Recent DJ Posts

(Though not lucid, this first one was about dream control.)

I've finally figured out how to work with this house. I've begun simply telling it, out loud, what I need from it - not exerting any effort or willpower, just a statement. "House, we need x thing," and the house takes care of it itself, without any effort on my part - simply informing the house what's needed instead of trying to control it. Amazing what a difference clear communication can make.

I'm talking to a servant girl in a room about the size of a closet where she both works and, I'm surprised to learn, sleeps. I ask if she'd like her own room, which of course she does. "House, we need a spare room." I walk out the door and find a new room's appeared, though it's dark and half-finished and covered in dust. "A nicer spare room." Now it's something suitable for living in - and I don't think I looked away, and there didn't seem to be any transition. One moment it had the first appearance, the next moment it was completely different. The girl explores the new room, exclaiming over it. There's a little bundle of fake white roses in a bowl of sugar.

There's what I think of as a wildfire at the edge of the house, just small patches of burning grass but I know it'll grow if I'm not careful. I have the impression this is the result of carelessly reshaping things, creating vulnerabilities around the edges. I have the house stop the fire, and though the fire's stubborn, it goes out as I walk towards it.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A servant girl came running into a room at the back of the household after hearing one of the other servant girls shouting, but I grab her at the door and stop her. I can hear voices outside, and I recognize the voices of some soldiers who were causing problems with that second girl earlier, somewhere more public. They were reprimanded. Clearly they resented it and want payback. Realizing this, I admire the girl who came running to help; she's small and only armed with a kitchen knife and completely outnumbered, but she doesn't hesitate. Very noble.

Unfortunately for both of them, I'm in a hurry, so I'm not going to let her go help her friend. I'm just here to track down an object that belongs to me and which was stolen long ago, and which she stole from its most recent owner - a leather journal with a star on the center of the cover.

She showed me her room where it was hidden and ran off as soon as I released her, and I start looking through the journal, full of brief observations and sketches I'd drawn. I stop at the sketch on the last page, Jules sitting in a chair with his head tilted back. I feel like there's something foreshadowing about this. And while I'm looking at it, I hear an old man's voice as if he's looking over my shoulder. He makes a comment that makes it clear he recognizes Jules, and then asks me, "Did you follow me?"

I'm walking through the basement of a tower, grey stone walls. There's some kind of chaos going on on the main floors above me, a distraction while I was taking care of something in the dungeon on the next floor down - but now that it's time to go, I want to avoid getting caught in whatever's happening on the main level.

There's two people waiting for me with two different escape routes - neither of them knows exactly what I was doing here, neither of them knows me personally, and neither them knows about the other. There's a person I work with who'd arranged for a man to meet me by the stairs up to the main floors, but I'm having second thoughts about trusting him. And there's a woman waiting by a wooden door that leads elsewhere; she's not involved at all, she just wants to escape whatever's going on upstairs and is willing to take me with her, recognizing me as a friend of a friend. I believe she would be more sympathetic to what I was doing here, if it came out.

Deciding to go with that woman at the wooden door, I'm doubling back, passing by the stairs leading down to the dungeon. I debate whether I have time to go back down there - there had been something else I'd wanted to look into down there, though it's not a priority. I start down those steps, but it becomes so dark I can't see, and I have a vague impression of massive chains. I can hear a woman's voice crying. I decide I don't have time to be fumbling around in the dark, and I head back up the stairs.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A man is looking at a wall recently painted green in an attempt to emulate some other place, and talking to someone about a man he knows, saying that while he wasn't looking, the man went and got married to people so unsuited - people, plural, meaning both the wife and the stepkids - people he'll have to keep secrets from.

I'm watching light play over the features of the man in question in an interesting way. He's looking at a signet ring with an image of a rose, which he's just removed from a hiding place in the base of a lamp. I'm hearing a kind of tinkling sound like a music box repeating a single measure over and over again.

In some small early 20th century village, I'm the youngest in a family of three sons, and for years now it's been expected that I'll marry the neighbor's youngest daughter when we grow up - we've always been good friends. In the previous scene we'd all been sitting around my family's dinner table; now I've gone to meet her down by the river, which is so full of plants it gives the impression you could walk across them like a bridge. The girl's here waiting, but before I go to meet her, I'm distracted by another girl, a stranger, standing in the center of the river. The observer side of me thinks, I have to remember this.

Her hair is probably blonde, but it's so matted and dirty that it's hard to tell. She's dressed in old-fashioned men's clothes, a shapeless and colorless coat over a blue velvet waistcoat with a pattern of rosebuds. Then I realize that while I've been focusing on remembering the details of her appearance, I've been missing the conversation the character side of me is having with her. I drop back to focus on what the character side of me is doing.

