I had a dream that a white cat crawled into our apartment through one of the living room windows. A window into the apartment next door was close enough that the cat was able to walk from their outer windowsill to ours, and since we had the window open, it just clawed its way through the screen. This cat kept giving Shugo a hard time, so I assumed it had come over here to play with him. When I discovered the cat, I showed a bewildered Autumn before carrying it back to the window and inspecting the damage. The cat’s owner heard its meow and came straight to the window. After explaining what I surmised had happened, I passed the cat back to him through our open windows. For some reason, I acted like the hole in the screen was my fault and promised to have maintenance take a look at it.

I had a dream last night about one of my teeth falling out. This is one of those commonly recognized stress dreams – apparently it means I’m afraid of any number of things happening – but I think the cause here is fairly literal. I’ve been nervous about this particular tooth for a couple of weeks now. I should really see a dentist.

Anyway, the tooth came out essentially whole. There was no visible damage to it at all. I even entertained the idea that if I brought it into a dentist’s office, he might be able to put it back in. I went through a period of sheer disbelief during which I was convinced this couldn’t possibly have happened. It had to be a dream, I thought. I tried various reality checks, and all of them indicated to me that I was wide awake. With a sigh, I accepted that it wasn’t a dream after all. I would have to go into work with a tooth missing until I could get an appointment. I showed the tooth to Autumn in its pristine glory.

Autumn said something last night about how she wonders sometimes if she’s the original or if Elita is. The thought makes me nervous. If Elita was actually the original, what would that mean? Would she spend most of the time out in the body, leaving Autumn in the brain goo? As I told her, since Autumn’s the part that’s in love with me, it would be a difficult transition. I couldn’t provide an acceptable answer when they asked what I would do. I still don’t know how I would handle it. I did remark that we would cross that bridge if we come to it. My fear is that the original isn’t likely to go away, but a created identity might. I’ve been trying not to think about it today, but I can’t help it. Autumn smiles when she looks at me. Elita doesn’t see anything special, mostly just a guy that takes care of her roommate.

Maybe the question isn’t which identity is the original, but why there’s an identity that doesn’t see me in that light or how I feel about it. That route is much more complicated. They aren’t the same person, but they make up the same person. Does it mean part of Autumn doesn’t love me? What am I supposed to do about that?

I guess another problem is the difference between how I see Elita and how I see Symphony. I always say Symphony is alive and that she possesses agency, but she’s not exactly a contender for control of the body. She’s just a highly sophisticated mental construct. Someone like Ezekiel is more similar to Elita in my eyes, but he’s still not part of me. Would it be more accurate to say I’m not part of him?

I’m sure it will take days to arrive at an answer I’m happy with. I wish it was easier to connect our minds.

I was walking down a very long hallway. Autumn and Mary were behind me, but I ran ahead of them. I kicked through doors as I came to them to maintain momentum. As I neared the end of the hall, I stopped to wait for them to catch up. Mary arrived first with someone I identified as her mother. I had to take pictures of Mary for Autumn. For some reason, they didn’t come out right; portions of her body were cut off or upside-down no matter how I positioned the camera. In the only good pictures I took, her clothing mysteriously disappeared. I wanted to delete the pictures from the camera because I feared Autumn would misunderstand, but she arrived before I could. I turned the camera off and hoped she wouldn’t ask to see it.

As you grow older, new responsibilities come into your life that make maintaining a dream journal more difficult. This started in the last year and a half of high school for me with my first job. Suddenly, weekends weren’t always mine anymore. I would have to wake up by a certain time, get ready, and drive myself to work, where I would spend the next several hours thinking about my job so I would still have one the following day. My solution to this was to go to bed earlier or sleep less, depending on what required my attention the night before. When I started college, things actually improved in the short-term because my schedule was so light. Even with attending classes, doing homework, and studying, I had a lot of free time. That meant I could take naps if I wanted to, shift my sleep schedule back an hour to give me time in the morning to record dreams, that sort of thing. If I had gotten a job in college, though, it would have been impossible for me to effectively record my dreams. That would have eaten the vast majority of my free time. Anyway, I’m envious of that period of my life now. Some disturbing things happened in Nyre back then, but at least I had time to deal with them!

After college was the real change, and I saw it coming from years in the past. I got a full-time job. This absorbed more of my time than any other single obligation ever had, and because I spent so much time commuting, it was a real challenge to fit dreams into my schedule. Except on weekends, that is — fortunately, working weekends in my position is the exception rather than the rule. I set out to use my weekends as a way to spark the dreaming again. If I could get my recall back to a point where I could remember most of my dreams throughout the day without thinking about them, I could recover from this new responsibility.

