Blue Light Dreams

Now and again, I have a weird sleep issue that I call “Blue Light Dreams.” It goes like this:

 

1. I’ll be having a dream which I usually don’t remember

2. I’ll wake up with sudden urgency and start carrying out some task of great importance that my mind is convinced is 100% real. This can be something like “the tunnel in the ceiling is open, now is our chance to get through!” and will end up with me literally standing up on the bed and hoisting up Davis so we can climb through the nonexistent tunnel in the ceiling that I’m scrambling to find.

3. A few moments later I’ll realize that I’ve woken from a dream and whatever I’ve just been acting out is actually ridiculous. Davis usually makes his confused “Mrrr?” sound.

4. 99% of the time these outbursts involve me seeing a blue light. Like in the previous example, I will have seen a bright blue light in the corner of the ceiling which is the signal that the tunnel is open. This looks like a reflection off the wall of a bright blue LED.

5. My brain will make up an excuse as to what the blue light was to get me to go back to sleep, but it’s always something that doesn’t make any sense when I go back and think about it. It’ll be like “oh it was just my clock” (my clock has a green light and usually is dimmed) or…and this is my favorite… “oh it was just the indiglo from my watch” (noting that I have not owned a watch, let alone a watch with indiglo, since high school). But in this state the excited part of my brain accepts whatever excuse the other part has come up with for the time being.

I hate when these Blue Light Dreams happen, because when I settle down from them, I get really anxious and distressed. I’m definitely awake when they happen, but I’m doing something just completely bonkers-crazy and absolutely thinking it is real. It’s like a brief little glimpse into what being a madman is like, and it scares me (I just had one now, and I can’t get back to sleep, which is why I’m up late writing this post). The blue light part is weird but consistent, and it has become a false reminder. Like I wake up and see a blue light and it reminds me that this is a familiar situation. But instead of reminding me “hey you just woke up from a dream, remember?” it’s more like “there’s the blue light! It’s a sign! You have to get up and figure out what it’s for RIGHT NOW and it’s VERY URGENT and DON’T FORGET TO GRAB THE CAT.”

Then, at the moment I should be thinking like a normal person again, I do another weirdly crazy thing – the made up excuse that doesn’t make any sense and the calm acceptance of the excuse as reality.

I’m really not sure what’s going on with these incidents – I’m certainly awake when they occur, and though I often act out with great energy I don’t do anything violent, and at most disturb Davis from sleep by grabbing him and picking him up suddenly. They seem harmless other than the fact that they make me feel like a crazy person, which is scary and distressing. And then sometimes it makes it so I can’t get back to sleep.

Stupid Blue Light Dreams. Does this happen to any of you?

The Pitch Neutralizer

I’m not normally a dream-recounter, but this one I had a bit ago keeps popping back in my head, so I’ll go ahead and share.

In the dream, at work, there was a large device called the “Pitch Neutralizer.”  If you had an idea for a feature for the game or a solution to a design problem, you would speak it into the pitch neutralizer through a telephone-tube device like you see at the playground.  Everyone would have a turn proposing their ideas.

Then, the Pitch Neutralizer would present those ideas to the whole room, the trick being that each idea was now coming from one voice and source, so you wouldn’t be biased against a particular person’s idea based on how good/bad he was at presenting it.  Thus, neutralizing the pitches (awake brain thinks that “Pitch Normalizer” would have been a better name, but asleep brain says “I DO WHAT I WANT,” so there you go).

The quirkiest bit about this whole thing was the voice and personality the device would use to re-present all of the ideas.  It was none other than Oprah Winfrey.

I have no idea.

Dream Games

I often have dreams about games I've made, and of course they're the awesomest ever in dreamland, because they follow dream logic. When I wake up and start reviewing my awesome new game idea, it is usually quickly apparent that, in real-world logic, they wouldn't work at all.

All the same, I try and write them down, because even if they are meant for the land of dreams I occasionally pick out some idea or mechanic or insight that could be useful later. In some cases (like tonight) I wake up immediately after the dream and can not get back to sleep until I write it down.


