THE DREAMER AND THE DREAMED
That me and my family were travelling around and going to concerts. We'd stay at hotels near the venue and to pay for our expensive ventures we'd sell the hotel pillows. It was a short dumb dream.
I had a dream that I was watching some sort of nature documentary that depicted a strane situation in which fattened hogs kept getting stuck halfway in the mud, either their snouts or big rumps stickin out. An unrelated heat wave caused some of them to burst open into gory messes like over-microwaved sausages. Maybe an over-microwaved pot pie is a better example, I bet it bursts similarly, however I've simply no experience on what happens when they're over microwaved; as compared to sausages which I've burst a-plenty.
Another issue was a group of passing monkeys who decided to antagonize and brutalize the helpless hams. Including a rather large gorilla pulling on one's exposed hind legs until the earth split him open, unlike anything one can do to a sausage
I've had many dreams during my Tres Semaines Terribles. It seems that the Dream Diary, despite my meager efforts with it, actually worked to make me have dreams/remember my dreams every night. Truthfully, I've 'dreamt' very little as my subconscious seems dedicated to frightening me regularly so I've been enduring near constant nightmares. There's a sort of charm to it but it's largely annoying anymore.
I developed a migraine for about three days, during which my dreams saw me tormented by lights. In one dream a large light of indeterminate origin came advanced towards my face as if trying to intimidate me, the light was freezing cold and it began to freeze my squinting eyelids directly to my eyeballs. Yuck.
Another night I had my strangest and most upsetting dream. In it I woke from my dream and saw an approaching light trailing down my hallway and towards me. I was so tired however that I began to fall asleep and was unable to get a better look at it. I couldn't open my eyes no matter how much I tried and I couldn't force them open even with my hands. Suddenly I realized that it must be due to the fact that I wasn't awake but was actually dreaming. I was so frightened about the hallway light which was most certainly coming for me but whose source I never got a chance to determine. I began to strike myself to wake up quickly so that I wouldn't learn but my hands delivered themselves to my head very politely. No matter what I did I couldn't wake up nor could I open my eyes.
I don't remember anything else but then I woke up with my head pounding, the worst migraine I ever had. At some point I did vaguely remember thinking that it had been a moon floating down my hallway. Like that one painting of a cube floating through the doorway of a house party. Does anyone have a link to that or, like, the name? I think of that painting often but uhhh I can never find it.
I had a dream that my teeth began falling out. One tooth fell out and had a giant chunk of bone at the end, which I was told was a sheet of skull that rotted out alongside it. Woof.
That's a classic dream, right? That's the first time I've had it though! Very exciting to have such an iconic dream!
I had a dream about someone who passed away. When I woke up I tried to figure in my head whether it was recent enough for me to say "passed away recently". I figured it wasn't recent anymore and went back to sleep, this time dreamless.
A particularly odd dream. Not so occultic but it's a dream-dream, a real dream-y dream. I suppose maybe that I've succeeded at utilizing my exhaustion to train myself to have normal person dreams using a dream journal. I'm somehow a little bitter about that. I really don't know why.
We were in some sort of hotel within the context of the dream but in truth we were within the convention center where I met game developer Goichi Suda and translator James Mountain (in which I shook their hands). We were stuck there and someone amongst us was trying to kill us all.
A woman and a man walked into the elevator and, based on evidence I don't remember, I realized that he was the killer after the doors had closed. What do you do in that situation? I mean, he's probably going to kill her on the ride up, right?
For some reason I was full of courage and somehow confident that I could survive a conflict with a now mass-murderer. I ran up the stairs to meet them as soon as the doors opened. Well, things got dreamy and no matter how many flights I ran up or how many halls I ran across (I don't know why I ran through some halls, I mean, up is up) I could never make it there. I don't really remember anything else.
A nightmare like a lot of my dreams so far. This one is really dreamy. It's also very unsatisfying somehow. I guess I feel that I was met with my own character and dissatisfied with what I saw.
