November 17th,
I am standing in my teachers biology room which is 3 times smaller than it is in real life and I am wiping down the black, squared tables with a white wash rag. Once I’m finished I walked over to the chemistry teacher (yes the chemistry teacher) and tell her that I’m finished. I exit the room and walk through the halls of the school into the Immaculate Conception gym, somehow getting from one place to other like a wormhole, bending the distances between space and time. When I arrive to the gym the cast of the movie Interstellar are sitting around a white table and then I realize that I am actually Matthew McCounaghey as I sit down to Nick Jonas.
The peculiar thing about dreaming is not necessarily the dreams themselves, but the act of remembering and storing memories correlated with dreams. We don’t always remember exactly what dream we had as soon as we wake up. Some days it takes a couple minutes to reconcile what happened; other days it could take hours upon hours. Whether or not you wake up in the middle of REM sleep or you wake up in one of the other five stages, the memory of the dream will come back to you through no systematic method. Sometimes the memories come back at random times, possibly through a ‘trigger’. It is at this moment when your brain does what it does best, make connections, and your brain finds parallels with your dream and something in the real world. Like a broken river dam, it all comes flooding back. It is amazing how words can activate your brain and stimulate the memory you have. While what we see and experience during a dream may not be real, the memory made in a dream feels as real as one you made in real life.
I have been obsessed with memory and dreams my entire life. I would ask myself questions like “why do I remember certain dreams and not others?” or “do dreams serve an actual purpose?”. I then heard about the phenomenon of lucid dreaming and being able to control the events of your dreams. Because of my past fascination regarding the subject of dreams and memories, along with my engrossment in the move Inception, I wanted to learn more about it. I learned I can teach myself to,,,,, lucid dream and ways to teach yourself how to not wake up instantly after you realize you’re dreaming while still in the dream. Every morning after a night where I dreamt, I would write down the date and the events in the dream that I could remember. It became as routine as taking a shower or brushing my teeth. It was now a habit.
While I have not reached the full capabilities of lucid dreaming, I am now able to realize that I am, in fact, in a dream and go along for the ride and the radical escapades. The beauty about dreams is that there are no bounds or conventional protocols to them. The point of a dream is not for it to make sense. When it does, you cannot help but wonder if it was a dream or if it was reality. One does not realize the strangeness of the dream until he or she is awake, which through lucid dreaming, is during the dream.
The closest analogy to the format of a dreamscape that I can allude to is probably close to a Darren Aronofsky movie. He incorporates jump cuts and non linear story arcs that are similar to dreaming. These elements make it nearly impossible for the viewers to grasp the movie vividly when each different episode of the dream switched from one to the other. While there are different story lines with no sequence, the dreams go together in a vertiginous, rapidly evolving locomotion. Dreaming is essentially like Wheel of Fortune if you want to bring it to broad terms. Every spin of the wheel, along with every letter correctly or incorrectly chosen seemingly has nothing to do with each other until the phrase is finally formed and every letter is hypostatized.
During this quarter I journaled every time after I dreamt and made specific note of the dreams during which I was conscious, so I could better understand the formalities of dreaming, why I dream the things I do. Do our actions and experiences in the real world effect how we perceive dreams? Do dreams act as an emotional outlet for things that happen to us in our daily lives? I wondered whether or not dreams can evolve into dream landscapes and eventually, possibly, into a parallel universe. Is there a way for all dreams to interact with one another and provide itself as a catalyst? Eventually, I wanted to be able to be as awake as I am now, writing this essay, as when I am during a dream. Not as cowardice as an escape from reality, but a rational acceptance of dual realities.