Oh, but then we got a dog.

I’ve always loved dogs. They’re a part of my immediate and extended family and always have been. This includes Mai, our little ball of perpetual energy. That said, while my job swallows up too much of my free time, the dog is the single greatest obstacle to tracking my dreams effectively. Why is that? Because 90% of the time or more, I wake up because she needs to go outside rather than waking naturally. I take her outside just before I go to sleep, one to three times during the night, and then once before work. If I try to do anything other than take her out, she’ll continue to whimper about it (or might even go inside). That includes lying in bed with my eyes closed and trying to commit my dream to memory. One just can’t focus like that. I have little choice except to take her outside to relieve herself, and by the time I make it out the door, I’ve usually forgotten any dreams that came to mind. They’re certainly gone by the time I make it back inside. If the dog isn’t what wakes me, it’s my alarm for work — and I have to set this as late as possible so that I’m not completely exhausted, which doesn’t leave me time to record my dreams currently anyway.

Again, there are only a couple of possible solutions to this. I could go to bed earlier, but this would put additional strain on my relationship, as Autumn and I don’t get to spend that much time together already. I could sleep less so I can wake up earlier, but this isn’t good for my health or pleasant, and I already cut back on sleep some weeks because of work. I can’t have Autumn handle the dog during the night because the area we live in isn’t the nicest; I would worry for her safety. So… This sort of thing is why my attempts to recover my dream recall are such an uphill struggle. I remembered two distinct, full dreams this morning, but I’m left with only a fragment now. It’s no surprise that my efforts have shifted from accessing Nyre in dreams to reaching it via mental back doors.

I thought I wiped this out a long time ago, but judging by the date of my last post (at the time of writing, this was in March), evidently I was using it earlier this year. That’s nuts. Even if there are only a handful of posts here from the last couple of years… I’m glad I didn’t destroy it, though… This journal holds more of my dreams and ramblings than anywhere or anything else, dating back to 2005. Actually, I think it’s worth breathing new life into. I have journal entries from other places that can be merged back here.

All in all, I’m basically at the same point with my dreams as I was in January of this year – if not further regressed. Life is different now in a number of ways. I’ll write more about all that soon.

I still haven’t made any progress with Nyre, and my connection is so faint right now it’s unsettling, but at least I got Elita to call me Nephanim.

There’s a difference in the tone of her voice. It’s definitely hard to distinguish Elita’s normal tone from Autumn’s angry one, though… The biggest difference is probably the pace of intonation. Elita sounds angry to me, but she talks at a slower rate than Autumn would enraged.

I’m so tired. Why am I on a train?

Last night, I had a screaming dream. One of those dreams where everyone and everything upset me so thoroughly that the only possible recourse was to scream at the top of my lungs and start breaking things. Well, everyone except Autumn this time. These happen occasionally, most likely due to accumulated stress.

I guess we were visiting my family. We were late leaving the house for something, but since Autumn wasn’t feeling well, there was nothing I could do about it. I tried to convince the rest of my family to go without us. They wouldn’t, nor would they accept that going with us was not an option. I grabbed the nearest wooden dining chair and split it over my father’s head. I continued to smash the pieces of the chair into walls and other things while screaming my lungs out.

I woke this morning feeling nauseous and upset.

Apheri and I talked about the current situation regarding Autumn and brain goo girl. She’s clearly of the opinion that my current approach is unhealthy at best. She suggested that it would be more effective to focus on reclaiming some degree of stable contact with Nyre right now than to spin my wheels trying to meddle in someone else’s affairs. I can’t disagree — but I’m on unstable footing in the waking world trying to make sense of things, so there’s a chance it’s going to come out from beneath my feet if I lose focus. I don’t have the luxury of chasing phantom worlds with this stuff going on at home. We didn’t reach a consensus; her frustration was faint, but visible.

So what have I been up to? Work, primarily. Autumn and I have a private journal together I’ve been using for various purposes. It was originally intended to serve as a bridge between her mental space and mine, but it’s served other capacities like as a dream journal or a spot for me to whine in the mornings on my way to the office. You know, the kind of stuff I typically did here.

I suggested that maybe I should focus some of that attention here instead. If it’s not furthering the goal of bringing our worlds together, it’s just noise on that journal.

Don’t get me wrong – there’s not much going on with my dreams at the moment. I might have more to say here in the near future, though.