# Sleep and Dreams > Dream Journals > Dream Journal Archive >  >  Because the Dark Matters

## Darkmatters

I did a lot of journaling at various times of my life, and usually included my dreams, which always struck me as being just as important as waking life. But I hadn't written anything for a few years, so I just started a new journal recently. I wasn't sure about posting it publicly, but things are starting to get _really interesting_ in my dream world, and I decided to share. 

*Ok, enough of that! On to the juicy stuff!!*

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## Darkmatters

*Eating cake... and Lady Gaga* Possible mild lucid01-03-2010Dreams in DARK RED
Lucid in BLUE 



I'm gonna start by going back a bit -- to... let's see...  january 3rd. That was shortly after I started to get interested in lucidity and when I started keeping my new journal. I HAVE had lucid dreams before... quite a few now that I understand just what they are... though only a few with full lucidity. But until getting here and reading *ETWOLD* I never knew you could induce them yourself or get so much control. 

Ok, so anywho... pretty sure I hit _low level lucidity_ in this one. But it pisses me off because there are so many _dreamsigns_ I should have recognized!! 

Cut my finger at work and there were no bandaids, so I just held a paper towel on it till it stopped bleeding. I noticed the way it swelled up and realized that's to press the cut closed for healing. Also, on the way to work, heard a snippet of Bad Romance from somebody's car. That was waking life, just to set up the dream.

*The Dream:*
1st part I remember I was in my aunt and uncle's castle (dreamsign) eating some cake. I saw my hand, and all the fingers were super swollen (missed RC) and the forefinger (one I cut at work) had some kind of funky-looking bandaid on it. Or I don't know... maybe I didn't completely miss the RC, because I _think_ this next part was lucid. Suddenly I was in an undefined space -- all I could see was a stretch of wall in front of me with Lady Gaga leaning against it, wearing nothing but fishnet tights and sticking her backside right in my face. Maybe she wanted to prove once and for all she's female, I don't know, but I grabbed her hips and stuck my face in there and started licking for all I'm worth. It only lasted about 3 seconds, then visual faded and I went back into the other dream in the castle.


*Post dream wrapup*
I know Gaga has a lot of haters... I've already run into a few in here, and I'm sure this post will generate some more flack. But that's cool. Haters can sit and spin... Lady Gaga is super-talented and super-hot... end of story. She can take a ride on my disco stick anytime. I had seen an interview that day that she did in a radio station where you couldn't see her from the waist down, but the DJ kept talking about the fishnet tights and panties she was wearing. I guess that sparked the dream.

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## Darkmatters

*Double Dream re-entry*
Dreams in Dark Red
Lucid in Blue

I didn't write these down... I think I actually had them before I started the journal. But they're important in setting up what's been happening lately, so I'll jot them down real quick. Here, in fact... pasted in from another thread:



I just did this twice recently... and the funny thing is, I had never been able to re-enter a dream before and didn't think it was even possible! My friend told me he can do it and I laughed at him (oops!)  

But after reading either here or in one of the LD books I've been reading that it's possible, it suddenly happens to me twice. Each time I woke up and thought about the dream, and let myself fall back asleep. It wasn't exactly the same the second time in, but some elements were... example in one I was dreaming of taking pictures. I was seeing through the viewfinder and finding great images and compositions (exciting to an artist). After waking up I wondered... since I could dream of taking pictures, maybe I could dream about *stopmotion animation* (what I do - I animated my avatar image to the left there). Nope... but I did manage to get into a dream of taking pictures again. Not the same situation or place, but the theme was the same (taking pics). 

In my other re-entered dream the first part was a kind of mild nightmare... I was driving on a highway and slowly the ground on both sides fell away steeply, so it was like the highway ran along the top of a wall. There was no way to turn around, and I felt like I was getting too far from home and needed to go back. Bit I could only drive on until the ground rose back up and the road entered a little town. At the first intersection I did an illegal move to turn around and headed back home, but I had the feeling the police were going to chase me and I woke up. 

When I re-entered it, it wasn't quite the same. I found myself in a long bus or train car that was permanently parked... being used as a building. I just somehow knew it was in that same little town from my nightmare. But this time I decided I would stick around and explore a little rather than run away in fear. I walked out of the train car (or whatever it was) and walked along the main street, right next to the intersection where I had turned before. Only this time I could see what I had missed before... that it's a beautiful little town with nice brick buildings covered with vines. This was all that happened, but I woke up that time feeling fantastic (I felt like absolute crap the first time I woke up).

I said these dreams are important in setting up what' been happening lately... bear in mind that I _asked to have dreams about stopmotion animation...._

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## Darkmatters

*Sculpture Garden*01-04-10
Dreams in Dark Red
Lucid in Blue



I was riding a bike up a long spiraling blacktop road that went to the top of a hill and then angled back down it (without crossing itself strangely) and at the bottom I fell into a big rectangular hole into an underground building. It was some kind of gallery filled with awesome sculptures of wicked-looking creatures and there were similar paintings all over the walls. A few workers were laboring away and didn't seem to mind that I had fallen in from the roof. 

For a while I just walked around in complete awe at the incredible artwork, and then in a back room I found Ben Stein, who was the owner of it all but was old and dying and said he needed to give it all to somebody (guess who?). Then my mom was there, only it didn't look like her at all... she was young and had long hair... she was like a hippy chick. We were looking at a sculpture of a shaggy dog (just like Star or Dusty, dogs I had in the past) and it *came to life*. Then all the sculptures started coming to life. There was this young guy who was somehow half sculpture (but alive- and drunk as a skunk... ) he seemed to be Ben Stein's son. All he was doing was laying around drunk on his ass. 

I kept exploring this incredible place (it was like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory for real!) and after a while I was outside in a sort of dug-out area (looks a lot like the fish pond in the back yard at my mom's house after my dad and I dug it out and before we filled it with water) ~ (or like the grave I dug for Star a few months ago come to think of it... ). Suddenly a bunch of sculptures buried in the walls of the pit started moving and coming out of the dirt. These were evil looking... all huge claws and fangs and tusks and wings. I got out of there quick! 

At this point a bunch of official looking people showed up to start carting away all the sculptures and art. Ben Stein was gone (dead?) and all the workers were just apathetic about it, were going to help them load it all up in the vans. I was like "screw that!" and I got them all organized into an army, including all the living sculptures. The half-sculpture guy was a total badass.. now he was all ripped (before he was just kind of wimpy). His entire right half was totally _Schwarzenegger_. Somebody said "Don't forget about the guy on the bus".... um... guy on the bus? Okaaaay.... but I could see him (even though I was inside and the bus was out on the parking lot) -- it was the actor who played Shaggy in the CGI _Scooby Doo_ movies. He came in and we all laughed with sheer joy at his 'return' as I was waking up, knowing we would win the fight now. 

*Post Dream Wrap up*
A lot of things going on here.... I realized Ben Stein was a father figure (he 'left all the art to me' - I inherited my artistic talent from my dad who died a few years ago)... my mom was young and hip... (now she's suffering from COPD and on oxygen all the time) and the guy who's entire right side was all ripped must be my friend Rob, who always used to haul firewood in his left arm while piling it there with the right, so his left side is stronger. We had a falling out a few months ago and haven't talked since. 

... And sculptures coming to life.... hmmmmmm, now what does THAT remind me of ~? C_ould it be.... maybeeeee....._ *stopmotion?!*

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## Darkmatters

*On being both Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser*01-04-10
Dreams in DARK RED
Lucid in BLUE

This was the same day as the dream above. I tend to wake up after about 5 or 6 hours every day and go back to sleep, and I usually remember several dreams. This one was weird... the visuals were just the downstairs part of the house, with no people in it (including me). Just still images. Everything happened in narration, with me dreaming up a story about _Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser_ (couple of characters created by *Fritz Lieber* - some of the finest fantasy fiction ever created). I was just working out ideas verbally for a story.. something about them wanting to make some kind of metal pole with a hook on the end to help them sneak aboard a ship from the dock... it's funny how detailed you can get in a dream like this... I worked out all kinds of intense ideas in great detail... should the pole be long or short... did it matter how heavy it was.... it could be very short (and thus lightweight) if they approached the ship with the Mouser on Fafhrd's brawny shoulders, but then how would Fafhrd climb aboard... 

This was a lot of fun, dreaming about writing a story, Essentially I was 2 characters... or was I just the writer? It gets into some grey territory there.

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## Darkmatters

*L'Animateur*01-05-10
Dream in DARK RED
Lucid in BLUE



This one was the next day after the last 2 entries, and only a few days after I wished to _dream about stopmotion_. 

Funny... when I woke up, at first I thought none of this was a dream... I just thought I had really been doing this crazy stuff!!! You'll see how utterly ridiculous that is....

*The Dream:*
1st part I remember I was in Main Street Market (a little store near my house) because I had picked up a piece of cardboard somewhere and needed to throw it away. Oh, did I mention... I was only wearing a towel.   ::?:  I had walked there THROUGH THE WOODS... and yeah... stopped in a public place in a towel to throw away a piece of trash. While I was there one of the cashiers said "Oh look... *Prammaven* is coming in!" (Prammaven is a friend of mine from the stopmotion message board). I looked out on the lot and there was a red mustang convertible pulling up with a blonde girl in it... I thought "that is definitely _NOT PRAMMAVEN_!"

Then I was running along the trail in the woods toward home, still in my towel. I could see my footprints from before (two sets of them actually... geeze, how many times did I run around this route?) and strangely, both my feet in all the footprints were pointing to the left (maybe due to the way I was laying in bed?). There's a *german shepherd* laying beside the trail a little ways in front of me chewing on a can of something like he's trying to get it open, and I hear a voice from a house nearby say "Well so much for that! I threw some food out there but the dumb dog went for the porn instead". I remember thinking "No he didn't you dumbass... he's trying to open the food... and he's probably gonna cut the hell out of his mouth!" I always carry a pocketknife, but alas... no pants, no pockets. 

I would have helped him, but in my dreams german shepherds are nightmare creatures that always chase me, and I was a bit afraid of him even though he was totally mellow and never came at me. Each time I saw him he looked different... at first his head was deformed... looked a bit like a Dingo's head. Then later he had some kind of green harness thing on and I remember thinking "Like a guide dog". And the next time I noticed him he had green moss growing on his side. Anyway, he was trotting along with me, sort of diagonally in front of me... totally relaxed like I said, and still I was afraid and didn't want to be near him. I mean I wasn't like "_Holy CRAP!! I gotta get out of here NOW!_" afraid, more like "Ummmm yeah... no need to get too close to the doggy... ". But I was trying to get off the trail as I ran along it, so in a minute I was floating next to it using a long pole to push off from the top of sawed-off trees and stumps alongside the trail below (the trail was now like a ledge). The dog kept perfect pace with me, but I was having a hell of a time... the wind kept trying to blow me backward and it took all my strength and precision to keep poling from one stump to the next. For some reason I couldn't let the pole touch the ground. 

Oh, and each time it touched the next stump I heard a piece of the music from *L'Animateur*... my friend _Nick Hilligoss'_ film. Because I was struggling so much to make any forward progress, the music was playing slow and pausing in between stumps... like a jack-in-the-box playing _Pop Goes the Weasel_ if you're winding it too slow. But when it played I could hear it perfectly... every note just right, and it sounded AWESOME!!!! In the dream I didn't realize what music it was... didn't figure that part out till I woke up. Oh, and just for the record, L'Animateur is (wait for it.... ) a _stop motion animated film_. Incidentally, Nick (who made the film) is from Australia, and Dingos are australian dogs. Also Nick pretty much taught me everything I know about animation. 

_Anywaaaay_, The wind gets the best of me and I lose momentum and come drifting right down to the ground. When I get there the dog is laying there panting pleasantly, like he's waiting for me. I decide what the hell... he hasn't made any aggressive moves... maybe this dog is cool, and I reach out and start to pet him. Then I wake up with an intense feeling of euphoria that stayed with me all day, knowing I did the right thing.

Here's Nick's film, so you can witness the awesomeness and completely forget about my dumb little dream: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lfqTk_v5Kk

Dig the music! And the sheer talent!!

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## Darkmatters

*Cream Dream Machine*

Dream in DARK RED
Lucid in BLUE



Stopped writing the dates because this one was last night. We're up to date now... I just left off a bunch of boring dreams from the last few days. And first off... no, it's not THAT kind of cream dream.... get your mind out of the gutter!! All will be explained.... 

1st thing I remember I was walking along a _looooong_ country road... no signs of civilization for many miles. Wishing I had a ride of some kind. There was some tall skinny guy walking along with me that seemed familiar but I didn't know who he was. Suddenly I notice a _cream-colored custom chopper_ sitting beside the road and I just _know_ it's mine!! Oh yeahh baby!! I get on and try to start it up but it doesn't seem to have a kickstart on it. So I think for a minute... yeah, must be electric start. I look around and see what looks like a little piece of bare wire sticking out under the handlebars... doesn't _look_ like a switch, and when I click it, at first nothing seems to happen... but then I realize it's purring like a kitten... it's just super quiet. I start to go and feel it's got insane power, but I slow down and ask the other guy if he needs a ride. Stopping was weird... you kow how dream vehicles can be... it kept wanting to roll a little, until I really jammed on the brakes and then it stopped too abruptly. He climbed on and that was the last I saw of him... guess he had served his purpose in the dream. 

I was really lovin the sheer _POWER_ of this chopper!! I was doing wheelies all down the long highway and it hardly made a sound. 

Ok, there was a dream edit, and suddenly I was parking the bike on the porch of an old abandoned house. Why? No idea. I wanted to turn on a light inside the house, (here's where it gets really bizarre)... suddenly *the house was no bigger than a dollhouse* and I was reaching in through the open side wall to switch on the light in the front hall. I had to look in through the window to do it, and I realized the tiny light switch was a fake, but right next to it was an inset disc that when I pushed it switched on the light. Ok, now the house went back to normal size and I start walking down the hill. 

At the bottom I see two *claymation cavemen* (but normal human size) arguing over something sitting on a treestump in between them like a table. They might have even resorted to hitting each other on the head with clubs... not sure, but there were definitely goofy cartoon antics. I was laughing as I turned and walked back up the hill... apparently that was all I had gone there to see. When I got back to the top I remarked how lucky I was that the chopper was still sitting where I had left it... "usually when you walk away from something it's gone when you get back". ... And yet I still didn't realize I was dreaming!!! Man, how stupid can you be in dreams!!??!! 

That's where I woke up, but the first thing I did was reach for my journal and suddenly realize... it has a _cream colored cover_! Interesting.... The pic I photoshopped above looks more metallic gold... but in the dream the chopper was literally cream colored... *exactly* the same as my journal. 

Anyway, tried to WBTB and continue the dream, saying "I want my chopper again", but couldn't get back to sleep. 

And need I even mention the by-now ubiquitous stopmotion images... claymation cavemen, a miniature house.... it's almost getting to be routine!! 

 I mean come on... yeah, I did ask to have dreams about stopmotion... but this isn't quite what I _meant_!! I was hoping to see some awesome creatures or a cool story idea that I can use for a movie. Guess I need to be more specific with my requests, huh?

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## Darkmatters

*The Cave Movie Redux*
Dream in DARK RED
Lucid in BLUE


This is an image from a project me and a friend did many years ago called _The Cave Movie_. Puppets made from steel florist's wire, bodies formed form surgical cotton and skin of liquid latex... very crude, but serviceable. We shot it on super-8 film - the only way for home hobbyists to do stopmotion in the early 80's. A few years later when early full-sized VHS camcorders became available to the general public we rented one and recorded the film while projecting it on a wall. Shortly after that Rob's uncle borrowed the projector, with the Cave Movie in it, and that was the last we ever saw of the original film. So... now it only existed on tape. On *ONE* tape. Which got ate by a crappy VCR. So we disassembled it, did masking tape surgery, and managed to repair the tape, losing only a few precious seconds of animation. That was sometime in the 90's. Then we got smart and made a few copies. 

Enter the new millennium -- along comes digital video and desktop editing. I transferred what remained (second generation copy of a damaged tape from a none-too-good film original) into digital format. It's really amazing it survived through all these catastrophes!! Our animation was pretty bad... not patient enough, but when played back in slow motion it looked_ kinda-sorta ok_. At _times_. But some of the puppet designs were cool, and the _idea_ was good. It's just that we were rank amateurs. 

Anyway, all that was just to set up last night's dream. It's not very clear, and I can't remember most of it, but here's what I do recall...

I had filmed a new *Cave Movie* using digital-age technology... a hundred times better than what we did so long ago. It used some of the same basic puppet designs only modified to be new and improved. Basically it was exactly what we TRIED to create when we were teenagers but were unable to. Note I said *HAD* FILMED... I don't seem to have actually _dreamed_ the filming part, or at least I can't remember it. Rob came over after I was done making it and I said I was going to run upstairs and get it to show him. The stairs were crazy-huge!! I mean, each step was like a 6 foot high leap onto a 20 foot long platform, then run to the end of that platform and another 6 foot leap up to the next one. Each level was like the size of an entire floor of a house, and there was stuff sitting around on the steps... furniture and stuff. As I ran I was seeing flash images of the movie I had made... 

Making a new version of the Cave Movie is actually something I've thought _a lot_ about. Essentially it's what I'm working toward with all my animation... when I reach a good enough level that's what I'm going to do. Only THIS time it will have a *story*, and the puppets and set pieces won't _move around randomly_ between each frame... and and and.... 

When I first asked to have dreams about stopmotion animation what I was hoping for was to see scenes for a new version of the Cave Movie -- only I didn't know how that could work. I could hardly see _MYSELF_ in a movie with nothing but monsters in it, right? Was it even possible to dream yourself into an animated movie scenario? 

Well it's almost as if my dreams have been demonstrating how it works.... showing me that yes, I CAN dream of being inside an animated movie, surrounded by puppets the same size as me. And furthermore, the dreams can also reveal a wealth of information not apparent while dreaming but only revealed through analysis after writing it all down and pondering it. 

So, in a sense... not much of a dream last night, but in a way, an *awesome* dream! It's as if my dreaming mind is working out how to approach this... setting up to show me what I wanted to see. Along the way I've been gaining a lot of respect for dreams and the way my intent can influence them (and yet the way you have to let them do things their own way). Hopefully soon I'll be able to go lucid and just click the _Cave Movie button_ on the remote and just watch it on my _plasma dream TV...._

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## Darkmatters

*Defending the fallen goddess*
Dream in DARK RED
Lucid in BLUE


Sorry about that last dream folks... maybe this one will make up for it. No stopmotion references this time _thank god_.... I was starting to get pretty tired of that myself!! Still no lucid, and I can't remember the beginning of the dream, so we pick it up midway...


I was some kind of _acolyte_ or _servitor_ of a *fallen goddess*... how I know this I can't say, I just knew it. She had had all her powers stripped except the ability to fly, and as long as I stayed within a few thousand yards of her I could fly too. We didn't have wings, and this was a totally unique way of flying for me. I've found many strange ways to fly in dreams before, but this time it was different... more like gliding -- I mean the way a pterodactyl does. We had to fall from a great height first to get the momentum up, then when we reached critical mass we could change direction any way we wanted.. including hovering in place as long as we wanted with no effort. Kinda weird, because sometimes we were just walking along on the ground... so don't ask me how the hell we got to flying again after that. 

The environment for this dream was really cool... it was post-apocalyptic, and all the carnage was from the epic battle that had resulted in the fallen goddess' divestiture of powers. Her enemy was some kind of *gigantic monster demon thing*, that had completely laid waste to the human world... it was night-time and the landscape was littered with devastated buildings, mostly gutted and smoking. We were exploring the ones we could fly into looking for some kind of weapon to use against the demon-monster dude... certain kinds of metal could really mess him up. 

The surface of the earth was swept by little whirlwinds and gusts carrying debris... swirling crumpled newspaper and all kinds of scrap. When we spotted a store that looked like it might have some kind of weapon in it we'd swoop down into it... usually they had an entire wall that was just torn wide open. I love the way we were flying... it was this effortless gliding and we could go as fast or slow as we wanted. So we'd swoop down and cruise slowly through these smashed husks of buildings -- trash and stuff flying around in the air, and we'd hover and talk for a while, then slowly cruise along looking for a weapon. In some kind of farm supply store I found a long hoe or something... like a 20 foot long wooden handle with a steel blade on the front.. like a hoe only not bent down... more like some kind of king-sized scraper or flat-bladed shovel. Wait... in fact what it reminded me of more than anything was one of these bad boys:
... It's a *"cutting-in spade"* for cutting up whales. And literally the handles are like 20 feet long. I guess that must be what I was thinking of... and now that I realize that.... yeah, it's a reference to my idea for an _Ahab movie_ I want to do in stopmo. Ok, so only one small reference this time. Huh... weird, I had no idea this dream had a _stopmo reference_ till I wrote this and thought about how to describe that weapon. Yeah, I guess I'm stopmo-obsessed! 

Yeah... so, anyway.... weapon in hand we now burst out into the night ready to take on this monster demon guy. And what do you know... that's when he made his appearance!! I didn't see him very well... the roof of a building just burst open and a mass of writhing flesh came swelling out, like he was sort of _blobular_ and going to squeeze himself up through the roof like a giant amoeba. But I was near enough that I could dive-bomb him and sink the steel blade into him. He let out a scream that shook the ground and it seemed to let some of the air out of him -- I got the idea that he shrank down to a more manageable size though I still didn't see him.

... And that's it. That's all there was (that I can remember anyway).

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## Darkmatters

::: DARKMATTERS DREAM CLASSICS :::*"Rapunzel Rapunzel let down your long hair"*
Dream in DARK RED
Lucid in BLUE
(I'm starting to wonder why I waste the effort writing that... I haven't used any blue since the first dream I wrote here!)



Occasionally I'll post an old dream that I still remember or that I wrote down long ago and is worth putting up here. I'll tag them with the _fancy-schmancy_ red title like above just to make them stand out. And if you've noticed, Im trying to use boldface and other formatting tricks so I can quickly scan the posts and locate certain keywords I might want to find later. Well... that and it breaks up a big block of dull text and makes it a heck of a lot more _readable!_ 

*Ok, so on with the classic dreamfest...* 

I'm doing this one strictly from memory. I'm sure if I dug through the box full of notebooks from years gone by I could probably find where I wrote it down (not when I originally had the dream, but years later)... but this is one I've thought about and told people enough that I can still remember it pretty well. In fact it's probably my favorite of all the dreams I've had. 

The whole dream took place in a gigantic enclosed area with a polished wooden floor like the floor of a *gymnasium*. I say it was enclosed, yet the walls and ceiling were so far away I never saw them (except when... well, we'll get there when we get there). It was dark, like twilight or late evening dark (yes, the space was so _freakin' huge_ that outdoor lighting conditions seemed to apply). Sitting here and there on this smooth wooden floor were little _japanese style houses_... the kind with sliding rice paper panels for walls, and they were situated in little decorative *rock gardens*. I was walking through it all with my sister Lauren. It seemed to be some kind of puzzle or riddle thing... a game we were engaged in -- we'd walk to the next little house and go inside, and it would be set up to look like some *fairy tale* or *folk tale* kind of thing, and we had to guess what it was. Like this...

We stepped into the first one (actually I had the feeling we had already done quite a few and there were only a few more left before the end of the day). Even though it was a tiny little house like a pagoda with rice paper walls, somehow the inside was a stone chamber with absolutely nothing in it except an _arched window in one wall_ (not even the door we had come in... we weren't aloud to leave the room until we solved the riddle). We puzzled over this one for a while, and suddenly my sister figured it out. We weren't aloud to talk to each other or say what the answer was, we had to answer each riddle by just saying the right lines -- so Lauren went to the window and hung her hair out of it. Suddenly I understood, so I said *"Rapunzel Rapunzel let down your long hair".*  That was it, puzzle solved. Now the stone chamber changed to the inside of the painted paper pagoda it was from the outside, and we walked out and went to the next one. 

This one was another stone chamber, very rough-hewn, as if the entire square chamber had been hand-carved. In one wall was a recessed stone oven with an iron door on the front with small grilles so you could see the flames inside. The only other feature in the room was a large iron cage. I got this one first -- I stepped up to the cage, stuck my forefinger in through the bars and said *"Hansel"*. Now Lauren understood her part, so she opened the iron door on the oven and said *"Gretel"*. 

That was the last pagoda in sight... we had solved them all, and that meant we were now allowed to spend the night inside the enclosure and to act as guardians... security guards in the event of intruders. We walked into a chamber with three straw mats laying on the floor, each one with a large jungle cat laying next to it. They were three different kinds of cats... I don't remember exactly what kinds, but I believe one was a *tiger*, one a *panther*, and one a *Leopard* or something like that. Somehow we knew two of these were our _spirit animals_, and we had to choose them correctly. I think it's absolutely ingenious how clever the dreaming mind can be at times... the fact that there were _three_ cats means we both had to make a choice... if there were only two then after the first of us made a choice the other one would get the other cat by default. 

We both knew immediately which cat was our spirit animal. I wish I could remember what they were, but it's been many years. But here's the clincher... just _choosing_ the right cat wasn't enough... we also had to _whisper their name in their ear_ or they'd tear us apart. My sister whispered something I couldn't hear in her cat's ear and it laid its head back down and went to sleep.. she snuggled up next to it's body to keep warm in the cooling evening air and I was left sitting on my mat next to my cat wondering how the hell I was supposed to know it's name!! The cat started to get restless because I didn't know it's name; I could feel it _growling_ deep in its throat and then it looked at me. Its eyes were wild and glaring... beginning to get angry. The tail began to twitch and it started to rise up onto its front paws ready to stand up. I knew it was only a matter of minutes before it would rip into me. But Lauren leaned over and told me its name... it was something complicated that started with an *R*... I think it might have been *Rumplestiltskin*. Something similar anyway. Again, I really wish I remembered!

