Strange Medicine

Note: Normal dream fragment.

My wife is driving, and I am a passenger in what seems to be a station wagon of some sort. My son is lying down in the trunk (the trunk starts immediately behind the front seats in this case).

I am in the back, and I have to give my son an injection of some sort. I have to insert a needle into his neck that is connected to a long tube. I must have been having some reluctance in doing it right, so the next thing I know, my wife is also helping (don't ask me who was driving the car). My job is to hold a sort of cup with padding on one end around the needle, while my wife squirts a huge syringe full of air into the open end of the cup. As she does this the level of fluid (looks clear like saline or something) within the cup slowly goes down, as I assume, it is pushed into his bloodstream.

The physics of this are really off, and for a moment it seems strange to me. I think I was on the verge of becoming lucid. I let off of the cup as I was distracted trying to figure out why things didn't seem right, and the fluid began to spill out. My wife is annoyed and admonishes me. She gives me "that" look.

I then have to pluck the needle out of his neck. It was an unpleasant experience.

JUMP

My son screams in fear from the back of the car. My wife reassures him that he doesn't have to worry any more. I don't think that his fear had anything to do with the treatment that we just gave him. I seem to remember that we are on the run from something, but all of the dream before the last fragment is lost to me now.

JUMP

I am back in the passenger seat. My wife tears off across an open field. I am like "what the heck are you doing?" She tells me this way is much shorter. I remain quiet to avoid an argument. I try to remember where it is we are, and where we are going in such a hurry, but I can't seem to find an answer.

AWAKENING

Key Thief

Note: This is a fragmented normal dream.

I remember sneaking into my cousin's childhood home (this is my second dream there). The house belongs to my boss in this dream. I make my way to the room where my cousin's parents used to sleep. I am looking for something, but I cannot remember what.

I hear noises from another room in the house, and they sound like they are getting closer. I assume that my boss has returned home, even though he is supposed to be on vacation.

I kick into a frenzy to get out of the house, and quickly grab a huge buch of keys that are laying on the bedspread (apparently this is what I came for). I run for the door as the noises come closer. As I slowly try to close the front door without making a sound, I imagine him entering the back door of the house, and just narrowly escaping.

As I walk in front of a picture window I glance inside the house again, and see that there is a group of my friends in the kitchen (including Trey, who I haven't seen in years). I realize that they must have broken in too, and that the noises I heard must have been them.

I enter the kitchen and talk with them, and it turns out that they heard me as well, and likewise, thought the boss was returning home early.

They were also very interested in the keys fro some reason.

JUMP

I'm standing in front of the bosses desk, and trying to hold a conversation with him. We used to see very eye to eye, and had a mutual respect for eachother. He apparently had a change in attitude while he was on vacation, and I feel that everything he says is condescending.

AWAKENING
---------------

I couldn't remember my dream when I woke up, but it came seeping back to me in the shower. I think a stray thought about work may have triggered it.

So, the boss really is on vacation right now. I am switching employment soon, and he knows it. I think this dream is a result of this situation. Sometimes I feel like attitudes will change towards me, due to my career decision. Seems like I might be branded as a "traitor". I don't have much of a problem with this in real life, as the move will be good for me, but apparently my subconscious is struggling with it right now.

Perhaps the keys were to release the shackles of my current job. No wonder everyone wants to get at them...

Just One Word

Only a single word echoing through my head again this morning:


"Gargantuan"

I have no clue what the dream was about, but I'm sure that it had something to do with FFXII, as I spent the majority of last night getting whomped by giant, sword wielding beasts. I really don't recall playing any games in the past that have had such a profound impact on my dreams. Good job, Square-Enix!

I just wish I could go lucid in Ivalice...


I have also been toying with the notion that my alarm clock might be my dream thief. It seems to blast all thought clean out of my head, and place me into an instant frenzy to turn it off.

A Sinister DJ, Helplessness, and a Giant Hand

Note: All normal dreams.

Before I get started, I want to mention that I tried something new last night after having recent problems with dream recall. I ate a couple slices of american cheese before I hit the sack. I read on LD4all, that this could help. I've tried bananas and chocolate as well, but neither has worked to this extent (in fact, bananas seem to be counter-productive). I have also been taking a Ginkgo supplement twice a day for about three days now.

I think I missed a large part of my first dream due to something kind of comical. I wrote all about it in my dream journal. Lots of detail - the works!

Turns out; I had a dream about writing in my dream journal as well :D Needless to say, 90% of the first dream is lost to me now. Here is what I remember (only a fragment):

There is a Rocky Horror Picture Show type guy standing on a first floor balcony on the corner of a narrow European small town street. The balcony is large, and has no railing. He is making a crazy face, and begins to put on a blonde, long haired wig (it was 80s hair band style). Once he gets the wig on it morphs into an Egyptian style head dress. The type you see on King Tut, etc.