Years later, but near that same river. One of my brothers is handing me a silver pocket watch that belongs to our father, and telling me that he's in Madrid - they've known this all along, apparently. My brothers got me to come back here on the pretense that our father's missing - I'm annoyed but not surprised to find that was a lie. There's a woman here, somehow connected to that girl in the river but not the same person, and something about biting down on a chain, and her little fangs.

I'm carrying one end of a wooden box through what looks like an abandoned house, with that woman holding the other end - it's not particularly large or heavy, just large enough to be awkward for one person. I'm looking at our hands on the box, close enough to be nearly touching. Her nails look thick and discolored, greyish; there's blood ingrained around the nail, but I'm thinking that the blood's not what's causing the dark greyish appearance, since there's blood all over my hands too.

That woman is kissing me and holding me in place, not letting me turn my head to see what's going on, telling me not to move when I try to. Something is very wrong. There's other people here; the observer side of me recognizes this moment and I switch to third person to avoid it. The scene still continues in front of me, they kill her, but I don't see much of it, focusing on remembering the earlier scenes.

I'm entering a large garage, looking for the owner. Off to the right I see a white truck I recognize from the first time I met him, when he'd kidnapped the queen. There are three vases full of red roses sitting in the truck bed now. The man I'm looking for is further into the garage, off to the left, along with another man who I also met during that kidnapping incident. I exchange the usual greetings with this second man, then walk up to the one I came to see. He's an incredibly big guy, tall and muscular, and he doesn't turn from what he's doing to look at me. Neither of us say anything for a moment - I have a hard time deciding how to talk to him - and then when we do speak, both of us start talking at once.

He asks about the queen at the same moment I say, "(the queen's name)'s sick." Dying, most likely.

He's shocked and horrified, as expected, and asks me a bunch of questions about her. As we talk, we raise the question of whether her sickness is a reflection of the state of the land, or whether the land's sickness is a reflection of the state of the queen - that they're linked is obvious, but which one started it, which is the cause, that's the question.

The other man joins in the conversation at this point. They'd been tracking the changes in the land on their own, not realizing what was happening to the queen; and comparing our information, the two of them become convinced it started with the land. That second man shows me one of their maps on a computer screen, showing when a giant creature associated with cold moved into the far northwest and burrowed deep into the earth - that was the first one, the one that started it. They'd already been planning to remove or kill it. It goes without saying that I'll be coming too.

As I'm looking at his data, I'm thinking, amused, how convenient, making this into a problem that can be solved with our skillset.

I'm walking in the garden, mentally composing a letter. When I'm ready to start putting it down, I go to where I've left my portable writing desk. There are a few bees hovering around it, interested in the vine I left it under. I'm thinking about moving it somewhere I won't disturb the bees, but then I see an envelope that's been left on top of it.

The letter inside is written in classical Chinese. I have no difficulty understanding it, but rather than actually reading the letter, I'm thinking about the woman who sent it - even without seeing her name, there's only one person who writes to me in this language. I'm seeing a mental image of the two of us walking through a rough stone tunnel next to water, with light reflecting off the water, rippling patterns reflected on our faces.

That was a memory, but the next image I see is the present, through her eyes, something that can sometimes happen when I'm thinking about her. She's looking at a painting of a woman I think of as a saint, with an image of a dragon behind her; then her vision moves up to the ceiling, as if she's falling back. I see an image of a pile of roses turning to ash, and my connection to her is gone - not just this vision, but the connection of our blood is gone. She's dead.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a man who's been sent back in time, and now several other people who've gone back to rescue him. He'd been involved with the woman leading the rescue team. They've just met up now, and very nearly attacked each other - both of them sneaking around a fortress, trying to avoid being seen. Having sorted it out, it seems he's working together on a mission with a woman from this era, and fallen in love, and has no interest in going back to his original time period. He's just broken her out of a cell in this fortress. The woman who came back to rescue him is thinking it was foolish to chase his spirit into the past when she had his (something) in the present.

The scene transitions to a modern-day park; that man was brought back to the present against his wishes, but so was that woman from the past. They're spending time in the park with their infant son, distracted and unhappy.

My attention shifts to other people in the park, a group discussing magic, specifically one man mentioning a "listen and learn" spell with leaves, as a second step for those just starting to work with trees. He describes trees in general as "a bit froggy, though."

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A private performance of a show based on Frankenstein. The 'bride' character speaks beautifully; the 'creation' character is silent, and his hands are bent backwards at the wrist as if they've been broken. When he'd been alive, he'd been the doctor's student or lover or something close.

