In the bottom of a box in the attic I have a yellowing post-it note that reads:

"You are afraid of your Russian eyebrows, that they will one day climb down from their place and strangle you." I wrote down the words when I had woken up from a dream. The year was 2003 and I was in a room in an apartment rented by a community college in southern Sweden. My budgie looked at me. I had had a dream. I wasn’t in a cold sweat. I wasn’t afraid. I just had the sentence that the man on the cobbled square had whispered to me in the dream. I wrote it down on a piece of paper next to the bed.

For a while I wrote down everything that happened in my dreams. What people said, what they looked like, landscapes and the colors, shapes, monsters, dragons, robots, ninjas and all that happened to show up in my head during the journeys.

After a while I began to sense patterns. There were things that reoccurred. I dreamt a lot about vehicles, movement and travel. I was always on the hunt or, I was being chased. There were mostly cars, bicycles, trams or airplanes in the dreams. Elevators and stairs also appeared. There was often something menacing in the form of a monster, police, military or foe. I ran a guerrilla movement that would fight against the menacing power.

One thing that changed after I began to keep a dream diary was that I was becoming more and more aware in the dreams. It was like my brain knew that I would need details in order to make notes afterwards, so it became more focused once I found myself in a dream world. Often I woke up mentally inside the dream, I realized I was dreaming. According to many researchers this is what’s referred to as "Lucid dreaming". Dreams in which we are partly or wholly aware that we are dreaming. The problem is that as soon as I realized I was dreaming that dream would begin to disappear. According to many scientists you can, however, train your ability to dream lucidly without the dream disappearing.

One trick is that every day, when awake, write the word “dream” in your hand. Then, turn your hand like when you look at a watch and read the word dream. After a while your brain gets the movement and word down. The action will then automatically be repeated in the dream. Inside the dream, you’ll turn your hand and the word "dream" will be revealed. Then we have just to practice on trying to stay in the dream. The trick of it is to breathe calmly and not be scared or excited. With practice one can become aware and stay in the dream.