JUMP

As for the dream journal, it is apparently my online blog, but it isn't formatted like this. It looks more like the admin page where you can edit posts and whatnot. The posts all have arrow heads next to them that you can click on to rearrange the order. I am having a hard time deciding what order to place tonights dreams into.

JUMP

I think that I am a female. I am being held hostage in a basement by a woman in a red dress. Eventually, she has to make her way upstairs for something, and commands me to follow her. She tells me that if I say anything to anyone, I will pay dearly.

On the ground level there is a big square counter in the middle of the room, and many people standing around it. I recognize these people as law enforcement officers and detectives. Knowing this, I begin to say something, but one glance from the woman shuts me up. Once she has done what she needs to do we make our way back through the crowd towards the stairs. I know it's now or never, so I work up the courage to speak to the first person I see. It is a detective wearing a black sports coat. I spill the beans, but he just stares at me blankly. Oh no! This can't be happening! I try another and another, but I get the same response.

Finally I talk to a security guard (mall security or something), who hears what I am saying, and we dash off towards the stairs down. Apparently the woman has run down the stairs again.

We reach the stairs and the lights are not on. I ask the guard if he has a flashlight, and he says that he does. Luckily, I have one too (go figure), and I take it out and switch it on.

By now, the guard has moved out of my range of sight, so I hurry down the dark stairs.

JUMP

I find myself in a dark sewer tunnel, reminiscent of the Imperial City sewers of Oblivion. I am no longer a woman, it seems. The walls are yellow/brown sandstone blocks, and there is rubble strewn about. It doesn't strike me as odd that the stairs leading to the room I was held captive in, now lead to an ancient sewer tunnel...

I look around for the security guard; swinging the thin beam of my flashlight back and forth, into the oppressive darkness further down the tunnel. I see blood splatters on the floor, and notice a pair of black boots being drug behind a crumbling pillar.

Oh no! I have a very bad feeling of impending doom. I have to get out! I swing the flashlight around, looking for the exit, and briefly worry about it drawing attention to myself. I see a stone staircase leading up, against the wall to my left. I run for it.

JUMP

The staircase winds up, and up. I remember having come this way many times before, but it all seemed very safe then. I am still being chased by something or someone. The horrible monster that I could have envisioned before, seems to have been replaced by a man (a man wearing red and black for some reason). The chase seems to be more of a high stakes competition to reach the top now, than a run for my life. I am in the lead, but I feel him closing in. Strangely, I fear him closing in. Not like I am scared to lose the competition, but some sort of fear of harm.

As I run, I begin to notice tiny chunks of glass (the way safety glass looks when you shatter it) littering the floor. I stop for a second to look around, and see that the walls and most of the architecture has changed to an iron and glass mixture. There are bridges spanning the room from side to side that seem to be made from thin, intricately woven bands of iron or lead, and all the gaps are filled with clear glass. Much like a stained glass window, if you were to use clear glass instead. There is a bit of light filtering down from tall windows far above.

As I look around, a humongous hand hurdles towards me from above and tries to snatch me up. The hand is attached to a long scaly arm, fading away into the darkness above. I dodge, and take cover under an iron and glass bridge. The hand begins to slam the top of the bridge, and the whole thing start to collapse. I quickly search for another overhang of some sort to take refuge under. This goes on for long minutes, as the entire room is made of crumbling glass structures that are broken by the hand as fast as i can dive under them. I am terribly frightened, and cry out "Why?, I have come this way before!" a deep voice calls back "You are brown. It is Tuesday." This is confusing, and I wonder if it is referring to the color of my skin, or something else all together (I am Caucasian, so this furthers my confusion). I ask what it means. The voice tells me that it is referring to the brown squadron. On Tuesdays the brown squadron is forbidden, and will be eaten. Apparently I am a member of the brown squadron.

I run towards a stairwell that leads up. The creature is frantically smashing iron and glass to reach me, but I manage to narrowly avoid it's grasp. My opponent has caught up to me now as well, and as a last resort, we hurdle through a broken window in the side of the stairwell and out of the building.

We are many stories up, and begin to plummet to the earth below. The two of us grab for what look like black rubber chords strapped all up and down the building, apparently holding it together. We get our grip, and begin rappelling down.

The walls of the building seem to be made from large red vinyl balloons. The type that firemen use in rescues, when someone has to jump from a great height. The balloons are held in place by the black chords.

We slide effortlessly down, and at some point I begin to slide between the bands and the vinyl like a snake. This is odd, but a very smooth feeling. It is hard to explain. It is a bit like flying, because gravity has no effect and I am able to just slide along the curves of the balloons.