I whispered the name into the cat's ear and it laid back down and went to sleep. I snuggled up against it... feeling its strength and power... it was a wild thing but I had a shared bond with it and could somehow use the power of this type of cat in defense of the... whatever the place was we were defending. We slept like this for some time, then we all awoke suddenly and quietly in the middle of the night, knowing that there were _intruders_ trying to get in. We all acted in concert without needing to say a word... we were like a well-oiled machine going into action. All three jungle cats started running along the polished wooden floor and my sister and I hung onto the tails of our spirit animals and slid along in our socks. *Awesome fun!!* 

In complete silence we made our way in this fashion for what seemed like miles along the polished floor, winding our way between pagodas along curving paths until we came to a vast steel wall that seemed to be super-thick like the door of a bank vault. There was a huge garage-style door set in the wall made of thick armored steel that had been pried up somehow and three *cat-burglars* had come in and were standing just inside the (still-open) door. Heh... _cat burglars_ was the way to describe them... they were like primitive tribesmen wearing nothing but loincloths and some kind of gloves or mitts and leggings... all made form the skin of a particular type of jungle cat. The mitts had *claws* emerging from them... I wasn't sure if the claws actually belonged to the dudes or if they were just attached to the mitts. 

When we got within about 20 yards of these guys we released the tails of our cats and slid the rest of the way to them in our socks. Meanwhile all 3 of the cats ran ahead and got there before we did. The fight was on, and it was sheer bedlam. These guys were total *badasses*, they were starting to kick our asses even though with the cats we outnumbered them... and you'd think three guys would fall easy prey to three *jungle cats*, but these guys had somehow assumed the power of the cats they had killed and taken the skin and claws from. Somehow Lauren and all 3 cats were fighting two of the intruders and I was fighting their leader alone. I didn't know how I was supposed to fight this guy... I mean, he was a match for a full-grown tiger! He was super-strong and moved way too fast for me, and he looked in my eyes (his eyes were glowing red and empty) and *roared!!* That kind of freaked me out, and for a second it scared me even more, but then I got mad. I was like... ok... ok buddy... you can roar, well so can I! So I did, and as I did I could feel raw primal energy coursing through my body. That apparently was my heritage because I had bonded with my spirit animal, and I somehow knew that because I had got my power the right way... by knowing the cat's name rather than by killing it and taking its skin and claws, that I had more power than the cat-dude did. 

When I roared at him, I felt this insane surge of power rise through me and I saw the reflected glow on his face from my eyes, which I knew were now glowing red much brighter than his were. I saw fear come over his face and suddenly he broke and ran toward the door, which was beginning to close. His _cohorts_ fled with him, and all three dropped at full speed and slid out under the massive door as it was closing. I dove after them and also did the drop/slide thing, but I was slightly too late and could only jam my arm under the door... but my fingers tangled in his hair, so I did another *roar* -- *this one louder and far more savage than my first one*, and my power redoubled. I felt claws spring out of my hands and a mane come out around my neck and shoulders, and I grabbed him with a hand as *strong as steel* and hauled him back under the door, bending the lower edge of it inward. In fact I became so powerful and primal that it scared me a bit...

I woke up right then, feeling a *surge of power* like that I had felt in the dream (but not nearly as strong... no claws or mane). I somehow knew that we had captured all the intruders and successfully defended the... place.

----------


## Darkmatters

Ok, no fancy picture today. The last 2 days my dream recall has been crap, just fragments remembered and nothing to write home about (or here either!)... just a lot of dumb stuff happening. I did write down what I could remember in my notebook DJ though (always do that). 

I will say this much about last night's dreams though... it seems like I dreamed *about* lucidity in some strange way... and I think that means it's starting to filter into my dreaming mind. I just remember something about all the bricks in the floor floating up in the air... only it wasn't actually HAPPENING in the dream, it's like I was just visualizing it (dreaming of visualizing.... it's like one of those Russian nesting dolls around here!). And somehow I just knew that if I was able to actually make the bricks float the way I visualized it then I'd be able to go lucid. Strange stuff, but encouraging. 

Also I dreamed that my sister stepped up to me in a store and said "See... you need me to help you". I didn't know why she said that or why it annoyed me, but I walked away from her and a couple of doors appeared in between us so I could shut them on her (*non-lucid dream control maybe?*). To set the stage... it was like a huge book store of some kind, and I was looking at the stuff on the shelves. I found some kind of chunk of melted glass or amber and when I looked really close inside it I saw a tiny mosquito (Jurassic Park reference?). There were two girls standing next to me and they laughed and asked what good something like that was... so I told them that I could make it fly around in the air and I could see through the mosquito's eyes. or if I wanted I could make it orbit the earth like a satellite and could see what's going on all over the world. (??!!!???). That's when my sister appeared out of nowhere and said "See... you need me to help you". 

In thinking about it, I realized I had just posted that classic dream where my sister told me the name of my spirit animal (last post above this one) - and I've noticed that after writing about things in this DJ sometimes I dream about them again... it's like writing about it helps to impress it in my mind. It's kind of funny... going through all the dreams I posted above you can kind of see certain ideas repeating. 

I even had the thought after writing that dream (the one just above) that maybe my sister is my dream guide or my *Animus*... so maybe that's why she appeared and said I need her help?

I don't know, but when I'm able to go lucid and not wake up right away, I need to try to find out. 

Oh, also I worked the last 2 days. On days when I work I tend not to get that much sleep, so I think that's why my dream recall isn't so good then. Off tomorrow, and it's good _sleepin' in_ weather!

----------


## Darkmatters

Dream in DARK RED
Lucid in BLUE

*Dream recall is back baby!!!! Yeah!!!*


*1st dream -* 

This was the last dream of my regular sleep period before I wake up (about 6 hours in). I don't even attempt any initiation techniques for that period, only for WBTBs. This dream was strangely in black and white, and was like a 50's action flick. It was me and a guy and girl running around in the woods. My recall is spotty.. I know there was a lot that happened, but I only remember a few things... 

There was a lot of running along the top of logs and pole vaulting with long poles (like 20 feet long). I can see certain themes that seem to occur frequently in my dreams already... the woods, long poles (hey... quiet in the back row there! Sometimes a pole is just a pole   ::roll:: ). But then I've already seen in the course of this journal that a theme can be introduced into my dream life and remain for a little while before phasing out... so I wouldn't say any of these can be considered *dream signs*... except maybe the woods. I could step into it any time I want... it's just about 15 feet from the back door, but I haven't gone into it for a few years now. Anyway... that's about it for this dream. woke up and thought about it (wish I had fixed the details better in my mind or written it down) then _WBTB_...
*2nd dream -*

1st part I remember I was in a dept store looking at some kind of large complicated electronic/mechanical toy in a red plastic case with a clamp-on lid. It played music and little figures moved around in it. When other people walked up I didn't want them to see how cool it was & buy it before I could (Like I didn't have money but wanted to come back & get it later) so I tried to clamp the lid on it, but it went on crooked and the music kept playing, and this little girl ran up and opened it. That scene ended and cut to a downhill trail in the *woods*. I'm with 2 girls and another guy and the feeling was that we were going to do something cool, like setting out to have an adventure. Somehow we ended up in an underground labyrinth being held prisoner by who I took to be one of the girls' dad and his henchmen. It seems like some cool stuff happened in between but I don't remember it, or maybe it was a dream with a lot of quick edits. 

They were marching us along the tunnel (with thick mud on the floor... lots of great concrete wall details and slimy tunnel stuff) and they made us take the batteries out of our flashlights, but stupidly they let us keep both, we just had to put the batteries in our pockets. Stupid stupid henchmen!   ::?:  They got distracted by something and I put my flashlight back together thinking I could blind them and make our getaway when the chance presented itself. 

There was some intrigue about a woman who had died and her soul was trapped in a tangle of vines. Not sure if this happened earlier, but it seemed like it was right in the middle of the underground part. Now it seemed like the girl took her dad's side and they recaptured the rest of us. But as we rounded a corner in a wide part of the tunnel the *Ghostbusters* were sitting at a card table with some equipment on it like they had been monitoring our approach, and they ran to the rescue and chased the henchmen off back down the tunnel. I picked up a rifle with a good scope on it and sighted along the tunnel at the retreating figures, shot one, and it turned out to be the girl. Didn't want to hit her. 

Then all 4 of us from the beginning of the dream were walking back up the trail we had walked down at the beginning and it felt like our little adventure was over and we were laughing and reminiscing about it as we headed back home. I felt physically drained, probably feeling my real body because I really strained myself unloading shipment at work yesterday IRL. 
*3rd dream -*

I was sitting in a room with *my sister Lauren* and we were both at computers. I was playing a game and trying to get her to play it but she didn't want to and seemed annoyed. Then I went _INTO_ the game & forgot about the room and Lauren. 

Overhead view looking down at a snowy road w/ a big mall off to the left. It was a very cartoony game, like *Kingdom Hearts*. I think I was Donald Duck in some kind of Duckmobile at this point. Cartoonish electronic videogame music was playing and my car was leaving a trail of slowly disappearing glowing dots behind it. Then I notice another car to the right of me starting to gain on me. Somehow I know it's Lauren & she's entered the game now. My vision zooms in on the 2 cars and they become more real. 

I decide to see if I can turn directly toward the mall and cut right across the strip of land, and it works! The mall is our goal in the game. It works & I feel overjoyed. I get there before her & go driving around the building, sometimes losing sight of the car as it goes around a corner. The view is no longer overhead, but I'm still seeing it 3rd person. When I know I've reached the store we're supposed to go into I again disappear momentarily around the corner but I try some kind of tricky move anyway -- some kind of quick sideways slide/park/exit from the car thing that I think will work better because the car is out of sight, and it does. When my vision gets around the corner I'm now Mickey Mouse standing beside the car. 

Mickey goes into the store and my POV follows. Inside the tiny shop Geppetto is just waking up behind the counter and stands up as if to help Mickey. But I've already made Mickey run around the room rapidly and didn't find whatever I was looking for, so I make him go into this tiny little back room behind the counter. Geppetto is freaking out like "Hey... you can't do that!" All I can see now of Mickey is his shadow on the wall, and suddenly a bunch of shadows of something like little Pac Men rise up all around him and start biting him. I'm laughing as I hear all these cartoonish noises.. clatterings and thumps and Mickey is going "Oh! Ouch! Hey.. Stop that!" in his high-pitched voice... then he's forcibly ejected from the room back into the store, tumbling head over... tail. Guess that room's off limits!! 

There's another dream edit and now I"m in a room where a spy mission is being discussed. One of the people there is a guy I grew up with, but nobody realizes that, and somehow I feel like it gives us an advantage. We decide to team up and go on the mission ourselves. 

It's as if these episodes with me and other real people are interspersed with the game cuts, as if these are the people I:m playing the games with. Now I seem to be playing a different game with the guy I grew up with... it's a more serious Anime style game beginning with two characters sliding down a waterfall into the parking lot of some kind of bank made all of brick. There was some sort of adventure then, but I don;t remember it, or else the dream just cut directly to the next part...

I was *writing in a notebook (!)* Hah!! DJ, anybody?   :boogie:  I can see myself writing words, and it seemed like I could read them, but on waking I couldn't remember what it said at all. Probably typical dream gibberish. I filled a page and wanted to write more, but was too *dream-stupid* to understand how to turn the page. As I was looking at the page, suddenly the words re-arranged themselves so that I had only written in the left half of the paper, leaving another column on the right! So I started writing in it. It seemed like I was writing down the dream so I would remember it...

It seems like there was another dream, but I was barely awake and remembering it when the other dreams flooded into my mind and I lost the last one entirely. I know I woke up several times and went back into the dream sequence. God, I love days off when  I can sleep in!!! The best dreamtime is definitely after waking up the first time. 

Note to self... Yesterday somebody on the forum posted something I need to remember. I don't recall who it was... one of the regulars from central Europe who posts a lot. He said the important thing is to make sure you *go to sleep with your mind still aware....* . I think I let my mind drift into a dull state before I fall asleep. I think I need to come up with some kind of mantra or something.

----------


## Baron Samedi

Ack! I want to read your whole DJ... amazing recall! No time...

I love stop motion. I wanted to be a stop motion animator when I was a kid. I was obsessed with Gumby and The Wind in the Willows.

----------


## Darkmatters

Hey Nomad, welcome to my DJ! Wow, you're the first visitor in here (to post anything).... and you're one of the big players on this site!! It's like a visit from a celebrity... well ok, overreacting a bit. But anyway, thanks!

----------


## Darkmatters

(stupid) SPY SCHOOL
Dream in DARK RED
Lucid in BLUE




Another work day, not much sleep, and not much recall. But I seem to be continuing on the *spy game* theme that began yesterday. 

1st thing I remember, I was in some kind of *Spy School* along with only a few other people. Wish I could remember more details from this part, I think it was fun. No cartoon or video game stuff today, the visuals were completely realistic stuff, but the _story_ was cartoonish now, like some goofy comedy flick. 

Anyway, we graduated spy school and went out into the world to do our thing.I was on assignment outside a row of suburban houses at night sitting in a bush near a few parked cars. Nothing is happening, until suddenly this ridiculous character comes running in foolish fashion up the street, making a complete ass of himself. I knew it was one of the guys from the spy school, and I groaned... he was a total idiot! If he's on this case too, then it's a lost cause! 

He was dressed like some kind of cheesy pimp with a big fro, and his shirt open to the waist with gold chains hanging all down his chest and black makeup all over him. The way he came running up the street a moment ago was like some kind of exaggerated pimp walk only done a lot faster... really ridiculous. Now he jumped on top of a car and sat there looking up at the moon like he was about to howl or something. I knew if I was going to get any good intel here it would have to be fast, before he ruined everything, so I broke from the bush and crawled right up to the house I had been surveilling. It was dark inside, but I knew some people were hiding in there with no lights on and trying to stay away from windows so as not to be spotted. So I boldly looked right in a window, and I saw some guy sort of sliding around on the carpet like an inchworm. He was skinny and bald and looked like another comedy reject, and then I recognized him as another classmate from spy school. 

He slid very laboriously around the living room and through a door, and I knew I had a few seconds to get in before anybody else would be in the living room (don't ask me how I knew). So I quickly opened the front door and crawled in. I thought it would be hilarious if I did this and then let them see me... I assumed this stupid position, laying on the floor with my head propped up on my hand and a big smile on my face. Geeze... I was just as stupid as they were!! 

Suddenly I was back outside looking in the window like I had been a moment before, and now the door the guy had slid through opened and a blonde woman walked out, dressed in an Oktoberfest peasant girl outfit. Stupid disguise yeah, but she was *SMOKIN*!!!  :drool:  All swelling hips and hanging tits and big eyes and thick lips... 

She walked right up to the window like she already knew I was there, opened it, and grabbed my head with both hands and planted a huge wet smacker on my lips!! I got incredibly aroused just for a moment, and then I was waking up. 

Still had half an hour till my alarm went off, but couldn't get back to sleep.  ::angry::

----------


## jeckersuji

The physics blogs are abuzz with rumours that a particle of dark matter has finally been found. If it is true, it is huge news. Dark matter is thought to make up 90 per cent of the universe's mass and what evidence there is for it remains highly controversial. That's why any news of a sighting is seized upon.

----------


## Darkmatters

Wow, very cool!!! Strange though... apparently this particle is in an abandoned iron mine in Minnesota? And it's probably just background noise, not dark matter at all... but still cool. Thanks for posting. Apparently now scientists are hard at work building far more sensitive equipment to scan for more particles of it.

----------


## Darkmatters

Too Stupid to Lucid?
Dream in DARK RED
Lucid in BLUE

Day off today, so I was able to wake up and go back to sleep several times and remember the dream each time (except for one).

*Walking the Whatsit*
1st part I remember I was walking some kind of animal from an apartment building out into the street & it kept mutating on the leash. It was a small dog at first, and might have turned into a pig briefly without my noticing anything weird was going on. It stayed the same size through all the mutations, and kept walking at the same pace, and I was just too stupid to realize I was dreaming! It turned into some kind of huge lobster-thing with the head pointing straight up, very weird looking. Then it just went into a constant state of change... never remaining any one thing long enough to even register what it was. 

I tried to walk it back into the apartment building, but now the door was just in a curved section of wall... no building there anymore! This also failed to strike me as strange, I just was confused as to why every time I stepped through the door I ended up outside again, but in a completely different place. 
*"Get the hell out of my yard!"*
Was running around in the woods while some guy shot at me, I think because I had walked through his yard. A lot of really long leaps, almost flying, jumping up or down low dirt bluffs etc. Pretty cool stuff. 
*Whatever*
This was a pretty long detailed adventure dream, and I think it was really good, but I only remember little snatches of it and they don't make enough sense to even really describe. 

*My computer is a practical joker*
Was trying to order a bronze statue online, but as I filled in the order form I was typing the word *BRONZE* but all the letters would change each time I typed another one. I thought it must be a site that's not optimized for Macs! When I typed in the last letter instead of BRONZE it said *OLDMEN*. I carefully counted the # of letters and it's the same for both words, and this struck me as being incredibly funny as I was waking up. I was amazed (in the dream) at how clever the computer(dream) was in tricking me.

----------


## Darkmatters

*Investing in the flying machine*_ (and getting conned)_
Dream
Lucid

Ok, now I *KNOW* my mind is playing games with my attempts to achieve lucidity!!!   ::angry:: 

Dig this... last night I set my *intent* to *fly* in a dream and thus realize I'm dreaming, right? Ok... well _here's_ what I dreamed.....


I was in some kind of department store like a K~Mart, at a card table in the back of the store that looked like it was set up for shady purposes, as in not really associated with the store itself but by some shady entrepreneur type. A bookie or something. I'm standing there next to this guy I seem to only barely know, as if I've just met him moments ago and he talked me into standing here with him. Behind the table sits some fat guy who looks like your typical underhanded used car salesman or shyster lawyer. He's got a few forms all typed up and pushes them across the table for me and the guy next to me to sign. I'm putting my _John Hancock_ on the line as the guy next to me is talking on his cell phone... talking real fast and using all kinds of persuasive tricks on whoever is on the line with him. As I scribble my _nomen_, the fat shyster type says something to him along the lines of "Hey buddy, I can't keep extending you a credit line like this... you know your last 6 checks bounced..."

This suggests to me that he's talked me into investing in some invention of his that he's already talked 6 other people into backing and each time before it's fallen through (as in they lost everything). And somehow I know what he's got me investing in is this crazy flying machine he's supposedly building made from (among other things) parts of an iron bedframe! 

That's it... entire dream. I woke up feeling swindled, and angry that I had fallen for it when it was so obvious. 

So... here's what I get out of this on sober (waking) analysis....

My subconscious is playing games with me!!! Bear in mind... my *intent* was to dream of _flying_... There was a *flying machine*. It was made at least in part from sections of a *BED*. 

I was being *swindled*. And I was too compliant (dream-stupid) to realize it or to do anything about it... I essentially let it happen because I was in the *regular dreaming state*.. not lucid. 

Yep... it's just like my dreaming mind was playing a big practical joke on me and saying "Ok... so you wanna dream about flying...? How's *THIS*... *flying machine*... made from a freakin' *BED* no less! Har har... that's a riot!! And... on top of it... just to show who's holding the cards here... _you're too stupid to understand I'm showing you your dream sign_, so now you're getting *swindled*!!!"

I thought it was very clever though... the dreaming mind never ceases to amaze me with what it's capable of. And I now have a theory... that the subconscious teases us when we first set out to attain lucidity. It plays practical jokes on us, just to put up a little resistance. But it feels like it's a playful resistance... like somebody who's just having some fun at your expense and eventually if you persist long enough they'll break down and say "Ok... well, if you really want lucidity that bad... then have at it!"

----------


## Darkmatters

Whip it good

Dream 
Lucid

I was at my Grandpa's old house in New Athens. My grandpa died many years ago, and of course now his house belongs to somebody else. I do sometimes dream of being at that house, but usually in those dreams I'm a child... this time I'm an adult. There are other people there, my family I assume, but I'm in the spare bedroom by myself on a computer (yeah right... like you'd ever find a computer at my grandpa's house!!) and I can only hear their voices. 

I think my sister walked in and we spoke briefly but I don[t remember what we said, and then I was leaving the house to take a walk. Out through the familiar green-painted screen door with a thread spool for a handle, and it slammed hard behind like it always used to. 

Somehow I end up walking through a long trailer. It seemed normal when I went in, like everybody always just walks right through trailers, but then I suddenly felt like I was intruding... looked around and it's a beauty salon with several women getting their hair done. I see a door in the side wall and walk out, and 3 people come out behind me. I can hear them talking... it's 2 men and a woman - I glance at them, and one of them is holding a coiled whip. Very strange.... but I start to notice all around me people are holding whips. Maybe one in 5 of them. I:m feeling especially sociable today so I slow down and let them catch me, and I say something like "Wow, I haven't been in New Athens for a while, but when did everybody start carrying whips? What's up with that?"

I say it in a friendly tone, but there's no answer and they seem angry that I spoke to them. Suddenly there's some kind of tremendous earthquake or apocalypse of some kind... I only remember images of fragmented reality.... as if the earth has broken up into chunks and some of them are lifting into the air with people still on them... but the people aren't overly surprised by this. 

I woke up then. I had a headache and felt pretty bad... probably why the weird dream and especially the ending. 

I went back to sleep and vaguely recall 2 more dreams, but unfortunately I didn't fix them firmly in my mind upon awakening because I still had a headache and felt like moose crap. So the only thing I can recall from one is standing beside some kind of really sweet sports car (maybe a bright yellow or red Lambo?) with one gull-wing door open and a few people standing near me. I was talking to them, and I THINK I was telling them a dream... possibly the one I just wrote or the one I was in at the time... and it seems my intention was to impress the dream in my memory.

----------


## Darkmatters

Dusty Star
Dream 
Lucid



I almost didn't make that entry yesterday... I was going to just give up... quit journaling and trying for lucidity and all of it. Because I felt like crap with that terrible headache (which had gone on for a few days). But today it's gone, I feel a hell of a lot better, and it's all good again. And here's today's dream (actually I think I woke up and went back into the dream, but it all runs together and I can't be sure)

First let me set this up... it relates to some pretty intense shit. When I was probably..... 14 (?) I had a shaggy Hungarian Sheepdog named *Dusty*. He was a great dog... smart and could do cool tricks. He died one winter and I wanted to bury him, but the ground was completely frozen and there were like 4 feet of snow and ice... no way it could be done. Instead my mom had me put him in the snow, and we were going to wait for a thaw/melt and then bury him. But the winter had other plans... the freeze just went on and on... and eventually she made me fold him in half and stick him in a trash can... and he got his burial at the landfill. I cried like a baby for months every time I thought about it. And several years later I had a dream that I was in the living room of her house and Dusty's ghost came slowly and sadly walking through a wall, sniffing dejectedly at the ground and looking around morosely, as if looking for us but he couldn't see us. I called out to him, but he couldn't hear me. He just kept walking, head hung down, and went out through the opposite wall. I cried again when I woke up from that one. 

Ok, cut years into the future... I got another Hungarian Sheepdog (actually my mom gave it to me) that looked just like Dusty... this one a female named *Star* (that's her in the pic). I hate to say it because I loved her, but she just wasn't smart like Dusty was. But you know how it is... that's not important when you love your pet. Star lived to the ripe old age of something like 15 years (!!) and died a few months ago, but this time I was able to bury her, and as I did I felt like I was making up for the terrible wrong that had struck poor Dusty. I buried them both that misty morning (symbolically). 

Ok... the dream...


I was laying on the parking lot of the old Petrosian Cleaners (which has since been razed) next to Main Street Market (which I'm starting to think is a DS... it shows up in a lot of dreams) and a shaggy dog was laying right next to me. I was overjoyed to see it, and I knew it was either Dusty or Star but couldn't tell which one. We rejoiced to see each other, and played for a long time. Now I was laying on my side again (position I was sleeping in?) and noticed there was a corrugated plastic pipe running across the lot, like a downspout extension thing. It was about the diameter of my arm at this point, but as I looked at it it grew until I could just about stick my head and maybe my chest in it. The dog trotted into it and disappeared along its length, and somehow I knew it was returning to where it had to go (land of the dead, whatever). But we had shared a beautiful reunion and I felt great. 

This is where I _THINK_ one dream ended, I woke up, and then went back into it. Anyway, next thing I know I'm in a dark room and my eyesight is slowly adjusting, and I notice a full-length mirror in front of me. I seem to be sitting in a char that swivels from side to side, but has a head rest... like a barber's chair. As my sight adjusts better I begin to see my reflection... no wait, that doesn't look like me. In fact it's a cop, sitting in another barber chair right next to me. He does look a lot _LIKE_ me, but it isn't me. I then realize this is the bathroom of my mom's house, and then the cop and I are in the living room.. he's in a chair, I'm laying on the floor next to the coffee table, and my mom is sitting on the couch. I'm telling her about the dog on the parking lot and that I couldn't tell if it was Dusty or Star, and I begin to realize there's a shaggy hungarian sheepdog laying right next to me again! After petting it a little I go into the other room where she always kept the milk bones and I get one. I hold it in front of the dog's nose but I say "Wait.... wait.....", and he waits, but is obviously excited. So I know it's Dusty... Star didn't have this kind of self control or obedience. 

I say "Dusty!!" and give him the milk bone. He's wagging his tail like crazy, all young and energetic the way he was as a puppy. Now I feel like I know it was him earlier at the parking lot too, and for a moment I'm sad because I wasn't able to have this moment with Star, but I remember having "another one of these things" (dreams) recently with a similar reunion with Star, so it's all good.

