LeaningKarst
Member

Another dream on the verge of being lucid without quite being there. In the earliest part I can remember clearly, I’m on a computer: I’m looking up some band I’m interested in, trying to find more of their music. But the dream shifts to another scenario. It still isn’t lucid, but it’s pretty clear I’m not actually invested in it as real. I’m initially in an outdoor farm-like area with flamingos some distance away, observing interactions between characters. I only identify with one when she’s asked a question, changing to her viewpoint and responding as her. There’s a sense of making things up as I go along. I need to go somewhere now, and so I call to the nearby leopard, which I call Arthur, telling him to come with me. (I use the German pronunciation. I am about 90% sure I decided to name it after Schopenhauer.) It doesn’t want to get up, but I pull it to its feet, which it tolerates, and we walk away.

Next, I remember entering a building. It’s somewhat reminiscent of a building on a campsite, just a long rectangle, possibly something like an uninsulated metal frame, and has no interior divisions. It’s mostly empty and white, and there’s an even stronger sense of almost-lucidity here. It’s as if whatever plot there may have been has definitely gone off the rails by now, and I’m driving things, though not in a fully conscious way.

I go over to the bed in the nearest corner – other than the one by the door I entered from – and sit down on it. What follows is maybe best described as a strange kind of visual thinking – a little like reading a picture book, where I cease to really be present in the room and am absorbed in the stories that are playing out in mental space. It’s hard to describe since it isn’t exactly like anything that happens while awake – but it’s almost like there’s another presence there telling the stories.

They seem to be some kind of philosophical parable, and also a sort of story-behind-stories, representing something that was once commonly manifested in literature from an earlier time. The first one was so utterly bizarre that I can’t remember a thing about it now – but in the dream, I understand it perfectly since the meaning in all its facets and interrelations is just a part of it as it is presented. I can see it all mapped out, like a complex constellation. But some of the points are placed in the wrong locations for it to reflect reality. It’s something I was already aware of, but it’s a little sad to see it laid out like this so clearly.

There’s enough of a gap for the room to enter my awareness again before the second story begins. This one is apparently communicating the same thing as the first one did, but in a different way. I can remember the beginning of this one – how the wolves were all howling at the moon, but the moon had fallen asleep and couldn’t hear them…

5.30.21

This was a dream that was only a hair’s breadth from being lucid – one of the dreams where I can’t be entirely sure that the only reason I didn’t realize it was a dream was that I was taking it for granted that it was one the whole time.

I start out standing on a grassy hill outside a very large house at night. A man is nearby – another dreamer. Together, we fly up and then over towards the house. I have to help him part of the way because he can’t get high enough, but we make it onto the roof and go inside.

I can’t remember much of the journey, which seemed somewhat reminiscent of a video game, and after a while, we reach a room with a bunch of other people. They're all dreamers, too. They’re chatting, messing around, having fun, but I have something more serious on my mind. First, though, I ask a woman to heal me, since I was injured by a monster on the way. (It isn't actually painful, still in line with video game logic.) I joke that I never got the hang of healing magic myself, but don’t mention I have a reason for not wanting to use too much of my energy right now. I go past them, up through a door in the ceiling.

Once again, I'm standing on the roof. It’s night out here too, but otherwise, it looks like a completely different place than the one I entered from. Almost close enough to touch is a tornado. It’s completely still though: it looks like it was sculpted out of some steely metal, frozen in place. I did this at some point in the past, freezing it in time, but it won’t be long now until it starts to unfreeze. I gauge its strength and determine that I won’t have trouble taking care of it before it unfreezes. But there’s another problem: the effect is already wearing off with some of the monsters around here, and I probably can’t take care of everything at once. I may have to get some of the others down below up here to fight them – but I don’t like that idea. They’d probably be happy to, but they’re relatively inexperienced, and I don’t want to get them into a potentially dangerous situation.

I start by taking out some of the smaller enemies with lightening – things like little wild pigs running around. Then I see that another monster is watching me – an enormous cyclops goat monster. I have the impression that he’s sad, like he’s taking it personally that he’s been unfrozen all this time and I haven’t even noticed.

This is maybe weird enough to wake me up.

20.5.21

I’m in a green hilly area dotted with groves of trees, alongside a group of people. It seems like we’re all traveling somewhere together and have been in this general area for several days.

