The Labrynth of the Mind

Well, well, well, I figured out my old password! I thought I might never get back in, not knowing how to access the old email account I used when I signed up here.

Turns out, you aren't supposed to make alt accounts for any reason, so I guess I'll be banned for a while (I turned myself in to the authorities). But I feel like I've gone back in time now. My old dream journal and everything!

Trying to get back into the groove of dreaming. A few interesting patterns I have seen lately:

(1) Secret rooms and passages at my Grandfather's old house...maybe related to the fact that when I was little and spent time there, I was fascinated by secret passages and would try to find them. But why dream about them specifically in recent years?

(2) The character Servalan, from the British sci-fi show Blakes 7, still seems to show up from time to time. I watched that show a couple of years ago - she seems quite persistent. But I also watched the show in my old apartment and while I was still in school, and there may be some memory associations there.

(3) There seems to be something related to an underwater place, or people that live underwater. Rather intriguing.

Another FA Lucid

I wake up, and go to use the bathroom. While I am in the bathroom, I am thinking about a family member who has been having some vision issues going on lately when waking up in the morning. I look at the medicine cabinet above the sink, and realize that I seem to be having problems seeing as well. I can't see the medicine cabinet, and the towels which hang on the back of the door seem to be above the sink. I look again, but things still don't look normal.

I do a nose pinch RC and discover that I can still breathe and am dreaming.

I think of what I ought to do, and consider doing something like eat the doorknob (lately I have been having weird ideas of what is fun in LD's). I suck on the doorknob, and then decide to leave the bathroom. I open the door, and see a big microwave hanging on the wall. About this time I wake up.

Archaeology in Caves

I am on a trip somewhere. We are walking around a pond. The pond seems small, but after walking around a good way along a path that encircles it, I realize that it is bigger than it looks.

There is a man in the middle of the water of this little inlet, doing something with animals. I think he is catching crocodiles, or something. I hop on some rocks out to where he is, and the rocks become some kind of a wooden platform high in the air. At the end of the platform, I find that the man has become some kind of a professor of archaeology, and the platform is at the entrance into some deep caves.

I don't remember all the details of this dream, which is too bad because the dream was rather neat. I go into the caves in search of some interesting artifact, and by the end of the dream I am involved in some intrigue and on a train trip.

Cath Lab

I am at work (the hospital) refilling the Pyxis medication dispensing machines. I have to refill the Pyxis in the heart cath lab. This pyxis seems to be located in an Aperture Science type place, with long corridors and chambers. I go down one corridor to fill one pyxis, and start to realize how isolated I am. It also becomes kind of creepy, because I think I see a body laying on a table in one of the cath labs. For some reason, I feel that this may end up being a threat.

There is more to this dream, but my recall isn't so good lately. My own fault, since I haven't been working on dreams so much recently.

Swimming in the Stars

I am exploring some big building. I think my brother has an office in this building. Apparently, the place is being remodeled, because everything is torn up and looks kind of delapidated. I think that this is a bit odd, because ordinarily the building seems modern. I do a nose pinch reality check just in case.

At first, I seem to be unable to breathe, but after I try a bit longer I find that I actually can. I realize that I am dreaming. I immediately forget about the plot of the dream, and decide to jump out the window. The window is closed, and I smash through the glass. Kind of fun. I try to fly, but lately I have been overthinking "how" to fly, instead of just doing it like I used to do. I glide down to the street below. I appear to be in a city, much like that of the dream/computer game I am building. I look up into the sky, and the tops of the buildings, and realize that all I need to do in order to fly is to just let myself float. I bounce up a bit, and look above me.

I see the stars in the sky, and feel the same urge I had in the last LD to fly into the stars. It is like a big pool in the sky, inviting me. This time, I fly upwards, into the night sky. Instead of flying any particular direction, I just go up. This part is a bit hard to explain, but I realize that I can float in the sky, almost like I am in orbit in space. I can see the city below me, a lovely skyling against the sky. There is just a little bit of color in the sky, as though the sun had set a while ago. I let myself just drift in this state, which is almost like I would imagine someone high on drugs would be. I find a beautiful, peaceful, almost euphoric feeling in doing absolutely nothing except float like this. The world appears to float below me like the Earth turning beneath an astronaut, and I watch, wrapped up in this feeling. It's like another world in and of itself.

Distracted Lucidity

I wake up, and realize that I am dreaming. I do a nose pinch RC to be sure, and I can breathe. I walk out into the sunroom, and think about what I should do. I think about visiting the first part of my latest dream/computer game, and I may or may not do so. If I do, I find myself in the white room in which it begins. Or I may still be in the sunroom. Anyway, I decide to leave the room by breaking through the window. I am a little surprised at how easily I do this, and I find myself outside on a starry night. I know I ought to do a bit of work on testing my game, but I get distracted looking up into the night sky. There is something almost irresistable about the expanse of stars, and I have an urge to fly into space. I spend the rest of the dream trying to do this. At one point, I think maybe I should fly closer to the ground, remembering that in other LD's this helped to stabilize things.

