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Dream Diary Part-2 | |
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Home « Hobbies « Lucid Dreaming « Part-2 | |
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There is a large gap in the dream log at this point, mainly due to being busy with work, or simply forgetting to make entries. The frequency and bizarre variety of dreams has been unrelenting, including one beautiful lucid dream where I was floating and bobbing on the breeze as I flew high over the suburbs, drifting amongst the tops of giant fruit trees.
Adventures on the Train to Talwood
Marcia and I are on a train going to Talwood (where Auntie Dolly Lives in Queensland). At least I think it’s a train, it seems to change size and shape, but there are rails! We pass through a vast variety of territory and climates, it seems to randomly fluctuate between day, twilight, and night. We stop for adventures at various places along the way. Marcia has dismantled the security controls to a booth outside an outdoor drive-in, the guard arrives and gives here an invoice, we look at it and scoff, refuse to pay, and wander off. I get mixed up with a weird inbred looking family who are fascinated by me, their young daughter keeps trying to cuddle up to me and kiss me, I try to placate her and be polite. The whole family is so weird, they live in a ramshackle house full of musty junk, in fact they feel a bit threatening at times. I manage to make an excuse to leave, the young girl follows me up the driveway with a morose look on her face, I give her a little kiss on the cheek, her eyes brighten in surprise, "Yuk" I say to her jokingly. I wander off. The train continues on, sometimes climbing steep hills of winding track that surely couldn’t take a real train.
It’s some kind of Holiday Park. Everyone is moving to another location for leisure activities of their choice. We seem to skate down a long highway at high speeds, chatting as we go. The activities include some ‘expensive’ and ‘exclusive’ ones, a lovely young athletic looking lady who I seem to know, asks me if I want to ‘chip in’ and go racing car driving, Hmmm, okay, I agree. I wander off.
The Nuclear "Sound and Light" Show
A large crowd of excited people are scattered around in a large building like an aircraft hanger, we are awaiting the start of a ‘light & sound’ show of unknown content. The inside has been constructed like a movie set, there is a large lake with a rocky shore. People are sitting around the lake, some are in the water. The lights dim and the walls illuminate and take on a 3D effect so they seem to stretch to the horizon. There is a rumble of thunder, and in the far distance an explosion seems to be rising in a cloud out of the ground, what sort of explosion is it? The cloud expands into a mottled hemispherical ball—it’s a Nuclear Explosion—Shit. In incredible slow motion, we see something the human eye could never see: an expanding plasma fireball from a fission explosion. It turns grey and white and expands to fill the horizon. The shock wave passes through the crowd but we’re not really scared, as it’s only a show, but it certainly is spectacular. Suddenly the air is split with debris thrown out and up from the explosion, some of it raining down, some of it streaming past us as if shot out of a cannon. One huge white ball of what seems to be ice rockets out of the 3D wall toward me. I lean to the side and it passes just over my shoulder and reach out to lightly touch it as it passes by (just as one can gently reach out and brush their finger tips over the rapidly spinning blades of a fan, and have no fear). I feel a thin layer of ice on my fingers. When the explosion is exhausted, people wander around and into the lake to pick up and inspect the debris.
I’m in a small bus that is taking a prisoner somewhere, regular passengers are allowed onto the bus, but must sit near the front, away from the prisoner. It’s night when the bus starts off, but now it’s day, and the bus is hurtling at high speed (I see 130-140 kph on the speedometer) down a winding dirt road, I’m sitting with a friend at a position that seems to be at the back and upper deck of the bus. The bus seems to have to walls or substance now, we a hurtling down the windy road, it’s much too dangerous to be going at this speed. The bus almost misses a turn, and the rear upper part where we are seated is ripped away from the bus, spins around and comes to rest, we are okay, but I’m worried about the person who was sitting on my right. The bus returns to look for us, the other person in the back seat is fine.
I’m floating in space with a friend, inside an artificial universe of astronomical size, fragile fractal coloured objects stretch out to infinity all around us, the objects are self-similar and are lined up in a roughly cubical array, like being surrounded in a hall of mirrors. I’m explaining that it is in fact an enormous computer simulation, the universe is not infinite, but its capacity is beyond human comprehension. To travel through the universe, you just ‘swim’ and then accelerate off in the direction of your choice, with practice you can reach incredible speeds relative to the space around you. (When I wake up later, I realise that it was like Neuromancer by William Gibson).