Tonight's dream game was a pen-and-paper RPG of sorts. I was gathered round with people who were presumably my friends (in my grandma's old basement, but that's an aside). One person was chosen to be the main participant in my game, and the rest gathered round to watch. I was DM, of course.

I gave a premise, that he was stuck in Hell, but had gotten there a non-traditional way. Then I gave him a set of objects I'd gathered to use as inspiration. Now, he was to tell the story of why he was in Hell and how he got there, improv-style, to the other people gathered round to listen.

The player launched into an epic story, and we took occasional breaks for snacks (and to allow the player to plan ahead some thoughts). The rules allowed that some of the audience could choose to do some storytelling themselves, and step in front to take the role of a character in the main story, then tell a bit from that character's perspective (which would inevitably steer the course of the main player's story when he took to the stage again). Two people did this in my dream.

All the while, I was watching and listening and taking notes.

When the storyteller was finished, we took one final break, as I set up the adventure. The short adventure was the character trying to get out of Hell by climbing some crazy tower (I had a cool little set piece to represent it). It was totally improvised, using information I'd learned from the main character's story.

When we all gathered back, I took over the story to explain the premise, and then we played through encounters as the main character climbed up the tower. All the encounters had something to do with his "how-he-got-there" story that he'd just told, and the audience was all anxious to see if he would get out.

Sounds pretty fun, yeah?? In dream world, that is. I don't know if anyone in real life is as good and brave at improvised storytelling as that. But, I do really like the idea of a pen-and-paper RPG adventure that other people watched as an audience, and for whatever reason were really invested in the outcome.

Food for thought!

Batman Dream

I had a fascinatingly epic dream! For LJ people who hate reading about dreams, a cut. For everyone else, tough luck!


In the dream, I became friends with the Joker. This would be the newest, Heath Ledger-portrayed Joker (which, I'm surprised to say, has trumped Mark Hamill as my all-time favorite Joker! Who would have thought!). When I found out he was the Joker, I was like "Aw, does this mean we can't be friends anymore?" and he was like "Well.....I mean...I guess we're still cool." So we became the bestest of friends.

Now, apparently this was before the Joker went *totally* crazy. He was still pretty crazy, I mean, but there was some semblance of humanity left in him at this point. Batman, of course, did not trust the Joker one bit.

The dream quickly turned very psychologically heavy, and I found myself in the precarious situation that A) If the Joker thought that I didn't trust him, he would surely be driven over the brink of sanity, but that B) he's the freakin Joker, so of course I was kind of scared to be in his company, especially when he had crazy Joker moments! It suddenly became very emotionally themed and circled around the nature of our friendship, and the responsibility I felt for keeping the friendship from tumbling over the precipice of no-return while at the same time keeping myself safe. The sort of thing that would probably never show up in a Batman movie (though in a Batman comic, I wouldn't be surprised).

Batman did not approve.

At one point in the dream, I found myself in some sort of trouble - kidnapped by some third party bad-guy. The Joker came to rescue me, since we were BFF. Batman, on the other hand, assumed my kidnapping to be the work of the "not trustworthy afterall, I should have known!" Joker, and also came to my rescue, complicating matters. It turned out that the whole thing was a setup by the third party bad-guys, in order to devastate the Joker's tie to friendship and push him over the edge of madness!

I don't know how the situation ended, having woken up, and I spent the entire day thinking about it and wondering what happened and worrying about my close, personal friend, the Joker. I always hope that dreams like this will resume upon the next night's sleep, and that the conclusion will be revealed at last! I know better by now, but I still hope.

*Yawn*

I am now bedding down a mere 2 hours out of LA. Tomorrow will bring me to Burbank and the beginning of the summer festivities, and for now I'm trying desperately to stay awake and adjust to the new time zone. It's difficult work.

Staying in hotels always brings out the weirdest of dreams. I learned a long while ago that, when explaining dreams, they are never as exciting to your audience as to you, so I will try and keep this brief.

Predictably, the dreams were smattered with ETCers. There were zombie monsters in something that felt like a play that turned into a reality. There was a secret Disney lab which we invaded. There was a swimming pool with layers, and a picnic table amidst a battlefield.

