Dream Fragment Sunday 5/1: 3:30AM
awaken at 330am from 3 hour sleep. Dream very vivid, desire to write down asap before losing. Note will be disjointed.
Main plot: going into dream state/game, thinking away elements of reality until in "experience" (their words). large animals(somewhat humanoid0 attached by fat wires/tech along walls (at various heights) in open room with windows, two levels of water, one at feet, one near top, space inbetween was not particularly 'underwater'. movement was like flying,
many people also connected, man given phosphorus (forced into something, i can't remember what) to find illegal recesses in mind. readout of mind recesses looks like a kind of circuit board, glowing as it goes along. recess found by area at bottom of board, everyone notices it; I don't but pretend i do. first implication is secret repository of ones own identity, is found to contain a small, lightblue 'cap'..think battleship 'hit' game piece except shorter/fatter, looking closer to abstracted mushroom in shape. Still very small though. Is read, has a message by the man congratulating on finding it, apparently presumes you found it because he's dead and we intend to erase his identity. turns out to be 'j-bomb', is run to super cold room and held under water by man with robotic hands. Water is very cold apparently, man shivers and sucks air in through teeth.
while in crystalline room flat towel/paper like creatures are attracted to bomb from under water. Hard to see initially, move slowly and water breaks up their silhouette. they are blue and are called mutants. Am instructed to run back to main room and told to snort 'blue poison'. No idea what it means, but upon entering main room again papers of blue/yellow/red are now found against the walls at different levels (generally above the 'water levels').
Maybe 12 people there in total, all rushing to snort the poison. Animals include polar bear things, bear with horse heads, dreadlock cat things. Most have android-ish parts to them, glowing eyes.
The whole point of being there is some kind of simulation/game of experience.
elements include
light gun hand game shooting white geometric shapes attacking me. If i don't stop them from latching on their geometric faces fold out and re-connect cutting off parts of my body.
users of the game are turning into different people for the purpose of some kind of spy game
one character being a drunk academic at a 1920's-ish bar drinking some cherry tasting alcohol, deep red semi-transparent, syrupy. Don't get far in that experience, i trip and push all elements of the room through the opposite wall, think as if they were all connected to my plane, if i move too fast they clip through the wall, otherwise they stay inside the room and i just get closer to them.
All environments feel dusty, light is visible, almost permanent sunrise, lots of technological implements but they seem in disuse, think blade runner (book and movie).
3 main characters + a kind of medic who never entered virtual reality. Failure always resulted in a kind of escape from drowning. Lots of water, inside and outside 'game'.
in earlier part of dream, one was female, we were looking for a certain exit (certain experience), requiring certain actions. Kept failing(succeeding) via different means.
Had, at one point, failed to take necessary action and was told to 'take a break'. Soon after, was back in same room with 12 other people as described at top.
Phosphorus drinking man a kind of cop? Invoked something whose name i can't remember (started with an r? recidivism?) to the dismay of the group.
Animals seemed to be kind of bodyguards, although never took that role, they woke up as mutant paper/towel things flew into room. Of note, once snorting 'blue poison' one would fling the paper it was on (crumpled at this point) into whatever 'water' was nearby and ink began to spread.
got the feeling one needed to snort as much as possible.
inside the 'game' one 'experience' had us driving a zeppelin/boat among a cityscape, inbetween buildings, all water where streets should be. Intense sequence.
I'm losing it now, all vague. remembering a 'man hole' clue given in game, approaching a large man hole as the room (a kind of future-tech well) is filled with water. Water was always very clear, light sources underneath, different colors. kind of cavernous despite being a man-made room.
Anyways, 'man hole' cover at bottom of well leads to expansive cave whose mouth has water dripping from top which opens up out along a large wetted rock surface. Again, always sunrise in this place, colors are generally bright though, mostly warm tints against man-made glistening greys (again, the water) and bright white-yellow sun (although never seen directly, corona was very large/diffuse).
Remember, after finishing that 'experience' (losing), that 'man hole' might have indicated an area on the body, rather than standard sewer manhole we went to.
I seem to remember all of this 'experiencing' is done in the woman's mind/game to get something from her. She is not ever entirely lucid upon waking up.
