The Tonight Plan Journal

Dj Tonight told me I ought to start a dream journal, for when I decide to get out of this town. Sounds like a solid idea.

[thetonightplanjournal]

Night 2- Getting Eaten

Okay... let me get the rest of this down...So... being eaten...It was terrifying: like being swallowed by a python or something, only a python that had already swallowed a bunch of jagged rocks to grind you up with. I tried to remind myself it was just a dream- tried to shift myself to something else- but I kept being distracted by voices. There were things in there, whispering to me. For a second, as I was getting my head together to try and shift the dream to something else, I thought I heard Brandon's voice, yelling for help. But before I could refocus on that, it occurred to me that the feeling of being bound up and trapped reminded me of the way it felt when I would get tangled up in my sheets during the Summertime- and I was suddenly just that, tangled in my sheets, in my bed, in my room. I thought I'd woken up.

The relief was unbelievable. I felt like I'd just escaped some kind of fantasy adventure cliff-hanger. I wanted the light on, so I got up, but as soon as I was out of bed I saw them, all along the walls of the room- teeth. Enormous teeth. The wallpaper and cornices were... its hard to explain, but it looked like a life-sized replica of my room had been built in a giant, fanged mouth. All I could think was "I didn't really escape- I did what I wanted, but I wasn't careful enough! The doorway to my room was open, but instead of the hallway to the kitchen, it was a hallway going straight off into the distance- a hallway made of stone, and open at the far side. Down, all the way at the end of this stone hallway, I could see a little shadow moving. I know it probably seems like I have Brandon on the brain, but I would swear it was his silhouette I saw. The way the room-mouth was shaped, the door was right at the front of mouth, so if I could get down the hallway I would certainly be out past the teeth. I ran towards the door, determined to get my little brother back.

And just as I got near the door, the stone hallways past the teeth just exploded inward, shattered from the outside by the blow of a massive stone club. I guess I was still inside the monster, and the cavebear was back in the fight- but the hallway broke away, and I couldn't see Brandon's shadow anymore. The club came again and again, slowly breaking away sections of the room around me, and outside I could see the same cavern I'd started the dream in. I had backed away from the broken away edges of the room, which I guess were supposed to be the inside of the monster's head- when the cavebear punched a big stony paw into the room, grabbed me gently, and as it pulled me out, I snapped awake.

I hopped out of bed, not wanting to be taken by surprise again, and immediately grabbed my resin-skull. I held my breath, pretty quickly feeling the burn in my chest, and decided I was probably awake. It took me a few minutes of deep breathing to get my shit together enough to start writing it down, but here  it is.  This certainly isn't why i started trying to lucid dream, but it does feel like I'm making a kind of progress. Maybe next time I'll dream up some weapons and try and defend myself if a monster comes, or see if I can summon old Furdinand back to protect me. 

I wish I'd been able to reach Brandon, though. Even if only to dream his face again. I miss him.

[thetonightplanjournal]

