non-lucid

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

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

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

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

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

5.30.21

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

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

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

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

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

This is maybe weird enough to wake me up.

20.5.21

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

14.7.20

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

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

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

16.5.20

In the earliest part of the dream I can remember well, I’m with a group of people from work. We’re in a house rather than an office, a mostly empty one that’s not in the best condition and which strikes me as reminiscent of somewhere in the past (it's not a vague memory in the dream – rather, my waking self can’t pin it down to anywhere familiar). There’s something in the way everything is happening that suggests we’re maintaining order in the midst of a chaotic situation and extemporizing as necessary. Some disaster has struck the world – although it seems less like this is the aftermath than that it was so bad that what remained of humanity actually had to flee to some sort of parallel dimension.

Kate, the director, tells us we should all go outside to see something. Stepping out of the house, I can see what looks like a large town square across the street, round-ish in shape, possibly cobbled. Above the old-fashioned buildings on the opposite side, the sky is turning pink and purple in a certain area. In the middle of it, a black spot appears, clearly visible against the light. I recognize it, as does everybody there: this was what happened before, the thing that came and destroyed the world.

But something is different this time: instead of appearing large and far away, the spot now seems to be quite close, in the square itself. Somehow, I know that I can make things turn out differently this time around. I run towards it, the others not far behind.

The dark sphere is floating there, too high to jump for but close to a flagpole on the far side. I scale it. The flag, which is dark blue, isn’t flying – rather, it seems to be tied to the pole, and (on later reflection) entirely too large for it. The thing actually looks more like a mast than a flagpole. But I manage to make it up with no trouble until I'm level with the sphere. It’s very small now, smaller than a cotton ball. I reach out and grab it, enclosing it in my hand.

The moment I touch it, it changes, becoming material, taking on a definite shape. It has become a key on a keyring.

I know what to do now: the keyhole can’t be too far away. I actually find it on the way back down, on the base of the pole. I put it in and turn, and keep turning. And as I do, something is happening to the building closest to the pole: the whole façade is unfolding, revealing a large airplane inside. It looks like a typical jet, but in the dream, it strikes me like something out of another era, concealed here for who knows how long.

A dirty, light brown liquid is pooled near the nose. An inner voice that seems to belong to the plane itself tells me that it needs an oil change. I think that it probably needs rather more than that, considering how long it’s been here. But I’m aware that this situation is out of my hands now. It will be others who fix it up and who make use of it somehow to avert disaster. I’ve done what I can.

10.5.20

I seem to be visiting my parents, who live on an island. I’m busy for most of the day cleaning out a cabinet or wardrobe. In only another hour or so, there are going to be guests over for dinner.

We’re out of the house now for some reason. Mother is concerned that I’ve been exerting myself so much, and I should drink some water. I’m not particularly thirsty but say I will. My father and I go off to a sort of convenience store-like shop nearby to buy a bottle, but the water is very expensive – almost 10 dollars for a water bottle (though I can’t swear it wasn't some other currency). That’s right, I remember – there isn’t any fresh water on the island, so it all has to be shipped here, and that makes it so expensive. My father asks if it’s OK if I don’t get the water, and I say I’m fine with it. Again, I don’t particularly care either way – I just want to keep them happy.

Not long after that, I step onto what unexpectedly turns out to be an elevator – a floating glass elevator, à la Willy Wonka. It rises up and flies partway across the island to a large building, then down several stories into its basement. I briefly see the various underground floors on the way down. I consider getting off and heading back – I don’t want to be late for dinner – but rumor has it that the headquarters of the secret police is on one of those floors, and I have a history with them. Just walking through their headquarters would be asking for trouble.

So I wait as some other people get on the elevator and it continues to the third major hub on the island – it isn’t very large, and so there are only the three. This one is on the other end, farther away – a place I’ve never been before. The elevator flies over lawns dotted with groves of trees. It’s dusk now, and we approach and pass a blue light – some sort of decorative sculpture marking the approach. This whole area is like an estate, or a place that was one at some previous time.

