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I just had an amazingly vivid and detailed dream. In the dream I went to some sort of gryphon tour. Monks in an old abbey nestled in a cliff that overlooked a lake raised gryphons. They would hold gryphon rides around the cliffs and a little ways over the lake for a few gold pieces. All proceeds went to the care of these amazing creatures and any excess went to maintaining the abbey.

When saddling up, I was told that my gryphon liked to fly high and fast and didn’t particularly like staying in the line. I was told that it was alright because he was the best flyer of the bunch and no harm would befall me. He needed a strong rider, however, to keep him from wandering. We where also told that the lake was full of magical creatures and that it was also part of a vast strip of troll warring ground. If we where to see a troll, we should alert the entire group so that we could return to the safety of the abbey quickly.

I remember flying next to the cliff face with craggy rocks below and a large shallow lake to my right. As promised my mount preferred to soar higher than the rest, who maintained a set distance from the surface of the water for safety reasons. I decided to enjoy it. It really was a spectacular experience.

My gryphon soared higher, riding an updraft, but we fell back from the rest of the group. The riders that where behind me passed below and began to fill the gap in the line that my absence created. After climbing some distance into the air, my mount decided to dive. We didn’t go straight down, but at a steep angle back towards the group whose heads we would then fly over at more than twice their speed.

I glimpsed something out of the corner of my eye towards the center of the lake. Amongst some trees that grew in a particularly shallow area of the lake was a white flash of light, as if someone had pointed a mirror towards me. I decided to investigate.

I turned the reins and my mount and I began to approach the trees. We had to fly very low in order to get under the sparse canopy of these trees. As we rounded the largest of these trees I saw something amazing, a unicorn! It looked me directly in the eyes but as we rounded the tree and a trunk blocked it from view, it seemed to vanish. All this time my attention was to right, not in front of me. As a turned forward again I saw a low hanging branch and immediately ducked.

I remember this so vividly, I could feel the feathers of the gryphon pressing against my face, the smell of dust, straw… and a bit of manure that such stable animals tend to smell of. My mount dove and turned slightly to dodge the branch. We had to go so low that the gryphons legs and portions of its right wing went under the water. I even remember feeling the water splash over my right shoulder and the cold created by the wind that was passing through my clothing as we flew higher once again, returning to the group.

A few of my fellow riders had apparently thought it seemed like a good idea to ride out above the lake as I had. Two women glided over the surface of the lake laughing as they coaxed their mounts into skimming the surface with their feet. I was flying over to join them as I passed what looked to be a small grey moss covered boulder to my left. However, I realized that it was no boulder the moment it began to move, raising from the water to reveal a massive 50ft tall troll. It saw the two women, bellowed a deep and angry cry and bounded straight for them with a large wooden club, which it had obviously dredged from the bottom of the lake, brandished wildly above its head.

I snapped the reigns and my mount dove quickly by the trolls head, whipping around its face. This diverted the troll’s attention to me and the women where free to fly back towards the abbey screaming to alert the others. They didn’t really need any warning, however, as the troll was more than big enough for everyone to see.

The massive beast took a wild swing at me, which only glanced my right shoulder. The force behind it was still amazingly powerful and a large splinter of the club had broken off and pierced the skin, embedding in my shoulder parallel to the surface. The troll thought he had done me in and was now off again after the women and the rest of the group. I folded my right arm into my lap and took on steering with my left hand as blood trickled down my elbow. I directed my mount to once again dive at the head of the troll.

This time we immediately rose high into the air after the dive. The troll crouched down into the water to about shoulder level and then jumped high into the air, flailing this massive tree trunk like it was a twig and we where mere flies. This time he missed and we continued the strategy. We would fly down by his head and immediately soar upwards. The troll couldn’t jump up fast or high enough to catch us and he was sufficiently distracted to allow the rest of the group to fly to safety.

We continued this process several times until the troll apparently came down upon some submerged trees. One pierced his foot and calf which immediately stained the water black with his blood as he fell into the lake. He did not resurface while I watched and I supposed that he swam away towards the shore. I didn’t much care, now that my adrenaline was waning, I could feel my arm throbbing with pain and my eyes becoming blurry from the loss of blood which had now stained the gryphons feathers crimson in a trail from its wing down its right flank.

As I approached the abbey, everyone was cheering until they saw my ashen face and the trail of blood on my mount. When we landed the gryphon lie down and thrust his wings out to allow me to dismount easily. I still found it difficult to remove myself from the saddle because I was quite week. From there I stumbled through the abbey, seeing all the horrified faces was worse than the injury itself.