I have a few related dreams that I’m lying in bed trying to get to sleep. Mum slumps over the bed and tell’s me that Dad believed in God, "load of crap" I say.
All forgotten now. I was playing Volleyball.
I dream I’m reading and writing large lists of e-mail, possibly using the BlueWave software screen. Lists of complex mathematical equations seem to float in the air around me, as if they are projected holograms.
I continue to dream that I am reading and writing e-mail. Complex sets of questions relating to C++ programming are floating around me. As I examine the e-mail lists and questions, I am hovering in mid-air as if I am on an invisible see-saw or trampoline, a most relaxing feeling.
I am wandering through a large field of soft green clover and grassy stalks, it’s not clear where I am, except that at the centre of the field is a large rectangular building surrounded by an electric fence and a paved area. It’s not clear what this building is, but it doesn’t seem very threatening. Ray King wanders in, and I offer him a bribe to break through into the place to find out why it’s so well protected (he is an electrician after all!). The field is planted at regular intervals with sprinkler heads that are waist high, they can barely be seen amongst the overgrown flora, I wonder how to turn them on. I sit at a square wooden table that rests against the fence, there are papers on the table, the white paper is very bright in the sun.
I am flying on a bright sunny and hot day in the slightly cooler air a few hundred feet over a wide round harbour ringed with festive bunting clad buildings. It might be Darling Harbour, I’m not sure. I know I’m in a plane, but it’s invisible, giving me the feeling that I am sweeping and turning in the thick air under my own power. I’m engaged in a wildly weaving dogfight with a friendly adversary who seems to be in a much larger plane. I’m on his tail, trying to anticipate his next turn to get into a position of advantage, I know there are cheering crowds down below enjoying it all, it doesn’t matter who wins, it’s all just a summertime spectacular show.
I’m reading an encyclopaedia, and as I read, it seems to be enacted out in reality about me like a 3D TV show (in the dream I remember that this happens a lot, but it doesn’t trigger a lucid state). There is an obscure historical article about how in France in the 1700s. Some officers were poisoned by someone who placed a bacterial culture into bottles of wine and then carefully resealed the bottles. Perhaps it’s the first ever case of bacteriological warfare.
As I amble along a wide suburban road on a clear and still day, I look at the world around me, and wonder how it would appear to us if our brains were enhanced by the ability to perform millions or billions of calculations per second like a digital computer. Would distance and time seem different?
A battle is taking place in a sparse and beautiful forest. Opposing forces are moving in groups through the tress, trying to overtake or cut each other off, the enemy is some sort of powerful alien army with strange weapons. I’m about to be overrun, I use my remaining charges to kill a few of the advancing troops, but it’s hopeless. I rise from behind a thin tree and throw my long weapon at them, as it hits their feet there is a low pitched noise and the weapon transforms itself into an opaque milky hemisphere, it seems to be impregnable. I’m now reading the words of a science fiction novel, the pages have the words formed into spherical shapes, the book tells me that I have discovered a new form of defensive shield from a hitherto unknown link between sound and energy. We are now assured of victory against the alien army. I read on and find that it’s only a short story, in fact the whole book I’m reading is a collection of short stories. I walk off down a road.
I’m walking down the footpath of a suburban street somewhere in Hampton, someone is asking me questions from inside one of the houses, I realise it’s Auntie Dolly talking through the open front door. I’m answering her questions, she’s worried for some reason that someone been taking advantage of me, I placate her, and in curiosity decide to walk up to front door and see her.
In the Office, and On The Roof
I’m inside the BMS office, which now occupies 3 floors of cramped space of what is like a British "two up two down". There are staff and visitors everywhere, including some of the old MNCS staff (Jim Lees, some operators, etc) who are trying to start a rather chaotic meeting in one small room. I go for a look around, wondering if I can get up on the roof. At the top of narrow stairs on the 3rd floor is a small room with 2 unmade double beds in it, I figure someone is down from interstate. I climb up on a table and unlatch a crumbly old cover that leads to the roof and poke my head through. There is a rickety old skeleton of a gardening shed, and a small area of lawn. I climb through with some difficulty and wander around the roof. Some others I don’t know arrive to set up a small cocktail part of some type, someone gives me a tumbler with a delicious cocktail, perhaps a Mai Tai, I pour the remaining ice from another glass into my cocktail to make it even colder.
