Xanga Post 5: Sleep Cycle of Change

When you think about how much we can remember, and when you think of the countless fine-tuned emotions we have, and all the different things with which we associate them..... it's pretty amazing, what the average person is capable of retaining and connecting.

I associate the smell of summer heat with the taste of the water in the little pool that we had in my old backyard that I would run to, and how I didn't like to step on the grass when my feet were still wet.

I associate oak trees with pollen, and I associate pollen with allergies that made me nervous, and how I sometimes wouldn't be able to open my eyes that well when I was little.

I associate a certain polka-dotted blanket with the overwhelming happiness that I get when a baby laughs and wants to play hide and seek with me.

And I associate the concept of change over time with this dream, which has stuck with me for the past 5 years and made me wonder what I look like to friends new and old, and if this girl is the same as that girl in the past.

3.28.2005 __monday____
I had such a sad dream last night.
It's pretty long and there's a whole lot of detail that I have to include if I tell the whole thing.. Which you probably aren't interested in, anyway.
So the summary is that I saw everyone from my past who was ever in my class in S.C.I.S. from kindergarten to 8th grade. I saw the people who were always in my class. I saw people who were in my class for a few years or one year. I even saw a girl who was in my class for only a month. I saw them all gathered in one place. They were all changed, all different from the ones that I knew. I was the only one who didn't change.
In the end, I walked away from them and decided I had to move on and change myself.

There is an entry in my written journal that describes everything. Some of these people, I've noticed, somewhat resemble the people I saw in my dream. Others are way off. And yet others....I haven't seen.

I had no image of myself. Maybe that's why I always expect to see someone different in the mirror. I'm waiting for change. I'm expecting it. I'm calculating it.
But have I actually changed, or am I fundamentally the same girl that I think I was back then?
(I say "girl," but I'm hardly that anymore.)

I thought about typing it up in here, but I don't know if I want to. At least, not just yet. When I get around to typing up my written entries, maybe I'll have changed my mind by then.
As I said a little over 5 years ago, it's really long, and I feel like it would only mean something to me.

Sometimes I'm convinced that I think more deeply and seriously when I'm asleep. Even if the dreams themselves seem nonsensical at first, there is always at least a hint of an idea that I see. Like jumbled up words that make you think you know what it is that's supposed to be communicated.

It's just that in some sleep cycles, those hints are more developed and worked out than others.

Xanga Post 4: Running on Axons

When I go over entries that I've written before, and I mention dreams, they tend to be somewhat vivid. It's actually sort of a rare thing for me if I remember dreams with so much detail, as if it was real life. When I focus on recalling a dream in the morning, I try to concentrate on how/what I felt when I woke up, or what I remember seeing or hearing last. From then on, if I'm lucky and I remember my whole dream, that dream's trigger is the same trigger that helped me remember it in that first morning.

But the exceptionally detailed and vivid recollections of dreams are what drive me to write them down as soon as I wake up and remember the scenes in the right order that I dreamt them (it's funny that there's still a kind of order in how dreams are laid out -- there's still a sense of time, even though time doesn't matter when you live in your head).

There was no one thing that led me to remember this dream. In fact, there were several.

A brick wall. Two red fans. A man in a robe, with two black fans. A stage. More brick walls oriented to create a labyrinth. And a young man.

3.25.2005 __friday____
I found the place that I dreamt about two years ago. I wrote down the dream after I dreamt it, and I found out yesterday that it's actually the Northstar Bar, where the concert was! At least, I think it is. It's oddly very similar to it... o_O Freaked out, or kind of fascinated..? I don't know, myself. I've never even been there before yesterday. (I really felt like climbing the wall and seeing if I could get through that vent) Oh my gosh.. And I saw someone else that looked like a guy in the dream, and he went to the concert, too.. And now I'm never going to see him again.. Probably. Aah!