Only character whose features i remember include a sensei-style character, long hair/facial hair/balding/late 40's or 50's. All other characters generic with various 'shaped' clothing (ex: not necessarily form-fitting). All felt like future.
No music, still can't get over that dynamic lighting. I remember the 'cool off' room being low light, red or very cold light in places.
Room had a kind of partition, old/worn/decrepit and made of technology that had a pillar in the center of the room. partition connected to pillar as a kind of arch.
room floor was not level/flat, in fact can't remember level floor in any of the areas, all like walking in a cave/smoothed rock floor at different heights with water forming in pools where available.
Felt very 'detective-y' and illegal. Doing this in secret against someone's knowledge. No real exploration outside of that main room.
Wish i could remember more, was very vivid and felt 'important' at the time.
the 'game' seemed to be a common cultural product, everyone knew about it/how to interact with it. I was learning as i went along, characters taught me without any hesitation.
seems pretty cliche looking at it now. But at the time felt very business-like. Black-market apprehension and mistrust mixed with a kind of magical alchemical task that needing to be finished asap. I'm missing something fundamentally critical about how we 'users' entered the 'experience', maybe via vocal chords? (i'm just speculating at this point). There was something different about it. Lost too much of it at this point, now just feelings:
generally felt like morning grogginess mixed with hush-hush conspiracy. Medical operating room pow-wow felt like dirty-dozen plan meeting mixed with corporate luncheon. blue mutant part felt like disciplined chaos (with my part being the only one in actual chaos, due to my ignorance of routine). game 'experience' felt muted/abstract and like a distant high-tone ambient whine. Always approaching actions 'in-game' with a kind of chess-like 'future-moves' feeling/interest. Large cave scene felt extra-dimensional despite being familiar to character/self, like Myst meets Beyond Good and Evil. Zeppelin scene felt like extreme-sport meets croquet (from a spectator feeling). cool-down room scene felt like 48 hour sleep deprivation inside a silent-running submarine.
Never got a good sense of own body, a few out of body experiences, mostly in game as different characters. The academic being one of them. I was generally bumbling, but accepted out of some critical part i wasn't entirely aware of. Getting a feeling of anime-destiny mixed with oil-well prospecting.
Architecture: art deco eroded into spikes. Technology either nano-cool or vent-tech.
430 now, going back to bed. clean this up later.
Dream Fragment Monday 5/16: 4:00AM
woke up, room is hot, dream is close. Again an important feeling but i'm sure it will end up reading like crap once i'm awake. Here we go.
Sand Dune, Desert Playa. Grid of hallways, hallways with open square courtyard gardens in-between. hallways might contain perils, gardens (dead) are hot and bright desert sun. Place was a kind of purgatory between two worlds, must be traveled either on foot or by "honorable animal" (horse/camel/horse-camel hybrid). Ended up in desert town with brother/father, brother had been there before. Father given rule over the desert town, laments the fact that this town has a large low-income population, is overriding all the good quarters he is trying to build. a certain section of the town consists of rolling dunes along a coast with a stone footpath inbetween; however, the dunes--upon losing sight of them--can disappear. Leaving just empty rolling void, where sand particles blow, but where feet cannot touch. Felt like death most likely awaited me if i fell into it. I stuck my feet into it while sitting on the edge of the stone footpath, but i didn't like the feeling.The town and the Grid-Hallway-Purgatory are all kind of bleached sandstone with little or no defining features.
At some point we three decide to trek back through purgatory into the real world (or some other world, at least). We can either do so on foot, which will take X amount of time, or via drugs which will cut the distance 2/3rds. We don't have the funds to use drugs so we decide to go on foot. Each hallway that leads to the next courtyard garden contains household decorations(furniture) but no one lives in it. Also contains possible hostile animals. The ones we encountered were docile, but I got the feeling like they could change at any minute. We walked briskly. Also, we took with us a bookcase which two of us carried at a time. It felt like we needed it for some reason. Before leaving we refilled our water, but we had to do so by dipping our faces into it and allowing it to drip into our bottles, otherwise the water would be tainted and make our journey harder.