Lately I've been very bitter, maybe it was just in the air
I've had a few good dreams since Shaved, many of which felt important to me but I'd struggle to recall anything concrete beyond a subtle feeling. A subtle feeling I could just as easily be forcing myself to feel as I looked for significance in my memories. So... My state of exhaustion ending seems to have ended the string of dreams I was enjoying so much.
Wahhhhhhh.
That is, until last night! I had some sort of strange vivid dream that I was struggling to recall until I walked through my driveway and remembered! In my dream I was out doing something when I looked up and saw a beautiful night sky, when I took out my phone to take a picture I realized that there was a second and third moon making a sorta triangle in the sky. I remember so clearly that one was purple but the other one? I wanna say red. I really think so.
When I saw these three moons I collapsed on the ground and struggled to lift myself back up or even lift my phone skyward. Not like some force was pushing my down but that I lacked the strength to fight against unaltered gravity. This isn't new. This does happen in my dreams sometimes but usually it's when something has tired me out in my dreams, if I dream of myself in bed then I'll struggle to get out of bed because I'm evidently too exhausted to move or lift my body. If I run around a lot in a dream then I'll surely collapse as I did here.
This is the first time it's happened spontaneously and without some sort of dream context. A lot of time I feel that my brain immediately tries to justify what's happening when something weird occurs in a dream and that's what drives them to be realistic but in this dream I was just so excited to see the sky that it slipped my mind that there had to be a reason for this.
It's stupid and very dream-y but I was so pleased to recall such an occultic feeling dream. The sky in my dream was really really stunning though, I wish that I could share it.
I had a dream that I was in some sort of ritsy home theatre where we were all (everyone I know, family, friends, friends of my friends, friends of my family, family of my friend's friends etc etc) watching horror movies. It was both big and cozy and loud and soothing. Full of people but with room to breath and privacy. It was a place that could only happen in a dream and even within the dream I was thankful to be dreaming.
This perfect environment was broken when someone within the crowd of calm familiar faces was not calm nor familiar. Someone I didn't recognize was talking loudly and excitedly. This is a pet peeve of mine, less so than others (Someone I know once said that a children's movie was ruined by loud children...Yeah, that's their movie!) but talking during a movie is against my interests and my beliefs and my personality and basically everything else.
I remember finding it endearing for some reason. Though it would usually piss me off, I enjoyed something about it. Maybe it was that it stemmed from excitement and joy, movies are something to be revelled in so the quiet atmosphere of a theatre could be limiting to some. I mean, you should still respect it. But I got somewhat envious. Her hair was short, so short it was most certainly shaved bald somewhat recently. I also found that endearing.
Later in the movie or maybe during a later movie, someone began to annoy me, I don't remember who but it was someone I recognized. They wanted to rearrange seating even though I had gotten so comfortable. So comfortable I thought I had fallen asleep, in fact I remember justifying that I hadn't remember much about the movies due to falling asleep during them. Partially true. I obliged and left my seat. Some part of me thinks they were trying to sit next to me, kind of a bother, kind of clingy but kind and loving in that attempt.
However I completely changed my seat and decided to sit next to the short haired girl. Distanced by her two friends whom she was sandwiched between, I still managed to get a better look at her. I tried to discern who she was and why she was here, I didn't try to do the same with her friends which probably would've helped but they were dreamt up unpersons, they likely didn't have a face at all.
I have an issue where I don't remember faces all that well. I wound up forgetting my own face for a long period at a point in my life where I felt particularly averse to my own reflection. My family, my friends, I can picture their faces with a second or two of thinking about it and I instantly recognize them when I see them (obviously) and if they get cropped in a photo or something then I can immediately point and go "Oh that's my sister's eyebrow!" or something. People I don't know as well can be a good bit more difficult for me and I find that I often can't tell when I've met someone before by their face alone. Even when I try to intentionally press a face into my memory I begin to mush it all up instead, it's like staring too much can 'blur' their face for me right there as I look.
