Dream 7/26/10

I only remember a fraction of what I dreamt of last night, but it's better than the last two nights of virtually no dream recall.

I was in some sort of "spa" in Florida, very nice. Many scenes of me entering bodies of water, like calm pools.

The X-Men character Emma Frost walked through parts of my dream, but didn't seem to be an active part of the story.

5 Tips To Remember Your Dreams And Make Them Awesome

I've been recording my dreams, on-and-off, since 1992. That's a lot of damn dreams. Through it all, via book research & personal observation, I developed a methodology of dreaming that you might find helpful.

WARNING: The more you record & pay attention to your dreams, the more vivid and long and weird they are going to get. Trust me. If at any time during this experiment (which would take several weeks to really kick in) you are too freaked out, just stop recording the dreams. Drop all attention to them, and they will fade out. The Dreamtime can be like an attention whore.

1. Drink a beverage before going to bed
Want you want, ideally, is to wake up just at the height of the dream when it is really fresh. A great way to do this is to have to pee in the middle of the night. Many times, your full bladder will even be incorporated into the dream: like, you will suddenly find yourself in a restroom in the dream, and the toilets are overflowing water. Apparently the drinking before bedtime routine has been used by fellow hardcore dreamers throughout history.

2. Keep a handy pen and paper by your bedside
Or, do what I do and keep an iPhone (I love the "Notes" app) handy. Doing so will not only aid in your dream recall (the seconds after you wake up are critical), but it will send a clear message to the Dreamtime that you are serious about this endeavor. Seriousness of intent is a crucial element.

3. Read up about dreams
The more you actively study about dreaming and related topics, the better your chances are of having meaningful, vivid dreams. This is extended even to reading stuff about mythology, religion, etc. It's like preparing soil for planting.

4. Eat and drink crazy stuff
It's not just an old wives' tale: you WILL get nightmares and funky dreams if you ingest weird stuff before going to bed. I'm not talking about drugs, but spicy food, stuff with a lot of MSG in it, lots of sugar or artificial sweeteners, alcohol, etc. Now, the full effects of this on your dream recall is somewhat unpredictable. You may get very lucid dreams but immediately forget everything because your brain is so messed up from what you ate or drank. Other times, you could eat this big fast-food meal and go to bed and wake up with a near-religious experience (goosed, no doubt, by the effect of the MSG and diet cola crap on your neurons). Lastly, I've had really lucid dreams on a very empty stomach. Bottom line is, what is in your stomach while sleeping has a big effect on your dreams.

5. Have PMS
I'm sorry guys: but the monthly misery we chicks have to go through is the best way to have lucid dreams with excellent recall. It never fails. PMS is like an open door to Dreamtime, with paid tickets to all the rides. Also: the more severe the PMS, the "better" the dreams. Women are also more intuitive and psychic while having PMS. When one's period actually starts, however, these heightened abilities can really plummet.

There are other methods to have lucid dreams and good recall that I haven't mentioned here: meditation, ingesting certain types of herbs, listening to "programming" music/tapes, etc. The ones I've listed are just the most immediate and practical.

Have fun, kids!

Dream 7/22/10: "Petrarch"

The amount of dreaming I did last night was excessive. It was the sort of night where you wake up & feel as if you received very little sleep.

First, a dream about X (X is the all-purpose tag I give people I know when I record these dreams. In the dream archives I might come up with more fancy initials, but here I just use X). I'm traveling the same bus as X, and he tells me how much he loved the classic Italian horror movie "Demons." Then we find out that we like many of the same horror films, and didn't even know it. There was more to this dream, but bottom line after it was over I really wondered what the mindset of this person was.

We are all going to go out, but I need to get dressed. I find my lime green sneakers, but then I realize that one is too short -- it's actually a kid's sneaker. Somebody gives me a little wooden pyramid to hold.

