Xanga Post 2: Dance to the Sky

I don't have flying dreams very often. Most of the time, my dreams are at least a bit more realistic than that.
When I wrote this, I remembered the whole dream. I still do. When I flew, it was the type of dream flying where I had to run. Except it wasn't exactly like that.

1.15.2005 __saturday____
The other night, I dreamt that I was in a beach house, a huge one with three floors, a wrap-around porch, and windows everywhere. The stairs outside led to the second floor instead of the first. The house was elevated on stilts, so the stairway was long and steep. When it reached the ground, the stairs kept going until the steps were the ground.
It was a beach house, but it wasnt't located at a beach. In fact, it was in a field. A field of browning grass that reached up to my shoulders. There was a grove of pine trees next to the house, and they were small enough to be Christmas trees. They might have been intended to be Christmas trees, because they were lined up perfectly.
I was on the porch, looking down at the trees. I walked around to the stairs and began to run. I ran down the stairs as fast as I could, and when I reached a landing at the middle of the staircase, I jumped.
I flew in the air and fell into the sky, the ground still far below. Then I fell down headfirst as if I was going to crash, but I positioned myself in a way so that I could land on my hands and feet, much like a frog or cat. I leaped up once I landed, and I flew again. I landed again, but on one hand this time. I kept going, on the ground, in the sky, diving again and again. It was as though I was performing some kind of flowing dance, twirling in the air, with hand motions that came naturally.
And then I tripped on myself in the air, and I let myself fall to the earth. I rolled myself into a ball and willingly let gravity take me, tumbling down the earth-steps and into the grass. When I finally stopped moving, I picked myself up and looked up into the clouds in the sky. They were where they should be, but they looked so far away. So out of reach.
I felt a need to reach them, a desperate feeling to be up there with them. So I climbed the stairs again and started over, knowing it was a futile attempt.

It was a poetic dream. I flew for as long as I could trust myself to dance in the air. And every time I fell, I was nimble and graceful enough to try again without stopping.
Every time, I felt like I could get closer than my previous try.

I don't think I described the house well enough. But I was flipping through a book I have at home a few days ago, and I came across a beach house that reminded me of the one I dreamt about. I don't have it with me at the moment, and I can't remember what it was called, so I can't look it up without doing unnecessary, extensive research. So check back here over the next day or two; I'll upload a picture of it later.

Xanga Post 1: The Trigger

I finally started going through my Xanga. I don't write in it anymore, but I still like to re-read things every now and then. At one point, I deleted my account out of anger, but then I realized that was a big mistake. I thought it was lost forever, all 3-4 years that I'd written down (even though it was full of so many pointless entries).

I was able to contact someone who works for Xanga and asked them if they could restore my online journal -- which they did. They can only do it once, so I won't try to delete it again.

So here is the first dream that I typed out, a few months after I started using the site.

1.5.2005 __saturday____
Did you ever get that feeling when you do something like smell a certain spray or perfume, or you see something in the light of a sunset… like nostalgia..? Well, that happened to me a few days ago, when I smelled something sweet in the breeze (when it was still warm outside), and I had a flashback. It’s like it’s not my memory, but someone else’s, because I don’t remember it happening. What I saw in my mind was this:

I was in a building that had walls and pillars of white marble, and the ceiling was domed. A boy around my age was standing next to me, aaand – that’s all I remember….

I wish I could just pull out pictures from my mind.

I was 14 when I wrote that, so please excuse my poor sentence structure or writing techniques. I promise, you'll see that I get better over time (or so I hope I have).

I know that what I wrote about was a dream I had when I was younger, but I couldn't remember all of it. Up until now, I can't recall the entire dream -- but I know, now, that some of these memories of dreams are triggered by things I perceive with my other senses. Which is interesting, don't you think? That anyone should be able to recall a dream based on something they smell?

That just means I can experience dreams other than by seeing, hearing, or feeling. For some reason, I find that fascinating. I think of taste and smell as unimportant or even absent in a dream, and if ever I notice that I have the ability to taste or smell anything, it comes across as out of place. Or real. It really stands out to me.