Night 2- Strange Progress

Tonight, I tried to stay focused on my room as I nodded off: best case scenario, I wanted to find myself in my room, but with the regular door replaced by the white dream door I dreamed last night. No luck with that, though- I think nodded off too fast, and instead of being able to steer where the dream went, I found myself in a massive cavern. The walls were some kind of purple stone, and in some places looked hewn from the rock.  You know, I'm not sure if I'm using the word "hewn" correctly. I think it means to carve by hand or something, but... so the cavern looked, in places, like it had been cut into the rock by someone.  Damnit, hold on... I need to look up hewn. It is bothering me now.  Okay... it kind of works. Means cut by hand, usually related to timber, but can then also mean given a surface by hand, so I suppose hewn stone walls does make some sense.  Anyway... so I was in this massive cavern, and there were stalactites and stalagmites in areas. I don't know how I could see, because it was dark, and there was no easy source of light, but I could see. It was almost like the air was glowing. Not a terribly cheesy glow, mind you- at the time it was lit better than a lot of bad horror films I've watched, but remembering it now, it does feel kind of like a cheap dream trick to give the place some ambiance. I mean, if you dreamed you were in a cave without a light, and there wasn't some kind of crazy effect, how would you know where you were? You might just be dreaming that you're blind, right? Eh, I guess that isn't entirely true. Sometimes dreams seem to come packed with knowledge about the dream, so you start out knowing what is going on, even if you don't ever think to question why. Anyway, this wasn't one of those dreams- it was just a cavern, and I don't know where, or why I was there. But I was still in bed. You know, the more I write this down, the less awesome and terrifying it seems, and the more silly it kind of becomes.  So, I'm laying in my bed, in the middle of this giant, strangely illuminated cavern, and the first thing I notice is that I don't feel alone. Not quite a "someone is watching me" feeling, but just... that there was someone else there. And then it started to get more intense... and it felt like maybe it wasn't just getting more intense, but that it was getting closer. Like something was closing in on me.  I thought about getting out of bed and trying to run or hide, but that immediately felt like a terrible idea. The bed felt like the only safe place for me, so I just pulled my blankets up. Not over my head: I didn't want to lose sight of the cavern around me, but up to my neck.  At first, it was just a weird phosphorescent orange spot in the distance, but I could hear these massive footsteps coming down what turned out to be a passage. Describing it was hard. It was enormous, bipedal, and kind of like a crab. Or a crab kaiju. I watched the thing get closer, and as it got closer, got bigger. And frankly, got grosser: there were mouths all around the soft spots on it- you couldn't really see them, but I could hear them whispering, like in between each plate of armor there were little holes that were saying stuff to me. 

I didn't have any light switches or books around, and I totally forgot to try the breathing thing. I was stuck. I totally fucked up, and didn't reality check myself, even though I kind of knew I was in a dream, I still felt like I was awake, and it was real, and that even though I was dreaming I was in for-real danger. Which sounds crazy to me to be writing now, but in that moment, I was totally aware and still thought I was in a cave, about to be eaten. 

Last time I didn't like how things were going,  I just kind of free-associated myself to a different dream. So I tried it again, but I was so scared I couldn't clear my head. Also, I was already in my bed, so that didn't help me, and I couldn't calm down enough to think of my room instead of a cave... so I just focused on the cave. Which made me immediately think of Clan of the Cave Bear, which made me think of Cave Bears, which then made me think of old Furdinand, this hunchbacked, gimpy teddy bear I got when I was a kid, who I keep at the side of my bed. My friends used to say he was retarded or lame, but I always just imagined that he was kind of prehistoric- you know, the sort that might look funny but would just stomp the shit out of anything that crossed his path? When I was a kid, I always used to imagine Furdinand was there to protect me- so I latched on to that thought, and shut my eyes, and just... I don't know... just kind of reached out and asked him... someone... anyone... for some help.  When it first happened, I thought something had pushed a giant boulder through the wall, but then the boulder started running towards the monster, and suddenly it wasn't a boulder at all. There, in front of me, swinging a giant stone club, was this ten-foot tall stone cavebear thing, roaring like I've never heard roaring before, and bashing the hell out of the legs and belly of the monster.  The difference in size was pretty extreme- I got the impression that the bear was buying me time. I had to get out of there. I think the bear must have gotten knocked down, and since I still wasn't thinking clearly, I didn't think to try and shift to a different dream. I just got up and ran like hell. I tried to head for a big forest of stalagmites, so I could hide out. I ran as fast as I could, but when I looked back (seriously, never look back) it was right behind me. There was a massive claw reaching for me, I thought to cut me in half, but at the joint where the claws scissored, a big butthole-like mouth opened up and down I went.  More later...this is taking longer to write than I thought.

[thetonightplanjournal]

Night 1- WTF?!

