The Non-Lumping In of Extremists

There. Quit lumping everyone in together. There are extremists in every area, and in every religion...and these generalizations do not apply to everyone. This guy hits the nail on the head

The Non-lumping together of extremists


This one seemed to get some reaction among my crowd.
Hope it gets a reaction from you too.

And it really makes me realize how many people I know are so very uneducated on the topic. Those whom choose to read one or two articles and take them for face value. 

Dont you remember? .... Question EVERYTHING.

Plant a tree

We need to work with our future selves and with our past selves. Not just for our present self. Because that will be the end of us. We need to take care of all of us.



"The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The next best time is right now."

Me vs. They

This is just a rant... I have no plan here...
I do, however, have a topic at hand.

The topic of somebody that I know and the totally emotional take-over and upheaval they caused in my life. It is not like there ever is a convenient time to do such a thing, but there are definitely better times. For I was just getting out of the hospital in which I had stayed an extended visit. I knew not everything would be the same, but the world kept turning while I lie stuck in an over-sanitized limbo watching the clock, completely disconnected with the outside world. Upon my exit, I was hoping that this person in my life continued to play the role that they were playing leading up to the time I went in to the hospital. One would think that would be the case, right?
Nah.

I did trust them, And I continued to, due to the chosen ignorance I cast over myself. I put all my faith in them and let myself be led astray.
When we had always talked about everything and discussed things openly. Because we are awesome like that. Oh wait.... Or was it just something that we always said. I chose to believe it. I am pretty sure they did too.
When my brain thinks about this particular topic, you will notice that my eyes will glaze over in a distant stare. I am scanning my memory, trying to search for a time when I was able to openly bring up some serious and/or urgent matter with them. One which was ideally met with an equally open and willingness to listen sort of ear.
Instead? Moments like that were often met head-on, as though this small matter at hand was actually imperative to sustaining their ego. Or just flat-out denials, each word dripping with disdain and disgust with me as a human being for even bringing it up to begin with. It was almost as though they thought that by standing their ground and denying something to its death was their way of going back in time. To change the situation so it did not happen, or to hide it better so they wouldn't be found out and not be in this predicament to begin with.

Underneath the Foliage

Dream::

It was me and a few friends, at a cabin in the middle of the woods. It was autumn and the leaves were in the midst of changing between yellow to orange. This other group of people showed up. At first it was just two or three of them. But the group kept growing and soon they were at about twenty individuals. And they were starting to get aggressive and began picking on me and my friends.

It wasn't long before they were ganging up on us. Making full use of the term mob mentality. We had to run. It was important to get out of there. I led my group of friends and ducked into the woods, darting between trees, leaping over branches and stumps, and trampling the foliage beneath our feet.

A few of my slower friends fell behind and was absorbed by the angry mob. We came across this road in the middle of this forest. It was only me and another friend who chose to cross it. Everybody else was sceptical for some reason, and their indecisiveness was what led to their destruction.
They were overcome by these corrupted, angry strangers.

While that mob was distracted, me and my friend who had crossed the road quickly buried ourselves beneath a pile of fallen leaves. I did not have much time to accomplish this. And thus the top of my head and half my face was still showing. I did not have even a second more to make the single sweeping motion that it would have took to cover my head with more dead leaves. My only hope was that I would still blend in with my surroundings.
There I was, facing the direction from which I came, watching my friends be destroyed by the mob. It was hard and I did not want to watch, but I had little choice, lest I be noticed myself... and blow the cover for both me and my friend. I did not look away and maintained my cover, scared that they would notice my eyes staring back at them. I continued to lie there.

The mob emerged from the forest out onto the road, dramatically looking in both directions. A few squinted their eyes in the direction in which we were hiding, looking for any trace of us. Obviously assuming we had run, and not hid. They saw no path blazed by us into the forest. The mob split up; half going up the road, and the other half headed down. There was so much determination on their behalf to find us, the two remaining individuals... and ruin us, like they had my friends.


