I wanted to make a post just talking in general about how I dream and dreams I've had in the past.
I've always had really vivid and intricate plot-driven dreams, ever since I was little. I used to have a recurring nightmare from when I was 3 until I was at least 10 about a scarecrow man who lived in the bathroom and had candy corn for eyes. Terrifying. My mom accidentally taught me about lucid dreaming, sort of. She told me that the next time I had a nightmare, to just tell myself that it was a dream, and it would go away. I guess a lot of parents tell their kids that, but I really believed it.
I remember the first time I had a nightmare where something horrible was chasing me, and I decided to try my mom's experiment. It was the coolest thing ever. I changed channels in my dream. Suddenly, I wasn't in a dark, grey and green forest anymore, I was watching a tennis match. Then I changed again, and I was in a hilarious sitcom. It was awesome. At the end of the dream, I "woke up" and my mom was making waffles.
This is apparently common with lucid dreaming, and I think that's what Kerjack was talking about. The breathing thing is actually a test, to make sure you're actually asleep. I don't believe doing it during the day actually causes it, unless it's psychosomatic. I've also heard that you should try hitting light switches if you think you're awake, and if they don't affect any appliances, you know you're asleep.
BUT lucid dreaming isn't everything. I'm happy just to see what I can come up with. I've heard that you're not supposed to be able to dream in color, but I am positive that I do. I also have smells and touch, which is nice.
I've been able to dream in German, when I was at the height of my studies, but I probably couldn't do it anymore.
Like I said a few entries ago, I go through periods where I dream a lot and can remember them for long periods of time. I don't know what sets off these periods, as my sleep patterns change so much. I seem to be in a good dream-recall cycle now, which is fun. I like to try and figure out what's bothering me and why.
I actually hate falling asleep, and I have terrible sleeping habits because of it. I try not to lie down until the split second I know I'll fall asleep. If I lay down any time before that, I start stressing out about everything that happened that day, and what I need to prepare for the next day. Then I can't get to sleep for hours.
I have a few other weirdo sleep rituals, which I'll keep to myself so I don't get sent right to the nut house. But I'll give you a hint -- it has to do with the order of my Firefox tabs before I can get to sleep.
:) Okay, more dreaming coming soon, I hope.
My first night in Kansai, I had a really bad nightmare, and I know what set it off.
I had been talking about lucid dreaming with Gabe and Kevin. Kevin swears it can't be done, and Gabe says he takes vitamin supplements that enhance it.
Anyway, so either during my nap or the first night there, I had this dream that I killed someone -- I think my friend Seth, but I can't be sure. He was a part of it somehow, and I did horrible things to cover it up. I also did them horribly, and I was on the verge of being caught. Suddenly, I was half lucid dreaming, half channeling the movie "Butterfly Effect." I was like, "Wait, I'll just go back to a point in the dream where I never killed anyone, and it will be okay!"
But, like Ashton Kutcher in Butterfly Effect, every attempt at going back and changing the inevitable future caused me to still kill the person and end up worse off than before. Kevin was in the dream too, telling me I shouldn't have messed with fate. Bastards.
Then LAST night, I had ANOTHER dream about killing someone. And the only thing on my mind was that I wanted to stay in Japan. So I got a fake name and tried to travel around the countryside, avoiding the law. My friends all had to help me out, slipping me food and providing me with lodgings and shelter along my journey. I didn't feel bad for killing whoever I killed, and everyone was on my side. Maybe they understood. Maybe I did everyone a favor.
Sheesh. Give me back dreams about kicking zombie ass any day. I only kill bad guys!
Yesterday, I took a half-hour nap because I was exhausted. Before my nap, I read a few threads in Something Awful's FYAD forum -- a forum designed to keep out people who don't get their (seemingly?) non-sequitur humor.
In this nap...I had a dream. The dream was just a computer screen. Not the actual screen, like my field of vision was an entire screen.