Apparently, trying to keep in mind what has happened in the dream is difficult for some people. I WISH that was an issue for me. On the upside, I have that down, so that is early progress. I'm supposed to take joy in every small part of the process. Maybe having some difficulty with that, but it is the first night. I am so focused on goal 4-6 that the more mundane elements of this (which  are supposed to be pretty challenging) are hard to get excited about, much less take joy in.  Or maybe I'm just not a very joyous guy. I don't know.  I'm supposed to pick a reality check object. It immediately made me think of the totem from Inception, but it works a little differently. In the book, I'm supposed to check in whenever I encounter this object, both in dreaming and when awake, so I decided I would use something unique, that I run into every day: my resin skull-pinion. Its a little creepy, sure, but I have so much resonance with it (from a particularly powerful psychedelic experience I had with part of it) that I think it'll do the job. Anyway, whenever I see it, I'm supposed to stop and ask myself "Am I dreaming right now?" There's also the usual techniques for checking: try the light switches, try to read random books around you, and in a pinch- try and breath through your nose while you're holding it.  Check.  The key to all this, apparently, is to try and isolate the moment when you begin to lose control of your pre-dreaming thoughts to your subconscious, and then relax into it... but still maintain control.  Sometimes it is really hard to get to sleep, even though I'm exhausted. Even when I'm trying to do the sleep purification meditation to ease myself into things, all the anxiety of the day still stirs up. I found myself thinking about Australian aboriginals, and this idea of "Dreamtime" that I've seen thrown around in different kinds of pop culture material. I don't really know shit about aboriginals, but the idea that we were all connected via a sort of shared dream-spirit space lodged in my mind while I was drifting off. I kept thinking that dreaming was the doorway to other realms. Which constricted down to the idea of doorways. And then the idea of a door. And then the idea of a white door locked in. One with a red doorknob. I don't know why, but I've always been attracted to high-contrast visual images.

While I was thinking about this... I saw the door in my mind, clear as day. Only it wasn't in front of me... it was above me. WAY above me, in this crazy high ceiling. I don't know where I was supposed to be, or why the door was there, but I knew I was sleeping, and that the other side of the door was what I needed.  I tried jumping, which felt as stupid as you'd imagine it would feel to a guy who barely clears the height of his own shins when trying to dunk. I was hoping that maybe I could fly up or something, but when I tried to dive (the whole jump at the ground and miss thing) I just slammed into the hardwood floor. It sucked. Like, it really hurt.I think I bit the inside of my mouth, because when I did wake up, I had a little blood in my mouth.  I got up, brushed myself off, and entertained the idea for a second that I wasn't really here... wasn't really asleep... that I was still in bed.  And suddenly I was. Just like that. It didn't even take as long as a blink. I thought I might be awake for a minute, just sitting in bed in my room, but then I reality tested myself: I held my breath. And held it. And kept on holding it. No burning in my lungs. No throbbing temple. Nothing. I was still dreaming, but now I was in bed, in my room.  I wanted to try and do some kind of crazy Matrix shit, but I nearly fell out of bed when I tried to stand up without kicking the blankets off of my feet properly. Even the dream me is clumsy as fuck. My room felt strange- like it was more spacious, and like things, even stuff right next to me, was far away... out of arm's reach. My door looked normal, but it was standing wide open... and the hallway was different. When I looked back at my bed, I expected to see myself laying there, but I wasn't: nothing but Polar Rat, an old stuffed bear of mine, sitting there. Staring at me. I half expected him to hop up and talk to me or something, but he just sat there. Maybe he looked curious? I don't know... we project so much stuff on to stuffed animals, its hard to know.  I thought I heard something move in the hallways, like an echo of something off in the distance- but there is no "off in the distance" in my hallway. Everything got creepy... unfamiliar. I felt like I'd missed my cue, and a nightmare was starting, even though I was wide awake in the dream. But nothing happened. Things just felt tense. I kind of wanted to explore the space beyond my bedroom, but at the same time, i was afraid of what I might find. I don't keep any weapons in my room or anything: no samurai swords or old baseball bats or anything. I didn't even have a steak knife on hand because dreaming me remembered that I'd cleared all the dishes out of my room the day before.  I don't know how long I stood there, hesitating to step out, but it all ended when there was this... slamming sound, almost like thunder. It snapped me awake in my bed, and freaked me out for a while. I wanted to go right back to sleep, but instead I jotted down some notes.  There is an intense cliche to it, but when I woke up my closet door was shut all the way. I'm pretty sure it was still open a crack when I fell asleep. Maybe Mom came in to tidy things up or something. I hate it when she does that. 

