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Morning of February 18, 2016. Thursday.



In my dream, I seem to be in an area that is loosely modeled after my Cubitis home (where I have not lived since 1978, yet my dream self sees it as my present home), at least regarding the large backyard and the railroad tracks behind it (to the east) but there are differences. It seems to be late at night and yet there are short time periods where I can clearly see the covers of books. On at least two occasions, I also notice unknown trucks parked in what would be the backyard.

I go near the railroad tracks and notice a shallow cardboard box filled with old How and Why Wonder Books that appears to have been put out by an unknown neighbor farther south, but the majority do not look like any of the ones I had in real life as a boy. However, “Coins and Currency”, which is one I did have, is near the top, but the cover is very worn. There are other books in the box in addition to the How and Why Wonder Books, including magazines and comic books. I think about taking them, as they had been discarded. Still, it is an unusual place to put presumed rubbish, as there is no pick up there (or rather, never was in real life) other than for the train to collect and take to the dump as my dream self reasons. A lifelong dream-related focus of a train taking large amounts of possibly valuable refuse to a landfill (or sometimes a warehouse where it is apparently sorted), usually northward, is a curious recurring theme.

I am on the railroad tracks for a time (remaining on the west side of them) but I am aware that a train is approaching from the south. I feel the vibrations and expect it to be carrying a lot of printed materials to a landfill, which enhances my curiosity about possibly attaining interesting books. Oddly, it turns out to be one boxcar moving down the track (with no discernible method of locomotion). It passes me, but when it starts to go through a tunnel (not a real-life feature) on the opposite side of our backyard, to the north, it somehow gets jammed in. I am somehow able to move it back out, as it seems very light. It falls off the railroad tracks directly into the living room of the house, which establishes consciously unresolvable ambiguity as to whether I am in an outdoor or indoor setting. (In real life, there was considerable distance from the railroad tracks to the house.)

I see various books inside the boxcar, which now seems only about half the size it had been previously. It is not only very light but starts to bend slightly, like thin aluminum. I notice a “Tom and Jerry” storybook with perhaps one small black and white drawing per page. I also notice two Nancy and Sluggo comic strip collections in book form. There are still a number of other books inside the boxcar as I tip it upside-down, some of the contents spilling onto the living room floor.

Two unknown men eventually appear and it seems as if they had been moving the boxcar down the tracks even though they were not seen until this point. They seem puzzled about the details concerning the wreck. They are not angry and seem friendly as I tell them that I hope to keep what I want from the boxcar. I even offer to pay for the contents (only because they showed up and I do not want to be seen as a thief) and the man to my right gives me a puzzled look as if there would be no need. (In the last stage, there is a vague sense of bilocation when the Cubitis living room is associated with the kitchen of our present home and the vague awareness of my real physical body in bed to my right, though there is also a vague awareness of one step leading up to it between the kitchen and where our bed is, a step or staircase symbolizing an increase of neural activity to eventually establish wakeful consciousness.)

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This dream seems to have been at least partly influenced by having reviewed and written about a childhood dream from 1967 (“Battle atop Boxes on a Boxcar”).

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A train is typically relevant to the dynamics of the dream state, not waking life. Here, it can be validated that I had threads of instinctual dreaming (unaware of being in a dream but still with influence and control). This is why my dream self was able to stop the boxcar (subliminally willing it to become stuck in the tunnel) and attain full control of it despite the size and weight. The preconscious and my emergent consciousness show up in the last scene as potential waking initiators, which is also unrelated to waking life as it is a common dream state component in case I indulge in a dream for too long (in which case the preconscious would become aggressive or more dominant, as waking up is a biological necessity).

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Resupplemented and minimally expanded on Thursday, 17 August 2017, due to seeing no evidence of public understanding of dreams or the dream state.

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Ritual: Last night's moment of lucidity made me crave good dreaming again, but I woke up after six hours with nothing but a few shreds of bland and wan memory. Determined to do better, I dug out the silent vibrating alarm I was using last year for my DEILD experiments and strapped it to my wrist. I set the timer for 33 minutes at first, so I would likely be asleep by the time it went off, but after lying awake for about half that time reset it for 17 minutes. I reminded myself that it would be fine if I was still awake when it went off, a good opportunity to re-familiarize myself with the sensation I was anticipating and to RC. I did feel the pulse once before I fell asleep; afterwards, given that another 45 minutes went by before I woke up, it must have gone off a couple times that I didn't notice. However, I did get lucid, even though the timing suggests that the onset was not triggered by the vibration, because when I finally woke up the alarm was 30 seconds from going off again, and I don't think the dream lasted that long (though I could be wrong about that). This would be consistent with my other experiments with this technique: it works, but not in the way one might expect. Rather than directly inducing an awareness of the dream state with its signal, it seems to be rather that the anticipation of the alarm serves as an anchor for the attention that makes it easier to transition directly into dream. Consequently, rather than a DILD I had a WILD.

