My dreams have been really choppy and disjointed lately. And I can't seem to hold onto the plot even immediately after I wake up.

The weird thing is that I know I've been having nightmares because my jaw aches for about an hour every morning after I wake up. I can tell I've been clenching my teeth in my sleep, and if I'm not fully awake yet in my shower, or if I got an hour less sleep than usual, I have to consciously tell myself to stop clenching because it hurts.

In related news, I've also been getting less sleep. Two weeks ago, I had insomnia. I even consciously tried to get to bed earlier than usual, but I just laid there for an hour or two until I finally bored myself to sleep. I kept thinking of things that made me get out of bed. Oh, I left my phone with the alarm in the other room. Oh, I forgot to put away the ketchup. Oh, I just thought of this really funny picture to PhotoShop; I should do it before I forget; it won't take very long.

Then I got sick. The seasons are changing here, and there are illnesses going around, but I attribute it to my lack of sleep. So in the last week, I've been chugging Vitamin C health drinks here and crunching delicious Vitamin C pills. I started feeling better before some of my friends, so I really think it did the trick.

I'm really busy this weekend, but hopefully not too crazy at night. I won't be able to sleep in, but I won't be able to have crazy late nights either.

Wow, this blog post is almost boring me to sleep. I guess I just want to track why I sometimes dream and why I don't.

Well, I'll tell you about the last dream I remember before my draught, on a Friday night about 2 weeks ago. In my dream, I was at this rock concert with my friend Melissa. For some reason, I wandered around to the backstage area and met some people who remind me vaguely of some old short friends I use to have. Actually, because I'm gargantuan, almost everyone is short to me, but these people were like a short crew all through school.

Anyway, I met them backstage, and we rekindled old friendships. We began trying on different sparkly outfits made, I guess, for the backup dancers? Or maybe, like, stock costumes for the venue. The rock singer was no one in particular, just a general star like Bon Jovi or something. Only, like, cool within this decade and attractive.

I spent the whole concert back there hanging out with my friends and Mr. Fake Bon Jovi (during a break in the music, I guess?), and it suddenly occurred to me that Melissa was still in the crowd. I was upset because she would have wanted to take part in the costume fun, so I went out to get her, but the crowd was cleared. The stage was gone, and it was just an old park with some swimming pools lined up. Yeah, Melissa was gonna be real pissed.

The end! More interesting dreams, I swear. Even if it means eating a chili dog and banana split right before bed.

Friday, there was a tiny earthquake in Nagano. I felt it here in Yamanashi, and it was kinda cool. The next day, strangely, I actually went to Nagano, and felt another earthquake in the early morning. It felt the same to me as the other one, but this one's epicenter was way at the other end of the island, so it must have been crazy strong.

Anyway, earthquakes have kind of been on the mind over the past few days.
Sunday night/Monday morning, I had a terrible nightmare -- one of those where I wake up and my jaw actually hurts from gnashing my teeth together from stress.

So at the beginning of the dream, I knew somehow that an earthquake was coming, and I ran outside, even though I know you're not supposed to. I just felt (and I still do) that it would be easier to dodge some falling tree than being trapped under a desk for days without food. So I run outside, and I see these buildings collapsing in the distance, and they're all falling forward. So I stand in a clearing behind a building I am sure will fall away from me like the rest.

Well, when the wave hits this building, it falls in every direction, and I see a huge piece break off the top and come barreling down at me faster than anything I could react to. I duck and do the TiVo thing, rewinding my dream enough so that I have time to run off to the side.

But the earthquake keeps going, and I keep looking for shelter. I end up in some park where there's an artistic sculpture that looks kind of like a silver Jenga tower, and I get caught in the middle of it. The pieces are light enough so that when it tumbles on me, I can push them out of the way, but I soon see that there are so many pieces, I'm gonna get buried and crushed, and I start to panic.

Then I wonder for a minute what's happened to people in the subway, and I blink there. I'm riding in a tiny two-person subway car (in Japan still) with Crispin Glover of all random people, and he's being neurotic like usual. We feel the tremors and get upset, but the car keeps going, and I'm concerned. The subway kind of looks like an amusement park ride, though, and it comes to an underground clearing, and I hop out because Crispin's kvetching is annoying me to hell. I don't need this in a damn earthquake, buddy.

Finally, I stumble outside, and the earthquake's still going on. I see two drunk guys, and they're making light of the situation, and it kind of annoys me, too, because I'm still looking for shelter. Then a big fucking beam flies down and impales both of them through their stomachs. I'm pretty grossed out, and now I feel bad about being annoyed by them.

I take refuge in a real amusement part I dreamt about a few nights earlier where the actor who dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow flirted with me. I think I hid under the ferris wheel. Not smart.

Then I woke up. So I guess I lived.