And thus... I awoke.

Jynx's Crystal Healing... part one

I went to Jynx's place after work today. She looks good. And I mean healthy and happy. I have known Jynx for nearly 10 years now, and she is one of my bests. I like seeing her happy.
She has taken up an interest in crystal healings and readings, and has since divulged herself in it.
I went to her house after work today and she performed a crystal healing on me. The first one I have had ever done. And the fifth one that she has ever done. I am happy I could help out, and also to open myself up just a bit more to this world.

The first half.. my thoughts were all over the place. But after a short while my thoughts started to focus in one direction and then another, without sporadically jumping about. Instead of the general worries of every day life, they started to form more around the prospect of me getting my life together. Giving me a sense of confidence in what I had gone through, bad or otherwise.

It is hard to say much more about it all.
After we ate roast beef [and this little piggy...] and watched some shows. Then left to find ourselves at Emma's apartment for a quick beer. Let's just call it a ten-minutes-or-less beer stop.
The apartment filled up quickly with folks getting together for Chadwick's birthday. Lauren was amongst those people. I get the strangest vibes sometimes in a room like that.

I easily could have stayed out tonight. But the real world called. And I don't really want to find myself in awkward situations surrounded by drugs. To be completely honest.
I can't pretend I am hardly twenty any more. Responsibilities. And a desire to take care of myself.

I wondered This...

I came to the realization today that in the past couple years, even the past few months, or few days, my views on life have completely shifted. Constantly evolving into something better and with more knowledge about the world at large. When in each present state I always feel like I know the absolute truth right then. Reality is - I don't. And clearly I will never know everything at any point in this life. Learning. Constantly learning with each passing situation.

It wasn't that long ago in which I felt like I was never going to be able to accomplish anything, And now, I actually feel that can take on the world. Which very different from the classic "taking over the world... more accurately associated when I am manic. Not going to lie - it does not mean it always feels like I am in control. Because sometimes you do not have the grasp on you things you thought you had that entire time.

Its learning to accept the bad feelings in life right alongside the good ones... that's what is tough. And I believe that once you learn how to do it, you conquer that bit. Right then and there.

But that is okay. Did you know that? Those shitty situations are the ones we learn from. Yes, they do have tough fucking lessons attached to them. They are the things that happen when you need to change something in your life. These times, annoying and irritating and plain despressing as they were... if it wasn't for them, I might not notice all the beautiful stuff life. The little things that never get noticed and walked right by... it is that which I have come to appreciate.

I think that it was coming face to face with death that has changed me. I am more of a person than I was before that moment leading up to my near demise. I am proud of who I am now. And to think I did not actually believe that I could become the me that I had lost a long a time ago.... revised, re-mixed, and evolved to make the me I am right here.

And I wonder how much more I will learn yet? And which ways I will grow.
I actually wonder this.

Slasher movie much..?

Dream::
#1

Part 1:
I showed up at my mom's house, exhausted and carrying this huge hiking backpack. Usually her place is in the middle of urban Winnipeg, but her house here stood out in the woods. Nobody was home when I went inside and I thought of how strange that was. But I made myself food and situated myself in the basement bedroom. As I was relaxing, my sister came into the room, asking to borrow a movie from the vew few items in there. I don't think I even gave her one, but instead started to watch one myself. And went into a dream within a dream.

Part 2:
The dream within a dream: I was part of the very large cast of strangers. There were three carfuls of us, all between the ages of 20-35. We had rented a very big house, a mansion almost cabin-like, in this very rich neighbourhood. The character involved were all very interesting - you had the tough guy, three nerdy boys who were very close, this asian guy, another guy portraying very douchebag-like traits, a few girls, another girl that was really a cartoon character that I watched change into human form, and myself. The backyard to this mansion was quite small for a house of this size, but still pretty fancy like the rest of the place.

