Mutable Environment, by David W

Earlier in the night, I had several unsurprising dreams. One had a pleasant erotic component, and then I had a typical Oneironauticum meta-dream in which everyone else at the event had awaken and started bustling around their day while I still laid asleep in the kitchen. In another I lugged around piles of books, immersed in a research project studying Frances Yates.

Later in the night, however, I became aware of the music though I remained and entered into a lucid hypnagogic state. I became aware of a stormy, inchoate, billowy state. I found if I put my hand into it purposefully, my hand entered the unstructured reality. I tried some lucid dream experiments manipulating the stuff, able to manipulate and interact with it, with reality before it takes form.

Throughout the experience, I felt a delicious somatic bliss, aware of my body twitching and of the sound of the music.

Trying to get the dream, by Stacy

My dream was epic, and happened simultaneously in three different segments, each with different versions of people trying to acquire her dream.

In the first segment, a group of people were playing a football like game with the dream, throwing it around and trying to catch it, trying to get it from each other.

In the second, people were on a Family Feud type game show trying to win the dream. They all stood at a podium that looked like Vibrata’s art on her iPad (that we had all been admiring before we went to sleep).

In the third, ninjas fought, trying to claim the dream in victory.

Auditory Dream, by Vibrata

I had a very unusual dream; generally, my dreams are very visually vivid and detailed, but this dream was primarily auditory. I stood by a grill filled with hot coals and wood. I could hear the hissing and popping of the wood and coal, and the distinct sounds of very hot metal.

I was selecting pieces of meat for the grill. I went to check to see if it was ready, and heard the hot, sizzling sound that told me it was.

Dreams of Light, by Carter

I had a flurry of dreams. The key thing was light. I was enveloped by white light, there were lots of snippets of dreams, all with light. One was in tall grass. In another, I looked down and my hands became paws.

At one point in the night, the music woke me up and I went to the bathroom and came back and fell asleep again. I was with the two cats who live in the space where we were sleeping. We all got onto a cosmic train and I became lucid.

Taryn and I were concerned that we’d left our room mate’s car behind. Then the light I’d seen in the other dreams started to approach me. I looked at Taryn, who had this huge, intense clear blue eyes, and Taryn realized I was about to wake up. She looked at me intently and the light came through her eyes, making them huge and vivid, glowing with white light.

Olympic Cherub Dodging, by Dean

In one dream, I was running. I didn’t know why I needed to run, but knew it was important, and thought that if I kept running, I would figure it out. I didn’t doubt the importance of running, however.

In another dream, I was with another guy in a sort of game show with people watching. We had to get from a pavilion into a house. We were in nineteenth century men’s bathing suits, and were participating in a sport, maybe in the Olympics. A cherub stood on a pedestal, a baby with wings but a strong presence, with a point on its head.

When the judge said go, the guy and I had to get to the house, and the cherub was supposed to prevent us from getting there. We felt fear because we sensed the cherub’s power. We took off but it was like trying to run through honey. The cherub loomed near me, staring at me with this timeless face, very intimidating.

We got to the house and suddenly everything went dark and the house filled with fog. We looked at each other and both realized, oh no, now we’re really in trouble.

Food Dreams, by Lesly

I had dreams about food. One was in a gym. Lots of people had gathered to learn about food. The leader had to be really loud and enthusiastic because people were talking over him. He was teaching about sorts of food, particularly about nuts and smogs. I was interested in what smogs were; I thought they sounded good. They were nuggets of delicious food.

In another dream, I was in a restaurant with my friend, who ordered a burger with tuna salad on it. At the table, she complained that it was bland because there was no sauce. The owner ran his finger across the burger and showed her that there was a white sauce on it. I told them, “I eat jelly”, and then went on, “but only the good stuff, from Amsterdam.”

Talking Too Loud, remote dream by J.P.

(Downloaded Somnium)

I was walking in a warehouse, and I decided to steal candy. It was a warehouse of people's belongings. When I couldn't find the candy, I decided to tidy it up a bit. Then I heard footsteps, and figuring I would be viewed suspiciously, I scurried off. In the other corner of the warehouse, my ex-girlfriend was giving some kind of lecture. I felt confident, and sat in the middle of the crowd. She asked the class a question and instead of answering it out loud, I began debating with a group of three other men whom I respected. She asked us to share with the class, and I went first, pulling my hat over my eyes and speaking loudly, cavalierly. The class asked me to speak more quietly and I felt self-conscious.

Next I was walking on a combination of a college quad and the area near the pool at the MAPS conference. There were people doing creative things all around us. I was told by Jon H that I would enjoy a movie a friend of his had, and so I borrowed it and went up to the rooftop garden of some building and my dad was there sunbathing.

Spying & Toys, remote dream by Sylvia

(downloaded Somnium, went to sleep to it)

[Not having the benefit of the core Oneironauticum group's wisdom about what volume to set the music to, a couple of times, my sleeping partner and I woke up and wondered why we couldn't hear the music more, before we fell back asleep. Next time we will turn the volume up a little at falling-asleep time.]

Went to bed between 11:30pm and midnight. Had decent dream recall around 7am that devolved to really poor dream recall when I actually woke up at 8am. Snippets: With JP, spying on people at night who were driving up to and sneaking recycling into our recycling bins. "Our" being, a hybrid of the house I grew up in and a warehouse-y thing. The driveway figured prominently in the dream. The people we are spying on are: a heavy-set dad-like African-American man right after he's gotten off work, and a shorter Latino man about the same age. (They were serially messing with the recycling, not collaboratively) It appears to me as if they are grabbing the bicycles, too, so I jump out to stop them, but then what is actually happening is ambiguous and I start to question my suspicions, as it is looking as if they are washing the bicycles? (Self-analytical thought in the dream: why am I suspicious of people's motives?) Recalled dreams were all nightscape, mostly single-storey house, semi-suburban, with some light-industrial contexts.