October 1st,
The dream began on a train with my distant family, with my aunt Jill sitting in the row behind and to the left of me, while I sat with my cousin Spencer. Although it was a train, the interior of it was visually representative of a charter bus. It was already presumed that we are on the bus because of a trip. The seats were gray with red and dark blue diamond designs while the headrest was blue. The carpeting on the floor was dark gray and the luggage racks were black. There were dim, almost Christmas like lights mounted on the ceiling, but not only was the ambience of the bus muddy and cluttered but the aerospace of it too. It was as if someone had a let a candle burn too long or the steam from a shower fogged up the highly condensed space of a bathroom. The reason for the trip seemed important because of the visceral nature of the surroundings.
The onlooking scenery was beautiful. The sky was a deep, dark blue and the transparent lights permeated through the pores outlined by buildings. The train was a relative of a Shinkansen, but the presence I felt in the dream was that I was in either Chicago or New York.
Aboard the train people mistakenly assume that Spencer and I are brothers. There is no such thing as a passage of time in a dream. It is just selected memories put together on a story board. When the storyline goes in another direction, it is for no reason. I fell asleep aboard the train, and as we arrived in the big city, passengers began to exit. I became separated from my family, as if I were Kevin from Home Alone. Cool.
They searched for me in the streets of the big city, describing my physical and facial figures like Frodo Baggins. But not that I look like him or anything, but because I guess between point A and point B I transformed into Frodo Baggins relatively smoothly in the dream. Another interruption real quick. What’s cool about dreams are that they can be told in first person and third person. So like a narrative, you aren’t just limited to one aspect of the storytelling.
I am walking around taking pictures of the night sky in either Chicago or New York and I find myself at Auntie Annes, the pretzel shop. It’s selectively random, but that’s where I end up on that cold night. And then I presumably woke up.
That dream was one of the most visually prolific dreams I had. The imagery of the train, and or bus, and the urban depiction of either Chicago or New York was very distinct. I am fascinated that the dream world can be so distinct yet so obscure. The whole idea that I had no idea what city I was in, while also simultaneously believing that I knew what city I was in, is agonizingly impressive. In truth, I really have no way of determining where the setting of my dream, but there is some sort of ‘dream inference’ which provides me with context clues and creates the awareness.
Dreams are made up of every worldly element and blended together to create it’s own universal space which bends logic and reason. The visual memory of a charter bus I was on during an eight grade expedition is molded together with a train I had seen in a movie, creating a simulated dreamscape. Something I have never thought about in four years, like the interior of a charter bus, is still active in my memory and helps form a conclusive dream. There is beauty in that. There is beauty in all that exists, where it resides, where it hibernates.

October 6th,
While I’m walking with Josie, a lifeguard and a soon-to-be sophomore in college, in the parking lot next to the Maplewood tennis courts. She tells me that she never wants to talk to me again and says that she never liked me in the first place. On the contrary, we proceed to snapchat back and forth with each other. The next thing I know, I am in Mr. Rowley’s class playing my Les Paul guitar and eating Domino’s pizza.
This dream seemed like a contingency at the time but proved to be a telling sign for the future events involving characters in this dream.  I dreamt this amidst the duration of a fling I had with a college girl who had come back to visit me during the school year. Only a few weeks after this dream did our relationship ultimately end, which begs the question on whether or not our dreams have a vision of the future or if it is just some casual coincidence.

October 16th,
I am walking around with friends inside of Busch Stadium with friends, including my coworker Lauren Gill. When I get home I find it run through and the front door unlocked. I see the high school basketball coach upstairs vacuuming and I hear the sound of voices upstairs. I run out and hide in the bushes next to the house. There happens to be fifteen “bad guys” on the roof. Next thing I know, I am in my room during the day, and I know they’re in my house, but like a narcoleptic, I fall asleep while trying to sneak out of the window. I awake from my slumber to lock all the doors in my house, although I don’t know who I am with, besides my mom, but I’m certain they are two friends. Eventually Kareem comes to say hi, but he turns out to be a bad guy, and I lock him up. Then a crazy homeless man comes from the basement but as any normal person would do I knock him out. Chris and Jonah arrive and I let them into the house, along the way letting in a couple beagles while I’m at it. Then the scene transfers to a penalty kick shootout between Borussia Dortmund and the Poland National Team. Marco Reus, a Dortmund player, is evidently nervous but one of teammates that his kick is no big deal, so he barely taps the ball. Artur Boruc, the Polish goalkeeper, tries to lavishly save it, but his arrogance gets the best of him and the ball goes in the goal . The dream then shifts to a house in Clayton. I’m trying to enter my friend Briana’s room but one of the Clayton boys threatens me for doing so. As might be expected by now, I knock him out. I travel the parameters of the house and go upstairs and start doing online homework with my friend Sofie, another Clayton student.
During this time I was having an on and off fling with one of my coworkers, which most likely prompted me to dream about being with her, though the biggest takeaway from this dream were the “bad guys” in my house. Three days before this dream my mother and I were robbed and they stole my bass guitar and two TVs. My avid act of locking doors and hitting people is how I felt after coming to terms with the fact that other people had been through my house and gone through my personal belongings. The most amazing thing about the dreams is that they are random and there can be symbolism there if you look for it. Every one of those sequences or characters in the dream can be connected, even if they have never personally met. The characters can undertake different roles that they have never had. In my dream I could be completely different than I am in real life, but in the midst of the dream I would not tell the difference because it is a form of conscience. It is interesting to think that I am aware of the fact that I am unaware, both extremities mingling at the same time.

