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Tag: dreams

Storytelling while asleep

About a billion years ago in college, I used experience every dream trope (false awakening, lucid dreaming, and just extremely vivid, movie-like dreams), along with sleep paralysis (which is kind of like dreaming, but you’re awake). Now I mostly have somewhat vivid dreams if I’m lucky, and the most I can lucid dream is detect that I’m in a dream or wake up on command, but can’t control it or stay asleep.

Dream Terminology

False awakening— A dream where you wake up…but you’re not actually awake. You’re still dreaming and you dreamed you woke up. Bonus if you’re stuck in a false awakening loop. 😑

Lucid dreaming— The ability to control your dreams and be aware that you’re dreaming. When I had this, I basically stopped having nightmares because I could control the outcome.

Sleep paralysis— Not really dream-related, but you feel like you’re dreaming. Sometimes you might wake up and realize you can’t move or open your eyes. And YMMV on this, but a lot of people sense an evil or malevolent entity nearby. IIRC, this really isn’t paranormal, but more psychological.

  • Dream: Giantpaper and the Beanstalk

    I planted my carnivorous plants (the ones I got for Christmas) on Dec. 28 last year. Err…two of them, that is (Venus Flytrap and Sundew, the others are waiting to germinate in the fridge). It takes about 3 months for these seeds to grow. Slow growers, yup. :yes: At the moment, I’m trying to make sure they aren’t too cold (60/70°F around this time of year is best) and that they get enough sunlight (indirect sunlight = good, direct = bad).

    Aaaand since I haven’t grown plants in a really long time, I actually had a dream about keeping plants. X3

    My dad gave the three of us (Worm88, L and me) these cactus plants as presents. They were already planted in dry soil in these little plastic pots with hard plastic domes over them. I didn’t water mine right away. I knew from experience (in real life) that if you water them too much, you could drown them. So I resorted to just bringing it around with me everywhere I went.

    One day, I must’ve given it so much love that it visibly right before my eyes that it grew a non-cactus-like sprout. O_o Then it grew another one. I took it out into our backyard, when the second sprout suddenly shot right out of the dome and straight into the cloudy sky. At first, I was surprised and happy, since I’ve never had this luck with plants before! (as seeing as how I’ve only kept cacti, I don’t know how true this is XP).

    Then I started to become a little worried, because it reminded me of the Jack and the Beanstalk story…I don’t know if I actually believed a giant would come down from the clouds, but I didn’t want the oversized stalk to break and fall on all those houses. The fact that there was an oval-shaped Venus flytrap-like head at the end didn’t help either (Little Shop of Horrors, anyone?). So I knew the right thing to do. The problem was that I saw it as my pride and joy (almost as a pet or friend). But my heroic ambition was much stronger, so I broke off the stalk and mushed it up in my hands, head and all.

    And because I didn’t want it to regenerate itself from its remains (a la Maijin Buu), I decided to burn it. Since I couldn’t think of any safe place to burn a giant plant mass, I looked around the kitchen for a pan to fry it in (right when the relatives were over, cooking from some kind of gathering). …Unfortunately, we had just recently remodeled our kitchen (not IRL), so everything was now mixed up. I found the pots and pans where the old oven used to be (the oven is now under the stove where the pans were).

    …The end. ( ._.)

  • Dream: The Worst Driving Senario

    I had to go back to college again at another school (is this going to be a new series of dreams?*). And once again, instead of commuting to school everyday, I lived in a dorm about five miles nearby. This time, it was at the community college I went to before the CSU…which was right nextdoor to CalPoly, right next to the freeway. So yeah, I got to go to school right next to Jeidai and her brother. :3 (Sometimes we went home together.) On days where they didn’t have school, I carpooled to school with some classmates.

    *Current “dream arcs” I’ve had so far: 1) moving into a big, new house/mansion 2) being a fugitive from the government 3) my current school (the CSU) was combined with my old elementary school/middle school.

    In addition to being next to the freeway, they were also getting a shiny, brand-new…basketball court! 😛 At the moment, it looked like a Greek temple (with the columns and everything). But it was supposed to become something really big and impressive, because apparently, when I was late getting out of a class, I knew Jeidai and her brother would have to wait, which I didn’t like. But then I thought ‘oh well…they can admire the new basketball court.’ (because if it wasn’t big and impressive, why else would I think they would admire it? D:)

    So…one day was really windy. So windy, it was causing some people to lose control of their vehicles if they weren’t careful. On the way to school is a bridge. A really one-lane bridge (one lane on each side) with no rails on the side. And just because things weren’t interesting enough apparently, it was also really windy and curvy. I wasn’t driving, but someone I knew was a careful driver drove instead (I was lucky enough to ride gunshot :D). But RIGHT when they got to the bridge, something happened to make them unable to drive anymore (had a stomach ache? A headache? Ran out of driving energy?). We sat there, wondering what to do, since he was our best driver, the only one we depended on to get us through the bridge. I mean, who would want to drive on THIS?