Then comes the big part of the dream. I am on a subway train I think I know, but then notice all these weird stop names. Suddenly, I don't know where I am -- even though it all looks so familiar!

Turns out I'm in a parallel universe that looks like ours, until you notice the details. Everything seems familiar, until you look close at labels and signs. Then you realize that you're in a universe in which items represent amalgams of several different things.

I'm not sure I would classify this dream as "lucid," but it was certainly extremely detailed. I spent a large portion of the dream just looking at stuff. Just walking through the supermarket in this dream took up all of my attention; products like sugar being, under closer inspection, amalgams of two or three different brands.

The name of the world of this dream was called "Petrarch."

Wow, it was pretty trippy!

Dreams 7/21/10: "Fake Dog" and "The TV Lover"

Dream #1: I bought a movie with a picture of a fluffy white dog on the cover, but when I take it home and watch it it's just some crappy 1970s movie about people that has nothing to do with the dog. It's like they fool you with the picture of the dog, and then sell you a crappy movie.

Dream #2: Somebody who is obsessed with his wide-screen TV set. I take a large magenta dish and hurl it Frisbee-like into the screen, cracking it. The person is inconsolable. The dish bounces off the screen and into the ceiling, where a big chunk of plaster falls off. But the person is most upset about the TV, crying "Oh my poor TV..."

Dream 7/20/10: "The Doctor's Laundry"

Doctor Who looks like Weird Al Yankovic in this dream, only he has no sense of humor. The Doctor sends his companion to fold all his laundry. The companion finds a tiny bedbug on the floor which upon closer inspection is actually a very advanced computer, its flat surface a monitor. The image on the monitor is of the companion Donna holding a little boy.

Now it's me folding my own clothes; starting with old sweaters I owned almost 20 years ago, and ending with blue shirts and dresses with stars on them that I have never seen before but that I think one day I will own.

Dreams 7/18/10, "The Education Of Myrna Bernbaum"

I am entering some sort of "presidential" writing contest with me and an acquaintance who reminds me of X. I promise to produce the story by the deadline so he can collaborate and/or draw it. I go to some sort of army training hall or gymnasium, with many soldiers in it, to write (maybe as inspiration)? There are many computers there, that look like mine, and I lose my computer.

Now I not only have to explain to my partner why my story is not finished yet -- but I find out the computer was the president's and now I have to explain this all to him too! There was probably a lot of sensitive information on that computer. The president (who looks like John Travolta) suggests that I shouldn't borrow his computer anymore to do writing; it's too risky.

I get an extension from the president to continue writing the story. I decide to name it something like "The Education of Myrna Bernbaum" or something like that.

***

In a separate but related dream, I am talking to the teenage daughter of George W. Bush. She wants to go to an overseas trip to support some Asian revolutionary. She shows me pictures of him: he looks like a cross between Che Guevara and a young, spry Fu Manchu and is posing with swords. I ask the young woman if her father will have some problem with her making this trip to see this person. She tells me that her father has back & psychiatric problems and needs to take medication for them every morning.

***

An unfamiliar city landscape in which there are vehicles that run along electric wires far above...sort of like streetcars, but the wires are pretty high. The whole city sky is like a matrix of poles, wires, the vehicles attached to the wires, and big sweeping nets to catch debris.

A messenger bike rides past, attached to & powered by the wires, but it stumbles and shakes the poles holding the wires up. This effects the entire matrix, and a very tall street-lamp is knocked off its base and plunges. The falling lamp lops off the head of a large statue, and that comes down as well.

The crowd is scared by the falling objects, though the lamp and the statue's head is caught by the net and bounces upon it many times.

Dream 7/17/10

There was a big announcement of a drastic change-over from paper comic books to digital. I sat scribbling a huge amount of notes as I heard the news, more than anybody else. My attention to it almost seemed excessive.

A lot of dreams of moving things from one place to another, and of change. At one point I was working at a temporary new job assignment that a friend/contact offered me.