Oh, I also forgot to tell you. The problem I thought I understood that my dead friend Mike appeared to me in a dream to tell me wasn't what it seemed...really wasn't. Like, I was further off than I knew.

I'm gonna go ahead and make it a rule to listen to things dead people tell me in dreams.

Last Saturday, I dreamt that I had to do something for my friend Sachi, but I was late for school. I had to go through this crazy dream maze that I've been through in other dreams. It's kind of on the side of a large hill or quarry, and I can see it from my first-person perspective and from across the way, like shots in a movie. It's very yellow and hot and sandy. I sound like a lunatic, but I'm trying to paint a picture here. And I don't know it's an actual maze while I'm going through it, but it's surrounded on all sides by various obstructions, and I'm growing increasingly frustrated, as I always need to be somewhere.

At the end, I get to this little house, and it's designed like one of those old timey colonies where people dress up like colonists and churn their own butter. There's an actor/worker there trying to get me to cook something with honey, and I'm just rolling my eyes the whole time.

I get a call from Sachi, and he tells me that I'm late for the play we're in, and they got a real director, who is now pissed off at me. I'm so overwhelmed from being stuck in the maze and forced to make some stupid honey dinner that I sit down at this table in the colonial kitchen with a friend here in Japan, Priscilla, and I just start sobbing.

Well, Priscilla doesn't know me very well, so she starts laughing at me, because, you know, Lauren's always the jokester. I absolutely flip out on her, and scream in her face, wondering who would laugh at a fucking hysterically crying person. She got this shocked look on her face, like she thought my crying was a joke, and now felt awful. Then I felt awful. Then I woke up.

My friends told me the next day that I dream of the most random people, and it's true. The two stars of my dream, I'm not really close friends with, and one we haven't heard from in months and might actually be dead. Nah, she lives next to Kevin. I'm sure he'd notice something. Unless he killed her...

Sunday, I had a dream that I was the stage manager at Performing Arts Camp, which is weird, because at the moment I was dreaming it, the first day of camp was actually beginning in real life.

I have a lot of stage manager dreams: something going wrong, the director stopping the play to bring me out in front of the audience and yell at me.
Only, this year, I'm not going back to camp, and they've had to replace me. I dreamt the new stage manager was so good, they placed this really elaborate beautiful Victorian set during the 10-minute intermission, COMPLETE with a working snow machine and huge piles of actual snow on stage.

Everyone was gushing about how good this new girl was (a camper named Amanda who was a few groups below me in the old days), and how glad they were to be rid of me.
I sat in the balcony watching it all, and the play went so smoothly, she even had the time to come up and rest in the balcony to watch the plays -- something I've always wanted to do. Seeing plays from the side doesn't do them justice.

Anyway, the two directors thank her for all her great work by shining a spotlight into the balcony for all the audience to see and applaud. I happened to be sitting in the corner of the far reaches of the spotlight's circle, and the directors screamed at me in front of everyone to quit ruining her big moment and get out of the spotlight.

So there you have it. Sometimes the thing I like most about my dreams is the lack of subtlety in its symbolism and metaphors. It's all right there on the surface. I'm an open book.

A few nights ago, I dreamt of my friend Jamie and my friend Tyler. Tyler is in a relationship, in real life, with a girl named Sarah. But in my dream, I was hanging out with the two of them in this super nice hotel. I have no idea where we were, but we were all dressed really nice.

I get the feeling, though, that I was there working on something. Like, I looked nice, but I was on the clock. Kind of the feeling I get when I'm working for Tiger Woods in Vegas.

Anyway, we're all in a room, for some reason, and I sloooowly start getting the hint...that my friends totally want to get it on. And I'm trying to figure out how best to leave the room without it being awkward. Then, they ask me to borrow a condom, so I take my leave to go on a quest to the hotel lobby.

End of dream! I never made it back to give them the condom, but I'm sure they used the pull-out method, in my unimagined imagination.
I should keep my dreams to myself sometimes, I think.

So Gabe gave me some vitamins that he said have an interesting side effect of causing lucid dreaming. I decided to test it out, on a weekend night, so I'd have more time to sleep, as I am a masochist during the week.

Anyway, so I tried one, and it was pretty potent. I couldn't recall TOO many details the next day, but I know I had a LOT of dreams, and I was aware I was dreaming in each one. I kept thinking, in my dreams, "It's because of the vitamins! Awesome! I hope I remember this!" But I wasn't able to affect anything.

Until the last dream. In this dream, I was working with Jamie and Kevin for a painter or an artist or something, and we were mass producing this delicate artwork. I dunno. This was in Dream New York or Dream Venice; they kind of look the same. Anyway, at one point, I was cleaning up the studio, and I said, "This is a mess," and the artist thought I was talking about her work, and she got pissed and fired all three of us.

