Images: Serith's Dreams

[Serith]

I tried Ninja's WILD technique again, and didn't even wake up to the alarms.  More importantly, I did have a couple of lucid dreams, and I had partial success at my main goal, which was to visit the Mortal Mist Dreamscape.

Symbols
The first dream I remember was set in a strange place, sort of a hybrid between modern times and colonial times.  I was with someone else, and they had something (no idea what) in my backyard that was forbidden by the police.  We knew it was important to go out and get it, or do something with it, but staying inside was our best bet at avoiding capture.  The other person went outside to get it, and when they were captured, I knew I had to go out myself.

I saw them being dragged away, and I think I followed to a distant building.  I was accompanied by some sort of disembodied intelligence, and so was the other person I had been with.  When I reached the building, someone from it saw me, and started chasing me.  The intelligence, wanting to help me, gave me knowledge of how to stop him.

This is the most interesting part of the dream.  What the intelligence gave me was a way of sending out these symbols, which I thought of as letters, but were also kind of like musical notation.  Somehow I sent out one of these symbols, it hit the person chasing me, and he stopped, allowing me to get away.

Snow and Jumping
I was with a group of friends, and we had decided to leave the house where we all were, and walk to a store.  This annoyed me, because the store wasn't exactly close, and it was a cold, snowy winter night.  We kept walking, and eventually reached some sort of tiny park area. 



Interestingly, the brass sculpture on the wall was a guide to the symbols from before, and they covered it's surface.  Unfortunately, I didn't spend much time examining it, and learned nothing.  My friends were annoying me more and more, and eventually, I tried to send out one of the symbols at one of them.  This failed, so instead I used telekinesis to send him up ten feet in the air, and let him fall down.  They found this to be really funny, and they all started pushing each other up to about the same height.

After all this, it was no surprise that I became lucid.  I immediately went to draw a door on the wall, and to direct it to the Mortal Mist Dreamscape.

Just as I was finishing drawing, I suddenly woke up, and found myself sitting in my computer chair, annoyed that my computer had woken me up.  I sat there feeling annoyed for a minute or so, until I woke up for real.

Doorways and Fragments
This dream was focused almost entirely on getting to the Mortal Mist Dreamscape.  I was lucid from it's start, and I frequently faded in and out of the dream, which divided the whole thing into many, many fragments, most of which were lucid. 

The dream's setting varied between fragments, but was usually inside of my house.  And each fragment, I tried to draw a door on the wall with my tablet's stylus. 

Sometimes, the dream faded out before I could finish the door.  Sometimes, I finished the door, but it couldn't be persuaded to become a real door.  A couple times, I forgot to use my tablet's stylus, and found myself trying to draw with a mechanical pencil, or a bit of cloth.  Once I even created a working door, but forgot to give it a destination, and ended up walking through it into a white void, where the dream faded out once again.

Oddly, the method that finally worked was drawing the door on a window.  I drew the door on the window, wrote MM to set the destination, and opened it up.  The setting on the other side was similar to what the other side of the window used to be (which is probably why it wasn't a total success), but it was clearly a different place.  It was much more vivid and colorful than anything else in the dream, and as I entered it, the dream itself became more focused and vivid.



It looked much as I had expected it to, with a light mist, hills, thick green grass, and interesting things all around.  I set out to find the center, and had high hopes that a tree on a hill in the distance would prove to be the center.  However, when I reached it, I was disappointed to find that it was clearly a different tree.  It had a different shape to it, and was only about twelve feet tall, much younger and smaller than I knew the main tree to be.  It felt like it, and some of the other trees I could see from the top of the hill, might be descendants of the central tree, but definitely not the same one.

I felt that I might have been in the far outskirts of the dreamspace, where the trees were young and the mist was light, and that I would have to walk many miles to find the center.  After looking around for a while longer, I woke up.

Going Home
It was late at night, and I was very far from home.  Tired, I stopped at a restaurant.  It had become an art gallery, and I found one of my art teachers.  I asked her how to get home, because I was unsure how.  "It's simple, just follow the signs." she said, and left me alone.  I was in no state to drive, and I was driving a large, unfamiliar vehicle that I wasn't sure I could safely drive in any circumstance, but I knew I had to get home.  I got in the vehicle, and woke up.

