Lucid, and Not So Lucid...

Though the subject matter of last nights dream was not all that strange, the irony of what transpired was too thick to believe. I didn’t write it down immediately so some of the details have been lost, but the gist is still there. I was hanging out with my mother and sister in the living room when my friend JW dropped in for a while. He was being outgoing and happy go lucky as usual, but there was something strange about the whole interaction, everyone was discussing something fantastical, and I was a bit lost until the moment I snapped into lucidity.

I believe the realization came when I tried to do some reality tests and they failed (this unloved inspecting some things closely). At this point I began having trouble speaking, and was no longer able to interact with anyone in the room. The fabric of the dream unwound, and I found myself in what I believed to be a waking state. The situation was one which has been recurring recently, I was back in high school for one reason or another (sometimes it works out better financially for me to take one more year of high school before doing my doctorate… go figure).

Here’s where this gets interesting, at one point I end up back in my living room with my mother and sister. I realize that I’ve dreamed this exact situation before, and try to explain the dream to them. A part of me realizes that this could still be a dream, but at this very moment things became very vivid. I looked really closely at the wall and ran my hand along it, and it looked and felt completely real. Every reality test passed, and I continued explaining the dream (as I was having it) to my mother and sister. They were quite confused, and I was unable to correctly put my ideas into words.

Note: This dream brings to light something I’ve been pondering for the past few weeks. Dreams will often echo thoughts and actions from waking life, but what happens when I devote a chunk (even a small one) of my waking life to documenting and discussing my dreams? This dream is one such manifestation: I tried to recount a dream scenario to characters in my dream. This is humorous, but unremarkable. Here’s the one that gets me: I’ve been trying to decide how to present my dreams, and I’ve been going through my dream archive and trying to decide which dreams are best for sharing… but what happens if I become aware of the fact that I’m dreaming and proceed to censor/guide my dream activity with the knowledge that I’ll be sharing it later?

I anticipate that as this thing evolves I’ll dive more into my theories and findings, expound upon ideas that arise in dreams, and perhaps do a bit of analysis. Many dreams from the archive read like laundry lists of actions, and this can get boring. I’ll try to touch upon emotional content as I continue developing my narrative style.