Lucid Dreamscapes

Body Switching

2008-08-21T16:56:00.000-07:00

I was on a hospital bed, and a doctor was giving me a prognosis. When he laid a comforting hand on mine I was teleported into his body. My entire field of perception warped, and next thing I knew I was staring down at my sleeping self through his eyes. I’d realized that I’d gained the power to teleport from one person to the next with any form of physical contact. I walked out of the room as the doctor and decided to test my hypothesis on the next person I passed. When passing a nurse I extended my hand and after a rush of energy found myself staring back at the befuddled doctor. I reminded him “you just finished delivering your prognosis to Mr. Alexander,” and he snapped out of his daze with a quick shake of his head.

The rest of the dream proceeded in a whirlwind of teleporting from person to person. If I wanted to make my way across a crowded room I could grab someone on one side and transfer from person to person till I’d found someone on the opposite side. I experienced the world from a myriad of perspectives, at one point I got in trouble with the law and my ability to teleport began to fade. I had to clear the persons name keeping in mind that I probably only had a few teleports left in me, and I’d have to ultimately make it back to my own body. I finally made it back to my bedside at the hospital and grabbed my hand but nothing happened at first. I closed my eyes tightly and focused on transferring back, after a few moments I opened my eyes and I’d awakened.

Note: I initially only jotted down the primary details of this dream, which explains the lack of detailed descriptions. The whole experience was completely wild, to the point that I knew I’d have to include a version in the blog despite the vagary. The morning after I felt slightly awkward being confined to just my own body. After the experience of freely traveling from person to person it felt rather boring knowing I’d be stuck with a single perspective. When I spoke with a friend shortly after waking I asked if I could test something and proceeded to grab his shoulder.

Pepper Spray Kid and the Clay Volcano

2008-08-21T16:48:00.000-07:00

From the Archive:

I was @ the rents house in LD. A huge snow store had come through and covered most everything inside of the house. When I looked out the window all I saw was a gigantic snowdrift. My room was covered in a solid foot of snow. It seemed like people were going to have to stay the night here, so I went about clearing room, and others joined in. The longer we worked, the more the snow began melting, and everything in the house started getting slightly wet and soggy. The carpet in the family room actually turned into some sort of mush.

Once all the snow had melted I wound my way out to the backyard. The melting snow had caused some sort of erosion, and now there was a small hole in the middle of my backyard that appeared to be filled with wet clay. A bunch of neighborhood kids had found a huge stick and were jamming it down the hole. I was amazed at how far it went down (at least 5 yards), and when they released it, it shot up into the air along with gobs of wet clay. I was thinking that this was something they probably shouldn’t be doing, but the hole looked small for now, and I wasn’t worried about anyone getting hurt. However, the longer they kept at it, the larger the hole got.

At one point I realized that if someone were to step in it they may have a hard time getting their leg back out. It was around this point a large circle around the whole began to become soggy, as if the whole area had melted to reveal wet clay. The neighborhood kids decided it would be a good idea to try to light the hole on fire. One of them dropped in a match, and the thing turned into a geyser of flames. It was as though a mini volcano had emerged in my backyard. All the clay began to catch on fire, and the fire spread outward. I was worried about the surrounding houses burning down, as there were quite a trees burning at this point. I put out the trees and the houses were spared.

At one point a younger kid walked up with a huge vat on his back and a spray nozzle in his hand. He started spraying the ground around me and I asked what he was up to, he said something like “pepper spraying the ground, it makes sure the plants don’t grow back.” I got in his way and said “dude that’s not cool, seriously, stop it.” He sprayed my feet and replied “there’s nothing you can do about it, I’ll spray your face if you don’t get out of my way” I grabbed the nozzle and tried to wrestle it away, he turned it on full blast and started hitting me with it again, pushing it towards my face. When he started spraying my face I decked him, but he continued spraying. I punched him a few times in the stomach and he went down. His pepper spray getup fell away, and he was just a kid lying on the ground. I helped him up and started walking him back to the house.

Courtney Cox, Slasher Hooligans, and the Afterlife

2008-07-20T22:28:00.000-07:00

The following is a dream so absurd... so completely and utterly wild... that I'm not sure the internet is ready for it. I'm posting it anyway. I take no responsibility for the unintended side effects of reading said dream. I haven't edited/corrected this one in any way, I'm posting it as is. Enjoy:

They were preparing a new movie that was going to star Courtney Cox. It was going to be called the great chicken escape or something like that. While I was waiting to learn more I started eating jelly beans. I ate the entire box quickly and held the last one in my hand. It began to crawl around from one side of my hand to the other. As I watched it, it slowly grew longer and longer. I became curious as to what was allowing it to move so I picked it up and looked at the bottom. At first it looked like little extensions of the bean were pushing it around, then I realized there was something inside. That something was a gigantic cockroach. It looked more like a millipead, but I picked up the box and read it and it said that there were cockroaches inside some of the special beans. I dropped it and it landed on the floor. It ran off, and another white bean scurried up. I promptly stepped on it and tracked down the other bean (which had been brown) and stepped on it too.

Suddenly a bunch of chickens began entering the room, and I was quickly subdued by a group of medical staff. I awoke on the street in hospital garb. I was with two other people. We’d all undergone the same operation. We held up our hands to find that they’d been surgically altered to look more like talons, and we’d each had a few more operations to make us look more like chickens. We knew that we had to get back to that room where we started in order to get to the bottom of the situation. We worked our way back to the room somehow, and I could feel that there was something rather mystical going on here.