at one point in purgatory we decided to stop off to refill our water/eat at a place that was a mcdonalds sans-branding. In other words, i knew it was a mcdonalds, but it didn't have mcdonalds visuals anywhere. Think 90's style Mcdonalds stripped of everything except its walls. Upon entering, I notice the ground is covered in gnat-like insects scurrying along in the direction i'm walking. I have trouble focusing on them, i give up at a certain point. In the main lobby of the mcdonalds there is a small line of people at the cashier, a bank of windows to the right looking out onto dunes and parking area (no cars, just a white camel with the mane of a horse being led away by a lady), and some windowed partitions to the left, behind which a darkened room--almost like an unused quarter of the building--sits. In the center of the lobby is a water well with pamphlets on its lip, gathered nearby are two distraught people, tattered clothing and heavy tans. Not poor/homeless, but journey-broken. One goes to the cashier, changes an amount of money for what looks like a roll of nickels, and shuffles right up to my brother and breaks the roll open, giving him nickels while shaking uncontrollably and chuckling under his breath. My brother seems as though he knows why this is happening, but doesn't tell any of us. he just lets the nickels slide off of him. I walk up to the cashier in the meantime and, as i examine the faces of those in front of me, i notice they are overly-fatty and wet. For some reason i blame this on the two well-loiterers.
I've lost other details, there was a part in town where we were in someone's room but i can't remember anything other than a sandstone structure. Feelings include: a determination to escape. A fear of things in the periphery being alerted to your presence if looked at directly. A feeling of resignation about state of life. A desire to return to earlier state. Again a reliance on other people to explain world around me. A feeling of sadness attached to my father but no reason/event i can recall behind it. Feeling of hopeless distance between purgatory and home but a recognition that it must be tried. A conscious lack of planning for the future/strategy to avoid thinking about how long our journey would be. All of this, again, colored by a determination to escape whatever approaches us/whatever we are in. Environment felt generally lacking detail, now that i think about it, it all felt unsatisfying. Like finding a warm damp humid corner to escape a bad dry heat.
Already this dream sounds bland, but the feeling was very intense. Wish I had a good way to describe it. Slow escape--likely death--no alternative--all inside an abandoned Mcdonalds in the middle of a desert. Maybe the journey broken well-loiterers were us?
Whatever. Going back to sleep.
Dream Fragment Wednesday 7/20: 3:01AM
Woke up but have been half asleep for a while now, maybe a few hours? Dreams kept breaking, but one thing i noticed is they all had a similar color in them. Felt really bad though, bad dreams. Like a big silence and emptiness. Ok here we go.
A procession of ronin looking creatures with salmon colored garments, white faces, and solemn expressions. Just tight lipped and staring ahead. They floated above the ground in a column of 3, row of 4, depth to infinity. Their bodies--below the waist--were cut off, ending instead in a small metal knob, brass-like. Along with these pale-faced ronin were more formal beings, don't know the name, but usually considered government clerks I think? Same era, anyways. They wore dark blue attire and an angled mask, showing a calm face on one side and what looked like an immortal fear on the other. Despite this, their carry bespoke an authority and they felt of a higher order than the creatures who book-ended them. They too were cut off at the waist, but their garments hung loose, long, and wafted lightly as they floated past. Everyone around me was stunned to silence, in disbelief, and with a sense of foreboding. They moved like a death procession. At a slow, constant, and steady clip. I moved up the line to see where they came from. I saw a red gate. A man held it open. I did not know him but didn't care to know him. It felt ominous all around. I looked back down the line and awoke.
Then I was at school, yet with no good sense as to which school it was. The buildings looked familar but shorter, as if being flattened by the clouded afternoon sky above them. I felt late to class, hoping no one would notice. No one did. I entered the classroom and it was full, I took seat off in a corner, sitting knees-up with a slab in my lap. I felt rushed to catch up, and after scribbling with my finger on the slab the teacher suddenly beckoned me to look as he pointed behind me. I turned to see an opening in the wall and a billowing dark smoke just behind the building in view. It had threads of grey twirling around it and rose with speed. As I focused on the smoke I found myself outside, staring at it. I felt like i was judging its distance, wondering if i had anything to fear. I decided to walk round the building blocking my view to see how close it was. As i rounded the building a hill came into view with a path to it that was flanked by a row of shops on one side. The smoke seemed both behind the hill and closer, behind the shops. Streams of people began to run from the shops, fearful and screaming. Turning back I heard an annoucement that felt like it was 'going to happen soon' and that 'it is coming' and that we needed to escape. Panic set in and as the people around me began to run I decided I needed to get my sandals, since I was barefoot. It seemed as if--in doing--I was deliberately challenging the danger to harm me. As I put on my sandals I felt as though an inevitable death was behind me. I woke up.