Challenge Course Level 1

I wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Since it is the middle of the night, I think it is probably a good idea to do a reality check. I plug my nose, and find that I can still breathe. I pinch my nose harder to be sure, but since I can still breathe I realize that I am dreaming.

I look at myself in the mirror for some reason (I don't exactly remember what the mirror had to do with it) then I go out into the sunroom. It is now daytime, and I think of what I should do. First, I try to summon monsters to fight, but nothing happens. I try this once or twice with no luck, and then walk into the kitchen. I remember the challenge course, and realize that this is a great opportunity to try it. I try to create the first chamber around me, and end up using a technique of walking out of the kitchen into the pantry, but with the idea that the next room will be the first chamber of the course. At the same time, I seem to be a little outside of the dream, because I can imagine my surroundings a bit more freely (at the cost of some vividness of the dream).

I find myself in the chamber, but already standing on the ledge that is supposed to be high up above me. The chamber is like a large cavern, possibly with water and plants but at least very much like a cave in nature. Across the cave from me on the wall is the door to the next chamber. It it smallish, and square, more like a large window. It is also higher up on the wall than I imagined, and already opened. Around here I either wake up or lose lucidity.

Boats and Computers

I am driving somewhere at night. I have to park my car some distance from where I am staying, and walk along a partially wooded path. I start down the path, but then I realize that I could just as easily be driving my car down this dark path. I turn around and head back to the car, just making it as I hear some voices nearby...

...Somehow I find myself on a boat, in some marshy area. There are places where there is open water, and I am discussing how the boat is built so that one can use it even in the shallow, overgrown areas. In one area I stop to fish...

...Somehow I find myself in a store, and my father is looking at computers. He either wants to buy one, or wants to find a good video game to play. This becomes more involved, but I don't remember all of the details.

All I took was some melatonin. This is the kind of thing I dream after taking valerian.

You Monster

I am dangling on some contraption above a platform. I am able to control it, like an elevator. I get uneasy, and lower the thing a bit, because it is swinging back and forth. I am able to get to a point where I can drop onto the platform...

... I have a wife or a girlfriend. I am walking through the living room of my grandparents' house. As I walk by a corner, I see a box in which I know my wife/girlfriend is. One of her legs is sticking out, at a weird position. She crawls out. Earlier, she was beautiful and intelligent. Now she is horribly twisted, and acts like an animal. She has been mutated into a disgusting creature, and I may be as well. We crawl along the floor, on our way to do something. I forget what. I decide I like her even though she is disgusting now, and try to hug and kiss her. Her mouth is gaping and ugly, and she kind of writhes as I hold her.

We crawl out into the sunroom, where my grandfather is sitting. The girl makes eye contact with him, and stares. As she stares at him, she straightens up and looks normal. She tells me that looking into his eyes is curing her.

"Does this affect you at all?" I ask my grandfather.

"It doesn't seem to," he starts to say, but then changes his mind. "Yes, I think it's starting to drain me."

As I look, he begins to lose the life in his eyes, and his speech becomes dull. His eyes change from blue to a weird brownish, lifeless color, like my girlfriend's.

"How do I look?" he asks me. I decide to try some humor.

"You have fangs," I say in a poor attempt at humor. He doesn't look good, and my girlfriend is starting to degenerate.

Fortunately, I wake up here.

Eating things

There is more to this dream, but I'm having a bit of trouble remembering it.

Anyway, I am either at my brother's house or on vacation. We are going to eat, and I start eating roofing shingles (or something like that. It may have been tarpaper.) I stuff a few of them in my mouth, chew them and swallow. They taste awful, but I'm hungry and somehow I either don't think there will be anything else to eat or I'm enjoying it in some way. Then I move on to cardboard. I eat a lot of this.

Then my family shows up with some real food. I think that perhaps the roofing material and cardboard might actually make me sick, so I decide to dilute the junk in my stomach with real food.

I forgot a lot of my dreams from last night. I'm starting to get lazy about jounrnalling I'm afraid. Anyway, here's what I remember. I think it was lucid, but even then I'm not 100 sure.

Lucid Jumping

I am standing on top of a tall building, when I apparently become lucid. I look at the long distance down, and decide to jump off and fly. I dive off the building gracefully, and swoop up into the air. I fall towards the ground, I think I am intending to dive down and swoop up at the last minute. But then I become curious about what would happen if I hit the ground while I am dreaming. Since it's a dream, I know I can't get hurt.

