Chill Out in the City

Credit: Retoka

Dream Eyes

If you look closely at the eyes of a reader, you will find they move like the eyes of someone dreaming. Is this coincidence?

That Dream Again

Christophe Jacrot

Change of Heart

I had a dream about a vampire who stalked me and my friends and the house in which we all lived. The dream had long-held close up shots of bites and other vampire evidence as you might see in a movie. At some point I woke up and realized it was a dream and got myself back to sleep. Entering the dream again, now the vampire lived in my household with my family, and my friends lived elsewhere in the neighborhood. The vampire is now attempting to be on my good side, sort of sucking up - no pun intended - as a weak child might to a group of bullies.

Nightmares have historically been the instigating factor in my lucid dreaming experiences. I tend to wake up when I am threatened, at which point I know it is a dream. Sometimes I'm aware a dream is a dream while inside. Suffice to say any threat to myself is removed once I'm in control of the dream, and that makes the change in the vampire interesting, because, as a mental character, it's as if it realized what I might do upon reentering the dream and therefore changed its behavior in an act of self-preservation. Alternatively, perhaps the change in behavior is the result of my control of the dream, effectively reprogramming the vampire so I could continue the dream without a sense of control.

Reality Warps

Luka Khabelashvili

That Dream Again

Seth Smith

Sleeping In

That Dream Again

Atey Gailan

DMT, the Somnambulist

The following notes were taken during an experience with several years old DMT. The substance still maintained a 'powdered Parmesan cheese with a hint of mushroom' smell, but the effect felt much shorter lived due to the presumed number of half-lives that have passed.

***

DMT is related to and like dreaming - even once the sojourn is over, you continue to live there, meditatively and observe from afar.

The trip is the coming on and coming back, like traveling. What people call a "trip" is really a short stay somewhere else, a sojourn.

It feels logical, acute. You can see science up close, or the intimations of it, like distant fireworks in the electrical circuits of a bulb. It's not sexual in any way. Those organs become numb and shrink and you become ambiguous.

The body doesn't realize discomfort; the body becomes paralyzed in whatever position is last.

The eyes in drug-drooped state must be manually forced open to take in maximal light! Our organic cameras. Leave the mouth open, but swallow every few seconds. The body forgets to take in enough oxygen and swallow collecting saliva. The body remembers before the moment you would choke, but it's good to take the initiative. An open mouth will take in more oxygen than the nose.

The edges of things becomes more distinct. You realize how much blank space is between things, as if our sober eyes tries to stitch everything together into a single patchwork. You feel like you can see the subtle differences in a clay pot, as if seeing where a finger or palm may have pressed its creation.

You are the stretched ecstasy of tiredness.

Popcorn-textured ceilings are the best way to tell when the active experience is over. In the beginning, it appears to be organic and alive, like the filaments of jellyfish or coral, or the stretching of plant roots. Patterns may appear. In the end, it slowly swirls and churns like clouds on a windy or stormy day.

***

Sleeping In

I Had That Dream Again

At the Wormwood Tea Party

bunny laundry tea time by raccoonnook

Sleeping In

Fragment

but i had this dream

i was rowing on a small river being followed by another rowboat with soldiers

there were guys with me rowing and i guess we were convicts

Report · 21:33

and

Report · 21:33

midway through the stream there was a small island in the center

i grabbed onto an outlying branch and spun the boat around the side so wed be behind the other boat instead of in front

but they were following us around so we headed for bank and started climbing the terraces

it was one of those hard climbs where normal steps grow taller and harder to climb

i was afraid id be caught even though i was in front of everyone else. i think one of the guys was killed in the boat or while climbing

and i stumbled down the other side of the hill into the idyllic neighborhood i always dream about where things are fine-lined and it seems like everything is one solid color instead of many hues

and i went into one nice house and ran into my wife with her kid and she said i had to voluntarily go through the reprogramming to clean and reset my personality

Report · 21:39

nat

whoa

Report · 21:39

it turned out that the other guys and i were avoiding it because it was a harsher reset but if you volunteer and do it without soldiers its easier on you

Report · 21:39

my dreams are never THAT clear

Report · 21:39

well i take melatonin

but yeah i got the reset and a guy or two found me and wanted my help but i was already reset

and i woke up

...

A Conflict of Dreams

I had a strange dream, set in a sort of camp; I remember running back to a picnic bench with people around it.

I think I noticed a pack of wolves, giant ones, hanging at a distance, playing with each other, and one came over to me. I was sitting on the bench and it jumped up next to me and rested its head on my lap as a domestic dog would do. Then I saw a giant red fox, maybe six feet long, and the wolf ran after it and they started fighting. I asked one of the people if the wolf would be okay, and they said, "sure, dogs always beat cats."