Actually, I had a dream this morning that ended with me feeling itchy. Mosquito bites riddled my face and hands as I crawled my way through and around bushes in an open conservatory. I scratched at one, and then two of them as I listened to a man who urged me to leave.

I blinked (which I hate to do in dreams, because most of the time it just means I was thinking that my eyes were dry. That makes me conscious about my state, and then I too quickly realize I'm dreaming.) -- and I woke up in bed still scratching at my hands and face.

I still felt itchy when I woke up scratching, but I stopped, and the sensation faded. When I scratched my skin again, it was gone. I even looked for a sign of a small bug bite, but there was nothing.

I think that's one of the few times I've held on to something in a dream that wasn't a sentence or a song; it wasn't someone's face I remembered, or even a scent. That feeling lingered longer than anything else when I woke up. After it subsided, I had to really exercise my brain to remember why I was scratching myself in the first place, until the memory of the dream finally came back to me.

So what would happen if I woke up in the middle of eating cake in a dream, or catching the scent of honeysuckle flowers?

Would I wake up sensing those things, too?

Illuminated Stairs

Today, I woke up just in time to get ready for work and run out the door. When I got back after my 4-hour shift, I went back to bed. I slept for 8 hours last night, so I'm not sure why I was still so tired... but I fell asleep, and I woke up 2 hours later feeling enlightened and curious.

I thought to myself, "I wonder if it's possible...."

I dreamt that I was going around a mall with Matt. It was a new kind of mall, with a few corridors radiating from a central space. Everything was asymmetrical.

He kept playing tricks on me that made me feel stupid, so this isn't the nicest dream of Matthew. But that doesn't matter with this dream. It has nothing to do with Matt. Or zombies. Or scary creatures that tell me when I'm going to die.

For once, this dream reminds me why I started this blog in the first place. It's about the architecture.

Matt told me he had a surprise for me, and that I had to go upstairs. I ran down a wide hallway with marble floors and dark walls. At the end was a staircase that I could barely make out. That was because it was made of glass.

A light in the ceiling far above illuminated the space, reflecting off of the different surfaces at varying levels. It created an effect something like this:

But it was smoother and much more fluid because of how the stairs were made.

Not only were the stairs made of glass, but the sides were, as well. It's hard to explain...

(I sketched it out a little bit, but it's kind of tricky to draw solid spiral staircases made of glass. I'll try to sketch it again and tone it so that you can understand how the light really played a part in the dynamics of the space. But I have to finish up with school first....)

The stairs were attached to the walls (and there were 3 walls around it, since it was at the end of the hall) by thick glass. The staircase itself wasn't made of glass panels as you would expect. So if you're thinking of this

or this

then that's not quite it. :)

There are no glass spiral staircases made of a continuous -- or "continuous" piece (I know it's impossible to make an entire staircase of one piece of glass, but you could always assemble it in pieces). None that have been made yet that I know of, anyway. But this staircase was one piece, about 4-6 inches thick.

Even the handrails were made of glass. But instead of it being just a thin handrail, it extended to the walls and created a continuous plane that frames the staircase all the way up. Both the staircase and the handrail plane were very thick and heavy, made of one piece.

It was all one piece, but there was steel reinforcing.

If you embed steel in molten glass and let it cool, would it crack the glass or something?

Is there any reason it can't be done?

Because it looked pretty cool in my dream.

If you're curious as to how the rest of my dream played out, here's how it went.

Matt playfully pushed me when I was running up the steps. But I slowed down to admire the staircase when he did it, and I fell over while he ran ahead of me. So I got pissed and didn't want to walk with him anymore. xD

His surprise for me?

At the top of the mall was an atrium (each of the corridors had double heights so that the roofs of the stores became pathways that were sheltered by one roof made of glass and steel -- I really have to sketch this out, it was awesome).

There was an event that day, where butterflies were released somewhere above. Matt made me rush upstairs so that I could see it. We made it just in time to see a horde of butterflies escape from cages and fly off into open space.

Don't ask me how maintenance would get them all back. I wondered the same thing, after staring in amazement for a few minutes.

There were going to be a lot of dead butterflies in a few hours/days.