Once we’re there, I get off. There’s a tower there – perhaps I have to climb down the side to get to the ground, but one way or another, I wind up climbing on it. It’s a fairly small building, though tall, made of square, grey stones, each of which has a shape cut through it large enough to make a foothold or handhold – circles, squares, stars, etc. Each stone is also marked with two sets of letters, one a capital letter, the others one or more lowercase ones. As I grab hold of one hollow stone, I feel a switch flip on the inside edge, causing the opening to light up. The whole thing is a giant cipher key, I realize. I don’t have any messages in need of decoding – but if I happen to find any, I now know exactly where to bring them.

I climb around for a bit, playing around with it to make sure I know how it works. But once I’m back on the ground, a woman starts yelling at me for climbing on the tower. Guess I wasn’t supposed to be doing that. I stay calm. What she’s saying doesn’t make much sense – really not a coherent accusation against me at all, just anger. I ask a couple reasonable questions. She answers, still in an angry tone. But then, having lost her momentum, the absurdity of it seems to dawn on her, and she starts laughing. I laugh, too. It seems like everything is OK now.

12.2.20

I have arrived in a green area shaded by trees. It seems that I’m traveling somewhere, and this is a stop along the way. The dream doesn’t make it explicit, but this seems to be the Czech countryside in the early 20th century – more or less.

Gradually, other people arrive. I converse with a woman there as we wait. A couple large dogs arrive as well and are running around getting in people’s way. I order them to sit, figuring that they’ve just run here ahead of their masters, who won’t be far behind. They obey. One of them lies down, then rolls over on its back, obviously looking to get pet.

The car arrives – a distinctly old-fashioned one. (Although there is some uncertainty there, as if the dream can’t quite decide on what sort of vehicle it should be. They all tend to be more or less interchangeable in my dreams.) There isn’t enough room in the car for everybody, but since I was there first, I get to be on its first trip. The woman I was talking to has to wait for its next one.

I look around as we ride. The man next to me in the backseat is choosing the music that plays in the car via something rather like a touch-screen tablet framed in brown leather – much more aesthetic than the modern ones, I think to myself. Out the window, I see a turquoise river pouring over an oddly shaped stone formation into a lake – a place I’ve seen pictures of before but never visited. I turn around to continue to look through the back window as we drive by.

I’m aware, as I look around, that in the not-so-distant future this area will be devastated by war. It adds a poignancy to being here in this beautiful place.

The train – sure enough, it’s decided it would rather be a train now – approaches a platform, stopping under a curved wooden roof from which flowering vines hang down. An invasive species, I note. Parasitic to boot. But quite pretty, and so you can understand why people let it grow like this. In the future, there will be more of a push against it – but not so much here as in other places. A brief image comes to me of the future, of its yellow flowers filled with ash.

It now seems as if the woman from before is on the train too, and along with another passenger, we continue our conversation.

When I woke up, I remembered the following melody:




I don’t think it was actually playing during any part of the dream – my impression is that it was connected to it somehow but happening on a different level of awareness. I find it rather odd that it’s in C# major since that’s not a key I ordinarily have much to do with. Maybe I waited too long before transcribing it and my pitch memory was off? Or maybe it was just in C# major.

-31/1/20

I had a couple dreams with music in them last night, and was able to transcribe some of it. I had forgotten almost all of the dreams themselves by the time I'd finished, but here's what I have:



And, from a later awakening:



Couple interesting things about these: first, that they're both in D major, which is the scale I've been practicing speedwork on for the past three weeks or so. I don't have perfect pitch, so this suggests some kind of residual pitch memory at work.

Also, they both seem familiar, particularly the second. I want to say it's from a rock song? But it's hard to tell whether music in dreams only seems familiar the way things in general seem familiar in dreams or because I've actually heard it before.

I’m on a trip with my parents and an unfamiliar young man. We were all supposed to go to a casino—and they did actually go. But I didn’t care much for that plan, and so I’ve been off doing something else and only arrived back at the hotel room in time for their last trip there, late on the final evening.