Despite this, her face is pretty fresh in my mind still. Like maybe I could draw her if I...Was good at drawing.
After the theatre we all went out to lunch, the group was much smaller and she was left by her friends. She ate something interesting that I don't remember. I remember a sensation of, like, 'oh, it's creepy to tail and observe someone' kinda getting hit with a 'yeah, but I'm dreaming'. Like, I recognized to some degree that I had conjured her here from my memories. The human mind cannot create a human face, it can only recall one. I stared and stared but got distracted that she was eating something interesting that I found funny. I laughed a little which I don't really ever remember doing in a dream before then.
She was really different from me but I started to get hit with this feeling that we were really really similar.
It's kind of interesting because as I describe her I'm hit with this feeling that I'm describing love or lust. I wasn't lustful but I can't really tell my own motives. I have a bad habit of being very slightly aware that I'm dreaming and a little bit apathetic about that fact. I can't be a lucid dreamer because dream-me just never gives enough of a shit about their cognition. But I would describe myself as being two people both here and in my other dreams, that I'm both awake, conscious that I'm dreaming and asleep, unconscious of much anything. The me that was aware wanted to know about her and why she was in my dream and the me that was asleep may very well have been smitten. I don't typically dream of love or sex. When I was in that 10is-13ish range I would dream of falling in love somewhat often and very occassionally of sex. As an adult I can't say that I've dreamt of either so if I did feel something like that towards her then I'd really love to know more, both about my own feelings and why I was attracted to her and about her and what memory I sourced her from.
Last night I had a stressful dream about zombies. Like Syndrome, this was something like a video game. I recognized that I was in no harm and that there were rules and even points to be earned but I was scared of pain and of death within the game. I can't say whether or not it was meant to be a video game or not.
I was in some strange house in some field hiding away from zombies with someone else (who I do not remember) when someone began firing on my house with, like, a comically powerful gun. One of those big turrets that have to attached to a vehicle. Anyways, I ran away and was targeted by some zombies. At one point I broke into someone's home and stole their charcuterie board which had a scarce few crackers and a little cheese left, I chose this difficult to carry burden over a bundle of fresh bananas. I was chased out of her home with another gun of more reasonable size.
I remember that my chest began to hurt with fear and that it became difficult to breath as I was so afraid. I don't remember why it overwhelmed me then but it did and it woke me up.
Unfortunately I can feel that my dreams have remained stressful and different than usual. These tactile long dreams that tire me have continued but I've started to forget them. It's horrible, I want to remember.
I remember very briefly, and very unexicitingly, grabbing one of those electric bug paddle things and swiping at a shit ton of little gnat-things. Eventually snatching up a beautiful medium spider who had a whopping egg sack, she fried up and smelled shockingly delicious but then her kids hatched and came for me.
That's all I remember. Interestingish, almost. Different from how my dreams usually are in that there are events where I can remember smells and associate those smells with sights and those sights with feelings. Strange textured dreams with events, rather than mush that I sink into. Even if in those events I'm a bit different from my usual self.
I had an eclectic mush of dreams depicting many different scenarios beginning and ending far too fast for me to keep track of. We've all had that happen before, right? I figure it means our sleep is getting somewhat interrupted or something.
The only thing I remember is that as I was awaking, I kinda freaked myself up with the sudden image/memory of a woman opening her mouth and she choked out four big silver cords that extended in a Doc-Ock style from her gullet. It seemed fairly unpleasant.
However! I'm unsure that I dreamt this at all. It was something that drifted into my head like a thought would as I struggled to awaken, in that state of flipping through dreams as I sunk into my bed further, I managed to pull one quick frightening sequence from my brain while I was still sleepy enough to be startled by it. I'm unsure that this alone counts as a dream though it could've been one and that's all I recalled from it, in that exhaustive state between sleepy-meemy and wakey-bakey I was unable to tell a thought from a memory from a dream.