JUMP

We reach the ground, and suddenly we are both rather chummy. I guess the situation has forced us to cooperate and forget about the competition. For a moment, the man felt like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he did not look the same. I think I was just supposed to get the action hero vibe from him.

I look around and it appears that we are on the shore of a small river in the Amazon rain forest. There is smooth sand under our feet, like a beach. I have no shoes on, and it feels great. I am very relaxed, and look around in comfort, enjoying the scenery.

There were two women with us now as well. One is Latino, and I recognize her from the show Lost, when she smiles at me (although she didn't look like any of the characters from Lost). I turn to the man and say something about how nice it is to be the best two male actors on Lost. He laughs and agrees with me. I say "Well Ok, so I'm not on the show, but..." My brain begins to churn through that statement, and logical thinking floods in.

AWAKENING

I drift back to sleep after using the bathroom. This dream is very short, due to the fact that I am in that hazy half-sleep just before morning.

I am apparently the Master of Half-empty and Half-full. I have an innate ability to distinguish between a half empty glass of water and a half full glass of water. Apparently, I can also tell you how many dice are in a row (don't ask me).

Near the end of the dream I have a sheet of black and white stickers with half-empty and half-full glasses of water and columns of four dice on them. I am peeling the stickers off and arranging them in a row around my wife's midriff.

AWAKENING

----------------

So, I have concluded, that I will eat cheese again tonight :)

Tanks on the Beach

I was really angry when I woke up this morning, because once again I remembered nothing of my dreams.

I was making pancakes for the fam, when something came back to me:

I was on some type of open-air tank with my Father and my Mother. The tank had two giant launchers mounted behind the cab. We were driving over a flat area of beach, but it seemed to be in the middle of a city, with tall apartment style buildings rising up all around us.

I was trying to load a munition into the launcher. The bomb had a bulbous front end that tapered into an X shaped fin. It was black, and about two feet long. I had to shove the munition back into the barrel of the cannon until it clicked in (like some suction cup guns, etc). I tried and tried to click it in, but it just wouldn't stick. This was very, very nerve racking, because the bomb had an impact fuse in the front, and that is where I had to shove on it to slide it in again and again.



Finally, I couldn't take it anymore, grabbed the bomb by the tail fins and heaved it out in front of our vehicle. It made a nice little explosion that I really didn't pay much attention to.

My father told me to load the next one. When I pick it up, I find that it is mangled and bent in different directions. I know I have to load it, so I try and get it down the barrel. It's not fitting. I try to bend it back into position, and even use my teeth to yank at the fins. Finally I manage to twist it enough to slide it into the barrel.

As soon as it is in, my Father launches it. I cower in a corner, as I am sure the thing can't possibly work as advertised. I could have sworn that it went off right behind me, catching me in it's blast. The feeling was really kind of frightening. I look around to survey the damage, and find that it didn't explode behind me after all. My Father points out behind the vehicle, and I see a mound of interestingly shaped shrapnel embedded in the ground (which looks like smooth, wet sand).

I remember wanting to gather the mound of shrapnel up in order to use it as an example for something.

AWAKENING

Just Words

Two word stuck in my head when I awoke today:

"Conscious Overload"

I don't know what I was dreaming about, but it certainly didn't ring true :( Not even a Conscious Trickle, here. I am having a real dry spell.

I did wake up briefly in the middle of the night, and remember two other words. I tried to commit them to memory before I fell back asleep, but they were gone when I woke up this morning. They both began with the letter "C", though.

I tried out the FILD technique when I drifted back to sleep, but I fell out before I remembered to RC...

I ate a couple Hersey's kisses before I went to bed last night, in hopes that my seratonin would have a boost. No luck.

Seems like my dream video camera is broken or something... I'm only getting audio (and very little at that)!

Wish me luck over the weekend!!

Nephilim

Another night without dream recall... Although I did remember a single word upon waking:

Nephilim.

Since I cannot remember anything else about the dream, here is what Wikipedia has to say about the Nephilim:


"In the Torah and several non-canonical Jewish and early Christian writings, nephilim (Hebrew, הנּפלים, those causing others to fall) are a people created by the crossbreeding of the sons of God (b'nei elohim, בני האלהים) and the "daughters of men"^[1]. The word nephilim is loosely translated as giants or titans in some translations of the Bible, and is left as nephilim in others:

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the LORD said, "My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years." The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown."

Oh, and I tried the earplugs out last night. It was infinitely easier to get to sleep, but I woke up before my alarm went off feeling uncomfortable. My ear canals were sweating and irritated.

Maybe it just takes some getting used to...