It started to get closer to evening, and all of us were exploring the house. The basement was incredibly creepy and we were obviously supposed to stay out. But we didn't. Four of us were exploring downstairs after we pried the door open. There were weird tall cases with chains and locks on them. Creepy spiked barrels piled in one corner. Everything was dusty, and there were only one eerie swinging lightbulb to light everything up.

The tough guy was determined to get open this tall double-doored set of cabinets, locked shut with a chain wrapped around it. He pushed and pulled at it, shook it, and then pried at the lock with a crowbar until it snapped off. Inside was a wealth of liquor. Bottles of rye, whisky, vodka, and some random ones with what looked like Russian writing on it. He was super excited about this, "See? Thank me later. Now I wonder what's in the other ones."

I am usually one for exploring, so of course I was looking around all this weird, old, and very dusty stuff. However, I refused to open anything that clearly was not meant to be opened. The asian guy was bent on opening up one of these creepy spiked barrels in the corner. He took the crowbar from the other guy and was trying to open the lid. He started trying to hit it with the crowbar, and as he swung it back to get momentum he accidentally hit off the vent cover hidden in the ceiling as he brought it down upon the barrel. At that exact moment tho, as the vent cover fell off, all this hissing and dust came flying out. The swinging lightbulb flickered out for two seconds. Everybody stopped. This was entirely too creepy - that was agreed. But when the light flickered back on we saw that he had indeed knocked off the lid of the barrel. He looked inside. There was nothing. And we were all suddenly much too scared to stay in that basement.

Now in the backyard, we drank up that liquor, And did what people do when they rent out a place for a weekend - party.

However, something was watching us. Some really creepy hooded figure, akin to one you'd find in a scary slasher movie, was plotting something. Perhaps we released something in that basement. Perhaps it was always there. One by one, they would go missing. At first it seemed like maybe they went off to go smoke a joint or something. Until we caught sight of this freaky hooded figure. And everyone bolted, trying to save their own necks.

There was a park close by. That is where I went with a few of the others (two of the girls and one of the boy nerds, who mysteriously had a weird burn line mark across the top of his hand). We attempted to hide in the trees. Altho it seemed like no matter where any of us went to hide, that thing was right on our trail. And usually one step ahead. One of the girls had run past this outdoor hot tub display, and saw that she could open what looked like a big sliding drawer in the side of it. She crawled in. But did not care to look inside of the hot tub that she was getting into. For it wasn't full of water, but instead that creepy hooded figure lay inside in wait, He took his big jagged dagger and stabbed it through the bottom of the hot tub, slicing into her and creating an opening through which he put his hand. Then grabbed her throat.

The scene switched. It now focused on the few of us left alive. Myself, the three nerds who all had the same mysterious burn mark across all of their hands, and one of the girls. It seemed like those with the burn mark were not actually being followed. It actually seemed as though they were safe. The girl and I, were not safe even though we were with them.

It seemed the only way to run was through the neighbourhood of these big mansions. And almost directly to one of the houses with this old man in front. He saw us running frantically, partially covered in blood and signalled us over and inside. He was skinny and bent-over, and way too happy to have us inside of his house. I was the first to think it, that we were being corralled over here. The doors appeared to lock, without any way to unlock them. He wasn't interested in the girls, but more so the guys with the marks across their hands. He wanted them.

Then I woke up.

Dream::
#2

This dream was completely unlike the first one. In this dream it was my birthday party. I had tons of weird looking "goody bags" in the form of these jelly frisbee-like devices. I invited most of the girls I was friends with in high school, One of them (in their 8 year old self) actually fixed a smashed up car in my garage before my step-dad could get home and stop her.

It was very short. I didn't accomplish very much because it was lucid and I was just sort of wandering around between everyone, thinking to myself, "Wow, I havent thought about you in years. Why the hell do you decide to show up now?" Followed by a sense of wonder.