Messages were being posted by my real-life friends in nonsense, and I couldn't understand them. They were ridiculous and almost funny, like Beck lyrics. The forum was scrolling past my eyes with every new update.
I am officially plugged into the Matrix. Dreaming of an internet forum that doesn't make any sense. I have achieved a new low. Or a new high! I'm so meta.
I had a nightmare early this morning. I remember only snatches of it. I remember being at the front desk of a hotel trying to explain to them that I can only stay a few nights, but then I have to fly to Russia and back, and stay a few more. They can't seem to understand.
And in my mind, I'm thinking, "Russia? What the heck? I don't know anything about Russia. How can I get around there? My friends are counting on me." Then I start second-guessing myself. Did I get the dates right? Did I factor in enough time for the plane ride? I get a few flashes of riding on the plane and being relieved.
I'm with my friends. Suddenly we're somewhere else. A mall or something in Japan, by a beach. We're riding in an elevator. For a moment, I start to worry that something's wrong with the elevator, and the exact moment I do, it starts plummeting downwards. At first I'm scared, but then I'm like, "How many floors is this thing? We'll just free fall down a floor or two, hit the bottom, and be fine. We can survive this!"
I can't remember if we hit the bottom. I remember it getting really shaky, and me not being too scared. More like taking charge, trying to calm my friends in the elevator down, making them flex for impact or whatever.
Then, I cut away. I can't remember if it was because my friend Gabe woke me up on gchat or if that was later. Where I appeared was in a happier dream. I was with my friends, and we were having a fun time. It's weird. I feel compelled to not mention it because it was like a private fun time spent with friends. Nothing you wouldn't see in a daytime Hallmark card commercial. Just nice.
I will share the end, though. I was out on the beach with a bunch of friends, and Jacob had purchased some disgusting black bag of goo that they love to sell in every aisle of supermarkets here in Japan. For some reason, he balanced it on my head as a joke, and it started leaking out the sides onto me. And he told me that that's what you're supposed to do with it, to prepare it for eating. I guess I'll believe anything here in Japan.
I definitely get the first part. I'm totally stressed about my trip to Kyoto I planned for me and my friends, especially one part where we leave the city to hang out in Nara with some internet friends of mine. It is in the middle of our stay at another hotel, and I'm still not 100% sure the woman I booked with understood it.
The end is more vague, but the meaning comes through. I'm happy here. I have a tight group of friends that I feel comfortable around. Comfortable enough to occasionally make a fool of myself, but I'll take that. Better than making a fool of myself alone in my house and having my cat roll his eyes at me.
Last night was a TOTALLY kick-ass dream, and I wish I had written it down when I woke up because I remembered so much of it. But I remember consciously telling myself not to write and get in the shower, because I would have gone into half-awake blathering nonsense about details that no one cares about. Nothing like a few cups of coffee in you to bring out that natural editor in you.
I was in the airport with my brother, and I was really excited to get to spend time with him. But I started to get the feeling...that everyone else in the airport was after us. And every single person we passed had a special power. This one girl kept injecting me with this needle that was melded into her body, and whatever was in it kept slowing me down. I had to struggle to fight everyone off. I just wanted to spend time with my brother.
Some people were robots who clanked when I kicked them. Some people had spindly tentacles like Doc Ock or something from the Matrix. I had to fight those off, too. Some people just looked like badasses in trenchcoats and I had to kung-fu fight them.
But I swear, when I woke up, I could remember like 20 different people with unique powers. I fought them all off and left the airport with Ryan. I win! Happy end!
Ooh, so I took a nap when I got home from work yesterday, partly because I remembered taking a lot of naps when I had vivid dreams, and partly because I was really fricking exhausted. And it worked! I had a dream in my nap AND one last night. What's the cause? Lots of sleep? Or a messed-up sleep schedule? No one knows.
