Recent DJ Posts

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #203: Mirror Mockery

I’m at the top of an old, wooden tower, looking out over a dirt road and nearby farmland. I’m pursuing someone, some criminal that I need to catch and confront. I climb down from the tower, and as I make my way down, I notice that night’s falling much too fast and I become lucid.

Something still compels me to find this man I was trying to catch. I have this sense that he’s nearby but that I’ve got some ground to cover, so I think about the idea of commandeering a car. Off in the distance I see a horse-drawn chariot thundering down a dirt road, the driver leaned forward and furiously whipping the four horses at the chariot’s front.

I try to catch up to the chariot on foot to take it over but it’s not even close. The thought of teleporting to it doesn’t occur to me until it’s too late. The whole idea of going after the criminal I was looking for starts feeling like a lot of trouble, so I walk past a nearby farmhouse and somehow enter a room in a fairly large wooden structure with a lot of people milling around.

I’m interested in the DCs at first but I see a pair of mirrors hanging on the wall to my left and stop to check them out. I notice that I’m shirtless as well as totally buff so I start hitting some poses in the mirror. I’m overcome with vanity and just keep doing this for a while.

After a bit, I see in the reflection an extremely fit woman walk right up next to me and also stare at the mirror. She’s short with curly brown hair and she’s in fitness model shape. She briefly looks at me and then back at the mirror before striking a series of exaggerated flexing poses that poke fun at what I’m doing and how silly I look doing it. I start laughing at this and she grins back at me.

I feel somewhat attracted to her but nah, let that go. She walks away and I then begin studying the roomful of DCs. My friend “Leroy” is there directly in front of me, and I take a moment to study how realistic he looks. I don’t seem to have his attention so I don’t take the time to speak with him, but I note how lifelike his appearance is.

I look at the other DCs for a bit, turning my gaze here and there around the room until the dream ends.

Finally, a DEILD! It's interesting that I keep generating these "endless maze" type dreams for myself. At least I remembered the Exit signs this time.

BTW, the new neighbors in this house have not yet moved in, so it'll be interesting to see whether the dream got anything right about them.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #39: The Endless Farmhouse

I'm meeting our new neighbor "Anna", a fair-skinned lady with red hair in her early 40s. JC, A friend of mine from California, rides by on a recumbent bicycle. I tell Anna, "Oh hey, I know him... that's JC." She says, "Sure, I know him too." This strikes me as very unlikely and I become lucid. I'm lucid only for a moment before I wake up.



I sit tight for a DEILD, focusing on breathing and mantra until I emerge just inside the front door of Anna's house. She is standing several feet away with a little girl of about seven. The girl says, "What's he doing in here, Mommy?" I feel way out of bounds and tell them, "Sorry, it's a lucid dream. I was just leaving." The front door is wide open behind me and I hurry outside.

Outside I'm under a wooden covering that reminds me of an open air stable or farmhouse. A slatted wooden fence hems me in from the sides and I can see sun just outside. I move to the next area, but it looks much the same, only rearranged slightly. I move forward a ways more but it seems that no matter which direction I choose, I'm stuck in the shadows.

I jump up and take a swipe at the ceiling to make sure I stay properly bolted into the scene, but I manage to miss. I'm slightly annoyed that I can't do something I do in real life (something I do when nobody's looking, that is!) I slap a nearby candy striped support pillar and it feels satisfyingly realistic. I move up a steep embankment of dirt, but again it's just more fencing and wooden covering. I'm feeling stuck so I imagine an Exit sign that will guide me out. But before I even see it, my vision goes dark.

I keep calm, and rub my hands together. Feels okay. I rub my face, lick each arm, grab a handful of shirt... everything is as it should be. My vision doesn't budge, though, so I spend perhaps half a minute just waiting things out in the dark, considering what I ought to do. The idea occurs to me to get help as I'd done before, but things fade on me before I get the chance to act and I'm awake.

I'm at the old farmhouse. It's a boarding house now. There is a young woman working as the cook to help pay for her stay. She owes some money for the food she's eaten during her visit. She has short, curly black hair and is fairly pretty. She works at the stove, wearing a dress and an apron. I get the feeling that she has no money and won't be able to pay her tab, but she insists that she will pay it.

There is a man staying at the house and I don't think he can pay for anything either. He eats at the kitchen table. He leaves to go do chores outside to help pay for his stay.

When more visitors arrive and there is some distraction, the young woman leaves quietly. She leaves a loaf of wonder bread to pay for her stay. I think to myself, "That is better than nothing I guess. It's not as good as homemade bread though."