Cookies for Pants

Dream::

It took place in Vassar, this extremely small town in south-eastern Manitoba. A place a couple kilometers off the highway with about two dozen houses in it. And half of those with no one living in them. There is a church right in the very middle of town, a community hall where every single event always takes place, some baseball diamonds that used to bring a lot of people around back in the day, a convenience store that I have only ever seen one man work at since I was a little girl.. and a few sets of of railway tracks running right through the middle of the town, with trains loudly honking their horn and going far faster than you are used to seeing in the city. They average every couple hours, causing any conversations being had to pause for the next few minutes until words can be heard again.

So, there I was in my dream with Will Smith, and his Uncle Phil, from Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. In my grandpa's house (which is right beside the church) there we were in the kitchen. Someone brought forward this bag of cookies in a white paper bag that they had found in one of the rooms. I recognized them instantly, for I had baked them two years prior. Oatmeal raison. They had been sitting in a closet or in a drawer in one of the rooms this whole time, being delicious and uneaten.

Will and Phil wanted twelve of these cookies from me pretty bad. However, I really wanted at least one of them for myself, and there were only twelve left in the paper bag. Plus, they didn't have any money. The deal we settled on was that Phil was to trade me his pants for the only twelve cookies there were. As long as I found him a replacement pair of pants. There was no question about it - this was a great deal. Consider them sold.

I agreed to this because I remembered that I just happened to have an extra pair of pants (in his size) in my car that was parked in the backyard of my Aunty Karen's place. Karen's place is about a four minute walk across the back of the yard of the church from my grandpa's place. I wasn't walking though, as quick as it might have been. I jumped in a motorized buggy I had, roll-cage and all. Phil and Will jumped in their separate buggies and followed me on a quick ride over to Karen's, just down a street and around a corner.

I got to my car, parked on the lawn where other old vehicles and campers were parked, and looked in my backseat and then my trunk. I checked under both front seats. It became more and more apparent I did not have any replacement pants for Phil. Which made me a liar. Him and Will waited for me, with their buggies running on the roadside. I panicked a bit at this point. Because they had already started eating those cookies, and I had no pants for him. I made a quick dash into my Aunty Karen's house, and to no avail I found zero pants there. How could this be so hard?

The neighbours were having a garage sale. A very large, and tall garage, filled with items for sale at really cheap, garage-sale prices. The items weren't normal old VCR's, children's toys, and old china... but were actually and entirely only indoor potted plants. Fake ones, real ones, hanging ones. All indoor plants for incredibly low prices, the way garage sales were. There was no chance whatsoever of me finding pants here, never mind ones of Phil's size. I checked any ways just to be sure as the neighbours sat in their lawn chairs chatting to one another, but still keeping an eye on me as I shuffled through the plants, wary of me; making sure I wasn't going to... i don't know... walk away with a hanging plant in my back pocket without paying..???

Without telling Will or Phil what was going on, I jumped in my buggy, signalling for them to follow me back to my grandpa's. I had to break the news to Phil. As I expected, he was quite angry with me, but also had eaten all my cookies in the meanwhile. There was no way he could have gotten his pants back from me. Not anymore. Slightly upset that I couldn't follow through on my word, I went into the house. My family was there. Not everyone but random members. 

They told me not to worry. And revealed something to me about Phil in hopes of cheering me up. (Apparently he was actually a part of my family, "Uncle" Phil.) They told me that when Phil would sleep at night, instead of sleepwalking, or talking, or snoring, he had an entirely different annoying habit. Every night while asleep in his bed, he would get up right against the wall and using his thumb nail would scratch the wall all night long. It would drive whoever he was sleeping with crazy. As well as the unfortunate person in the next room. My cousin said that there was a time when he would be wide awake because of this, and so he started trying to decipher what these thumb scratches could mean. The thought was that maybe he was trying to communicate from his dreams. However, nothing that made sense was discovered from those long nights. They appeared to be gibberish,

________

Razor blade cereal

There are not a lot of details I remember about this one. But I could tell you one thing for sure; I was hiding razorblades in a bowl of cereal, and mixing it in with the milk so that you couldn't tell.