Everyone I knew (friends, loved ones…) began entering the room and singing and dancing. I felt this was too good to be true. Everyone was entering the room through one door, and there was another down the hall, but I couldn’t quite see what was through it. I began to walk towards this door slowly. The singing and dancing became more boisterous, and I was overcome with the powerful feeling that I wasn’t supposed to see what was through this door… but I also knew it was something that was going to answer a lot of questions for me. I slowly approached the door and looked through. It opened up into a giant space nebula that was glowing intensely. In that moment everything became clear to me.

Whatever was rehearsed in the room I had been in would become a reality in the next room, and everyone I knew was rehearsing my ascent to heaven. They had gathered to stand in for the loved ones I would meet in heaven. This meant that what I was staring at was the afterlife, and it sharply dawned on me that I should not be seeing this.

Reality fragmented and the nebula encapsulated my entire field of vision. I was suddenly sitting on a bed, unable to control my actions for more than a split second at a time. I would try to stand, then the nebula would flash and I would be back on the bed. I would try to look around the room, flash, I would be looking down again. This entire time a wild energy was pulsating through my body. I awoke and contemplated writing down this dream, but I decided to go back to sleep, and it continued.

(Stretch, grab a drink, this is long...)

Fading in to a "dream in a dream" in which I was watching footage from a new Soprano’s movie that was in the works. It was beautifully stylized. Beginning with a slowly panning close up of a man entering a room. The camera followed him from the side, and we could only see his face for a moment before the lens rack-focused and he was completely blurred (this section was in black and white). The camera followed this fuzzy wash of a man as he walked across the room, and another man approached him. As the other man whispered in his ear the shot tightened into crystalline focus for a split second, and I could see the faces of both men.

Then I "awoke" (inside yet another dream) and realized that I’d dreamt about an amazing movie. The plot line from the Courtney Cox movie had now infused with this second movie to become one beautiful screenplay in my mind (can’t remember the title but it had something to do with chickens). As this dream proceeded I was traveling with my friend JL, I wasn’t sure where we were heading or why we were going there.

We stopped at someone’s house along the way and revealed that I’d had a dream about a new Soprano’s movie. There was a father and son at this house, and the son said “actually… I heard they just released information about a soprano’s movie being in the works.” I was shocked that my idea may have not been completely original, or may have been stolen somehow. I told the family that I hadn’t written the dream down yet, but that I usually write the good ones down in a dream blog. Then I proceeded to tell them about another detail of the dream, I think it had to do with Courtney Cox and the chickens. The boy said “That information is true, but there’s no way you could have known about that.”

The father added in indignant disbelief, “Now are you trying to tell me that you’ve just had a dream about multiple things, all of which turned out to be true?” I replied “I wish I would have written about them in my dream blog so you know I wasn’t just making this all up” (dream blog having an effect on the dream itself, strange).

JL and I got back in the car and we arrived at our destination that appeared to be an extremely large military compound. Everything looked futuristic, and there were a lot of people walking around in biohazard suits. As I explored I noticed that one side seemed to resemble a college campus, and the other side was more like a run down war zone, I was warned to never go onto this side after dark. JL and I were suddenly up in an apartment, which he said we were renting. We were living with a 3rd person, but for some reason there was only one large room with 5 beds along the wall. It was lavishly decorated and I was excited about living here, but when I looked out the window I realized JL had found us a place in the war torn area. I voiced my concern and he said. “No worries man, as long as you don’t walk around at night you’ll be fine.”

I suddenly found myself back out on the street again, and it struck me that this whole setting looked like it could be the set for the Soprano’s movie I’d dreamt of. I wandered into a large warehouse and as soon as I entered some kind of proximity alarm went off and the place locked down, I realized this as a trap of some kind, and I’d end up dead if I couldn’t escape. I slammed my shoulder against the door that had closed behind me and oddly enough I broke through easily even though it was made of steel.

I now approached a few older guys hitting tennis balls behind a building (which I believe was the house in which I grew up). As I walked up they handed me a racket. Evidently one of the guys was a legendary tennis coach. He hit the ball of the wall and I hit it back to him. The other guy looked at the coach, dumbfounded, and said “this guy could be better than Mcenroe.” I continued to play this strange kind of tennis off the wall with this coach as he explained that I seemed to have an amazing amount of talent, and he would like to train me to enter into a large tournament coming up.

Some rough looking mobster types walked in between the wall and us, and rather than stopping, I hit the ball lightly such that it landed on the head mobsters shoulder. The ball turned into a hamster and crawled down his sleeve into his hand. Everyone was delighted at this. The mob wanted me to join their ranks, and the tennis coach was certain I was world champion material. I let them know that it was time for me to start walking back to my apartment. The mob boss said “you’re cutting it close if you want to walk home at this time of night. Anyone who enters that area is likely to become a ghost.”

I knew I had to leave now, I walked out to the street and there were college students hustling everywhere. Mixed in with them were Mafia thugs, and there were a few gun toting slasher Hooligans sitting just over the border of the war-torn zone. I was now fully immersed in the world of the Soprano’s movie I had dreamt. A girl walked by carrying books, I stopped her and asked “what’s the best way to sneak through the forbidden zone?” As soon as the words escaped my lips she began briskly walking away again, wanting nothing to do with me, and rightfully so. Two Hooligans had been listening in, and they began to push me around.

“So you wanna take a little walk over to our side do ya? I think we can help… escort you.” with this he drew a line across the ground with his assault rifle, smiling and feigning courtesy. “Oh, I see. We’d almost forgotten about your friend, lets take her too,” with this he pointed his rifle at the girl whom I’d asked for directions, who was still walking briskly away.

I snapped into action, kicked the rifle out of his hands, and decked him one square in the jaw. This fight dragged on ridiculously long. I was continuously disarming them or just barely avoiding gunfire. I would knock them both out, then after a few seconds they would spring back up as though completely un-phased. In the end of the dream I had to hold one guy in front of me as a shield to prevent the other from shooting me. He kept shooting until he ran out of ammunition, at which time I lunged forward and knocked him out for good.