As FK's Nicholas, I saw an image of a vase of white roses, bleeding a few trails of red blood - I believed that this was a hallucination, thinking of it as "a bit of silliness" - and then I saw a mental image of Janette lying on a white couch, looking unwell, somehow connected with those roses. Now I'm sitting on that couch, and Janette's lying on her side with her head resting against my thigh, my hand in her hair. We're talking about a particular time in the past when things had been better between the three of us. As we talk, I'm thinking about how easily I revert to this version of myself when I'm around them - without thinking, my body language, my speech patterns change automatically. It's like taking off a mask.

POV shifts to show LaCroix. He's at some kind of charity event. At the moment he's talking to a man near a buffet table, a man he knows in some professional capacity, and a moment comes when he has to either eat or make some excuse. Without hesitating, he puts some item of food in his mouth. As a disembodied observer/Nicholas, I'm incredibly jealous of his ability to do that without flinching. It would make my life so much easier if I could pretend to eat - socialization revolves almost entirely around food and drink, so just imagine how much easier it would be to blend in. After a moment, LaCroix makes a displeased face, reaches for a napkin, and removes the thing in his mouth. He makes some comment about the poor quality of the food this year compared to previous years, and the man he's talking to agrees. LaCroix's posing as a gourmet, picky about what he eats - it's his usual trick, insulting the food wherever he goes. They make a joke about not being able to trust the food in a place that has such skinny staff, and then the man LaCroix's talking to complains that this event has gone downhill in general - disappointing for such a worthy charity. LaCroix makes a comment about the decline of morality as time goes by. He manages to say this with a straight face.

After going lucid and abandoning the storyline I'd been in, I'm walking to a simple full-length mirror leaning against a wall. I focus on my intended destination - the rose garden, a meeting place. As I place my hands through the glass, I lose all visuals. My hands sink into the glass as far as my wrists, but no further. The 'hole' beyond the surface of the mirror that acts as a portal isn't open enough. I can feel jagged edges against my right wrist, as opposed to the heavy liquid-like feeling of the portal. It's like I've broken open a hole in a frozen lake. I stay focused on the destination and mentally dig at those edges until they give.

I can feel a wall of thorns all around me so that I can't move. I still have no visuals, I think of this as between scenes. I'm annoyed at myself - this is the barrier around the garden, I shouldn't have had to deal with this at all. It was an error in focus, thinking about roses and sharp edges. I try to correct my focus but find myself waking up. (Though it wound up being a false awakening. Visuals returned when I 'woke up.')

Dream - Lucid

I was in a building, working on re-stringing a guitar. The strings were all in place except for one or two. I looked at them very closely, and they didn't really look like guitar strings at all, but different types of silver necklaces. The one I was working on looked like it was made of small ball bearings.



I started to tighten it into place. When I felt it was just tight enough, I started to pluck it. Hmm. It still seemed a bit loose; it gave a bit instead of making a sound.

Then, I was talking to someone about chewing tobacco. I was being told that someone else really likes it to be as fresh as possible. I then had some chewing tobacco, and I put some in my mouth and literally started to chew on it. I then remembered that that isn't how you actually use it. I put it in my lip instead. I wondered why the hell I was doing it, because I hate chewing tobacco, not to mention it's terrible for you.

At some point, I did go back to trying to put the string on correctly.

~

I was going on a trip with my family. I mainly remember my mom being there. We were going somewhere in Georgia, Marietta I believe, and it was tax-free weekend, so the roads were bad, and the town was crowded. I saw many streets with people and cars on them. I remember seeing cars driving up some concrete stairs outside somewhere.

I then saw my old boss, Sherry. She was standing in a doorway, and had a bunch of things behind her, though I have no idea what they were. She was telling me that the roses I was bringing with me should be killed when I was done with them. It had something to do with the chance that the roses could spread something. She then walked away. I couldn't bear to kill roses! I imagined myself purposely killing roses by pulling them apart. I just couldn't bear to. I would not do it. I told my mom I couldn't kill the roses.

~

I was observing some dinosaurs. It was daytime in a desert oasis type region. I saw a green parasaurolphus laying down by a lake. I thought about how hot she must be, and how she probably would have to stick her head in the water to cool down since she was cold-blooded.



I then was inside the scene, swimming in a nearby cave full of water. It was a shallow cave, and I was right by the opening. A green velociraptor started to swim towards me from outside. I knew I needed to avoid him so he wouldn't see me. I started to quietly swim to the side. I went underneath part of the rock structure and out of the line of the raptor's vision. He swam past me. I was still cautious so as not to attract his attention.