I have the impression that this is a place they’re familiar with, but this will be my first time there. I’ve been told not to bring my purse with me for whatever reason, but I don’t like going around without writing materials on hand, and so I say that I’ll just take my wallet out before I go. But it seems my parents are so eager to get back that, rather than waiting the couple of minutes this will take, they go on without me, leaving the young man to drive us there.

Outside, it’s raining hard, and has been for a while, judging by all the standing water in the streets. As we go on, it only gets deeper, until the car, which is a fairly low one, starts having trouble moving forward. Some light on the dashboard has come on. He curses at the car—and quite probably my parents, who would have had no trouble handling this in theirs. I suggest that we just pull off the road onto higher ground, as some other cars seem to be doing, and walk the rest of the way there. It isn’t very far. He agrees to it.

The next part I remember clearly is being inside the casino, in a large room with a grand staircase, crowded with fancily dressed people. On the upper floor, near a restaurant area, I meet up with my parents again. It’s sort of like a buffet, with tables in a horseshoe shape, each one with an attendant behind them, offering samples of various kinds of foods to the guests. Mother is going to get a chocolate milkshake—apparently, a favorite of hers there—but my father isn’t interested. The idea doesn’t appeal much to me either, and anyways, this is all new to me: I want to try things out before I order anything.

He heads off somewhere else. I get some kind of a soup, and then head over to where they’re serving white wine. I try the sample they have there, which is pretty good—but they have all kinds of interesting drinks here, and this would be a good chance to try things I wouldn’t necessarily want a full glass of. And my mother is trying to get my attention from across the room, so I leave the table without ordering anything and head over in her direction.

Then, suddenly, I feel a spray of cold water—and the people around me do as well, judging by how they’re crying out. It seems someone is spraying people with a hose. I move out of the way, wondering what that was about. Maybe the casino staff themselves are responsible. The whole reason this place exists is to take money from people, after all—I think it’s best not to lose sight of that—and it wouldn’t surprise me at all for one to start charging people to keep things going nicely, once they’ve got them used to it.

Once out of range, I pause and kneel down to make sure the cat is still with me. He is indeed still there and comes to get pet. He’s an orange cat, an adult, though on the small side, and has been here with me this whole time. So far, nobody has noticed him—or else they just don’t care. But it’s still a little dangerous for him to be here with me, and so I’ve been making sure he stays close, waiting until I feel him against the back of my ankles before moving on.

11.5.19

It’s sometimes disappointing to wake up with only fragmented memories of dreams—but sometimes, trying to image what the context might have been is almost worth it.

In the beginning of the dream, I’m walking into a building. Many people are already there—it seems like some event is taking place, possibly multiple events. A couple men are entering at the same time as I am. One of them seems to be able to see me—although he doesn’t say anything to me—and the other doesn’t. I’m keeping track of the people who are able to see me since I’m really not supposed to be here, and I’m trying to keep a low profile.

The space I’m entering is basically a circular building with a separate central area, although the specifics kept changing throughout the dream. The first area I walk through, going clockwise, seems to be a restaurant. I pass people sitting at tables, including one that’s occupied by dreadlocked guys dressed in Jamaican colors who seem to be having a lot of fun.

[Note: today, the day after the dream, I was given a story to work on about reggae becoming a UNESCO intangible cultural heritage—so maybe that’s what they were so happy about.]

There was a lot that happened after that, most of which I can’t remember very clearly. But, towards the end, the space was like an auditorium, with a lecture area in the center and areas for students to sit all around it and higher up. I had put the table I had surreptitiously borrowed from Nancy Pelosi among the tables in the student area while I went and did some other stuff, but in the meantime, students had come in, including my friend Dirk. And somebody, noticing that the table is more wheelchair-friendly than the standard tables there, which have metal bars crisscrossed underneath them, has set him up with it.

Now, I had totally been intending to give Nancy Pelosi her table back. It’s what I came back here to do. But Dirk is clearly getting some good out of it. Also, Nancy Pelosi was more of a jerk than I had expected. I figure she can just buy a new table or something.

