So I fell asleep at 5pm today and just woke up and I'm UP. Freakin' jetlag. I've been listening a lot to my lucid dreaming cd on my ipod, since it's best to listen with headphones and I was never inclined to fall asleep with my cd player (my ipod, now that's a different story). It has brainwave frequencies and/or subliminal messages underneath the sound of ocean waves, so it's very much like a normal relaxation soundtrack used for meditation or sleep aid. I listened to it more frequently last year, when I was trying to be able to remember more details of certain dreams, because I often dream of developing ideas for scripts and working out issues with current scripts, but then could never remember the details after I woke up. Very frustrating for a writer. I couldn't tell if it was helpful since I wasn't very diligent about it (and didn't use headphones). I've been doing it a lot this last week because the plane ride and the jetlag in Taiwan were a bitch, and the sound of waves made it the most relaxing thing I had on my ipod to induce sleep. I've found that I've been having really vivid dreams where I'm present in them and I can have total thought processes, thinking out what to say to people and have insights on people during the dream. Like the dreams are in real time and I can remember processions of thoughts and emotions. And observations. I can also say to myself, this is a dream and instantly remove things that are frightening to me in the dream (like the presence of a threat), or skip something that's boring (like waiting for someone to finish doing something. I can skip it like a dvd so that they're done). It's really great and has been helpful to understanding some of my subconscious stressors in waking life, and working them out so that I feel better when I wake up, without necessarily knowing the specifics of why.

I dreamed last night that some kids were being murdered in a high school and they suspected it was another kid. I was me and I accompanied the two men who were brought in to investigate (I think I had gone to that high school back in the day and these guys were friends of mine so I tagged along), but at one point, I realized that I was alone by the locker rooms after school and became terrified. I fast forwarded to a point where they had suspects, and this one kid was suspected. We went to his house to interview him and I remember thinking, I don't think it's him. He's too innocent. At that point in the timeline, two more students had been killed for a total of four. We were outside when I jumped perspectives and followed someone else who was in the backyard, 3rd person. Nobody in the house knew he was there. He was some independent investigator who was foreign (I knew he had a foreign accent), and he was using the distraction of the interrogation inside to search the backyard, and he found a buried human skull. I remember thinking, in my 3rd person state, that here I was, watching proof being found that the kid was guilty, but my true self was inside the house with a killer whom I thought was innocent. I became terrified so I woke up. I can remember with good detail the way the school looked and certain physical and psychological elements of the characters encountered in that dream.

Tonight I dreamed that I was interning at KCRW and they agreed to let me put together a compilation CD in their name. I was psyched and I was putting toghether random songs, which I could hear at the time, but which I think my mind made up. They were all kind of electronic dance-ish, ala Timo Maas. I was in Fremont for some reason and I knocked on this door and my friend Rebecca Marko answered. I was PSYCHED because she's a cool chick. I was happy to see her but then I noticed my ex-boyfriend standing behind her. I was cordial but wouldn't look him in the eye, because in my mind, I thought, he doesn't deserve to see into my eyes and have me speak to him from my soul (I believe that people can communicate a lot psychically through eye contact because the eyes are the window to the soul). The house had wood paneling and kind of looked like a trailer home, but it was big and I was impressed that he was living in a big house. I also think, so it's true...he moved. So I was talking to her and he was sitting there next to her being the attentive boyfriend, but I managed to black him out so that when I glanced over there, his head had a black mist over it so I didn't have to look at him. He offered me a mini Snickers bar which I declined, and then he left the room. Rebecca was talking to me about my KCRW gig but I couldn't hold it in so I asked her what she was doing with him. She said, "You won't believe what happened. She went crazy on him." I immediately knew two things--that she was talking about the girl he dated after me, and that he when he hooked up with my friend, he had told her that his last girlfriend went crazy to get sympathy for him, poor him, victimized by a girl who made him suffer. I got angry that he was playing the victim to a friend whose kindness was genuine so I cut in and told her, "Rebecca, he always says things like that. He either goes for girls who are crazy to martyr himself, or when a girl proves to normal and healthy, he'll be sadistic to her to the point she either acts crazy in frustration or leaves, at which point he gets to play the victim again. He's manipulative." I asked her how they met and she said, through friends. She gushed that this was the first night she had spent the whole night because they were taking things slow. I asked how long they'd been dating and she said, a couple of weeks. So I said, oh, you're still in the honeymoon period. I got really scared because she was so innocent about it and so enamored, and this is this creep's MO. So I grabbed her hands, looked her in the eye and said, listen, Rebecca, you know I care about you and I wouldn't say these things unless I was looking out for you and concerned with your wellbeing. You have to keep your eye on this guy. He's bad news and he's toxic and he hurts people. He can play the role of amazing boyfriend until the times when he remembers that he hates himself, and then he'll break everything around him that has any value or beauty, in particular, innocence and kindness. I don't want you there when he goes on his rampages, and I don't want him taking advantage of your kindness and understanding when he decides that the person he wants to most destroy is the person who's nicest to him. She says, oh, I know, but he's been great so far...and I said, he always starts out that way, then turns into a monster. He's incredibly abusive. It's like she doesn't want to hear me. She says to me, you're a very, very lucky woman. And I know she's talking about the fact that I was with him and that she was implying that he still cared. The alarm bells in my head were going nuts because this guy was going to hurt her. So I said, no I'm not. I'm lucky that I got out. He came back into the room and said he had to go to work. He comes over and tenderly kisses me on the top of my head (I had jerked my head away from him out of instinctual revulsion) and whispers, "I've missed you." And then he doesn't even kiss her, but does say, "Bye," looking at her like he's completely lovestruck and it makes me sick because this guy is going to hurt her with his insane game. After he leaves, I get up to go, too and just say, "Please keep your eye open and don't let him push you around." I hug her and leave. I drive around but I'm worried. And I realize that I don't know what's worse...that he's going to fuck with my good friend, or that maybe he has changed and become a better person. But I think, I doubt it. The whole time he was there, he was doing his thing...playing two girls off of each other. I go home and try to think about music for the CD, but by 2 am, I'm really bugged. I leave a message for Linda to see if I can drop by in the morning instead of the evening as planned for the next day. Then I call Sarita, misdialing once, leave a message asking her if she'd talked to Rebecca lately. She calls back and I tell her what happened and she's surprised, since she didn't know Rebecca was dating anyone even though she had talked to her very recently. I was again worried because this guy likes to keep his relationships a secret because he likes to date in the same pool (getting one thing guaranteed before he ends another) so he doesn't want his game cramped, and I think, deep down, he doesn't want the girls to talk. He also likes to breed animosity and competition between the girls he dates for this reason. A really bad character. So the fact that she hasn't even told her friends about it worries me. In my dream, Sarita and I talk and analyze it the way we talk about things, and I feel better talking to her. While I drive home to my parents house, I notice that they've installed streetlights around the last curve of the hill. My car's engine is roaring as it tries to go from 0 to whatever on such a steep incline and the noise and effort of the engine really is incredibly abrasive in my dream, so I decide to wake up.

So those are the details of my last two dreams. I wrote them down here because it's easier to maintain the memory of your dreams if you write them down.