I knew I must have transitioned when I realized I was holding a piece of paper in my hands. I used the paper to better integrate by running it between my fingers and being attentive to the lifelike sensations. They were vivid enough that I figured I should just get up out of bed, even though my vision hadn't kicked in fully yet and everything was dim and blurry. Since there are bookcases right next to my bed in WL and my intention was to do this month's Basic Task i, the moment I was on my feet I started examining the books. My vision was no better overall, but I could see well enough in the area of my primary focus. Reading was surprisingly easy as well, although the words themselves did not always remain stable, sometimes changing into new ones right before my eyes.

I read a half dozen book titles right away, some better than others, but none so striking that I felt like putting special effort into memorizing them. I hoped a few might stick with me naturally, but unfortunately I didn't remember any of them on waking. After browsing the books in the bedroom for a while, I moved out to the kitchen, where I have more bookshelves (there are books almost everywhere in my house). I continued reading titles, trying to find a really good one for the task. Finally after moving on to a second shelf in the kitchen I found what I was looking for. The book was a slim hardcover, about 9"x11" and 3/4 inch thick. The cover had a glossy sheen and was white in the upper half and a darker color, grey perhaps, in the lower half. In the very center, where the colors met, was the word: "REVOLIOTUN" in red and black stylized capital letters. I took note of how it appeared to be the word "revolution" with some of the letters transposed. I wasn't sure if this was part of the title or designated something else, like the series, publisher, or maybe just a cover design, since the actual title seemed to be printed below this in the lower half of the cover. The title was David Bowie's Dreams: Naked in Flight. This tickled me, especially given his recent passing, and I knew it was the one I wanted to bring back for the task.

I set my mind on remembering that book, but glanced at a few more for good measure. There was one small paperback titled Blue Skulls Book that struck me, but that's the only other title I can remember.

Now that I had completed the task, I wondered if I should wake and write immediately, but it seemed a waste of good dream state. Was it really that good, though? My vision was still terrible. "Then maybe I should work on that," I told myself reprovingly. So I looked out the kitchen window and tried to clean up my vision. "Just open your eyes," I instructed myself. "But be careful not to open your real eyes!" I actually did have a sensation like my eyes were opening, and suddenly my vision cleared up beautifully! I looked out the window and was startled by the amazing color and clarity of the landscape, a wide grassy expanse bordered by distant hills, so unlike my actual concrete pool patio. The vision from my left eye was perfect, but my right eye faded in and out: it kept feeling like something was covering it, which I tried to brush away with my fingers as though it were an errant lock of hair. I realized that it was probably the bleedthrough sensation from the way my face was pressed into my pillow (I was able to confirm this on waking) and decided I'd better do my best to ignore it.

The beauty of the outdoors lured me, so I stepped through the sliding screen door into this marvelous dreamscape, and immediately felt my heart fill with joy. I wondered if I should plan to do anything in particular, but decided no, it was enough just to look around and drink in the sights, now that I could see so clearly. As I moved over the ground, I was more dancing than walking for the sheer pleasure of it. Momentarily I wondered if I should be careful not to accidently blunder into any WL obstacles I couldn't see, but then had to remind myself, this isn't like google cardboard: I'm not just surrounded by an illusory overlay on the real world, this is a whole world in its own right.

"This is my favorite world!" I murmured in fervent appreciation, then caught myself. That seemed like a radical statement. Was it really true? I reflected for a moment and had to admit that it was. I felt a bit sorry for the real world—how could it compare to this? As I looked around, marveling at the beauty of my surroundings, my eye was caught by a brighter spot in the dream sky, a white disk surrounded by intensified illumination, like the sun filtering through a haze. For some reason this struck me as remarkable, and I thought back and couldn't remember ever seeing a sun in my dream sky before. Unlike the unpleasant brightness of the real sun, this one I could gaze at directly.

I wandered across the lawn until I discovered a large headstone. It had the traditional rounded shape but was very wide, maybe three or four feet tall and five or six in width. I was pleased to discover that I could read the chiseled inscription very clearly: "THE EARLY DEATHS OF BLAKE GRACE." The name meant nothing to me, but what particularly caught my attention was the plural, "deaths." How could he or she have died more than once? Oh well, in the dream world, I suppose anything is possible.

Encountering the tombstone hadn't diminished my joy in the slightest. I still felt radiantly happy, even when I glanced down and noticed that I was standing on a carved piece of stone that covered the grave itself, like the lid of a sarcophagus. "I hope I'm not disturbing the inhabitant!" I thought amiably, and stepped off the stone, watching closely to see if it would move, on the off-chance that the corpse might decide to rise from the grave in indignation. Even this possibility did not dampen my mood; I felt fully capable of dealing with such an eventuality, should it occur. But the dead slept. I felt compassion for the person buried here and thought I should make up for my accidental insult by doing something to honor the grave. In the hollow of one of the carvings toward the foot of the stone was an accumulation of gravel on which an uprooted mushroom was lying. I picked up the mushroom and tried to set it upright, pushing the stem into the gravel to help it stand up. The surface of the mushroom was starting to rot, but the sight filled me with a sense of tender compassion, much like the grave itself.