Note: What I wrote about in a side note a few weeks ago has become a more prevalent issue. That is, the impact of my dream blog on the dreams themselves. Nifty…

Mr. Sparkles the Dolphin

2008-07-20T22:23:00.000-07:00

This dream from the archive was rather unremarkable, except for the ending... which is solid gold:

...I couldn’t find the right nozzle, eventually she walked over and pushed a button that turned off a hand-drying fan that had been blowing, and evidently this took care of everything. As we were leaving we walked past her father and they exchanged words. As we walked down the hall she excitedly said “We’re going to see Mr. Sparkles the Dolphin, he’ll drink water with my kitty kat!” at which time I became so excited that I made a really high pitched squeaking sound. I actually surprised myself with the sound I’d made, and attempted to reproduce it. She seemed rather amused and tried to reproduce it as well, neither of us could get it right.

Alaskan Lightning

2008-07-16T16:45:00.000-07:00

From the Archive:

I was in Alaska on a shopping trip at a local supermarket. I was buying lots of foodstuffs, and I decided to wander through the computer game section for a while. There were a lot of booths set up and people were gaming inside them. I got so caught up that I forgot where I’d placed my shopping cart. I walked outside and the clouds were absolutely huge and beautiful, for some reason I felt I should be following the rain I could see in the distance.

An electric field began sweeping across the ground towards me; I knew that this was where a lighting bolt was about to strike. Wherever it passed objects were lifted slightly off the ground and dropped again. It was suddenly on top of me and I could feel my hair stand up. Suddenly lighting struck and my entire body was rapt with a powerful electric current. This was an extremely intense feeling, much like I was having a seizure, though completely conscious at the same time. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't allow this incident to permanently damage me in any way (I was really worried about the speech center of my brain being damaged). I pulled myself back onto my feet and said a few words, everything seemed to be working properly.

I ended up trying to drive back to wherever it was I was staying. There was a stop sign up ahead and I pulled into it much more quickly than I’d anticipated. I tried to slam on the breaks but my car ended up bumping into the car ahead of me. From here this small bump propagated out into a huge accident. Every moment I thought I’d rationalized the scope of what had happened, I’d realize there were more people involved. My car ended up sliding over an embankment. I got out and walked back to the accident to check if everyone was ok. There was a woman there who’d received minor damage to her vehicle, and she didn’t want me to worry about it.

When I got back in my car and began driving again I noticed that there was an active call on my phone, it was my father and it had been active for hours. I explained the accident, and he was quite nonplussed. The end of the dream found me in a bathtub, Cuba Gooding Jr. was in the room giving an emotional speech about how what I’d done was the right thing.

The Swamp Creature

2008-07-16T16:20:00.000-07:00

From the archive:

I was riding on a school bus and we came to a rocky pass. To say it was rocky is an understatement; we were running over gigantic tree trunks and logs. My view of everything zoomed out a bit and I could see the bus jumping into the air and bouncing from log to log. Eventually it became too rough and the bus flipped over the edge and rolled into a lake. I escaped before the bus submerged completely, but I lost my guitar and backpack. My backpack had been filled to the brim with everything I needed for a trip. I was with a bunch of youngsters (as though I had been leading a field trip), and we had to tread water for a while. I let them know that I was going to dive for my backpack and guitar.

A boat came around eventually and brought us all up to the dock at my house in LD. The water seemed much deeper and murkier than usual, much more swampy. I was scheming of ways to allow myself to breathe underwater (to search for my bag and guitar) and I found a few things that didn’t quite work. I walked up to the house and noticed that new people had moved in. They put some sort of fancy locking mechanism on the back shed and emptied it out. I eventually found a large hollowed out set of metallic tubes and decided I’d use them like straws to breathe through. I looked through one end and noticed a spider had made a home in the other end; I shook the tube vigorously till it fell out.

As I grew close to the water once again someone yelled “RUN! THE SWAMP CREATURE IS COMING!” It was coming from up by my house, so I bolted for the shore and saw that two of the boys were still in the water. I jumped in and we all noticed a set of colorful floating cardboard buoys, I could see that they were hollow on the inside. We swam to the buoys, climbed under them, and waited. The swamp creature was on us in seconds, it was like a two-ton dog with a gigantic face and teeth like an oversized alligator. Our cardboard shelter shattered and I told the boys to go as quickly as they could out the backside. The swamp creature launched itself onto my back; I tried furiously to beat at it with my breathing pipes. At this point I became slightly lucid, and I began to float upward into the sky with the swamp thing on top of me. I was planning on lifting it up a ways and dropping it, or something of that nature.

Pong and False Awakenings

2008-07-11T12:58:00.000-07:00

From the archive:

I had a number of constant false awakenings. A whole slew of dreams occurred before the hour of 8am. The general feeling was much like that of the Movie “Waking Life” (which is a great movie that I highly recommend seeing more than once). Like the protagonist in Waking Life, I was faced with the question of whether this was all one extended dream, or was it possible that I had died. Dreams kept coming in endless waves, and I was confronted with figures that had me questioning all sorts of things.

At one point I awoke in my bed and MB was in my computer chair. He said “ssssup Rob.” And I replied “duuude, I just had the craziest dreams.” He didn’t really seem to care about what I had to say, he moved his way over to my digital clock (which was actually the model I had a couple years ago). He said “hey, want to see something cool?” and he started fiddling with the dials. Evidently he knew how to throw it into some sort of master reset mode. It made a few beeps and then a bunch of small words started lighting up. He commented that he wasn’t sure I had the right version because the display seemed to be missing a word. After a few seconds the screen lit up in what looked like the Atari splash screen. He scrolled down till he found a pong-like game and started playing. I realized that I was dreaming and rolled over the other way in an attempt to wake up.