I finally collapsed on a wooden bench when a fat friar approached me. He took my wet jacket and folded back my clothes to reveal the wound on my shoulder. The piece of wood from the trolls club had completely submerged into the skin, leaving a long bulge along my shoulder at least two inches wide and four inches long. A few splinters remained lodged in my clothing and I remember smelling them to see what they where.

I recognized the odor at once as Yliewh-Yliewh, or BaneShot (of course that’s something the dream just made up). This particular tree, when submerged in a swampy environment harbors moss and algae growth that somehow petrifies the tree, hardening it. It also imparts powerful antiseptic qualities into the wood. Actually, it just about killed everything, including people in large doses. In small doses, however, the toxins worked quite well at fighting infection. The trolls often used these petrified trees as weapons due to their amazing strength, not realizing that they could heal as well as harm. Generally speaking, if you could survive the toxic effects of the stuff, you could survive the injury.

I asked the friar to fetch me some clean linen, some gray moss, boiled water and two bottles of brandy. Luckily, they where about to make some soup and a large pot of boiling water was brought out to me quickly, as where the linen and brandy. They sent a young monk down to the cliffs to gather some moss which hung thick from the trees that grew along the cliff side paths.

I took several large gulps of the brandy. I could feel it stinging my throat as it warmed by cold body. I ripped my right sleeve completely off, then wrapped it around my shoulder above the wound, pulling it tight with my teeth. The friar looked at me in horror, I knew he thought I was as good as dead. I remember him saying “the swamp water has gotten into the wound, you’ve lost too much blood, and the fever is already setting in. Whatever you’re planning will just hasten your end.” I yelled at him to leave me and not disturb me unless it was to give me the moss.

I awkwardly poured the steaming hot water over my shoulder, which quickly washed away the blood and muck from the area. I then took several more gulps of the brandy before pouring it over my shoulder which burned much worse than the stinging in my throat.

I then loosened my belt and wrapped that around my shoulder as well, right over the torn sleeve. This would make a tourniquet that I would tighten with my teeth. The leather belt in my mouth also served a dual purpose, I would have something to clench my teeth on for the next part. I pulled a dagger from my boot, dunked it in the hot water then took several more gulps of brandy before pouring the spirit over it as well. I then took the belt in my mouth, pulled it tight and after a few sharp breaths I made a clean cut just above the entry wound and at least twice as big. I then took the blade and inserted it into this wound to push the splinter deeper, then prying it so that the tip would now come out of the incision I had made. With the butt of the dagger, I pushed the top of the splinter until I had enough to grab with my hand. I then slowly pulled it from my shoulder, my teeth straining under the force of my bite. I could feel every last bit of it, as I often do in my dreams. Even as I write this, my arm still aches.

Just then the young monk arrived with the moss, saw all the blood that was now quite profuse and immediately passed out. I gathered up the moss, placed it over my shoulder, and then wrapped the whole thing up tightly with the linen. I also used some of the linen as a sling to keep my arm in place. The Baneshot fragments that where surely still in my arm would hopefully help stave off any infection from inside and the moss should help prevent infection from the outside. I then took the splinter that I had just removed from my arm, rinsed it in the hot water and cut a small piece of it off to crush into powder against the stone floor. I mixed the powder with the remaining brandy, swirled it around and drank the rest. The remaining unopened bottle I would save for later. I then propped myself up against a wall, closed my eyes and immediately fell unconscious. When I opened my eyes, I was awake in my own bed, my arm aching from such a realistic and vivid dream.

A few things fascinate me about this dream.

1. I was able to ride a gryphon, that was pretty cool.
2. I saw a unicorn!
3. I fought a troll.
4. I was actually able to think clearly enough in the dream to at least seem to know what I was doing when tending to the wound.
5. I was able to stay asleep through being splashed with water, attacked by a troll, and the pain of cutting a large chunk of wood out of my shoulder.
6. I can’t believe that I was able to deal with all of that blood. I’m hemophobic (afraid of blood) in waking life and normally wake up from dreams of blood because it manages to access a deep and primal part of my brain that screams for action. Not this time.

All in all, a very cool dream, and an interesting story. It might make a good part of a larger novel… perhaps if the gryphon flight wasn’t for tourism… although I’m not sure what else it might be for.