Anyway, my nap dream was uncharacteristically short. I usually have ridiculously involved dreams only to wake up and see I'd only been asleep for half an hour. If I could only get a handle on lucid dreaming, I could live out lifetimes. I blame this short one on Seth waking me up from my sleep by beeping my gchat. I do however remember being inside a mall and looking at a really intricate storefront for a children's toy store. Think of the huge Disney-like sign for the Build-A-Bear chain. I remember admiring it and thinking it couldn't be a dream because it had so many vibrant colors and details.
When I turned to leave, there was a sort of metal/shoplifting detector the mall's patrons had to pass through, only it was like a conveyor belt, and you had to get on your hands and knees to pass through the short gate. I remember other adults grumbling about how childish it was, but I thought it looked like fun.
Shrug!
My dream last night had me chuckling in the shower this morning the more I thought about its meaning. I don't entirely remember the beginning, but it had to do with a park in a forest nearby where I went to elementary school. I know the roads well in real life, and in the dream, I was debating which was the most direct way to drive from there back to my house. When I thought about where the park was, my dream sort of pulled back into a map view, like a movie, so I could clearly see the more efficient route. Awesome!
I remember realizing something in the park as I was about to leave. I had a baby! And I left it at home. And I forgot to feed it or ever buy diapers! It was so out of the blue, like a passing thought, that I had to take care of a human.
Then suddenly, I was in my Dream Dorm. Again, looked exactly like my real freshman dorm, only I've slightly altered the architecture in the same way in every dream. I guess subconsciously, I think Hemingway Hall should have had a third staircase at the end of my floor near my room. Actually, I consciously think so, too. Anyway, for some reason it was the next day, and I remember thinking, "Crap, I forgot to feed the baby again!" And I looked over in the corner, and Melissa was sleeping there in a pile of laundry with my baby. I was worried she'd smother it, but she woke up, and I could see she was just keeping it warm.
I offered to take care of it for a little while, but she said it was okay, and she could handle it. Then I worried that the baby would grow up thinking Melissa was its mother if she spent too much time with it. But I was resigned in the fact that she would probably be better for it anyway.
The reason I chuckled this morning in the shower was that I think the baby represents me being a writer in Hollywood, and that not-so-deep down, I know that Melissa is much more disciplined and hard-working than I am. To project these insecurities onto a living thing in my dream is pretty telling. I'm an open book!
So I haven't written in a couple weeks because I've only been remembering snippets of dreams. I wonder what I am doing differently. I was vividly remembering almost all of my dreams the whole day after, and now I can rarely remember more than a single scene even right when I wake up.
Well, this one was from a few weeks ago, and I know what set it off. In this dream, I was standing in a circle with a group of people, and I bent over to write something on a notebook. I guess I was using my legs as a hard surface to write. I heard one of the guys say something to someone I assumed was inappropriately dressed. He said something like, "Well, yeah, with perfect breasts like those, how can you expect anyone to concentrate?" That sounds like flirting or a compliment when I think about it, but in the dream it was mean, like chastising.
I looked up from my notebook and started to agree with the guy, when I noticed everyone in the circle was nodding their heads in agreement with him...to me! I was really confused. I didn't get it. I looked at my shirt, and, you know, all the normal hardware was there. I remember thinking, "Wait, what the hell are you all talking about?"
That was definitely set off by a conversation I had earlier that day about Japanese people and my parents commenting on my having lost weight, even though I definitely don't see it or feel like I have.
A little later, I had a theater dream. I KNOW I've been dreaming of this setting for at least 15 years, because in the dream, it looks like my old elementary school's theater, before they did renovations. This was different from my usual theater dreams, because I'm usually freaking out about something I've done wrong. Usually, it's a nightmare, where the director has to stop the play and call me out on stage to yell at me in front of the audience.
In this dream, I think I did something wrong, but I didn't care in the LEAST. In fact, I remember saying, "Hell, we'll just stop the play and have the audience come back for the second half tomorrow." Wow. Could it be? Have I put a stop to a painful recurring nightmare of screwing up a play?
Last night I had a dream, but I don't remember a bit of it. I had something this morning when I started to blog, but I have since forgotten it. Bollocks!