After this I decided that it was probably time to wake up, since I didn't want to risk wandering off and forgetting the book title and the engraving on the headstone. Since I was waking myself up deliberately, I was able to get ready and do it in a very controlled way. As the dream began to fade into void, I grabbed a pen and got ready to start writing in the notebook next to my bed the moment I transitioned, until I realized how ridiculous this was. There was no point in picking up a dream pen—it wouldn't save me any time—I would still have to move my physical arm and grab the physical pen once I actually woke up! What a hassle!

I'm walking in a deep hilly wooded area on a grey day. There is a lake to my left. There are large lumps of tree roots on the surface of the ground and I trip over them. I make my way to a house, it looks modern and is very solitary, no other house in sight, as if it was right in the middle of a little depression in the ground. Looks like a safe place.

I go inside and it is fairly dim inside as only a bluish grey light comes through the shaded windows. It give the whole house a mystical and serene feeling, hard to explain. A lamp is in the corner, it looks very fancy and modern in design gives a little more of a golden lighting deeper in the house. There is something oddly satisfying being here, safe, serene, a mindset like something remembered in childhood.

I'm in my grandparent's old place. In the kitchen, all the lights are on, I see a mosaic decorative plate on the wall. It's like all the other decorative things they have on the wall. There are three tiles on it that stand out, the rest have fallen away. They look a bit like hexagons, one has a large "C" on it, meaning a complex number. One tile is touching it on its left, the other tile is one space away from the "C" tile on the right, not touching it. I look at it and it is supposed to show a mathematical number sequence that has something to do with complex numbers. I try to think what it could mean, I think the terms of the series can tessellate the whole plate. I hear in my mind "only a fool adds them together...".

In the bathroom, out the window I see one of my friends and his friend have arrived by car. What are they doing all the way up here?

I have to give a presentation of a subject of my choice. I use my sister's computer to look for some information of Kendrick Lamar, I type his name into Google. I can't find enough information, at least not enough for me to want to confidently present anything.

It's dark outside, I'm standing by the large show window of a bookstore, there is a golden orange light coming from it, fancy, brown wooden shelves have books on them. I think of doing my presentation of Satanism and the occult, I begin to notice books with those words on the spines on the shelves. Is it too edgey?

I wake up through the night, feeling sick and disorientated.

Morning of November 19, 2015. Thursday.



Notas: Cinco libros, todo sobre una nueva versión de la película de 1962 - “Cinco semanas en globo”, con el actor Johnny Depp.

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I am at my sister’s house yet again (on Loomis Street). This sometimes triggers apex lucidity (especially in the situations where she and Bob are leaving the house as here and appearing as if it is the 1970s), though not in this case. I become more aware and focused on the setting as my sister Marilyn and her husband are going out (possibly to a restaurant). It seems to be early in the evening (near sunset).

There is a certain level of expectancy regarding semi-lucidity (as if I am “testing” the setting though not fully aware yet that the setting is of a dream). I keep seeing a teenage version of my wife Zsuzsanna to the north, the left side of the house when looking out at the small front sidewalk perpendicular to the street. Strangely, I know who she is on some levels, though not on others. Still, we hug each other and begin to converse.

After a short time though, I lose focus (possibly due to a noise in my real environment). Eventually, there is an elderly male in the same general area. He seems argumentative. I tell him that he is not invited into the house and that I will “break his head” if he insists on following me.

Eventually, I am looking at five books on the couch, at least three of them paperbacks and each in one of at least three different Languages (English, Russian or possibly Bulgarian Cyrillic, and Spanish - though one also seems Italian - “5 settimane in pallone”). If Russian, it is ambiguous, as the first word would translate as “pet” (only if anglicized) and only “five” if Bulgarian. (Otherwise, I get a strange impression of a movie about a dog, a rooster, a cat, and a few other animals traveling around the world in a balloon as a parody to “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly” theme - with the rooster crowing, followed by the cat’s “meow meow meow”, then the dogs barking rhythmically in the background; “WOOF, woof woof, WOOF, woof woof.)

Even so, the books are also all apparently different in the story itself (one being almost like an episode of "Gunsmoke” or perhaps more so “Wild Wild West”), even though all are a supposed novelization of a remake of “Five Weeks in a Balloon”, starring Johnny Depp. However, one (unknown?) actor on one cover looks like he is only pretending to be Johnny Depp in a copycat version of the remake. I have a very strange feeling of enjoyment in anticipation of reading all the books, even expecting completely different stories or plot developments in each. However, my dream fades before I am able to read much.