[mu]

I felt that I might have been in the far outskirts of the dreamspace, where the trees were young and the mist was light, and that I would have to walk many miles to find the center.  After looking around for a while longer, I woke up.

Maybe you could make a door in the main tree? That way, you could create a door directly to the center.
I wish I could participate in this. It's a great idea.
Is that a super mario block in the upper right corner?

[Serith]

I felt that I might have been in the far outskirts of the dreamspace, where the trees were young and the mist was light, and that I would have to walk many miles to find the center.  After looking around for a while longer, I woke up.

Maybe you could make a door in the main tree? That way, you could create a door directly to the center.
I wish I could participate in this. It's a great idea.
Is that a super mario block in the upper right corner?

I thought about maybe creating a door in the tree, I just didn't remember the idea in the dream.  If I had, it probably would've worked much better. 

This project is an ongoing thing, and I can't see any reason why we'd ever close it, so I wouldn't be surprised if you could participate in it eventually.  Once you can lucid dream, it probably would be easy for you to get there, especially with the way locations tend to work in your dreams.

Yes, it was a giant Super Mario ? block there.  In the dream, there was also a giant coin, but I couldn't figure out how to fit it into the drawing.

[Serith]

Sunday night I didn't sleep well, and only remember one dream. 

I was the leader of a band of sapient animals traveling down a highway in the middle of nowhere, in an old truck.

I was also the tourist walking down the road, who the animals stopped in front of.

As the leader of the animals, I was surprised to see the tourist carrying a painting, since I hadn't considered the possibility of humans being intelligent enough to have paintings. 

As the tourist I was surprised when the animals showed me one of their paintings. They somehow indicated that I should make a replica, with a metal frame, and black mesh to stretch over the frame, definitely not good materials for painting on.

As the leader of the animals, I was disappointed that the tourist wasn't doing well at constructing the painting, which I had made him do as a test of sapience, but figured that it might just be because of the materials. 

There wasn't any sort of double consciousness like some people have been experiencing recently, I just took turns playing the two roles, without acknowledging that I was doing so.  Also interesting was that I knew that the two groups were speaking two different languages, though I perceived both as English, and that I never saw the animals, or even the leader of the animals.

[Serith]

Fall and Temple
My family was driving by a river, and I was noticing the way the currents moved, and the amazing colors, all greens and purples.  Then we were driving in the river, downstream, but I didn't care, because the water looked amazing. (I couldn't get anywhere close with the drawing, even when I went with a less realistic approach.  However, the river did start to speed up, and I started to get nervous, and told my parents that maybe we should get out of the river.  They ignored me, and soon the river reached a gigantic waterfall!



We went over the edge, and everything started to go away.  My family was gone, and the car was gone, and even the waterfall was gone, it was just me and the drop.  I grabbed something floating nearby, and descended safely to the ground.

When I landed, I was lucid, in a desert.  The thing I grabbed had turned out to be a dragon.  We talked for a while, and I moved on.

At this point, the dream had regained the vividness I had lost in the fall, and I found myself in an ancient temple.  It looked like it had been abandoned long ago.  In the center sat an unusual statue. 



I knew that it wasn't just a statue, it was a creature, that was in the middle of a long, deep sleep, possibly one it had been in for centuries.  I thought of it as an alien robot, although it didn't seem like that at all.  I decided that it would be a good idea to wake it.

Somehow, I succeeded at this, and it came to life.  It had an unusual way of communication that didn't use words, just emotion.  It seemed cheerful and friendly at first, but soon it became clear that it did not have good intentions, and it began to lunge at me.  I panicked, and lifted it up with my mind, and slammed it back onto the ground, breaking it into pieces.  With that, the dream ended.

Rewind
I thought I was using some future, virtual reality version of Youtube, which I had personalized through some mental trick.  The plot of it was that someone had kidnapped a younger version of myself, and I had to rescue him.  Younger me was carried off in a purple minivan by an unpleasant man who I don't know in reality.  I caught up to the van eventually, and grabbed onto it.  The kidnapper was angry, and brought out a knife to attack me with, and in desperation, he ended up killing the younger version of me.  This caused the VR to restart.