When I hit the ground, I apparently bounce up into the air. I fly up backwards and drift to my right, towards some pillars of the building. These look painful, but when I hit them I just pass right through them as though they were a hologram.

Adventure

I am on a flying object with my brother. Apparently, I have won a trip for two on this flying object, whatever it is. I decided to take my brother along. It seems to be a huge structure, thousands of feet high, with a flat platform at the top and two legs stretching to the ground below. As it glides, the legs pass through wooded hillsides. I wonder about the possibility of the legs breaking the trees, or something.

I seem to know that I am dreaming without becoming lucid. I am able to change the arrangement of the structure's platform by thinking about it, and try to arrange things so that we have a good view of the landscape below us. We walk towards the middle of the platform, where there is a large opening. I try to widen the opening so we have a nice view, but seem to have difficulty doing so. I move half of the floor up at an angle, but we still don't get a great view.

At some point, we end up on the ground in the woods. It seems that this is our destination. Now there are a few of us travelling, and it is getting dark. We can hear things in the trees around us, and a large creature moves above. The creature swoops down a few yards off to the left from us, and I see that it is a prehistoric "Terror Bird". In reality, Terror Birds were flightless, while in my dream this one had huge wings and flew rather well. It was a pretty bird, although somewhat menacing. It also appeared to have human characteristics, and possibly a face. I theorize that this creature is the origin of the Moth Man sightings, although my scientific explanation for the apparition doesn't lessen our danger any. The bird is a predator, and doesn't look very friendly at the moment.

We decide to seek shelter. I duck behind a tree, thinking that perhaps this will make it more difficult for the bird to swoop down at me. Someone decides to light a fire to frighten the bird away. I seem to recall this working, at any rate the bird leaves us alone...

...I have a fuzzy recollection of a train that I need to get on. There is disaster coming, and the train is like Noah's Ark. People are flooding to get on it, but some people who look religious/important are deciding who gets on and who doesn't. The people who can't get on run away very fast, and I have a feeling that despite the urgency of the important looking people they may still be able to save themselves. As things progress, it turns out that the important Pharisees are actually some sort of scam, and the train won't save anyone. In fact, it may be the opposite...

...It seemed like this dream went on for hours. After much travelling, we end up "home" in something like an office building of my old college (which I dream about sometimes) and the hospital I now work in. I am making rounds of some sort, seeing people who were part of the big adventure. We are all exhausted, perhaps some of us are injured, and we have lost everything. It seems like a not so good ending to such an experience, although we are happy to be alive. I and my wife (? I'm not married in RL) have lost our money, and our farm (?). We had hoped to have some kind of a return on our investment through this trip, but now we have nothing. But a letter comes through the mail. It turns out that back in the woods I had a theory that there was lots of gold. It turns out that there was, just where I said. Someone has stumbled across it in the very spot where we were dealing with the Terror Bird. That somehow makes our journey a success.

Happily, the man is friend or family, and is going to share his white gold (which looks like cottage cheese) with us. We will have all the money we need now.

Phlebotomy Phragment

I am in the hospital. I am apparently supposed to either give someone a vaccination or draw blood from them. Heading towards the patient's room, I realize that I have never done this before. The phlebotomist that I am with assures me that it is easy to do, and that people are tougher than I think. Even though my hands are shaky, they won't care if I shake the needle around during the procedure.

After having been waking up at 3:45am for about a week, I am back on the afternoon shift at work and am sleeping in. As a consequence, I am having a lot of dreams. Now I have to try and recall them, but they are kind of weird.

Mirror (Lucid)

I am in a restroom. Finally, my habit of doing a RC every time I enter a restroom in waking life carries over to my dreams, and I do a nose pinch. I can still breathe. I double check by looking at my reflection in the mirror, which looks odd (a bit like a charachter I created for myself on Wii). I'm dreaming.

I climb onto the sink, repeating to myself "am I dreaming?" or "is this a dream?" to keep the question in my mind. The dream doesn't seem as unstable as others in the past, but it isn't very vivid. I think about flying, but a strange thing happens. I have been reading advice to lucid dreamers about how to fly in lucid dreams. It seems that others have a problem with this. Until now, I never thought about it but just did it when I wanted to. But now a doubt was created in my mind about whether or not it was easy to fly. Overanalysis seemed to interfere with me, and I had difficulty in flying.

Part of the problem was likely due to the ceiling though, because I had a hard time getting through. Anyway, I wake up somewhere along the way.

