A Briefly Lucid Dream

You may be wondering what I've been up to. Or not. But I'll tell you anyway.

I've been working on my Flash physics engine, in particular, the collision detection and response. It's been a lot of fun. It's great to be solving interesting problems that I care about, being able to fix things and see them have an immediate affect, and build cool things that actually exist, instead of just being in my mind. The latest cool thing I've built with it is Engine Prototype 05, a ragdoll and a ball.

I expect to continue working on that for the next week or so.

I've also added a bunch of stuff to my deviantART gallery, like this weird painting of a scene from Ishmael, and a bunch of my nature photos from last year.

And I learned that yawning is the best thing ever, like yoga or meditation but easier, so I've been yawning constantly for the last few days. And I expect to continue doing so. *yawn*

Anyway, this morning I had a very brief period of lucidity while dreaming, falling asleep again after waking up early. All my lucid dreams so far have been wake-back-to-bed occurrences. I thought you might find it interesting.

2009/11/30
I was walking along a sidewalk, thinking somewhat abstractly about how I seemed to have just been dreaming. Then suddenly I realized that if that was true, then I was still dreaming. I immediately lay down on the grass and tried to see it up close, but all I could see was an indistinct blur. I couldn't see my hands either, so I knew that this was a dream.

Then the scene couldn't hold itself together any longer and it shifted somehow. I found myself talking with my parents about what had just happened, and I wasn't really sure if I was still dreaming or not. From there, I got carried away by the dream and lost my lucidity.

After writing that down, I happened to read the previous entry in my rarely-updated dream notebook, from earlier this year. I found it quite intriguing and poetic, and thought it would be worth sharing here.

2009/01/25
I was hiking a winding path in the snow along with many other people. They had lost hope. The majority had decided that the best way to go would be to nuke the whole place, with them in it. I didn't want to. But the missiles were coming.

I was terribly anxious. I could not bring myself to surrender to the situation and accept it. When the explosion came, I woke up. It may likely have been a false awakening.

I felt better about it then, that maybe death is just waking from a dream. I remember thinking, back in the snow, that I wanted to keep this identity and all its memories and attachments to people, that I couldn't be ready to merge with oblivion and leave it all behind.

My second dream was about these traveling people who were also sea creatures. As they imagined their future, they saw themselves falling into water, which they feared.

I pushed them into the water, and they suddenly realized that they were meant to be in the water, that they were already where they wanted to be, free.

What do you see when you imagine your future?