I seem to be having a lot of dreams where I understand I'm not in a normal state of consciousness, and yet I don't quite realize it's a dream. So close!!! I'll take this as a good sign....

----------


## Baron Samedi

Sorry to hear about your dogs, man.

I had a dream last night of a shaggy dog that jumped into my arms. It was white.

----------


## Darkmatters

Thanks Nomad. Yeah, it's a shame pets just don't live as long as we do... they bring so much joy, but you always know it's gonna end in sadness. But it's been long enough that I'm over it, and a dream like this can make you really remember them the way they were in the good times.

----------


## Darkmatters

The dwarf girl and the metallic balloon
Dream 
Lucid

I didn't even attempt any techniques last night... I figure I'll just take a break for a while and get back to it later. 

I'm walking through a school that resembles the college I went to (note to self.... SCHOOL= DREAM SIGN) but it's weird... there are parts of the corridors where you need to get down and crawl through narrow spaces. I'm looking for somebody and I check in several classrooms. There's a memory gap here, and next thing I know I'm outside with this big metallic balloon (I mean the sort of foil ones that they give away at events you know... they're disk shaped with a big seam around the sides) talking to a dwarf girl, and it seems like she's my only ally. Somehow I know there's some monstrous character chasing me and she's given me the balloon to help me escape. 

We have a teary goodbye and I get the feeling she's in love with me and it really hurts her to see me go, but she gave me the balloon (her favorite possession) anyway. Very touching. I blow it up and I'm in some kind of seat or simple harness under it and it lifts me up into the air. The terrain is extremely hilly here, ridges upon ridges, all slanting upward in one direction, and that's the direction I'm going, so as I rise slowly Im paralleling the slant of the terrain and these awesome rounded hill formations are passing by me. Awesome stuff!! This goes on for a while... then the dream devolves into fragmented images that don't make enough sense to record. I know a lot more happened, and it seems like it was pretty darn cool... wish I could remember it better. I didn't try to fix it in my memory when I woke up because like I say I decided to take a break.

... Screw taking a break!!! I can't stop thinking about lucidity, and I've only been trying now for a month... I'm going to keep on trying for a while.

----------


## Darkmatters

*Caddies in Spaaaaaace...*
Dream
Lucid



Making stopmo puppets

Me and my friend Rob are making stopmotion puppets. It's a weird technique... we're using coathanger wire for the armatures (way too stiff... I actually tried it on my first puppet) and we're just making arms and legs, sculpting them on the wire from super sculpey  or epoxy putty or something that hardens like that. 

Wake up, fall back asleep....
Black Caddy space shuttle

I'm watching commercials, or more like looking at magazine ads in a really big glossy magazine, but as I look at them they move. All the ads feature a particular model of car... need to see if I can find a pic. It's an old-fashioned type of car, something from a 40's gangster flick (Google shows a 1940's Caddilac Limo that looks perfect)... but in the ads each one is done up differently... I remember one was all chromed and had rivets all over, as if it's made from thick armor plated steel and completely bulletproof. There was also one that could drive underwater and one that could go into space. I seem to be looking from the magazine to something else... a monitor or TV? Each time I look at it all I see are wheeling stars, as if it's a feed from a spaceship drifting through space really fast. I get the feeling Im supposed to be controlling it or at least doing something every now and then to keep it on course, but I'm not... apparently because Im too busy looking at the magazine ads. They're really well-done and look super cool. 

I'm now looking only at one ad, for the car that goes into space. I see that it's actually a lot bigger than it looked... much bigger than a car in fact... more like the size of a space shuttle, and astronauts are lined up beside it as if waiting to get inside, all wearing what look like old-fashioned aviation suits... hoses draped over their shoulders that can be connected to sockets on the ship and laced-up leather body panels to hold in the pressure. 

Now it's not just an ad any more, I'm actually there right next to this huge shiny metallic spaceship, and it's like I'm trying to get on the team so I can go into space. Every now and then I glance again at the monitor, but now it's like because I'm waiting in line I can't get to it, only see it from a distance, and each time I see it now the space ship is careening out of control spinning dizzily through a massive field of stars. It's thrilling to see, but I get the feeling it might end badly at any moment. I'm just hoping that I can get accepted on the team or whatever and get fitted up with my space suit in time to fix things before disaster strikes.

----------


## Darkmatters

*BUMPERFROG - IDIOTS - ANGELS*
Dream
Lucid



Again the idea of me next to a giant car carries through from the dreams of the night before. Or, well this time I think the car was normal size and I was... small. Anyway.. here goes.... 

I seem to be about the size of a rabbit, clinging to the front/underside of the front bumper of a car as it careens wildly along a hilly, swerving road through the woods, the landscape studded with little lakes between the trees. Size of a rabbit, but clinging to the underside of the corner of the bumper the way a frog would. Weird awkward position... elbows and knees sticking out every which way... And the funniest part... this did not seem in the slightest way weird to me!!! Like this is just something people do all the time!! 

Sadly this image is all I can remember. It seems I did remember more when I woke -- I should have jotted *NOTES!!* Other fragmented images are teasing at my awareness, but not coming clear. If I recall more in a bit Ill add it. Was I on a bus after this? Seems there was _SOMETHING_......

Ok, now I remember. Next dream was a cartoon. Not surprising since I had been looking at Bill Plympton cartoons a lot before going to bed... especially clips from his new *Idiots and Angels*. This dream was drawn in that style... scribbly pencil sketches done on paper with desaturated pastel-hued scribbly colors. Heh... weird how a dream can be done in a particular animator's style... 

Anywho, it was hell, or at least a system of caves that I thought was supposed to be hell. You get there by falling in level after level... each level is like a sheet of crumpled but then flattened paper, and when you fall off the edge you land on the next lower level. Floors, walls and ceilings were all made from that kind of wrinkled paper, but it wasn't flat... it was curved and bent to form interesting cave shapes. Along they way were all these cartoon characters sitting around, like chained to the walls in some cases... wish I could remember what they were saying or what happened. Man, I hate days when I have to get up and go to work, it shoots my dream recall all to hell (hah!)


<<<THIS JUST IN>>>
I just remembered... after making the post yesterday with the 1940's caddy limo in it, I realized it reminded me of the gangster-type cars Plympton drew for Idiots & Angels. Image below:



THAT'S what made me think about Plympton... I decided to check and see if Idiots & Angels had been released on DVD yet (nope), and I watched the trailer and a few clips for it. Which led to my dreaming a dream drawn in his cartooning style. Weird... and yet has a certain logic to it. It's fascinating to see the way dreams and waking life are tied so intricately together... ah what tangled weaves we web...

----------


## Darkmatters

Lucidity at last!!!!
Dream
Lucid (finally I get some use out of it!!)

*Drug Raid at the Penthouse*
I was in a penthouse apartment apparently belonging to Tamara, a girl I used to work with long ago. It was an incredible apartment... there was a swimming pool inside! There were 2 drug dealers there with her, and I got the feeling that was where the money was coming from. Rob showed up and started flirting with Tamara, something I hadn't done because I assumed she was with one of the drug dealers and she flirted back with him, which kind of pissed me off. Then me and Rob were out on the rooftop/balcony talking and we saw a couple of SWAT vans pull up in the parking lot and police in riot gear piling out and running into the building. We knew they were coming up to the top floor to bust the drug dealers. Then suddenly we're in Rob's truck sitting on the parking lot and we can see the SWAT team up on the roof busting them. A couple of plainclothes cops come strolling over and talk to us briefly, say it's a good thing we weren't in there when they showed up. They say they know we weren't involved in any crimes, but because evidence was found linking us to being in the apartment recently we have to go to jail for two hours or so.
*Sexy Spy Games*
I'm in *Mark Brown's old house* on 40th street and there's a huge christmas tree set up. I know I'm a *spy* (!!.. Dream sign I guess!   ::lol:: ) and *Lee Marvin* is there with me. He's a helper, my link with the American Embassy or whatever (the feeling is that I'm deep in enemy territory in another country). Along comes a sexy Russian spy... sort of a cross between *Nastassia Kinski from Cat People* and *Mila Jovovich*, with a little *Ivana Humpalot* thrown in. She's even wearing a white fur coat and hat. I make drinks for us, but for hers I mixed up some urethane resin (which sets up solid in a matter of minutes!   ::shock:: ). She doesn't drink it before it solidifies, so she knows I'm a spy when it goes solid. Now it's like I've violated the *Geneva Convention* or whatever Spy Rules we operate under so she now has the right to torture and interrogate me. Lee Marvin is now like a sort of referee, watching us both closely to make sure we don't violate the rules. So he watches as she straps me into this big chair. My legs are apart, and she has this big dog that walks up and sniffs at my crotch... scares the hell out of me because Im afraid it's going to do more than sniff. It does growl, but I dont end up losing anything that's important to me.    ::lol:: 

But now the spy herself is kneeling where the dog just was.

*Spoiler* for _Ok, I better put the rest of this part in spoiler brackets, don't read if you're offended by pornographic dream imagery... (yeah right, is anybody NOT going to read it after that?!!)_: 



Somehow I've lost my clothes. She lubes up and gives me a handjob until Im rock hard and almost ready to blow. If she gets me over the brink I'll spill government secrets among other things. Then Lee Marvin says according to the rules she has to stop there. Damn those rules!!  :Mad: 

She stops, but she keeps her face real close.. I can feel her fur hat and her hair brush against me now and then as she talks in a sexy Russian accent and says really nasty things. I'm very aware of her thick lips and big eyes. Then she leans forward and starts kissing my belly, with a lot more fur and hair rubbing against bare skin. I'm just about to blow, but I wake up instead.



*Driving me Lucid*
I'm walking along a highway watching cars go by and wishing I could be in one of them instead of walking. Suddenly one of them crashed into a ditch right next to a tree and the woman driving pops through the side of the car like a ghost. When she rolls on the ground she's hurt, and that makes me think "She must be real" (as if there are 'real' people and cars here as well as dream people and dream cars. See the logic... if she was a dreamer or a DC she wouldn't have gotten hurt.)

*I go lucid*. God it feels so good to finally be able to write that!!!! Here it is again just for good measure. I go lucid. Hah!! Lucid lucid lucid! I suddenly realize that, since I'm dreaming, I could stop a car and just take it for myself. I step out in front of an oncoming car with my hand raised, it stops, and I walk up to the driver's door. There's a brief dream edit here... I don't see just how I got the driver out of the car or what happened to him, but next thing I know I'm driving it along the highway. It reminds me of the game Driver when you can switch cars. Unfortunately the car I got is an old road boat... a brown Delta 88 or something. When I floor the gas it makes a spluttering sound and almost dies, doesn't go any faster. But I remember things I've read on Dreamviews and in ETWOLD etc, and I decide to find a Turbo button hidden somewhere on the dash, disguised as a regular button. I try the wiper button - the wipers come on. Damn! I try the lighter - it's just a lighter. But lo and behold... there's ANOTHER lighter just above it!!  That must be it! I pull it out - it's just another lighter. 

So I think for a bit. I realize I have to somehow make myself BELIEVE one of these buttons could actually be a turbo button, and I;m trying to come up with a way to do that, when I suddenly notice there are 4 red VW beetles around me. I laugh and think 'well, those have GOT to be dream cars!!!' I don't seem to be fully lucid, I still think most of the cars around me are "real". So I cut off one of the VWs and switch to driving it instead. It's a much faster car, and when I step on the gas it doesn't splutter and almost die. I'm humming along at about 70 or 80, weaving rapidly in and out of traffic. I'm having a blast, when it occurs to me I don't have a license and I'm driving illegally. Somehow I completely gloss over the fact that I also just stole 2 cars! But I remind myself that this is a dream so I can't get busted.

And I run into the wall on my right. A moment ago it was a row of storefronts, now I'm driving inside a mall and I just ran into the doorway of a restaurant! Heh.. considering I was doing 80, it was just a tiny little bump though. The restaurant is at the end of a corridor, so I back up and whip the car around. A couple of teenage punks come out and look at me as I drive off over the tiles into the mall, laughing because this feels so cool. 

Now instead of driving I'm walking in one of the stores. Beside me is *Ronnie Haas*, who was in one of my recent dreams. I'm telling him that I have a cool dream car that will do all kinds of tricks and go real fast and we ought to go for a drive in it, but he seems annoyed and doesn't believe me. Until I tell him I'm dreaming... then he smiles with this wicked look that says Awwww hell yeeeah!! But a girl who's walking behind us overhears and suddenly leans up and starts hitting Ronny all over the shoulders and back, screaming something I can't understand. Her arms and head swell up alarmingly and she falls down and starts convulsing. Shit... now we have to make sure she's ok... And I wake up.

I obviously wasn't fully lucid... if I was I would have been flying around rather than driving an old clunker. I wish when I remembered ways to make things happen in dreams I also would have remembered to do an RC and stabilize the dream. Last night I was reading somebody's DJ and he had a dream where he was driving but he remembered he doesn't have a license. That must be where that idea came from.

----------


## DreamQueen

Hi again  :smiley:  I only had time to read a few of your dreams. It's interesting because I clicked through to your journal from the link in your sig in your thread about getting lucid for the first time and immediately saw how you'd read Demon Haunted World. Just last night a friend recommended that book to me telling me I'd love it. Was planning to buy it today - quite a coincidence.

Interesting how you had the dream of being in a stop motion film. You can definitely induce dream content if you want. Our dreams seems to reflect our deepest desires and our deepest fears. I find by spending time during waking life thinking about how much I want to do a reality test in a dream it becomes more likely to happen. I'm now at the point where I only have to think about it hard for a few minutes before I go off to sleep and I'll do one for sure in my dream. Even though WBTB and WILD are my main methods for lucidity it makes for some great bonus DILDs!

Keep up the good work and enjoy those lucids  ::sunflower::

----------


## Darkmatters

Thanks DreamQueen, nice to hear from you here. 

Yeah, Demon Haunted World was a great book, as well as the other Sagan ones I read. I'm on Castaneda now, working on A Separate Reality. Also great stuff. Having that lucid really boosted my confidence, and makes it seem like I'll be having more soon. Last night I watched HI turn into a dream... it was awesome!! Didn't go lucid though. I'll be posting that one in a bit.

----------


## Darkmatters

Dream
Lucid


*Hot for Teacher* - and teacher is hot for herself
1st part I remember I was getting dressed and had only one sock on. I was looking or the other one and couldn't find it anywhere, though I found all kinds of totally different socks that didn't match each other. Then I looked under the bed, and found dozens of old crusty socks there covered with cobwebs and dust. I pulled one out and it had been chewed by rats. Ugh.

I walked into a classroom as class was just about to start. There were no desks or chairs and the floor was tilted pretty steeply down toward the teacher's desk. I sat down on the floor in a spot I knew was mine and a few other people were coming in now. At each place were a few papers... a test and some study materials for it. The guy next to me started filling out the test before the teacher arrived, and I asked if he was sure we were supposed to do that. He said he didn't care. I started filling mine out too, but thought it was probably wrong. Soon the class was just about filled with people and the teacher walked in. She was totally hot!!   :drool:  Sort of a milf type with long black hair, and it seemed like she was completely narcissistic.

I covered my test with the study papers so she couldn't see I had already filled it out, but she didn't seem to care at all. She picked it up and gathered everybody else's tests, even if they weren't filled out. There was a sort of dream montage where I saw the room a few times, as if through the entire class period condensed into a few seconds. The teacher had changed clothes several times, always wearing something sexy but tasteful and standing as if she wanted to be the center of attention. She never sat at her desk. Now she showed a movie, and it was some kind of historical film showing a lot of different situations throughout history, She played all the female leads in it, affording her opportunities for lots more costume changes.*HI* there
(HI for Hypnagogic Imagery)
After waking up from the last dream I wrote it down and lay back down. It took a long time, but I started to fall asleep, and inside my eyelids I noticed shifting color-blobs. I watched them and suddenly they turned into an image. At first it was very flat and colorless - it looked like a reflection on a piece of glass. It was a field... I could clearly see every blade of grass and in places I could see clods of dirt and little frogs and things like you'd see in a field that hadn't been mowed for a long time. Suddenly it became very clear and vivid, no longer like a reflection but like I was actually there in the field in bright daylight. I knew this was HI and I was excited. But I didn't go lucid. 

Now I was panning sideways slowly across the field, like in a movie. I noticed a few people standing around, and saw that the field was next to a small town. Now it seemed I was in a car slowly moving toward the town, and I was looking out the side window. I was not aware of the inside of the car or who was driving. We moved in slow drifting motion through this old town that looked like it had a lot of history behind it. The terrain was very hilly and a lot of the roads were just dirt trails or light gravel. I kept seeing these awesome old brick buildings (which are a staple from some of my childhood dreams). I started to notice we were seeing a lot of really small brick buildings that looked like they used to be ice cream stands or something... it was like we were on a tour looking at these in particular. I found the pic that I posted above for this.. even though it's not brick it has the right kind of look... all kinds of decorative stuff built on. 

Suddenly the car swerved onto this scary steep trail that wound down along the edge of a cliff with a sheer dropoff along the edge. I got scared because it looked too dangerous, the car wasn't going to make it without sliding off into the gorge. I heard my dad's voice from the driver's seat say "Im going to try it". I knew we wouldn't make it and I asked him not to. Woke up then, but with the feeling that because I had asked him not to, he decided not to try the trail.

 ...My dad died a few years ago. He was living in Colorado, high in the mountains and you have to drive on steep winding mountain roads to get to the house he was building and living in. A week after he died, his common-law wife died in an accident where she went over the edge of a mountainside.

Also, about the brick buildings -- when I was young I had a lot of dreams where everything was made of old crumbling brick. Complex buildings, sidewalks, streets... everything. My dad was always in these dreams.. it was shortly after he and my mom had separated and he left. So I associate these dreams with him and with that period in my youth. There are areas of the city I live in that really do have a lot of old brick buildings, and many years later I saw a documentary about the founding of my city... it grew up around a brickworks, and originally all the buildings were brick....

----------


## Darkmatters

*Getting caught up*_ - last few nights_
Dream 
Lucid

02-05-2010
*The Comic that Roared*
Standing in  desolate spot out in the hills with no trees or shelter... it felt naked and cold. In front of me, nestled between a few hills in a cozy little spot there's an old rusty iron H beam standing up like a sign post and it has a rusty iron plate welded on to it at head level... like a sign. If it ever had anything written on it it's long since been worn away to pitted metal. The only residue left on the iron plate now is some old crusted paintball splatters in various colors, mostly worn away now. The whole scene is an icon of lonely desolation. 

Rob is standing next to me, and he has some comic books in plastic bags. I notice the covers seem puffy, like some gimmicky new trick the comic company is using to make them more "collectable". It's like each character on the cover is thick and puffy, while the background is flat. Yeah, great gimmick. Image, I'm lookin' at YOU!   :Shades wink: 

I press my finger against a monster on one of the covers, and when the puffy stuff sinks down, the monster roars. What's next, _scratch~n~sniff_?*Going to school dirty*


I'm on a yellow bus going down my street. Right in front of the bus a woman  is driving with a kid in the car. She's not paying any attention, talking to the kid and occasionally she takes both hands off the wheel and puts them out the passenger's side window (!)

There's another woman in a nice white convertible right in front of her who;s driving desperately backwards so the distracted woman doesn't hit her car. It's a crazy scene and everybody on the bus is watching. The woman driving backwards swerves off the road just in time so she doesn't get hit... the crazy distracted one just keeps right on going, never even saw her. Now we're passing my house and heading down the steep hill at the end of the road. I think Good... it'll take me right to the bus stop so I can go to _school_ (DS alert!). 

I notice I'm wearing some weird clothes... not my school uniform (um... when I was in school we didn't wear uniforms... I think the dream is mixing school and work together). My pants are caked with dried-on dirt. Then I remember I don't wear a school uniform, so it's alright, and I'm picking chunks of dirt off my jeans. We get to the bottom of the hill, to where I used to catch the school bus with Ronnie so long ago. When the yellow bus stops I just get off & walk across the street to the school bus stop. A black dude is standing there already. A quarter falls out of my chest pocket and falls into the little pond behind the guard rail at the edge of the woods. I say screw it... that's 25 cents down the drain (right where I once lost a shoe!) but I try to fix the chest pocket... it's clear plastic & has a hole in the corner, and somehow It's turned inside-out so it's now on the outside of the vest. I can see a few more quarters and a huge survival knife in there (one of those really cheap ones with the hollow handle and a little ball compass in it). Im mostly embarrassed to be seen carrying this crappy stupid knife, so I'm trying to tuck the plastic pocket back into my plaid vest ( ::shock:: ). This seems to be mostly a fashion nightmare! Somehow I can't fix the pocket. 

There's a whistle from the woods and 2 more black dudes come strolling out. They look like gangsters, one with some kind of dyed red mohawk/ponytail thing (at last it's a fashion nightmare for my DCs too!). He looks at me and then at the other 2 black guys significantly, like "yeah, honkey's a racist" (I apologize for my dreams!).

Now we're sitting at the covered bus stop a few blocks down the road, just me and the scary gangster dude with the red hair. We're sitting very awkwardly with our knees hanging over the railing and our backs jammed up against a wall.. but we seem to think this is normal. We're discussing christianity (waking life seeps into dream world   ::?: ). I'm telling him I have no problem with it as long as it isn't fundamentalism. I start to explain why, but don't seem to remember clearly what it all means. Wake up.

----------


## Darkmatters

*Stupid clumsy Ninja*
Dream
Lucid
02-06-2010
I'm *creeping* around in the basement trying to *hide*, carrying a huge *machete* like I'm some kind of ninja. Or rather pretending to be. Weird how sometimes in dreams you're like a kid. Kind of cool I guess... you get to live out parts of childhood again. 

Im trying to tun off the lights by unscrewing the bulbs to be real *sneaky*, but the bulb wasn't where it was supposed to be. I kept creeping around feeling along the ceiling trying to find where the light bulb was - somehow I couldn't seem to see properly up above me. It's like I was all crouched down and maybe wearing a ski mask or something? Vision blocked pretty badly anyway. I Kept finding light bulbs screwed into extension cords, but every time I unscrewed one there was still light coming from somewhere else. So lots more creeping and feeling along, following extension cords etc. 

Suddenly I came to the central hub of massed extension cords and electrical sockets... you know, those blocks you plug into an outlet that have 6 outlets on them? There were hundreds of them all plugged into each other. Near this I finally found the lit bulb. It was all covered with rust and dirt. I tried to unscrew it stealthily but it shattered. It seems like all this time somebody was coming down the stairs and the whole idea is I was trying to shut off the light and hide from them (and it took like ten minutes of clumsy creeping). Finally I jumped behind a sofa and covered up with a blanket, trying to become one with the pile of blankets back there. But a little girl I'd never seen before walked right up to me and stood there looking at me for a while, then grabbed the blanket and pulled it off me! 

I'm definitely thinking *creeping* and *sneaking* are dream signs.   ::?:

----------


## Darkmatters

Dream
Lucid

*Falling for Jennifer Aniston*

I'm standing in a skyscraper on one of the top floors looking across the street at another one that's split open down the front as if by an earthquake. Jennifer Aniston is standing on one of the top floors of that building, right in the center of the split where I can see her, talking on the phone. Suddenly the floor under her gives way and she falls through to the next one, but stayed upright and kept on talking on the phone. Now it seemed like I was watching the trailer for a new movie. I thought (Aw come on... that's _STUPID_! She'd fall *FORWARD*, not stay upright like that!"

Then she fell through the next floor the same way, and the next, all the way down to the ground.*Driving her up the wall*

I'm in a house... I think it's the one Mimi lives in up on Sherwood Forest. Can only remember this one part -- there was a tiny girl.. not a child, a teenager, but really short. She asked me to spin her, and I grabbed her wrists and started spinning around. As I went faster she rose up and pretty soon she could 'run' with her feet on the walls up near the ceiling.*Riding on the Edge... of the wall*

I was riding my bike on top of a grassy hill near my house. I decide to go down onto the street, but it's a very steep hill, so I cut across it at an angle. As I"m descending fast (too late to stop now) I see another guy on a bike down there, and Im just about to crash into him, but I manage to swerve onto the top of a narrow concrete wall so I'm riding just over his head beside him. Pretty nifty work if I do say so myself! The wall goes down, the street comes up, and pretty soon they meet, so now Im riding on the street itself. The other guy is nowhere on sight. It now looks like Main Street, and it's dark. I'm going to a little store. I think I woke up then - anyway, its all I remember.*Fightin' Irish!*

I'm standing in a public square watching some Irish or Scottish guys putting up a decorative pillar with a sign on top with a slogan in their language and in english. Hmm... do they actually have their own language? They asked me to clean up a board they wanted to use for another sign (asked is a euphemism, they seemed to be terrorists) and the only tool they gave me to clean it with was a push-broom. It was totally ineffective.

I had just watched Rick Steves' Europe before going to bed, and he was traveling in Ireland, talking about the war between extremist groups there. Also I had grabbed a broom to try to sweep the fresh snow off the front steps, but it turned out to be really heavy wet snow, and the broom was laughably ineffective! 

I'm very surprised to remember so many dreams from last night... I had to work today and so like usual I only got about 4 1/2 or 5 hours. At first I couldn't remember ANYTHING... but slowly it all came back to me. I usually only remember maybe one short dream on work nights. It's gettin gpretty late now, and I have to work again tomorrow, so   :bedtime:

----------


## Darkmatters

*Drift Away*
Dream
Lucid


*Rubbing Cordy's crotch*

I was floating up near the ceiling in a *school* - or it actually seemed like I was drifting down THROUGH the ceiling, or there was no ceiling... anyway, I floated down into a section of corridor. I came in at a bit of an awkward angle and, though I was moving slow, it took some fancy maneuvering to keep my footing when I touched down on the squeaky floor. The corridor was very narrow to begin with, and there was a coat rack on the right along with a principal's desk and a few chairs (the principal's office was actually IN THE HALL) and walking on the left was *Cordelia from Angel* in a short plaid skirt and white blouse. 