This time, I started running immediately, even before younger me was kidnapped, but I had gotten confused, and ran opposite of the direction I should have been going.  The van got too far away for me to catch it on foot, and I knew I'd need a vehicle. 

It was suddenly hours later, and I was on the road outside of my grandparent's home.  Some old guy came driving by me, and there was a small vehicle attached to his car.  I was going to take the small vehicle, but the old man fainted or had a heart attack or something when he saw me, so I took his car instead.  I had a moment of near lucidity when I knew I probably shouldn't drive because it might wake me up, but I ignored it.

I continued onward, ignoring the road when it was quicker.  Eventually this led to me driving on a river again, and onto a fatal accident off of another waterfall.

This restarted things again, but only back to being on the river.  This happened a couple times, until I figured out how to survive the fall, by leaving the car, and boarding a boat.  At this stage the plot twisted, into something that seemed like Futurama.  I was still on the boat, but I was a robot, offering this guy some diamonds.  He didn't want diamonds, which was surprising enough to make me restart the conversation several times, due to a logic error, or something.

 I met up with the cast of Futurama, who supposedly were riding with me when I drove off the falls.  I asked them how they survived, and was given a screen where I could submit an answer to the question, with an interface that looked like it was designed for inputting names in an old video game.  I tried to say that the answer was "magic", but it wouldn't let me say that, so I had to say "maic", instead.

[Clairity]

Fall and Temple
My family was driving by a river, and I was noticing the way the currents moved, and the amazing colors, all greens and purples.  Then we were driving in the river, downstream, but I didn't care, because the water looked amazing. (I couldn't get anywhere close with the drawing, even when I went with a less realistic approach.  However, the river did start to speed up, and I started to get nervous, and told my parents that maybe we should get out of the river.  They ignored me, and soon the river reached a gigantic waterfall!



We went over the edge, and everything started to go away.  My family was gone, and the car was gone, and even the waterfall was gone, it was just me and the drop.  I grabbed something floating nearby, and descended safely to the ground.

When I landed, I was lucid, in a desert.  The thing I grabbed had turned out to be a dragon.  We talked for a while, and I moved on.

Serith, your picture fit perfectly (I love your drawings)!  I found it strange that you went over a waterfall which dropped you into a desert.. but at least you got to talk to a dragon! 

[Serith]

I had another night of poor recall. I had one long, coherent dream, but I only remember the very end.  I was talking to this crazy woman.  She had two cell phones, one was hers, and the other belonged to someone who she thought was real, but wasn't.

[mu]

I knew that it wasn't just a statue, it was a creature, that was in the middle of a long, deep sleep, possibly one it had been in for centuries.  I thought of it as an alien robot, although it didn't seem like that at all.  I decided that it would be a good idea to wake it.

Yup, good idea. Just like when you tried to rescue that guy from the painting. 
The animal/painting dream was interesting. I've gotten the impression too, that someone's talking in another language, but I perceive it as English. It does seem like a lot of split consciousness dreams around lately. It will be interesting to see how your Dreamscape project goes; it definitely seems like peoples dreams sometimes influence eachother.

[Serith]

I knew that it wasn't just a statue, it was a creature, that was in the middle of a long, deep sleep, possibly one it had been in for centuries.  I thought of it as an alien robot, although it didn't seem like that at all.  I decided that it would be a good idea to wake it.

Yup, good idea. Just like when you tried to rescue that guy from the painting. 

Now that you mention it, that's definitely a pattern in my lucid dreams,  I bring some aspect of the dream up to the state of dream character, and it attacks me.  I think the pattern was set by some of the things that happened when I first tried interacting with my reflection and lucid dreams.

I remember one dream, but my memory of it was confused.  I was traveling across the country, and visited an unusual movie theater.  I was with a strange group, a church involved in a mysterious conspiracy.  I and others had access to some strange power, and at times there was a group of creatures that would obey me. I remember singing a song with someone. 

I was also a journalist at times, and in some areas, I wasn't allowed to report on any information I learned, and I had a device on my belt that let me know when I was in one of those areas.  The church was cloning people, trying to reincarnate, the people involved in some pivotal, ancient event.  I had to travel with a group of people in the conspiracy, one of them a clone of some hero, across an area where we risked being caught by the government, which was still actively involved in witchhunting, and would find us suspicious.

