This afternoon, I had two dreams where I figured out I was dreaming.
In the first one I was hanging out with this internet stranger named Lauren I've been chatting with. We were out on the porch with someone else, but I don't remember who. In my mind I was marvelling at how different Lauren looked in person from the pictures I've seen of her. Then I move to the rail on the porch and lean over holding my hands out. That's when I noticed my nails were painted.
I told Lauren that I was dreaming. She either asked how I knew or what I was going to do about it, and as I jumped off the porch and into the front yard, I told her. I knew I was dreaming because my nails were painted, but I was sure I hadn't painted them in a week or more. I hadn't painted them the color they were in my dream in months. And I was planning on poking around and taking control, which is what I did.
First I kneeled down and started poking the concrete. It was soft and bent in, like it was made of foam rubber. Then I looked at my fingernails. They were still painted blue and black, but now they curled around my fingertips in unnatural and wrong ways, curling around to the side of my fingers. I moved my hands around and tried to will them to be right, but eventually just gave up.
I asked Lauren if she wanted to go to my house, and she asked where that would be. I looked across the street and picked the house that I liked the most. It was an average looking house, nothing great, but it was painted a really nice shade of green. I told her that was my house. It felt like a lie at the time, but I figured that it was my dream. Why couldn't that be my house? If I insisted on it hard enough maybe I would come to be sure of it.
We decided to go inside, and around then I forgot that I was dreaming somehow. For a period I was hanging out with Jackie Chan, as though he was my roommate. Then I realized he was my roommate, but he wasn't Jackie Chan, I just called him Jackie because he looked like Jackie Chan.
Then a few more of my friends were there. Leon and Tim were with me, and we were all sitting around a table (with Jackie and Lauren, I think) at a cafe, eating and drinking and joking.
The other dream involved me trying to complete some series of illogical goals, never sure what I was supposed to be doing but sure that something had to be done. It featured occasional visitors and beautiful landscapes. At some point in the middle I thought that I should make a story about a person who has recurring dreams where he has to accomplish something, but he's never sure what. In the story he would be partially aware that he was dreaming, but would play along with it anyway. He wanted to find out what needed to be done. He felt it was important that he just intuitively discover what was going on, and he was sure that when he'd accomplished this, he'd have achieved something important that he could take with him into his waking life, some sort of enlightenment.
One of these illogical goals was to fill a two liter pop bottle with rain water. I ran around outside trying to collect the light drizzle into my pop bottle, but when it stopped raining I only had a small bit collected at the very bottom of the bottle, perhaps a few drops. So I wandered about and found two strangers camped out in the plains around the fire. I chatted with them a bit, and let them have the bottle and the few drops of water that I had collected so I could go find something else to do.
It ended with me talking to the creator of the dream and of that land, explaining why I wanted to stay there and why I didn't mind continually failing at these illogical goals, not even sure what I was attempting was what I needed to do, and why I was playing along with the dream even though I knew it was a dream. In part, I didn't know I was dreaming. I was always half aware of the fact and half blind to it, though I never realized that while I was dreaming. Instead I was going over little pieces of the landscape, and remarking how the way they fit together, the sublte changes, should have told me I was dreaming. I said that over and over. "I should've figured it out!"
But even if I knew, I didn't want to know or finish the dream. I wanted to stay, to enjoy the passing company, enjoy the landscape, and to try honestly to figure out what I needed to do. I didn't actually want to succeed, because then I couldn't honestly keep trying.
In the first one I was hanging out with this internet stranger named Lauren I've been chatting with. We were out on the porch with someone else, but I don't remember who. In my mind I was marvelling at how different Lauren looked in person from the pictures I've seen of her. Then I move to the rail on the porch and lean over holding my hands out. That's when I noticed my nails were painted.
I told Lauren that I was dreaming. She either asked how I knew or what I was going to do about it, and as I jumped off the porch and into the front yard, I told her. I knew I was dreaming because my nails were painted, but I was sure I hadn't painted them in a week or more. I hadn't painted them the color they were in my dream in months. And I was planning on poking around and taking control, which is what I did.
First I kneeled down and started poking the concrete. It was soft and bent in, like it was made of foam rubber. Then I looked at my fingernails. They were still painted blue and black, but now they curled around my fingertips in unnatural and wrong ways, curling around to the side of my fingers. I moved my hands around and tried to will them to be right, but eventually just gave up.
I asked Lauren if she wanted to go to my house, and she asked where that would be. I looked across the street and picked the house that I liked the most. It was an average looking house, nothing great, but it was painted a really nice shade of green. I told her that was my house. It felt like a lie at the time, but I figured that it was my dream. Why couldn't that be my house? If I insisted on it hard enough maybe I would come to be sure of it.
We decided to go inside, and around then I forgot that I was dreaming somehow. For a period I was hanging out with Jackie Chan, as though he was my roommate. Then I realized he was my roommate, but he wasn't Jackie Chan, I just called him Jackie because he looked like Jackie Chan.
Then a few more of my friends were there. Leon and Tim were with me, and we were all sitting around a table (with Jackie and Lauren, I think) at a cafe, eating and drinking and joking.
The other dream involved me trying to complete some series of illogical goals, never sure what I was supposed to be doing but sure that something had to be done. It featured occasional visitors and beautiful landscapes. At some point in the middle I thought that I should make a story about a person who has recurring dreams where he has to accomplish something, but he's never sure what. In the story he would be partially aware that he was dreaming, but would play along with it anyway. He wanted to find out what needed to be done. He felt it was important that he just intuitively discover what was going on, and he was sure that when he'd accomplished this, he'd have achieved something important that he could take with him into his waking life, some sort of enlightenment.
One of these illogical goals was to fill a two liter pop bottle with rain water. I ran around outside trying to collect the light drizzle into my pop bottle, but when it stopped raining I only had a small bit collected at the very bottom of the bottle, perhaps a few drops. So I wandered about and found two strangers camped out in the plains around the fire. I chatted with them a bit, and let them have the bottle and the few drops of water that I had collected so I could go find something else to do.
It ended with me talking to the creator of the dream and of that land, explaining why I wanted to stay there and why I didn't mind continually failing at these illogical goals, not even sure what I was attempting was what I needed to do, and why I was playing along with the dream even though I knew it was a dream. In part, I didn't know I was dreaming. I was always half aware of the fact and half blind to it, though I never realized that while I was dreaming. Instead I was going over little pieces of the landscape, and remarking how the way they fit together, the sublte changes, should have told me I was dreaming. I said that over and over. "I should've figured it out!"
But even if I knew, I didn't want to know or finish the dream. I wanted to stay, to enjoy the passing company, enjoy the landscape, and to try honestly to figure out what I needed to do. I didn't actually want to succeed, because then I couldn't honestly keep trying.
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