Beware the Wow Man...

Every now and then, I have the delightful pleasure of dreaming of the CREEPIEST THINGS NO ONE HAS EVER SEEN. And they only get scarier as I come up with more.

Example 1:

Several hooded figures with distorted faces during sleep paralysis (all in different occasions) -- they all want to strangle or suffocate me. But that's normal with sleep paralysis. lol

Example 2:

The harvesting scarecrow -- think of the child-eating monster from Pan's Labyrinth, but in scarecrow form. Now imagine trying to climb/jump up onto a 5-ft-high platform while it's running towards you at top speed. Since it's a dream, of course you move slower than you want to, and you feel like you're about to die.

Example 3:

The Wow Man.

-----------------

The dream began with me walking across the schoolyard of my grade school (I've been dreaming of my school ever since it closed right after I graduated). I was making my way towards the parking lot on the other side of the open gates, and there were other people around me, most if not all of them adults. Everyone else was behind me, so I was the first to approach what I was squinting at from a distance.

Still somewhat far away, I saw what looked like a human figure sitting/crouching on a rolling platform made of wood, as if it was being transported from one place to another and was left there and forgotten. Whatever it was, it squatted with its entire body facing the church to my right. I would have to walk right in front of it in order to get to the van that was parked.

Closer still, I could see now that it was incredibly skinny and abnormally tall -- even in its current position, it was well over Matt's height. It was huge.

Then I saw its skin. Its entire body was like a tree.

While it still had a somewhat human-like form, I saw that this thing's skin was like tree bark. A flake fell off as I continued to close the distance between us. Whatever this thing was, it was covered in different shades of gray. Now that I think of it, it could easily have been mistaken for ashes/scabs, because there was a skeletal form to the creature, and it seemed deformed.

But I saw its hands and feet: they were made of dry twigs. There were many of them, and they were long and crooked. Its "hair" stood up on the top of its head, with shards and spikes that looked like a broken, dead branch.

And then I saw its face.

I was told that the Wow Man, as it was commonly named, was a dangerous creature. It was called that because of its legendary cry that was otherwise indescribable.

"Be careful," someone said to me, "Don't get too close."

The face scared me more than what I'd already seen.

It had a long, thin, jagged face, with at least half of it being comprised of its open mouth. It was very slack-jawed, with a gaping mouth that made the creature look like it was petrified mid-scream. There were no eyes, and there was no nose. Just voids, holes that looked like they could house nests for small birds. There was nothing inside.

It sat there, unmoving, on the platform.

"Be careful," someone said to me, "Don't get too close."

I didn't know what was considered "too close," so I inched forward in hopes that I could get past it without doing anything wrong.

And I didn't get TOO close, but I knew (a little too late) that it was close enough-----

Once I crossed that invisible line, everything around me

stopped.

even time.

Everything around me was overcome in a sweep of gray tones. It started from the tree demon and spread outwards, around me, behind me...

But I was still moving.

Well, I was frozen because I was in shock, and I was fucking TERRIFIED.

While time was stopping, even though that happened very quickly, the Wow Man turned its head towards me incredibly slowly.

I was told that the Wow Man, as it was commonly named, was a dangerous creature. It was called that because of its legendary cry that was otherwise indescribable.

As it turned its head, there was a sound that emanated from it, like a combination of noises that it made from just moving, and its voice coming through the frozen face's mouth. It was a very low sound, almost too low for people to hear; it hurt my ears, it was so loud.

Very slowly, with a low, booming voice that was painful to hear.

"B-wwwwwwhhhhhhhhooooooooooooaaaaaaa---"

The Wow Man.

There were several voices I heard at the same time, all coming from one source.

And so I cowered, a mere 10 feet away from it.

I shut my eyes as tightly as I could, and covered my ears, shaking with fright.

And when I shut my eyes, I heard it "scream" my name (it was fast, but slow -- like dreaming the same thing in different ways, but at the same time, so they almost seem to overlap impossibly).

Even when I didn't look at it, I couldn't escape.

With my eyes shut, I could still see it attack. Without ever moving from where it was perched, it pounced.

