Wow. I just woke up from a wacky dream. As per usual, I don’t remember much, nor would it really matter if I did (or is it better to forget?), but I seem to remember Modest Mouse’s Dashboard was playing. And there was a beach. Yes, I dream a lot about beaches. And “The Beach”.

Well this has been a pretty useless post so far, so let’s up the ante. What follows are:

Murray’s Super Tips for Easy (Lucid) Dreaming. Sometimes.

1. Wake up slightly earlier than you normally do.
2. I don’t just mean open your eyes, I mean get out of bed completely, as shitty as this sounds.
3. Go do something moderately awakening like eating breakfast, going outside, or reading the paper.
4. Do this for a short amount of time only, don’t actually get yourself ready for the day, cause that’ll fuck up your sleep schedule, and won’t work as well, I don’t think.
5. Go back to bed, ready and willing to fall back asleep in the cushioned heaveny palace that is your mattress.
6. Make sure the room is as dark as it is when you normally go to sleep. If it isn’t, simply stick duct tape over your eyes.
7. Not really.
8. Fall asleep, making sure to remind yourself frequently thar you are relaxed and falling asleep, and that you are ready to dream, the lucid dream in fact, as your thoughts now will be the most determining factor in what you will dream about.
9. If possible, fantasize about things that are highly emotional, stimulating, and impossible (in waking life) but very, very highly desired. Like an avid love affair, with an adrenaline addicted, human-shaped, clump of cheese.

You probably won’t dream about the exact things you picture, but if the underlying emotional charges are there, you may very well explore these feelings in some form of abstract dream narrative.

The latest and greatest dream theory suggests that dreams are the brains way of dealing with emotional urges unable to be fulfilled in waking life. Sounds like ol’ Freud, right? Not really, the so-called Expectation Fulfilment Theory of Dreams is much more concrete, a ton less crazy and neurotic and disturbed and wrong than Freud’s ideas, and in many ways more tame. More scientific, by a long shot. And more tangible, too.

“Wow!” you think - what a dang ol’ nifty list he’s done up here!

Moral of the story: ‘You keep dreaming, San Diego’.