false awakening

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #260: The Prancing Pied Piper

A false awakening takes me downstairs where I putter around for a bit doing silly "chores" like moving chairs around. Then I head back upstairs, totally focused on having a lucid dream when I “return to bed”. Just so that I’ll get in the right mindset, I do a nose pinch reality check and oh hey, check it out, I’m already having a lucid dream! I hold the nose pinch and start leaping and prancing about, waving my other hand in the air. I sing about lucid dreaming while I do this.

I head into my youngest son R’s room, but instead of R, I find my 5-year-old son E sleeping on his bed. “Daddy, what are you doing?” he asks getting out of bed.

I keep singing, prancing, nose-pinching, and waving one arm. I sing, “Lucid dream, lucid dream, lucid dreeeeee-eeeeeeam!” E laughs and says, “Daddyyy!” I think about returning to the master bedroom in the hopes of finding Wife and enjoying some sexytime. But those plans fall through when E gets out of bed, and starts following me around, prancing the same way that I am.

I reflect on the joy of being lucid and this emotion takes me to a desire to hear beautiful music. (I’d chained these feelings together using Dreamer’s goal memory technique.) This is in pursuit of Jenkees’ dare to do cool stuff to a lucid orchestral soundtrack. E and I go prancing into the master bedroom as I realize that I need to stop singing if I’m going to get a new soundtrack.

The lights are on in the bedroom and instead of me or Wife, my friend KS is lying in bed next to some blonde guy with surfer hair. KS gets out of bed and rubs her eyes like it’s the morning. I ignore her and surfer guy, instead phasing my face through the shutters so I can look out into the night. I start creating an orchestral soundtrack in my head.

It sounds nice, but I realize that I’m forcing every note manually and composing it as an act of will. I want it to emerge organically instead. Maybe if I go do something outside. I phase through the window and leap out into the night with a yell. As I’m preparing to take flight, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #254: Adobe

I’m driving through a city, looking for some place to park. My dream family is here with me -- a dark-haired woman is my wife, my young daughter is in a car seat in the back, and there’s maybe a 2nd child (a son?) as well. We’re exhausted and homeless, living out of our car. I pull into a parking space next to a hill and sleep for a while. A cop car pulls up soon, though, and we have to move on.

Now we’re driving down a dusty freeway that’s under construction. Workers wander back and forth, while a thick cloud of tan dust obscures my vision. I can barely see 30 feet in front of me and I’m really scared that I’m going to hit someone. A worker walks right in front of the car and I swerve, barely missing him. I’m so afraid that I’m going to kill somebody and I panic myself into…

… a false awakening. I believe that I’m anotherdreamer and that I need to write this dream down before I forget it. My surroundings are alien to me, though, and I’m feeling super lazy, way too tired to get out of bed to journal. Something seems odd, though, and I flow into…

… another false awakening as myself! :canislucidus: I still feel really tired and lazy, but this time since I’ve “really woken up”, I decide to do the right thing and journal. I grab my DJ and walk into the bathroom, but as I’m holding the DJ I notice that the journal isn’t as thick as it usually is. (I keep a pen jammed in it.) I try the nose pinch, blow through, and now I’m lucid. I walk back into the bedroom and my vision dims until I’m in the void.

I rub my hands together, recalling the idea to try a little singing the next time I’m in the void. I sing a line about how “this is a lucid dreeeeeeam” and my voice comes out like half-badass/half-joke rock like Tenacious D. After some more singing and hand-rubbing, my vision comes back and I’m in my bedroom closet. I walk back out to the window and try some air guitar. It’s lame at first, but after a few tries, I hear some distant chords of electric guitar that actually sound pretty good.

I look out through the bedroom window onto a nighttime desert scene. As far as I can see there are rows of adobe buildings lit by neon signs. It looks like fun, so I phase through the window and hulk-jump off the side of the house toward the buildings. I do some mid-air guitar playing during this jump, too, and kind of flail my legs around like I’m trying to do some kind of rock star jump thing. I land between one set of restaurants and buildings on a dusty street, then hop into the air again.

While I’m up in the air, I decide that I want to try summoning Dreamer to hang out at one of these places to talk and pig out on a bunch of dream food. Out loud I say, “Okay, I know we’re supposed to meet here…” and then “Don’t be late!” I nag. When I land, though, the DC waiting there is a woman I don’t recognize, tall and pale with short brown hair, a pierced nose, and multiple piercings on each ear. She starts speaking to me in this really caustic, unpleasant American accent, berating me about my guitar playing.

“Your guitar playing was all bullshit,” says the woman. “That wasn’t even you!” She walks up to me, continuing to scold and complain about my guitar playing, telling me that my playing sucked, etc. I find this pretty annoying but for some reason I don’t think to just leave.