Some guy I didn't know was floating just behind me - like I was teaching him how to do this floating thing. I said something like "This time we're gonna go left..." and twisted myself toward the left branch of the corridor. 

Suddenly we're back where we began and everything is just as it was when I first saw it... Cordy is still walking right where she was the first time. We drifted down and again did the awkward landing, but this time we took the right branch, right through the principal's office area. 


*Spoiler* for _Adult content - over 18 only. No, seriously! Hey... I MEAN it_: 



Then we dropped in the same way one more time. This time though it felt like I was teaching the guy what you can do in a dream. I grabbed Cordelia and bent her over, pulled her skirt up. She had no panties on - I started fondling her shaved crotch. Apparently it was just a demonstration of stuff you can do in a dream... I didn't follow up and just left her there as we passed through. Finger em and forget  em I guess, huh?  ::lol:: 




We progressed (walking now) through several corridors. After a while he was in front of me, and I noticed he was really super squat and wide, all red-skinned and red-headed like an Irishman, and his left hand and right leg were really swollen. He was only wearing a pair of shorts. When I noticed how swollen he was he said something about it, wondering if he had hit his hand on something and bruised it (!?). There was a beer keg sitting in the corridor and I suspected he had had some kind of tapper accident.
*Skeleton Fence*

This might have been part of the same dream, Im not sure. I'm floating over the spiked iron fence of a golf course or maybe a graveyard at night. There are two old men walking on the other side. As I pass over the fence I notice my shadow on the ground - I'm a skeleton. One of the old guys says something nice either to me or about me.
*Drive-Thru stalking*

I'm driving slowly on a road with many sharp curves in it at night. All this slow drifting in dark places makes these all feel like the same dream, or maybe related ones. In front of me is a house and my headlights point for a moment right into a window. It's a teenage girl's room and I can see her laying in her bed looking out at me. 

Now it seems like the road goes into and through the house, so I actually drive through her room and through part of the house before going out the front door.  As I'm leaving she and her parents come into the last room to watch me go.. they seem angry and she's smiling.

I've worked for the last three nights. Normally when I work I don't get enough sleep and have poor dream recall, so I had gone to bed a few hours early (but spent an hour finishing Castaneda's A Separate Reality). I woke up from this/ these dreams (?) at 12:30 (afternoon... I'm a nocturnal). Decided to write them down, and that made me wake up too much... never got back to sleep! Pretty sleepy now... need to get to bed early again and this time if I wake up to hell with recording my dreams... it's DEILD time!!!

----------


## Darkmatters

Dream 
Lucid

To set the stage - I usually only have good dream recall on my days off when I sleep all day. On work days I tend to only get 4 or 5 hours' sleep, and usually can't remember anything. Well, I've worked for 4 days in a row (unusual), and the sleep deprivation was getting to me. Yesterday I woke up with a headache and this weird feeling like the front part of my brain was sluggish or still asleep. Rather unpleasant, and stayed with me all day. 

Ok, so FINALLY I get to bed yesterday. It felt SO GOOD to lay down and shut my eyes! And I was hoping for some REM rebound from the sleep deprivation period. But it wasn't easy to get to sleep. I'd lay there for a while, start to drift off, and then wake up as if I'm stressed or something. I call this 'burning off the sleep fever' (it happens whenever I've been sleep deprived for a while). But one kinda cool thing I noticed... as I was laying there with my eyes closed I kept seeing images moving around, like pale colorless dreams trying to form. I guess this was HI? 

Anyway, it's hard to say if I really had any REM rebound... I think it's quite likely, but my recall was pretty bad! Heh, just the fact that I was seeing HI a lot before I fell asleep makes it seem like I was already dreaming even before I was out. I remember the 1st time I woke up, I recalled a dream and reviewed it in my mind the way I do, as if I'm telling it to  a friend, and even made up a title for it to help me remember it after several more wake-ups. Usually that works. But not this time... unfortunately when I finally did get up all I could remember was the 2nd dream and the little dream-flash I had just before waking up. Im sure I woke up and went back to sleep 4 or 5 times. Here's the one I remember and the little flash:

*Wall of Comics*

I was walking with two people in a downtown city area. One of them was a really short girl wearing a short skirt who had fantastic legs.. the other one I didn't really notice. As we stepped from the sidewalk onto a series of parking lots we were crossing she was in front of me and I grabbed her wrists and picked her up and spun her around (just like in a recent dream). We were laughing and having a blast. Then we ran across the parking lots and into the entrance to a cave. 

As we went into the cave I saw a crack in the floor and underneath the chamber was a deep pit lit by lava or something. I thought "I've seen this movie... I remember how it ends!" I also remembered some of the actors who were in it, but the names are lost to me now.

We jumped over the crack, and then over a series of cracks (each about 4 feet wide)... then as we progressed rather than jumping over cracks we were jumping from wall to wall across gaps between them. The walls were made of piled stones and were a few feet tall, but there were cracks in the floor between the walls, so to miss would be deadly. 

As I was jumping to one of the walls I saw a side view of it clearly, and it was a drawing of a wall done in a very stylized style. When I landed on it it had become a wall of stacked comic books... all from *Warren publishing* in the 70s and 80's (company that did big black-and-white horror comics featuring mostly european artists, and with covers by *Frazetta* and *Richard Corben* etc). I  used to lOVE those comics when I was younger! I started looking at the ones on top of the wall, getting excited. I started to notice some of them were gigantic... like if you'd stand it up it would be as tall as me! One of the giant ones was an edition of *Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein*, and I was thinking about getting it because I could tear out the illustrations and they'd be big enough to be posters. 

*Ebert and Siskel Roeper*

Like I said this one was just a quick flash. Roger Ebert was sitting in a chair and I was thinking about the other critics he used to work with, remembering their names, and I think the names of a few other movie critics. Meanwhile I noticed a rack behind him with something like bags of potato chips hanging on it.

----------


## Darkmatters

Dream 
Lucid

Last night I still had pretty poor recall, and the dreams I do remember were not good ones... very downbeat and depressing. It could be that* it takes me a couple days to recover from sleep deprivation* (see last post) -- I think there's some truth to that... but it's also probably due in large part to the freakin' *HUGE-ASS BUCKET-O-NACHOS* I shoveled into my face a couple hours before bed!!! I have a pretty sensitive digestive system, I really don't deal well with spicy food or cheese, and here I downed mass quantities of both! Geeze, it's like I was asking for crappy dreams!! Anyway... here's what I do remember (and wish I didn't):

*Treebridge*

I was making a bridge by gluing popsicle sticks together. Not a complicated one, just a flat truss shape. Then I'm seeing it hoisted up into the trees, only it's full-sized now. 

Next I see it attached at one end to the top of a tall tree and tilted down at a steep angle (and it's a lot longer than when I made it... it reaches all the way to the ground). An old man with a cane is hobbling his way down the ramp/bridge thing. 

Next part, I'm sitting on the floor in my basement petting *Dusty* (my old sheepdog from many years ago - it actually could have been *Star*, a more recent and very similar sheepdog - but for the sake of simplicity I'll just call it Dusty). He's in pretty bad shape, his hair is all matted and discolored and I get the feeling it's because he's been dead so long. It's as if he's visiting me in this dream but because I feel like crap he can't manifest in full frisky form, & the corruption of death is making it through. No more Nachos before bed! Ever! This was just an awful feeling, I was sort of trying to ignore the signs of death and pretend like everything was ok, but I couldn't help but notice how bad he looked and that he wasn't moving right. So sad after my recent wonderful dream of reconciliation with him. 

Then I'm inserting a pair of small metal parts into two slots in the roof of the cab of a toy truck. Somehow the truck is Dusty, the cab is his head, and Im putting the parts into slots in the top of his head, just behind the eyes. I'm putting tape over the parts to hold them in place. I'm a bit horrified at the emptiness inside his head but try to ignore it. 

Then Im sitting on a big bus like a Greyhound at night looking out the window onto the parking lot. Next to the bus is a wide shallow puddle and right at the near edge of it Dusty is laying, still not looking good at all. I'm very sad. 2 guys I don't know are doing something to him and he can hardly lift his head. They assume he's dead and pick him up and toss him out into the puddle, which has become the ocean, where he sinks out of sight .

There was more... I remember walking on the roof of the bus, but nothing else. I wish I didn't remember ANY of this one. 

*Breakfast with the Browns*

Staying at *Mark Brown's house*. Not a house I've ever seen though. I'm going to bed but he's staying up for a while. The bedroom is high on a 2nd or 3rd floor balcony (indoor balcony). There are 2 beds, each with a light switch (Missed RC!!!   :Mad: ). I sleep in one and when I wake up he's nowhere in sight. In fact I never saw him in the dream at all... I just knew it was his house. I'm getting ready to go to *school* (!!) and don't have a notebook, so I find a looseleaf binder and take some paper out that I put in a folder. Then I make some breakfast from his refrigerator. 

Dream cut - now *I'm in a store.* I stepped in looking for a comb or brush because my hair is trashed really bad and it was the only store in sight. It turns out to be a *womens' boutique* of some sort and there's a girl standing right in the middle of the floor with pantyhose half on and not wearing anything else. When she sees me she gets embarrassed and runs into a dressing room with a hanging curtain. I start looking around for a brush or comb, when I notice in the dressing room next to hers is a pair of feet in high heeled shoes. A girl steps out of this dressing room who seems to work here. I feel very out of place and I'm starting to get embarrassed by just being here. There doesn't seem to be anything to fix my hair with, until I see a shelf with a bunch of wig-heads on it and stacked next to them a bunch of things that MIGHT be combs of some weird kind, or at least I _think_ I could comb my hair with one. 

They're clear plastic domes just about the size to fit on a head and on the inside they have teeth like a comb. Not very effective-looking, but it  was worth a try, so I grab one and drag it through my hair. Heh... totally ineffective!!! Weak weak weak. My tangled hair (hmm... matted like Dusty's was?) is way too thick and strong, almost breaks the teeth out of whatever that thing was. So I put it back on the stack, feeling the countergirl's eyes burning into me and feeling like I was being a complete ass.

Heres proof that the nachos were at least partially to blame for the terrible dreams... after waking up I hit the bathroom and took a massive dump which looked really awful... in fact a bit like the nachos did!! (sorry... ). And literally as soon as that was out of my system I felt fantastic!!  ::banana::

----------


## Darkmatters

Awesome Incredible Stupendous dream!!!
Dream 
Lucid

*Monkeys on the water -- and water in the sky*

I'm in a living room surrounded by my family... Grandpa (who's dead by the way), my aunt and uncle, and maybe my dad. I'm looking at this elaborately carved wooden fireplace screen that at first I thin is pretty tacky. It's a series of interlocking figures - I think they were little monkeys or something, with big repeating shapes cut out between them. I notice the cutout shapes are pretty complicated and have a sort of human shape to them... then I realize it's *Popeye the Sailor*, complete with his pipe! 

I'm astonished by the detail and the cleverness of the illusion, and I stop the conversation to point this out to everyone. Grandpa chuckles warmly and says yeah, he thought it would be a nice idea to carve this for my aunt and uncle for their fireplace. I'm absolutely blown away! I had no idea Grandpa had any artistic talent. 

Then I'm standing waist deep in a lagoon. It's raining, but there are these cool formations of coral or volcanic rock standing out of the water here and there that rise up over my head and then flare out, forming natural shelters I can stand under. There are big cardboard boxes standing in the water... really big ones like refrigerator boxes, and for some reason I don't want them to get wet in the rain (!?) so I go around and drag them all under one of the formations. 

The bottom of the lagoon is very jagged and treacherous & suddenly my foot breaks through whatever I'm standing on & I hear the sound of a glass jar breaking. I reach down into the water and pull out half of a broken jar, and I start to feel something stabbing into the bottom of my foot... I reach down again and work loose a long spar of broken glass from my foot that has blood on the tip. 

Before I notice any pain though I'm distracted by the faces of the cliffs around me... the coral or volcanic rock of the cliffs is completely covered with elaborate interlocking carvings of -- little monkeys! Done in a sort of squared-off style like ancient Aztec carvings. So detailed!! This dream was incredibly vivid -- I was acutely aware of the textures and colors of every surface. It was no longer raining.. the sun was shining brightly on the cliffs and warming the porous stone. 

Now a tribe of monkeys comes swarming across the cliff and wherever they pass the carvings are transformed instantly into far more complex shapes. From being essentially flat they're now very 3 dimensional and geometric. I'm utterly flabbergasted at this... I put out my hands in amazement to touch the phenomenal wall and it turns out to be soft and spongey - in fact I can cut through it with the edge of my hand! I cut out a really awesome looking piece of sculpture to take home - once I do it's hard porous stone again, and very lightweight. 

Now the monkeys (the live ones) are dogs - about the size of german shepherds but grey. They're very wolfish and wild, panting hard, but they're not menacing me at all, just swarming all over the cliff and the rocks under it. I pet a couple of them and notice some have big scars on their sides, apparently from the rough jagged stone (I assume it was jagged before they transformed it into carvings, and I guess every time they pass the sculptures are further refined). 

They sort of herd me around a rocky promontory and up onto a beach. There's a huge crowd of people all spread around in little clusters as if for some massive event. I see my mom and my sister & want to show them the sculpture I extracted from the wall. As I'm making my way toward them through the thronging masses a plane overhead bursts into flames and crashes in the woods nearby. There are reporters and camera crews here and there who point the cameras toward the crash site - not like its a tragedy, but just an interesting visual event. 

I get to the row of orange plastic chairs where my mom and sister are, and then I wake up. 

Was planning to do a bunch of DEILDs but when  started to remember this dream I got excited and decided to write it down. So after that I went for a WBTB instead. Didn't lucid though. 

*Brother can you spare some bread?*

Hard to remember or even understand really, but I'll try to make sense of it. This one also seems to begin with me standing waist deep in water, but this time next to a grey stone castle with walkways built out through the water. It seemed like I was in a weird foreign country. I made my way up onto one of the walkways and saw lots of people standing and sitting or kneeling all over the place. They all seemed to be simple peasants, not very bright, and nobody was talking or anything. Each one had a loaf of bread laying on the stone walkway next to them. 

The water was rising and would soon come right over the walkway, destroying all the bread. I felt like it was my responsibility to organize them and save their bread (it didn't occur to anyone - including me - that they could just have picked up the bread... ). So I started giving orders which they mindlessly obeyed. But each one would only touch their own loaf, which made things difficult. PLus they had weird little organizations... political and religious etc, and certain groups refused to get near anyone from other groups. This made everything really difficult I remember passing the time by telling jokes that none of them understood.


*Associations and interpretation...*

In copying these dreams from my bedside notebook a few things jumped out at me. The second dream could be a continuation of the first... they seem linked by the fact that I'm standing waist deep in water next to a stone formation in each. So if that's the case, then maybe the stone castle represents the further refinement of the wall sculptures made by the monkeydogs? It had an Aztec (primitive) feel in the 1st dream, and in the second it was medieval (more advanced historically)... 

The monkeys (that transformed into grey wild dogs) are transforming the environment in these dreams. I take it to mean they're transforming my mind. Refining it into a lucidity machine! 

The dogs... they remind me of the german shepherd from an earlier dream that at one point had green moss growing on his side, and that also wore a harness making me think of him as a "guide dog". He was also linked to Nick Hilligoss, a mentor and teacher to me on another website, so these animals are like guides... dream guides maybe? The fact that they were grey links them with Dusty and Star, my sheepdogs who got pretty bad press in last night's dream. It seems like here I was seeing them as hardy, strong outdoor dogs in tune with nature in a way they never really were as soft floppy indoor dogs. So what it means... Dusty and Star, my dead canine companions, are my *guide dogs* and are helping me transform my mind so I can achieve lucidity at will.   :Bliss: 

OH, and this just struck me... I remember recently reading that *Loaf* has had a bunch of dreams with planes bursting into flames and crashing. That expains the plane crash in the first dream AND the *LOAVES* of bread in the second. Weird how the mind works, eh?

----------


## Darkmatters

*Writing my intentions in my DJ*
Dream
Lucid

Before going to bed last night I decided to try something new - I wrote my intentions in my dream journal, using the LED lighted pen I write my dreams with. Here's what I wrote (from here on I'll just copy what I wrote in the journal):

*I will wake after each dreamI will remember my dreamsI will lie absolutely still, think about the dream I just had - imagine being in it and becoming lucid. I will then re-enter the dream -- and ----- become ---------- LUCID*

I was successful at not moving the 1st time I woke. I lay perfectly still, didn't even open my eyes or twitch - never been able to do that before as many times as I've tried to DEILD. I guess writing my intentions in my DJ helped. 

But I didn't fall back asleep. I think I was too excited because of my success at lying still. Several times I heaved a sudden deep sigh - completely involuntary, and a few times my heartbeat got real fast for a while. But I was getting HI and was able to visualize myself on my Dream Chopper - very vivid with full sound and wind lowing etc, plus I visualized myself some times rubbing my hands together or spinning - I know these are dream stabilization techniques for when you're lucid, but hey - I was grasping at straws here! I think it's a good idea to visualize things like this to get the images in your head so when you're dreaming you'll remember them. 

So after maybe 15 minutes of lying there doing this and realizing I wasn't going to fall back to sleep, I decided to write down the dreams I had just woke from:

*1 - Kicking Travolta's Ass*

I had a rivalry going with John Travolta. He was much taller than me, like I was a kid? Don't remember the beginning of the dream, but for some reason I was really pissed at him. 

Then I was walking around alone in a dark environment carrying one of my boxes full of drawings. I was carrying one drawing - the latest one I had done - separately on top. It was a cartoon character done in color. he had some kind of logo on his back but part of it was floating in the air over his head - this seemed really funny and clever to me in the dream. The drawing moved when you looked at it, and the logo bounced around comically. 

Some guy walked up to me and I showed him the drawing. He liked it. I then put the drawing n the box with the rest of them for easier carrying. Ran into Travolta again and somehow I tricked him and kicked his ass... wish I could remember how. It seemed like a really great plan perfectly executed, and I remember him laying face down on the floor at the end of it. 

*2 - The Lucidity Group*

I was a kid (again?!) sitting in a shabby apartment with a group of people... a couple were kids, most were older teenagers and young adults. They were a strangely mixed group, most of them people I would never choose to hang out with, but we shared an interest in lucid dreaming & visualization techniques. There was a super-hot girl there with an unbelievable body... huge boobs and booty and a tiny waist, long blonde hair, and a great smile. Actually now that I think about it, I believe it was Shyla Stylez. She was naked most of the time, almost naked the rest. Everybody was sitting or laying around in overstuffed chairs and sofas, some were asleep from time to time, everybody was being quiet or talking in hushed tones so as not to wake anybody. 

I was wearing some kind of huge floppy torn bell-bottoms, light blue, dirty with rips and patches here and there. Some guy walked over to my chair and handed me a binder full of photos that were either his visualizations or intended to help with mine. There were all kinds of awesome pics of different places and objects, including some great nude and semi-nude shots of the girl. I looked at the book for a while then went into the bathroom to change and head home. The sexy girl walked in and started talking to me in a friendly manner, and I wanted to hug her, so I just walked right up to her with my arms outspread (I was a kid remember, so my head was right at the level of her crotch... sorta awkward). She started to freak out a bit, but I wrapped my arms around her in a big hug rather than trying to cop a feel (even though my hands met right on her ass... hey, it wasn't my fault!) and then she was cool with it.

She was holding her clothes in her hands... a couple scraps of cloth about the size of wristbands, and she was wearing some cool old beat up work boots. I joked about how tiny her clothes were, but when I looked at her again she was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.



Now it's back to bed... WBTB this time since I wrote the last dreams down. Gonna attempt a WILD (something I only tried once or twice before with no success). I know the pitfalls now - the biggest one being - as always - getting too excited and waking yourself up. So it's off to REM Atonia for me!!


<<< >>>
Tried for a solid hour to WILD - after doing the clench/relax method. Felt like I was getting close a couple times, but never got there. Finally rolled over and kept trying, but just fell asleep. 

*3 - The little girl and the Playboys*

I was sitting on a deck near my house just like the actual deck out back, but it was like a reflection of it.. the same design, but backwards. Next to it was the actual deck that belongs there, and the house beyond it. Weird. 

There was a little girl sitting there in the dark at the center of the deck, I was sitting on the railing or something talking to her. It seemed like I was telling her how to pretend to be asleep - its like she was in a bad situation and was getting either molested or beat up a lot at home, and I was trying to protect her. I was saying "Why would you even _want_ to make any sound with those people around?" 

Then I was sitting in the dining room with a paper bag full of old playboy magazines. Rob and my sister were sitting there & Rob asked what I had. I showed him the Playboys (pretty weird with my sister sitting there!). He was looking at one and said "Oh yeah, this is a classic... it's got the pictorial with the girl in the clear plastic dress - but does it have the best picture?". I knew what he meant... there was some classic image that came form this issue, and apparently if you buy a copy chances are the pic has been torn out because everybody wanted to keep it or pin it on their wall or something. 

I started paging through and found the pictorial, but didn't see the picture itself. I thought I must have just missed it and that if I look more carefully it'll be there - then I woke up.
*4 - Dried out Melba Toast*

Dreamed of a bunch of weird dudes like pro wrestlers - all big burly guys amped up on steroids and with an excess of personality - like cartoon characters. Then I was looking at a concrete porch stoop like you might see on a New York street - seeing it pretty close up. One of the wrestler dudes came falling form apparently really high (like 7 stories) overhead and landed on his side on the porch, right at the edge of the steps, and he slammed a hand down when he hit to absorb the impact. Then the camera pulled back to reveal that the porch itself was about 5 stories high over the ground. Somehow he managed to stay on it though it looked like he was going to fall off, and he jumped to his feet and did some silly dance, like a wrestler doing his routine. He now had 2 sets of legs and 2 sets of arms... and as I watched it became clear that he was actually 2 guys joined at th waist - I felt like I had solved his secret and now I understood why he was such a great wrestler... nobody else knew he was really 2 people. 

Pull back - this is a show on TV and I'm watching it in the living room. Lauren and my (deceased) dad are there, as are 2 other people... possibly the old next door neighbors? There's talk like it's getting late and we all need to get to bed soon, and the neighbors get up to leave The woman kisses Lauren (my sister) on top of her head and starts to kiss me the same way, but doesn't. Then she says something like "Don't eat too much chocolate cake just before bed guys!"

That spurs my dad to get up and he says "Well damn... I'm up for a little...." "... Scrounging?" I finish for him, getting up and following him into the kitchen. On the way I see an old opened pack of Melba Toast on a shelf in the dining room (not even supposed to be food there... wtf?) gathering dust. 

*Final Thoughts:*
This is what strikes me about the last few dreams. Especially taking into consideration the Lucidity Group and the dream with me talking to the little girl. About being a child in my dreams, and talking to the little girl... there's a feeling of vulnerability, and almost a sense of sexual violation. No, this isn't anything from my dark past - I suspect it's to be interpreted in a more Freudian way. Me as a child in a crummy room full of seedy people... what could it represent aside from of course the seedy people on DV?   :Cheeky: 

Seriously though... I think my dreams are telling me that some inner part of me.. my inner child - the most vulnerable part of my deep mind - feels unsafe... and I think it's because I'm posting my dreams openly right here for all the world to read. I think that theme was begun in the Lucidity Group dream, and then continued even more explicitly in the followup. The little girl... that dream took place on a REFLECTION of the deck behind this house. She was a reflection of my inner mind. Little girl = vulnerability, and the situation she seemed to be in suggests an almost sexual violation. Knowing what I know about dreams (I've read Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams) I know that the most seemingly trivial symbols in a dream can reveal deep secrets clearly visible to anyone well versed in dream symbolism. It isnt the explicity sexual themes or any part of the Manifest content (the surface content) that reveals your inner world - and that's the part most people concentrate on... it's the hidden symbolism - revealed through analysis and interpretation. You probably won't understand those parts when you first dream it - you'll copy it all down and only later realize what it meant... and by then its too late! Everybody and their brother has read and probably understood it better than you! 

It'
s not that I have any deep secrets to hide... it's just an insecure feeling, you know... exposing yourself to a bunch of strangers. But then if you're not going to reveal things exactly as they happened in your dreams... then what's the point? And I remind myself - everybody else is posting their dreams (though many of them are probably unaware of Manifest and Latent content and how to read them). 

The alternatives are - 

Stop posting my DJ here onlineEdit it down till it becomes bland and uninterestingBe brave - follow Castaneda's Way of the Warrior, and just post it all for the world to see -- but if I do that it means I have to get over the anxiety and doubt and just DO IT!!

I think these nagging doubts are what's stopping me from letting go and letting the dreams take over. More on this next entry in the Post Dream Wrapup.

----------


## Darkmatters

*Awesomest dream EVER... & almost DEILDed!!*
Dream
Lucid

Funny note - a little before I went to bed I was in the kitchen getting an apple and a bagel to eat in bed. I had the light off - just the refrigerator light and the oven light to see by (I like to keep it dark before I go to bed). Suddenly I heard a door swinging open. It was clear as could be... no mistaking it. I know the sounds - it was one of the lightweight interior doors, not the heavy outside door. I thought somebody must have walked in and came up the stairs in complete silence and was now opening the door at the top of the steps. But I could see that door, and it wasn't moving!! I'm really hearing the Twilight Zone music now big time!! 

