Peachy

type: hypnagogic state imagery

I spend almost three hours preparing to lay down and attempt to practice lucid dreaming today. I should have predicted some disruption, as I am attempting to sleep at two-thirty in the afternoon. I lay my head down and I feel the HS come over me fairly quickly (I have been awake over twenty-four hours and am exhausted -- I am probably almost dreaming on my feet at this point). However, the first dream images I receive are fairly gruesome, startling, and I have to force my eyes open for a few moments before attempting again to relax. It seems every time I try to think of meditation, sakura trees, a quiet breeze, my brain wants me to think of a rotting zombie head.

It happens.

So finally I calm and am able to clear those images out. The first thing I do as I feel this stage come over me is check my watch for an early reality check. I had thought that the rampant symbolism so commonly associated with lucid dreams wouldn't be so easy to engrain into my mind, but the face of my watch is, sure enough, adorned with the red question mark of LD4all.com's RC. The thick, black hour hand of my watch is moving rather quickly--I should note it was not moving at all, but to me it seems to want to make a swift, five-minute jump ahead--while the minute hand stays stationary.

I look away, and almost find it hard to summon up the image of my watch again (as if it is hard to force myself to look back to it). When I do, the style of the hands on the watch has changed to a more delicate, intricate style, and both hands are spinning wildly and erratically, unpredictable tempos. After I am made aware that this is definite dream behavior, I am also aware that I have not yet fallen asleep, but am still in the HS.

I am standing on a soft dirt road. For miles on all sides span green grass, a peaceful setting. The sky is blue, but not too blue. The climate is temperate and comfortable. My hair is, unusually, being worn down, and I am wearing my black hooded sweatshirt. Conversing with me is a very tall, exceedingly lovely red-headed woman. We may have been walking together. She seems like royalty, not of this earth. Her voice is pleasing, her smile is kind. Very Glinda. Her dress, the style of which I cannot pinpoint, is sewn of peach and white fabric and it seems to glow. As she speaks to me--I want to say she is explaining that this is her demesne and I am welcome here, explaining where I am and what I will be doing here--I find it hard to really focus because her dress begins to shift its entire design every so often. The colors remain, but at one point it is made up of short, stuffed scarves, and at another it is long and flowing, with a headdress. She does not notice the change, but keeps smiling and talking to me.

At this point I am ripped out of my HS by a ringing phone. Unfortunately this continued throughout the day. I received three phone calls in one-and-a-half hour intervals, and my stepmother watched a two hour film at an obnoxiously high volume. When I finally did go to sleep, I know that I dreamt, but I retain no memory. The only thing I remember, and this I recalled while spending time with a friend later in the evening, is that I had eggrolls. Self-explanatory -- I believe this is due to my unfulfilled desire to have them the day before.

I will keep practicing. Hopefully through constant recording of these images I may retain more each night. I did wake up at one point and recall what I'd dreamt, but I was still very exhausted and the room was pitch black. I'd like to have a tape recorder for those inconvenient times. Something to think on for later.

-M.