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I sincerely doubt if Johnny Depp will be in a remake of “Five Weeks in a Balloon”. If so, you read it here first.

All these are fragments.

In the dark, I realize that I'm asleep. I see only darkness. The state I'm in is very fragile, I spin in a circle to try to stabilize the dream but then darkness swallows me whole and no memory remains.

I'm in a car going down a desert road on a grey day. I'm tuning a car radio. It has a small TV screen. I see Christina Aguilera on the TV screen. She is on the panel of a talent show. She begins to suck on the microphone stand in front of her on the desk very suggestively. All I can think is that the microphone stand must be pretty dirty, why put it in her mouth? For the shock appeal?

I'm in a cabin kind of place, although the place looks pretty modern. On the floor I find three colorful manuals on psychonautics, they look very interesting. I take them with me and put them in a black velvet bag. My trip to the outskirts of society won't be boring after all, I am sure to learn some very interesting skills.

Fragments

I see a line for a new amusement park ride, it's a grey day. The ride looks like a shifting, neon pink floor. It shifts to the sides and people have to balance as they walk through. It looks like it would be bad for my knees. I see a creepy, middle-aged guy in the line among all the kids. Is he a predator? People swarm around him and he reluctantly walks away.

A vague memory of being told, or maybe just realizing; this is your dream character you must remember. (!)

I'm enter a bookstore in a modern shopping mall. I'm waiting for a friend to finish looking through the books by a shelf on the wall. It's as if the mob is now here and has singled out a guy I know from school claiming he stole a book, it's even a book he already owns apparently. He is angry and yells he did nothing. The gang hones in with a sense of righteous indignation. I try to pull them off, this is not the way to handle this. I'm scared of being swept up in the fury.

Suddenly outside the bookstore in the hall of the mall, the guy pulls out the book and shows he paid for it, the sales rack outside has the right price on it. People drift away shamefully. I know they blamed him only based on how he looks, very rough and tumble. A guy who was in the mob who I tired to stop awkwardly tries to start small talk by a sales shelf, says everyone's a but hungover today. I just nod and say "yeah".

Back in the bookstore, I wait for my friend again. I see a man dressed in an elaborate steampunk style. I see some old Penguin classics on sale, 3 for 1.

With another friend I walk away from the store down the halls of the mall. I mention the books I bought and I offer to give her one. She says she would rather have a 10€ gift card to somewhere. We enter an elevator and as we press the button to go to the top floor the elevator goes so fast that everything shifts and smears. The doors open and there is only an overflowing trash can with a McDonald's employee trying to empty it. The doors close and we go down a floor. The elevator opens again and we see the same scene. Immediately there is a weird sense, how can this be? We turn to each other and then turn back and see that we are on a new floor, the trash can and employee (who was looking very stern) are gone. Weirdness. We get off to try to get into the restaurant proper.

Fragments:

As I read a book in a room with grey natural light coming from my right, I remember a quote by a writer and I pencil it into the last page of a chapter where there is empty space. In pencil I write "If only Huxley had such supple minds to impress." I see a old-timey picture of young men in college in the 50's, wearing polo shirts but the men have bulldog heads.

The book turns into a sci-fi anthology, each chapter takes place centuries after the one before it. The cover and the first page of each chapter has a 3D peace sign shot at an angle, computer generated, very late 90's-early 00's. The chapter names are long and convoluted like a history book. A fragment of one title that stands out is "...the anti-baby classes of anarcho-populism."

In a diner's kitchen, morning sunlight coming through the far windows by the tables. There are some leftovers of a fake bacon and potato casserole. Too little to save, I begin to eat the rest until a snotty, bratty boy comes over and says he was going to eat it, obviously lying and just being difficult.

Setting loosely based on China some centuries ago, vaguely Ming dynasty. Two men have been speaking to a human woman about a book, but they're interrupted by a human man who is a friend of hers, of sorts - he offers to join their expedition. He has some manner of expertise to do with this book they're looking for, and if he comes along, the woman's presence would be unnecessary. The leader of the two at first is ready to agree, this would be much preferable.

But the human man then says, why should his cut be only 10%? Make it 100% - he'll keep the book himself, but translate it for them. To his mind, this would be a better deal for all of them, he expects this to be accepted. But the leader of the two is offended by his presumption and kills him, abandoning his human appearance in the process - his eyes are covered by a cloudy grey film, his teeth are fangs on both upper and lower jaws. I'm remembering a year earlier, when that human man had been doing something in a place where many books were stored, directly above where this man had been sleeping in the ground for a long time. The human woman, watching him kill her friend, blames herself - she was involved in something that happened in a market a year ago, when this man woke up.

Belle is in the kitchen of someone else's house, someplace that has servant quarters, and she's found a jar of a certain weed that's been spilled - it's not something that should be used for cooking, it's dangerous, causes disfigurement. The implication in finding it spilled across the counter is that a servant was carelessly exposed to it. It's said that it only affects those who say rude/cruel/insulting things while holding it - a physical disfigurement to reflect a disfigurement of the soul. She calls Rumplestiltskin to dispose of it safely, and to look into what it was doing there.