I keep mentioning memories because some part of me thinks it wasn't a dream but a memory of a dream that I had that night and forgotten. As I'm consciously trying to ride this train of strange dreams I'm having, some part of me thinks that I'm somewhat actively attempting to remember my dreams while having them and that part of me gave me that sequence as I began to stir more significantly as if to say "Here Day-Cudoc, here's the most interesting thing I, Night-Cudoc, managed to collect from our dreams!"
The other possibility is that this same desire to have interesting dreams simply presented me with this thought unrelated to dreams in the vague hope that I would remember it as such. Or even possibly that I intentionally had this thought but in my half-awake state I forgot my own intentions, there's a small period when I'm waking up (especially if I'm having a tough time doing so) where it feels like my conscious and subconscious are switched up. During this time I'm unsure that I'd be capable of remembering my own thoughts or intentions, forgetting them as simply as I forget my subconscious dreams.
Embarrassing to admit but I had a Twilight Syndrome themed nightmare.
Is that a bad first step in my dream journal?
I mentioned that I never had interesting dreams and that this journal was specifically to encourage them but somehow another strange dream occurred. I think my exhaustion has been messing with my noggin before bed and encouraging these strange, stressful dreams lately. Perhaps this could serve as a foot in the door to permanently alter my dreams? If this means more nightmares like this then I'd unfortunately still be happy.
To preface, I've never dreamt about video games like this before. I've dreamt about playing video games but it's never been the center of the dream, one of my sisters often talks about dreams relating to fictional characters and engaging in fiction firsthand. "I dreamt last night that I was at a sleepover with this hot anime guy" I've heard half a million variations of this, each time I listen with a certain enthusiasm. It sounds stupid and I may not particularly like to use my dreams as a vehicle to talk to my favorite characters or anything but I think there's some value in subconsciously displaying my opinions on something. Like that it'd somehow further my understanding of it or better the way I formulate my thoughts on things. Hey, it makes sense to me, okay!
In this dream I had purchased the rerelease of Twilight Syndrome for the GameBoy Advanced, it served as a combination of the two games, like, Kyuuyaku style. Due to it's being on the GBA they increased the violence and gore, the reasoning of this isn't nearly as sound now that I'm awake but it made sense at the time. It contained an additional scenario which focused more on a serial-killer/slasher style riff thing, the sorta joke here being that there were red herring killers. It took place in the parking lot next to a store near my home, which I feel would be unlikely due to (amongst other things) my not being in Japan. So it wasn't so much that I was playing it as I was just in it, yeah, the whole Twilight Syndrome thing was just elaborate dressing for a dream in which I get spooked in a parking lot full of scary people at night. That's still leagues more interesting to me than any other dream of mine that I can think of and even having set dressing at all is beyond my usual.
One such killer, who was definitively confirmed to be a herring, was a horned man with blood all over his face who just sorta had a razor. He left a kind of cute minivan which seems like a poor design decision in hindsight. Why he had horns, a razor, or was covered in blood despite being a normal guy is beyond me but I respect his privacy.
This is kind of silly but I feel that the blood on his face was very similar to the blood covering Akira Hokuto vs Shinobu Kandori. It was likely pulled directly from that as I had been thinking about it before bed. He wasn't nearly as charming as Hokuto but he was kind of badass.
The only other people I remember from that was a feral cannibal family, they sorta looked like how I pictured Morlocks looking when I read Time Machine as a kid. I vaguely remember that I somehow confirmed them to be herrings. Who was the real killer then?
The only proper Twilight Syndrome thing was that a car pulled into the lot and I was somehow certain that it was Yukari's
Anyways, as stupid as this dream was, (and as funny as it is to me now) it did make me wake up with a racing heart. Super unpleasant, yeah, but I'm happy that I had such an interesting dream! Here's to more, nightmares or otherwise!