Everyone was wearing the most ridiculous outfits...Andy was a ghost. Brian Evans was dressed very much like Rambo with the exception of a collared, button-down shirt beneath his ammunition harness. Jesse wore two pairs of engineering goggles, one over his eyes and one propped on his forehead, along with a lab coat and a pair of dish gloves that we were all supposed to believe were official science gloves. We were searching for Bryan Cash, who may or may not have been turned into a zombie monster.

There was much activity. Betsy McIver stabbed a zombie monster in the eye with a screwdriver. Vimal kept bounding in and out of existence with tutorial-like advice. There was a faculty decree that banned all animal migrations, with the exception of migratory fish.

I was FURIOUS about this, and put up a rebellious protest.

Certainly, I am purging some weird stuff from the school year...

Dream Post?

I always feel a little guilty making journal posts about dreams, because I have a hard time reading about other people's dreams, and I know the same must be true in reverse. Plus, I know that a dream always seems way cooler to you than it is to the people you're telling. ...but this one is really REALLY cool I promise!!!

 The past few nights I have been plagued with dreams that are so realistic that I am absolutely convinced they are happening for real, but last night's was the strongest. I dreamed that you could access Google Maps on your cell phone, and if you zoomed in far enough on the map, when you looked up, you were in that location! I thought this would be a very good way to visit Ken, so I typed in "New Orleans" and zoomed in until I found a place on the map that looked very similar to a map he showed me once to show where he lived and worked.

Even in the dream, I knew this was shaky logic, but I tried it anyway. So I looked up, and sure enough, there I was in New Orleans. After wandering around nervously for a bit, I ran into Ken! "Heeey!" said Ken, "what are you doing here?" And I told him about Google Maps, and he took me to his place and we hung out and it was awesome.

 I was so convinced that this was really happening, that when a phone call woke me up from my dream, after I hung up, I was all ready to go find my cell phone so I could go visit Ken. Then brain was like "psst, Lisa, you're awake now..." and I felt really dumb.

 The moral of the story is, I miss Ken and he should visit soon! Although, if I visit Ken in New Orleans and it looked like it did in my dream, I'm gonna totally freak out

Dream

I usually don't write about dreams but, eh, it was an interesting, thought-provoking one.



So first, some background. I'll let you know when I get to the dream, but this part is actually real.

When I was little, my grandma lived next door to some people who had a wolf hybrid. I was too young to understand what the word "hybrid" meant, so when visiting I'd often ask to be taken over to visit "The Wolf." (who had a name, I just could never recall it). The people kept him in a pen in their backyard. I don't recall them ever letting him out of the pen, because they were in a fairly urban area. But I was way too little to formulate any opinions or coherent thoughts about proper facilities and care for wolf hybrids.

Anyway, I would go over and stand at the door of the pen, and I remember The Wolf being really really big, like almost as tall as me, and very very calm. And he would come over to the door and look at me, and I would look at him, and I would hold up my hand and he would sniff it a little, and then look at me some more. I remember his eyes being really intelligent and sad, and thinking "wow, must be a bummer to have to stay in a pen all the time, even Bruno (my grandma's dog) gets let out of his pen to run around the yard a bit." It made me feel very small that I was unable to do anything about it. Anyway, on my visits with The Wolf, I would pretend to have conversations with it and such.

But that was a long time ago, and I actually had never thought about it up to now, because....

(this is where the dream starts)

I dreamt about The Wolf last night. I can't recall if I was a little kid in my dream or the way I am now, probably somewhere in between. Realizing that I hadn't even *thought* about the Wolf until that instant, I said "Oh! I remember you!" And he looked at me the same way he had when I was little, intelligent and sad, and I felt the same way, small and unable to do anything. I don't recall that The Wolf was in his pen, though.

That's all it was, very simple, but kind of fascinating to me to dredge up an old memory of The Wolf (who was probably almost entirely dog, but hey, he was a wolf in my little-kid mind). Thoughts thoughts thoughts