1.12.18

I’m in what seems to be a bathhouse—a basic, no-frills rectangular room with a concrete floor, on the large side, with a number of small pools and folding screens that can be moved around. Although the setting also seemed shifty and indefinite in a more basic way—a “I had this dream early in the night” kind of way.

Weird things are constantly happening there, strange figures materializing and disappearing again in a sort of timeless convergence - it almost seems like there's nothing outside of this place, even though in one sense I arrived here at a definite point of time - but nobody else seems aware of it. But this is normal: I hadn’t been able to see them once, but I had been through a long process—all of it, every stage. I go over it in memory: some parts of it had been unpleasant or even frightening, but there’s nothing frightening about it now that I can see the whole of it instead of just pieces. It’s familiar—it even feels like home somehow.

I seem to have come here with two young women, and at some point—it’s very difficult to say what order things happened in in this dream—I say to one that this is a special place, that you can feel it in the atmosphere. I’m curious if she can feel it too, on some level. At some other point, perhaps earlier or perhaps later, one asks me if there’s anyone here I’m interested in romantically. I say that there is one person, but I’ve only spoken to him a couple times. And he hasn’t shown up here for a couple hundred years now—but I feel it’s best not to mention that.

Also, at one point, one of them is arranging stuff around a pool we're going to use. There isn't enough space for two people to do it without getting in each other's way, but I don't want to just sit there, so I clean up some of the central area at the same time.

Later on, towards morning, I have another dream. I’m now in a large house with my bouzouki instructor for a lesson. I have the impression that it’s not his house or mine—that he’s an employee here. There are interruptions to our lesson—we have to temporarily leave the house at one point and go somewhere else in a car.

But we do make it back inside eventually, and he tells me to go get something. He gives me directions to the room and tells me to get #5, indicating approximately where in the room I’ll be able to find it.

It’s only a few rooms away, and I make it there without difficulty. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call this house a mansion, but the room I now find myself in wouldn’t be out of place in a palace. It’s richly decorated, 18th-century style, in blue and silver. There’s another doorway on the other end, and one of the longer walls, to my left, is covered with shelves, all of which are lined with ornate silver music boxes. They’re all individually numbered, and #5 is one of the farthest to the left, about mid-way up.

It occurs to me that people who decorate rooms like this usually don’t like other people coming in and messing with them. But, at the same time, this place has the look of an archive. It will probably be OK, then. I take the music box off the shelf. It has its number and what seems to be some notes about it carved onto the top in a rather messy handwriting.

I open it there—but unfortunately, I can’t really remember what happened then, although the dream kept going. Before carrying it back, I notice what looks like a bone flute lying on the floor, the only thing out of place here. Perhaps a child was playing with it and left it there, I think.

(8.11.18)

There is a woman—some dark entity had reached out for her, badly frightening her. She has shut herself away somewhere to get away from it, but it can still reach her. I can hear her screaming there—but I’m on my way to help her.

The first thing I have to do is get out of a sort of wooden elevator running down the center of the building. I seem to have entered this way, going down, but none of the doors are opening. Somehow, I can see perfectly fine into the space beyond the shaft, but the walls are definitely there, and the doors are not only solid but quite heavy. I’m alone here in the elevator, but in communication with someone else—someone I know to be my mother, although she isn’t my actual, waking life mother. She seems to be playing some kind of guiding or teaching role.

Above my head, everything just fades into darkness, like the heights of a cavern. Apparently, it doesn’t occur to most people who come here to look up for a while, and so this comes as a bit of a shock to them, but I can remember having been through this series of events before, and so this place holds no surprises for me. Besides that, I have access to a deeper understanding of the space I’m in: it’s defined by solfege, as if the intervals and their syllables are acting as some kind of abstract structural parameters, and they are also structuring what I am able to do in it and do to it.