I suddenly had my phone against my ear and SR was on the other end. He gave me the usual “What’s up!?” We had quite a long conversation in which I told him all about how I’d had this ridiculously long dream that I couldn’t wake up from. Eventually I realized that I was probably still dreaming, I started trying to test this out, but I couldn’t establish this fact for a while. Eventually I started having trouble talking and I realized I was indeed dreaming.

At one point later in this dream I was with a group and we were fighting for one god against another god. The evil god’s name started with a P, and the good god’s started with a D, something like Daedalus.

Note: The fact that I can’t remember more about this dream confirms that I really do lose a large amount of detail if I fail to write things down immediately.

Massages and Airplanes

2008-07-11T12:24:00.000-07:00

#101 from the archive:

I was with a large group of people getting ready to leave in an airport. Everyone wanted to get deep tissue massages while we waited. We stopped by a booth and the first person laid down on the massage table, a woman walked up and blew some hookah smoke towards his face. I walked around for a bit while waiting for my turn. My little cousin J was with me and I was in charge of looking after her. This representation of J was extremely nice and generally quite mature. When it was finally my turn for a massage I got the feeling that the masseuses were playing a joke on me in front of my friends. They took strawberries and rubbed them on my face, then stuck some up my nostrils and took pictures. Someone said something about how I shouldn’t play along, and I replied that I wasn’t sure how their culture worked, and I didn’t really mind playing along, it looked like everyone was having fun.

The final boarding call for my plane was announced and I realized I was quite late. I rushed onboard the plane, which had an absolutely huge interior much like a gigantic warehouse, there were a few seats scattered here and there. I realized J wasn’t with me. I screamed her name and tried to run back to find her, but the plane left the terminal as soon as I was onboard. I turned back towards the front to find J standing there. I ran up and hugged her and told her that we couldn’t separate again. When the plane took off it pulled up 90 degrees into a completely vertical ascent, just barely missing the side of a building.

Time Travel Adventure

2008-07-11T12:10:00.000-07:00

Here's dream 100 from the archive, I didn't remember many details, but the concept was interesting:

I was in some sort of intense adventure that involved time travel and a virus (yes, much like heroes). A girl I was dating in the dream was dying from the virus, and I believed I had an early stage of it. The time travel part of it was trippy, because the dream ended where it began. By this I mean that there’d been a large-scale event that initially kicked the dream off. I realized that we’d traveled back in time and were now arriving at that same event, except this time we’d be right at the epicenter and most likely killed, and at this exact moment our past selves would just be arriving and beginning the dream. This made me think about the inevitability of events after I awoke.

Twenty-Five Pounds of old Golden Flesh

2008-07-01T23:27:00.000-07:00

Another from the archive, this one was quite vivid and I recalled quite a few details. The ending was... well... just read it:

I was auditioning for a vocal part in a college choral group. I’d been talked into it by my friends and I decided to try out at the last minute. One of my friends was going before me and doing a terrible job, but at least the two of them had brought sheet music for the accompanist/judge to read for piano. I decided to use the song I’d used for concert choir. It was swing low sweet chariot, a jazz version, I was going to sing it sans piano. I started to hum the tune to get it cued up in my head. As I hummed the judge began to hum with me, even though she was in the middle of my friends audition. At first I’d thought my friend picked the same song, then I realized what was happening. The judge looked me in the eyes and gave a smile. If I remember correctly she was an older amiable black woman, much like my Tai-Chi instructor. We began to talk about the song and how we each knew it. She was really impressed with my performance background. She told me that I was all set, and that I should wait outside (even though I hadn’t sung for her). I was moving to wait in the other room but then my other firend entered the room and began asking me questions and practicing, and the vibe felt like I should wait in this room now. My friend who was currently auditioning was completely bombing and looking really nervous. After his audition completed he pleaded “How was that? Do you want me to sing it again for you? Do you think I’ll get a spot for sure?”

Both friends were so invested in this group, both really wanted a spot. A new pianist/judge walked into the room and took over. My other friend auditioned and bombed and pleaded. As the pianist wrapped things up I was trying to elaborate about how I felt about performing, but the more I talked the more everyone seemed confused. At one point I said something about the “performance world.” And the judge furrowed her brow and mouthed “performance world?”

Just to be sure I had everything straight I asked the judge “so you’re sure I’m all set? The other instructor said I was good to go, but I’d be more than happy to sing for you.”

She cast a stern look, as if to say I shouldn’t be saying this sort of thing while my friends were still around. Then she began to talk to me on a more personal level. By the way, she was attractive. As she packed up her bag she said, “walk out with me.”

As we walked she ranted, “3 days of non stop auditioning, it’ll really wear a person down. Then someone like you comes along and doesn’t even need to sing, it’s such a godsend… keep walking with me.”

We’d already walked a little ways, and I was starting to see people I recognized. Among them were JU and BC. Everyone was going to some sort of meeting. The judge took a few steps down a small flight of stairs, turned, and said with a smile, “we’re here… go in”

I walked through a set of double doors and entered a large auditorium; people were mostly flocking through another set of doors just past the lectern. As we walked people started picking up wooden sticks, about the size you’d use to play swords as a child. I realized that everything was being filmed, and this was all part of a new James Bond movie. I was really happy that a lot of my friends got a part in the new movie, but surprised at the same time. One of the people who looked as if they were in charge began to fight the person next to them in a very passive/theatrical way. They were clanking sticks more as a game than an actual fight. This triggered everyone else to begin fighting. We continued to walk until we filled around a central fire pit. We all lit our sticks on fire and continued fighting. Everyone subtly beckoned me to push forward and fight the leaders. As I worked my way forward the clanking got more intense. I finally found myself fighting between two elders, and at that point (I believe It was…) the woman who’d told me to follow shouted and everyone stopped. She placed her stick in the glowing embers in front of her and we all followed suit. My stick lit ablaze almost instantly. Everyone took a seat and the meeting began.

