Crater village, Utica, and lucid superhopping

I can't remember how it started, but I had an explanatory monologue going about legal distinctions in the word "island", showing a bunch of places on the globe that were called "island", but were actually craters or other land depressions.

The view soared over a vast semi-wilderness in a dry western area (brush and scrub, not many trees, lots of open sandy dirt). The land was pock-marked with depressions with sandstone walls, apparently formed by ancient water erosion; each was big enough for maybe 3-6 houses, and each little pocket was vaguely connected to the rest to form a network/town.

I went down into one of these depressions, where there were three or four houses. The rightmost house had a fancy exterior, so I decided to take some pictures. With my camera, I took three or four pictures starting from the left house and panning over to the right one, to make a panoramic picture out of later.

I then walked over to the pretty house, around to its right side, and found a staircase leading up along the side of the house. I walked up and ended up in a covered balcony/veranda area. From there I walked inside the house, noticing that there weren't any particular doors or locks preventing me from doing so.

I wondered if maybe a police officer lived here, reasoning that his very presence would justify an unsecured house. I cautiously continued through the house, going downstairs, but never did run into anyone.

Around now, the house had transformed into the first floor of Aunt Mildred's house in Utica. I wandered back towards the kitchen. Around this point I started to feel an anomalous sensation, and had an inkling that I was more in control of the dream than usual.

This influenced my behavior now; I was wondering whether to go upstairs or downstairs. I glanced up the stairs from the kitchen on the right, and noticed Greg's cat Jori walking down; but despite this distraction, I made up my mind to go down the stairs on the left, because I wanted to test walking into a space I couldn't remember well (i.e. the basement).

Almost immediately after getting down the stairs and turning left, what would have been the basement became the empty lobby of a city building; I was facing the exit, located on the outer corner, all glass doors and windows.

I walked out onto the sidewalk, then straight toward a grassy area with a tallish deciduous tree in the corner near the street. When I had approached the tree, I decided to try seeing how high I could hop (to test whether I was able to control the dream). First hop, I didn't quite reach the lowest branches. Next hop I did, and then I hopped a few more times, at least once hopping higher than the whole tree. Strangely, even on the high hops, I seemed to fall quite a bit faster than gravity should allow (maybe close to landing on the same time scale as a normal human hop), and when I landed on the ground, I felt no impact.

(I started to have the repeating phrase "Ich kann huggenen buschen [something something]" running through my head.)

As I walked to the right, toward a large bush, I started to pay attention to my breathing (which presumably was my actual, non-dream breathing). I started to think I don't really need to be breathing hard, or at all, if this is a dream (and other elements of reality, such as impact force, were missing anyhow).

I also tried to quiet my inner monologue, which was, as usual, quite saturated. But as soon as I did, I started to wake up.

So, this was the longest I've ever dreamed lucidly, and the most stable I've felt in light of realizing I was dreaming. However, it was interesting that there were things missing relative to reality: no people, no tactile sensations, not much going on auditorily, except my inner monologue. Upon successfully warping reality (by jumping really high), gravity did not act normally; not sure what the basis was for that -- lack of experience? video games? Drawing attention to, or altering, my breathing and inner monologue seemed to have triggered the exit. Will have to be more careful next time.

Paramilitary abduction and stuff

In a suburban area, on the grass near a sidewalk, I had been tied up and left by a group of two or three women (don't remember why). A small band of paramilitary-looking folks walked up and escorted me to a house across the street.

The house was laid out so that the first floor foyer stepped out to an atrium of sorts, where the first floor had balconies that walked around and overlooked a room on the floor below. In the lower room, a group of six or seven women and men were sitting on couches, being interrogated by a few more military folks.

It looked like they had brought me there to help put the people being interrogated at ease. I'm not sure what about me, in particular, would do that. I was a black man, so that was apparently enough to make the one black woman down on the right relax and smile when our gaze met.

And then there was the blonde white woman, directly below me. She was lying on her back with her feet up, somehow reaching the edge of the balcony in front of me. We started playing footsie. Or toesie, really.

I then turned my attention to an inspector who was standing to my left (and noticed, at this point, that while my right hand was tied to my right side, my left arm was completely free). The inspector was reading his notes on a pad of paper. I glanced over his notes and saw that they were in Quikscript. When I asked him about it, though, he pointed out that it was all Chinese characters. But then he turned the page and everything on that page was in Quikscript.

He wrote a few things for my benefit to demonstrate how to write. One of the words he wrote was "stairway" or something like that, which somehow ended up being written almost in a circular fashion (I don't know if he was being fancy or if his version of Quikscript required it). At some point, the inspector was actually Brian C from high school.

Andrew K came by pushing a cart of books (apparently this first floor was sort of a library). He looked very cheerful and said hi, and we talked a little. All I can remember from our group conversation is something about how the incoming generation (of students?) was really gung-ho about the crazy stuff that we did (as a club, I guess), which we would have expected to be offputting to the uninitiated. In reference to this, the flat screen TV on the wall behind us was playing a South Park clip that had people talking about.. showers. ?

Woodbridge High & Woodbridge Middle up for auction

So it turned out that Woodbridge High School was being put up for auction, and I went there (around dusk) with Greg and Grandma M. Almost as soon as we arrived, though, we learned that Woodbridge Middle School was also being put up for auction this same night. We went over to watch the auction at WMS. WMS didn't look at all like it really looks — for one, it had a church built into the middle of the front side of the building, with a largely black congregation. Many members of the congregation were standing outside watching. The building was fairly modern, maybe 80's-90's red brick architecture; the church portion wasn't distinct from the building, except there was an embedded tower with stained glass going all the way up it, which stuck out above the roof line a little ways.