Kylie Minogue & Elle McPherson
I see a Kylie/Elle manikin, half plastic, part real.
Too many to remember, only these few remain.
Talking to Rick and walking down to Toyota, waiting and patting a black cat. Walking back to St. Kilda, through a twilight ‘mall’, followed by 4 Korean boys singing an ‘a cappella’ hymn, they start a fight and dispute which I avoid by walking upstairs, across the shopping centre and down again. The Skeptics are meeting in a small room.
Seeing Neil, it’s really his brother, Neil was killed in French Guyana, no one in the family will explain.
Planning for a flight in an F16, deciding what manoeuvres to perform and ‘how to recycle fuel’.
I see Neil, tell him I dreamt he was dead the night before.
Went to bed early (22:00) and got up at 09:00, too many dreams to remember, only fragments remain. Overall, it was a night of stunningly clear and colourful dreams, full of long meandering stories.
I’m on a train heading into Sydney centre, we go past and over Garden Island Dockyard, there are ships and people everywhere, bustling with activity under bright lights that diffuse everything with a yellowing glow. I seem to have forgotten my shoes, I’m only wearing moccasins, I decide to get off and take a train immediately in the direction I came from (I want to minimise embarrassment). While waiting at the platform, a big bloke tries to steal my wallet, I punch him in the stomach, he ignores me, whacks my wallet and causes a few coins to spill out (some on the tracks), I reach over and pick them up…GAP… I’m now heading into Sydney, I seem to be flying and zooming down amongst the buildings and bridges. People are waiting for me milling around in a park, one family seems to be enacting out a grim play where the father shoots people around him and groups of people fall down dead, weird. I stop for a chat to two women, one of them is Elaine Davies, I say to her "This is a dream, isn’t it fabulous, we’re asleep", she smiles at me, she seems to be having a good time too, I pause and say "Haven’t we done this before?"…GAP… I’m on a wildly weaving roller coaster…GAP… I’m in a restaurant far above the city, a big muscular man picks up a small man dressed like a gangster and throws him over a wall, then jumps after him and seems to transform into a huge plaid parachute, they are gone.
I’m near the entrance to a railway tunnel, a mudlark (or a caricature of a mudlark) with a big droopy stomach drifts in and lands nearby, as I watch it, it’s face transforms into a smiling tabby cats face, I think it’s Eeek’s face.
It’s impossible to remember more details, only an overall impression of the colourful and intricately interwoven stories remains. The elapsed time of the dreams seems well over an hour. Often I seemed to be an audience member watching a complex and bizarre TV show with plots spliced together from hundreds of authors on psychotropic drugs.
Before going to sleep this night, I watched part 3 of 4 of an American TV drama called Wild Palms. It’s like a meld of Miami Vice and Brazil, and I hope its dreamy surreal nature will influence my dreams (it doesn’t seem to, except maybe for the image a sword being handed to James Belushi as his "briefcase").
I’m in a large convention centre, perhaps it’s inside a hotel. I wander into a large room full of people, they are gathered for some sort of computer industry function. I can see Graham Jane over in the distance, he has a large area of a desk to himself, with papers, phone, and monitor. He seems quite busy. I see some of the chaps from the PCUG OS/2 interest group. It seems to be full of IBM related people. It sure is relaxed, people are laying back in huge beds, I’m resting comfortably also, there is another man in the bed also (I seem to know him). The beds are so large that it’s like sharing a vast sofa. I push a large wad of doona cover off the end of the bed with my feet, and relax to enjoy the conference or whatever it is. The tall chap who has taken over the OS/2 interest group in 1995 walks past and says "Hi Greg", then throws a bundle of notes for me to browse (my friend is impressed that I’m recognised amongst the crowd).
…GAP…The convention centre is transformed into the interior of a castle, the walls are now huge roughly hewn rectangular blocks of brown granite, the crowd has disappeared. It seems like a game of Wolfenstein, people are trapped inside, and I must get them out. Someone distracts the ‘baddies’ inside, and I pull small bricks out from around a high window, just wide enough to squeeze through and jump down into the interior of the castle. A mostly forgotten dispute mixed with verbal trickery ensues, and for no apparent reason (except that it’s all like a game), a woman swings a broadsword across the neck of a young princely looking blonde man and severs his head right off (at a slightly oblique angle). There is no blood, he may not even be human. This seems to signal the end of the whole scenario.