I realized this was some sort of secret society. At some point it was disclosed that this was the priory of scion. The beginning of the meeting is a bit blurry in my mind, but there was some general discussion going on. The second phase was one in which people were called on to say things in front of the group. If you were bringing in a new member, or knew the new member, you’d have to tell them something in front of the group that you normally wouldn’t say to their face (or at least make something public). If you had no connection to the new person you had to say something to a group member. One of the elders of the group was called on, and he addressed me, he stood up and shouted “goofy looking 6’1’’ tall guy, SIT DOWN!”

I was confused, as I was already sitting. Someone next to me leaned in and whispered “I can’t believe you were acknowledged on your first day.” I guess the ‘sit down’ part meant something like ‘join our group,’ JU was called on and he said “Rob, I’m going to have something to say to you after the meeting, it’s not something you’re going to want to hear. We’re going to have a rough patch, but I think we’ll get through it.”

I was completely taken aback by this, my mind immediately went to a large project we’re working on together, I was almost certain he was going to kick me off the team. My mind began reeling on what I was going to say, the future of the project, and all the work I’d put in thus far.

The final phase of the meeting involved giving out direct orders to individual members of the group. My buddy MW, was called to move to a certain area. I recognized this as a command to move his Everquest (online videogame) character to a certain zone. A few other orders were given out and everyone disseminated.

I began looking for JU to hear whatever it was he was going to tell me. I had to wind my way back out to the auditorium, and I spotted him on the far side. There were children playing here (even though it was 2:00 in the morning?). I approached John and he asked me to take a seat with him. He walked up past a couple of children who were sitting at the end of a row. They were both girls. As I passed I smiled, the atmosphere here was very light and playful. The blond girl on the end looked up at me, her eyes glowed incandescent blue. She said “Hi Rob!” I was taken aback, and she proceeded to ask “How do you know me?”

I thought for a moment and replied “Well... I’m a friend of JU’s, and I’m guessing he must be a friend of your parents.”

The girls mother walked over, it was one of the leaders of the group. The little girl smiled and said, “I knew it mommy! I was right!”

Her mother knelt down in front of her and replied “You’re getting so much smarter every day, I’m so proud of you.” At this point I was in the row behind the children, still following JU, preparing to sit next to him. The little girl’s mother suddenly took on a completely different aura, she looked at her child lovingly and said in a very melodic but serious tone, “Twenty-Five pounds of old golden flesh, that’s all I’ve ever loved or will love.” She then shifter her gaze upwards, looked me directly in the eye and repeated with the exact same phrasing, “Twenty-Five pounds of old golden flesh, that’s all I’ve ever loved or will love.”

And I awoke.

Hairballs

2008-07-01T23:15:00.000-07:00

Here's a snippet from the end of a dream from the Archive, your guess is as good as mine:

...When I walked upstairs my mom said, “she was talking about kissing Peter,” implying that a phone conversation had been involved, but it turned out that this girl was calling my cat peter, and kissing my cat. The dream ended after I coughed up a giant hairball.

The Exam

2008-07-01T23:06:00.000-07:00

From the Archive:

Dr. KF was giving the class a final examination. It seemed to be an emergency preparedness drill for the Nazi invasion of Germany. She was going to walk down the street, and we were each assigned a few blocks that we could hide in. We were also given cap guns. If she found us we lost 5 points (out of 40). If she found us but we were able to surprise her by shooting at her with the cap gun, then we only lost 3 points. I would find a really good hiding spot, then I’d lose track of whether or not she’d passed already. I’d get up from my spot and sneak over to the road to check. I couldn’t remember what she’d been wearing, and almost every other woman seemed to look and sound exactly like her. I found a nice spot underneath a dining table and made sure the people sitting there were cool with me hiding. This time when I got up to check she was coming down the block, I had to sprint back to the spot. Someone was already there and they beckoned me in, it looked like AB. I got in and waited. Eventually Dr. K poked her head under the table and looked around for a second, I wasn’t sure if she saw me but I pulled the cap gun and fired. She was extremely surprised and jumped back away from the table. Afterwards she said “I always feel bad about taking down someone’s grade, and that really was an amazing surprise, I’m only going to dock you 2 points.”

Tasty Ceramics

2008-07-01T23:01:00.000-07:00

From the Archive:

…I caught up with JW and a bunch of guys. For a while everyone moved to the UGLI except it was like a futuristic computer space station or something. I was supposed to help JW and the gang do some research, they were at a computer opposite mine (the backs were facing one another). I was having a ridiculously hard time getting the browser to work for me, JW sent me a few instant messages asking when I’d have the info ready. I eventually sent him a message that told him what it was he should google. Someone mentioned “damn, I’d never work here, it’s always way too crowded.” It was around closing time, everyone was powering down their stations, and some of the people who worked there were ushering ppl out. Eventually I was hanging out with JW and the gang. I’d joined them outside of a girls room I accidentally slept in (earlier in the dream). They went ahead and I stayed back looking for my shoes. I had to cross an ice river on a small inflatable raft. It was crazy, at times the current would be extremely fast and filled with large ice chunks. Other times it would be much more calm, I waited till it calmed down a bit and jumped in. I paddled all the way across and had some trouble getting up the opposite shore. @ the end of the dream JW and I were hanging out in an apartment. We were grilling up some ceramics, they were going to be a nice sugary snack. We just found ceramic objects around the apartment and threw them on the frying pan. A ceramic dog, a ceramic clock, etc… We were going to soften them up and eat them. JW said I should call my mom and let her know what’s up, he handed me his phone.