I was in a room with walls but whose floor was open. Below was an indistinguishable cloudcover--again salmon colored--at great distance and spreading as far as I could see. I was hanging onto a rung, dangling. In a dull sense of panic i climbed up a metal support, what seemed like a bedframe, and eventually made it over a lip to a wooden floor. It became a sense that I was in my room, but not my room, because this room had only a bed, a tub, and four walls that faded in and out of transparency. The room and I floated high in the air and as I placed the bed over my bedframe entrance I immediately felt as though I had to prepare for something, some long stretch of time. I took a board from out of my view and placed it at the foot of my bed. I poked a series of holes in the board, it felt like cork-board but looked like wood. I smeared a red jelly in and around the holes I made, feeling like this would be my garden. As I set about preparing for this long stretch of time I wondered if i would survive it, then I wondered how much longer I would be floating. Upon that thought the cloudcover broke slightly and i saw a forest racing below me. As the trees grew nearer I felt like I would likely die here and I awoke.
Feelings included an inevitable sense of harm. A painless death or end with a sense that I couldn't avoid it. Emptiness emphasized by sheer magnitude of space. I felt bad, like I was put in a world I had no idea how to live in, and then realized that it didn't matter because my place in it was about to end. Ya, just a poor feeling all around. I felt slow. I think i'm gonna go lie down on the couch, it's too hot here.
Dream Fragment Monday 7/25: 3:42AM
Jolted to wakefulness by what feels like a thing crawling on my arm. I twitch in a panic and the thing is gone. Upon turning on the light I can't find what it might have been. Now I'm absolutely awake and feel like I want to eat. Luckily(?) my dream is very vivid. Might as well write it down.
The dream starts with me and a group of friends in a car driving home after feeling like we didn't get what we set out for. Continuing home we are attacked by a group of young people in their own car shooting at us with paintball guns and hurling insults at us. A dramatic chase ensues which we ultimately escape from. At my house, which is a house that envelops another house+driveway+yard. An old van drives up quickly, head on, turns out of the way, and unhitches a speedboat from its back which it lets roll right up into my driveway. Thinking about it, the whole process was comical. I wasn't amused though, not a bit. Anyways, then it doubles back around and parks alongside the boat in my driveway. A balding full-bearded man with glasses, a skinny elderly woman, a fatter man with short curly hair, and a tall bald man get out of the van and start handing out invitations to a party.
This being my house, and these people being strangers, i am--naturally--upset. I demand to know who they are and what they're doing here. They refuse to tell me anything, instead creating a bit of a party on the front lawn (the front lawn, to recall, enveloped inside the larger house). The rest of the encounter consists of various tricks i try to use to make them tell me who they are. Things like threatening to write down their license plates (the van disappeared by this point, and was replaced by a 2 door compact car. I realized this after I woke up. Think A-team van -> Ford fiesta). The elderly woman tries to dance with me at the party and i oblige hoping she will spill some info on the group. She doesn't and i get frustrated and try to leave while she clings onto me. After what seems like forever, i get the (finally) bright idea to just call the police.
Upon hearing that i'm to do so, the insurgent party group slinks off with only the tall man and the fat man left over. I chase them both but end up following the fat man since he is slower. During this time a gun battle ensues, but i guess we run out of bullets after a little while because i stop having a gun. The fat man comes back to my home and gives up, picking up one of the invitations to the party that he handed out upon arriving initially. I grab it, it's wet for some reason and has a colorful embossed picture of the Eiffel tower on the outside with a full-page picture of the french flag on the inside along with party details. The party's address gives me their address and i intend to inform the police when they arrive that this address is where the people come from who left a speedboat in my driveway and started this party (which i have not enjoyed at all, despite it seeming like a pretty good party tbh). I feel a sense of justice nearing and at this point i wake up.
