Having  moved  our  things  from Arizona  to  Missouri,  and
having  setup internet  service,  I'm  reading to  hopefully
resume gopher activity. I've  been keeping up somewhat using
DiggieDog for Android, but no client is quite as streamlined
as vf1[1]. It's nice to have a proper setup again.

Perhaps I'll get a domain setup here at home as well. I used
to have  jozhaus.com pointed at  an old acer  laptop running
motsognir[2].  I'm  attempting  to  participate  on  several
gopher servers already, so it  might be redundant... but, it
might be fun as well.

Last night I had a  lucid dream[3]. Actually, my whole dream
experience last  night was notable  and very odd  feeling. I
think it  was one of the  oddest nights of dreams  that I've
ever had. I've  had lucid dreams before,  but not frequently
and  not recently.  It  seems  like any  time  I attempt  to
describe a dream, it comes across as exactly mundane. Still,
it felt interesting, and so I'll try to convey that.

First, a bit  of background: I have a son  who sometimes has
difficultly  sleeping. His  mind is  constantly active,  and
sometimes he wakes up at 3am and  is too wired to go back to
sleep. Frequently,  his imagination gets the  better of him,
and he'll come into our bedroom to let us know he's having a
hard time. As a result, I sometimes get into a sleep pattern
where my mind  and body are expecting to wake  up at 3am and
then fall  back asleep. It's  not pleasant. It does  seem to
increase dreaming in general.

This  past week  has  been a  semi-interrupted  one. To  mix
things up,  I flopped  down on  my bed  yesterday afternoon,
exhausted from moving, and took a  three hour nap. I went to
bed at the same time as usual that evening.

The stage was  set. My body and mind were  going to be ready
to wake  up at 3am, and  I'd have the right  amount of sleep
already,  so getting  back to  sleep would  be difficult  or
impossible.  I was  prepared, and  my son  did wake  up, but
instead of  coming in  and interrupting us,  he just  sat up
reading a Brandon Mull book.

At around 3am  this morning my sleep became  fitful. I was, 
in the  balance of things, oversleeping.  Oversleeping, for 
me at least, also increases dreaming.                       

(as  an  aside,  my   Swedish  grandmother,  who  we  called
"Mormor," always used to tell me to eat cheese before bed if
I wanted to  have dreams. I don't know if  it works, but she
must have planted the idea in my mind at just the right age,
because I can't help believing it is true. I love cheese, so
I like to test the theory from time to time. I always forget
to remember if it worked by morning.)

I began  to dream that I  was sleeping in bed  fitfully, and
that I  was waking  up repeatedly. It  was a  dream bedroom,
nothing like my own, but the bed itself was exactly like the
one I  was actually sleeping  in. I'd  wake up, it  would be
dark out, and I'd try to go back to sleep.

Eventually, after falling  back asleep in my  dream, I began
to  dream  that  I  was  at a  rest  area[4]  on  a  highway
somewhere. There were high mountains all around me. The rest
area was beautiful, and it  was "crepuscule"[5]. I like that
word better than  "twilight," but I like the  actual time of
day better than both words.

I woke up  from this dream in the  dream bedroom, frustrated
that I was  waking up so much. I tossed  about and fell back
asleep, in my dream.

I was on some kind of hill, above the rest area. There was a
rocky circular outcropping, with  a metal grating deck built
up and a  fire pit in the middle. The  flames and coals were
more colorful, with a lot  more pinks, than usual. Some kind
of building was attached to the outcropping, as if it were a
deck of some kind. Over the  rocks I could see the rest area
below. The sun was almost set.

And then I realized that I  was dreaming. I told myself that
I was dreaming. Often, right at this point of realizing that
I'm dreaming, I  drag myself out of  my sleep involuntarily.
It's a specific feeling, like  I'm dragging myself back from
a brink or over a great  distance all at once. I told myself
again, expecting that I'd wake  up from the realization, but
I did not.