October 26th,
Sitting shotgun in a car with my friends Zack Siebert and Zach Russell, we get pulled over by a policeman. As it turns out it is Earl, my mom’s boyfriend, dressed as a cop. He let’s us go even though we are apparently under the influence of marijuana. After being let go we travel to hangout with somebody named Pat, which eventually results in us meeting up with Clayton kids. The dream shifts to the MRH Elementary gym where MRH kids and I are eating pizza. The dream ends when someone asks me if I canoe with my mom, which I respond by saying “can you?”
As much as you might like me to correlate the elements of this dream with a real occurrence, I was never actually pulled over during this time. Everything about this dream is random and does not apply itself with anything having to do with reality. Clearly my dream conscience has the tastebuds for pizza as well as a friendship for Clayton students, but all of these are randomly selected.

October 30th,
The dream begins with me peeing in a bush underneath a tree in the evening of the night. When a car pulls up beside me I react very nonchalantly and my friends Chris and Addy ask me to get in the car. Once I get in the car, they tell me they don’t want me in the car anymore, which I find extremely strange and more so annoying. Is that the entire reason for them interrupting my attempt at public urination?  I begin to yell at them both, but neither of the two say a word to me. When we arrive to school I push Chris into locker, which trickles into a slight shoving match between he and I.
I can only assume that I had to pee while dreaming this, and no I did not wet the bed either (at least I don’t think I did…). My friends Chris has made a guest reappearance, which is interesting to see him interact with me throughout different dreams. In spite of the fact that we are very good friends in real life, he and I are fighting in this dream and that’s very surprising.

November 17th,
I am standing in my teachers biology room which is 3 times smaller than it is in real life and I am wiping down the black, squared tables with a white wash rag. Once I’m finished I walked over to the chemistry teacher (yes the chemistry teacher) and tell her that I’m finished. I exit the room and walk through the halls of the school into the Immaculate Conception gym, somehow getting from one place to other like a wormhole, bending the distances between space and time. When I arrive to the gym the cast of the movie Interstellar are sitting around a white table and then I realize that I am actually Matthew McCounaghey as I sit down to Nick Jonas.
This is easy. The previous week I had seen the movie Interstellar and I had immediately began to obsess over for days straight. I saw the film with my friend Zach on a Sunday and following school days consisted of me either listening to the soundtrack of the film, reading the movie’s wikipedia page from top to bottom or reading reviews of it. I also studied the film’s scientific accuracy and had a new found respect for Mr. McCounaghey, which might explain my sudden incarnation as him. I also dreamt about the Immaculate Conception gym in my neighborhood because that is where I play futsal with my friends.
After a few months of journaling and once again looking back and analyzing the data I had collected, I had a lot of interesting theories. My experiences where directly related to what it was I was dreaming about whether it be about Interstellar, girls or robbers. The biggest thing I noticed was that there is no sense of rational in what happens in the dreams. Although most of them are based off real life experiences, they take on many different aspects and bend physics and dimensions, which makes it so surreal.