The sound continues... seems to go on for a ridiculously long time... but I still don't see the door moving. Then suddenly the closet door across from it opens fast, and something comes out from inside!!! My heart leaped into my freaking throat!! So many crazy ideas are racing through my mind... including memories of the SP incident I had as a child when I saw a dwarf dressed in big floppy clothes walk out of my bedroom closet and tell me the secret to flying in dreams!! 

Then I realized what it was - the vacuum cleaner leans against the inside of the closet door, and if the door isn't shut tight it pushes it open and the handle falls out. Whew! I guess when I had walked past I set it in motion somehow. The funniest part... I was standing there doing nose pinch RCs over and over!!!   ::lol:: 



*Swingin' - The rope that reaches... EVERYWHERE!!!*


Earliest part I can remember, I'm priming and loading a muzzle-loading rifle preparing to defend our village. There are only a few of us - it's a very small village and seems to be a tiny miniature built inside a vast empty house filled with dust and cobwebs. I mean... the houses of the village are so small... we were the size of toy soldiers!! And in comparison the house it was all built in was so *VAST* that I was only occasionally aware of it... wooden floor, a dimly visible ceiling far overhead, wooden beams like giant redwoods standing here and there. It was dark - there were only patches of light here and there revealing sections of the village. 

Enemies start arriving. There seemed to be a lot more of them than us. I was afraid of fighting them face to face, so I jumped 10 feet straight up and grabbed the end of a rope that happened to be hanging right there. I got excited when I felt it and I knew it would make me like a superhero. I wrapped the end of the rope a few times around my hand to secure it, and discovered I could swing literally anywhere I wanted to!! I had basically total control over my direction and height, but I had to follow the logic of swinging - once I started moving in a certain direction I had to continue it or slowly modify it... no sudden direction changes. 

At one point I looked up, curious to see where the rope was attached, and there was a little circle of dim light right where it emerged from the ceiling. Weird... it seemed any time I wanted to see something in the huge dark house an obliging disc of dim light sprang up there. Pretty cool.  

Somehow my muzzle-loader had several shots in it and I didn't need to reload or anything (heh... just like in movies!), and I also found I could adjust my height just by thinking about it.. anywhere from almost dragging my feet on the floor to right up under the ceiling. It really felt too cool!! And when I was singing I got the tingling sense in my gut, just like when I was a kid and went real high on the swingset. It filled me with an overwhelming sense of joy and power! 

From my high vantage point I got an overview of the battle, and I could see enemies sneaking up on my fellows and pick them off at my leisure. Somehow swinging by one arm did nothing to mess up my amazing aim! Soon we had killed all the enemies. 

At this point I was way up at the highest point I could reach, a dozen feet or so under the dark rafters seeing everything laid out beneath me like - well - toy soldiers! And I saw what I knew nobody else could see as they were celebrating our victory... the dead enemies were beginning to transform! They grew and changed shape, became slinky dark forms with long sinuous tails... they were turning into giant cats! 

They moved so fast and so gracefully and silently... I saw dozens of my fellows just get wiped out by them without ever seeing what was attacking them. I began a long downward swing that would take me past all the groups of my fellows, and as I rushed past them I shouted what was happening. I also shot as many cats as I could along the way, but it seemed like there were more cropping up all over the place. The cats scared me ore than the human warriors did because they were so fast and could leap so high, and I was like a big ball of yarn dangling at the end of my rope.... 

But I swung right in among them ready to battle to the finish.

One of our leaders was a red-headed girl just like Angie E. As I swung past to warn her about the cats she angrily told me to get down and stop clowning around... there was much work to be done. She stepped right n front of me and tried to physically stop me, but I maneuvered around her and shot a cat that was about to attack from behind her. 

Now I was swinging along at a really fast clip just alongside (but slightly behind) a moving train. In the last car was a huge sumo wrestler kind of guy with red hair and red war paint and a red loin cloth. He was a warrior for the cats... it seemed like he WAS one of the cats, but in human form. And I knew he was one of their most dangerous fighters. I was planning how to attack him when he suddenly leaned out the open side of the car and cut my rope with a scimitar. 

I held onto the rope with the hand it was wrapped around - now I had a length about 10 feet long and was still flying along parallel with the train by sheer momentum. In desperation I looked up and saw some power lines running parallel with the train tracks just overhead - so I whipped the piece of rope over the bottom wire and managed to grab the end with my other hand. Whew! And somehow the power lines didn't seem to have any kind of supports... which was a good thing, cause as soon as I ran into a telephone pole... hoo boy!! Don't want to think about that! 

I woke up here... still elated with the sense of flying at great speed. My intention to not move upon awakening still held... I lay perfectly still and didn't open my eyes, tried to DEILD. But for one thing when I remembered the dream I got excited and started to wake up too much. I got that under control I think, but then I realized I probably only had a few minutes till my alarm went off, so little point in trying to go back to sleep now. This got to me and I had to look at the clock. I had a half hour till the alarm went off. I tried to go back to sleep... remembering the dream and still awash in the sense of flying... I visualized myself flying without the need to a rope to swing on, and holding a scimitar rather than the clumsy rifle (which was like twelve feet long, did I mention that fact?). But soon I heard my alarm start to go off.



*Post Dream Wrapup:*

Part of the problem that's keeping me from a successful DEILD is the fact that it was a work day and I couldn't sleep in. I felt constrained by time limits. I need to realize that there's absolutely NO REASON I cant fall right back asleep... my alarm will wake me up when I need to get up. I shouldn't even be remotely concerned with what time it is or how long I have left. These pesky doubts only hold me back. 

The other problem is that when I remember a great dream like this one I want to record it in my DJ so there's no chance I'll forget it. Today I let that get to me and decided to get up and write it rather than commit to re-entering it. I have to get it straight in my head... the ONLY thing worth doing is to re-enter the dream and EXPERIENCE it... rather than record it. As Don Juan Matus would say to Carlos Castaneda... experiencing life is far more important than writing it down!!

----------


## Darkmatters

*Monkeys!!! - my 3rd lucid since joining DV!*
Dream
Lucid



Resurrecting my DJ because I've finally had my 3rd lucid since joining!! I had decided to take a break... been trying for over a month and a half, and had 2 during that time, and I was getting frustrated because I wasn't having any more. Also I had heard sometimes it happens when you quit trying. Well, it didn't. I went for like a week and a half or so without so much as writing down my dreams or making even the slightest effort (well, not entirely true... more later). 

But today I was off work and could sleep in all day, and after my 2nd awakening decided I'd try a WILD. Oh, actually almost forgot... I had re-entered a dream on the previous awakening. No lucidity in that one, but I guess the fact that I was able to re-enter made me want to try WILDing again. 

So I basically just went into a mindful state... tried to keep my mind aware as I drifted off to sleep. I found it difficult... mostly I was either letting myself think about stuff or just going catatonic/ unconscious, so I started counting. Reached 58 and decided that was enough (I know I got messed up somewhere - like 46, 47, 48, 47, 48.... 

My mouth was getting super dried out (got a slight hint of a cold, couldn't breathe right through my nose) and I was getting really uncomfortable lying on my back, so I rolled onto my side and tried to stay aware. I don't think it was really a successful WILD, but Im not sure. It didn't seem like I went directly into a dream or went through anything like SP, but more like a DILD. But I did seem to be ALMOST aware I was dreaming from the beginning, if that makes sense. And one thing that makes me think there's a chance it might have actually been a WILD is the sound of rushing wind through the beginning of the dream. But I don't know. Anyway, here it is:



I was walking through a big house (seemed to go on forever inside, as if it was several square miles of interconnected rooms). Parts of it were like my house, but after a while it was my friend Rob's old childhood house. I wandered through it for a while without seeing anyone, but then pretty soon he was there and we walked together talking. Something seemed to be wrong with him... he was really quiet and sort of hang-dogish... not at all like Rob. 

I was having trouble hearing him when he talked, and he seemed to be mumbling too. I got mad and started making fun of him to try to get him to speak up, and I remember part of the reason it was hard to hear him is due to the sound of strong wind, even inside the house. He never did really snap out of it though. After a while we were sitting in his car in some kind of big barn with straw on the floor and bales of it stacked here and there. We had our doors open, sitting with our feet on the floor of the barn and looking out at the straw. 

I was getting a feeling similar to lucidity, like I kind-of-sort-of knew it was a dream, but didn't fully realize it yet. I reached into the straw under my feet and started pulling little packages out, large manilla envelopes like packages you might get books in through the mail. I had a playful sense as I did this, like I knew I could pull things mysteriously from nowhere and then see what they were. I tore one open to find a dirty, dried-out old sponge. The next one had grapes in it still on the vine, but looked dirty. I almost started eating them but stopped and said "These things all need to be washed". 

So I didn't quite realize yet it was a dream. If I did I could have eaten them without worrying. Suddenly the car started to roll forward slowly, out the door of the barn. We both pulled our feet in and shut the doors, but he seemed to be having a hard time getting the car to stop. It rolled across the yard and toward a few big stacks of bricks in the neighbor's yard. I had just seen a teenager carrying a few bricks walk between the stacks and I shouted "Get away from the bricks! They're going to fall" We hit the corner of the front stack and they all went down like dominoes, and then I could see the kid standing there holding some bricks with a dumbfounded look on his face... I knew my shouting had saved him. And I went lucid. I started to laugh, experiencing the sheer joy of knowing Im in a dream and can do anything. 

We drove on, Rob still apparently trying to get control of the car without success, and me telling him over and over that this is a dream and we can do anything. I was telling him to do some donuts or figure 8's, to burn rubber... stuff he used to do all the time when we were younger but now he drives like a grandpa (IRL). But he seemed to be just fumbling, trying to get control over steering and brakes etc. We were going haphazardly through a city area, winding between blocks, and suddenly up on a high balcony I saw a huge stuffed monkey that was alive! Actually when I first saw it it was a baboon, but quickly turned into something like a chimpanzee - only ten feet tall. 

I shouted "Monkey on the balcony!" and pointed at it, not sure if he was seeing it. Then as we passed the apartment building it jumped off the balcony right toward us and I shouted "Monkey coming right at us!". Now I knew he could see it. But by the time it landed (sailing kind of slow) we had gone around a corner and it disappeared behind us. We turned another corner and then I saw a small fenced-in yard with a dozen or so giant stuffed monkeys all inside the fence. Now I got really excited and told him to get close to them and stop because I wanted to try some dream powers on them. 

We stopped right next to the yard and opened the doors, and I saw a couple of gorilla generals (just like in the original Planet of the Apes ) - regular life sized, not giant like the stuffed ones - which seemed to be in control over the giant ones. I was trying to pinch their heads off with my fingers and blast them with energy from my hands and stuff, but it wasn't working. Then one of the generals saw us and started to open the gate, to let the giant monkeys out at us. I started to get scared then and didn't object when Rob took off again. 

We went quickly into a country road nothing like the city area we were just in, and he was still struggling to control the car. But I realized that, even though I didn't have any powers, we were still safe because it's just a dream, so I told him to go back. There were steep embankments on both sides, making it hard to turn around, but I told him its a dream, just drive right up onto the embankments... hell, do a donut around that old well up there.

Then I woke up. So, if I remember right, that's 1 LD in Jan, and 2 in Feb. Getting better! 

Oh, and when I said earlier that it wasn't entirely true I had totally given up trying... I did try a few other WILDs during my little vacation. One time I got really close, and suddenly got a feeling of pressure inside my head and a strong physical sensation of something pressing against my forehead, or what I've heard people describe as a third eye emerging from the center of the forehead. This was very powerful, and scared me a little so I quit trying after that. 

Anyway, glad it's going well for me. Guess Ill go back to trying more often now, and hopefully I can have a few more in March. And start to get some control or dream powers or something!   ::roll:: 

*The Monkey Connection -* 
I love the fact that my lucidity was because of monkeys!! A couple entries ago I posted a dream with monkeys swarming over a cliffside and sculpting ornate mayan type hieroglyphics into it, and I identified them as symbolic representations of my old sheepdogs Dusty and Star, helping me to attain lucidity... and now in my next lucid I see monkeys everywhere!!??! Too cool!! Also, how ironic... being as Im a stopmotion animator and was having dreams all about stopmotion for so long. Almost like a visitation from King Kong... or more likely Mighty Joe Young, as he's about the same size they are. Oh.. that's NOT me in the picture above, just so you know. I'm not that old! It's a trip though that an image search quickly turned that pic up, because it looks a lot like the monkeys in the dream, though they were twice as big.

----------


## Darkmatters

*Hold on Teddy... I'll save you.... OOPS!* 
Dream
Lucid

Last night's dream links up with a couple of previous ones, including my last lucid. Thought it was worth posting in here.

All I can remember is a fragment --

I'm on a balcony, 2nd or 3rd floor, and there's a teddy bear or some kind of stuffed animal on a lawn chair on the balcony - I think it was alive or moving, and it seemed like I had to get to it to help it or it was going to fall off the chair and through the slats of the balcony floor. 

But before I could reach it this huge monster head comes up beside the balcony... some kind of ogre or troll dude, tall enough that his head is level with the balcony. All I have is a BB gun, and BBs are bouncing off his skin and even his eyeballs. But as he turns his head I see the gleam of metal deep inside his ear, and I know it's some kind of electronic control unit - if I hit that it will shut him down. 

I take very careful aim and just wait until he turns his head. I fire at exactly the right moment and hit the metal ball in his ear, and that's the last I see of him... he just disappeared entirely from the dream. 

So I look at the teddy bear, and it's just falling off the edge of the lawn chair, and goes down through the slats of the balcony floor. End of dream. 

I didn't realize until toward the end of the day that it links up with previous dreams... and ones I consider important to my developing lucidity._ A stuffed animal on a balcony_... last time I saw one of _those_ was in my last lucid (dream just above). Then it was a baboon for a second and turned into a chimp, but ten feet tall, and jumped down at me and my friend. 

Difference... this time it was small and needed my help, and I was on the balcony with it, protecting it rather than fighting against it. And as I recall, I also linked those giant stuffed monkeys with the monkeydogs that I decided were helping me toward lucidity - AND that I linked with my two former dogs Dusty and Star. 

Ok, I know... maybe I'm overanalyzing here, but really all this stuff occurred to me in a few seconds once I started to think about it. What it might mean -- maybe I shouldn't have automatically attacked the giant stuffed monkeys (I tried to pinch their heads off and fire energy bolts at them from my hands). Come to think of it, they didn't actually attack us, though they did seem pretty antagonistic and aggressive. I did get that sense of 'enemy' from them. 

A little more thinking... and this I believe is more on the mark. 

Rather than try to use dream powers to attack the monkeys, I wish I had leaped into the pen with them or something... anything rather than run away. Sitting in the car outside the penned-in yard was safe, and I tried various long-distance attacks (which didn't work). And as soon as there was a sign of danger we fled the vicinity. Well, Rob did, but he was driving the car, and I didn't stop him. 

I should have dove right in among them fearlessly.... I knew it was a dream after all, what's to be scared of? And - here's the clincher - once I was among them, there would have been a *NECESSITY* for dream powers. I think that's key... when you really NEED them, I suspect they'll be there. Probably a good way to achieve dream powers for the first few times... by putting yourself in a position where you _NEED_ to fly or have some kind of power. As Robert Waggoner says in *Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self*, the way to approach LDs is_ FEARLESS AND PLAYFUL_. 

Also, I need to remember next time to stabilize the dream. I never remember to do ANYTHING... I just get all happy cause I'm lucid, and start running around trying for powers and control. Gotta remember... you must walk before you can run (or fly)!   ::lol::

----------


## Darkmatters

*Kornered by Kong*
Dream 
Lucid

To set up last night's dream, we got truck delivery at work yesterday and it was HUGE!!! Hundreds of pounds of foodstuffs to be loaded into freezers, coolers and cabinets. Really did a number on my back. 

Ok, so I'm in this massive mega-mall that I tend to have in a lot of my dreams.... it stretches on forever in every direction... there is no outside world. I seem to be a cop or security guard, but a complete rookie, like first day. My partner is Ron S, a former friend from my wilder days, who was always a conniving backstabbing little #$^%head. He's teaching me the job, but he's doing it all wrong... we're not wearing any shoes and have our pants legs rolled up... it seems like he's deliberately making me do stupid stuff for some nefarious reason of his own. 

Suddenly there's a giant gorilla chasing me all over the mall! And this time not a stuffed animal, a real, huge, hairy, smelly gorilla... it was basically King Kong. Now the dream is a nightmare, no matter where I go or what I do he's after me... ripping through walls and tearing out doorways so he can fit through. I'm terrified, I can't get away from him, and suddenly my back is spasming uncontrollably, making me weak and vulnerable. Im just leaning against a wall with my back muscles trembling, unable to move as King Kong is reaching for me...

I woke up then with my back spasming for real. And I instantly remembered a dream from my childhood, or more likely early teen years... I'll make a separate entry for it under this one.

----------


## Darkmatters

::: DARKMATTERS DREAM CLASSICS :::*Battle of the Giant Gorillas*
Dream 
Lucid

This is one from the archives... I guess I was about 13 or so when it happened. Maybe younger... I don't really know. 

I'm just chillin' in the house when all of a sudden this giant black gorilla rips the roof off and reaches in to try to grab me! I dive through doorways and down corridors trying to escape, but he keeps busting walls down so he can get in farther, and his hand is always just a few feet behind me. 

He catches me and picks me up in a crushing grip...  can hardly breathe and it feels like my ribcage is being crushed. He carries me out into the woods just behind the house, when another giant gorilla appears... this one brown rather than black. The new one starts fighting with the one that's holding me and rescues me from him. After he drops me I'm all injured, my back feels all screwed up and all I can do is lay there unable to move, watching these titanic beasts fight over me (literally). 

I wish I could still remember the details... I know it was pretty long and detailed, with me getting captured several times by the black gorilla and rescued by the brown one, but alas, it's all forgotten to the abyss of time. 

After waking up from that one, I was having back spasms (I've had problems with my back basically all my life). Now it seems when I have back spasms in my sleep I associate it with giant gorillas.... 

I managed to find this clip from the move War of the Gargantuas... this is the movie the dream was based on, though here one is green instead of black, and they're not really gorillas...



Ran across a rather interesting page about the movie:  http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/W...The_Gargantuas A lot more going on behind the story than I ever knew   :Shades wink: 

Here's the trailer for it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JEhn0swpfQ (embedding disabled by request, so had to post a link). I had actually forgotten how cool of a movie it was until I stumbled across this trailer just now.

----------


## Darkmatters

*Main Street Money - and Wild Honey*
Dream 
Lucid

I'm walking down Main Street - there seem to be patches of snow here and there... weird cause IRL the snow melted a few weeks ago and yesterday for the 1st time it was a balmy 70 degrees!! I start finding money all over the street... badly crumpled bills just laying all over. I pick up a couple of 20s and some other bills and put them in my pocket, then suddenly I see this enormous wadded up roll of money laying in the ditch. 

Just when I get there to pick it up a long expensive car pulls up with two guys inside who seem to be drug dealers, and they say it's their money and ask me to hand it to them. Damn!! I do it, but don't tell them about the bills already in my pocket. 

They drive off and I proceed walking down Main Street till I reach my turnoff at 82nd and start heading home. There are tables set up along the sides of the road for some reason with little groups of people sitting at the tables talking, all wearing heavy winter coats and caps etc. I pass one table with three people at it - a woman and two men, and I hear Rob's voice, so I stop and sit down to talk. I don't recognize the other two people with him, but the woman is incredibly beautiful and sexy... a brunette with a wild gleam in her eyes and a great smile. 

Immediately Rob says he can't stay, and he takes off. I don't know what happened to the other guy, but I'm left alone with the woman. IN fact she kind of reminds me of my French teacher from high school (who I was thinking about recently now that I recall). Complete MILF! 

Now we're walking back out onto Main Street, and she's naked. She's totally uninhibited, and has a wild quality about her, as if she's actually some wild animal in human form. A cat it seems like. We're having a blast... running and laughing and joking, and there's a lot of touching and faces pressed very close together, staring into those sparkling wild eyes. She's the kind of woman who lights up a room the instant she walks in. I tell her about finding the money and what happened with the drug dealers, as if I'm asking her if what I did was alright (keeping part of the money)... she doesn't care one bit. 

There's a lot of this stuff... basically a montage from an 80's sexy romantic comedy. At the end of it we somehow fall down a cliff and drift what seems like miles to the bottom, still laughing and talking. At the bottom I have to execute some complicated maneuver so I land safely, but she just lands on all 4s on top of a beach umbrella (it's a sunny warm beach scene). I say "Not fair!! I had to work hard to land!". She just laughs and the world is perfect. 

I'm getting the feeling she's some wild uninhibited part of myself. 

Now we're running (and laughing... always laughing) through the corridors of a school... right through classes in session (she's still naked and stunningly gorgeous). 

Then I find myself walking through a forest of thick dangling vines on bare dirt. I'm still glowing from her presence, but she's not with me anymore. There's just a few seconds of this scene, then I:m laying on the roof of a bus as it moves down Main Street (I do dream about Main Street a lot). I'm now naked, and there's a warm purring cat curled up against me. It seems to be her in different form.

----------


## juroara

You dream a lot about monkeys! It's a shame you didn't have any dream powers in your last lucid, but that happens a lot actually. So when do you think you'll be lucid again? Tonight right?  ::D:

----------


## Darkmatters

Well I HOPE so! 

Yeah, I do dream about monkeys a lot, don't I? I think it's still because I asked my sub-c to show me stopmotion-related stuff (King Kong is pretty much the center of the stopmotion universe, at least as far as I'm concerned). 

Tomorrow I try my Lucid Dreamer supplement for the 3rd time... so it might happen then. I think it failed the 1st 2 times because I was taking a lot of Piracetam in the daytime, which counters the effects, but now I'm off the initial megadoses of it and I won't even take any tomorrow, just to maximize my chances. Keeping my fingers crossed... 

And thanx for reviving my DJ!

Actually my dreams tend to go through these little phases. Once I start dreaming about something (like monkeys ferinstance) they tend to show up in a lot of dreams for a few weeks or even months. Is that normal? 

*Sigh* and now that I just finished reading Robert Waggoner's Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self my subconscious seems to have developed a mind of its own and seems not to like me very much. I hope this little trend passes soon!

----------


## Darkmatters

03-19-10*Paralyzed*
Dream 
Lucid


I've decided only to post my lucids and certain non-lucids here... just the ones I deem worthwhile. I don't like the idea of opening up my interior world for public inspection. 

Note... I had my 1st lucid (since joining DV anyway) in january, and 2 in february. I was hoping for 3 in march, but didn't get ANY until the 19th (this one). I was quite disappointed not to be getting increasing numbers of lucids, but lo and behold.. suddenly on the last day of march I have 2 more!! Details in the next post on them. So Im right on track then... 3 lucids in march. Woo. Ok, on to the 4th lucid:

I believe this was the 1st day I discovered Binaural Beats and Theta-Wave music, and I listened to it for about 2 hours while meditating before going to bed. Had a couple normal dreams and as usual woke up after about 4.5 hours (I seem to do that every day). While briefly awake I asked my subconscious if I could have a lucid dream... I figured all the theta-wave activity had put me in close contact with the sub-c so it was worth a shot. And it worked, but apparently only partially, or something else was wrong. 

1st thing I recall I was laying on some sort of couch in my room (there isn't one IRL) facing out the window. I couldn't move & was very aware of my position & my face being pressed against the clod glass. I suspect I was getting signals from my sleeping body and my dream body matched the position of my real body, and when I woke my face was about an inch from the wall... I could feel waves of cold coming off the wall. The way my bed is positioned, there's no way I could see out the window from bed, but the couch was right next to the window. In the yard next door I began to notice a lot of people... it looked like  a party in fact, and there was a waterslide there (!). Apparently my old friend George and his mom lived there in the dream, and it seemed like she was throwing a big party for him. Among the crowd I suddenly noticed a guy named Mark that I used to know in high school and sometimes see at his job at Shop&Save. He was looking straight at me & it seemed like he could see me. 

Then I began to notice there were people in my room. I couldn't see them because of the way I was frozen in place up against the window, but I could hear them walking around and talking, and my room seemed a lot bigger than it really is. 2 of the managers from work were there, arguing like they always do. Occasionally I'd see an arm or someone's shadow as they passed close by me, but I was beginning to feel really stupid just laying there unable to move with people all walking around behind me. 

Now I"m looking across the street. It's dark, and there's a very old crumbling brick building there. It isn't there in real life. There's a lighted yellow sign over the door that I;m trying to read but can't make it out. I remember than in dreams they say it's hard to read anything, and also that if you stare at one thing for very long the dream will destabilize and what you're looking at will change. Well Im not real happy being paralyzed, so I stare at the building and try to read the sign. 

Suddenly the whole building "shifted" subtlely.. nothing obvious, it was like the shape of it just altered slightly overall and the patterning of the brick changed a little. I still couldn't clearly read the sign, but it looked like it said Wal-Mart. Hah.. it didn't LOOK like a Wal-Mart, more like a creepy haunted house! I was like "Huh!... it's all true!" and I knew I was dreaming. 


Now I'm standing in the middle of an alley uptown, and I seem to live in an apartment close by. It's dark and there's a group of teenagers sitting against a wall like they're getting high or something. I walk up and talk to them... don't remember what was said, but they pissed me off & I started punching them in the face. I didn't feel it though... just  went through the motions. Weird. In this lucid I seem to be retarded or stupid. 

