Dream A Little Dream Of Me

So I re-watched my favorite movie ever – Waking Life – last week and decided that I am going to learn how to lucid dream and become an oneironaut.

I’ve actually been obsessed with the idea of lucid dreaming and being an oneironaut (even when I didn't know that word) for a long time. In college, when my then-boyfriend and I would go home for winter break and over the summer, we tried to astral project and have out-of-body experiences so we could see each other. It never worked, but we never stopped trying.

I’ve started doing some research and it seems the first step is to become aware of and remember your dreams. I’ve actually had some pretty spectacularly weird ones lately, including an awesome one last night with Henry Rollins, on whom I have had a HUGE crush for like a hundred years. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize it was a dream in time, otherwise I’d have been having some lucid fun with Henry. Damn.

Anyhow, another aspect of learning to lucid dream is knowing when you are dreaming (of course) and when you are awake. So I do reality tests pretty frequently, even when I’m sure I’m awake, mostly so I can engrain in my mind the act and then take it into the dream world with me. I figure if I make it a habit, then I’ll be able to continue doing it even when I’m asleep.

Anyhow, I'm only at the beginning stages, but I totally feel like I can get there if I focus. And I'm jealous of all of you who can do this without trying.

Shear Madness

I had a terrible nightmare last night, one that left me crying uncontrollably in my dream (and in real life as well, since I awoke to a little sea of tears on my pillow).

What was this horrible dream, you might ask?

I went to a salon and a very giant and snooty male stylist cut all my hair off! I was just heartbroken. I told him not to cut it too short and he sheared me like a sheep! It was pretty awful, though in retrospect, one of the funnier nightmares I have had. I'm not quite sure why it made me so emotional.

It's possible my subconscious is still processing the fact that I recently got a haircut, a result of me accidentally-on purpose cutting my own bangs. (I'm very open to the power of suggestion and Corazon cut her bangs a while back. Of course, hers looked super-cute while mine looked like...well, like I cut them myself.)

At any rate, I was glad to find my hair still there when I woke up.

Not Again...

Another dream. About the same stupid person. Blurgh!

At least this one was interesting, as it involved this really cool apartment and a cute little mouse (weird, I know) but I'm ready for these to stop any day now.

I'm sure eating jelly donuts at 11pm really helps the situation.

Leave My Subconscious Alone!

I've sort of made it a point to avoid thinking about or talking to someone who recently irritated me. So imagine my dismay at having a dream about this person last night, and despite trying hard to stay mad even in my dream, being really happy to be hanging out together. I woke up very confused and aggravated.

You jerk! Stay out of my dreams!

Freud Vs. Jung

Dear Subconscious:

Please stop being so susceptible to anything anyone else says regarding dreams. Thanks to an off-hand comment by the Ex, I had a nightmare in which I was chased by a strange man as I ran in a dark parking lot at night. I very much did not enjoy that, not only because it was frightening, but also because I barely like to exercise when I am awake.

kthxbai,
City Elf

Waking Life

I had two dreams last week that stood out:

1) I had a nightmare that I was married. Why a nightmare and not a dream? Only my subconscious knows for sure. Within the confines of dreaming, I woke up, realized my marital status, and thought, "Oh fuck, I'm married. This is not good."

2) I had a dream about my new Dyson vacuum (on the way via FedEx!), which I thought was pretty funny. It did an amazing job on my carpets in the dream, by the way.

Maybe It's PMS

I have kind of a lot of emotional junk going on right now that I've been doing a good job of suppressing in public. (Shocking!, I know, given how well I usually deal with anger and sadness and how open I am about my feelings.)

But apparently, I can only control my brain during the day. Even though all the dreams I remember from last night were fairly innocuous, I woke up in the middle of the night with my face soaked in tears and my eyes were extremely puffy this morning.

Stupid subconscious.

In Dreams

So I had this dream the other night that I could fly. I think everybody has these dreams.

I was a little surprised to find that I needed to flap my arms to fly, which seemed kind of ghey, but it wasn’t that bad, since I didn’t have to flap them very hard or anything. I was not surprised to realize that I was an uncertain and clumsy candidate for flight (not unlike how I am for most aspects of being ambulatory) and nervous about crashing to the earth. For this reason, I was flying very close to trees that were about two stories tall and grabbing their branches when it seemed to me that I was flying a bit too high. This was obviously necessary to keep me flying at a low enough height that should I plummet to the ground, I hopefully wouldn’t break my neck. God, even in my dreams, I'm a klutz.

Despite the lack of any super-heroish qualities to the dream, it was really, really cool to be able to fly. When I woke up, I immediately thought: “Hmm, maybe I really can fly, and I just don’t know it because I’ve never tried.”

My second thought, of course, was: “Hmm, maybe I should go out to the back patio and jump off my picnic table to test this theory out.”

Followed by: “Hmm, that particular method of breaking my arm would be really hard to explain to people.”

Anyhow, I’m still mulling this one over, so if you see me in an arm cast…no questions, please.

Crazy Dreams

I am a hard-core dreamer. I dream almost every night and my dreams are vivid enough that I wake up laughing or crying or angry at someone who did something in my dream that they would probably never do in real life.

This past week has been particularly dream-filled. I had one dream that a furious chipmunk ran up my neck and was chittering angrily at an equally furious squirrel on the ground. The squirrel proceeded to throw a large walnut at my head in an attempt to bean the chipmunk and then race up the front of my body, over my head, and start a fight with the chipmunk. I don't know where that one came from, but I am vaguely frightened of squirrels ever since one of them got too close to me in our yard a few months ago with a rabid look in his beady little eyes.

I also had a dream that I was in a mattress store (?) and FMC came in with his best friend Matt. The two of them started chatting up these girls in the store while I fumed silently, though they didn't notice me. The guys left without seeing me, but as they were walking past a window of the store, I saw FMC say he was going back in to get one of the girl's numbers. He walked back in with a notebook and a pen (like a reporter or something) and as he started to get her number, I flew over to him and started screaming at him and threw my engagement ring in his face. Then I woke up. He found that one a lot more amusing than me and asked if he looked "hot" in my dream.

A couple of nights ago I had a really sad dream that something awful happened to my sister Sandy and her husband. I was sitting in a car weeping, saying over and over, "I want to see Sandy, I want to see Sandy!" FMC woke me up because I was sobbing into my pillow. It took a while to calm me down but he was quite patient. He's sort of used to these waking dreams at this point.

The funny thing to me is that FMC claims he almost never dreams. I can't even imagine sleep without dreams! How boring would that be?

I am curious about how many people don't dream, or dream in black and white (something I have heard that some people do). Also, does anyone have recurring dreams? I never do, though I have recurring natural disaster dreams. Maybe I should stop eating pizza before I go to bed...