~

I was working where I am now, but it was ran from the water. Like...being in the a pool and swimming was part of the job.

I was then in a back stockroom. It was absolutely huge, way bigger than IWL. The floors were filthy, covered in grains and stuff to make bread. I thought about how this must attract pests. I also had never remembered seeing it so filthy before.

I was then sitting down in a hallway. I don't remember what I was doing, but I was sitting with my back against the wall. I then saw a small, grey creature about the size of an iguana zooming around the wall and onto the ceiling. I thought that it was a huge spider, but then I thought that there was no way there was a spider that big. It must be a lizard of some sort. It scurried into an opening on the ceiling. I then caught a glimpse of its six legs. Whaaat?! I was thinking about whether or not there was a species of lizard that has 4 legs and 2 small arms, but nothing came to mind. Weird.

I was then telling my boss, Shannon, about what happened. She interrupted my story when I was telling her about it, saying
"A gecko?" as if she knew exactly what it was.
"No," I said, "It had 8 legs! It was a spider!"
I said it had 8 even though it had six. I thought about this in the dream, and how it was inaccurate. I did not correct myself, however.
This seemed to be satisfying enough for Shannon. She did not argue about what it was anymore.

We were then in a pool, and Brandi, a lady I used to work with at my old job, was there as well. Shannon was there also. I was some sort of lead baker. Brandi had been as well, but she couldn't handle it and had to step down. I "remembered" her getting really stressed out. She did the right thing though by stepping down. Now it was just me. I wondered if I could handle it.

There was then a meeting in the pool. I got on a swim noodle and headed over to the group. I did something to try to be funny, but no one laughed or anything. I felt stupid. I then went underwater with the noodle, and it was taking me a way longer time than I thought it would to get back up to the surface. I wondered when my head would break the surface, because I could only hold my breath for so long. I kept thinking it should have already come, and that I would feel it any second.

I do not remember if I ever made it back up or not, because my husband's alarm woke me up.

~

Second time in the past week or so that I've dreamed about having to re-string an instrument. I do not play any string instruments IWL, and have no experience re-stringing anything.

Also, dinosaurs. Fuck yeah!

I am on an alien planet with a barren landscape. The boulders are red and piled up in some places into mountains. At one point in time, the surface ripples like a long, slow tidal wave of earth, which explains the strange fauna, all very sturdy with flat surfaced faces and bodies. I see two horse-like beasts flat against the boulders of a slope. They are gray and immobile, but they detach as I watch, and they separate and heave themselves up the slope…traveling. The scene is depressing, especially the bulky, graceless, sluggish animals.

I am alone…wandering. I seldom encounter other people and nearly always at a distance. They are wanderers, survivors, scavengers like me.

I have settled down now in an enclave of red boulders at some elevation. I can look down a slope, and I can see across the barren, rocky landscape. Sometimes I see a wanderer or a pair of people in the distance.

I am looking out from this desolate aerie when I am threatened by a pair of men from behind. They try to bully me into doing something. I don’t know what they want, and I don’t think they know either. It’s not possible to bully me because there’s nothing I want to protect or live for. I’m immune to their threats, taunts or violence.

My morbid passivity dispels the aggression of the two rough and burly men so they seat themselves, instead, at a boulder as if at a café. I bring them what I have, a little water in a salvaged, worn, plastic container. More people, all haggard and rough, come to the red boulder enclave, and I serve them what I have, bits of food or scant water all in deteriorating containers or poorly-crafted bowls of red clay.

A man and woman come to the improvised diner in the barrens, and I bring the woman a little milk in a broad, plastic container like the bottom of a 2-liter soda. She is hot, dirty and tired, so she tosses the milk like water against her throat and chest to cool herself. For the first time, my emotions flare, and I cry out in distress over the precious milk. “More valuable than gold…!” The regret is piercing, but brief, and I go back to a red boulder where more of the rare, nourishing milk sits at the bottom of a deteriorating container, and I take it to the woman to drink.

My mom appears to help me clean up. I have piles of clean, folded rags with which I wipe out the bowls and other plastic ware. She expects and looks around for water, but I explain that there isn’t enough for washing, so we must settle for wiping with these towels.

Another rough stranger complains about the conditions, at which I slam down my towel in my fist against a boulder and cry, “It’s the whole damn solar system…!” By this I mean that it isn’t just this world or this little, red rock diner, so this person won’t find better conditions anywhere and will just have to get used to it.