As he removes it, he looks around the building and sees old photos and negatives of him and Belle among various trophies that the owner of the house has collected - there's a sense that these photos are things that were stolen from him. He looks at one in particular, a moment when he'd stopped Belle from saying that she loved him. He regrets this, and says he would listen now. She says, "I would have meant it then." And wouldn't now, is the implication. But she stops him from moving away from her by grabbing him roughly by the hair.

She tells him her plan is to find her ideal world this time, with the money that Regina left her, and with him, as they're stuck together due to a previous deal. He reminds her that he's no longer capable of appearing human, which will cause difficulties in many other worlds. "I'll work with it," she says. A previous deal requires him to leave at least a piece of himself in this current world, and I see an image of his hand chained to the sand, in the surf.

I was looking under the bed for my two cats, and they were there, but to my surprise I found a third! It was an enormous calico, at least twice the size of any other cat I'd ever seen, and unbelievably fat. Startled by this strange discovery, I pointed it out to my husband. He gave me a suspicious look and said, "That's Crowl," as if explaining the obvious.

"He must have at least fifteen percent of the Internet!" I exclaimed, thinking that there's no way such an unusual cat could avoid becoming an Internet sensation. My husband nodded in confirmation.

"Where did he come from?" I inquired. It seemed like a reasonable question, since I had never seen this cat before but my husband appeared to be familiar with him.

Again my husband looked at me in wary confusion, as if he couldn't understand why he had to keep telling me things I should know perfectly well. "We got him from Donna Slope."

"Who's Donna Slope?" The tension was growing with every question I asked. My husband was now staring at me as if he feared that I had finally lost my mind. I gathered that this was the name of someone we knew quite well, for for the life of me I could not remember a single detail about her.

I noticed that the sliding door to the patio was open, and one of our own cats and Crowl had gone outside. I expressed alarm: ours is an elderly indoor cat, and definitely not allowed outside without close supervision. My husband seemed strangely unconcerned: "It's okay, he'll follow Crowl." I was not reassured. "We'll have to talk about this later," I said, indicating the events of the entire morning, and went out after the cats.

The two were already walking along the side of the house toward the street. To my alarm I saw that the front gate was open, and they went right through it. For some reason after I caught up with them I picked up Crowl first. As I walked back along the side of the house I noticed an assortment of little pumpkins or round gourds next to the path. One green one was rattling violently as if something were trying to get out. This piqued my curiosity, but I could not investigate with my arms full of cat, so I resolved to take a closer look after both cats were secured back indoors. I unceremoniously dumped Crowl back inside the bedroom, making sure to close the screen door behind him, and then went back for the other cat.

I was worried at having left my cat unattended, but reminded myself that he moved very slowly in his old age and he could not have gone far. As long as he hadn't blundered out into the street, he should be okay. I soon spotted him next to the sidewalk chewing on grass... but something was amiss. There were now two cats of his appearance. I studied them closely until I thought I was sure which one was him, and carried him back inside. After he was safely secured in the house, I went back to investigate those pumpkins.

The pumpkins ranged in color from green to orange, and seams indicated that the tops could be lifted like those of jack-o-lanterns. What did I expect to find inside? What if it was a coiled up snake, and it bit me? I brushed aside the fear impatiently: the only reason to be afraid of a snake is if you think it might have deadly poison, but that is quite rare. Most snakebites are harmless. Still, why did I want to look inside the pumpkins? I needed a good reason. "Curiosity," I concluded. "Curiosity is the desire to know more." That seemed like a good enough reason in itself.

The first few pumpkins were hollowed out as I anticipated, but they contained only vague shapes, like something was still buried in the pumpkin flesh. I peered closely at one and I thought it looked lizard-shaped. "Maybe they aren't ready to hatch yet," I concluded. I reached the green one that had been shaking violently. Surely this one was ready! I stopped and tried to imagine what I would most like to find inside, and decided on one of those little troll dolls. Wouldn't be cool to find one that had come to life? I lifted the top and... it was just another lizard. This was vaguely disappointing after I had gotten my hopes up for something more exotic.

After going back in the house I started thinking hard. I realized something very strange was going on today, and I needed to figure out what it was. My husband was acting very uncharacteristically, and I was apparently unfamiliar with major details of my own life. What could it be? Was it related to time travel? My current situation felt very similar to the life I knew, but not identical... could I have somehow "jumped the tracks" to a different timeline, a different possible present?

Later I was shelving some books in the kitchen when another possibility came to mind: I could be dreaming. At first this felt very unlikely, but I knew that apperances could be deceiving, and I would need to test thoroughly. I began by looking at a book on the shelf and trying to withdraw it through will alone. Nothing happened, but I thought it might just need a headstart, so I pulled it out about an inch with my fingers, then tried to finish using only mental strength. This time it worked! I let the book hover in the air above my palm to confirm that I was controlling it with my thoughts.