… if I have any control over it. That is, if I can protect my wife, I will do so if it within my power. I just had a dream that I wanted to record because of the strange things that where in it, one of which was an extremely cinematic way of protecting my wife. I know this is my first post in a long time, but I assure you, it’s a good one.

As far back in the dream as I can remember, my wife and I were doing detective work somewhat like the TV show Psych. We where investigating something having to do with a movie and had been given free run of the set. So in order to get where we needed to go, we basically stole a car from the set, a big Hummer. I don’t think we where going anywhere in particular, just trying to find out what was down this one highway. While driving up the road we came up on odd cloth screens, suspended by thin metal frames, that blocked the road. However, you could drive straight through them because they where only connected to the metal frame at the top. I specifically remember them being red, but reflecting orange as they ruffled in the wind, almost as if they where made out of velvet.

Then from the other side of the highway, we saw one of those screens moving in our direction. It was connected to a small vehicle that had a camera on the other side, filming cars from straight ahead as they moved down the road. I said to my wife, who was driving “Crap! We’re running onto a closed set for a movie, in a stolen car! And it’s their car!” We also happened to pass several police officers who seemed to be talking about the movie. Luckily, they didn’t seem to notice that we where really out of place. I suppose a lot of strange things where happening in the town with the movie being shot there.

We passed through another one of those screens immediately turned off onto a side road and ditched the car. We began walking as casually as we could so as not to draw attention to ourselves or our stolen vehicle. As we walked we passed by several strange shops on our right. One of these shops happened to be a pet shop specializing in snakes, specifically pythons. Looking through the window, we could see large clear plastic tubs that contained bright green and yellow pythons that just sat there lazily, sometimes shifting positions slightly almost like a person who is asleep would shift to get more comfortable.

The next shop was a rattle snake shop. I remember having a discussion with my wife about the snakes. She didn’t like them and mentioned something about them laying eggs inside you like in the movie aliens. I plainly told her that they didn’t lay eggs in people and even if they did, the eggs don’t eat anything… but the snakes might, once they hatch. We then went into the rattle snake shop, which I suppose was what we where looking for. It was rather dark and dusty inside with a concrete floor and wood paneled walls. Sunlight streamed through a few sparse windows showing the sheer amount of dust in the air.

Upon entering the store, we saw the store owner, a plainly dressed guy with dirty blonde mullet, sat on an old wooden chair, handling a very thin, but long, rattle snake (it was about as big around as a little finger, but about four feet long). To his right, was a dark green tub full of adult rattle snakes and in front of him was a tub which I knew contained baby rattle snakes. However, they looked like just the adult snake rattle and pure white. They just sat in the tub rattling occasionally and writing around like very large maggots.

I jokingly asked my wife if she where afraid of snakes, knowing full well that she was. In a somewhat defiant move, she grabbed the snake from the shop keeper. We where both very surprised by this, myself and the shopkeeper, and he was about to say a few words when the snake writhed around and leaped down to the ground, slithering away. The shop keep ran after it with a pole (the kind with the funny bent end for catching snakes) and a net. However, he only managed to chase it back to me. The snake ran around my leg and climbed up me. It went around my neck and then down inside the collar of my shirt. After running around my stomach area for a few seconds it turned back upward, opened its mouth to put its fangs against my throat right at my jugular (but it didn’t puncture the skin). The shopkeeper asked me if I had anything to eat. I asked why. He said that she could smell that I had low blood sugar and that she didn’t like it. If I didn’t eat something, she might bite me. None of us had anything, so the shop keeper had to slowly sneak up on the snake and snatch it away.

I then turned to leave but my wife pointed out that I had something on my face and neck. The snake had left venom on my face and neck like ink splotches from an exploded pen. In fact, they looked exactly like that, large black splats on my neck and a few streaks on the side of my face. The area where they touched my skin felt numb and tingly. My wife produced some napkins from her purse and handed them to me to wipe myself off. It was while I was wiping myself off that the snake leaped from the mans arms, turning into a cat before it landed. The cat had a medium length gray coat with brown diamond spots on it’s back and bright red eyes. The shopkeeper was a little afraid, because it was coming towards me again. Although, this time, it merely rubbed against my leg. The cat looked up at me and mewed, revealing two long and thin fangs amongst it’s regular cat teeth. The shopkeeper told us that the snake was magic. He wasn’t sure why she was able to transform or what she really was, but she did have those two forms and could change at will. I rubbed the cat’s head and scratched under it’s chin before we left the shop.