Of course, I can't honestly say that's what it was. But there's a 98% chance that.....my mind made it up, and the Northstar Bar seemed to be an uncanny resemblance at the time (but if I went there today, I'd probably still insist upon the two things being one and the same -- it's all just wishful thinking, with me).

In more detail (but still summarized)...
I had a dream that was like most of my dreams around this time -- it started with me climbing over my bedroom wall. I would fall asleep and "open my eyes" in my dream, still feeling like I was awake. I'd be facing up, staring straight ahead. But what I thought was the ceiling was quickly identified as the sky, when a boy's hand would reach over the wall and wait for me. I would climb up on my bed and hoist myself over the wall with his support, and we would climb into a vent and crawl into a dream.

In this particular one, we ended up finding our way to a dark room with walls of typical red bricks, old mortar chipping away. I went over to a far wall and noticed that there were footholds that I could use to climb up (there was a lot of climbing and exploring that occurred, back then).
Again, there was no ceiling -- just some artificial-looking sky that confused the brain until one saw a person standing on top of the wall.
When I got to the wall, I stood up and saw that there was more than what I could see from down below. The boy stayed on the floor, looking up at me nervously (I named him Alex in one dream, either before or after this one, because I'm almost sure that's what he told me his name was) -- I told him there were pathways. He knew what I was talking about, but he didn't budge.
I looked at a sudden wall behind me and saw that there were two red fans, whose radii were equal to at least 2/3 the length of my outstretched arm. I picked them up and understood them to be weapons. The edges of the cloth shone brilliantly in some light behind me. They were flexible blades that could slice so thinly that you couldn't find the line of its cut unless you studied it closely.

I looked up to see a slender, menacing man standing on the opposite end of the wall, wielding his own fans readily.

Now.
Think of what an axon looks like.
No, not the nerve fiber kind of axon, but the architectural kind: an axonometric projection.
Like this (the floor plan sucks, by the way....but this is apparently what Anne Frank's family apartment looked like....... ANYWAY)

Some of the walls continued above us, for another floor or two. Others stopped as they would in a regular axon. Now imagine balancing on .. hmm... 4-5 inch-thick brick walls while a 5'-9" man on the opposite side wants to fight you. With fan blades.

I don't remember how it ended now, but up until that point, everything was and still is crystal clear. I even remember the hand motions and the dexterity with which I moved, and which walls I stood upon -- we jumped around in our fight. Ran along walls. Sliced curtains with the fans. He cut my sleeve at one point, and so I cut his pant leg and saw a trickle of blood stain them a darker shade. That made him come after me furiously, but it slowed him down a little bit, since half of the fight was just running, jumping, and balancing.

It was a different kind of labyrinth study. Instead of wandering around between walls, I ran on top of the them.

Xanga Post 3: Time House

2.12.1005 __saturday____
I had a weird dream. I don't remember all of it, but it was bright, and it was like a movie - there was a family in a huge house that looked like it could be a private school or something. It was in the past, like in the 1700s-1800s. The walls were white, and the stairs were narrow, and on each landing there were two white doors. I was seeing through a man's eyes, and I didn't want to open the doors because I was afraid of what was on the other side - I thought the house was haunted and that the ghosts were trying to find me.. It was so weird!.. It was really long, too.

I think it turned into another dream later on. The man - I - was now in this time period, and he was trying to get back to his own century. It doesn't make sense now, but it made perfect sense in my dream. He was standing outside of the house because it was still standing in the present time, and he had a cell phone. He dialed a number and a woman picked up the phone, and he started talking about how he doesn't know how he got here but he has to come back - the woman was his sister or something, I think. (she wouldn't be able to answer the phone because he can't call people in the past - and phones didn't exist then, either.. so..my mind is weird.. lol) She didn't answer him, but she hung up, and I don't think he ever got back. haha

I don't know what any of that meant, haha. But it reminds me of The Lake House (which, in viewing, I did nothing but point out things that were wrong or impossible -- which was everything).

I, uh... really don't have that much to say about this dream. I wish I could remember more of it.

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.