Scuffles & Sisters

The following dreams were three dreams that got mashed into one. Probably because there were some strong feelings attached to it.

DREAM..::

I was with my cousin and her baby, my mom, and my sister. Together the three of us walked up these steps outside of a building. Inside was the living room of a hotel room. Seeing as we were in a dream, the three of us discussed a variety of wacky topics. However my drug issues arose, which they often seem to once I am in a dream with my mom and/or sister.

They confronted me. All my drug issues laid out on the table; some real and from my past, some completely exaggerated, and some fake (but in a way, very real. Because it was mine, that dream me's real drug dream issues). None of this was approached in a friendly or a supportive way. And it would appear that I had drugs on me. I am not sure what kind they were, but they were a generic type of drug. I excused myself to the bathroom and tried to hide them underneath something... anything. And then I tried to hide some more out of the bathroom window, removing the screen and glass from the pane.

They were banging on the door. Actually it was my sister. And my nephew was now in the room - her son. She accused me of being the one to ruin him. To introduce this world to him, and in turn get him high. My sister had apparently had found acid in his room and... well, logically who else would be the one he would get it from. My nephew is a grown man... 20 years old. He is not a child and can make decisions for himself, is what I argued back.

Things got even more heated. As my mom sat back and just kind of shook her head at her two daughters fighting over this. She was more-so shaking her head that I was this big junkie, and that I couldn't just fess up to what they clearly thought to be the truth. My cousin, with her baby, just leaned back on the couch, furthest away from the drama that ensued. She covered her head with the blanket and blended into the background, making no noise and trying to remain unnoticed. Clearly she wanted nothing to do with any of this. Her baby girl was the quietest one the entire time, even through all this nonsense.

As the tension rose between me and my sister, the fight grew from verbal to physical. In my dreams, when I get to the boiling point of frustration I feel like I have no other option than to lash out physically. This never helps get my point across and I don't see how it would. But I was trying so hard to explain myself, with no one listening to a word I was saying. So more and more, as I was verbally attacked, I tried to strike out against my sister. She grabbed both of my wrists, on in each hand. She shook me, accusing me louder. At this point, it was clear that the point that both of us were trying to get across to the other, was getting lost in the heat of this argument.

How I got myself out of that situation, I do not know. But I left our hotel room, leaving them behind in it. Let them talk. I left out a different door from which I had come in - this one leading out into the hallway of the hotel.

A hotel employee walked past me, in his dark purple velvet vest over a white long-sleeved button up shirt, and black slacks. And he was short. So, so short that it bothered me. And personally I did not think he was a suitable candidate to be working at this place... for he was as tall as a child. That, and he had the attitude of one. He was incredibly sarcastic and snarky.

I asked him for a bottle of champagne that I was going to bring back up to the room as a peace offering. Not surprisingly, I got a rude answer back from him. So I declared that I was to complain to the hotel manager about him. His response was, "Not if I get there first." And he started running. Well, I was right behind him. And there we were, running down the hallway of this hotel, trying to push each other aside to get out ahead of the other.

We both made it to the hotel lobby, with him hot on my trail. The hotel manager was there, shiny bald head, glasses and all. What a nice guy.. he listened to my complaint. Not surprised by it at all. Other guests had also thought he was far too short as well. So with that being done, I turned around and decided to head back to the hotel room. Somehow, that had either cooled me off or distracted me.

I took a different route. Walking around the pool behind the glass walls, with the water slide and the few kids splashing around in it. I walked up stairs, down stars. I took a couple elevators. And noticed that I kept spotting this hotel manager a hallway length behind me, every now and then. Perhaps he was following me. Two times I stumbled right into him, and he asked me, "Did you need a hand looking for something?" I insisted I did not. But the third time I ran into him, I admitted I did need a little bit of help finding where I was going. I could not find the hotel room from which I came from. He pointed to a winding staircase. I ran up it.