I walked into  the building through sliding  glass doors. It
was poorly lit.  Inside, there was a man who  wanted to talk
to  me. He  had  short  blonde hair,  and  was wearing  dark
clothes; but I wouldn't let him talk. Instead- even though I
was afraid of how he would react- I told him that this was a
dream, that  I was dreaming.  He seemed  put off by  this. I
can't recall  if he  said anything.  I think  he did,  but I
don't know  what. I turned  and walked  out of the  door and
onto a path in the woods.

The woods were like the woods in northeastern Arizona. They 
were dry,  without much  undergrowth, with  ponderosa pines 
all around on both sides. After walking a very short way, I 
saw a wolf in front of me on the right. It was stopped, and 
it was looking at me.  It was a sickly, emaciated, crippled 
looking wolf, with light brown,  almost tan fur. It was not 
at all threatening.                                         

The wolf scampered on ahead of me as I walked, and I thought
to myself  "that is a  sick wolf, I'm  going to heal  it." I
knew that this was my dream, and I felt like I could do what
I wanted  to a degree. The  wolf healed, and ran  off to the
left, into the  trees. I could see it rejoin  its family. It
wasn't a pack, it was a mother and children.

I then turned toward the trail, and  in front of me a ways I
could see a pack of wolves  running. Their fur looked like a
matte  of  dried ponderosa  needles.  If  you've never  seen
ponderosa  needles, they  are  long and  brown  and come  in
clumps,  almost like  the  old bristles  they  would use  on
brooms. They had a fascinating color and texture.

I turned  around to walk back  to the building, and  I saw a
gnarled old  tree. As I followed  it upward with my  eyes, I
thought that I would fly- this  was my dream, and it sounded
fun. I climbed up the gnarled tree a ways and considered how
I  would start  flying.  I  have flown  plenty  of times  in
dreams, and when I do it  just happens. It feels natural and
just happens,  I don't ever  recall thinking about  how it's
done. But this  time, I was thinking about how  I could fly,
and I really couldn't figure it out.

At that  point, I decided that  I would wake myself  up from
this dream.  But, I  didn't wake  up in my  room, I  woke up
again into my  dream bedroom. My bed was there,  but my room
was wrong.  And then  it hit  me that  I was  still actually
dreaming, and I dragged myself into real consciousness.

If it had just been a  dream about wolves and rest areas and
pink fires, I don't think I would have shared the dream. But
the dream-inside-a-dream  aspect was  new for me.  I've seen
Inception[6] of course,  and I actually relate  with some of
the dream  patterns that they  describe in there (in  a less
melodramatic way),  but I've  never had  any sort  of nested
dreams.

I mentioned the "feeling" of the dream, and this is where my
experience  is wholly  different  from  "Inception." In  the
movie,  the  main  character is  increasingly  incapable  of
distinguishing between  dream and reality. He  is so fearful
that he  carries a "totem"  to test  whether he is  awake or
asleep, and is  ready to shoot himself in the  head to end a
dream that he is not in control of.

For me, dreams  feel real enough when I'm in  them, but upon
waking  there is  such a  pure difference  between life  and
imagination that I can't fathom how anyone could ever accept
the counterfeit. Being that last night's dream was, in part,
a  lucid one-  and  more  lucid and  lengthy  than I've  had
before- I  thought that  perhaps I would  have a  more vivid
memory  of  it, or  that  it  would  have a  more  appealing
residual memory. It didn't. It was, in the end, just a dream
that I was in partial control of.

Some people  pursue lucid dreaming,  but I'm not sure  I see
the appeal. As I dream  frequently (non-lucid), I am curious
about dreams, and I would  love to hear what gopherspace has
to say on the subject.

[1] gopher://circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/files/vf1.py
[2] gopher://gopher.viste-family.net:70/1/projects/motsognir/
[3] gopher://gopherpedia.com:70/0/Lucid dream
[4] gopher://gopherpedia.com:70/0/Rest area
[5] gopher://gopherpedia.com:70/0/Crépuscule
[6] gopher://gopherpedia.com:70/0/Inception