My wife wanted to go back to the car, but I reminded her that we couldn’t and that it was probably swarming with police officers by now. As we walked past the shopkeeper’s two cars that where parked out front a black sedan drove slowly down the road, rolled down its windows and a man with a machine gun began firing at us from the moving vehicle. I crouched down and immediately began to chant (as I often do in my dreams to stop an advancing threat), my right arm outstretched, my left arm around my wife, who I had forced to the ground. I now realized that the scene, which had been a desert scene before was now covered with snow. I only noticed this because the bullets kicked up snow in front and to the sides of us as I whispered to my wife “not a single bullet with touch you.”

I remember thinking that we where on the right track if someone was trying to kill us. The car began to drive away but as we stood up, unharmed they noticed and backed up to try again. The man with the machine gun produced a rocket launcher now. My wife was rather flustered and didn’t notice that they had come back with bigger weapons. She mumbled something like “you’re right, I wasn’t hit. How did you do that?” I really only had enough time to tell her to stay down as I began the chant again, in the same protective pose as earlier. The rocket was shot directly at my head and I swatted it away with my right hand, my left never leaving my wife. There was an explosion off in the distance behind me, but I didn’t turn around. I remember thinking “at least it was far enough away that it didn’t hit the shop”. My gaze was locked on the man with the weapons. He threw the launcher down and picked up another one.

This time, several men stepped out of the car, some with rocket launchers, some with machine guns, all aimed at us. They all began to fire their weapons at us, bullets and rockets coming at us faster than I could think. I dug deep to find the energy to pull this next stunt off. This part I saw from third person, as if I where watching a movie. all the rockets and bullets were diverted upwards, their paths curving as they neared what seemed like a protective shield around us. The men attacking us looked up in astonishment, seemingly bewildered by their new direction, some dropped their weapons. My right hand, this whole time was moving as if it was directing this flock of deadly projectiles. As they moved upwards, so did my hand extend towards the sky. Then, I moved my hand down sharply and their path curved to changed course again, this time coming straight down, right towards the bewildered attackers.

They didn’t have enough time to react, the projectiles hit their car and the surrounding area with lighting speed and explosive force. There was no trace of the men, just the charred wreckage of what used to be their car. The rest of the dream is really fuzzy. I remember talking with the snake hander again. He had been bitten by one of his snakes on the neck. His skin was flushed red from his head to about halfway down his chest and he couldn’t feel anything but the searing pain. But he assured us that he was immune to the venom because of the number of times he had been bitten and he would be alright. He was staying with my wife and I because he was sure those same men would go after him as well. It wasn’t long before I woke up.

The things that I thought where particularly interesting where as follows:

1. There was a lot of color in this dream. Apparently color dreams are rare and I never thought about it until recently, but I dream in full color all the time and can specifically remember the colors therein. I made a point of mentioning the various colors for this reason.
2. The transforming snake was really cool and an interesting idea.
3. The way I deflected all those deadly projectiles as if they where nothing was really cool. I would love to see something like that in a movie. All I knew was that they were going to kill me and my wife and I wasn’t going to allow that. I didn’t want to kill them either, but they didn’t seem like they where going to stop until either we where dead, or they were. Such cool abilities aren’t anything new to me, however, as I can do stuff like this all the time. Although, usually not as cool and cinematic. That was my “Knight in shining armor” complex showing through. I have control over my dreams, so of course I would control them such that my wife wasn’t harmed in them… and that means deflecting bullets, swatting away missiles and blowing up a car full full of mobsters.
4. The most surprising thing however was that my wife handled a snake! Never, in a million years would Mary EVER handle a snake like that, let alone a poisonous one!

I hope you enjoyed that, I know I sure did. I’ll try to at least post my dreams more often. Even if I can’t come up with substantial posts, I still have dreams almost every night. They’re usually fairly strange and at least entertaining.

An ongoing theme/ability in my dreams is actually the ability to create swords from my own body. I’ll outline a few of the dreams (in chronological order) that illustrate this ability.

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Lucid dreaming is defined as a dream where the dreamer is aware of the fact that they are dreaming. Often, the dreamer can exert conscious control over the dream as well. If you have ever controlled your dreams before, then you may have experienced lucid dreaming.

The only prerequisite to being able to control your dreams is that you realize a few things:
1) that you realize that you are dreaming
2) that you realize that everything that occurs in this world occurs because your mind invents it
3) that you realize that you have control over this world because this world was built by your mind.