Nearby is an enormous skeleton horse with leathery wings. I think it’s cute and have been making friends with it. (My waking-life sense of what is cute is pretty broad by most people’s standards, and it seems to be even broader in dreams.) The horse is really enormous: it has its head down at my level, and it would probably be big enough to inhale me if it breathed (which seems unlikely to happen).

Now it wants to give me a ride: it lies down, leaning to one side so I can get on. I seat myself in the ridge between two of its vertebrae. This part of it, like the wings but unlike the head and neck, is still covered in skin, which is dry and stiff, rather like a drum skin in feel and color. It takes off, and we fly around the area for a little while.

When it lands again and lets me down, I rejoin the group, which has been occupied with something else up until now. Before long, though, as we leave the area on the next phase of the journey, I take to the air again, on my own this time. I have one eye on the rest of the group and the other on the road ahead as they walk towards a pass through taller hills.

28.12.20 [I’ve been meaning to post this for a while….]

(Note: The longer my dreams are, the harder it is for me to remember details, particularly conversations, and this was a long one. There’s several hours’ worth of material here that I can only remember happened at all because I can remember remembering it in a later part of the dream, and this does raise questions of whether they ever actually played out. But, for what it’s worth, it doesn’t feel to me as if that’s what happened, and I do have many cases of knowing dream memory is working in that way to compare it to.)

The earliest part I can remember is of a disaster taking place, a flood sweeping through a public building of some kind. Everybody is trying to get out. I’m one of the last out, but I wait, holding the door open so that the waters don’t forcibly close it and trap the one person who’s still there. It took him a while to believe this was actually happening (understandable, considering how weird it is), so he didn’t get out as quickly as everyone else.

After this series of events is the biggest memory gap, which seems to mainly consist of meeting up with a large group of people and preparing for some kind of expedition together. I become lucid not long before we’re going to set off, although it’s not so much me realizing that it’s a dream as it is the unconscious knowledge that it’s a dream, which I’ve been acting on this whole time, becoming conscious. And this sort of makes it feel as if I’ve been lucid the whole time, if that makes sense.

I’m looking out the window of a house onto the rolling fields beyond as it happens. I still have some preparation to do here, though, so I’m still here packing as everybody else is leaving. I’m taking my hiking backpack, the black one with yellow trim. It occurs to me to wonder whether I need to do this in a dream, since I can just make things appear if I need them. But I have the impression, based on earlier conversations, that I might not be able to do that in some of the places we’re going, and so I’ll want to make sure I have essentials with me, at least. The last thing I grab is my brown aviator-style jacket, which I fold and pack into the backpack before buckling it and heading downstairs and outside.

I can just see somebody disappearing past the other side of the house, down a broad stone staircase. That’s where everybody’s gone. I try flying part of the way, but perhaps because of the hiking backpack—even though it doesn’t feel heavy—it’s hard to get more than a couple feet off the ground. But flying seems to be slower than running anyway, so I just run around the side and down the stairs.

I’m now in an area with several platforms rising a distance above the ground. Next to one on the far side is a cliff wall with a small tunnel partway up, a little above head height. A young women is nearby – it seems she had to stop to do something before going onward. I jump onto one of the platforms, where I see some piled-up clothing. I recognize it as a kind of uniform for us to wear. It looks a bit like a karate gi: loose pants and a shirt that ties around the front, white, though a little discolored with age and threadbare in places. On some of the edges, flowers are embroidered in pale colors. I put it on over my clothing.

Jumping onto the last platform and up to the tunnel—taking off the backpack and pushing it in first—is practically effortless, much easier than it would be in waking life, which makes it kind of fun. The tunnel is not tall enough to walk in, and it narrows considerably not far ahead, so I push the backpack in ahead of me. It barely fits, and I can see it slide down once it gets past the narrow point, where the tunnel slopes downward. I barely fit, too – I actually have to turn my head to the side to squeeze through. But soon, it’s large enough to where I can crawl again, and then walk upright.

The tunnel is made of squares of some smooth material, solid black in the center but with a stripe of red-orange around the edges that glows, lighting the way. As I walk, it slopes further downward and eventually drops me into a corridor with a grimy, institutional feel to it. All dimly and artificially lit, as if I’m somewhere underground.