I saw twig fingers coming towards me, but I couldn't blink because my eyes were already closed. I felt like it was inside me..

And then the twigs twisted around and changed so that I saw this:

jul 19 28

(I understood it as Jul. 19-28 -- I was destined to die sometime then)

I could still hear the tree demon's cry, but it was finally starting to fade.

It resonated, reaching me in sound waves so that the moan was broken up into what became a low, slow laughter.

And then even that faded, but I could still hear it.

I opened my eyes then, looked up, and saw that Alex was there. Time was ticking again.

While I was under the Wow Man's attack, Alex was battling it.

Now it lay there in a heap, looking more dead than it did before.

I was so scared; I didn't know what else to do but run -- I was far too close to it. So I sprinted into the parking lot, far away from everything. But I was so weak from what happened to me that I had to stop.

Turning around, I saw that everyone else who was walking behind me was still frozen. Everything was "back to normal," and the world was full of color again, even if the sky was overcast. But I could tell by looking at all the strangers standing there, that the same thing was happening to them. All they could see was a gray world and dates in their minds. Some of them fell to the ground and didn't get up. Others were able to recover.

I ran into the van, locked the doors, and sat there curled up with my hands over my ears (I could still hear the din).

And every time I blinked or closed my eyes, all I saw was

jul 19 28

jul 19 28

jul 19 28

JUL 19 28

JUL 19

Until I woke up.

Just wondering...

Is anyone reading this? haha

I have three nights' dreams to write about in here (actually, I have around five, but three are consecutive nights). I haven't updated, though, because I either didn't have time or I wasn't inspired to write. Yes, I still need to be inspired to write.

But Easter break is coming up, and although I will be busy working on projects or spending time with family and my boyfriend, I will try to actually write something worth reading in here.

I want to tell you about my dreams of water and how I may be able to incorporate them in my current project.

Another Goal

http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2007/05/communist-gothic.html

I randomly found this a few minutes ago. I wonder if the writer means that Yakov literally dreamt these up, like how I dream up things.
I've always wondered what architects come up with at night -- what anything looks like in their head.
I can't say that the buildings I dream of look exactly like these, but they're not too different in terms of how detailed and intricate they are. They are also, many times, massive/grand, and made of such beautiful material.
I think I should try to do something similar this summer. I need to practice sketching from memory so that I can give you pictures of what I see.
And then next would be watercoloring or some other medium like that.

Destroying Nonexistence

While on spring break, I was reading my journals and trying to pick out the dreams I'd written about.

I realized that I didn't really begin regularly writing them down until at least 2005. I've written about past dreams that I had when I was little, but none of those ones have certain dates. So it's getting frustrating.

Spring break itself could've been better, but at least I was home. I missed it, and very badly needed to leave campus for a while. It was a good time to go back.

That having been said, I went to sleep one night feeling angry.

I took it out on my dream and destroyed it.

I dreamt of several characters. I was back on campus, running around in the evening, somewhere between Crough and Mullen Library. Some other people were with me, and we were throwing things up in the air and letting them crash down on the ground behind us (I don't remember what they were).

Then I realized I was in a dream, and I turned to one of my companions and strangled him. He didn't fight back, or he didn't have time. I just let him crumple to the ground.

In my dream, Crough wasn't the same building, nor was it even the School of Architecture and Planning anymore -- it was some sort of art museum. I walked inside, even though it was closing soon (people were steadily leaving in larger groups) -- one or two people followed me as I stepped onto the elevator and dragged my heavy hand over the buttons to every floor. And as the doors closed in front of me, I tried to set myself straight and wondered what I was doing.

Did anything have consequences here?

The doors opened, and my mind said, "No."

So I slowly stepped off, walked somewhere off to the right, and approached a security guard who was falling asleep on the job. I wrung my hands around his neck and squeezed as tightly as I could until something snapped...and I let go.

There were some more people milling around the room, gazing at paintings and being quiet. Nothing had changed. They didn't seem to notice. I got back on the elevator, where my company was holding the door for me.

Before I reached the next floor, I asked myself the same question.

And I got the same answer.

And so I did the same thing.

