Archive for the 'Dream' Category

Lucid Dreaming: Inception Style

Published on December 1, 2011 in Dream. 1 Comment Tags: .

I often have the problem that the moment I realize I’m dreaming, I wake up. I never get a chance to do the cool stuff you’re supposed to do in a dream when you know what’s going on (like fly and whatnot). Last night, I did end up having a lucid dream of sorts.

I was walking around a house when I realized I was dreaming. I read somewhere that you can spin around really fast, and apparently that helps you stay in the dream and not wake up when you realize you’re dreaming. I did this and was able to stay in the dream. After that, I walked through the house some more and looked at the furnishings, thinking that I have a pretty cool brain for being able to invent that stuff on the fly. Like, “wow, my mind just made up that sofa arrangement.”

At this point, I decided to do something more fun. I tried moving parts of the house around with my mind, and see if I could demolish it. It didn’t work. Once I wasn’t able to control the dream, I woke up. After I woke up, I decided I would try to go back to sleep and dream the same dream. I wasn’t quite able to do this, though, because I was still dreaming! What I thought was a lucid dream was really me dreaming that I was lucid dreaming. I think this is the first case I can remember of having a dream inside of a dream. I’m pretty sure I was dreaming that I woke up, because I can recall actually waking up and it being quite different from my dream waking up.

I think it’s kind of interesting that I was able to keep dreaming even though I realized I was in a dream partially due to the fact that I was dreaming of dreaming. The complexity of dreams continues to surprise and confuse me. Hopefully I am writing this blog post in a non-dream, because I’d really like to have a record of this dream in a dream.

Fly Me To The Mars

Published on April 20, 2010 in Dream. 0 Comments Tags: .

I had a dream last night that me and my Mom won a trip to Mars. I think we won a contest that allowed us to take a tourist flight to Mars, kind of like how people are paying big bucks to fly into orbit right now. When we got onto the shuttle (which seemed kind of small and had a random tour guide driving, like it was a bus), I realized that it’d probably take a while to get there. Like, more than 24 hours. I think that was a low estimate…

At this point I really wish I had done more preparation for the trip, like maybe getting some audiobooks loaded up or at least bringing a book to read. I kinda just showed up (my Mom might’ve caused us to be late; this happens in real life). During our trip I kept feeling kind of dreadful. Like, what if we don’t come back (it was the first ever tourist trip to Mars)? And what if our pilot bus driver guy gets killed?

Our bus driver/guide said that once we get to Mars, it’ll be really small, so we all have to keep our eyes peeled for it. I thought this was a load of crap, because it’s actually a pretty big planet! I think this also meant that we wouldn’t actually go onto Mars; we’d just fly over and look at it, and then go home.

I guess we didn’t go directly to Mars; we stopped at a space station or something first. In the space station we had to form a huge line, for some reason. I remember reading some really specific headlines when glancing at a newspaper. One was about how the space library was charging really huge fees for interlibrary loan. Makes sense if your library is in space, I guess.

Grocery Store Antics!

Published on December 10, 2009 in Dream. 1 Comment

I had a really weird dream in-between snoozes this morning. I’m writing this post on my iPhone on my way to work (don’t worry, I commute by bus).

The first part of my dream was at some kind of museum. It was a place where I had gone as a kid. I saw a hallway with a bunch of mechanical educational arcade type games. They were old. I think one was of Dick and Jane. I felt the kind of nostalgia that you get going to a place you used to frequent as a kid but rarely as an adult. Think back to elementary school when they’d send you to the same place every year or semester. Like the natural history museum for me.

The museum quickly got boring so my dream transitioned me to shopping at a grocery store. I think it was Meijer. Shopping got boring in the dream (which strangely never happens in real life) and I resorted to riding my shopping cart around with another dude who kinda seemed like my friend Matt Strand. But I don’t think it was him.

Then some security guards came up to us with “energizer” brand binders (I could tell because they were drumming them like the energizer bunny, except vertically because the bunny has a bass drum and these guys were playing them like snares). They were going to take us to the manager’s office on the 9th floor or something. I tried to make small talk with the guards. Like “I bet a lot of people mess with the shopping carts and ride on them!” I was trying to make it appear less lame that a 26 year old got caught goofing off. Then my second snooze alarm woke me up.

It seems impossible that my long dream happened in the span of 10 minutes but I guess that’s how our brains work!

Prison Card Fight and Punishment!

Published on May 25, 2009 in Dream. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

cards-as-weapons

I had a dream that I was in prison for some reason. I guess the reason is irrelevant. I imagine I was innocent and was unfairly accused of committing some crime. Anyway, since weapons are not allowed in prison I decided I would carry a pack of playing cards around and I’d the use cards as some kind of shiv if I got into a tussle.

I think the idea originates from when I read about a book (I think this was in some kind of magician’s manual) that explained it was possible to get so proficient at throwing cards that one could, if thrown with enough velocity, lodge a playing card into a watermelon. I’m not sure if this is even really possible. I should look it up or ask it as a reference question to a librarian.

Okay, after a brief digression, I found the book: Cards as Weapons. But apparently it’s just a hoax/parody. Oh well.

Anyway, back to the dream. As expected (think about Chekhov’s gun), I eventually got into a major prison fight using cards (my opponent also used cards to fight back). We actually fought with two cards in each hand, sort of knife style or something. The prison guard broke up the fight and had to punish us. This is where the story gets interesting. He used the face value of our cards to determine how severely to punish us! I have to hand it to my dream guard, he sure knows how to make things interesting. Is that just me complementing my own subconscious? I don’t know.

The guard was gonna add up the value of the cards we used as weapons and probably put us in “the box” for a duration of time appropriate to the value of the hand. Or something. In the middle of the guard figuring out the value, I woke up. Good timing, I think.

John Linnell’s New Album For 2009!

Published on February 17, 2009 in Dream and Music. 2 Comments Tags: , .

I had a dream that John Linnell released a new album (solo, not with TMBG) and I was gonna buy it or something. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a false dream. Or a dream with a false real-world connection. Too bad; State Songs was great.

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