Fractals, Thespians, and Skylights

2008-06-27T08:37:00.000-07:00

The following dreams occurred on the night of Satuday, May 10th, 2008:

It all started with me standing in my house, and really subtle things would happen that i would notice were wrong or out of place, like I heard the sound of an animal lapping water, the I remembered that all the pets have died at this point. I went to check it out and suddenly someone ran past me. They were a dark shadowy figure and they hid in the shadows. I then closed my eyes (in the dream) and I was looking @ exactly what I'd been looking @ before, as in, I was seeing through my eyelids, then I realized I was sleeping. but then I remembered that I'd been watching something on my computer before I fell asleep, and my computer had been sitting on my lap. So I tried to move my waking hand to move and check if the computer was still there while maintaining the dream imagery. and it worked... to my dream eyes I was standing in my kitchen back in P-town, but I could feel my computer. So I picked it up and moved it to the chair so I wouldn't knock it over, then I was completely awake and I took a drink of gatorade, and prepared to re-enter dream world mind you... I think the whole part about moving my computer while asleep could have all been a dream. I may have dreamt I felt my computer and moved it. I think I may have moved it earlier, because the other scenario is too crazy to comprehend...

*

I was @ AL’s house (as I seemed to be for quite a few sections of this dream series). I was down in the basement in the room that was first ML’s (AL's brother) but then became AL’s. ML still owned it, and he’d added some extension to it. It seemed like the house had been abandoned or something, and ML had taken up occupancy as a last resort. He was showing off his new spacious skylights over the area that previously stretched out to the retaining wall. It seemed like ML was sitting on a ladder towards the edge of the space that was his old room and the new extension, he pointed out and said, “check it out, isn’t this pretty friggin awesome?” I stepped out and walked around. It was raining really hard, and water was pouring in everywhere from cracks in the ceiling. The carpet was a deep red, and it was completely soaked (reminiscent of the carpet in my sister’s room was before the refurnishing). I pointed out the leaky ceiling and he went into a rage and wanted to fight me.

**

It was as though my entire time in the music school were turned into a television show about medicine, and they didn’t bother to change the departments around, so there was still theater/drama, ect. I was on the top floor of the medical building, between some research lab and the chief resident’s office. Someone in my class was on the brink of death. He was staying in a hospital, and a lot of my classmates were there with him. He was suffering from a skin condition among many other things. I was told that one of the treatments he was undergoing had something to do with blood oxygenation therapy. There was some sort of large mechanized vial holding some of his extracted blood sitting on the counter in front of me. For some reason it was my duty to work this mechanism. The way it worked resembled a miniature bike pump. I’d pull and push the pump and watch how the blood was responding to the oxygen. The trippy part was that incandescent fractal swirls would manifest as the oxygen soaked in, and if there were too much/little oxygen in one area it would glow red or purprle, or all shades thereof. Properly oxygenated blood would briefly glow green before fading to black (it were as though I were watching this take place on a screen). The fractals were incredibly brilliant, some of the cooler stuff I’ve seen. I was pumping for what seemed to be about 5 minutes when I realized that I had no idea how long I was supposed to pump, or who I was supposed to report to. As I started to walk to figure these things out, I accidentally pulled the top section of the vial open and some of the blood managed to splash into my mouth. I was freaked out about the possibility that I’d contracted something. So I tried to hunt down the chief resident to see if he could help. The chief resident looked a bit like Rev. Jackson. I searched all over the hospital but couldn’t find him, when I finally did find him he was extremely busy.

***

I was in some sort of thespian drama class and we were doing a dramatic reading of a play about programming. Everyone else was having a really easy time, but I couldn’t pull it together for the life of me. It was ridiculously hard to find the correct page, and then it was even harder to find my line. When I finally found my line it would have pictures and symbols intermixed. As I went on there were less and less words, and more and more pictures. For a line that should read “mother has a deep love for you all,” there would be a picture of a woman holding a baby, then a heart sunk deep beneath the ocean, and then a group of people standing around. Everyone was getting really irritated by the fact that I couldn’t get my lines straight, but they were acting as though they were playing it off in a theatrical passive aggressive way.

it was like I had to figure out a riddle as I was reading for the first time, and I was the only one having a problem with this everyone was getting really pissed, and one of the professors came over and said the greatest monologue ever... "Do you remember AB? Little guy, wouldn't think much just by looking at him. Well AB never took shit from anyone. He may have been small, but he was always on top of things. I think you can learn a lot from AB. He never would have had this much trouble, and he certainly wouldn't have taken this kind of shit if he did." Then the prof started walking away, I stood up on my chair and yelled "WHAT THE F***!?" and the room went silent, the prof turned around and I said... "That's what AB would do."

Note: The portion of the brain which enables reading is "turned off" while we dream, so technically reading should not be possible. A friend pointed out that my brains ability to substitute symbols for words was a subconscious attempt at working around this. A few nights later I became lucid and decided to test this out. I grabbed a book and sure enough, when I tried to read words letter by letter everything would disintegrate into squiggles and symbols. However, I found that if I didn't focus on the words, and took them into my peripheral vision, I would see an entire word suddenly flash into focus. This makes me wonder, is it possible that the area of the brain that handles phonetics and linguistic patterns is shut down, while the ability to call up words/phrases as chunks is still possible? More on this later.

Lucid, and Not So Lucid...

2008-06-25T16:08:00.000-07:00

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.

My Socks Were Too Big...