[thetonightplanjournal]

Dreams, Goals, and the "Triangle of Commitment"

So, Swap got me a book on Lucid Dreaming. I don't know if he's read it or not, but he felt like I should have it, given... well... I don't know... my life. How to Master Lucid Dreaming: Your Practical Guide to Unleashing the Power of Lucid Dreaming By Sean Kelly. I realize how snarky I am when I sit down to work my way through this: despite the fact that I have what are clearly serious issues relating to my sleep, dreams, and stress... when I crack the book, rather than thinking about how useful it might be, all I can think about it how flaky the whole thing seems.  Screw it. I'm going to step through it, one page and one night at a time, and even if it doesn't do anything at all for me, at least I'll be able to say I tried something new to help. Anyway... the beginning of the book is all about setting goals and expectations, and this idea of "The Triangle of Commitment", which is basically 1) Write down the goals for lucid dreaming 2) Tell someone  3) Update whomever you've told as you go.

I figured, if Swap was willing to open this can of worms by giving me the damned book, I'd go ahead and make him listen to the updates. In terms of goals... well... I don't know.  I guess I've got two sets of goals. The normal set, and the crazy set.  Honestly, I think I only really care about the crazy set.  I1. I want sleep at least 5 hours a night.  2. I want to overcome my nightmares.  3. I want to learn to control my dreams.  And then the crazies.  4. I want to learn to travel in my dreams, like… OBE kind of stuff… and find Brandon while he’s dreaming.  5. I want to use my dreams to bring him home. To find where he is, and bring him home.  Shit, maybe that's three... 4. I want to learn to travel in my dreams, like… OBE kind of stuff 5. I want to find Brandon while he’s dreaming.   6. I want to use my dreams to bring him home. To find where he is, and bring him home. 

If I'm going to dream, I'm going to dream he's still alive out there. Maybe it'll just be a dream, but it is MY dream, and I get to dream it my way. Sometimes I think Mom's given up, though she'd never say it. She'd given up on things with Dad years ago and never let on- if she'd have cried at the funeral I wouldn't have ever known. But I never gave up on Dad, and I won't give up on Brandon. And who knows, maybe if I bring him home... something will have worked out for once for Mom too.  So... now I've got two legs of the triangle, and all I have left to do is try it and see. The book says it should take a couple of weeks at least, and maybe longer, so I need to keep focused and try not to get discouraged. I think I can do that.

[thetonightplanjournal]

"Women Control Their Dreams"

"Dr Blumberg is also concerned that the practice may even be harmful. ‘From a psychological perspective, by trying to treat nightmares with lucid dreaming, you may be ignoring an underlying mental-health condition,’ he says. ‘A lot of people will exploit vulnerable people, offering quick cures for something that needs a long-term therapy, and that is dangerous.’ "  

[thetonightplanjournal]

Lucid Dreaming

Usually, when i think about the kinds of dreams I've had, the last thing I'd want to do is "wake up" into one.  Kind of a pussy way to spend, what, like  33% of your life?

I've got a couple more books from the library. I'm going to start reading them over.

To start with, i'm going to try to open the journal and get the dreams down as soon as I can once I wake up. Maybe it'll amount to something.

Hell, at least its something to strike up a conversation with Tonight about.

[thetonightplanjournal]

Between Swap giving me this lucid dreaming book, and Tonight telling me I should journal my dreams, I figured it couldn't hurt.  If nothing else it will serve as a record of how I went totally crazy. :)