Now I'm standing under a streetlight near the kids I just thrashed, they seem to have forgotten or don't care. I hear a radio being carried by someone walking up from behind me. I think it's somebody who's looking for me and I don't want to be found, so I walk fast away from the disc of light and then run, taking a couple of corners so as to throw off pursuit. I come up behind an old woman who's walking very slowly carrying an umbrella or a cane, and I don't want to scare her running up behind her in the dark, so I turn onto an alley. This brings me out onto Main Street (hah... my ultimate dream sign!) near where the entrance to my apt building is located. 

Here it's pretty well lit and there are clusters of people standing around talking in the entranceways to buildings. It seems like a lot of businesses are open this late at night... maybe they're all night clubs or something, and they have patios with little tables and benches where people are sitting. I Have to duck down low to get under the low overhanging ceiling for my building's entrance, and once inside there are openings on both sides into a restaurant and a video game arcade.

----------


## Darkmatters

*Blind!*
Dream
Lucid


Took Lucid Dreamer supplement last night along with a full 500mg capsule of B-5. This is the 3rd time I've taken the supplements, but my other 2 tries were unsuccessful, I believe because I was also taking megadoses of Piracetam to begin the daily regimen of it for cognitive/memory development. Yesterday I didn't take any Piracetam, just to see if it would change my chances of getting lucid. 

I took the supplements after 4.5 hrs sleep during about a 20 minute WBTB, then I counted myself back to sleep. Got to a hundred and stopped counting because I seemed quite relaxed and close to sleep. Occasionally during the count I'd stop and repeat "I AM dreaming!" - feeling the excitement of being lucid and imagining myself dong RCs. 

I was afraid I'd have a hard time falling asleep, but very soon I found myself in a public restroom washing my hands & noticing how luxurious the decor was. I thought "I need to remember this, because it's probably the nicest accommodations I'll find myself in all day."

Then I was in bed wearing socks and a sweater (!?) and there was music playing quietly that I wanted to shut off so I could get to sleep and have the lucid dreams I was waiting for. I shut off the clock radio, but then noticed even quieter music playing that had been hidden under the other music. It was the Rush song Cinderella Man (which includes the line "Try as they might they cannot steal your dreams"). I fiddled with the big stereo for a while and finally got it shut off. 

I woke up singing Cinderella Man, and it's been in my head ever since. Incidentally though, there was no actual music playing IRL... guess I just dreamed it. I decided to take another Lucid Dreamer capsule, for a total of 8 mgs of Galantamine, just to really push it, because I wasn't getting lucid yet. 

That did the trick! Counted myself to sleep again. After a while I found myself in the room next to mine, typing or something, and wearing a robe, socks and mittens (!!). My theory is that I was getting signals from my sleeping body and this was my dream's way of interpreting the feeling of covers over my entire body. 

I heard someone call my name from downstairs and went to see who it was. As I pass my bedroom there's some kind of curtain hanging over the door as if to stop me from going in there. Downstairs I find my mom and ask her if she called me. Nope. So I go into the living room where my sister lauren is sitting with a friend. They didn't call me either. I go back upstairs. There's a bit missing here, seems to be a dream edit rather than a forgotten part... I find myself in bed wearing the crazy getup and fumbling around trying to make it more comfortable.  I'm also having trouble seeing. Suddenly I realize I:m dreaming and get all happy & excited. And for the first time I remember to do RCs. I don't really need to - I KNOW I:m dreaming, but I want to see what it's like. So I try to push my finger through my palm. It feels like it goes through in a bit, but I can't really tell because now I can't see AT ALL!! So I do a nose pinch and can breathe perfectly! That makes me laugh. So cool... it's like being in an alternate universe where the laws of physics are different or something. Because it really feels just like you're awake, but you can do these crazy magical things. 

I walk to my window and decide to see what it feels like to go through glass. Never done that before either. I press both hands against the windowpane and in a few seconds it begins to stretch slowly outward under the pressure, feeling like tightly stretched plastic wrap rather than glass. This is so freakin' COOL!!! Suddenly my whole upper body pops through and I can now hear wind and birds that I wasn't hearing inside. Still can't see a damn thing though!? 

I have an awkward moment wondering what to do with my legs.. the main problem being only that I seem to be blind so I don't want to go flying around. I start to climb outside anyway and my legs come through like there's no glass at all, but I decide against flying while blind and pull myself back in. I begin to believe the reason I can't see is because I have my eyes closed, so I try to open them (takes some effort), but as they open I suddenly become afraid I'll open them IRL and wake up. 

I wake up. 

It's pitch black in my room, and I'm standing halfway out in the hall (wait... I woke up standing in my doorway?). I start to get back in bed but I see a wasp coming down the hall toward me. I don't want it in my room, so I run down the hall to the bathroom & it follows me, then I run back to my room & shut the door before it can get there. 

But wait... if it's so dark, how the hell can I see this tiny little wasp? I realize it was an FA and that I'm still dreaming. Do another nosepinch... yep. Im dreaming. I'm getting pretty pissed about it being pitch black in my dream though so I open my eyes, and this time I do wake up for reals.

Frustrating. Ah, to be fully lucid but struck blind!! It's like a punishment from the gods of antiquity. Next time if this happens I need to think of it differently... it wasn't that my eyes were closed after all... I could see the wasp, right? So I need to think of it as if there are no lights on and either switch one on (I was standing right next to the light switch in my room when I saw the freakin' wasp!) - or just ask the dream for some light. Another thing I thought of... if I find myself in a dark lucid again and don't want to risk destabilizing it I could do something that doesn't require light... like summon some hot girl. Though... that might also destabilize the dream. Ah...   ::?: 

At least I know the Lucid Dreamer supplement works now. Next time I'll go ahed and take the Piracetam in the morning even on the day I want to try Galantamine again, just to see if it works as long as I don't take a megadose of the Piracetam. It might not, but at least I'll know. 

Im counting this as 2 lucids because of the FA. And if that's not allowable according to the Rules of Lucidity (whatever that means), then because I believe I was partially lucid in the first dream, when I was dressed in socks and a sweater. Either way, I'm counting it as two dammit!!   ::lol::

----------


## juroara

The Gods of Antiquity are going to punish you for counting this as two lucids!  ::tongue:: 

Walking through anything is fun! I've had the not being able to see problem before. If you're too afraid to open your eyes, you can also try the opposite - close your dream eyes instead! And then try falling into a new dream. You'll probably have a FA (so RC) or wake up in a new dream.

----------


## scottyo

never had a false awakening...yet, but they sound funny and a bit of a nuisance.

----------


## Darkmatters

> The Gods of Antiquity are going to punish you for counting this as two lucids! 
> 
> Walking through anything is fun! I've had the not being able to see problem before. If you're too afraid to open your eyes, you can also try the opposite - close your dream eyes instead! And then try falling into a new dream. You'll probably have a FA (so RC) or wake up in a new dream.



Haha! screw the gods of antiquity... nobody believes in them anymore so they have no power!   ::lol:: 

Need to try the close the dream eyes thing if I ever wind up in another dark lucid (damn, wish I had thought to use that for my username!)

----------


## Darkmatters

> never had a false awakening...yet, but they sound funny and a bit of a nuisance.



They can be fun if you realize what it is and go lucid. Pretty annoying when it's so short though and then you wake up for real!

----------


## Darkmatters

04-03-10Dream
Lucid

This is from the day before yesterday. It was another Lucid Dreamer night (Galantamine). No success, but had some pretty wild dreams (not WILDs   :Cheeky: )

It was just a really crappy night altogether. Had a lot of trouble sleeping. I had decided to go ahead and take Piracetam in the morning and then try the Galantamine at night, to see if it would still work. It didn't. Now I'm convinced you have to give the Piracetam 2 full days to clear out of your system before using Galantamine or it will counter the effects.  Well shit... guess I won't be doing the daily regimen of Piracetam then! But I did get this stuff in the 1st place for having lucid dreams... I didn't find out about the memory/cognitive effects of Piracetam till afterwards (and Galantamine is also a smart drug). 

After having a hard time falling asleep to begin with, I woke up after 1 hour! Had a hard time getting to sleep again... not because I was excited about using Lucid Dreamer like i was the 1st couple of times I used it, just not having a good night at all. Woke again at 3:45 or so - here's the dream I woke from - I can only vaguely remember it:


*Night of the Giants*


Rob stopped by. Did he bring swords? Or I already had one and he brought one? It was like we were going to go have an adventure around town, almost like playing the way kids do. Wish I could remember more details... this was a truly epic dream! Somehow there were 2 totally hot giant girls chasing us around town. They were like 20 feet tall. I don't know how we fought them, but it seems like at times we became giants or they shrank down to our size. 

At some point we killed them, or maybe just one of them. We were trying to escape the other one I think, and the streets started getting pretty weird... then we realized we were actually inside the body of the dead giant girl. Now it's like she was hundreds of feet tall... we were walking through a series of long deep trenches in her chest that had metal conduits and bundles of cables running through the flesh. We got separated trying to find our way out. 

The other girl caught me as I was climbing out of the chest trenches, but now she was normal sized, and it seems like there was just about to be sex... really kinky sex somehow involving some very serious bright yellow high-heeled stilettos she was wearing. Of course this is when I woke up!  ::shakehead:: 

At this point I'm deliriously tired and feel like total crap. And now things suddenly get very weird in waking life...

My fan, which I use for white noise to help me sleep and has worked flawlessly for a ridiculously long time, suddenly started rattling badly. It started right then, while I was awake. Struck me as odd. I had to turn it down from High to Medium, it still rattled slightly, but quietly enough not to bother me. Right after that I noticed a strange sound from the neighbor's yard... it sounded a hell of a lot like a digeridoo! It was actually very pleasant though, and I realized it's a string trimmer. This helped me get back to sleep. Heh... this was all so odd I did several nosepinch RCs!  ::lol:: 

It had only been 3 1/2 hours of sleep, but I couldn't fall back asleep for a good hour. Decided to take the Lucid Dreamer, as REM periods don't seem to care if you're asleep or not.. they seem to progress at their own rate even if you wake up (or so I think judging by the fact that WBTBs and afternoon naps work). Had some really stupid non-lucids that I could barely remember, woke up AGAIN after about an hour, and decided to take another 4mg Lucid Dreamer capsule because the 1st one wasn't working. 

*... It's Kool Aid!!*


I'm trying to sleep in an unfamiliar and uncomfortable place, but someone is talking constantly. I really don't want to open my eyes to see where I am because I'm so freakin' TIRED, but I finally do. The room is unfamiliar, but it's my friend Rob. It seems this is his house and I'm spending the night... again as if we're kids. There are a few other people in the room I don't know, several of them are talking in tired droning voices. 

Several times Rob tries to smack me to wake me up... I don't open my eyes but somehow I flawlessly block each attempt! Now THAT was pretty cool!

I think I tried to WILD as I was laying there (in the dream... I DREAMED I was trying to WILD!)... I seem to remember trying to separate my dream body from my 'real' one without success. Then I just got up and walked out of the house. Heh.. rude, I know!  :Cheeky: 

The dream completely changed here. When I walked out of the house it was sunny and there were three kids leaning against the railing of the porch - the next thing I know I'm standing on top of a snow-covered mountain at night on a wet blacktop road. Weird! 

Somebody yells "Run!!" (I didn't see any people at this point). I have no idea what's going on so I look around a bit, then I see a few people running away on the road. Curious about what they're running FROM, I walk the other way hoping to see what it is. I top the rise that's the rather unimpressive summit of the mountain (it's really more like a very high, very steep hill) and then I see two --- objects - running up toward me. Can't make out what they are yet, but they seem to be nearly human sized... maybe the size of children or midgets. 

They get closer and I realize the front one looks exactly like Kool-Aid, but is made of battered steel and has a pissed-off look on his face.   ::lol::  The other one is harder to make out, seems boxy though. I'm totally unafraid of them and when they get near I pick up Kool-Aid and turn him upside-down and place hi on top of the other one. They fit together very tightly and Kool-Aid can only kick his legs feebly and angrily. This makes me laugh. But I begin to sense incredible levels of power building from them and I know in seconds they'll be able to mess me up bad. Oops... shouldn't have done that I guess!   :Oh noes: 

So I dive onto the snow-covered mountainside hoping to slide down it fast... I just lay there. It's a patchy wet snow... no way to slide on it. Damn! So I decide I'm going to summon a rocket sled. Im not lucid, but I seem to think I am.   ::roll:: 

It doesn't work. So I start running down the mountainside into the darkness. After a while I see a house ahead... a very nice house with no lights on. I go in through the back door... it's very nice inside, as if it belongs to rich people. I step through a green-painted doorframe thinking "There will be a rocket sled in this room". There isn't, but there is a nice collection of rifles and various guns. It seems whoever lives here is a collector. The more I look around the more rifles I begin to see... every closet I open has more in it. Then I begin to notice the really big guns hanging on the walls... looking like they came from the turrets of B-52s or something. 

I select a worn old black military rifle of some kind  that I really like from a closet and open it... no ammo (in fact there was something jammed inside so it couldn't even take ammo, but I ignored this). I carried that gun as I wandered through the rest of the house still hoping to find that elusive rocket sled. 

I never did find one, but suddenly a car pulls into the house (right into the living room) and people get out. I'm not worried about it for whatever reason, I just keep wandering in their house. Two women in fur coats walk up behind me from the car, not seeming very surprised to find me there, but I get the feeling they're prepared for intruders and have been known to do not-nice things to them. One says something like "Wait till my husband gets out of the car..." to me I guess, but I just walk into the next room and ignore them. I'm a real asshole in this dream! 

I decide it's time to go before Kool-Aid and his buddy get themselves separated and come to kick my ass, so I go out through the front door, still heading down the mountain. Now though the snow seems nice and solid, as if I could slide on it. I throw the gun back toward the house (getting nice toward the end of the dream!) and I jump into superman position on the snow and go _shooshing_ along downhill at a pretty good rate.

----------


## Darkmatters

04-04-10*Attempted WILD IN THE DREAM*
Dream
Lucid

I stayed up extremely late, and when I did go to sleep my *mind was very active* - I could calm it down to a certain level, but not below it AT ALL. It felt like there was a strong current of unstoppable thought going constantly in my mind. I *woke up every hour* or so and had a hard time getting back to sleep each time. This was before even taking any *Lucid Dreamer*... it could be unrelated - I do have periods of this kind of insomnia. 

OK - woke up after 4 hours and took a 4mg Lucid Dreamer capsule with 500mg of B-5. Didn't get back to sleep - AT ALL - for a good 4 hours. I lay there wide awake. Counted to 100 4 times and tried other relaxation techniques, finally slept very briefly with no dreams recalled. Decided to take another LD capsule. After this I slept for 40 minutes and had the following dream:

I was *laying in bed trying to sleep*. It was *exactly like the waking reality* I had just experienced.. heh at one point I had tossed and turned so much all the sheets were off the bed and I was laying half on the floor. 

Interspersed with this were flashes of brief visuals. Example I'd be laying in the dark room and gradually begin to see an area on the desk in front of me. There was an animal skull there (I do have animals skulls sitting around - I live right next to the woods). It was like a dim illumination gradually came up just on that area - reminded me of the discs of pale light that would accommodatingly develop in the dark house wherever I wanted to see in a recent dream (Swingin - the rope that reaches - EVERYWHERE). This is what's known as *Dore Lighting* (see illustration above - Dore used to very skillfully spotlight the important areas of his illustrations)- a technique I want to use in my animation and that Harryhausen used to use (he's the one who named it Dore lighting). But anywho - on the animal skull was a mouse sitting there looking back at me. It *grew slightly bigger* (dream sign)... like chipmunk sized. This image only lasted a second or two and faded out again. 

A bit later, after more of the 'trying to fall asleep' stuff there was another disc of Dore lighting illuminating a book rack right in front of me (which isn't there IRL) loaded with comic books - I remember seeing a Thor with an incredible cover painting. 

Then I started experiencing classic *SP symptoms* (which I've never actually felt before - even when I had a couple of SP experiences as a child I didn't feel any of the vibrations etc). I got strong vibrations in my hands that moved to my arms and various parts of my body. I noticed I was holding something in each hand - couldn't move to see what it was but they felt like a couple of AA batteries. Heh... guess my mind wanted to explain the electrical-feeling vibrations. Then I started seeing very vivid flashes of light and moving formless shapes of colored light. 

I could just move my fingers very slightly but nothing else. I remember *trying to roll my dream body out of my sleeping body without success*. Was I lucid? It didn't feel like it... there was no "Aha!" moment and I never did any RCs or anything. 

Suddenly I started hearing sounds - voices singing and talking and weird noises. I could tell it was 'in my head' but at the same time it seemed totally real. The sounds all coalesce into singing and then I see a happy 50's family skipping and dancing in front of me.

----------


## juroara

Ah..don't you hate it when you're trying to sleep and you don't realize you already are asleep? WILDs within the dream are great though! Always something interesting.

----------


## Darkmatters

Apparently that's very common when you take the Galantamine. It's happened to me several times when I've used it. I'm starting to dislike it. The lucids I have from it aren't as good as the ones without, even if they're easier to have. It's like training wheels for lucidity.. make it a lot easier but just don't have the same freedom. I think I'll quit using it for a month or so - go back to my average of 1 lucid a month. 

What would be really cool is if I could *SUCCESSFULLY* WILD in a dream!! I've done it without success a couple times now, always while taking Galantamine.

----------


## Darkmatters

I felt like crap all day yesterday after *2 nights in a row of very little sleep*. Had a headache and just was all grouchy. But a very cool thing happened very late last night that I want to share... not related to sleeping or dreaming, though it was very dreamlike. 

I'm a night owl - completely nocturnal. I always say "last night" when I write my dreams just for the sake of expediency, but the truth is I always sleep in the daytime (a good set of *blackout drapes* and nice *droning fan*help). Around 5:30 AM I was sitting here in the basement in front of my computer, chillin' on DV when I hear an incredible caterwauling just outside. I live in the midwest in a heavily wooded area, we have a lot of wildlife. It's common to walk out and see ten deer strolling through yards and across the street - raccoons, possums - even occasionally a fox or a coyote. Apparently there was a Lynx or other type of large wildcat in the area a year or so ago that a lot of people saw. So it's not unusual to hear some crazy things especially late at night. I love roaming the streets in the dark when the people have gone to sleep and their artificial boundaries are destroyed by darkness... the wildlife takes over then. 

Anyway - I've heard this particular sound many times. It's pretty chilling - a combined grunting huffing screeching sort of a thing that occaisonally changes into a monkeylike chattering. Me and my friend used to think it might be a wolf or coyote (he used to say it was a werewolf when we were  kids). In more recent years I figured out what it probably was, but had never actually seen the animal to confirm it, so some doubt still remained. And keep in mind - it's a terrifying sound out there in the darkness.  :Oh noes: 

One of them seems to be sitting *_right_against_my_basement_window!* And I can hear another one answering from a few hundred feet away. This instantly stopped the pleasant chorus of toad calls from the small pond in the backyard. At hearing it I became filled with the sense of wonder... I had always been curious about what makes this sound and this time it was sitting right up against the house, so I was going to go out and see it. First I flipped back the curtain but couldn't see anything there, so I grabbed a little booklight and went trooping out there hoping we were wrong about it being coyotes or wolves. I went out onto the wooden deck that overhangs the edge f the fishpond - hoping whatever was out there wouldn't venture up the steps. 

This felt *totally dreamlike!* By now it had move into the neighbor's yard. Throwing caution to the wind I walked over there. I could now tell the sound was definitely coming from high in a tree. Well, that's better... no way it's a wolf or coyote! So now I was confident it must be an owl as I surmised. Actually I was pretty sure of that for a few years now - I wanted to really get across the sense of excitement and possible danger as I crept out there into the unknown. And wow... this is getting long!! But what the hell... it's worth it. What happened to me out there was an exhilarating experience that deserves to be told right. 

It's the perfect time of year for this... warm enough to just stroll around out there without needing a jacket, but the trees are still bare enough to see clearly against the moonlit sky. Because of that I was able to see every branch of every tree clearly - and after a while I thought I could see a big lump that might be the owl. It didn't seem to mind me standing so near it - I was within 20 feet of the tree it was in. And then it swooped down from the tree in absolute silence!! The wingspan was 3 or 4 feet across! Awesome. It moved to a nearby tree, and its partner moved a couple of times too. They kept calling to each other. I was standing there aiming my little booklight at the one near me (uselessly) and suddenly wondered if owls ever attack adult people. I figured probably nothing bigger than a rabbit or small dog. 

After a while i started heading back to the house and kept looking back at it over my shoulder. Again in total silence it dropped gracefully from the high branch and this time came swooping DIRECTLY at me!! Good thing I was looking back... the silence was eerie! I ducked convulsively, thinking about those razor sharp talons, and it passed within 4 feet over my head to land in the edge of the woods in front of me... right next to my house. I had to walk within a few fee of its new perch to get back inside. 

Ok I'll cut this short here. I actually grabbed my camera and a broom (for fending off any further dive-bombing attempts) and went out and recorded the calls, but by now they had stopped the really intense call and were doing a calmer one. I then started googling to find owl calls typical to the midwest and decided they're Great Horned Owls. I had to post the pic above to demonstrate what swooped close enough to touch right over my head in the darkness last night - guess it kind of spoils the surprise element I worked so hard to create huh?   ::lol::

----------


## Dannon Oneironaut

Great story! 
Wow! Owl calls in the night are spooky, aren't they? So are mountain lions! I've had nights camping where I was terrified. That is amazing the thing swooped right over your head! Amazing creatures, huh?
I don't know if I shared this or not, but I used to walk through the woods every evening playing my flute. There was two barn owls who flew above me EVERY night to check me out. I think they could hear the flute from far away. And it is neat because when you are playing flute and walking through the forest you are breathing a lot, which gets you kind of high. Very neat experience. 
I found out that those owls lived on the roof of the only tall building in town, the historic Marc Antony hotel. It had gargoyles and such on it. But it went out of business and someone bought it and the new owner poisoned the barn owls!!! Arrrgh! I was sooo mad! And I still am!!! 
One name for owls is flying cats. And that is a subject of a dream I had once that you inspired me to post to my DJ when I get a chance.
Thanks for the Owl story!

----------


## Darkmatters

> Great story! 
> Wow! Owl calls in the night are spooky, aren't they? So are mountain lions!



Damn, Ill BET!!!  ::shock::  ::shock:: 





> I've had nights camping where I was terrified. That is amazing the thing swooped right over your head! Amazing creatures, huh?



Yeah they are!! I wonder what would have happened if I didn't duck? I think it was just a feint to scare me off. The other day I stepped out on my way to work and saw a group of 7 Turkey Vultures circling over the woods just behind the house. Crazy looking things, and also huge raptors like the owls:









> I don't know if I shared this or not, but I used to walk through the woods every evening playing my flute. There was two barn owls who flew above me EVERY night to check me out. I think they could hear the flute from far away. And it is neat because when you are playing flute and walking through the forest you are breathing a lot, which gets you kind of high. Very neat experience.



Wow, super-cool! I wish I could walk through the woods at night playing a flute or something. There isn't enough wilderness here for that - I'd definitely get arrested for disturbing the peace! But how cool - that the owls responded to your playing! I had something kinda-sorta similar happen once, but without the wildlife... I was playing Iron Man real loud on a crappy electric guitar (and very poorly I might add) and suddenly somebody somewhere out there - across the woods in another subdivision - plugged in and started playing the lead!! And he didn't suck like me... he was really good. It was an awesome moment of long-distance connectedness. I never knew who it was or even quite where it came from, but I'll always cherish the memory. We jammed on it for like 5 minutes.






> One name for owls is flying cats. And that is a subject of a dream I had once that you inspired me to post to my DJ when I get a chance. Thanks for the Owl story!



Awesome - looking forward to that one! Yeah, another name for the Great Horned Owl is a Tiger Owl. Easy to see why from that pic above. I hope I hear them again tonight... if I do I'll grab my camera right away and go out and record the calls... maybe I can post them here. None of the ones I listened to online are nearly as wicked as what I'm hearing out there. 

One of these days I need to draw up Monkey Chow. It's a strange unidentified creature that lives near here, apparently under someone's porch. Some kind of hairless small dog, but it has a long prehensile tail and the paws look more like hands. The front legs are longer than the back... it all adds up to make it look more like a monkey than a dog (hence Monkey Chow - looks like a cross between a monkey and a chijouha. Damn, how do you spell that? ~ Chi- wow - a.

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## Dannon Oneironaut

> One of these days I need to draw up Monkey Chow. It's a strange unidentified creature that lives near here, apparently under someone's porch. Some kind of hairless small dog, but it has a long prehensile tail and the paws look more like hands. The front legs are longer than the back... it all adds up to make it look more like a monkey than a dog (hence Monkey Chow - looks like a cross between a monkey and a chijouha. Damn, how do you spell that? ~ Chi- wow - a.



What?!
Are you pulling my leg?
BTW, it's chijuajua.
Monkey Chow?

----------


## cygnus

nope - it's 'chihuahua'  ::roll::

----------


## Darkmatters

> nope - it's 'chihuahua'



That's it! Would have never come up with that spelling on my own. Thanks Cygnus (that's a great Rush song by the way!)

Not pulling your leg one bit! I saw this thing run across the street one day as I was riding my mountain bike. I freaked out bad. There were a couple of people standing outside nearby and I asked them if they had seen it... they didn't but had seen it before and knew what I was talking about. One of them said it lives under the porch of a house down the hill... not sure if it's somebody's pet (though I assume so). I tried searching for hairless dogs but didn't find anything that looks quite like it. It was really bizarre!! One day I might have to knock on the door of the house where it supposedly lives and ask about it... they might even show it to me if it's still alive (this was 3 or 4 years ago and I haven't seen it again).