It has a distinctly unpleasant vibe – although part of the reason may be because of what I know about this place. It is actually a sentient environment, and not a very nice one, and now that I’m inside of it, it’s going to be tracking my every move and shaping itself according to my actions and reactions. It’s not the destination – just somewhere we have to pass through on the way. There’ll be a test at the end that has to be passed before we can get out – but this place doesn’t like people leaving it and will be actively throwing obstacles in our way.

My backpack isn’t here – the place probably hid it somewhere, and so I’ll have to be on the lookout for it. I turn towards the right, reading the plates on the doors as I go by, deciding which room to enter first. The place looks to be some sort of school judging by what they say.

As I walk, faint, unpleasant feeling-tones arise, like the ghosts of memories with an archaic, dark quality to them, although they definitely don't involve my personal past – not in this lifetime, anyway. Or maybe they’re anticipations of what I’ll find here, behind the doors. Or maybe both. I also see a set of stairs leading downwards, but I don’t want to leave this floor just yet.

After reaching the end of the corridor, I head back, still making up my mind. It’s not terribly important where I go first, but I am aware that, as the first deliberate choice I make here, it will give the place some insight into me, will establish the course of how things will go. I decide on a room about midway between the end of the corridor and where I started from labelled “Faculty Lounge.”

As I open the door, I’m surprised by what I see. It’s a little room, somewhat like the bedroom of a hostel, with two bunk beds, a table off to one side and some assorted furniture – overall, quite nice apart from the lack of windows. But the really surprising thing is that it’s already occupied by two people from the group I started with.

Sam is there—Sam, maker of ukuleles, fixer of anything with strings and frets, host of concerts and an accomplished musician in his own right. His dog is there with him. The other person isn’t waking-life familiar, although he does somewhat resemble one of my coworkers, with dark hair, pale skin and some kind of facial hair, I think. A dog has come in with me as well, a large, black one. I don’t pay much attention to it besides noting that it’s mine and hoping that the room isn’t going to be too crowded now.

Sam greets me – but he uses a different name, a man’s name. They must be seeing this place and this situation differently than I do, I realize. It had been mentioned at the earlier gatherings that it would appear differently to everybody – but I had assumed that we would also be going through it alone, individually, and so it hadn’t occurred to me that I’d find myself in this kind of situation. But I can roll with it.

We talk for a little while. At one point, one of them advises me to be careful not to give this place “the impression that I’m somebody it can f*** with.” Sam mentions that he’s working on a puzzle—it seems to be set up on the table there—and I say I’ll leave him to it. I mention, though, that I’m good with puzzles, and he invites me to come help put it together. This must be part of their test, I realize – and it strikes me that maybe it isn’t a coincidence I ended up here to help them with it, although from everything I’ve heard, it would be uncharacteristically benevolent for the place to intentionally direct me to them.

The puzzle seems to mainly feature cute baby animals, and it is close to being finished. I help assemble the remaining pieces as Sam tells me some anecdotes he’s heard about a 20th century Viennese composer. He can’t remember which one they’re about. I notice, though, that the bottom edge of the puzzle isn’t complete. Sam is stirring some sort of gooey blue liquid, and I realize that that will also be part of it: the tests, though different, all have one thing in common: incorporating two bowls of these brightly colored mixtures into them somehow.

14.7.20

I am hanging out with co-workers and getting to know somebody who’s apparently just been hired. Her name is Marie, and she’s from Canada. In addition to working here, she’s a grad student working on a music degree, which she's now almost done with. She's currently working on the composition that will be her thesis. She shows it to me – via some sort of electronic device, I think.

The music is notated on manuscript paper, but instead of the usual note shapes, there are little horizontal rectangles that stretch out for as long as the note is held, rather like a midi display. The inside of each rectangle is patterned in ways that indicate something about the music. I hear it in my head as I read, with the patterns calling up images and connotations in relation to it.

The first bar begins with two long Gs an octave apart played by instruments in the violin family – I don’t identify them explicitly in the dream, but given that it’s written in the bass clef, almost certainly cellos. The rectangles contain the patterns signifying darkness and light. The impression this makes is hard to describe. Poignant, maybe – a suggestion of a cavernous space vast enough to hold them both at once. It continues, but I can’t remember the part after that so well.

16.5.20