Assassin
I am an assassin working for an agency. We're on a job , a heist of some kind. When it comes time for me to do my part then hide in a small room to wait for the signal that it is safe to come out, I realize I am probably about to be double crossed. There are about a half dozen of us working on the heist and I figure that one or two of us are going to take all of the money. I realize that my gun has been marked, that the bullets now have a distinctive gouge in them when fired. I've been set up!

Inappropriately Dressed
It's a holiday or birthday celebration at the farmhouse. I throw a fit because I can't find a bra to wear. I keep digging through a laundry basket in in grandma's bedroom, but can't find one. My mother chews me out for not packing one. I can't go out to the party with everyone else because I don't have one.

New Video Game
My cousin, Matt, is playing Super Mario Brothers 4 in the living room at the farmhouse. At first my sister and I say we don't recognize the game. We're sitting on the floor, the old patterned floor. The game levels look new and unfamiliar. But the longer we watch it, the more familiar it becomes. I am sure that I have played it before, maybe on another game system? Eventually he gets tired of playing it and switches to a football game. I lose interest.

New Hires
We have three newly hired employees at work. They're all Japanese and none of them speak English. It's a great thing, because some of the people at work can shake off the rust on their foreign langugage skills. The new employees seem nice but we haven't gotten to speak to them much. A manager is walking them around on a tour.

Move-In Day
I am a college student and it is move-in day. When I get to my dorm room, it is FULL of stuff. There are boxes piled very high. They are "bank boxes", the kind with lids and handle cut-outs. They are not all the same color - there are lots of different looking types of boxes. At first I think that it is because Jenny must be my roommate and she has a lot of crap that she thinks she needs to bring to school with her. I am a little disappointed to find out that Jenny is not my roommate. There is a young, thin blonde with short, wavy hair. She is holding a baby in her lap. I think she is sitting on one of the boxes. There is a young blonde guy there too. He is trying to put a fish tank on top of one of my little, black, wooden tv trays. I try to tell him that the fish tank is too heavy for it. It is top heavy and will tip over. He doesn't pay any attention to me.

Can't Find My Class
I am in a high school. It looks a lot like the highschool I graduated from but different. I have lost my registration form. I spend a lot of the dream trying to find out where my next class is supposed to be. I finally make it to class. It's a topic I am not familiar with and I feel like I am already falling behind. When class lets out, I again struggle to find out where my next class is. There is an administrative office but they don't seem too helpful. I find myself wandering the halls. I end up in the bathroom, staring at the inside of the stall door and I realize that bathrooms are one of my dream signs. I say aloud, "This is a dream!" but panic as things start to go dark. I lose the dream and wake up.

Zombie Games
I am playing a zombie game at night, outside with a lot of people. Most of the other players are kids or teenagers. I recognize a few of them, like my cousin and some of my friends. We get "infected" by players that are zombies. They throw a grey cloak over us when we get turned into zombies. Then we have to go back to the base and shamble out to infect other players. The players just run around in the dark and try to avoid the zombies.

The scene shifts and now there is a game show host that is surrounded by a crowd. We're here to see someone defeat the zombie on stage. I get impatient as the previous contestant fails to kill the zombie. They take so long that my buffs start to wear off and I need to reapply them. I am apparently my BloodElf Paladin tank character from World of Warcraft now. I can't wait for my turn to smash the zombie up with my holy hammer.

Strange Cat Lady and Deck Building Project
I am at my Grandmother's farm house. At first there are only a few people around. In the living room it is just one of my guy friends and a woman I know from the roleplaying meetup. She's different though, she is very slow witted and very socially awkward in this dream. We're playing some kind of game where we are all three on the couch. I'm at the far end and she is in the middle. My guy friend is at the other end.

As we play she decides to put her head on his shoulder and snuggle up to him. I get very jealous, because this is something I would like to do. She is using her stupidity and awkwardness as an excuse while he tries to tell her to get off his shoulder. I say something rather mean to her and she gets up in a huff to leave. He gets mad at me for being so rude to her. He defends her saying, "The cats like her enough," as if that is a good way to judge someone's personality.

There is a cat here in the dream now. It is a black and white cat with long fur. It's very friendly and keeps pestering me. I'm now sitting on the floor when some relatives come in. Uncle Gary and my cousins help me set up an electronics device. At first it looked like a laptop case but it turned out to be something smaller like a PDA.

Everyone goes out the back door of the farm house to work on building a new deck. They tell me not to bother. I try to remind Uncle Gary that I helped build a handicapped-accessible ramp for my dad and that I had used his power drill before. I go out the back door to help. I grab onto the railing - it is not level. (This is how my uncle actually builds railings for porches and decks in real life. The top railing is tilted to drain water better). On top of the railing is sitting a big piece of wood that has a heart carved into it. I carefully reposition it so that it doesn't fall to the ground.