[Serith]

I had a lucid dream yesterday morning, and I was going to make an animated gif as the drawing for it.  I spent a lot of time trying to get it to work, but the software didn't work the way I thought it did, so I ended up losing a lot of time, and that's why I didn't post the dream.  It was an interesting dream, mostly because it had some very unusual false awakenings.

My mom was driving somewhere, and I was in the back seat of the car.  We were crossing an overpass, and she was clearly on the verge of falling asleep, and veering off the road.  I tried to wake her up, but as soon as I did, she'd start to fall asleep again.

Suddenly, a dog leaped onto the hood of our car, but it disappeared as I snapped awake (still asleep though, and still in the car), and realized my mom wasn't the only one on the verge of falling asleep. 

We went off the edge of the overpass twice, and both times I snapped awake again to find that we were still driving safely.  However, the third time it happened, I did not wake up, and we kept falling, only to land on an identical overpass below.  We then proceeded to fall off that overpass in exactly the same way, and this loop continued briefly until I landed, alone and lucid, in a huge junkyard.

I immediately started looking for a good place to draw a door to the Mortal Mist Dreamscape.  There were some large pieces of construction equipment that looked big enough, but they moved on their own in an unsettling manner that I did not trust.  A salesman tried to convince me to draw the doorway on an older one that was not moving, but I decided against it.

Eventually, I found an alley between two old brick buildings that I thought would work excellently.  I took my tablet stylus out of my pocket, and began drawing the door.  I tried to ignore the feeling that something was going to attack me before I finished, but failed.  Naturally, the next thing I noticed was a monster standing at the end of the alley.  It was not frightening, especially since it looked like something out of sesame street, but it was quietly staring at me in a way that made me nervous.  It came charging at me, and I reflexively pulled myself out of the dream.

Fortunately, it was only a false awakening, and I found myself staring at some sort of video game menu, with full memory of what happened.  Somehow, I dropped back into the dream, and was able to resume drawing, but only a few minutes later my vision warped, and the dream ended.

[Serith]

I had to get up earlier this morning then I had expected, and forgot all of my dreams, except for one fragment.  Fortunately, I have enough of a memory of what my dreams were like that I know I haven't forgotten any dreams that were lucid or otherwise interesting.

Fragment:  I stole an onion ring from someone.  It was delicious.

[Serith]

I had three lucid dreams last night, but they weren't that interesting, and I have other things to do, so no drawings.

1  Some supernatural person was helping me because I could use telekinesis.  There was a whole community of supernatural creatures, who mostly hated each other, but not always.  I saw some lady who was part of an immortal race, maybe a vampire.  One day a year, all the supernatural creatures would call a truce, disguise themselves as human, and have a party at this house.

I was in the house, and became lucid.  I tried to get into this one locked room, but had troubles, because part of the defense was a metal fence, and I have trouble phasing through things that are slightly flexible, like metal fences, nets, etc. 

2.  I was on a small spaceship.  I found a door that was a portal to a place I thought was another spaceship.  It was huge, had many people, and was ruled by this alien no one liked.  Everyone disobeyed the alien and had a party.  Two poets escaped, gained immortality, and were recaptured.  They thought the alien would kill them, but he instead forced them to write poems for him forever.  They wrote a poem that was critical of him, and then set it on fire and used it to burn the place down.  It turned out that it wasn't a spaceship, it was a completely enclosed community on a planet, and everyone escaped either to the planet or to the small spaceship.

I found myself in a flooded parking lot, and became lucid.  I wanted to try walking on the water, but failed.  I tried again, this time taking my shoes off first, but I did no better.

3.  I was lucid, but had no vision.  I knew I was very close to waking up, and tried to get my vision back.  Although the dream did continue for a while longer, I didn't succeed, and woke up.

[mu]

1  Some supernatural person was helping me because I could use telekinesis.  There was a whole community of supernatural creatures, who mostly hated each other, but not always.  I saw some lady who was part of an immortal race, maybe a vampire.  One day a year, all the supernatural creatures would call a truce, disguise themselves as human, and have a party at this house.

That sounds like some kind of inverse Halloween.