----------


## Darkmatters

Ok this got me curious again so I did a little googling. It looks like it might be a Chinese Crested Hairless:





It looked a lot like the little grey one... it did have hair on the head and paws and the tip of the tail exactly like that, but the hair on the head wasn't that long. Maybe they kept it trimmed up. But I swear Monkey Chow was thinner and more supple than that and looked more monkeylike! 

Here's something else kind of similar found in a trap in Texas:

In some ways this one looks more like MC. That long prehensile tail especially. Heh... this one looks like a fox mated with a chinese crested hairless.

----------


## Darkmatters

Dream 
Lucid

Ok, back to the dreams. Had a rare 2 days off in a row thanks to Easter. I was sorely tempted to take the Lucid Dreamer again, but after 2 sleepless nights decided I need to just get some good recuperative sleep instead. 

And this is actually very ironic... I didn't remember until I went upstairs and got my journal, but I dreamed of being a *FLYING CAT* last night!!!  ::shock::  ::shock:: 

Here's Dannon's dream of owls transforming into flying cats. This is so strange... synchronicity in action. Recently I was interested in what kind of wildcats had been domesticated to create house cats, and yesterday I found a nice big Wiki page about it (the original wild ancestor looks just like a regular house cat!)

That, coupled with learning that Great Horned Owls are also called Tiger Owls might have given birth to this dream (part of it anyway). Not as cool as Dannon's though...



*Wait what... ~ I'm a... FLYING CAT??!!!??* 

I'm riding around *Fairview Heights* on my *bike* at night enjoying all the city lights. I'm on a little road that runs parallel with the highway where all the strip malls are, usually IWL I'd be on the highway instead, but it felt cool to be exploring this little quiet road I'd never been on before. There are apartment buildings lining the road and it curves through a large arc before opening back onto the highway. As I'm back there in the quiet among the apartments a *pretty teenage girl in black concert shirt and lots of black eyeliner* runs from one of the buildings, obviously wanting to stop me and talk to me. She seems troubled... and also seems _like_ trouble, if you know what I mean - druggie runaway type. 

She needs a ride, and now my bike has transformed into a *car*. What can I say - I'm easy! I give her a ride. To a donut shop or something. 

Then I'm in a big building with *my sister* and a friend of hers. They want me to take them somehwhere but I say I need to wait for the girl to *bring my car back* ( ::shock::  - not good!!)

Now I'm *flying slowly over incredibly beautiful landscapes*... vast Northwestern vistas of heavy forest with huge lakes reflecting the glowing indigo sky. There's some kind of modern city under me... it's what I think *Ontario* might look like, but in the dream I still think I'm flying over Fairview Heights.   ::roll:: 

I'm amazed by the beautiful detail... the lighting and the feel of the air... this is awesome!! After passing over one of the lakes I'm flying beside a huge building that I think is a *bank*. It's got very modern architecture, like it was designed by *Frank Lloyd Wright* or something - big slabs of wall supporting a cantilevered roof, surfaces all pebbled and with nice decorative elements. Somehow without meaning to I fly right inside... one of the wall slabs is just open along the edge and I sort of get scooped in by it. I'm laughing about this as I turn around and fly back out to resume my journey.

Now I have a sidekick... a *flying house cat* that I can apparently _communicate with telepathically_. We fly on for a while, then my awareness transfers into the cat. Now I've _BECOME_ the cat and I'm flying alone. 

Some kind of *statue* below me *comes to life* as I fly over it and it *flies up to chase me*. It's a statue of some kind of monster - it's incredibly powerful and can't be stopped. Somehow I just know this. It's much *stronger* than me as well as *more maneuverable and faster*. The monster statue is so confident in its ability to kill me it's singing a happy song to taunt me, biding its time. 

And still the landscape is impossibly beautiful - the architecture has pools built in at various levels in a terraced formation that blends harmoniously with the terrain. I plunge down into a pool to try to escape the pursuing creature but it doesn't throw him a bit.

I wake up - as usual I tend to wake at the end of each REM period (which is a good thing as I usually remember the dreams). I have a weird headachy feeling.. lingering effects from the two nights of insomnia, but I feel better now. There was at least one dream I've completely forgotten, but just before waking up for the last time I had this one, that I consider a wish fulfillment dream:

*Wish Fulfillment dream*


I'm working at the *restaurant* (where I actually do work). There are only 2 of us working, me and the manager *Mary Beth* (manager we had many years ago who was cool as hell and favored me - those were definitely the *good old days!*)

I'm sitting in the office doing a *drawing using colored pencils and various other mixed media*, including the *white-out* from the desk drawer. It's looking really good. I'm excited about it and want to show Mary Beth. I find her sitting on a stool in the kitchen with a TV on (hah... as if we're allowed to have a TV!) and reading the paper with a big smile on her face. I peek out into the lobby to see a bunch of customers waiting patiently. I tell her about them and we go calmly to take care of them... there's no pressure or anxiety at all. 

Now I'm *Conan*! Ridiculously muscled and bristling with broadswords and shields and daggers etc. 

Standing in front of me is an even bigger *barbarian dude* that's my *mortal enemy*. We're indoors - maybe in the restaurant? He wants to fight me, but I tell him I don't want to trash the place - I know I can take him anytime I want with or without weapons, and I know he knows it too. I tell him I could easily decapitate him with one swordstroke, but I won't do it until it's necessary. 

I was hearing the song *Please Don't Touch by Polly Scattergood* as I woke up. Not for real... no radio on or anything, just in the dream. I had just discovered it and I like the surreal almost Beatles-esque sound of it.

In reading this I Just realized the last dream is sort of a reversal of the one before it. In the 1st one I'm being chased by a flying statue that's stronger and faster than me and I know it can't be stopped. It sings a happy song to taunt me. IN the 2nd dream, when I'm Conan, I'm super-muscular and facing an opponent that I know I can easily beat, and he knows it too... plus I hear a song playing.

Another belated realization; the monster statue was probably my shadow. If I had been lucid I could have integrated with it somehow rather than run from it or try to fight it. The idea that it's my shadow might have been reinforced by the role reversal dream - I'm a muscular barbarian and so is my opponent... almost identical.

----------


## Dannon Oneironaut

Alright! Your dream sounds as cool as mine, if not cooler! Anyway, here is another coincidence for you: Today I was walking in a new park I haven't been to before, and this reminded me of you so I took a picture. How neat that you also had that dream!


Imagine if this thing came to life and flew! Coincidences are magic, this may be a coincidence for you, but it is also a coincidence for me! When I saw this sculpture, I took the picture just for you, not knowing it would be even more applicable.

----------


## Darkmatters

Hah!! That's awesome!!! Yes... even more synchronicity... *statues of "flying cats"!!!* ... And you hunting a stone owl with a camera... just like I hunted the owls with my camera the other night to record their calls. Once the synchronicity starts to flow, it's amazing what it can do!!! 

Well, I said not as cool as your dream because for one you didn't have an unstoppable monster statue chasing you and singing - plus it just sounds so cool to have all those owls transforming into cats and rolling around in front of you! Mine was cool in an action/adventure way, but left me feeling a bit troubled due to the almost nightmare nature of it.

----------


## Dannon Oneironaut

Somehow I missed you speaking about Vultures.
I secretly love vultures! The way they fly effortlessly. How they have no voices. How they can actually _see_ heat thermals to ride. How they clean up after nature. How they don't kill, not even plants. 
They are karma-free astral flyers that see the invisible and purify the shadow of nature. A vulture feather in your dream catcher will really help dreaming. Nice pictures!


*Spoiler* for _Yet another damn unbelievably story._: 



I was in Oregon and had been camping all weekend at a beautiful secluded spot by the river. I am driving down the mountain and going kind of fast. I go around the corner and a vulture is in the road! I step on the brakes as the vulture takes off. But he is carrying something! I cannot slow down fast enough to avoid hitting him as he is flying at about windshield level! He realizes that he needs to drop what he is carrying in order to rise to safety. He drops what he is carrying on my car: an open can of beer! Beer splatters all over my car and I feel some come through my sunroof as the vulture flies to safety!
Nobody EVER believes that story, but I swear on Buddha as the Earth is my witness, it really happened!

----------


## juroara

Ahh..flying cat dream for the win!! And it sounds like stones coming to life could be a dream sign for you  :smiley:

----------


## Darkmatters

LOL, I Just read your dream from yesterday (or the day before?) with 2 cats... was wondering if they were going to fly!   ::fly:: 





> And it sounds like stones coming to life could be a dream sign for you



Definitely! Also things changing sizes spontaneously, like Alice when she eat mushrooms. 

Dannon, I LOVE vultures!! Always been fascinated by them... but then again, what guy isn't? Sort of goes along with the childhood love of dinosaurs. Hey, they ARE called Raptors! LOL @ thinking about a drunk vulture flying around!

----------


## Darkmatters

Dream
Lucid

*CASTLE SCHEMA*

1st part I recall - 

I'm hanging out with somebody and they show me a *magazine* or a *newsletter* that at first I think they made themselves - I'm commenting on how good it looks. Then I decide it can't be their work because the photography in it looks totally professional. I say something like "... unless you have access to professional photography?" - they don't respond. The pictures are of a *female pop star* from a year or so ago who's no longer famous (nobody IRL) but I say she was big "in like 1989" when it should have been 2009. 

Then I remember lots and lots of *pennies raining down*. 

I'm in *my sister's old room* looking out the window at some *sunflowers* that grow tall enough to be level with the 2nd floor. I remember planting them a few years ago and I'm proud they've grown so tall. Suddenly she's standing in the room with me and *Mark* is outside under the window dressed as *Prince Charming* (this begins a *castle schema* that continues through the rest of the dream). He steps forward so the stem of one sunflower is coming up right between his legs, and this pushes the flower right up against the window. This annoys me because it reminds me of the time when he tried to hit on her. 

Now I'm walkig down some dark stairs made of stone - as if in a castle. I've got *Dusty and Star* both with me (my old sheepdogs) and they're all happy, wagging their tails and sniffing each other's noses excitedly (which is awesome because Star was always very unsociable and suspicious of other dogs). It seems like I'm going to take them outside and this makes them very happy. We get to the bottom of the steps and I open the door onto bright sunlight, they both jump out ---

And fall into a *moat*! It looks like a regular front yard out there, except for the big rectangular pit dug right in front of the door, which is filled with water. I'm shocked... why would there be a moat here? How bizzare!! 

I leap into the water to pick the dogs up... the sides of the moat are straight up and down and way too high for them to climb up. I now can't see them anywhere, though the water is totally clear. I'm getting afraid they might drown if I don't find them very quickly. Then I see a dark shape moving across the bottom... but it's not a dog... it's a huge alligator!! Damn, now the urgency to find them fast is getting intense. 

I see that the alligator has something in its jaws... and I'm afraid it's one of the dog's legs, but a closer look reveals it's the tail of ANOTHER ALLIGATOR!! Oh shit... this is one of those dreams where you see one dangerous thing, and then you start seeing more..... crap!! 

Then I see the 5 or 6 big sharks swimming around. I'm getting REALLY worried now, but suddenly I catch sight of the two dogs trotting happily across the street, shaking water out of their hair. I have to struggle mightily up the muddy far side of the moat to try to join them. 

But instead I find myself standing in front of a *steep-sided ravine* (seems to be the moat but in heavily modified form). There's a lazy stream flowing in it, and the far side of the ravine is much taller than my side. Suddenly a bunch of people come jumping down from the top of it, where I couldn't see them before. They're all laughing and having fun. Some of them jump directly into the water, some hit the slanted wall of the ravine and bounce into the water, and the last few stragglers seem afraid to jump so they just slide timidly down into the water. 

Now I'm walking next to some kind of cobblestone paved path that I know leads back to the castle behind me... somewhere far behind. There's a bridge running parallel with the path, which also leads back to the castle. I'm alone at first, then I see a tall broad-shouldered guy walking fast along the path, coming up from behind me. I know he's *my brother* (I don't have a brother IRL). Behind him, unseen by him, I also see *our father* (not my real father - it's like I'm playing a character and they're also characters). He's running silently toward my brother and carrying a *huge powder keg* on his shoulder. I know instantly that his plan is to drop the powder keg on my brother to kill him. 

But I also know that if I don't intervene my brother will turn and see our dad coming at him with murderous intent. I distract my brother by talking to him. Just before he gets close enough for the kill though, our dad loses his footing and drops the powder keg too soon. It's still big and heavy enough to kill my brother though, and is rolling ponderously toward him, and I know if I can just keep him distracted long enough it will still kill him. For whatever reason (wasn't made clear in the dream) I want that, so I get all excited and start shouting to prevent him from hearing it rolling. He begins to turn anyway, so I throw him down in front of it - it rolls very slowly over him, flattening him like a cartoon. 

I also remember what seem to be long stretches of dream with no visuals, that consisted entirely of hearing *Please Don't Touch by Polly Scattergood*, which I also heard in last night's dream. Yes, I'm obsessed with this song! For the last two days it's been running incessantly through my head while awake AND while asleep. It hearkens back to the heyday of great female-led alternative bands like Belly and Tori Amos.

Heh.. Castle Schema is the perfect name for this entry - the castle (representing the royal family) seems filled with scheming! Me and my dad conspiring to murder my brother - 

I suspect the scheming/suspicious theme started the moment Mark made the obscene gesture toward my sister, reminding me of my suspicion and anger at him back then. That gave the whole dream a rather bad flavor. 

Also, in reference to the first part - about someone publishing a newsletter - _my sister did publish one years ago_, and I drew the covers for it! That didn't occur to me until just now. Heh... how rude of me, to dream that it couldn't be her work because the photography (cover drawings?) are too professional! Also, I watched a brief stopmotion film yesterday made by a friend of mine which featured a lot of pennies raining down all over his puppet.

More associations that just came to mind - A Prince Charming costume is appropriate for Mark... he was a bit of a player and the girls all went for him... fortunately not my sister though. 

A rectangular dirt-sided pit... reminds me of two things, both relating to Star. One is the fish pond that me and my real dad dug in the back yard many (many) years ago, when I was a tyke (I'm back in the same house now, helping out my mom who otherwise would have to go to a retirement home). A few years ago I came home from work one night and asked my mom where Star was, and she said "outside". I asked how long she'd been there, and she said "wow... a pretty long time I guess... maybe an hour or more!" This was unusual, Star generally only stayed out for 15 minutes or so at the most. I walked all around the yard calling her and heard nothing in response, was about to head up the street, when a thought occurred to me (I think I might have written all this in another entry?) - I checked the fish pond, which is 3 feet deep (Star was about 2 feet tall). I didn't see her in there, but there's a wooden deck which overhangs a corner of the pond, and she could have been under it. 

I looked under it, but it was too dark to see anything there. I called her name, and then I heard something big move down there. I figure it HAD TO BE her, so I took a deep breath and reached into the darkness - to feel wet dog! I curled my arm around her and pulled her out, dragged her up onto the brick patio. She was shaking... she must have stood on her hind legs under there for an hour too afraid to move... she would have had to put her head under the water to get out from under the deck - what a terrible ordeal it must have been! Heh... I toweled her off and spent about an hour with a hair dryer getting her all dry. 

The other rectangular dirt pit is the grave I dug for her a few months after that, not too far from the pond. Rest in Peace, my faithful canine companion!!



Here's Star, on the deck over the pond where it all happened. I'm absolutely astonished at how efficiently dreams can compress a complex set of ideas into a very brief set of images.

----------


## Darkmatters

::: DARKMATTERS DREAM CLASSICS :::*The Brick Pit*

No lucidity in this, so I won't bother posting the color key. I was probably about 15 when I had this one. Reading Juroara's post The Dream Pipes tonight inspired me to post this old dream.

I dreamed I was awake in my room, looking out the window at night deep into the heart of the woods. Way out there somewhere, in the deep dark of the wilderness in between the visible strings of lights representing streets and subdivisions there was a powerful white spotlight beaming straight up out of what seemed to be a hole in the ground. I was mesmerized by it - utterly fascinated. Somehow I knew it was just for me, and that I had to go directly to it right now. 

It's hard to remember exactly how parts of the dream went, but I *THINK* I just sort of drifted through the dark woods like a ghost. Or maybe a more appropriate term would be like a moth drawn toward the light. As I drew closer to it I could see that it was huge... bigger than any spotlight beam I've ever seen. 

Indeed, when I reached it, it was emerging from a round pit several hundred feet in diameter - a straight column of brilliant light blasting straight up into the sky. I think I drifted slowly down into the center of the pit. Now I could see quite clearly here, as if the brilliant light was no longer on - I guess now that it had brought me it had served its purpose. The entire pit was lined with bricks... a perfectly round pit sort of like a small coliseum. The surrounding wall had a series of arches, and through them I could see another brick wall.. sort of an arcade in circular form. 

I walked up to the wall of arches and saw that behind the arches were a series of openings in the other wall... not lined up directly behind the arches but interspersed between them so they couldn't be seen until you stepped through an arch. The arcade was like a large-diameter circular walkway of sorts, the arches opening along one side into the pit and the dark rectangular doorways in the opposite wall opening into corridors that radiated outward like spokes. 

I knew I was supposed to choose a tunnel. They all looked identical, and from down in the pit I could no longer get my bearings on the landscape above. I strolled around the circular arcade for a while but couldn't find any difference from one tunnel to another, so I picked one at random and started walking along it. I knew once I had chosen I was committed and couldn't return and choose another one. 

There was a diffuse illumination coming from nowhere in particular.. no light fixtures visible but it never got too dark to see. As I progressed along the tunnel nothing changed much for a long ways... the brick was fresh and new, as if just laid recently and perfectly clean. It was a nice wide tunnel with a high ceiling. But after a while I noticed it was getting smaller, and the brick didn't look so new or clean anymore. 

I kept going, and the tunnel kept getting smaller and grottier. Soon it was almost brushing my shoulders and the top of my head, and now the brickwork looked like it was maybe a hundred years old... edges rounded by erosion, a lot of cracked and broken bricks, and little roots growing through here and there. It stopped getting smaller, but kept looking progressively more ancient and broken. Now there were huge cracks in the walls and moss growing on the bricks... the roots were bigger and it was getting drippy and slimy. 

Now the tunnel was no longer straight - it twisted and turned like a maze, and there were narrow dizzying stairs going up and down and back up... after a while I had no idea how close I was to the surface anymore. 

I think it ended like that. Really wish I could remember it better, but that's the gist of it anyway.

----------


## Dannon Oneironaut

Yeah sometimes dreams are like .rar files. Just packed with information. Amazing really.

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## Darkmatters

Hah! .rar files... that's CLASSIC!! (BTW, I hate .rar files!)   ::lol::

----------


## Dannon Oneironaut

Speaking of coincidences, I saw two Great Horned owls today. One had one eye open and the other was sleeping. And two bears.

----------


## Darkmatters

Cool! Our friendship is now symbolized by Great Horned Owls! 





> And two bears.



Holy crap!! What kind of bears? Were they close to you? I'd be scared shitless!! 

I haven't heard the owls for the last couple nights... I guess they have a big range and are only occasionally in the vicinity. But I'm keeping my camera and a bicycle helmet close by for next time... I really want to record their calls! It occurred to me though... a broom for fending-off might be a really BAD IDEA! I imagine if something stops an owl cold in its flight it'll start flailing in desperation... that's when I'd get hurt (and the owl too). Probably best I don't get so close... the mic on the camera is good enough to work from a few hundred feet I'm sure.

----------


## Darkmatters

Dream
Lucid

*The Endless Comedy of Sexual Frustration*

I wanted to test to see if the Lucid Dreamer might be what caused my _recent bout of insomnia_, plus I wanted to try using just one 4mg capsule (apparently taking too much is what causes lucids where you can't move or can't see or get weird real-body signals that screw up the dream). Had no problem getting to sleep before taking it if course (no insomnia anymore), took an hour to get back to sleep after taking it. _I think I'll get some L-Theanine_ (relaxation/sleep aid) before trying it again. I also think I'll experiment with taking one and a half capsules (6mg). No lucidity, but a very cool dream! A matched pair of them actually, the second commenting and expanding on the first in very interesting ways. 


My memory of the 1st dream is very hazy. I didn't write it down because I wanted to fall back asleep as fast as possible with nothing to wake me up. However, after taking the Lucid Dreamer and B-5, I did _review the dream in my head_ to try to lock it into my memory. 

I was *Ashton Kutcher*. Or at least my personality was just like his... not sure if I looked like him or nor, and the theme of the dream was *comedy improv* - there was the definite sense that I was _acting a role_ (a theme from last night's dream) - so I could have just been playing him. The whole dream was an _improvised comedy jam between me and my subconscious_. I wasn't lucid, but I was aware that there was another mind, far more powerful than mine, that was creating the situation and the other characters and maintaining them moment to moment and responding to what I said and did, and I was responding to its choices as well. It was a really cool feeling! 

The setup for the session - I had a hot girlfriend and it was time to meet her family for the 1st time. A perfect Romantic Comedy setup, right? It must have been a family reunion or something, because it was a LOT of people!! It took place in a large house. I was walking from room to room looking for the girl (who I never found by the way... wondering if she even really existed or was just a convention cooked up for the purpose of the improv?). In each room are a number of her family members, all of whom are very _weird and crazy_. They all look funny... tall and skinny or short and fat, every description (except for normal) - and their personalities were strange and outlandish. 

How to explain it? They all seemed very excited to meet me, and each of them wanted to monopolize my time - wanted all my attention for themselves. Not in a bad way... they're just the kind of people who are very opinionated and strong-willed and who have ideas that they want to share with you. Like the weird crazy person who sits next to you on the bus and keeps telling you about Venusians who are controlling our minds. That kind of weird. 

I wish I could remember more of the specifics - really sad to say I can only recall one character - *Aunt Mini*. Maybe it was spelled _Minnie,_ but I think of it as Mini because that's part of the joke. See, she's really short and fat - like 3 feet tall, but has these HUUUGE boobies, and she's a close-talker. She wants to get face-to-face, and in so doing, the boobies get pressed up against you a lot. Mini is a joke referring to her size and the size of her boobs. 

When I figured out this joke that my mind had set up for me I started to laugh. Aunt Mini... ok, it's funny!! Good one, sub-c! I don't remember if I came up with any good lines myself, but I definitely spent a lot of the dream laughing in amazement at the cleverness of my subconscious in devising these characters and coming up with fantastic names for them. But at the same time they were all great people.. there was a warmth and humanity to it all that made my laughter sweet rather than mocking or insulting. I felt that I was being shown the truly human side of weird crazy people, people we usually turn away from or laugh at in an insulting way. 


Ok, there were more characters, but I can't remember them. I woke, took the LD and eventually drifted back to sleep.


In the next dream I found myself trying to remember the last one and reciting it to myself so I wouldn't forget it. It still felt like a creative and interactive comedy jam-session with the sub-c, and as we went I was getting its story on the creation of those characters and what they meant. As if the dream was revealing its inner workings to me. It's almost as if I was hearing a voice in my head explaining things. Again I was laughing almost the entire time with a warm expansive laughter that embraced all of humanity. 

But again I don't remember much! And it seems like the explanations in some ways were different from what I had dreamed the first time... and for that reason I think the second dream actually made me forget a lot of the first one and vice verse. It's like in re-enacting the improv we did it differently the second time. But what stuck with me the most from it is this...


The sub-c explained to me that the entire first dream had been a lesson in *The Endless Comedy of Sexual Frustration*. Every one of those characters, in demanding all of my attention to themselves, was acting out on their unsatisfied sexual impulses, which usually go unfulfilled for most people. Even those who have what's considered a satisfying sexual/romantic life are actually sexually frustrated because, according to the way humans are wired, whatever you're getting sexually/romantically you always want something else (grass is always greener). And most importantly... *this is the very REASON that human existence is so interesting!* It's what drives us in all things... what essentially makes us human. Or it's a very large part of it, and we're not aware of the huge part it plays. We think of sexual frustration as a negative thing... when in reality it's the very driving force that led us forth from darkness to become human in the first place! (note... I'm not saying this is true.. it's just what the dream told me).

The idea being basically that everybody in the house - in the dream (representing everybody in the world) was horny, and they were subverting that energy into their actions. Rather than acting directly on it, they would talk loudly and impassionedly about some theory they had concocted, or whatever. Hobbies people have.. interests they take, scientific discoveries and artistic masterpieces - all of it is subverted sexual energy, and if not for _the way humans are wired to be subject to constant sexual frustration_, we wouldn't have those interests. But this revelation wasn't just psychological or sexual - it was somehow *spiritual*. The dream was saying it isn't _BAD_ that our energy all comes from subverted sexual frustration, but that it's a common link that we all share deep inside, so it draws us all together. And understanding it brings us closer to *enlightenment*. 

I remember trying to improve on the 1st dream by saying "Maybe Aunt Mini could be *Aunt Minitonka*? Tonka - as in Built Like a Truck? Get it?" - Which seemed pretty funny, but I immediately decided it put a weird twist on the character... makes her sound like an indian and brings in unwanted associations, so it's back to the original Aunt Mini. Cool... editing my own dreams as I dream them! 

I came away from the dream with warm laughter in my heart - ready to look beyond people's weird self-serving behaviors and to understand the driving forces that cause them to act the way they do. Oh, and in case I didn't get this across - the endless comedy of sexual frustration is nothing less than *life itself*.

----------


## Dannon Oneironaut

I have heard that the only reason men get out of bed in the morning is because of the possibility of sex! It is true that you can reduce any motivation down to fulfillment of life energy. And it is the life force that has fueled all things in this universe. Even the Universe is the fruit of cosmic sexual energy. Gives a whole new meaning to the Big Bang! All life is the unfolding in time of the power of the timeless orgasm. In every peak experience you touch the timeless void. This timeless void is what we all hanker for, the source of all energy. Energy to create life, the Universe and everything. It is celebration. It is this that makes a peak experience. That is the appeal of sex, to unite the opposites and to touch this timeless void for a few moments.
Life energy is a river. Life energy is kundalini. Sex is one expression of kundalini. there are other expressions of kundalini also, like love, compassion, spiritual bliss. But it is all basically the same energy and ecstasy and passion are its nature!
But if it is frustrated you might want to talk Ashton Kutcher's ear off! And beware of Aunt Mini! She sounds like a wild one!