Alright, so I'm definitely dreaming. Shit. That means I have to remember everything so I can write it down when I wake up. I started going over details from the morning, listing them aloud to better fix them in memory. "Crowl... Donna Slope... lizards in pumpkins..." I'm sure several other things happened that morning that I'm now forgetting, but I lost lucidity and had another long NLD before waking up, so some of the details have faded.

Morning of July 1, 2015. Wednesday.



Notes: Ever since I was young, I found out (at least for me) that a fulfilling session of intimacy always brought me into the state of blissful sleep paralysis. In fact, sometimes this changeover was so immediate and primarily passive, I sometimes did not move into my long-acknowledged self-as-dream-maker role. I would almost always start to hear loud hypnagogic audio before the beginning of sleep paralysis (though not directly related to the state in my experience - though everyone seems different).

Imagine my immense surprise as I got older, when people wrote of hypnagogia as being a problematic “condition” (often regarding some sort of “disorder”) and almost always wrote of sleep paralysis as mostly a negative experience of “shadow people” or a dark presence (a load of nonsense in my case - I discovered that the shadow was my conscious mind becoming less-defined as I was then more into the dream state - the opposite of what most people seem to believe). No one could be more baffled than I am over the things I have seen in typical dream literature (especially idiotic “interpreter” sites), none of which has resonated with me throughout my life.

I mention this in somewhat of a prologue here, as I entered the first dreamscape this time at a passive level. (My first dream of the night is almost always vivid and lucid as I remain in a “carryover” self-as-dream-maker state. I do not usually document such dreams online, especially as they are often very similar and mostly without any plot or theme.) After fulfilling intimacy, I almost immediately heard an imaginary sound pulse as I remained on my back for a time (though I do not typically sleep all night on my back). It was three loud knocks (seemingly on a fictional “dream floor” I was lying on - or rather, a typical state of perceptual bilocation in this state), moving from my right to my left; that is, first knock on my right, second knock right “above” me, and third knock on my left. It does not surprise me at all that there is an actual superstition related to this. Of course, I do not buy it any more than the “shadow people” story. Save that for the people who believe in “dream dictionaries” and the syndicated Wishing Well newspaper feature.

In my dream, I and my family are living in a large unfamiliar house (though it also seems like a composite in afterthought - one which includes the Loomis Street house and my old Cubitis home). I am involved in sorting things out; mostly a large number of paperback books. For some reason, I have glued at least three paperback books to the otherwise featureless wall covering their back cover with glue and pressing them up. They remain just above my head, though the third one (farthest right) is slightly lower. They are all the same title but different editions. I clearly see the differences on each cover. Two of the covers show the heads and upper shoulders of two ship captains (one with a thick beard, one without) on each in a diagonal layout, but one cover of those two has an embossed tessellated flame design over mostly blue while the other cover is flat (though with otherwise mostly the same imagery), which distinguishes it from the other edition. The other book (first one from my left) looks of an older style of painted cover art (perhaps late 1960s) in mostly darker greens, blues, and grays, and displays a warship and a submarine underneath. I no longer recall the title, though. I know it had “captain and the” in it, possibly “The Submarine Captain and the Warship Captain”.

For several minutes, I think about what I am doing, wondering if the books will just eventually fall off the wall, the glue not being strong enough to hold over time. This does not happen though and I go into a dream within a dream - though only for a short time before returning to my main dream setting. In this one, I am at a book store seeking a particular edition of this title, asking if they have the “thirteenth edition” (my wife was born on a Friday the thirteenth - though I do not link this association in-dream), but then I realize that the book store owner may not have a clue which edition is which, especially in a secondhand store. I will likely have to do everything on my own, as usual. This is a rather strange reflection, as I have the mind of a passionate book collector in-dream, something I have never been in reality and could not care less about having several copies of the same title in different paperback editions. Even so, I am puzzled over my actions in both layers of my dream, though mainly the “why” of gluing the books on the wall in the first place. I cannot quite work out why I am doing this - especially in my vague concern about the longevity of the setup.

I am thinking that we should turn our house into a bookstore, though mostly using the porch for patrons. I think that I will mention this to Zsuzsanna and we can start running our bookstore as soon as possible.

I notice a young girl lying on the couch (opposite the wall where the books are glued). My youngest son is also there but slightly older than in reality. I sit down near them and “remember” that the girl is my daughter, though for some reason I cannot remember her name at all. I am thinking it may be something like Rebecca. I am vividly aware of small grains of sand on the couch, which has been opened out into a single bed that reminds me clearly of my couch/bed in Cubitis for a time (of the kind of couch where the back just drops down in contrast to the one we now have in reality that opens out into a larger bed from a compartment underneath). Even the texture and color looks like the one I had as a teen (for about two years or so).

