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)
Last night, I once again found myself lucid, once again without being entirely sure how it happened. It felt like the dream was close to an hour long, although it was technically two dreams since there was a brief awakening and reentry in the middle. Because it was so long and I spent the whole thing just exploring the house I found myself in and messing around, it wouldn’t make for very interesting reading, and so I’ll just include a few highlights of it. -Finding a series of books entitled “More Than 21 Cats” on a bookshelf. -Devoting more attention than usual to maintaining awareness and focus. My lucid dreams almost always end with no warning whatsoever, and while I used to consider this something I couldn’t do much about, I’ve been wondering lately whether preventative stabilization might help. This intention seems to have carried over, and as the dream was longer than any I’ve had for a while, I’d call it a success. -Receiving a few gifts for no apparent reason from people who were around. I spent a good chunk of the dream opening them, resisting the urge to go off and do other things since it seemed like that would have been ungrateful, even if it was a dream. -Moving a wardrobe with my mind. I extended my hand, interfacing with it on a mental level—if that makes sense—and then pulled. And then I pushed it back. -Having the dream briefly interrupted by a message displayed over the scene as if it were a screen. It was a rather ominous message, but it seemed to have no immediate effect other than turning everything in the house green and shifting some of the furniture into new styles and/or positions. This may have been a direct result of moving the wardrobe as it happened shortly afterwards, and the last time I tried to control things in a lucid dream was also closely followed by something weird and threatening happening. -Two more visits to my M--- basement, the first before the green shift, the second afterwards to see if anything had changed. It had: the second version had a closed door where the tunnel often is in dream versions of it, as well a sort of workshop behind the same wall, visible through a couple small windows. -Lots of cats around, but probably less than 21.
A meeting is taking place beside a river between a knight and a woman. His name is Gawain. Her name is Lotus. It seems like the beginning of a relationship between them. But she can see into the future, and she knows that one day, he will kill her. And yet, she doesn't attempt to break things off. I am seeing things from his perspective and from hers, and also from somewhere outside of it, where I don’t like the way things are going. And so I pull the scene apart, untangling all the little mental streams that are contributing to it and recombining them into three separate bundles. It will be easier to work with this way, I figure. Now I am in the kitchen of my old house in M--- with my mother, preparing a meal. I’m making the salads. But as I tear the lettuce into smaller pieces, I can still see the river there, and a little point of red light shining in the grass beside it. It’s easy to see and easy to avoid, but it still makes me uneasy. In a different dream, I’m in a grocery store, although the building seems to be serving multiple functions. I’m there shopping with Saimi’s little sister, who seems to be around seven years old. After a while, I figure I’ll let her take care of a few things. She gets to do something all on her own, I get to read for a little bit—it seems like a pretty good arrangement. I tell her to pick out some plums—maybe three, whatever kind looks nice—and I sit down at a table there with my book of Rilke’s poetry, which I apparently have with me. She goes off and comes back a few minutes later with a single plum in a plastic bag. She places it on the table and then leaves again. A few minutes later, she’s back with another plum in a bag. Kids. You know there’s got to be some sort of weird logic behind this. But now something else seems to be happening: there’s going to be a horse race here, inside the building, and Saimi’s little sister is participating, along with three other people. But the horse she’s on is a rather strange one: it seems to be made of some embroidered red material with yellow patterns in it, while still behaving like a living horse. But the race doesn’t begin immediately, and I awaken before it actually takes place.