I was really upset for a few minutes, but then I remembered, "Lucid dreaming, lucid dreaming, TiVo! Rewind! Rewind!" And I like skipped back -- literally like a TiVo, with the little bar and beeps and flashes of video. And I went back to myself cleaning up, and actively did NOT say anything disparaging. It was pretty cool.

When I took the second pill Gabe gave me, nothing that cool happened. My dreams seem to be getting shorter and with less...plot? I have flashes of intense emotions or, like, answers to some unasked question. Nothing to blog about, though. The other night, I dreamt my friend asked if I shaved my legs, and I said I did, and he said, "Good." Look out members of the Dream Pulitzer Board.

I did have one notable snippet a few weeks back. My friend Mike, who died of an aneurysm a year ago came to me, and we chilled. I also dreamt about him right after he died. It was a nice, relaxing conversation, just the two of us hanging out. Well, so, in this dream, he came to me really intently and said something that I don't feel like sharing. Suffice it to say, he told me that a problem I was going through wasn't what it seemed. This took me aback because I had finally figured out and come to terms with that problem, and I was uncomfortable opening it back up. Also, a few of my friends were there, and they felt very awkward by Mike's insistence.

Now, I'm not gonna get all hippy dippy on you, but it really struck me as a strange dream, a strange cast of characters, and strange that I would be subconsciously second-guessing this scenario that I thought I came to terms with.

FURTHER ANALYSIS MUST BE FORMULATED.

I wanted to make a post just talking in general about how I dream and dreams I've had in the past.

I've always had really vivid and intricate plot-driven dreams, ever since I was little. I used to have a recurring nightmare from when I was 3 until I was at least 10 about a scarecrow man who lived in the bathroom and had candy corn for eyes. Terrifying. My mom accidentally taught me about lucid dreaming, sort of. She told me that the next time I had a nightmare, to just tell myself that it was a dream, and it would go away. I guess a lot of parents tell their kids that, but I really believed it.

I remember the first time I had a nightmare where something horrible was chasing me, and I decided to try my mom's experiment. It was the coolest thing ever. I changed channels in my dream. Suddenly, I wasn't in a dark, grey and green forest anymore, I was watching a tennis match. Then I changed again, and I was in a hilarious sitcom. It was awesome. At the end of the dream, I "woke up" and my mom was making waffles.

This is apparently common with lucid dreaming, and I think that's what Kerjack was talking about. The breathing thing is actually a test, to make sure you're actually asleep. I don't believe doing it during the day actually causes it, unless it's psychosomatic. I've also heard that you should try hitting light switches if you think you're awake, and if they don't affect any appliances, you know you're asleep.

BUT lucid dreaming isn't everything. I'm happy just to see what I can come up with. I've heard that you're not supposed to be able to dream in color, but I am positive that I do. I also have smells and touch, which is nice.

I've been able to dream in German, when I was at the height of my studies, but I probably couldn't do it anymore.

Like I said a few entries ago, I go through periods where I dream a lot and can remember them for long periods of time. I don't know what sets off these periods, as my sleep patterns change so much. I seem to be in a good dream-recall cycle now, which is fun. I like to try and figure out what's bothering me and why.

I actually hate falling asleep, and I have terrible sleeping habits because of it. I try not to lie down until the split second I know I'll fall asleep. If I lay down any time before that, I start stressing out about everything that happened that day, and what I need to prepare for the next day. Then I can't get to sleep for hours.

I have a few other weirdo sleep rituals, which I'll keep to myself so I don't get sent right to the nut house. But I'll give you a hint -- it has to do with the order of my Firefox tabs before I can get to sleep.

:) Okay, more dreaming coming soon, I hope.

My first night in Kansai, I had a really bad nightmare, and I know what set it off.

I had been talking about lucid dreaming with Gabe and Kevin. Kevin swears it can't be done, and Gabe says he takes vitamin supplements that enhance it.

Anyway, so either during my nap or the first night there, I had this dream that I killed someone -- I think my friend Seth, but I can't be sure. He was a part of it somehow, and I did horrible things to cover it up. I also did them horribly, and I was on the verge of being caught. Suddenly, I was half lucid dreaming, half channeling the movie "Butterfly Effect." I was like, "Wait, I'll just go back to a point in the dream where I never killed anyone, and it will be okay!"

But, like Ashton Kutcher in Butterfly Effect, every attempt at going back and changing the inevitable future caused me to still kill the person and end up worse off than before. Kevin was in the dream too, telling me I shouldn't have messed with fate. Bastards.

Then LAST night, I had ANOTHER dream about killing someone. And the only thing on my mind was that I wanted to stay in Japan. So I got a fake name and tried to travel around the countryside, avoiding the law. My friends all had to help me out, slipping me food and providing me with lodgings and shelter along my journey. I didn't feel bad for killing whoever I killed, and everyone was on my side. Maybe they understood. Maybe I did everyone a favor.

Sheesh. Give me back dreams about kicking zombie ass any day. I only kill bad guys!