lumpy white paint job on the walls like it's probably been many layers over the years. Some daytime construction workers are complaining about how people on the night-shift steal or destroy things. They show me that they put a padlock on a bag of green beans to protect them.

I'm here with A. My neighbor R. is there, and I think it's his apartment. There seems to be a dinner party going on. He continues talking about crime in the neighborhood. There's a man who looks like George Costanza, who buys cookies and gives them out to people on the streets. Ralph says this is a bad idea, at first I think because it makes him vulnerable to the criminals, but he says it's because people hate the cookies - they are completely plain/unflavored. In particular, there is one middle-aged white woman in a wheelchair who he always gives cookies to, but she crumbles them up in her fingers to avoid eating them.

The woman in the wheelchair is a guest at the party. She is having a great time talking to a charismatic young white guy with a beard and glasses. He works at a hospital, he is either a doctor or a therapist. They are so absorbed in their conversation that the rest of us leave without them noticing.

When I leave the room, I see at a smaller size, so I can pick it up in my hands. Felt fabric of different colors is pinned up over the walls on both sides. I want to attach it, but I don't have a needle or thread, so I try gluing it, but it doesn't stick together.

Now I'm back to human size. The group of us who left decide to go down to the lobby. Directly inside the apartment, there is a cylindrical chamber, that is somehow both stairs and elevator, and somehow goes both up and down. A. comes in behind me, but the door opening is so low that he has to bend down.

As we're leaving, A. and I ask the others if we should turn ourselves into spiders (we can turn into red spiders in this dream) to stay behind and eavesdrop. However, we decide against it.

The building manager at the front desk is a black man in a wheelchair. Someone tells him about the man upstairs' success with the usually grumpy woman, and the building manager decides he wants to hire this man.

I follow him into an exercise room behind the front desk. Holding the phone, he steps up out of his wheelchair and stands on an exercise mat with weights. I hear his phone conversation - the head doctor at the hospital can't let this guy transfer right now as he's too in demand. The building manager is disappointed but understands. He walks over to the back side of the desk to hang up the phone. I think, "wasn't he in a wheelchair? How is he walking?" and when he gets back to the mat he collapses to his knees.

Parchment paper

I'm at the local supermarket. I need parchment paper or baking paper, but in two varieties (I think one is adhesive). They don't have much left, and I need to pick out rolls from a few different brands to get enough. To make sure I have the right amount, I start unrolling it and cutting it, lining it up with pieces of fabric. When I'm done, I realize that was a bad idea, because they'll think I'm trying to shoplift. I solve this problem by going to the self-checkout.

Carrots and laundry

I'm in the backyard. I'm cooking chicken, potatoes, sweet carrots, and almonds. The chicken and potatoes are for dinner and the carrots and almonds are for desert, but I'm cooking them all in the same big saucepan, and trying to keep them separate by moving them with a wooden spoon.

A young woman with box braids in a t-shirt and sweats comes into the yard. I see her crawling and looking around the ground by the garage. I have a memory of seeing a striped sock blow into the yard and under the deck. I wonder if that's why she's here, but I'm distracted by the pan, and I don't say anything.

She's there for a long time, so long I think it will be awkward to ask, but I finally do ask her, "Did you lose a sock?" When she says yes, I show her under the deck. There's a small pile of laundry that drifted there. For some reason we can't crawl under the deck, I have to fish for her sock and purse with a twig.

When I get up, more people have come into the yard, and we all have laundry baskets. Someone is commentating on what I'm doing, like "she's going to try to carry too much," and it's true, I am going to try and bring two laundry baskets at once into the house. I decide against it, and the person says "good idea."

Side Notes
What I learned last night:

- Dream recalling habit doesn't instantly go away. As I've seen on previous occasions too, even when I'm not consciously intending to remember dreams I can call up a lot of detail, and while I don't have any "full" dreams it is more than I was remembering with effort just a few short weeks ago when I began practicing. So I think this is important motivation to remember on nights when I don't remember so much, to not get too down.
- I could keep the memory of the first fragments pretty much at the same level as when I first woke up just by rehearsing without writing anything down. So maybe in the future if I'm scared to awaken myself too much too early in the night, I could combine notes for my first two cycles. (Though I don't even always wake up after the first.)
- However, I think not writing things down caused my later memories to become more fragmented and scrambled. Because when I would wake up and think "what was I dreaming?" part of what I remembered was those previous dreams. So I would want to have things written down and cleared from my working memory definitely before the third cycle where the dreams get longer.

And a question:

- Do you dream while recalling dreams? Sometimes, when I'm remembering and not writing down, I think I might fall asleep during the process and add or transform them unintentionally.

End notes:

*Yes, this is really not a great game with only seven continents to choose from, my brain will have to get some better material.

**This is not a person I'm attracted to, just my brain filling in "male person." Also hilarious that I'm wondering whether he's divorced and not thinking about how I'm in a relationship and also would never even have the social battery to date three people at once.