Feelings include, A sense of blind revenge. Frustration. Pride in a plan nearing successful completion. Aforementioned justice. Hatred. And a feeling of duty and responsibility towards my house-house. Those people were dicks. I'm totally awake and a little afraid that the thing on my arm was a living creature. I think i'll be up for a little while now.
Addendum Dream Fragment 7/25: 7:37AM
I went back to sleep around 5AM.
I'm in a classroom whose seating was like a densely packed theater. Many people around me, all talking with one another. I am with a friend, we are troublemakers but having harmless fun. I decide to try and move down closer to the head of the class but its so densely packed i can't get across. It turns into a joke, my friend egging me on to keep going. After a little while of this we stop and just kneel near some new people, chatting and joking with them. A teacher's aide comes up from behind and tells us we're being too loud. We ~are~ making some noise so i take the opportunity to run another joke, pretending like i can't hear her. As i get close with my ear, she puts her mouth right on it and says something. All i can think about is how nice her mouth feels on my ear as she talks. She gets playful at this point, chuckling as she pulls away again. Feels like a successful flirt. Now i notice a man coming from behind at the top of the classroom, asking the students "number jfkls or number dioua" (by that i mean it was a number, but not something i could make out, even after a while.) Each of the students produce a paper that shows a number, it feels like most of them are the latter which he then tells to head outside. This group sounds like the better deal, the other students want to join outside. I start to feel worried, because i don't have any paper and i have no idea what he's talking about. Maybe i won't make it? Maybe i won't be picked? I remember feeling like he wouldn't get to me and i wouldn't be able to go outside with the others.
Now i'm with a group of students outside at a picnic table. It's dark and I can see the stars in the sky, big swirling galaxies and nebulae, like what you'd see on promotional NASA photos. It's beautiful except it was covering the sky in all directions, perceptibly swirling. We're partially covered by a kind of veranda. The teacher asks a question. I give a witty reply. He seems annoyed. I reply "It's understandable when you have a night like this around you." I remember feeling very good about that sentence, like i just hit some profundity and i'm at the top of my game. I look around at the night sky and feel good about myself. As my scan moves back to horizon we are in a rural field. It's still nighttime, with train tracks in front of us we stand beside a low-hung building that feels like a station. We are all waiting for something, huddled close together, looking out beyond the tracks and to the right of a more distant building whose silhouette breaks the horizon. I have no idea what we're waiting for, i keep thinking "why aren't we doing anything?" I sometimes try to move or talk but it's transformed into trying to ~think~ about moving or talking and keeps looping around in aporia.
A couple pairs of people trickle in from the other side of the tracks, in the direction we're looking. I begin to think we're waiting to go to disneyland, or some kind of themepark campus. I start to feel anxious about our wait. Wanting to get there before these other people do. As this new group approaches us, swinging round our left, i focus in on one of their faces. A girl whose features i don't recognize as anything other than 'girl'. I give up trying to do whatever i thought looking at her would do and look back towards the horizon to notice a rising cloud beyond the darkened building. It is a silver white with a column of orange at its center. Glowing. It is a mushroom cloud. It is rising.
I yell "Oh my god, oh my god, holy shit, holy shit it's real, holy shit everyone run" As i turn to run there is a white farmhouse blocking my way, and the group i am with run slowly. I am stuck behind them as we try to round this building. Now i am thinking "Jesus Christ, what an event, but i'm going to die in it, I wont get to see how it affects the world." I remember thinking that very vividly as i'm running away, how i feel sad that i won't get to see this historic event if i die in it. Now i'm yelling again "Holy shit it's right here, it's right over here, holy fuck run run run." Now i'm thinking again "I hope it's further away than it seems, I hope i'm past the blast radius." I look back quickly to see its wake starting to envelop the distant building we had been looking past when we first got here. I begin to feel resigned to my fate. I begin to hate the slow people in front of me. I barrel through them yelling "don't you see it coming?! fucking move! run! it's right here!" I think "Who would do something like this, why, what purpose? Jesus Christ this isn't a dream, this is actually happening, my god i'm going to die in this. I'm not going to wake up, this is real death." I am so afraid. I don't want it to hurt. I don't want to die slowly. I look back and see the dust beginning to rush over the train tracks. I hear the sound of it, the rumble in the dust as i sprint round the side of the building. I think "maybe this will shield the blast." But then immediately i think "No; no it won't." And I wake up, breathing heavily with my right arm entirely gone to sleep.
