Monday, February 28, 2011

Lucidly Moving Stars

There was a lot more to the dream, but I only remember a small chunk of it now.

I was outside, I think near Weyers Cave Elementary School, it was night time, and I was looking up in to the sky.  I got the feeling that I might see stars starting to move around like I often do in my dreams, which caused me to start becoming lucid and consider that I might be dreaming.  As I watched, over some trees kind of to my right (facing towards Massanutten) I started seeing a few moving stars come up over the tops of the trees.  They weren't moving in a straight line, but rather in somewhat random and squiggly motion.

There was a man standing next to me.  He looked like he was nearing 50, and he had thinning blond hair and big glasses.  He reminded me somewhat of a more 'with it" version of Milton from Office Space.  I got his attention and pointed the moving stars out to him, and he was watching them with a grin on his face.   As I did, I thought to myself that if I asked him something, and if he gave a particular answer, then I would know I was dreaming.  I don't remember the exact question that I asked him, but it was something that I knew that he wouldn't know the actual answer to (or I thought that he would think the answer was something completely different) if this wasn't a dream.  It was something along the lines of, "Do I feel like I know what I'm doing at work?"  If he answered "yes", then I would know this was a dream.  Sure enough, while grinning and keeping his eyes on the stars, he said yes and nodded his head slowly.

I was so excited about realizing that this really was all a dream that I woke myself up.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Taking a Sleepy Pee in the Woods

I started out waking up and feeling like I had to pee.  I looked around me, and I was in the front room of a small cabin.  It was sparsely decorated with a small cot, which I was in, and a chair or two and a fireplace somewhere in the room with a small fire going.

I knew that there was someone else there at the cabin with me, but I didn't know where they were at the moment.  I only knew that they weren't sleeping.

I got up and went out the front door.  There was a bright flood light on the front of the cabin that was shining out into the yard.  The area beyond the yard wasn't quite dense enough with trees to be considered a forest, but there were plenty of trees around.  It was dark out, a little chilly, and there was a light mist hanging around.

I didn't want to pee there in the front yard, so I looked around and decided to head out along the path and through the trees out from the front of the cabin.  I trotted off in that direction to find a place to go.  As I went, I never felt fully awake.  Despite the fact that I was jogging and it was chilly out, it was like I was barely awake.  I just knew three things:  I had to pee, I was following a path, and no matter how far away from the cabin I got, the flood light shone just as bright as if I was at the edge of the yard.

I wound up jogging for about twenty minutes, following the path and winding my way around trees and hills.  I finally got to an area that was a little more open and had a bit of an upward slope to it.  I went to the other side of this area and noticed that just on the other side was the crest of a hill, and down the slope were more trees on the other side.  As I went down the far side of the hill, the flood light from the cabin finally quit following me.

Still feeling like I was mostly asleep, I also finally felt like I was out of view of the cabin and could go to the bathroom in peace.  I did so and then turned to make the return journey.

After going back over the top of the hill and seeing the flood light in front of me, I vaguely remember seeing and hearing a small herd of buffalo there in the clearing.  Some were sleeping, others were standing and quietly eating, but I could hear their breath sometimes and hear the rustle of the grass if they moved a hoof a little bit.

I started jogging again and went all the way back to the cabin, which took about another twenty minutes.

When I got back to the cabin, I was still mostly asleep, but as I slowed down and went back inside, I finally started to wake up and realize just how asleep I had been.  I was amazed that all of that running for 40 minutes in the chilly air didn't do more to wake me up.

Once I was inside, I met the other person that I was there with.  It was Jethro Gibbs from NCIS.  He was asking me where I had gone to.  I told him that I had to go pee, and he started getting agitated and angry.  He knew I had gone far away to pee, and he was asking me about where I went.  I was telling him that I wasn't sure, and he said, "Well, you didn't go out past the buffalo, did you??"

As soon as he said that, I realized that there was something out there besides the buffalo.  I don't know what it was, but I knew it was dangerous.  It was something nebulous and not well defined.  It had the feeling of some mystery from Lost, like the smoke monster or a force or something.  I knew immediately I had been stupid to go out that far, but I had forgotten, and now I felt very lucky to be back safe.