TOW 		             
Dreaming; Night of
August 17, 1985
       8:08              2Stuff. I was at a house—huge—along with a number of people from my high school class. I was goofing around with some younger kids, when one of them accidentally fell over the edge of the cliff on which the mansion was built. Everyone (except me) rushed over there to peer over the edge, but apparently, he was obviously dead, battered apart. Then I was playing with another young kid. I went to a closet where I knew there was an opening into the wall. There was no sign of one, so I punched at the wall where I figured it to be. Sure enough, a section of the wall fell back into the hole. Looking into the gap, I could see rungs set into the left-hand wall, going both up and down, as we were apparently on a central level of the house. The opening was rather small, so I sent my little friend into the narrow shaft. He/she started climbing up the ladder to see where it led. I went up to some higher viewpoint and looked down on the climbing one. Suddenly, he/she lost his/her grip and fell. I feared this was to be a replay of the death of the other friend, but after falling six or seven rungs, he/she managed to grab hold of the rungs and stop his/her fall. He/she climbed carefully back down and came out the hole I had made in the closet wall, through which he/she had entered. Feeling through the whole stack of plasterboard pieces just inside the hole, I tried to find one big enough to cover the hole. They were all too small, however, so I left it open, knowing that I would get in trouble with whoever owned the house (my little friend's father, I believe). I then went outside onto the patio between the mansion and the edge of the cliff (a different part of it from where the boy had fallen off, however; to the right of). I don't remember what triggered it, but, suddenly, I became aware. Almost reflexively, I looked quickly at my hands, but then I put them back by my sides, thinking that to look at them would only initiate dream loss (based on past experience). I followed this thought through, remembering the prescribed (by Dr. LaBerge) method for prolonging a failing dream—spinning. This was of little use at the moment, however, because not only was I not losing the dream, but I was experiencing unusual clarity. This didn't last long, though. Seconds after I thought of dream loss and spinning, the dream did begin to fade and darken. I immediately began to spin myself around, counterclockwise, and after only four or five revolutions, I found myself stopped, with the dream back to its former clarity, and then some. I looked around briefly, and, seeing again the precipice, I decided to jump. After taking a moment to overcome my natural fear of such an action, I started walking toward the edge. A policeman walked by in front of me, and we exchanged waves. There were a few others around, so, very suavely, I said "Adios amigos" and with a running leap, jumped over the edge. I saw the branches of huge, oak-like trees that rose so high that I saw that I would meet with them after falling only a third of the distance (dark-green leaved, mossy, lichen-covered, wide, wide spreading branches). As I fell, I sort of turned around, facing back toward where I'd jumped. I saw PL standing there, watching me. He seemed to know what I'd done, and made some comment about what he'd do for me if I survived the fall. I don't think that I have ever been more alive in a dream as while I was falling here. My mind was working clearly, and I was contemplating the significance of the fall, and what would happen if I hit, etc., as I fell. I was looking all round me, eagerly experiencing what it would be like to endure such a fall, even though it was, of course, a false representation of a fall—more like a drifting float than a gravity-yanked, headlong fall. But I was enjoying myself immensely, only a little worried about what was to come (I remembered reading of people who had dreamed of being impaled, and I eyed the swiftly approaching tree branches nervously), when I began to lose the dream. I tried to spin myself, but, in freefall, it was hard to get a purchase on anything, and I failed. Unable to maintain the dream, I awoke. (A-)