I went from floor to floor, strangling all the security guards in sight. None of them fought me back. They just stared at me, wide-eyed, like they suddenly forgot how to move.

Every time I got on the elevator, I was fully aware of what I was doing. But every time I left it, I seemed to lose my will to think logically and went on a blind, fury-driven rampage.

I could tell that I was destroying something that my mind made up for me. I was lucid, and I could see that the characters were ready for a dream to unfurl. But that dream never happened because of what I did. The people I dreamt of weren't made to fight me back; it was as if they didn't know anything other than what they were supposed to be doing. It was strange. I was the only one who was real. I was the only one who thought anything. I was the one making decisions for myself. I could do whatever I wanted, and nothing would happen to me. No one else thought anything, they just were -- they just existed.

No, they didn't even exist.

I was the only one who existed -- I can breathe, I can taste, I can feel and hear and see. I can think and choose.

Only I knew all of those.

I was scary in that dream.

I fell asleep feeling angry, and woke up feeling disappointed in myself. Now I'll never know what was supposed to happen that night.

I killed it.

Type 2 god

There are two types of daydreams, according to me.

There are the ones that you force yourself to imagine -- the ones where you have to tell yourself the scenario and your mind wanders from there.

And then there are the dreams that come out of seemingly nowhere -- that are so distantly related to something you're looking at, smelling, or hearing. You don't know how you came up with it, or why it means so much to you, until you think about it more.

In this case, I had the second type of daydream while I was reading my textbook in preparation for my Enviro midterm next Tuesday.

I ended up writing what I saw in my mind. And then I hid the piece of paper in my book.

dreamt about a god who didn't know what

waves sounded like. wanted to know what

it's like to be us; wanted to know what

we see, hear, feel, smell; to know what

the differences are, if any; know what

life is like, living small; what

limits infinity.

I guess I should say I was currently reading about the different types of energy that we could use to be more sustainable -- solar energy, wind energy...water energy. There's a type of water energy that uses waves.

I got caught up in the idea of seeing us as little dots fiddling around with massive waves, our little ears being filled with the roaring ocean while all the whales glide along beneath the surface, miles away from us. Our little machines and other inventions, trying to make up for our own mistakes. There are sounds all around us, even the high-pitched humming of electricity that makes true silence seem odd and unfamiliar. Our ears pop in silence, and we feel uncomfortable.

What does God hear?

I imagined a god sitting in the dark, using his fingers to start the waves we see today, but hearing nothing -- he's too big.

And while we were curious to know what it's like to be a god, the god wanted to know what it's like to be our size. He wanted to know what he's missing out on, and why we make such silly mistakes. He could fix it, but that would just make us lazy, and we would never learn for ourselves. Children.

He wondered why he didn't know what it's like to be us, why he didn't know what waves sounded like, and why he wondered anything.

Shouldn't he know?

Apparently, he wasn't a god, he told himself. Because something limited what he thought was infinite wisdom.

I wrote it down, hid it for a while, and stopped thinking about it. I went back to studying.

It was just a thought.

My Endeavor

I'm currently busy with schoolwork (as usual), but when I finally finish summarizing this zombie apocalypse dream and this project is finished, I have decided to do something I've always meant to do:

collect all of my dreams in one place.

And since this blog now exists, that "one place" is here.

That's right --

by the time spring break begins, I will sit myself down and begin transferring all of my dreams from all over the place to this blog.

That includes my two Xanga accounts (one was deleted, so I created a new one -- later on, I asked to have my first one restored because I had it for years and couldn't bear to lose all that I'd done), my Facebook notes, my Myspace entries, AND the dreams written down in my 14 journals. My collection was begun in elementary school.

That's quite a goal.

I know it'll take some time, and I'll get incredibly backed up on my current dreams.... but I'll just keep adding all of my dreams chronologically. Eventually, I'll catch up to the present time.

Most of it is copying and pasting from one to another, adding tags, and editing here and there.

The real challenge comes in placing them in chronological order, and typing up my written dreams.

Do you think I can do it?

Zombie Apocalypse: Part III

I was sure that the four of us were the only humans left in the city from the way that the streets were abandoned and splattered with blood. The streets were quiet, and the shadows and anything that obstructed my view scared me. But I couldn't let it show.