I’m talking to an elderly man who tells me he can speak fluent Chinese (it’s hard to believe, as he has a rounded English accent). It seems he worked in China for many years, perhaps as some sort of diplomat. I begin a lesson in Chinese with him and some others. We wander around looking at various objects, and someone is telling us their names in Chinese. The names are very weird, and it sounds like Mandarin due to the exaggerated tonal fluctuations mixed with unexpected glottal stops (pak mah ungh, dow toh cha, ta te waha, etc). I try to simply remember the sounds like birdcalls, knowing that I can regurgitate them later and learn the contexts. I muse over how simple the Latin languages are, and try to remember how I felt the first time I tried to remember hundreds of French verbs and nouns.
There is a change – we seem to be living in a large communal hut with walls made out of planks of wood inaccurately hammered upright into the frame. I feel like I’ve been living amongst Chinese peasants in this hut for a long time, but I don’t really belong here. I have an image of looking through a door in mid-air into a green and foggy land, it’s Japan, I can hear staccato atonal Japanese being spoken in the distance, then it vanishes. We are being invaded by the Chinese army. Everybody flees except a few of us who believe it’s best to hide cleverly inside the hut and let the soldiers pass by. I slip through a tiny trapdoor in the floor and hide on the ground under the floor in the dry dirt. My mind is acutely aware of potential danger, and I explore every possibility of how the soldiers may discover me. The wind is whipping through the foundations of the hut, a find the darkest most uninviting position, and partly drape a flapping canvas over me to as to break up any visual body line (a commando trick). It seems to work for a while, I can hear the footsteps of searching soldiers above me for many minutes, then fingers jut through the floorboards and someone gets the tiniest feel of the end of my foot before I foolishly withdraw it. This arouses their suspicions, and hands start groping around for me. Somehow a Chinese soldier has crawled under the floor and found me, I lunge out and grab his head in a vice like grip, I seem to totally overpower him and he is almost suffocated. I thrust a long knife deep into the gap between his ribs roughly where his heart is, he twitches and slumps in my grip, dead.
There has been some sort of great event recorded in the media, people are milling around outdoors, and there is a festival feeling in the air. Apparently it is a time when sperm is produced and collected. I’m watching a drama unfold, someone is carrying a small glass vial to collect sperm (I dread to think how). It seems that the best sperm is obtained from huge muscular men, so this character is wandering through a large crowd on a bright sunny day, stalking a large man who seems to be Arnold Swartzenegger. Arnold and the other men accompanying him enter a private apartment block and disappear. Our character somehow climbs some stairs and climbs over a barbed wire fence on to the roof of the apartments. Arnold is up there with some other body builders, it’s quite threatening being surrounded my the large men, but a deal can be struck.
Upon waking I realised that this idea of fertility festivals may been taking from the novel ‘Flesh’ by Phillip José Farmer.
I’ve wandered into an orchestra that is setting up outdoors to play to an audience that has gathered around the foot of a small hill. The orchestra members are scattered about the flattened face of the hill, there is a large open tent to protect them and add an air of formality to the event. I’m having a lighthearted argument with some other friends about what instruments we will play, and what music will be played. I quickly grab a cornet as everybody sits to begin playing. Where’s the music? Myself and other chap playing the clarinet have no music. The orchestra starts playing ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’ by Richard Strauss. I reach over to an empty music stand and grab a handful of parts and shuffle through them looking for the correct ones. I find one labelled ‘clarinetto’ and give to the chap next to me. I find one labelled ‘cor’, that’s close enough, I’ll transpose. The cornet is not very good, and it’s difficult to hold a note exactly in tune, I drop the volume a bit so as not to upset the other players.
Someone is asking me how to convert values into a format that can be exchanged between different sorts of computers. I tell them to convert it into hexadecimal characters and right justify them. I see a string a hex digits forming in front of my eyes. Someone else is asking for a printout on 15x11 inch paper. I try to convince them that they should use condensed printout listings from a laser printer. They’re not convinced, so I indicate a pile of A4 listings about 10 inches high, and explain that if the same listings were printed on 15x11 inch paper, then it would be about "this high" (indicating about 2 feet high with my hand).
Upon waking, I realise that the contents of this dream are total rubbish.