There is an old farmhouse and barn in front of me. I can see an older couple working in field out back. I am not sure which, but the couple is either just really old fashioned pioneers or menonites. There is a doorless shed by the east side of the house and I wandered into it. Along with an assortment of old fashioned farming implements, homemade brooms line the far wall. I ask the old mennonite man if I can buy one when he comes over to see what I am doing tresspassing in his shed. Instead I am hired (or forced?) to become a live-in-maid to keep the farmhouse clean.

The mennonite couple disappear and a new couple appear as owners of the farmhouse. They are still older, but they look like they come from the Victorian era. I cannot think of anyone whom the lady of the house (the Mistress) looks like, but the man of the house (the Master) looked very much like Christopher Walken. The outside of the farmhouse looked the same, as did the barn, but the doorless shed disappeared and a long covered porch now wrapped itself around the east side of the house.

The inside of the house was still mainly Victorian/Edwardian era but seemed to have some seemingly out-of-place modernizations scattered randomly about. Though the house wasn't all that large, there was another maid who lived there as well. We usually worked together and while I was relatively pragmatic, the other maid was extremely superstitious and constantly tried to convince me that every creak, or misplaced object, was caused by ghosts. I did not believe in the ghosts theory and tired to argue that the house was old and prone to creaking and that objects get misplaced all the time, but the other maid would have none of it.

The other maid and I were asked to clean out the sothern rooms of the farmhouse because the Master wanted to convert them into a variety store. It was at this time that I started to see unusal things happen, like curtains move when there was no breeze, electrical cords pull themselves from the wall, and doors open and close by themselves. In the main hall, drops of blood fell from the ceiling and pooled on the floor. No matter how many times the other maid and I cleaned up the blood, it always reappeared the next day. Most frustrating was the fact that the Master and Mistress of the house never experienced anything strange, nor saw the blood, and would dismiss our complaints as nonsense.

I was now convinced that the house was haunted afterall, but was still not all that creeped out until the drops of blood from the ceiling became bloody bootprints that appeared decending the stairs and entering the southern rooms. At one point I was cleaning something in the main hall and heard footfalls on the stairs. I turned and saw not the Master as I was expecting, but the bloody bootprints. I quickly tried to duck into one of the adjacent rooms, but the double glass doors either locked of their own accord or jammed. I quickly spun around so that my back was pressed up against the glass doors and the lights in the hall began flickering. The temperature in the room dropped dramatically and I could see my breath. I was frozen in terror as I watched the bloody bootprints slowly and ominously stomp towards me. I cowered and shut my eyes, but just before they reached me, the sound of the footfalls disappeared, the room temperature returned to normal, and the lights stopped flickering. The glass doors behind me swung open and I made a hasty exit from the main hall and ran into the other maid, who saw everything from the other side of the glass doors.

Not only did the other maid quit after that but the bloody bootprints following me around the house became a common occurance. While it did take me a while to get used to, I eventually figured out that if I made no attempt to run from the ghostly follower, or try to clean up the bloody mess, the ghost would soon leave and the bloody mess would eventually disappear on its own.

I was standing in the southern room at one point, brainstorming ideas for the variety store, when I was summoned by the Master. I went to his private study in the north end of the house and when I got there, he lectured me on how no women in his household should leave the premises without a male escort. I realized at this time that I had never so much as stepped out onto the porch in all my time of working there as a maid, let alone leave the property. I got angry and shouted "There is my escort!" I pointed to the bloody bootprints that followed me into the room and the Master finally sees them for the first time, but says nothing.

Almost immediately after the lecture, I began to see ghosts in and around the farmhouse. The first is a little boy in a blue coat and white shorts, playing with an orange ball, near the pond at the front of the house. One Sunday I am sitting with the Master and Mistress and their guests when I get up and go into the kitchen for something. When I return, there is an old man sitting in my seat. He looks exactly like the character Oscar Leroy from the show Corner Gas (baseball cap and all). I recognize him as a friend of the family in the dream and he starts telling me about how it is his birthday. I realize that the old man is a ghost and I exclaim outloud to the Master and Mistress that their friend is dead, but everyone in the room just looks at me like I am crazy. Some get angry because they think I am being disrespectful since they know that man I am talking about and that it is his birthday.

