Yesterday, I decided I want to write a fantasy story. Needing material, I decided to try to dream the plot. For ideas to write about, I had decided to go outside and explore the city from this perspective.
This morning, after havign slept around seven hours, which is not enough; I need 8 or 9 hours, I gave up. It was raining, and I was not eager to get out of bed. Instead, I tried an OBE.
I rolled onto my side. I could feel the throbbing in my solar plexus. I closed my eyes and focused on the vibration in my solar plexus. The throbbing grew in intensity, and within seconds, it had flung me out of bed. I landed on my hands and toes.
My POV was of being in a pushup or yoga plank position on the floor beside the bed. I looked around the room. Curtain was closed. On the bed, I saw only bare sheets. Not my body.
I knew my body was there in the bed, but I could not see it. Why do I never see my body in such a dream? I wondered. I was disappointed. “Goddammit.â€
I could feel my body lying on the sofa bed, and at the same time, I could feel myself on the floor holding the plank yoga pose. Idiotic discrepancies like this ruin the dream experience, and I prefer a dreamless sleep.
I was well aware that I was dreaming. I was thinking clearly, so clearly, that I could do complicated arithmetic in my head. (One of the lucidity tests I do during dreams).
I knew I would not be able to hold it (the dream. I can hold the plank position for as long as I want.) for long. Act fast. “No time. Move,†I said aloud.
Not much time. I could feel it going. “Must hurry,†I said aloud.
I tried to open the curtain, but it was solid and did not budge. “Ack!†I went through the curtain and the window. Passing through the solid barriers confused me.
Now, I could see only gray light, as though I were looking into fog. I felt weightless. I could not feel any objects touching me, not even the ground or my bed. I had no idea where I was.
Then, I felt motion. I struggled to see. Finally, I saw a gray shape silhouetted in darkness. It became a pale, gray trapezoid outlined in darkness. The sense of motion continued. The trapezoid was getting smaller and smaller as though I were moving backwards down a tunnel, away from the light at the end of the tunnel.
Then, I realized the trapezoid was the cloudy sky. I was on my back looking up at the sky. It was framed by the tops of the walls of the courtyard. I was falling down into the courtyard one hundred feet below. I braced myself for the inevitable bloody SPLAT.
After what seemed nearly a minute, I was no longer moving. I was on the ground of the courtyard of my building. Door to building was open. Another door opposite led through an ivy covered wall. People were going in and out through the doorways.
“Think fast,†I said. “Time’s running out.†I went into my building. I went through the passage into the lobby. It was just my building and normal people were going through. I could feel myself waking up.
What do with so little time? Think fast. It was early in the morning, and many of the residents were still asleep.
Perhaps I could go into their apartments and give them Night Terrors. Go medieval and put on Devil’s horns and prod them with a pitchfork. Or sit on their chests and choke them like the Old Hag. Put on a Roswell Gray alien suit and give them an Anal Probe… Last time I tried that, my experimental subject screamed and woke the entire building. Woke me up too. I know it was only a dream, but the coincidence between my dream content and the screaming of a real person was... interesting. And reapeatable. I decided it was not a good idea to dream about things like this.
Move out now.
I went back out through the hallway. People were walking through the hall. The hallway was narrow, and only one person could pass at a time. I forced my way through the people in the hall, climbing over them, saying, “Sorry, so sorry, pardon me, Ma’am. I need to get out right now, sorry. It is an emergency.â€
After an agonizing moment that seemed like it took an hour, I made it out of the building to the courtyard again and went through the other door in the ivy-covered wall opposite my building.
I went through a tunnel and came out into a grassy area. It was foggy, and I could only see fifty feet.
The area nearest me was clear. Abruptly, at a distance of around fifty feet from me, was the fog. It was like a wall reaching to the sky. It roiled, and shadows moved in it. Some shadows would solidify into forms and boiled away. Trees, animals, people, buildings became solid and evaporated into fog.
Near me was a ring of huge trees. I moved toward the trees, and the Fog of Time retreated. Landscape and trees and statues formed out of it. They remained solid, and I approached and walked among them. As I looked, the wall of fog receded.
I was in a park full of plane trees, huge and untrimmed. The park was surrounded by walls that looked like they were made of thick, boiling mist. I had the feeling that they were a dream phenomenon known as the Walls of Time. Perhaps they were temporal walls sectioning off this area into a place of non-time that intersects thousands of years of time, past and future, for this area.
Although I did not pay attention to the tops, they were perhaps thirty meters high and their orientations and locations corresponded to that of the University behind my apartment, just as they are in life.
Stationed along the Walls were monuments, representational bronzes atop high stone and brick bases. They were mostly of significant people, mythical creatures, and animals done in a nineteenth century realistic style once popular for municipal art.
I walked around. People were here in the park. Going farther south (away from my building), there was a canal. In it was a barge (for people, like a pleasure boat). There was a ticket kiosk. A female voice was announcing guided tours and describing the areas the boat would visit. Her words were garbled, as though her reference time frame did not match mine. I could not follow.
I went to the barge. I wondered where it went. I looked for its name and home port. It was called the “Nightmare.†I could not find its port. I decided to get on and go for a cruise.
Sadly, I could no longer maintain the state. I woke up and did research on streams in the area. Turns out the Beaver river used to run through here until perhaps 100 years ago. It was used as a network of transport canals. There are old photos and it is shown on maps as being where I dreamed part of it.
The park and locations of the walls of mist were the same as those of the College of Agriculture.
The experience took only a few minutes. I was glad I had not wasted the entire morning lying around dreaming.