I noticed a little girl. She looked incredibly familiar. I asked, "Do you know Sarah and Rebecca?" (two twin childhood friends from back when I was five years old). And she did. She was their little sister. And I followed her up to the top of the stairs where this gigantic round table was set. My Aunty Karen was there, and I gave her a big hug. A lot of other strangers sat around the table. And there was my sister, my mom, and my cousin with her baby. I took an empty place beside Aunty Karen.

And then I woke up.

++++++++


I woke up in-between dreams after the one where I fought with my sister. It was actually my sleep-yelling in the real world that startled me awake. I am glad it did though. I did not want to see how that would have turned out. When my brain gets a little evil and a little twisted and brings past drug use into my dreams, I usually find myself confronting my family. Or my family confronting me. You can really read a lot into my previous guilty conscious with dreams like this.

Hire me. Fire me. Actually, piggy-back me instead.

Last night I slept terrible.
This did not stop me from dreaming, even though every hour or two I would sit up in bed, puffing on my e-cigarette, reliving the dream I just had in my head. Then I would lay back down on my pillow and repeat the process. I must have awoken five or six times throughout the night.

This dream was the most recent of them. And the one I can most accurately offer up more details.

DREAM ::

It took place within this strip mall. The front were these large windows, that so incredibly mirrored the outside world in such a way hard to describe. Inside were stores...  for example, a small grocer, a hairstylist, and a slightly larger drug store. You could travel between the stores without going outside. Or through the back hallway area, meant for employees only.

In the short time period of one day, I had so easily gotten myself employed at the hair stylists. I would just be shampooing people's heads, and cleaning up the hair trimmings. Altho it wasn't long, before my acting out by rebelling against the products they were using on people... got me fired from the job. It was quick. It was painless.

I went over to the drug store next door. It was similar in style to many shoppers drug marts that I have been inside. Them, without knowing that their neighbour hairstylist had already hired and fired me that same day, also gave me a job.

I suppose I was just far too rowdy to hold down a job.
For I was on this other person's back getting a piggy-back ride, and they were carrying me up and down the aisles. We were running around. Things were getting knocked over. In the excitement of getting this piggy-back ride, I didn't even realize for the first while that it was actually me that was carrying myself.

And then my perspective suddenly switched to the me that was doing all the carrying. At this point, my new boss and other employees were attempting to hunt us down, so I carried my other self to the back through the hallways behind the stores. Finally we crouched down in this locker room, where we discussed the schematics of this all.

The dream became lucid here... for I was talking face-to-face with myself, carrying on a conversation about how this all was possible. There was no way that I couldn't realize that this was just the insanity my dream world was making up for me. So, bam! the realization of the dream turned it into a lucid one.

I only got to spend a small amount of time exploring a portion of the locker room with myself as my companion. We then saw an opening in the ceiling tiles, with a pile of boxes below it. I boosted myself up. It was just in time too, as we both looked down through the hole from the ceiling we were in and saw the people chasing us go running past.

And I woke up.

+++++++

Two jobs hired and fired in one dream. That was impressive, even for me. It is clear why I dreamt of this, seeing as how I am job hunting with everything I got these days. It doesn't worry me, though. I feel like I will be able to pull myself through this with much less incident than this dream indicated.

DREAM...:

In this dark underground bunker, there was this very small window-less corridor that came out from one door - the entrance, and then it would wind around turning left, and then turning right, and then led to the exit. Both the entrance and exit doors were very thick, solid doors with windows to watch into the corridor.

Watching the corridor through those doors were prison guards and a warden. They were watching that corridor because, inside of it, was squished approximately forty inmates. The halls were thin, with a low ceiling, and along the walls on both sides of the inmates, were these very large heavy metal barrels. Nearly unmoveable by oneself.