I beg the Master to call the family of their friend but they wil not. The ghost of the old man gets up and asks me to follow him outside into the front yard. I do so, and the family and their guests follow me to see what I am up to, though I suspect it is just to observe me because they think I have lost my mind. The ghost of the old man tells me about how he died peacefully in his sleep, and as a hearse drives by in the distance, he points to the completed variety store at the southern end of the house and to says "Never stop writing down your ideas." The ghost then fades away. I walk over to the pond (though it looks more like a muddy pit at this moment) and stare quietly into the murky water. The Master comes over to me and finally says that he will get someone to call the family of his friend, to confirm his condition, because no one else yet believes that the old man is dead.

The Mistress runs out of the house and proclaims that their friend is dead and that it was self-inflicted. While everyone reacts to the news of their friend's suicide, I walk away saying "He lied to me!" (about how the old man said he died). Later, the Master, Mistress and guests are sitting around talking about how strange it was that someone would want to kill themselves on their birthday, but no one seems particularily upset at the loss of thier friend. I am disturbed and upset at their apparent apathy.


The dream ends there.

The birthday-suicide thing is something that I had been ruminating about for a few days because I struggle with suicidal ideation as a result of clinical depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The main character is me, but I do not look like me. I looked like a young boy with short blond hair, wearing a dirty grey jumpsuit and a bright orange scarf, and I was very thin. Every time I mention myself in this dream, picture the aforementioned description of the young boy.

No long before this dream I had to euthanize my first cat, Bambi, because she was very sick. I find it interesting that my memories of her, and the pain I feel from losing her, appear in the dream - but she does not actually appear herself. I also acknowledge my memories and feelings of her in the dream but it does not become lucid when I do so.

Picture of my cat, Bambi:


The dream took place in this beautiful, lush back-country that bordered the ocean with huge rocky cliffs. There was four areas to this place: a flat, grassy field that lead to the cliffs; a lightly forested area that was "hilly"; a farmhouse and country road on the otherside of the lightly forested area; and a heavier forested area that bordered the other three areas.


The dream starts off with me inside the farmhouse, tidying up rooms and packing my belongings because I was supposed to leave that place for good for some reason, though my heart was reluctant to go, because my memories awere in that farmhouse. It felt especially painful because my cat, Bambi, just died and I kept finding cat toys and other things that would bring up memories of her. There are other people there cleaning up as well, but I cannot remember specific descriptions about them. There was a middle-aged man, a young girl, and a young boy who was similar in age as I appeared in the dream.

Eventually I went for a walk because my heart ached for Bambi too much. I cannot remember now how in the dream I got there, but suddenly I was at the cliff overlooking the ocean. The cliff edge was very steep and must have been hundreds of meters above the sea level; it was one heck of a long way down. I cannot remember how or why now, but somehow I got too close to the edge and I slipped over. I grabbed a handful of grass that grew on the edge and it held me up (which totally wouldn't happen for real, but whatever). I screamed for help but I knew no one could hear me. I struggled for a bit and at first I was convinced that I was going to fall. I thought of letting go for a moment, because if I died then I would get to see my cat again, but somehow I found some sturdy handholds in the rock and pulled myself up onto the cliff top and to safety.

I laid there for a long while before gettting up and wandering along the cliff's edge (but far enough away so I wouldn't fall off again) and I came across some stray cats playing and lounging around near the cliff's edge. I pet them for a while and thought of my own cat before walking to the heavily forested area. On the way I kept running into stray cats and I wanted to believe that if I found out where they were coming from, I would find my cat Bambi, still alive. There were many strays that looked like her (gray, stripped tabby) but none that were her.

In the heavily forested area I came across a large hollow tree that many of the strays seemed to live in. I became worried about them because I was going to leave this place soon and there would be no one to take care of them. I wandered out of the forest and back to the farmhouse. I explained to the three DCs about the cats and they told me to stop worrying about it. Just then a large truck pulled up in front of the farmhouse and some construction workers got out. They worked incredibly fast and put up a chainlink fence around the farmhouse and the large hollow tree in the forest. I asked them what they were doing and they said the next people who were moving into the farmhouse were Veterinarians and wanted to make sure the stray cats were safe.

It was a great relief for me to know that the cats were going to be taken care of, and I hung around until all of the construction was done (including an extension on the farmhouse that was going to be a cat hospital), and this seemed to allow me to accept that my cat, Bambi, was gone and I could leave without regret or sadness.

Just at the end of the dream, as I was walking towards the car that would take me away from that place, I turned my head and saw a black bear by the edge of the heavily forested area. The middle aged man was there as well and he was ignoring the bear, which was ignoring him as well, and since I did not sense and danger I ignored the bear as well. The dream ended there.