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## Darkmatters

Wow, that's a really deep insight!! So glad I met you man, this is the stuff I need to hear!!

----------


## Darkmatters

Dream
Lucid

Ok, catching up real quick... 

*2 nights ago -*

All I remember is the tail end of the last dream. I'm riding my bike in some kind of maze where the walls are only 2 inches high, like curbs. There are cardboard boxes sitting here and there, and I don't want to have to stop my bike to move them, so I go real slow and try to wedge my front wheel in between each box and the curb beside it and sort of flip it away with a quick jerk of the handlebars. It worked every time.

*Last night -*

Decided to try opening a Lucid Dreamer capsule and one of the B-5 capsules and intersperse half of each into each capsule.. make sense? So each capsule now has 250mg B-5, 100mg choline and... waitaminnit!! Here's where I ran into a problem -- the 4mg galantamine is nestled randomly in with 200mg choline! If I divide the finely milled white powder into two equal piles, how do I know where the galantamine actually is? It could all be in one pile! Sort of defeats the purpose. 

I had to facepalm and laugh at myself for that one. The don Juan in me was laughing at the Castaneda in me.   ::ghosttown::  :laugh: 

Anyway, since I had already done the deed, I went ahead and took one regular LD capsule and one of the modified capsules ( I made 2). Never got back to sleep after I took it though... I shouldn't even mess with it on work days. 

Semi-related note... I love that galantamine is extracted from lotus flowers! The Chakra flowers. 

I dreamed me and John Candy were security guards in a department store and had a huge food fight. All the food was made of shit.  :Eek:

----------


## Dannon Oneironaut

What is this lucid dreamer capsules you speak of? What supplements do you do to help your dreams? Sometimes I just take amino acid blend and 5-htp. I would like to learn more about these type of things, however I do not want to mess with my brain chemistry too much. What is in it? How does it work?

----------


## Darkmatters

Here's what I'm talking about.

I learned about it on this thread. 

I feel the same way you do, I wouldn't care to try anything that could be dangerous, but after reading through that rather long thread I'm convinced it's completely safe and quite effective. After buying the Lucid Dreamer product, which contains only galantamine (4mg) plus choline (200mg), I found out about a similar product called Galanta*mind* (heh... get it? cute huh?) that also has 100mg vitamin B-5, which is recommended with the combo. I ended up buying B-5 separately. If anyone reading this chooses to try it, definitely read that thread I linked to. And don't get the 8mg glantamine... that's too much for some people and can cause weird messed up lucids... better to get the 4mg - sold as a "starter" kit. That way you can take two pills if one isn't doing the trick. 

Essentially this stuff strengthens neuron activity in the brain, helping with cognition and memory, and as it so happens, if you take it during a WBTB, it also sparks lucidity. 

I don't care to mess with any other supplements or drugs for lucidity though.

----------


## juroara

> Semi-related note... I love that galantamine is extracted from lotus flowers! The Chakra flowers.



That's pretty awesome! 

I couldn't take this galantamine stuff even if wanted  :Sad: . I can't swallow pills, does it only come in pills? I know shameful. Some people think it's an irrational fear of choking. But the one time I did swallow a pill I gagged it back up. It's like my body thinks I'm swallowing poison. (actually I know I'm telling my body it's poison, lol, I really hate modern medicine)

But..if it's from a flower, maybe there is a tea I can drink that has natural galantamine in it?

----------


## Dannon Oneironaut

I just read about galantamine. I never really thought to much about taking supplements, funny, though that I don't think twice about drinking herbal tea. I read that there is a possible side-effect with galantamine involving too slow of a heartbeat. I don't know if this stuff is for me. A few years back I was having problems with anxiety attacks or panic attacks where I thought I was dying. My anxiety would make my heart go crazy and I would think that I was having a heart attack so I would try to calm down and then I would feel like my heart would stop or skip a beat so I would have to tense up again. I fainted once and went to the hospital (I still have an unpaid hospital bill). It got so bad that I could only lie in bed all day trying not to panic and keep my breathing calm. But I healed myself. I haven't had a panic attack in years.

But things that mess with my heartbeat make me nervous, which doesn't help my anxiety. I like the 5htp though because it actually mellows me out and improves my mood also, and it is very natural. Anyway, I find brain chemistry very interesting.

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## Darkmatters

Juroara - some people like to open the capsules and dissolve the powder in orange juice or something similar. Not sure how it tastes though. 

Dannon... really? Slow heart beat... well that's not good. I don't remember seeing anything about that. It hasn't done that to me, and I don't plan to take it too much. If it does anything funky to my heartbeat I'll toss it.

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## Darkmatters

No recall AT ALL from last night!! I did remember 2 dreams and parts of a 3rd when I woke up, but I lay in bed for a while thinking I'd get up and write it down in a bit, and when I tried it had all disappeared! I *THINK* I remember one image, of a few people in a volkswagen... but I'm not even sure about that.

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## Dannon Oneironaut

I don't mean to spread fear about it, I am just saying _for me_ it would make me nervous because I am too sensitive to things sometimes.

----------


## Darkmatters

This is the remains of my bottle of Lucid Dreamer. I took a couple days to think about what Dannon had said. I did a websearch. Essentially in the words of don Juan, I took all the time I needed to make the decision - chose the path with a heart, and once I made the decision I acted on it - immediately and irrevocably. 

Actually I did take it one more time after Dannon's last post. I must admit, I had really come to rely on the pills to get lucid. And even though the dreams were of low quality overall - unable to move in one, unable to see in another, always dreaming of trying to get to sleep or get lucid etc - the lucidity itself was powerful! It was thanks to the Lucid Dreamer that I was finally able to do reality checks in a dream, to feel my finger go through my palm, breathe through my pinched-shut nose, go right through a window. 

But it was a crutch. It was training wheels. They can help you reach places you aren't (currently) able to reach without them, but you come to rely on them too much and then they become a hindrance. Oh, and I forgot to mention... about an hour after taking it my heart rate got kind of funky... slow and irregular. That was too much, and thats really what decided me. 

So, after taking that last capsule (and not being able to get to sleep at all afterwards!   :Mad: ) - I took the water I had left in the cup beside my bed (which was intended for taking the Piracetam after waking up) and poured it into the bottle. 

H2O - essential for life; THE most abundant material on earth; and one of the most destructive known to man. Water erodes mountains - destroys houses - drowns people. And it's capable of rapidly and utterly destroying a bottle of capsules. I knew if I didn't destroy them I could always change my mind later... it's not hard to dig a sealed bottle out of the trash! And I was like a junkie or an alcoholic!   ::wino:: 

So I dissolved them into a sloppy green mass. Humorous note... you can see the paper envelope containing silica - supposed to safeguard the capsules against the destructive ravages of moisture.   :Cheeky: 

I've been feeling like absolute crap for a couple days now. Symptoms - pain in the abdomen, headache, and a general overall achiness. It COULD have been from the galantamine... or it could be from overdoing the Rapid Breath of Fire. I actually think it was the latter... because the abdominal pain felt more like a muscle strain than anything internal, but hard to be sure. 

Heh... I was really dreading shipment tonight at work! It's usually me and one other person putting up load after load of heavy stuff... but tonight little did I realize it would end up being me alone! Strangely though, after about 5 minutes of labor, I actually felt better! Weird. But not a bad thing! And now the achy headachy pain thing seems to have passed.

*SIGH* - ok, so now I've thrown away my crutches, and I find I've lost the edge I used to have. I need to get back in practice at being aware constantly of the dreamlike nature of reality, and the *real* nature of dreams. Reality checks, setting intent, mantras... all of it. Maybe I'll read ETWOLD again too... that always seems to help. 

Time to start taking my first shaky steps without the crutches...  :Rock out: 

Thank you to my friends... Dannon for pointing out the danger of Galantamine, and Juroara for jump-starting my dream journal recently and for all her support throughout!

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## Darkmatters

Dream
Lucid

*CARS CARS CARS*


No recall AT ALL from the night before last... last night I can only remember the last dream. I really need to get back to where I was recalling dreams from every REM period! 

I'm in a weird car... it seems like a large *toy car*, with a couple of people (don't know who they are). I think the car was big for a toy car and we were small enough to fit in it. The car was really *quick* and had a lot of *power*! We went zipping around through gravel and dirt doing donuts and figure 8s and having a blast! This was in the field at the end of my street at night. 

I remember another *car* being there... maybe we almost ran into it, or at least we were surprised to see it there for some reason. We talked briefly to the people in the other car, and I don't remember what was said, but it seems like we were making up a story about why we were there. It felt like lying to the police when you get caught drinking or something - a situation I haven't been in for many years!

I'm in a weird house with my *mom* and she asks me to go to the store and get some *candy bars*. I have to go up a really long flight of stairs to get to the front door, and when I step outside I notice I don't have any shoes on. I almost went like that, but it was cold so I went back in to get my shoes. Heh... I like the way I got down all those stairs... I put a foot up on each side against the baseboard and was able to just sliiiiiide down! I love strange methods of transportation in dreams! 

Now I'm driving *another toy car*... this one is faster and makes a wicked sound like a chainsaw. I'm controlling it with a *remote*. I seem to be in some kind of *desert race* with many other vehicles, all raising long clouds of dust as we progress across the rugged terrain. The coolest thing... there are rocks falling in slow motion all around us... like asteroids and boulders and showers of gravel all coming down in extreme slow motion. It was awesome... we had to take the falling rocks into consideration so while passing other drivers we don't get hit by any rocks. This was a fantastic dream image!! 

Then I'm driving a regular car on a highway near my house. In front of me is a *pink Trans Am* driving very erratically and very fast. I seem to know the person driving it. This seems to be a continuation of the desert race segment, and the strip malls just ahead are the first signs of civilization we've seen for days. The Trans Am suddenly swerves on screeching tires and crashes, but it seems like the driver did it on purpose just to spin the car around and park it in the left turn lane (!!)

As it's crashing/parking, a girl in an all pink outfit pops through the side of it (similar to the lady who popped out the side of a crashing car that sparked my 2nd lucid dream since joining DV...). She slides along the road for a second in a crouching position, looking at me like this is what she was trying to do. It looked really cool... like some kind of female superhero move from a movie! I park right behind her to protect her from oncoming traffic. It seems like we did this crazy move for a reason... we were going to film a scene for a movie right here or something, but I woke up before I found out what it was.

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## Darkmatters

Last night I ordered these books from Amazon:

The Mind At Night: The New Science Of How And Why We DreamThe Power of Silence: Further Lessons of don JuanThe Art of DreamingHow to Practice : The Way to a Meaningful LifeThe Heart of the Buddha's Teaching

This completes my Castaneda collection (I had already read Active Side of Infinity... heh, it's the last in the series and the first one I read!) and begins my reading in Buddhism. 

*I'm so glad I destroyed the Lucid Dreamer pills!!* I had actually been considering it already. I got exactly what I wanted out of them... just a little experimenting and some lucid experiences to show me what I'm shooting for that I can now work toward without the pills. I never intended to take them every time I had a day off (which is what ended up happening - and I even took them a couple of times on work days!   :Eek: ). So it needed to be done. They had served their purpose and had become a habit I needed to break. No regrets, no looking back. It was an act of impeccability.

Today I realized that, although I haven't made much progress yet in lucid dreaming, I've gotten a great deal of excellent information just from keeping my DJ and from participating on the forum and thinking so much about dreams. My main reason for being interested in lucidity is to try to get n closer contact with my subconscious in order to spark greater *creativity*. Specifically I want my films to become like little dreams. So often you see movies with a "dream sequence" that's nothing like a real dream, just dumb little conventions that have become accepted to mean "dream"... you know, the edges of the frame ripple, there's slow dreamy music, etc. I want mine to have a more authentic dreamlike feel to them. Some filmmakers and authors obviously have a great feel for dreams... like David Lynch and Lewis Carrol to name just two. These guys must have really delved deeply into their own dreams... I'll bet they both kept a DJ!  ::cheers:: 

I didn't realize how important just keeping track of the non-lucids can be. Today after waking up I for some reason thought about a couple of dreams I've recorded recently and had a bit of a revelation. I was thinking in particular about the dream I called a *wish-fulfillment dream*, which only takes on meaning when taken in context with the dream just before it because it commented ON that dream. This is also the structure for my *Endless Comedy of Sexual Frustration* dream, followed by another dream that elaborated on it and expanded on it. It made me think about this... *I could make a series of very brief films, some of which comment on other ones, and taken in context they take on more meaning than taken individually*. I had never considered making a series of short films that need to be taken in context like this before. I love this... actually getting ideas for the *structuring* of short animated films from the structures of dreams!

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## juroara

Wow! That's a lot of books! And I'm glad your off the pills too  :Cheeky: . I don't think we should be dependent on any supplement. We gotta learn the old fashioned way!

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## Darkmatters

Yeah, I'm a pretty voracious reader... I'll probably finish them all in a month or so!   ::lol:: 

Glad to be clean and sober too!   ::banana::

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## Darkmatters

Dream
Lucid

*EXCUSE ME*

I hate when this happens... I woke remembering an awesome dream that made me feel great... but I had about a half hour till my alarm went off and wouldn't you know... I fell back asleep and had a crappy dream that completely wiped the good one from my memory banks!!!   :Mad: 

I wake up to find my house has been converted into a gallery or museum during the night... all the doors removed and there are clusters of people standing here and there looking at pictures on the walls. There's one woman standing right in my bedroom - she's heavyset and wearing a brown fur coat with an elaborate piled-up hairdo. I can't believe she has the nerve to stand right there when she sees she's in my bedroom and I'm sleeping. 

I'm putting on a long-sleeved shirt but I can't open the cuff buttons and I have a really hard time squeezing my hands through the cuffs. I have to struggle with it for a long time but finally I get it on, then I see it's really dirty and I have to struggle again to get it off. The whole time the lady just keeps standing there silently looking at the picture on my wall. From time to time she turns her head to look at me, and when she does it's like her head is divided on a line right through the eyes... the top half of her head moves a split second later than the bottom half. It's really weird looking... like her head is made of rubber or jello or something... very unnerving! 

I finally get a different shirt on and get out of bed (not sure if I'm wearing any pants or not). She again turns and looks at me, so I say "Excuse me"... politely the first time. She doesn't respond at all, just keeps turning her head every few seconds to look from me to the picture back to me. I say it again, louder and less polite. Still no response. So I step right up and shout it into her ear: *"EXCUSE ME!!!"*  :split:

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## Dannon Oneironaut

Alright DM! Happy for you. Good decision. Impeccable! 

I like your cars dream, it reminds me of a video game. I make myself stay away from Amazon because I will end up going on a shopping spree. Never go to ebay or amazon if you are drunk! I learned the hard way. But I should start using amazon because I just end up at the bookstore paying full price for a book. I buy lots of books. 

It seems that since you pored the water in that bottle you have claimed your own power.

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## Darkmatters

Ha ha!! Yeah, I police myself pretty well on Amazon. I only allow myself to make one big purchase a month there (this was it!). I'll take the entire month choosing what it's gonna be, and usually after a few days I'll pull a few items out of the cart and pop em into the _Save for Later_ cart - and I usually end up never buying them. It's the only way I can beat the impulse buying bug.   ::lol::

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## Darkmatters

Dream
Lucid

*In the Palace of the Persian Prince*

I'm sitting on the roof of a bus (!!?) on a vast network of spiraling overpasses. An unidentified friend is sitting next to me. The bus is stopped in gridlocked traffic for the moment. 

Across a huge empty field we see somebody running toward us, miles away. The name Jesus of Suburbia pops into my mind, and for some reason I think it's him, trying to reach us. He disappears for a moment behind an overpass, and when he emerges into sight again he's much much closer... like almost on the edge of the highway, within about 60 feet of the bus... but now traffic starts moving and the bus takes off, leaving him behind. 

The bus takes me (now alone?) to a huge dark ruin of an old mansion out in the boondocks. I go inside to find the house empty and somewhat falling apart, but not moldering or anything... still pretty clean on the inside. I decide to stay here for a while... it's like I need a place to hide or something. 

I remember scenes of chasing someone... a girl who lives in the dark house. It's like we're playing hide and seek. She seems to be afraid to come out and talk to anyone, like she's been hiding in the darkness all her life. I don't mean her any harm, just want to talk to her about this house... it seems like I was drawn here for some reason and she's part of it. But she always eludes me. It was fun though... I remember lots of long sailing leaps up to balconies and crawling through ornate carved wooden ventilation shafts and into secret chambers that were designed into the house by its original inhabitant (who I somehow know was a prince. I now think of the house as a palace). 

Someone came in through the front door at some point, I think it was a doctor? Or someone with medicine I needed. But I was injured or hurt in some way I don't recall or didn't understand... I was huddled on a landing overlooking the huge entry foyer where he was and I was too weak or sick to even speak. After a while he seemed to be gone and I was crawling through the corridors looking for a room where I could curl up and heal. I thought there was one certain room - maybe it was the prince's room - that had the healing energy I needed, but I needed to find it in all the vast maziness of the huge sprawling palace. 

There was no electricity in the house, but I noticed a room with light in it. I went there... someone had laid out some fresh bedding and food... apparently for me. I vaguely remember seeing a very pale girl with long black hair that I somehow knew was Persian - it must have been the girl who stayed on in the house after the Prince's family left it vacant. She seemed too timid or frightened to be in the room while I was there but kept bringing me food. She seemed to be helping me to heal. 

I woke up and was remembering this dream, but I was really sleepy and at some point I was half asleep and still reciting the events of the dream, but now I was making parts up... embellishing on it and changing it. This is like the Endless Comedy of Sexual Frustration dream where I fell asleep and was 'remembering' it but at the same time changing it and it made me forget most of the original. Very annoying!! Fortunately in this case it only happened for a second or two and I snapped out of it and realized what was happening, so I wrote this one down before I could lose any more of it.
*The Scene of the Crime*

It's night and I'm walking around on alleys, come to some kind of convenient store or mini-mart. I walk in but there's nobody there, and there's a long box laying in the middle of the store... the proportions of it are coffin-like. I touch the box, but get a flash image of a screaming face and I decide not to open it, step back instead. 

Now EMTs rush in and a couple of them kneel next to the box and open it. Inside is a guy on a stretcher... it seems to be some new kind of protective measures they're taking when people are really injured and need to be protected. The victim is wearing a neck brace and his face is the one I saw in my flash vision... he looks like he's screaming but there's no sound. 

Now in walks the detective. It's Louis Gossett Jr. He has a look of intense concentration on his face and he's holding a pocket knife (weapon used in the robbery attempt?) against his forehead. The way he's holding it it looks like sunglasses that he's holding over his 3rd eye. His regular eyes are tightly closed and he's muttering to himself... something about "I'm going to find you wherever you are..."
*Music*

I'm playing a guitar. Only 1 chord... I think it's a G (if I remember right... been a long time and I was never very good). I"m holding the chord and sliding it up and down the neck of the guitar. At first I'm only strumming rather clumsily, but once I find the right frets to stop on and get somewhat of a plodding melody going then I switch to finger picking. I did used to play like this, but never got very good at it... in fact I used to play a song exactly like this that I invented... a single chord slid up and down the neck while finger picking. 

But suddenly a powerful inspiration overtakes me and my playing gets incredible!

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## Dannon Oneironaut

Don't you wish you could record the music in your dreams? I wish I could hear your song. I LOVE to make music in dreams. Did you know that Paul McCartney heard "Yesterday" in a dream and to this day he isn't sure if he really wrote it or not?

The aborigines of Australia believe that when you dream of a song or make a piece of artwork from a dream that you are actually channeling the ancestors' dreams. These songs become sacred creation songs that they believe created the world.  I WISH I could've heard it! I usually remember how to play the songs I make in my dreams, my problem is that they don't sound all that spectacular or special in waking life.

"Excuse Me!" makes me laugh. It is a funny mental image. You might like to send that dream to this artist who makes comic strips of other people's dreams: http://www.slowwave.com/

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## Darkmatters

Dannon... to be honest, I woke from  that dream thinking the inspiration had come, not from the ancients, but from YOU!! I immediately thought of your dream of making music recently, and I thought I was channelling your talent. 

Yeah, I had heard that about Sir Paul dreaming up Yesterday. Awesome!! 

Oh, another reason I might have dreamed of sudden inspiration making me into a better artist... over the last few days I've been getting ideas and inspiration for the film I'm working on (which has sat untouched pretty much since the beginning of the year when I turned my attention to lucid dreaming and this site). Last night it all came together and I suddenly understood exactly how I need to make this film!! Part of the inspiration comes from my dreams. 

IN fact that's the main reason I wanted to learn to lucid dream... get in closer contact with the subconscious and get inspiration from it. But the inspiration has come... not from lucidity, but from just closely studying my dreams themselves - the regular ones mostly. 

Anyway, it looks like I"ll finally get back to work on this beast that has almost killed my creativity and become a tremendous albatross around my neck - and hopefully I'll be able to make it into a decent film after all!

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## Dannon Oneironaut

That reminds me to check out your youtube channel. I went to check it out the other day but I have wireless and something was wrong with my connection and youtube. Someday you should tell me more about these films.

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## Darkmatters

LOL well so far basically everything I've done is just practice - hard to call any of them films... except maybe Terror in the Pumpkin Patch. Man, I need to get a bigger version of that uploaded to YouTube or something... it's so small! 

The only other one that's somewhat of a story would be One Good Yank - which is really just me trying to learn about mime principles... telling a story through nothing but body movement. I call that one a microfilm. 

A stop motion animator is essentially an entire film production crew and cast... you have to be the writer, director, producer, the whole carpentry crew, set decorator, you do costumes hair and makeup (well... in fact you have to *make* all your actors!) - you have to *BE* all the actors... and do your own sound, effects, and editing. 

Just learning to be a good animator takes years... and so does learning to write a decent story and how to move the camera effectively etc. I've been putting in the effort in all that. So everything I've done so far has been preparatory. This will be my first "real" film, and it's going to be real short and sweet. Well short definitely, I HOPE it ends up sweet! 

So everything you see on those links is practice at making puppets and moving them.

Here are the links for anyone else who wants to see them... I just realized I had only posted them on your DJ: 

My Darkmatters blog

My YouTube channel

My website Darkstrider.net 
That link goes to the page with some of my older animation on it... I also have pages with lots of great work by European stopmo animators plus a Gallery with puppets I've made and drawings/paintings I've done.

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## sleepyzac

> *Blind!*
> Dream
> Lucid
> 
> 
> Took Lucid Dreamer supplement last night along with a full 500mg capsule of B-5. This is the 3rd time I've taken the supplements, but my other 2 tries were unsuccessful, I believe because I was also taking megadoses of Piracetam to begin the daily regimen of it for cognitive/memory development. Yesterday I didn't take any Piracetam, just to see if it would change my chances of getting lucid. 
> 
> I took the supplements after 4.5 hrs sleep during about a 20 minute WBTB, then I counted myself back to sleep. Got to a hundred and stopped counting because I seemed quite relaxed and close to sleep. Occasionally during the count I'd stop and repeat "I AM dreaming!" - feeling the excitement of being lucid and imagining myself dong RCs. 
> 
> ...



nice! i love the winter wear, hilarious! and the darkness thing is odd, tough though because what you think is what you get so if you think it's dark and get stuck thinking like that it's hard to change. i've had similar issues before with problems that one should be able to change in a dream but never this particular one. although when i took that stuff i was in dark tunnels so maybe it's got something to do with it? no now that i think about it there were definitely plenty of parts in well lit areas... who knows, maybe you have a point about your brain linking with the outside world and since it was dark when you went to sleep...

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## sleepyzac

> 03-19-10*Paralyzed*
> Dream 
> Lucid
> 
> 
> I've decided only to post my lucids and certain non-lucids here... just the ones I deem worthwhile. I don't like the idea of opening up my interior world for public inspection. 
> 
> Note... I had my 1st lucid (since joining DV anyway) in january, and 2 in february. I was hoping for 3 in march, but didn't get ANY until the 19th (this one). I was quite disappointed not to be getting increasing numbers of lucids, but lo and behold.. suddenly on the last day of march I have 2 more!! Details in the next post on them. So Im right on track then... 3 lucids in march. Woo. Ok, on to the 4th lucid:
> 
> ...



crazyness! at least the non-moving section didn't last! i like the visual aid for the haunted wal mart ha ha.

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## Darkmatters

Hey Zac! 

I suspect I was getting strong real-world signals because I took 2 of the Lucid Dreamer capsules. According to a thread on the board that's too much for some people, and that's exactly what it will do... make you overly aware of things like the position of your sleeping body, the fact that your eyes are closed - and I'm guessing in my case even the feeling of cloth against my body. 

I wish I would have just popped right out through the window and went flying... who cares if I could see or not?   ::lol::

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## sleepyzac

> Hey Zac! 
> 
> I suspect I was getting strong real-world signals because I took 2 of the Lucid Dreamer capsules. According to a thread on the board that's too much for some people, and that's exactly what it will do... make you overly aware of things like the position of your sleeping body, the fact that your eyes are closed - and I'm guessing in my case even the feeling of cloth against my body. 
> 
> I wish I would have just popped right out through the window and went flying... who cares if I could see or not?



oh ok, good to know! thanx.

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## Dannon Oneironaut

Nice videos. Can't wait for the feature length film!

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