Personally, myself, I was not partaking in the dream; I was moreso a spectator, watching the events take place before my eyes. Although at times, I could float above them all and watch everything unravel before my eyes... I could also choose to take up the view point of any of these inmates, the prison guards and even the warden.

All the inmates were hardcore criminals, and would be getting a sentence of life had they been in a regular prison (as opposed to a corridor...). My impression was that the prison guards, under direct order of the warder, had trapped all the inmates in this corridor. The only way in or out was through the two doors, which were thick, solid and also heavily protected.

There was this mysterious over-hanging impending doom the entire dream, like a countdown until some tragedy of sorts. Until something would happen in this corridor and affect all of these inmates, to the joy of the prison guards and warden watching safely behind the doors, snickering and gossiping. There was a lot of profanity. There was no lack of threats. And I really got a glimpse of the private life of both the individuals from the prison, and the cliques involved. The inmates needed to get past any problems of beefs they had with each other in the past, and work together, if they wanted even the smallest chance of escaping this terrible situation.

The countdown was soon among them. And the inmates figured out that impending threat was to come from the heavy duty barrels lined up beside each and every one of them. I am not sure how, but one of the main guys (prison tattoos, bald head, scars a-plenty, and a natural leader among them) made a deal with the warden to let him have the satisfaction of killing him one-on-one, face-to-face. He somehow managed to use this haggling conversation with the him to get the information about what exactly was inside of those barrels. The inmates then used the contents, as well as the timer with the countdown, to their advantage, blasting a whole in the wall. About half of them escaped with their lives, while the rest was killed in the blast, and by other random half-assed traps set up. It was incredibly dramatic.

++++++

Tournament jousting arms

My dreams have become more intense. More frequently I have been able to snap myself into a lucid dreaming mode. And I have come to take full advantage of my time spent in this astral dreaming plane. I couldn't be more excited about it.

_____
My dream the other night was of aliens coming down from the sky. Big alien bug-like creatures with armoured sections. Their arms were shaped like two long conical tournament jousting weapons on each elbow.

My family and friends, along with other random people from my childhood past, seemed to be the target of the aliens falling from the sky and landing with a giant thud on the ground.

It wasn't very long into the dream when I realized amidst all the running from building to building with a small group of people, that this world was most definitely not real. Therefore meaning I was in a dream. I walked confidently towards the aliens, with the people behind me hiding behind fences, bushes, and construction equipment. I was not scared of them, and them not without a lack of trying to scare me.

Three quarters of the distance towards them I stopped walking. Got on my knees, still facing them. And then I bowed forward, as they came rushing directly towards us. The first alien, getting near, stopped beside me. I wasn't attempting to be invisible. What I was doing was a sign of respect, and I was succumbing to them.

An alien stopped, its full attention on me. It took its jousting-arm and placed the point of it on my back, along by spine, a couple inches below my neck. As soon as contact between me and it was made, it instantly communicated with me. It lasted about three seconds. I knew from here on, none of the aliens would see me as a threat.

These were the first few moments where I confronted the overlying issue of the dream, so that I could deal with it properly and move on to more interesting dream choices. With the alien invasion behind me and everything hectic now calm, I got down and put my face at ground level, taking in the spectacular detail that was the grass. It seemed, as I turned a 360, that the world had varying levels of surrealism depending on where I looked.

I walked towards downtown, finding myself entering a tall building. Several stories up, I found two old friends of mine. In this dream world, I was able to remind myself that their behaviour toward me was completely false, as told to me by subconscious. The entire time in their "presence" I was aware how this was not the real them.
_____


So slowly am I able to affect the outcome. One dream at a time.
I feel that my subconscious creates certain scenarios to place me into once I fully submerse myself into sleep. And in those scenarios I either learn to cope with it, or remind myself to do so in the real world.