Feeling quite strange over not remembering my own daughter’s name I begin to develop an idea on how to get it without being seen as uncaring. I ask her “What is it you like to be called?”. She calmly answers with “Belly”. Oddly enough, this fictional nickname is somewhat an unlikely form of my real daughter’s name (Isabelle) and strikes me as such (“returning” my memory) that my dream is fractured and I very slowly wake. However, I would hope that this is not the name she will use any more than “Izzy” (which I also do not personally care for that much, no offense to the Izzys of the world).

06/26/2015 - THE SLASHER

We’re driving on this hill, near where I am. Myself, my sister ANDIE and my aunt VERA. We’re being chased by this JASON VOORHEES type of guy. Except he can drive. I stop the car. There’s a vehicle on the middle of the road. Someone on the ground. I go check it out. My sister tells me to go back. I see Jason dude coming in his car so I run back into mine and drive away.

Next thing I remember is being in my own neighborhood. Jason dude is still chasing us. Now Vera isn’t in the car anymore, instead is my friend ALEXANDRE. We manage to lose him when we pull up in front of a cop’s car.

We stop by a book store. We all go in. They have loads of french books. Andie wants to buy something for someone. Alexandre knows someone in the bookshop. I wait. My sister decides on a book. When we’re heading out I run into a bunch of guys who manage this soccer club I support in Rio. IRL I hate them, but I’m awfully friendly towards them in the dream.

When I leave the bookshop I’m alone. I don’t see Alexandre or Andie. I go down some stairs. Where I meet the two of them. We meet two girls, both Andie and Alexandre know them. I do not. They’re exchanging currency, because one of them is dating a foreign guy. We talk about the economy and how everything is so fucked up.

From there we go to a gallery, they’re buying some clothes. When we’re leaving the store we run into Jason Dude, who seems more human. Almost afraid. I figure the cops must have done something. He steps out of our way and we leave.

I'm coming out of a mine with a box a man gave me. Sitting down at a table across from a woman I know who's eating lunch, I open up the box and we have a look at the books inside. There's a two-volume set on healing magic that catches my attention; I've seen the first one before but the second is completely new to me, I'm very pleased. The woman asks me for a demonstration, and I laugh, saying I've barely got any understanding of it - it's not something you can learn from books, they're just for pointing you in the right direction, it takes time and work to actually put into practice. She's disappointed and leaves. As I look through the book, I call up a blue healing light that plays around my hand. Reading, the book is saying that it's impossible to progress further without "the Lady's smile."

I see an image of said Lady, a woman in a void. She's aware of my attention, though her eyes don't focus on me; she talks as if this is a visit from an old friend, sounding surprised and pleased, saying that I've come earlier this week than expected, and calls me by a name that starts "Shari-" But she cuts off partway through that name, and gives the impression of focusing on me, though still not with her eyes. She says then, "Isfael? Is that you?"

The observer side of me splits off, recognizing that this Lady and Shari-whoever are figures that often appear in stories together under various identities. When she correctly called me Isfael, I realized that Isfael is one of those identities, a specific young version of Shari-whoever without knowledge of his older self.

Morning of April 9, 2015. Thursday.



Not much occurs in this dream. My family and I are living back on Gellibrand Street in Clayfield (Brisbane area) where we have not been in years.

In my dream, the main rooms of the apartment (first bedroom, second bedroom, and kitchen) are duplicated (all but the porch, which remains in the middle) and mirrored so that there are seven rooms. This makes the additional kitchen the main entrance, I think. I do not really consider this oddity of layout. I am in the process of going through things to see if the house can be arranged better. The large sliding door cupboard we have (originally designed for an office and very heavy) is near the doorway of the original kitchen. I notice that over half of the books are large telephone books from different years. About half of those are for Sarasota, Florida and the other half for Brisbane (Australia) suburbs. I am a bit annoyed about the space they are taking up and plan on getting rid of them, but I do not focus on doing so at the time.

There is also something about finding crossword puzzles for my second-youngest son, but that idea does not really seem that feasible as I look at a few different ones, as I seem to realize that solving crosswords is not really educational (relative to critical thinking skills) and in fact, rather pointless, though not as pointless as the “find a word” puzzles (and all their variations of titular names), which I also notice now and then in some magazines, which are not even puzzles and where you just look at words within random letter patterns and circle them. I mostly just look around at random books and magazines. Some of the writing is rather sparse on some pages and not quite discernible.

One book I pick up has a comic-strip-like sequence of small photographs near the top of the page, mostly only of the back halves of various breeds of dogs (but from the side, all facing to the left). I continue to think about what books we can sell or give away (or just throw out). Perhaps it is a play on “Dog Tales (tails)”. I had just seen a rather odd section of a television show in real life (Dr. Harry), where it showed a large dog jumping up and humping someone’s leg and the commentary was something about the dog not being playful, but intending to show dominance (probably one of the strangest and more “Captain Obvious” things I have seen on that show).