A pair of wanderers, probably father and son, come into the diner while I am busy, but I see the boy looking at a little, picture frame I have set upright at an angle amidst the crude dinnerware on a boulder. The frame is white porcelain with tiny, pink roses painted on it. It is square, about 3 inches in both dimensions. In gilt lettering, it says “love,” but there’s no image contained in the frame. It’s empty.

.../I met the lead singer and guitar of a band which lately I bought one of its albums. We start talking and I realize that we are the same sort of freaks. Apparently we have even the same psychological disorder and I notice that his t-shirt is dirt with food the same as mine. I'm amazed! Then his partner gets around and we decide that we can go to visit some underworld I know from previous visits. I can remember the smell of roses there, and I ask him if he remembers that smell, like vanilla I say. I'm hungry and wanna eat some pizza before we go there. I know the secret passage where we must go to get that underworld. I can see us slipping into the darkness and start crawling in search for some adventure. I'm fascinated with the possibilities. I think it would be fun if I can share the experience of visiting that underground place/...

* I fell asleep hearing the CD while I was taking a look to the booklet art.

* I remember some past scenes of that world where I have to crawl in the dark to get somewhere.

Aeolar's Dream

I am in this hillbilly house that I thought was John's, but I don't think it was now. There is a movie or something similar taking place inside, and the dream kept cutting back and forth between scenes. I am in this bedroom, and everything inside of it is black and white, and I am watching myself in 3rd person. I wasn't in control of myself, I was simply watching as I acted. The scene then changed to another man who is walking into the door of the house.

He walks up, and sees something on this table. When he walks over to it, there is a card, roses, and chocolates sitting there together. The scene goes back to me in black in white, having the same thing on the bed, and eating the chocolates. Back to the other man doing the same. "I" then walk out of the room and see a potion that that's label says "Boater Man's Potion" on it. I drink it, and walk over to a mirror. Personally, I thought that it would turn my clothes into a boaters outfit, but in the mirror I had a red helmet on, and my regular clothes. "I" was making weird faces in the mirror and pouting my lips.

Dream skip.
I am in a school hallway and my German teacher is telling us something.
------------------------

I am with my Mom and her friend Karen, and they want to get a Lamborghini. Mom is telling us that we would be so deep in debt if we crashed the car, which she was sure we would do. I decided to use a dirt bike instead, and started heading out. It was extremely hilly, and I almost fell a few times. I rode in the same direction for a little while and the dream scenery started to change. Buildings were starting to sprout up, and the dirt was covered up by white tiles in the ground, which looked like something from Mirror's Edge.

I rode through this alleyway, and noticed a big group of people. They were fighting these slow creatures, reminiscent of zombies, but they looked pixellated. None of us had weapons, so we are fighting them with our natural weapons. I went into birds eye view and felt myself holding a controller, just like a fighting game. I was now doing crazy spin kicks, and I had figured out that I had boosters and could use them to fly for a long time. I began to fly up to the north west, and the ground which I was looking at started turning purple.

I kept going, doing flight combos, and I reached a big river that was pixellated too. I was almost out of boost, and I almost made my way to the other shore line, but I fell into the river, and was eaten by a shark. I heard a narrator say:
"You feel a River Slime Shark under you. River Slime Shark has eaten you."
I then respawned back with the group of people, but this time it was our turn to play hunter. There was another group of "survivors" and they are the ones who called the zombies on us. We morphed into these weird creature forms of all different solid colors, mine being purple, that looked kind of like an organic sock monkey.

We all took off flying really fast to the north north-east, towards a big city. We flew over a bridge, and I heard gunfire and looked over to my left to see a big blinking arrow over a survivors head. I wondered where his friends were, and went up the street to search for them, and when I did, I saw this huge green mech with a "mouth" with spiky teeth. I hurried back and landed, 3 others and myself approached the man, who was currently dealing with a massive zombie horde. I summoned a blue crystalline orb that I threw at the man, and ran up to attack him. I was pulled back by the mech I saw earlier, and almost got eaten by it. I wriggled out of its grasp, and noticed that my normal attacks would be no use against this thing. I touched the foot of the mech, and morphed into one. We began fighting like Rock-em Sock-em Robots.

We are all Rock-em Sock-em Robots.

So I was at school. My boyfriend Chris showed up there, which I thought was meant as a surprise since he goes to a different school. I'm not sure what occassion it was for, but he gave me a boquet of purple flowers (maybe thistles?). I was disappointed, though, because my favorite flowers are red roses. But then my friend (can't remember which one, maybe Megan) gave me a boquet of red roses. I was grateful, but still disappotined that they weren't from Chris.

Later on in the dream my friend and I were at my locker. I wanted to clean it out since it was so messy, but one of the resource officers said I couldn't

.