Once I finally manage to get out, I find myself in what seems to be an iteration of my old house in M---. This version looks twisted, hollowed out, dark—actually, there doesn’t seem to be a source of light anywhere, which would explain why, even though I feel vividly present here, it has an odd visual quality to it, and the only non-black color I can see here is blue. I’m using night vision. The blue is brightest in the fog hovering throughout the house, moving as though stirred by currents of air. When this fog is concentrated, it indicates the presence of a ghost—or perhaps it simply is the ghost.

This whole place gives off a decidedly creepy vibe—a palpable sense of decay and malevolence. But the fact that I already know where all the dangers are takes the edge off the creepiness, as does the fact that this seems to be a case where there is no outcome but success. I already know things are going to turn out fine, and so I don’t let the place bother me too much.

Now the person who is my mother is physically here with me, a couple rooms away—although, either because the walls are in ruins or because I can see through these ones too, she’s still visible from where I’m looking around the living room. Nothing much seems to be happening at the moment. I’m just keeping an eye on the blue fog. There are some mirrors there in the room: I use them to check my form as I practice jumping from side to side, moving between stances I might need to use later.

(7.9.18)

In this dream, I seem to have been selected to contribute to some collaborative project that has to do with “Game of Thrones” and a couple of prominent political figures, including Trump. I think there are 25 of us in all, but I don’t actually meet with the others—I just have an interview with someone, and that’s it. It’s in a large, modern building, and I recall being in an elevator at some point, deciding that I’ll go to join the others and see the complete work. It seems a little strange to me that I should be playing a part in this—I haven’t watched or read “Game of Thrones,” and I don’t seem to be personally involved in these matters the way everybody else is. But I’m curious enough to go anyway.

I join the others in a room with a large screen on one wall. It’s divided up into smaller rectangles of various sizes and proportions on which video loops are being played. I can see my own contribution among them, in the upper central area, showing the collapse of a temple-like building with hundreds of statues in front of it, among other images.

Then it starts playing, and my part comes first. In the narration, I recognize what I had said in the interview, now in a more polished form. It’s now clear that what I provided was the prologue, tracing out the historical background of the story told in all the subsequent parts, setting the stage for it. That makes a lot of sense, actually—now I can see how it’s relevant, even though it doesn’t directly concern the characters that the story is focused on.

(30.8.18)

In the earliest part of the dream I can remember, I'm reading a news article online. It’s about an odd discovery that was recently made—what seemed to be a fossilized person on a bicycle.

I pull up a map website so that I can have a better idea of where the places I’m reading about are. It starts off as a map of Europe—more or less. The only major difference I can remember was seeing a series of small countries along the (more or less) Baltic Coast.

The place I’m interested in is further west of that, around Luxembourg, I'd say. I zoom in until it’s more like looking at a satellite map, and I can see the spot the story is talking about: a place in the woods where the grass gives way to gray rock, and in the rock, the figure of the cyclist can be clearly seen in profile, looking rather cartoonish.

I look up and find I’m not looking at a screen on a computer anymore: I’m actually there in the forest. And there’s only one way that’s possible: I’m dreaming.

The gray rock isn’t there anymore. There’s just forest in every direction—deciduous forest, with foliage that isn’t so thick it blocks out the sunlight. I pick a direction and start walking, not having any particular goal in mind.

The forest is quiet and still: there don’t seem to be any animals around. The only notable feature of this place is the mushrooms I see growing in small groups among the undergrowth every few meters. They’re red with white spots—obviously fly-agaric. I recall a recent discussion on DreamViews about hallucinogens in lucid dreams: what would happen if I ate one? I’ve never been curious enough to try it before—I wasn’t even curious enough to read the thread, for that matter—but here they are, and here I am. Guess I’m going to find out.

I get down close to a group of them, pull a piece off a small one and put it in my mouth. But then I see that the mushrooms aren’t mushrooms anymore: they’re red flowers now, poppies by the looks of it. Still in an experimental frame of mind, I pull off some petals and chew on them. They’re completely flavorless and slightly cool. It is an extraordinarily realistic experience of eating flower petals.

Shortly afterwards, I wake up.

(7.8.18)