Eventually, I found an alley between two old brick buildings that I thought would work excellently.  I took my tablet stylus out of my pocket, and began drawing the door.  I tried to ignore the feeling that something was going to attack me before I finished, but failed.  Naturally, the next thing I noticed was a monster standing at the end of the alley.  It was not frightening, especially since it looked like something out of sesame street, but it was quietly staring at me in a way that made me nervous.  It came charging at me, and I reflexively pulled myself out of the dream.

Again with the monster?!

Now that you mention it, that's definitely a pattern in my lucid dreams,  I bring some aspect of the dream up to the state of dream character, and it attacks me.  I think the pattern was set by some of the things that happened when I first tried interacting with my reflection and lucid dreams.

I've heard about that... I've seen my reflection in regular dreams many times. I guess being lucid makes a difference?

[Serith]

1  Some supernatural person was helping me because I could use telekinesis.  There was a whole community of supernatural creatures, who mostly hated each other, but not always.  I saw some lady who was part of an immortal race, maybe a vampire.  One day a year, all the supernatural creatures would call a truce, disguise themselves as human, and have a party at this house.

That sounds like some kind of inverse Halloween.

It did seem a lot like that, even besides the obvious connection of the disguises.  Halloween is supposed to seem scary, but is usually quite safe, while this celebration was supposed to be safe, but wasn't really.  Safety was guaranteed at the house, but not outside, not even in the parking lot just outside the house, where I remember we were very careful not to bump into anyone.

Again with the monster?!

I don't know what you mean by that, that's the first time I remember seeing that particular creature.

Now that you mention it, that's definitely a pattern in my lucid dreams,  I bring some aspect of the dream up to the state of dream character, and it attacks me.  I think the pattern was set by some of the things that happened when I first tried interacting with my reflection and lucid dreams.

I've heard about that... I've seen my reflection in regular dreams many times. I guess being lucid makes a difference?

It wasn't really the lucidity that did it, I had several lucid dreams involving mirrors before the events happened which started this pattern.  What made a difference was the first thing I tried that treated a mirror as more than an object.  I tried an old DV task of the month, shaking my reflection's hand.  It tried to pull me into the mirror.  Similar things happened approximately the next five times I encountered my reflection in lucid dreams, until I eventually figured out a way to deal with my reflection that caused it to not behave nightmarishly, only chaotically.

I dreamed that tiny aliens came to live in my backpack.  They could speak English, but not read it, and I was going to teach them.  They were musicians, who played instruments made from old bits of metal and wire.  I spent most of the dream trying to figure out how they managed to be good at making music, using old junk that shouldn't have worked as instruments at all.


Fragment: Living outside, owning an iPod.

[Serith]

I was watching someone's dream.  It seemed interesting at the time, but I don't think I would think so if I could actually remember what was going on.  It was mostly dialogue, and I'm not good at remembering dream dialogue.

Then the dream finished.  Four people, including me, had been watching it, and we were talking about it.  They thought it was really interesting too, and someone mentioned how annoying it is that we don't realize that we're dreaming until the dream is already over.  He asked everyone if they ever realized that they were dreaming during a dream, and one by one they all said no.  Finally, he asked me, and when I said "Sure, all the time", he freaked out, pulled out a knife, and ran at me!

I wasn't thinking anywhere near as clearly as I usually am before I become lucid, but with all the signs the dream was throwing at me, I didn't need to be in order to realize I was dreaming.  However, my mental state still made things much more difficult for me, so when that guy was still charging at me with a knife, instead of realizing he was harmless, I tried to throw him throughI  the air with telekinesis, and even that didn't work.

Then I tried to fly away, but that didn't work either.  That distracted me from him, and I spent a while trying unsuccessfully to fly.

Next I was in my room, and that same guy had found what I thought was my sleeping body, and was really slicing it up.  This bothered me for a while, until I realized there was no way he could hurt me.  I told him this, and woke up not much later.

____________
I rode a rollercoaster, and had visions of a strange place, and of a city that I forgot.  I went to a library, and hanging on the wall, was a metal structure much like the one I found on 9/21, but this one was smaller, and instead of storing knowledge about magical symbols, it stored knowledge about lucidity.  Unfortunately, I didn't examine it much.