This is the second dream I had on April 29th, 2010.


Dream starts off with me and my friend Becky atop a mountain at night. It is night time and we are in a desolate mountain range as there are only forest covered mountains on either side of us as far as the eye can see in all directions. The full moon is our only illumination. There is an old Victorian style mansion halfway down the mountain so we walk there. Despite the remote location, the mansion is a popular destination for touists and the place is full of people. People come and go in and out of the building almost nonstop even though it is the middle of the night. The thing is though, that the sign advertising the mansion is considered cursed and no one will touch the fallen lettering on the outside of the building, even though everyone wants to see it restored. I think belief in curses is ridiculous so I go over and rehang the fallen lettering. Everyone, including my friend, now believes that I am now somehow cursed and will not come near me. In fact I am forced to leave by being chased off the property and have to wander the mountains alone.

The dream kind of changes. My physical appearance changes to that of a young man dressed in primitive animal furskins rags and though I am still in the vast mountain range in which this dream started, my friend and the mansion (and all the other people) have disappeared and I am in the post-apocalyptic world that the first dream took place in - except it is a few hundred years later and things have gotten so bad that humans have reverted into primitive warring tribes living off the land. I wander through the vast mountain for ages, hungry and alone until I come across a small tribe of people living in some caves on the side of a particularily steep mountain. They are initially suspicious of me and keep my at bay until I convince them that I am unarmed, lost and hungry. I find out by chatting to a few people that the tribe are Goddess worshippers who have exiled themselves from the rest of the world so that they could practice their faith in peace since most of the other tribes still ascribe to the "archaic" patriarchal Abrahamic religions and still violently war with each other because of it. The chief of this tribe, an elderly lady who looks as old as the mountains themselves, tells me that they have revived the Goddess religion of human pre-history because the fighting between the warlike patriarchal religions are why civillization collapsed and brought about the apocalypse in the first place. They live on the seculded mountain range to avoid persecution.

After talking to the chieftess I am welcomed to stay with the tribe and encouraged to participate in a competition of strength and skill between the men. The winner will be hailed as the Protector Hero of the tribe and be rewarded with the responsibilty of guarding the tribe's safety, which is a huge honour for them. I protest at first because even though my dream character has changed into someone other than the me of reality, I still think I am female even though I now have a male body. The tribe tease me for as a man it is appalling to them that I back down from a challange, but I have no idea how to explain to them that I have a girl spirit inside my male body. Someone suggests that I am a good candidate for Protector Hero because of my modesty (which is very Goddess-like) and every tribesperson seems to agree except for two. Amidst the men of the tribe a young, muscular man appears and challenges the tribe's eagerness to bless me without the trials of the competition. He seems a few years my elder, but is extremely handsome and my girlspirit instantly develops a crush on him. The other man is a shaman of the tribe who also happens to be the uncle of the challenger. I agree that it is not fair for any titles to be bestowed without testing the strength and skill of all competitors and insist that I am not participating in the challange anyway. The men scoff and say that I cannot refuse as it is the way of their tribe and as a new member I have no choice to comply lest I be expelled to survive on my own. The young man tells me his name is Atka and we set off immediately for the first challenge which is a deer hunt in a nearby forested valley.

Every man is successful in catching a deer for the tribe to eat except me, partly because I have no idea how to hunt with a bow and arrow and the deer I was about to shoot at is quickly shot first by Atka who was hiding in some nearby bushes. I stalk another deer but it too is claimed by quick and hidden Atka. I score a deer finally but I am not strong enough to carry it over my shoulder like all the other men and have to abandon it where it lay. Atka, carrying a deer over each shoulder, jeers at me. He considers me an intruder and a rival - for he was the favoured candidate to become the next Protector Hero of the tribe until I showed up. I am determined to win the next part of the challenge, just so he'll notice me in a good way because my girlspirit is still going gaga over him. I am the only one to return to the camp without a deer. After we have eaten and night has fallen I am sitting alone by the fire, unable to sleep, when Atka's shaman uncle approaches me and tempts me with magical gifts that would supposedly assist me in winning the competition. When I refuse the magical gifts (because the dubious and suspicious offer is way too obviously a trick) he then offers to make the most beautiful woman in the tribe fall in love with me if I throw the challenge. When I too refuse that he becomes enraged and summons some shadowy spirits from the surrounding forest to attack me. I grab my bow and shoot at the shadows, but they are hard to see in the flickering light of the dying fire, and being noncorporal spirits, the arrows go right through them (though somehow they are able to hurt me). I begin shooting arrows in a panic in all directions and the shadowy spirits suddenly retreat as one of my frantic shots strikes the shaman in the chest. He howls in pain then quickly retreats into the night. I am afraid that I will be driven from the tribe for injuring one of their reveared shamans, (and be forever hated by the heartthrob Atka for hurting his uncle) but no one emerges from the caves to investigate the ruckus.