We were the only humans around, or so I thought. We were on the other side of the city, near the edge. I was hoping we would be able to get out and find a safe haven somewhere past the outskirts of the city.



........
Okay, so I admit it. I don't feel like writing this anymore.
This isn't even halfway through it.
But I think I got the most important part down, anyway. The beginning was vivid. The middle had its moments. The end was just... random as hell.

So I'll just update my draft texts in my phone and sort of elaborate from there.

Draft 1: Down an alley with "pen gun," go first, shoot zombies in the dark, eventually meet up with scouts from refugee camp. We stay in the camp, I don't fall asleep because I remember something is supposed to happen. I know a woman is going to kill herself by eating something. We leave early, sneak away from camp, try to find the exit. Trapped, mob of the camp with guns, against leaders of the camp. They want to leave too -- they leaders wouldn't protect them and they'd all die. We sneak past the mob, I hide from brother of the woman. Later on, captured. Go through test: white, white, and blue; after the third blue it is what....white. I'm marked as mentally unstable or something
Draft 2: Go up the steps, see Mary in the same line as me. Not criminals, just stupid, apparently. We're in prison. Somehow, I go down to the basement to meet with someone who works with metal. To help fix our weapons. Later, I go back up to my room -- Joey is there with someone else, we all stay there for the night. Don't fall asleep. We start writing things on the walls -- warnings of the zombie apocalypse. Then we hear scratching at the door. Go through the window, run and hide
Draft 3: Eventually end up at someone's house, someone rich. Hospitable, but I don't fully trust them. I'm with a girl, forget who. After a while, we trick the woman and her husband, steal food while I ruin their gardens and kill their livestock...the girl goes ahead, leaves me behind. I meet up with the woman we were tricking. I'm on her side now? Still don't trust her. She tells me to drive, I go over other cars. Hard to steer. She changed the car so I could easily get shot. One guy tries to kill me, she shoots him in the stomach, then the face. I get out of the car, see people shooting themselves in the head. Red or blue. End up on a unicycle, need a better one. Leave side street, go to Saturn Place, see the Mad Hatter. He comes up, slowly. Don't trust him. But he starts singing. Apparently, this was practiced. I don't remember it. He starts dancing with me, I'm in awe because he's suddenly Johnny Depp. He stops and says, "Don't eat shit."
Draft 4: I crack up. Amanda Palmer gets up even though I thought she was dead. We form a new team......and then I woke up.




So.
You can see how my brain gets tired of creating such a cool story -- it just gives up and does things like tell me not to eat shit.


----------
I wasn't even through the first draft... this would've taken forever lol

Draft 1
I made it to another town, but was arrested (for my own protection?) and was brought to some huge building (it looked like a school) that had been converted into a prison/mental institution/refuge. Basically, everyone who wasn't a zombie was brought to one place and put in separate areas for the safety of others.
In order for them to figure out who goes where, a test is given to each person in which you have to answer by choosing colors. Apparently, when I chose white, it was decided that I was crazy. I was put in line with mentally unstable people (probably all paranoid from the events that'd been happening).
I was perfectly sane. I was separated from my group and never saw them again. Crap.

Draft 2
While I was standing in a slow-moving line on a dark stairwell, I looked over some people and saw Mary. I was so happy that I saw someone I recognized, someone I went to school with. She was alive. And like me, she didn't seem mentally unstable at all. I had to stay with her.
Before I could catch her attention, I was hit by a police officer for holding up the line. He insulted me and all the others because hey, since we're all crazy, we're not gonna do anything in retaliation.
..........
I found some other sane people in the mental institution (that test was a big fail, but so was everything else about this place); we all stuck together. Unfortunately, I didn't see Mary again.
One night, while the guards were asleep and my newfound friends and I were preparing to run away, I led them down to the basement because I'd heard of a man who helped escapees.
Yes. We reached that level in the video game where you get new weapons and armor and medical supplies and all that.

(to be continued, because I know you want an update and I might as well post what I have, because I've had this as a draft for days)