Another book actually seems to be a virtual baby in two-dimensional form (though about several months old), though probably at 2:1 scale relative to the imagery on the pages. How the baby is - relating to its status, mood, or health, depends on what pages you turn in what order, I think - am not sure if there is an index or table of contents relative to this. There are several pages that just show the stomach which may represent various stages of breathing or to signify weight. The book does not make noise and seems to be on glossy paper (probably only about forty pages in all). Perhaps it is a play on “The Baby Book” (in this case, the baby being the book).

There are other unusual books with unusual features but I do not recall everything. Some of this may relate to reading about Charlton comic books recently, which were once so cheaply made, that the pages were all different sizes and with different page edges (such as straight or sawtooth-shaped edges, often mixed from page to page) as well as being of different thicknesses, sometimes almost like cloth.

Morning of March 29, 2015. Sunday.



I am walking up a very long and steep flight of stairs (both by my choice and my seeming simultaneous creation of it by way of non-lucid dream control). Others, including a wealthy old lady, are ahead of me. This flight of steps is so steep and high, I get a strong impression that I will not be able to go down them comfortably. (This is mainly due to the fact that I am facing the solid structure of the stairs as I am ascending them but when walking down the steps, I will be facing open space, which might cause me to feel ungrounded.)

I decide that instead of using the stairs on my way out after I do whatever it is that I have to do, I will teleport from the second floor of the building down to ground level (though this never occurs by the end of my dream).

I notice that, as I am climbing the stairs, the building I am in is like a huge cathedral. Eventually, I find myself in a large L-shaped area that has numerous bookshelves along all walls. Apparently, it is a book sale, displaying both new and old and worn secondhand books. My wife Zsuzsanna eventually appears and looks over different sections.

A young Japanese male seems to be responsible for most of the book sale, regardless of how large an area it seems to be in (at least one city block). At first, I talk to him about the books in broken Japanese but eventually I decide to implement a translator where I can speak English and it will automatically be translated into Japanese. This translator even forms a holographic matrix around my head to display the correct lip positions for each word and syllable, so that it also looks correct. It is as if I am actually speaking Japanese to anyone watching me. My translator works both ways. I hear the Japanese male speaking English even though I know he is speaking Japanese. His voice is loud and clear.

I look over a set of small but thick softcover books on a low shelf that seem to be in a series and are mainly about mythical monsters, though one has a triceratops on the cover. At first, I notice only book number four, but eventually find all of them and decide to buy them. I carry them around with me to another section closer to where Zsuzsanna is.

I pick up a large hardcover book from a top shelf and notice that the writing is very small and sideways on some pages, which seems to relate to statistics, old census reports, or other government records. I see that the front covers (though not the back covers) are missing from most of the books in this particular section including the one I am holding, which is also damaged in that the spine is at a slanted angle. Even though most of these books are in English, it seems that they may have been printed in Japan. I do get a lot of various information from the young male but cannot remember all the details, as there are a lot of different books I look at and talk about.

I find a large book in the area where Zsuzsanna is looking around. It seems to be someone’s dream journal in the form of a novel. It is about a man and his wife and young daughter traveling over an isolated desert region in a station wagon. I read one entry about a drive over a particular stretch of hard, cracked ground and what was seen, the dream journal being from the perspective of the male, who is the driver. I decide to get that one as well.

Eventually, Zsuzsanna and I are ready to leave. She has a large canvas carry bag full of books. Mine is smaller than a backpack. In order for us to pay, the young Japanese male has to put on a blindfold and determine the price by weight alone as he stands near the section we stopped at. I do not question this. The total cost is fifty dollars. As I go to pay, I see that there is about two hundred dollars in fifties and a few twenties in my wallet. For the third time in this dream, I implement an idea that seems to prove that a part of me knows I am making my dream. Even though I have enough money to pay for the books, I mentally create an additional fifty dollar note on the other side of the twenties.

From here, my dream fades. However, as it does, I begin to notice additional bills of odd amounts, such as a thirty-four dollar bill, a seventy-dollar bill, and several other fictional values.

---

There are two ill siblings, they seem to be recovering but then the girl relapses and starts fading away.

The younger boy is left and is depressed. I find him in a room looking for a book on knives. I go through the cooking books on the shelf and find the only one, but it’s a technical one and I keep stumbling over my words. The boy is unhappy and leaves.

Everything else is too foggy to remember, except this part where I went to the bathroom at my grandma’s house and saw myself in the mirror on the back of a door. I tried to remember if that’s where it was supposed to be. A tiger was peering at me from under the door…

Inspiration: Reading the Tower of God webtoon with Baam and Rachel, her disappearing on him. Mirror from me thinking about the TotM and what mirrors were around places I go. Tiger comes from a cat toy Jazzy has, I sometimes hang it from the window so she can play with it.