The next challenge occurs the next day at dawn. The remaining shamans of the group (Atka's uncle is no where to be found, but equally no one save Atka seems to miss him and I am still too scared of being driven from the tribe to confess the events of the night) demand that all participants perform a miraculous event saying that if we are favoured by the Goddess that nothing is impossible. One by one all of the participants fail to do anything special and are eliminated from the competition until only Atka and I are left. I am to go first so I will myself into the shape of a fish and plonk myself into a nearby stream and start swimming around. Atka tries to one up me by transforming himself into an otter, leaping into the same stream and catching me in his teeth. He surfaces and shows off to the men who appaud wildly because not only am I trapped in his mouth as a fish, but I am also trapped in the body of the fish whilst he has a hold of me and he is yet able to revert back to his human form. He tosses me around in the air a few times to make his point before throwing me back into the stream, where I am able to finally revert to normal. The men all have a good laugh at my expense. Point to Atka.

The next challange consists of Atka and I having to climb down the steep side of the mountain with no protective gear or ropes, pick a rare red flower that grows in the valley below and then returning up the mountain again. It is a race as well as a test of physical endurance. It is midday and the sun glaring down upon the bare mountain side feels like it is going to bake me alive because unlike Atka, I did not strip off my furskin top before beginning the challenge - add this to the extreme physical exertion needed to cling to the rockface I begin sweating like crazy. Though Atka is older and more muscular than I, he is under no stress whatsoever, even though I am ahead at first. Eventually my hands are sweating too much and my body too tired for me to carry on and I silently conceed defeat and start climbing back up the mountain.

As I pass Atka, he strikes out with a hearty fist and knocks my block off, and knocks me right off the block. I am pretty sure I am falling to my death and though I am not scared I resign myself to my fate. I don't feel any anger towards Atka, though I do ponder the contradiction between the peacefullness of the tribe and his overly aggressive competitiveness. It is a long drop but when I hit the bottom I kind of bounce off something soft and coushy. I have landed on the rare red flower that I am supposed to retrieve except I have a new dilemma now because the flower is absolutely massive, being the size of a VW Microbus. I lay on my rose bed and contemplate for a moment what to do next (and enjoy the cool breeze while I catch my breath). Atka is still a ways up the mountain so I know I have time. Remembering how I transformed into the fish I climb off the giant rose and will myself to grow in size so that I am as tall as the mountains. I mearly have to pluck the rose from the ground (which is now the size of the nail on my pinkyfinger) and place it on the mountain ledge where the tribe is waiting.

Atka is not yet completely down the mountain but he decides to copy me and lets himself fall off. Before he is able to grow himself large and copy my feat I am able to revert back to my normal size and land on the ledge where the rose is, which also shrinks to a normal rose size. The tribe welcomes my return and Atka begrudgingly follows shortly after. This round to me, but we are not done yet as there is one more challenge apparently. Before it can be explained Atka's uncle returns and accuses me of asking him to help me cheat as well as trying to kill him the night before. I don't have any proof that reality is the reverse and figure that the tribe will take the word of a respected shaman over the word of an outsider anyway. I also don't have proof that Atka punched me in the face and knocked me off the mountainside and my girlspirit is heartbroken because of what he did. I meet the accusations with bitter silence because I am angry, frustrated and despondant. Just as I expect, the tribe asks me to leave when I cannot refute the allegations. Still clinging the rose I retreived at the bottom of the mountain I am escorted by the men of the tribe to a path that leads away from the tribal camp and told never to return.

Atka looks on without saying anything, his facial expression stern and unreadable. My girlspirt surges up one more time and I shyly offer him the rose, not sure how he'll respond to what looks like a guy offering him a flower. After a brief and almost akward silence, he accepts the gift and even smiles at me. Suddenly the mountain begins to shake violently and everyone is thrown to the ground. The shaking stops after a few moments and I stand and put my head literaly into a cloud. The mountain has doubled in size and now towers over all others in the entire mountain range. Everyone starts jumping up and down and cheers. Apparently I just passed the final challenge by allowing my heart to reugn over my mind, and thus elevated the entire tribe to Nirvana or something. It is revealed that the whole tribe knows about Atka and his uncle attacking me and the test was about forgiveness or something, which I did in the end and magically I am transformed back into a woman. The end of the dream becomes distorted and fragmented and I cannot remember anymore.