Right at wake-up, after the music had started over at the beginning again, I had two short dreams. In one I was sitting next to a woman on a couch and she was unwrapping things on the coffee table in front of us -- articulated 8" or so toy animals to give as gifts, notably a blue whale and a blue octopus. She had already decided to whom to give the octopus (some older lady who didn't even really know anything about them). Then, a friend whose face I don't recognize is saying she is going down to Brazil to be with her sister "to get know the people, the language," she says, brashly. I ask her "Oh, when are you going?" "In May." "Really?! I am going down in Mar/Apr!" As I wake up I'm confused because it's almost May now and I don't know what year she is talking about.

Maintaining my data, remote dream by lissa ivy

(went to sleep listening to Brian Eno’s Discreet Music)

Pools of olive oil in my hands from giving someone (a large man) a massage, balancing on balls of my feet around edges of loft bed. Phone rings, so many rings that I can answer after wiping off my hands. It's my chiropractor calling to straighten out some technicality re. my address in his files. He explained that he had to write that I'll be at my temporary address for 10 years, rather than one because otherwise the software would eject me at the end of the year and my data would all be gone.

Arid Landscape and Hypnagogic Heads, by Taryn

Mostly awareness of a landscape, a desert scape. I’m lying in a very arid environment curled around a giant fig. I stay that way for a long time.

Later in the night, I was in a hypnagogic state. I became lucid and could see a swirl, an imagery noise space, with heads (only the head) emerging, coming in to focus. They were people I knew, talking to me, but saying mostly really mundane things, like my grandmother who reminded me that I needed to answer a letter she wrote me.

Outfits and Art, by Paz

I remembered two dreams.

1. I was in the nature nature/desert with my mom and maybe somebody else. We are spending a few days. It is like a retreat. I am in the middle of nature, very dry and I observe the native plants (rosemary or thyme). Suddenly it is time to go to dinner. I go to my room to get changed for dinner.

I enter my room, which is like a dorm that five or six people also share with me. Once inside my room, I go to my closet. Two young women are talking and both light cigarettes inside the room. I asked them “you guys are not smoking in the room, right?” “Oh, ok,” they say, “we will smoke in the hallway.” But they light the cigarettes in the room anyway and then leave.

I start putting clothes on: a dreass that is very tight with a belt. I ask an older woman how I look in that dress and if it is appropriate for the night. She said “not so much, you should try something else.” I put on something more casual, like a t-shirt and jeans.

2. I am with my friend Txutuo, who owns a gallery in the Mission district in San Francisco. He is drawing a sign for the gallery with the title of the galley’s show. He is drawing with a black ink roll pen on a large size paper. He is using black paint to attach cuts and other pieces of paper to the design, instead of glue. He hands me the pen and paper and asks me to finish it. I start drawing but realize he is making very thin lines and very precise design with the lines. I am surprised because he is not very clean and precise in his work.

Sex Slave Uprising, Sex Party Celebration, by Jennifer

I had several dreams throughout the course of the night, two of which were longer, more narrative dreams.

The first took place mostly at night, in dodgy parts of town, a general air of seediness around the whole scene. In dingy, worn apartments, women were kept as sex slaves, maybe foreign women who’d been tricked there though that part wasn’t clear. My position seemed unclear, though I think I had recently arrived as one of the women imprisoned in the circumstance.

My point of view changed rapidly across many different locations, all similar apartments or ramshackle motels, poorly lit, peeling wallpaper, threadbare furniture. Then somehow I arranged an uprising and gathered all the women together to claim our freedom. The man in charge arrived at the apartment and we stood up to him and achieved victory. Oddly, I didn’t have visuals for any of this, only the knowledge that it happened.

In the second long dream, I attended a gathering (maybe a meeting) of several of my high school friends and learned they were all involved in a series of sex parties. I realized I was a veteran of the scene and everyone respected and admired me in this role. I had a third person view of a few of the men all putting sexy boots on me, lacing them up.

Then we were all at a big family picnic sponsored by the sex party people. It was a big barbeque with lots of families and children running around, the adults swinging the kids high up in the air and everyone happy and laughing. One friend told me how his daughter almost died and I looked over and saw how healthy and happy she looked.

Minutes of the April, 2010 Oneironauticum

Present at the April, 2010 Oneironauticum were dreamers Vibrata, David S., Dean, Lesly, David W., Stacy, Paz, Taryn, Carter, and yours truly, Jennifer.

As usual, between the time we arrived and then bedded down, we discussed our reent dream experiences. Dean told a story of a recent intense dream experience with a (non-sexual) succubus in which the dream woman rushed at him and entered his body. Taryn and Carter said that on the same night, they, along with their other two room mates, had dreamed being choked. That same night both Paz and I had unpleasant toilet dreams.

A conversation about unpleasant toilet dreams ensued, which led us to discuss our most frequently visited dream types. Most of us had had dreams from what I think of as the “popular hits”: the dream where you realize you never finished high school/college and have to go back and take another class, the dream where you have a test and can’t find the location, the one where you’re trying to run and can barely move, the naked in public dream. Then we talked about our own trends, my dreams of whales or being inappropriately barefoot, others’ dreams of cats or snakes or foxes, of being underwater, of driving.

Around midnight, we put on Somnium and bedded down for the night. Over brunch, we discussed our dreams. Many of experienced strong hypnagogia, as we did last time we slept to Somnium. Several people also had dreams of being in nature, with attention to landscape. A few people also noted lucidity in their dreams. Almost everyone reported sleeping well, though we all woke up at some point or another, aware of the music.