(This is what Woodbridge Middle School totally didn't look like in the dream.)

The area where we were standing was kind of a long, raised concrete patio/walkway, and in front of us was a short wrought-iron fence (acting mostly as a railing) separating the raised patio from a lower patio that led up to the school building. From our perspective, facing towards WMS, there was another small two- or three-story brick building with a walk-around veranda on the second floor.

There was the crowd up where we were, mostly people watching the auction, and then the crowd on the lower patio in front of us, mostly participating in the auction. As the bidding started, the first person to bid was Oprah, who was facing the audience as she registered her bid. Soon after, a Muslim man in middle-eastern(-ish) garb, who was perched on the outside corner of the second story veranda of the building to our left, raised his hand slightly, registering a bid. Then two other men, standing on the patio below, continued the bidding.

For whatever reason, there wasn't anything indicating how much each person was bidding, only that each bid registered in turn was higher than the previous bid. (Seems like a bad way to run an auction, unless there's rules stating how much the price increases with each bid.)

It was very digestious!

Greg, Neil, and I are in maybe the family room of a house, and I am looking in a large plastic bin under the coffee table, while Greg and Neil are sitting on the couch facing over the table. I see several digital cameras, and I almost think I see the one that died from falling in the Potomac River, but it turns out to be an older (and functioning) one. I check out a few others. Neil has my Nikon DSLR, and is taking various pictures (now we appear to be outside in a parkish area, with iron-fenced off areas and a street). He aims the camera at me, and I close my eyes and start walking towards him. Eventually, we end up just past where Neil was standing, now apparently the third story of a church (with very open architecture, perhaps semi-cathedralesque). We are standing at the top of a staircase, with a balcony overlooking the first floor below. I am humming something and I realize there is an acoustic sweet spot at one particular deep note, and I keep humming up to it (and some big guy on the second-story landing below is doing it too).

I walk down to the second-story landing and I have a clear view of the first floor, which is set up for a wedding. The floor is all tiled black and white like a checkered flag, and at the head of the room there is a rounded, slightly raised platform. And standing there on the platform by herself, in full wedding gown and veil, is Q's assistant, who is apparently getting married to Wolverine (or Ray now?). [Note: for Q's assistant and Wolverine's previous encounter, see the previous dream.] This seems to be the wedding rehearsal. Several people I recognize are standing off to the sides, getting ready to sing something. I recognize at least Heather D and Katie K, both off to the left side. As the song procedes, (in the key of E, although now I can't really remember how it goes), the words seem to slip from whatever they are supposed to be into commentary about the things that happened that day, very movie-musical-like. Katie K looks up to the landing and sings something to her dad about how they all went to the Cheese Shop (a tasty sandwich place in Colonial Williamsburg) earlier. The song switches into a "bridge" of sorts, sung by the dad:

(key of E major, melody notes descending) (A) (B) C# C# C# B A G# F# It was ve-ry di-ges-tious (A) (B) C# C# C# B A G# F# Al-so (ve-ry) di-ves-tive (rhythm of words:) X...x...x...x...X...x...x...x... | | | | | | |

And at that point I woke up.

Electrical zaps in the courtyard

In an intervening dream, possibly taking place after the welcome center, I am walking/climbing/wandering a grassy area filled with various row houses and apartments, with decks and back stair complexes and the like. I climb up to the near top (third?) level of a set of back stairs and suddenly on the other end of the courtyard below, near another staircase/set of houses, electricity strikes diagonally downward/inward from two perpendicular directions towards a single spot on the ground, ending in a ball of electricity maybe the size of a beach ball which disappears when the bolts do. It makes surprisingly little noise. This recurs a few times. Somebody's voice is explaining the phenomenon to me, but he is not there with me. I explore some more.

Lovesick at the beachside condo

Before that, a dream, which turned out to be a novel that I was reading (as commented on by Roy as the dream was wrapping up). The setting was probably a beachside city on the west coast, in the 70's or 80's. The exact background story is lost to me now, but basically, a lovesick blonde woman, probably in her thirties, had gone down to her balcony (the lower floor on a two-story flat, many floors above ground level) to contemplate jumping off.

Meanwhile, the guy she loves (seemed like some identification with my father) is coming to look for her. For whatever reason, he visits the next door neighbor first. As he's finally headed down to her, I fall out to Roy commenting on the novel that I'm reading. I catch a glimpse of the text and remember one of the syllables was "sou", and I'm pretty sure the whole thing was written in a toneless pinyin.

Theme park: Wizard of Oz, sports store, glass overlook

A theme park of some kind, reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz in some places, simple terminals in others, a sports store in another, all kinds of different stuff. Greg (or his character) wants to demonstrate how easy it is to snatch cards off the guards, so he walks up, snatches one and runs off with the guard none the wiser. Unfortunately, he then pushes the card onto another guard and they start pursuit.

I make my way to the sports store section where someone was asking me about the hemp football that seemed tainted with something white. He thinks I work there and that I have any idea what he's talking about. What does it matter? Meh.

Onward to a small field where another main character, a guy with hollow (or holes for) eyes who's doing some kind of Wizard of Oz dancing for his main-character girlfriend. At some point, he opens his face and reveals two guys in his head with similar faces making committee decisions; only one of them would speak out loud for uniformity of character.

Later I pass out onto a deck with lots of glass walls looking out onto whatever (creeks, pools, aviaries? no idea) and I keep walking past people who should look really familiar but when I crane over to try and see their faces they've turned away. How irritating.