Essentially once you realize that its all in your head, you realize that you can do whatever you want. Often the only limitation is your ability to suspend your own mind’s concept of reality. For instance, we all know that walls are solid. If you run straight at a wall you brain will expect you to hit it and it will react on instinct. In the dream world, you must override that instinct in order to run through that wall.

First I’m going to start off with an anecdote, then I’ll give some tips.
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Another strange dream this morning. Let me start off by saying that I have crazy abilities in my dreams. One of which is the ability to teleport/time travel. In this particular dream I was trying to get somewhere else, anywhere else. So I went into my closet. There was a door at the back of it that was supposed to lead to another room. I turned my back to it, closed my eyes, opened the door and fell backwards through it. I fell like nothing was there to stop me. I fell through the floor and tumbled through space. I eventually landed on a smooth carpeted surface, very gently I might add. I stood up and looked through the door through which I had passed, I could see the closet and the room from which I came. However, turning around I realized that I was indeed somewhere else. I had created a portal that bridged two places by this doorway.
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This morning, I had a rather messed up dream. Essentially we where in a plane and flying north when all of a sudden we where hit by a couple of missiles and two fighter jets swooped down on us. Somehow we had entered restricted airspace. I noticed what looked to be a missile base with a landing strip and figured we should try to land there. I remember being able to read something on one of the buildings, from the air: “CPAT” which I’m sure means nothing.
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Sine: Collective Minds

I had a very wild dream this morning. It could very well turn into an interesting book/movie/TV series/game. In the dream a group of people started trying to develop a new and unique operating system for computers. However, they began work with incorporating technology and the human consciousness. The first thing they realized was that if they got people to unify their thoughts that they could communicate telepathically. Eventually they discovered that getting enough minds to work in unison gave the group the ability to use certain psychic/metaphysical abilities. In order to facilitate the unison of minds, they developed a chip that could easily be installed in the back of the neck. This chip allowed the person to “connect” with everyone else who wore the chip. Essentially this produced one collective mind, or rather used everyone in the “network” as a node in a biological super computer… which resembled one mind. This made them all super smart and by directing their thoughts on one purpose, they could use abilities like pyrokinesis, telekinesis, etc… The name of the chip was the Sine (Not sure why… I think it had something to do with the signal it transmitted). There was also a biological agent that they had to infect a person with in order for the chip to work properly. Some where resistant or immune to the virus that made up this agent, these people formed the resistance against the Sine.

The Sine didn’t care about anything but making the connection stronger and increasing their power. They only ate to sustain themselves but skipped “civilized” steps such as slaughtering and cooking their meat. They did have certain nodes who worked solely improving current or creating new technology but for the most part, the rest of the Sine spent their time trying to expand “The wave” by “recruiting” more nodes. If you where resistant to the agent they could still enslave your mind but you couldn’t think for yourself and thusly couldn’t actually act as a decent node. These people where used for hard labor. Individuals who the Sine found to be completely immune to the agent where killed on the spot. Imagine a world where technology has gotten to the point to where people ignore all things civilized and essentially become beasts and machines. There is no love, only power. The entire world was rather post-apocalyptic in appearance except for the few automated Sine cities. They used robots and the enslaved to maintain them. Read the rest of this entry »

This category (dream journal) is dedicated to my subconscious mind. Herein I will be a detailed dream journal. I’m essentially just using this part of my blog as an easy place to keep all of this crud in my brain. I would suggest that everyone create their own dream journals. They can be a useful therapeutic tool. Psychologist Carl G. Jung (1875-1971) believed that dreams where conduits to our unconscious minds. Keeping track of our dreams may help us understand the messages that this relatively unused portion of our brain may be trying to send us. Dreams also tend to be fairly entertaining, both to ourselves and to anyone else who hears them. They are odd and seemingly random although steeped in symbolism. You can pretty much guarantee that your unconscious mind will come up with a story you’ve never heard before. Dreams can also be a great source of inspiration. Many artists, composers, song writers, singers, etc… credit their dreams with inspiring them to create great things (including myself). In any case, the average person will sleep away one third of their life. During this time we dream and upon waking a great many of us forget the experiences we had during this time. Knowing this, it’s crazy that we actually forget about one third of our life experiences. Writing them down seems like a small effort with huge benefits if you ask me.

Expect much more,
Type to you later,
~Nathaniel