    Scary bridge
    nope.avi

    So someone else from the backseat took his place. I got a little nervous, because while he’s not exactly a dangerous driver, he can get a little cocky and impulsive. But I thought that maybe he’ll know how dangerous this situation is and know that he should drive slowly?

    WRONG. He jumped behind the wheel, floored the gas and sped off, zipping down the bridge. I was tense the entire time, thinking we were going to be thrown off the edge by the wind, like that poor truck.

    Well, we made it safely on the other side. But I noticed that there was something really different about my surroundings…

    1. I was no longer in the front seat. I was now in the back.
    2. The car resembled an F1. It had a giant spoiler in the back (where the back seats were), even though it was supposed to be a sudan.
    3. The car had completely separated into two, almost as if it were sawed in half. The back half (which along with me, had another classmate who was just as confused as I was) was kind of gold-colored with white flecks. The front half was silver with a dull finish.
    4. Speaking of the front half, where was it? Just a few yards away from the back half. The driver was nowhere to be found…in fact, no one (other than the confused classmate) was to be found. o_o

    Then it was time to wake up, because it was 8:30 and we had to leave for Jeidai’s commencement (more on that soon :D) at 9.

  • Dream: Giantpaper in Wonderland?

    Cast:

    • Jeidai: cousin
    • L: sister

    (Most of the earlier half of this dream is a bunch of seemingly unrelated fragments…kinda like Alice in Wonderland. This is what I get for not writing this one ASAP.)

    Jeidai‘s immediate family and my immediate family were on some kind of vacation in Japan. We stayed at this warehouse-looking hotel and played this game where Jeidai’s dad dressed up in a Yeti costume and would try to scare the beejeebies out of us. The cousins (my siblings and I and Jeidai and her siblings) explored the city, but were on the constant lookout for Jeidai’s dad umm…dressed up as a Yeti…

    Then we met our match on a train where Jeidai and I sat in the back, surrounded by school girls in uniforms. Someone in a Yeti outfit came up to spook us, and just when we thought we had lost, Jeidai’s dad NOT wearing the Yeti outfit came up, next to the Yeti person. For a while, we were confused, until the unknown person took off the mask, revealing…

    (more…)

  • Dream: Hogwarts…Giantpaper-style B)

    Cast:

    me: me

    Jeidai: cousin

    Dream:

    Note: Everything I know about HP comes from either the movies or Wikipedia. I don’t really have the attention span to actually read the books. o_o

    I went to school in San Luis Obispo, CA (where Jeidai currently goes to school at CalPoly). My mom and I stopped off at some checkpoint nearby the school when she said that’s as far as she could take me. Since I had my car, I could drive the rest of the way. I decided ‘nahhhh, I’m going to walk instead!’ Buuuuut since it was about 30 miles away, I rode my bike instead (which I also conveniently had :3). When I was done with school for the day, it was time to head home for the day. I went back up to the checkpoint and thought about having my mom pick me up (and as for my car still being there…what car? :O).

    But instead, I decided to go to Hogwarts (wow, looks like “Hogwarts” is in the Firefox dictionary…it wasn’t underlined when I typed it), which wasn’t too far away. Also, I am now Harry Potter, since everything was in my POV, but I looked and sounded exactly like Harry. XD

    In this Hogwarts, the houses were in modern-looking CalPoly-esque style buildings. Except for one which is also kind of abandoned. The only ones who lived in it were…Harry, Jeidai and some others. Also in order to get to it, you have to crawl into this hollowed-out tree and into a hole in the ground. Then you would appear in one of the CalPoly-esque buildings (which doesn’t look so CalPoly-esque on the inside). This was so only residents of that house/dorm could access it, but pretty much everyone knew about this “secret” entrance.

    (In a previous dream where I was Harry and Jeidai was Hermione, we lived in a Hogwarts-style dorm that could only be accessed via hollowed-out tree.)

    One day, I was talking with my zombie friend* and he wanted to know about this “secret” entrance. I told him that only residents of that dorm could get in. Oh yeah, I also accidentally hinted about its location. o_o The zombie took off to notify his friends and I knew I better tell someone fast.

    *I was up really late last night playing as a zombie on Gaia’s Halloween Hysteria event. 😀 Two factions down, two to go (zombie and human).

    I immediately went to the dean of that dorm, whose name was similar to Cornelius Fudge (I think his first name was Cornealus?). His face looked a bit like the Mad Hatter’s from Alice in Wonderland, only less cartoony-looking (but he was just as goofy/silly). And he had hair like a jack playing card.

    (more…)