2008-06-25T15:53:00.000-07:00

From the Archive:

I was with my family somewhere. I was looking after my little cousin JN. She hopped down from whatever it was we were on and started walking around on the snow. I noticed that she was barefoot and said “lets find something for you to but on your feet!” She said something like “I’m surprised that you noticed that, we really should cover up my feet.” I tried giving her my socks but they were too big, in the end we never found anything for her. It looked like she was growing exponentially as we hung out.

Note: This dream was a catalyst in the creation of this Blog. The following night this whole scene was acted out almost exactly as it's written here. Still blows my mind...

Worst... Meijers... EVER

2008-06-25T15:51:00.000-07:00

From the Archive:

I was working @ Meijer, and there were a whooole bunch of people working in my area. I was trying to figure out how they could be making profit when there were so many employees and so few shoppers. I eventually got a white dress completely sudsy when I was trying to clean it. I talked to a manager about whether I could just rinse it in the sink, and he said that no I had to go to a special cleaning facility in the back. The back area opened up into a huge warehouse, and then I wasn’t sure if I was outside or just in a huge space. I walked through a bunch of tarps and there were huge tubs in the back. They started like normal bathtubs, but the farther I went the more they were like alien pods or something. The shape I took was kinda a large “r”, working my way around to one of the tubs in the back. The texture of the water was very strange, and there was someone stirring the tub. There were lines across the surface that seemed rather static. I noticed something really strange, there was a public pool back there too, and I came to realize that people were swimming in this fabric-cleaning tub. There were a bunch of kids who’d gotten out and were rubbing there eyes and crying.

I'm awfully big... for a 4 week old

2008-06-25T15:48:00.000-07:00

From the Archive:

I was with a bunch of people at a restaurant. We were sitting at a table outside on the deck overlooking the water. It was next to a window that let us look inside. I was sitting with a few attractive girls. One of them had a strong southern accent and was sitting across the table (she had walked up and smiled like she wanted to talk to me). I asked if she was from here (Alaska) and she said “Yeah…. I was just born with this funny accent… no sweety I’m from (insert southern state here).” We both laughed a bit. She asked me if I was from here and I said “Yeah I’ve lived here all my life, so about 4 weeks.” There was a guy @ the table and he chuckled “awfully big for a 4 week old” and I replied “yeah, I grew really quickly, people say I’m a fast learner too.” This is where it all got crazy. I started to be pulled back ward towards the edge of the deck overlooking the water, only slightly. I was able to hold on for a bit and I thought nothing of it. Then I realized that we were on a boat and it was rocking back and forth. It tipped even further and I began to slide towards the edge. I would occasionally find things to hang on to but would then slip again after a while. Eventually I was dangling over the edge, and hanging on with all my strength. The waiter came by and extended a helping hand, pulling me back on board. The ship rocked back and I rejoined my group at the table. Nobody else seemed all that affected by the rocking.

The Dog Treat Gun

2008-06-25T15:40:00.000-07:00

From the Archive:

I was in a school and a huge dragon like creature was hanging out in one of the open halls. I tossed an explosive device and it stuck to the armor of the beast. I then walked around with a detonator waiting for the appropriate time to trigger it. I reach a paradox. When the beast was indoors I did not want to kill it because I would also kill the children in the school. When the beast was outdoors I did not want to kill it because it was rather majestic, and no longer a threat. The conflict sprawled out into a war, in which we (USA) were fighting against some other country (Mexico?). I could see their army preparing and training (down the street past AL’s? My street is a on a peninsula, but it was not so in the dream) while my army was receiving reinforcements up by KA’s house. Trucks came through filled with colored balloons, and I was thinking wtf… until someone explained that there were tanks hidden inside. A person similar to James Bond handed me a strange pistol that seemed more like a stapler at first. To shoot it I had to twirl it around, which meant it was facing me for a moment, which seemed absurd. The more I used the gun the more complex it got, till I realized it had a slot that would fire dog treats to lure guard dogs away, and a fan that if pointed downward would allow me to fly. As I floated I saw that our team was receiving transformers to fight in the battle, and realized that this might be part of a new transformers movie.

The Vegas Clothing Debacle

2008-06-25T15:38:00.000-07:00

From the Archive:

We decided to go to Vegas for a weekend. I was having fun till I realize I’d lost my jacket (this was the same night I’d lost my thumbdrive + keys). I went down to the lost and found, which was where they sold off clothes they’d found for cheap. I found a jacket that looked like mine but was not mine. Someone said, “I can’t believe they sell all this so cheap, think it’s imitation?” But I knew it was just other peoples lost stuff. The woman who was helping me hooked me up with a new jacket and pants and all that fun stuff. A group of friends arrived and decided to stay another night. I ended up staying in a room right off the lobby. The blinds were open and everyone could see me when I woke up. I went to close the blinds and someone on the outside closed a set from the outside before I could close the inside ones. Another girl in my group lost some stuff and we went to the desk again. The lady said to me “I can’t believe you gave me that much of a hassle on my first day.” I said something like “well the logic should have been all the same.”

Leaf on the Wind

2008-06-25T15:31:00.000-07:00

From the Archive:

I was standing in an underpass and I heard zero seven’s spinning echoing in from the distance. At this point I realized it to be a dream, and I felt as though the music was some sort of false comforting, or as though I was realizing it’s placating effect and upset by it. I launched myself forward and floated. I must have broken through the dream scenery… I was suddenly at the top of A’s hill. I imagined myself to be light like a drifting leaf, and it was so. I drifted gently downward, and when I came upon something like a table, I simply floated through the legs. I allowed myself to drift out over the water. As I moved down the shore it turned into a tropical beach. I landed, and there were several huts, with different types of people occupying each one.

