An annoying dream: after my alarm goes off at 5:30, I drift back off to sleep, dreaming that I am up and about, that I've reset the alarm clock as needed for my still slumbering roommate, that I've slept in until 5:50 and then made my lunch. I wake up again at 5:36 and get up for real. I think this means my sleep latency is very very low. Maybe.

I dreamed earlier that I had tickets good for candy, from a bar called "The Bluenote". Definitely a bar, but somehow mixed up in the candy trade. I had vague suspicions that they laced their candy with booze, giving it a soporific effect popular with parents, but I found no proof. The tickets weren't mine, but I'd "borrowed" them to effect some cockeyed scheme whereby I get lots of candy, and the owner of the tickets, my boyfriend's father, gets the same number back. There were a few close shaves, but I think I was on the right side of the law when I woke up.

I am having so much trouble remembering since I stopped taking paxil. I almost want to go back on to it for the complete and accurate memory of my dreams, but I think that's fortunately too much of a hassle.

I don't usually (er, never) use Dream Logs (which sound unpleasantly like a food product). However, I feel I should warn any potential inventors...

As usual, my dreams contain extremely complex mixtures of situations, overlapping and intertwining. One 'scene' that sticks in the mind is me trying to phone my friend's mobile (cellphone, then!) and due to inebriation (or stupidity) failing repeatedly to get the number right.

Irritating enough, you might think, but this constant faliure tripped some sort of evil mechanism. A female voice started to try and talk me out of dialing the same number for the 10th time as if I were a toddler...In other words, this was a (not-inconcievable) scheme to dissuade young children from picking up the phone and calling people. (Obviously, it would be impossible to create such a scheme to determine whether you have repeatedly misdialled - it was a dream OK!)

Obviously, I then went on to continue the coach trip and accept some large, round, flat, meringues from a blonde widow. Normal stuff. However, if anyone invents such a mechanism in the future (and I find myself drunkenly dialing someone's number) I will make them very, very sorry. :)

You Can Fly! You Can Fly!

  • University graduation day, sitting with my mother in the front row of folding chairs which fill the gymnasium to capacity. Funny thing is, it's the gym from my junior high school. My proud mother is blabbering on about all my academic accomplishments and it's beginning to get on my nerves. She keeps anticipating some special award that I might possibly receive. Across from our seats, facing us, is the table where the MC is sitting, stacked high with gold leafed scrolls. The ceremony is about to begin and from my vantage point I see the MC write my name down on a piece of paper as if a reminder to himself.

    At last he stands up and taps the microphone to quiet the cacaphonous audience. He starts right in with the same-old same-old speech about the great journey of life which each one of us passionate youths is bound upon. I reach the end of my nerve right there, fed up with the whole facade. Standing up, I turn to face the crowd and make a sweeping gesture with my hands as if beckoning the people to stand up as well. But that's not my intention--as I rise into the air like a helium balloon. Shrieks of astonishment and fear fill the auditorium as I continue my ascent until reaching the high ceiling far above the din. And somehow, inexplicably, I am out of there.

  • It's now night and I'm in my mother's house with my friend, Thomas. I'm still in a flying mood so I take Thomas out in the backyard so we can practice. Out there we find my friend, Mario, sitting alone under the porch light. I get the feeling that he wants to be alone but I convince him to try a little flight with us. We start small by taking jumps from the ground to the roof of a gazebo-like structure that isn't there in waking reality. We work up to swooping from the gazebo roof to the roof of my house. I note that I've never been on my roof before (in waking life) and it looks a lot larger and Victorian than I'd thought. Mario's heart isn't in it so he just perches on the roof edge like a gargoyle while Thomas and I keep practicing. Between tries I sit on the gazebo admiring the nighttime view of the neighborhood--all lit up with the amber gold of sodium street lights. I also chat with Thomas about dreams since by this point I'm having an extremely lucid dream. It's perhaps the best environment for a metaphysical discussion of reality with your friend because you can say things like, "Ok Tom, how can you give the waking world any kind of ontological priority when we're sitting here, in a place that is indistinguishable from that world to your every sense? Look at that streetlight diffusing into the mist; listen to the sound of distant cars and the TV set next door; smell the wet grass; feel the texture of your clothes, your gurgling stomach and your palpitating heart--and yet this is a greater reality because it includes far more possibilities like human flight and this oh-so-wonderful self-realization? Obviously, this reality can include the waking reality while maintaining the verity of both. The same can't be said for vice-versa, which is why they say a dream isn't 'real'." Thomas catches my drift. Believe me, in that environment it's a faultless argument.

    I continue my practice, working my way higher and higher, leaping from the roof of my house and swooping down and up over the cul de sac in front. At some point, Thomas gives up and goes inside. Mario is nowhere to be seen. As I practice I re-learn a lesson which I've been taught in countless other lucid dreams from my past: thought is the sole determiner of what is possible and what is impossible. That is, sometimes when I'm about to leap into the air, a doubt enters my mind about my ability to fly. Invariably I will fail in that case. Only when my thoughts are purest confidence in my capability do I succeed. This is subtler and more difficult than it sounds because I might, just before jumping, have the thought: "Uh oh, I won't be able to fly if I have any doubts. What if I doubt?!" Again I will fail.

    The long practice comes to a climax as I painstakingly mold my consciousness into a figure of concentration and confidence, pure of intention, free of doubt. It feels like my graduation moment and I will myself into the air, rising straightly vertical high above my house and neighborhood. The landscape of streetlights spreads out beneath me like an inverted starscape. Rivulets of streaming headlights & brakelights show the boulevards and highways. White halos hover above little league fields and the downtown mall. My mind thirsts for an ever-greater altitude, an ever-wider field of view. But suddenly a tiny doubt breaks through my defenses and I fall back into the town, back down into the field of lights to a strange street corner and a bar with music and the sound of raucous laughter emanating from within. Curious, I walk slowly through the open door and past the intoxicated patrons gathered around wooden counters along the wall. Everyone has brightly colored dyed hair and beards, where appropriate--flame red and vibrant blue are the most common. But the strangest thing about them is their faces: porcine snouts and thick steel ring piercings through nostrils, eyebrows, ears and septums. They aren't beasts or demons--just friendly men and women with pig faces having a good time. Some smile as I pass and I make my way through the crowd to the other exit. I walk out onto the porch and, with one last look to the bar, leap into the air and finish what I'd started.

    Up and up, I return to the cool silence of the atmosphere. Up and up, the surrounding towns become visible and I'm so high now that the city below looks like a solid sheet of dully glowing copper. Up and up, until the distant ocean's presence becomes apparent by its matte black occultation of the shimmering night landscape. Above me the stars are brighter and more numerous than I have ever seen while awake. And I go higher still, until there is no world and I go higher--up to Heaven.

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