Caves, chasing, anxiety stuff

I am driving somewhere down a dark winding road. At one point, someone jumped out in front of me and I killed him. But I kept on going because since I wasn't responsible never having seen him coming. Later I go back to the area for some reason. It may have been to buy a Christmas tree, but I am kind of fuzzy on what was going on here. There was a whole part of this dream that had significance that I can't remember.

Anyway, we end up going into a huge building/cave thing. In this building there is a killer or monster or something, and much shooting and running. My brother (?) and I are trying to escape. I wish I could remember more, because this journal is not doing the dream justice. These things are just vague impressions that might not be the actual dream plot.

Superman (fragment)

I am in front of a mirror again. I put on some glasses that I find, and I like how I look with them on. I look again and I seem to look a lot like Christopher Reeves as Superman (or rather as Clark Kent). My face is stretched though, and I find that I can distort it with my fingers.

Mars

I am getting out of a car, going towards a school. I am talking with someone about Christmas stocking candy. I think there is significance in what we are saying, and there may possibly have been a big voice in the sky saying "stocking candy". I have the impression of something like that although I can't quite remember.

We go into the school, which turns out to be my old high school. We are getting ready to go on a field trip to the planet Mars. I decide to go to the library and find a book about Mars, preferably a science fiction story by Edgar Rice Burroughs (who wrote several series of science fiction stories that partially inspired Star Wars). The librarian shows me a small cart of books, which seems to be the only books that one can check out. There are lots of books on the other book shelves, but we don't seem to be able to check out those.

I walk down the aisles, which turn into the aisles of some store. There is shiny tinsle on some of the shelves, and other Christmas like things. As I continue walking, I find myself outside, following a small creek. I am in a kayak on the creek. As I paddle, the creek widens out. It looks familiar in a way, and I realize it is the upper end of a small river that runs into a nearby lake. I have a feeling that there may be a waterfall up ahead, so I decide to beach my kayak and get out. I get out of the current, and look back the way I was headed. Sure enough, there is a large waterfall ahead. It is rather scary to look at, considering how close I was to it. I quickly pull myself to shore by a kind of plastic lining to the creek. I start to walk back to where I started, knowing that it will likely be a long walk. But it's better than getting killed.

Missed Class

I go into a college office for some reason or other. I come across a professor that was teaching a class that I was going to take this past semester, but ended up not needing. In the end, I forgot to drop the class. It didn't count against me, but I feel bad because I think it caused my professor more work. I tell her I am sorry, and offer to make it up to her by doing some work.

She (in real life one of my new coworkers) thinks a bit, obviously hurt by me not telling her I was quitting the class. "I could pay you for the work..." she mumbles. Clearly she wants me to do something but also feels bad about making me do too much. She goes behind some structure to think about it. I wait for a while, but start to get annoyed because she is taking so long. And besides, I start to think that I didn't do anything really bad. Maybe I was too hasty in offering to work. I decide that if she doesn't say something in a few minutes I will just leave.

Caramel Man

I am talking to a vending machine, or watching cartoon logo people for candy, or something of the sort. It's a bit hard to explain. There is a caramel candy, which is also a guy, or maybe it's the logo of the caramel candy brand. Anyway, the caramel guy is eating a chocolate bar that has caramel in it. The other candies think that this is disgusting, and is a lot like cannibalsim. Anyway, caramel guy eventually falls into a huge flow of caramel, which the other candies think is dangerous to him. But, someone points out, to Caramel Man caramel is like kryptonite. Instead of being completely lost in the caramel, just the tips of his hands are burned and the caramel dissolves around him.

I wake up from this dream laying on my stomach with my arms outstretched partly thinking I am flying like the superhero Caramel Man. In a half conscious state, I try to do a DEILD, with the following result:

As I lay there watching the dream form around me, I find myself in my workplace (a hospital). But I'm not very lucid. However, for some reason I am dreaming that I know I am not lucid without actually being lucid. I call out to some nurses standing around to help me get lucid. But things get out of control completely. An older female doctor comes along. She is apparently attracted to me. She says something kind of obscene, which is some kind of a really stupid pick up line. Then she does something disgusting which I would rather not write here, and I wake up.

New Comics

This dream is interesting, because it involves a dreamsign that I never think about until I have it. It is not one of my more common dreamsigns, but sometimes it pops up and occurs multiple times in a series of nights. We'll see what happens with this in the nights to come.

I am reading a Calvin and Hobbes comic book. It is also Peanuts and Garfield, I think. Or else it is a comic that is niether of these but similar in some way. As in all of these kinds of dreams, I flip through the book and find comics I have never read before. They are darkly shaded, as always, and at least in past dreams often have some kind of dark depressing subject matter. But I believe that last night the subject matter wasn't quite as dreary looking. Either way, I am still delighted to find Calvin and Hobbes comics that I have never read.