Note: I've often had trouble flying while lucid in dreams. Often I can get close to wherever it is I want to fly, but then I can't... quite... get there. I've found that rather than thinking "up, up, up" in an attempt to go higher, it helps to think of myself as being extremely light, and allowing myself to float.

Pumpkin Men

2008-06-25T15:30:00.000-07:00

From the Archive:

It was passing noon and I could tell everyone was hungry so I was going to take the car into Hardings to pick up food for everyone. This was in a post-apocalyptic setting. I asked my mother if I could take the car, then I remembered back to an earlier part in the dream when I had taken the car out last night and gotten drunk and trashed it (though I wasn’t positive on this). She said I could take it but I’d have to hurry as the lunch specials were about to end. I left the house and ended up on the other side of the golf course. There were suddenly lots and lots of people who had come out to my home town to both steal from the rich and beg for money. Most of them were pretty downtrodden and slow, however, I was able to outrun everyone. I started to run across the golf course over by J’s house and I realized some people were keeping up with me. I turned to check who it was and it was 2 guys and a girl. As I continued running I explained why they couldn’t come with me. I’d jump over a snow bank and say “you’re much too out of shape to keep up with me,” then I’d slide over some ice while the guys fell and say “you don’t have what it takes.” The girl kept up with me though, I was attracted to her so I told her to follow. We ended up at the top of the intersection of Doster road and the road that connects it to my road. I said… “You won’t have any problem keeping up here, this is all downhill, and it’s all fun!” and I was preparing to run down this road that was covered in snow with huge slopes on either side. Just as I started running, pumpkin men came walking up from the bottom, and they also sealed off the top (groups of men who walked around carrying pumpkins by their heads). I believed these to be explosive pumpkins. They fanned out down the hillside to perfectly cut off all my ideas of escaping up or down. I instructed the girl to follow and I jumped over the edge. As I floated they began launching pumpkins, I deflected them with my feet, and dodged others. When I reached the bottom I started trying to throw pumpkins back at them, one of them was hurling really large pumpkins, I couldn’t quite take him out. Then a bunch of random people showed up to fight against he pumpkin men. We started to turn the tide, I ran up to a nice shiny SUV and yelled “DESTROY THEIR ____” (not sure what that word was). I ripped off the rearview mirror, and then ripped off the wiper blades. I was about to smash a window when someone inside said “dude… we’re not with them.”

Cranberry Escape

2008-06-25T15:23:00.001-07:00

From the Archive:

I'm running away from someone, running on a road towards New York and Boston. I was hoping to find a television, because then I could look at the place I wanted to be and instantly be there. I ended up jumping over the endge into a huge pool of cranberries. There were a couple people trying to help me escape, and the man I was running from didn’t seem like someone I should legitimately fear. I eventually ran into a shack and he found me. I ran out the door and he shot me.

Waterfalls

2008-06-25T15:03:00.000-07:00

from the archive:

I was living in some tropical island paradise. There was a crazy waterfall that seemed to closely follow the laws of mathematics, rather than chaos theory. That is to say, it arched perfectly, and cylindrically, and it broke off at the weirdest spots. Close to the ground another waterfall would just branch off the side. Where they hit the ground there was no splashing, it was as if they went through the ground. This was all at an ocean beach. Someone lived in a house that was suspended some 3000ft into the air. One of the waterfalls started at this house. It was on a small piece of land that was held up by a tiny pole shooting up from the ground. I never got a good look at it, it seemed more like a thin piece of rock shooting up. There was a second waterfall that started above the house. It shot out over the house and landed elsewhere. Sometimes I would be on the beach, at other times I was disembodied and floating above everything.

In the beginning...

2008-06-09T22:51:00.000-07:00

I'm going to use this space to publicize my adventures in lucid dreaming. About 3 months ago I began cataloging my dreams and I just hit 100. To get things up and rolling I'll post a few of my favorites over the next few weeks. Names have been abbreviated to protect the innocent. Eventually I'll be documenting my dreams/discoveries as they unfold. This should be fun:

I continually found myself on a roller coaster, one of the craziest rides ever. It had a lot of the dynamics of a pinball machine. At one point there was a fork in the track, and we were no longer on a car, we were just sliding. We all funneled down a narrow chute, and got lost in a maze of tracks. In the lobby B asked who was going to drive, because it was his birthday, and since I’d offered earlier, everyone put me up to the task, though I protested a bit. We walked outside, across the parking lot, to the car. Everyone busted out alcohol, and I laid down my only ground rule, that there would be no drinking in the car if I were going to DD. Everyone already had their bottles out though, and one person had placed a clear aquafina bottle full of alcohol on the ground a ways away from the car. When I went to retrieve it I saw an old policeman making his way towards our car (talking to some other youngsters at the time). I grabbed the bottle and returned to the car, the two front seats were occupied (yes the drivers seat), I gave the bottle to to person in the passengers seat and told him to hide it because the police were about. He tried under the seat, then he tried the dashboard. I felt the presence of the policeman behind me and said “NOW! He’s here!” A young CSI style police detective (dressed in all black w/black hair) rushed forward and began harassing us. “looks like you fellas are planning on drinking and driving tonight!” Myself and TJ began pleading with him. T was almost crying, and repeating “There’s no way I’d get in a car with a belligerent driver man, no way!” I asked the detective to please stop harassing us and to brethalize the driver already. The detective turned to his partner and said “These felas are smart…” which seemed to pacify me. I suddenly found myself back on the ride, and this time when we hit the series of tunnels we all got stuck. There were many other people in the area who’d gotten stuck as well. I could hear the rumble of a rollercoaster car approaching, and a girl on the other side of the track grabbed me and pulled me over against the wall. I became vaguely lucid at this point and we began to make out, but it felt more like a cat was liking and biting my lips.