 

HOWEVER,

that's the story that makes sense in words (that follow dream chronology), but the images I remember from the dream tell a different, fragmented story.

I remember seeing the six-foot-long red fox at a distance and I went over to it. After picking it up, I ran back to the bench and then noticed the wolves, one of which was watching me. On the bench, I let the huge fox curl in my lap. The wolf came over and sat sort of like a domestic dog, and that's how the scene was for a while. I believe I didn't move at all because I was afraid of any sudden  violence the wolf might do.

Then the fox ran off and the wolf chased it and fought with it. I asked the same person if the fox would be okay and they said they didn't know because it was a wolf fighting a fox.

 

It's like I had two versions of the same dream but can only remember the chronology of one and the images of the other.

Dreams on Repeat

I had a good dream last night, in the depth of sleep. The details of the dream aren't important and are hard to remember; however, the transition to waking was interesting. Ali was up early running around making noise so I woke up slightly, but knew I wanted to reenter the dream. The problem was that I had woken too much, and the best I could do was submerge into a shallow form of sleep similar to meditation; like bobbing in a pool, I would surface and submerge continually. I found that this level of wakefulness couldn't get me back into the dream, it only put me in the last few seconds of the dream, on repeat. It was similar to a record at the end of its set, the needle hitting the paper and popping back a little only to move toward the paper again.

Another Strange Dream

Currently listening to:
1,000 People
Blackfield

This is the first time I've had a dream that took place so far in the future. I was a very old man and Jessica was also old but dying. I was at her bedside and I asked if she really didn't want to live anymore, as if her dying was just her giving up on living, like the desire to live could keep someone going forever. I crawled into the bed and just hugged and cuddled her and started crying. We had just met as far as I was concerned, and hadn't had enough time together. So it felt too soon to be dying, but I was also sad because I knew I wanted to keep living as long as I could and so I would, alone. Then someone else was in the room taking pictures of us. My dad took pictures of my grandpa when he was dying, so it must be from that. Just a strange short dream.

Movie Dreams

Last night I watched a bunch of stuff. I saw many of the Phantom Museum stop-action shorts that are very much like David Lynch, 10 to Midnight with Bronson, Dead Heat about a resurrection machine bringing criminals back to life, and some other that didn't play as big a roll. I was high by the time it was bedtime, so I crashed without melatonin, my stomach full of junk food.
I dreamt I was in some sort of school building, maybe a middle school, which was surrounded by large amounts of abandoned agriculture land that looked dusty and some swamp-like land. The sky was dark and hazy.
I was with some people who were more like the classic stereotype personalities that make up a movie cast. We went inside and turned on the antique looking wall lights, which produced a dull, flickering light as hazy as the sky. The inside of the "school" was surprisingly similar to the layout of my parent's house with added rooms or stories; but this seems to happen with all buildings in my dreams.
A certain level of fear was felt amongst the cast of the dream; apparently, the world I entered when I fell asleep was full of creepy imagery and creatures that wouldn't make sense, but had to be avoided.
One particular scene that stood out vividly to me, because it felt like it was most of the dream itself, occurred in my room. The room was altered such that the bathroom door led to a guest bedroom a little smaller than mine but with a similar configuration of windows. The really long window in my room had the new blinds my parents just put up, but with a break so that half the window could be open while the other was closed. Next to that window was a vertical strip of marbled glass, thick and distorts the view so it's like a natural blind. The last window that mattered was the normal-sized window that had a leafy bush growing right in front of it, obscuring the view. The blinds are the sort that let light through but only shadows can be seen, and are operated by drawstring fixed to the wall. I was with an older man character who was loveable but confused.
In my room the blinds were fully down and in the guest room the blinds were only down on the window half nearest the door. I could hear something breathing or pressing against the large window in my room, but I didn't want to raise the blind. So I went into the guest room and peeked around the edge of the half-blind. A very large, white-haired, winged dragon-shaped creature was crouched by the school trying to see through my blinds. Somehow I knew that if it saw anyone it would break through the house to grab them. Just like in the movies, I also knew to move back to my room, and sure enough the creature started moving toward the guest room to look through the unblinded part of the window. It gave up the search and took flight and on its hairy tail I saw a flag with some eastern looking symbols apparently growing from the tail.
The last memorable scene took place at the normal-sized window with the bush. The bush was thick enough not to see through, but thin enough to make out what was happening inside of it. Right up against the window was a central cavity in the bush of leafless stems. On one stem was a praying mantis and every once in a while it would vibrate, the whole body would shake in place. It would fly to another perch and do it again, and once in a while quickly vibrate greater distances to eat an insect. I know for sure this part came from the Phantom Museums series. Weird dreams, the kind I like.