I’m travelling south towards Melbourne on the top of a twin engine plane. I seem to be lying along the top of the fuselage, like a surfboard rider. I don’t seem concerned, I’m just enjoying the ride. I have the feeling I’m return from an interstate business trip, and I’m not quite sure if I’m supposed to stop in Melbourne, I might be in transit to other city. The plane stops at Moorabbin airport and taxis down to the end of an unmade airstrip. I wonder if the plane is going to stop, but it turns 180º and prepares to take off again. I can see the lips of the air traffic controller moving, probably giving clearance for another take-off. The plane accelerates and takes of with me still riding on the roof, it banks gently over Cheltenham and turns north-west, I think I must be on my way to Adelaide. The plane gathers height slowly, and I look for landmarks such as major roads or other airports. The top of the plane has become a bit slippery and I push my foot against the right wing to regain my balance, I know there’s are spinning prop down there somewhere and I don’t want to stick my foot into it. Suddenly I slip right off the roof and slide down the length of the right wing which has turned as slippery as butter. I fall into space, arms outspread like a parachutist leaping backwards out of a door, as I fall past the fuselage I can see sunlight horizontally through the cockpit windows briefly revealing silhouettes of the flight crew, who don’t know I’m falling. The plane dwindles above me, and wonder what it will be like to die falling into the ground from a high altitude. I wake up.
This is a mini-nightmare. I wake instantly and find the hair on the back of my neck is stiff and upright, fuelled by a small adrenaline release.
I with Paul Foulstone and some others, we are looking around the cages in a large and spacious outdoors zoo. There are strange and beautiful animals in the cages. I don’t know why, but I feel that they are all endangered.
I am on a narrow road that passes through low grassland, I’m with Craig and Stewart from work. I’m discussing C++ programming with Craig, and Stewart gets into his Mercedes and drives off a high speed, he fails to take a corner at a distant T-intersection and his car plunges into the grasslands in a paddock. Stewart doesn’t seem to care, he’s driving round-and-round back-and-forth, trying to find a way back onto the road, it looks rather comical with an expensive car roving around in a paddock like it’s lost in a cross-country rally.
There were simply too many dreams to remember this morning. I recall that there were at least 6 overlapping dreams with different themes to them. I woke early, irritated and restless, then memory of the all of the dreams faded rapidly.
I am wandering through lovely peaceful bushland that slopes up from a gentle hill to a dirt road that winds through the native trees and scrub. I meet up with some people who are gathering for an outdoors rock concert, they are gathering in small groups and making comfortable places on mats and rugs. I think I’m talking to Ian Butler, we look up into the sky and see ochre coloured clouds drifting across the sky—it’s a bush fire—it seems quite close. I wander back down towards the road and discover that the undergrowth is smouldering and nearby trees have flames leaping up their trunks. I’m not really concerned for anyone’s safety, as the fire doesn’t seem severe. I’m hopping through the burning grass, not really concerned, even when I realise I’m only wearing thick woolly socks on my feet …GAP… I’m getting a high-speed ride in a fire engine, quite exciting. I return to the rock concert, where any concern about the bush fire is totally forgotten. I join a group of people behind the stage where the concert is in full swing, an all female rock-band is playing, I can hear the music quite clearly, and follow the lip-sync of one of the nearest girls as she leans into the microphone. I’m so close to the band that I feel I might have become mixed up with the ‘sound crews’. The concert slowly deteriorates into a kind of slapstick comedy and people are throwing things off the stage into the audience, someone even throws a large black dog into the crowd.
I am simultaneously a participant and an audience member as a feature mvice is being filmed or reviewed (it’s hard to say which it is). It’s a crazy adventure movie, full of violence and action, the main character is John Travolta (shades of Pulp Fiction). The plot is forgotten, but it revolves around being chased by Travolta and valiant attempts to thwart his advance, it involves: Covering him with aerosol spray and igniting it, smashing him in the head with furniture, even shaving his chest in some kind of deception. The action is so good, that the chase scene is repeated 3 times, slightly different each time. The final scene has James Bond getting into a car and driving off into the distance for no apparent reason.
I have walked into the basement carpark off Patterson Street at No.1 St.Kilda road and found some of the staff members having an informal meeting. I know most of the faces, but don’t know them really well. We get into a discussion about security, and someone implies that I broke security. I’m a bit angry, and I start a logical defence of the programs that I wrote…GAP… I’m alone now, and there’s a large pile of rubbish in the carpark. For some reason I want to collect them and take them out onto the road (which has suddently outside the door on the opposite side of the building). I want to use the PKZIP program to compress the physical objects to make them easier to transport.