I am walking through the neighbouring backyards towards my parent's house. As I get closer to my parent's backyard I see that there is a large, suspended wooden and rope bride that goes back into a vast forest behind their house. The forest is like the one that existed there when I was a kid but this one isn't small and continues far out into horizon, what would in reality the rest of the city, now untouched wilderness. The day is bright and warm and their is a clear blue sky. It is close to the end of summer and some of the trees are starting to change colour and drop their leaves.

At the foot of the bridge is a pack of wolves play fighting with each other. They are not small but seem not quite adults yet. There are about five or six wolves and they are wide varieties of colours. One wolf is almost completely white except for a patch of black on his face and left side. One wolf is completely black. One wolf is kind of brownish grey and the rest were grey and white. I have the sense that there are several species of wovles present, but they run and play together as if they were one pack, one family.

A few of the wolves take notice of me but do not approach or make any hostile gestures but seem nervous. I think that it is so cool that not only is there an endless forest behind my parent's house but there are wolves living in it. The wolves stop playing and gather into a circle with their heads pointing in. I hear one of them say something in a strange mix of wolf growls and human speech, but the sound wasn't horrible nor hard on the ears. It was almost musical. When he is done talking all the wolves look up at me, then back at themselves, then back at me (which kind of freaks me out a little) before suddenly turning towards the bridge and running along it into the forest.

Almost at the same time many people arrive with cameras and binoculors, from around front of my parent's house, and ask where they can find a newly released pack of wolves. They are tourists and they want to see the wolves in their new home. I suddenly feel very protective of the wolves and demand that the people get out of my backyard. I feel that they will not be able to survive if tourists are allowed to disturb their privacy all year round. I have the overpowering urge to run down the bridge and try to catch up with the wolf pack. I do not get on the bridge right away but wait until all the tourists are gone. I do not want any one to follow me.

When it is safe I start running along the bridge and it twists and turns through the thick forest. I run for some time but do not seem to get tired no matter how fast or far I run, but running on the bridge is difficult because it sways and rocks quite a bit and I do not want to fall off of it (even though it is suspended, it actually is not that far off the ground). After a while a small clearing appears and the suspended bridge comes to and end at a small wooden stair that leads down to the ground and to a wooden boardwalk that continues on into the forest. My unlimited endurance disappears and it is now very tiring to follow this path. I continue on along the boardwalk anyway and as I walk I pass or am passed by all sorts of people dressed for autumn hiking.

I suddenly become aware this forest is a national park. The wolves being reintroduced is a big deal or something because it is the first project of it's time (to reintroduce wolves into the wild so far south in Ontario) but the reason why most of my home town has disappeared and been replaced with a forest is not revealed in the dream and I am confused as to why the edge of the national park is literally in my backyard. Why is it so close to the edge of the city? I walk for a while and the boardwalk comes to an end. A well worn path in the earth continues on for a bit before splitting into two directions at the bottom of a steep hill. The path leading right circles around the hill along a marshy lake or pond. The left path is straight up the steep hill and over. I choose the path on the left because there are less people on it and it seems to lead back into the nature reserve. I am still hoping that I can find the wolves, though I start to feel that I am doing exactly what I want to save them from: constant disurbance of their privacy. I come to at what I first thought was a clearing but turned out to be the sudden end of the forest. I walk out into a parking lot for visitors to the national park. The sun is begining to set.

The parking lot circles around the north park of the park and comes to an octangular tower, beyond which is a soccer field and a rose garden combination. There are many people standing around a fountain in the right side of the field. The fountain is covered with a rose bush that has large, bright red roses on it. The vividness and beauty of the roses seems to contrast the unusually large black thorns hiding underneath the flowers. I walk through the feild and on the other side is a street with houses along it. I see the pack of wolves running up the street towards an overpass that has a large drainage pipe that leads along the ground back into the nature reserve.

I try to catch up with the wolves but they run into the drainage pipe. The wolf that is white with black patches watches me for a moment, like he is waiting for me to catch up before taking off into the pipe as well. I reach and enter the drainage pipe and find that there is ankle deep water and debris. I cannot see the end of the tunnel but parts of it are lit up by light shining through sewer grates along the top. The dream becomes fuzzy and I do not remember exiting the pipe but somehow I end up in the forest behind my parent's house near the suspended wood and rope bridge.

I run along it again, and when it reverts to a path through the forest, this time it leads to an field beside a large cliff. On the side of the cliff is a glass display case containing a minature representation of a city which is labelled "Old London" and I know it is refering to my hometown of London, Ontario.


I cannot remember anymore of this dream.