Usually i recall more feelings from these dreams. This one, though, only ended up feeling like it washed me entirely clean of feelings. Like i just turned on and started feeling for the first time upon waking. I really need a few more hours of sleep at least, but I don't want to have another dream like that. I really need the energy though.
Dream Fragment Saturday 1/7 7:14AM
I am myself but a better version. Sometimes I am in my body, sometimes I am watching it. I am in a college. I have to go around to the various departments. At each 'department' I am a stranger but perform some endearing feat which makes the people there love me. I can't remember what I did. One is a casino floor, another is my hotel room, another is a high school dance, another is a platform for singers centered on a fountain in the middle of a lake, another is a cryptography lecture/competition. The last department was the lecture/competition. I am tasked to give a talk on a paper I never submitted to the panel, my teacher(?) and fellow students are nervous and frantic.
I walk briskly up to the lectern and give a speech. I say that life and living aren't about finding a truth, I cite each of the departments I've visited as evidence that life can be lived in many different ways but all are towards this hopeful 'truth', thus this 'truth' is either the same and at the end of each life, exists in only one of these departments, or it is the same and sitting in plain view amongst all departments equally. I end by asserting that life and living are unavoidable and found, that the contents of any life are similar and relatable, that it is the context which gives us a sense that one life is different from another but this sense is not truth or falsehood. That the action of truth is living and real, whereas the thought of truth is symbolic and unreal. If one is living, they are acting truth and their desire for symbolic truth is already filled. It is only our mind that demands truth in the symbolic form it is used to, quantifiable data and concepts. At this point the crowd is cheering and I am ecstatic, I feel completed.
Immediately projections begin to form on the wall, as if a movie has started. I leave the hall and find projection after projection on the walls and on objects. They are projecting parts of my 'journey' through the department. People are discussing it as if it were some piece of entertainment they hadn't seen before, a movie or something. I am not a part of it. I begin to notice that I know where the movie is going, knowing what will happen. I am so puzzled by my knowledge of these future events I begin to consider that I've already seen this, or that I knew all of these things from a book I read. I think for a long time about how I could know these things beforehand, it feels like perhaps i knew them from a dream. Am I still dreaming? I can't tell, and move along. I determine that all of these 'departments' exist in one building on campus but find no source of my prophetic knowledge of the story that continues to play out in the projections.
I decide it's time for me to go home. I walk toward the parking lot, presumably to my car, and take a shortcut through another building. This building is a High School. I get anxious knowing I have no business here. I walk directly through a class as it's about to start. I survey the kids and teacher but keep my face forward, walking with purpose, hoping no one will call me out. One of the girls gets up and as she's walking out the door a boy stops her and gropes her breasts. I feel intense anger, but I keep on walking.
Exiting the halls of high school I walk onto the asphalt towards the cars. A woman stops me, she is wearing a false cat-tail and ears. She asks me where 'Building 13III' is. I am willing to help and turn to answer, showing her the building I just exited. "If you go through this building, towards the back," I am feeling less and less confident with my directions. She seems unconvinced. We move back to the pavement and consult a directory. I still can't find it. A man in a suit comes up to us to help. Now I have a long piece of bamboo, I'm using it as a pointing stick on the directory. I don't even care about showing her where it is, I have to find it myself, it's a challenge now. A couple more people show up behind me, giving me opinions on where it is, pointing things out to the woman. We finally find a listing for "Buildings I, II and III etc etc" and agree that building 13III must be in there.
She is gone, I guess she left a while ago. I don't care, I'm glad i found the building. I turn to walk towards my car again and my alarm goes off. I awake.