I don’t find this DC appealing, but I decide to turn things around by saying, “There’s no need to be so weird about it. If you wanted to have sex with me, you should have just asked.” As I say this, she takes on a different countenance, her hair darkening, her body growing a little shorter, a little more athletic-looking, and a softer, more attractive face, probably mixed-race. She approaches me and we kiss. We awkwardly lose our balance and do this not-at-all sexy fall onto the road. I make an attempt at escalating things to sexytime, but my vision has faded out. There are a few more seconds of void-kissing before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #249: Long Shot

I’m hanging out with Dreamer in a sparsely-decorated apartment. She’s wearing a dark jumper with the hood pulled up over her head. We’re joking around and coming up with silly games and dares. Dreamer comes up with a really really crazy one that gets us laughing. Warning: It is pretty gross!

Spoiler for Very gross dare -- not for the squeamish!:

I’m talking to Dreamer about how I’ve got some kind of pimple on the right side of my nose. (True IWL! ) Dreamer says hey, she’s got one too and that we should have a contest where each of us pops our pimple and sees who can shoot their pimple juice the farthest.

We laugh and laugh about this and finally decide to do it. We worry about what happens if the other person’s aim is bad and we accidentally pimple-juice each other. To help with this, I find a huge sheet of plexiglass for each of us to hide behind while the other person goes. As I’m setting the plexiglass up, the idea of the dare is so unbelievably disgusting that...

... I become lucid. I feel sleepy and out if it, and I tell Dreamer that I’m really happy to have become lucid so soon after going to sleep, but that I feel really groggy. We both stand up and Dreamer is super tall, easily 7 feet. We talk for a bit, my brain moving slowly during the conversation. Her accent is entirely American during the conversation, which strikes me as one of those strange details that I figure will work itself out.

I finally remember my intent to do the “play a musical instrument that doesn’t exist in waking life” task and ask Dreamer if she has an instrument for me. She says, “Well, I have this violin!” She produces a violin from out of nowhere and somehow plays a few notes with no bow. Now she plucks 3 notes pizzicato.

I tell her that this is cool but that we need to have an instrument that doesn’t exist in waking life. I know that I should be able to flow into the task from here but I feel really slow-witted. I get a little confused what to do next, and Dreamer walks up to me (still enormously tall) and wraps me in a hug. Since I don’t know what to do anyway, I just stay still for a moment and enjoy this. After a bit, I get the sensation of falling asleep, and …

… I emerge in a false awakening in the same room. Dreamer isn’t here, but I have a vision of her sitting on the edge of a table with a model train set on it. In this mental image she’s wearing the same trackies and dark jumper from the previous part of the dream, but now she seems to be her normal height. I wander around the apartment, eventually finding the table, but Dreamer isn’t there. The dream ends fairly quickly after that.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #241: Not Quite Movie Night

I wander into a still-lit movie theater and see my cousin “SU” sitting next to one of his close college friends on his right, his two children on the left. How cool that they’re here! I’m looking forward to joining them for the movie, and the positive emotions remind me of dreaming, making me lucid.

Even though I’m lucid, I still want to walk down and join them for the movie just the same. As I’m about to head down, though, I realize that I’m not wearing a shirt. This bothers me, so I turn around, expecting to find a shirt on the seats behind me.

And there it is, a black polo shirt! Unfortunately, there’s also a discarded condom lying next to it. It doesn’t look obviously “used” but still, eww. I force-push it away with a wave of my hand and it sails out of sight. Unfortunately, even though I don’t physically touch it, I still feel it slap the back of my hand. Gross, glad that’s over!

I grab the shirt and put it on over my head. It’s getting hung up on my big head and just generally twisting around and seeming to go on forever no matter how much I pull it down. I remember my intent to perform a Task of the Month with Dreamer and start getting really antsy that I’m stuck doing this silly errand instead.

I address Dreamer, saying something like, “I can’t believe this! I’m really trying to find you!”

I flail around in the shirt and Dreamer’s voice responds: “Relax, stop struggling…” Yeah, she’s right… I relax my mind and put my arms up in a confident show-off pose and the shirt slips right on! The theater is still the same, but feels a little less stable now. I lunge for the back of someone’s seat, feeling a little worried about how stable the scene is, and the dream darkens into the void.

I open my eyes and see a dresser with a strange shape on it. Even closer to me is Wife, the two of us lying on our stomachs, facing one another during the nap. (I’m still dreaming, but this is precisely how we fell asleep together for this nap.) Wife looks completely lifelike, but I know I’m still dreaming and that this is a false awakening. I try to move my left arm, but I can’t... my mind has even simulated REM atonia! I marvel for a moment at the deadened feeling of my left arm before attempting an OBE-style roll out of my body. The dream doesn’t hold together through this, though, and I wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #233: Rucksack

I have a false awakening in a hotel room. It’s dark and my oldest son E is standing nearby. He asks me where Wife is and when I don’t know the answer, I feel terribly worried.

Another false awakening, and this time Wife is lying on the bed. She stirs and sits up. Confused, I complain to her that she shouldn’t have just disappeared earlier without telling us where she was going. She says something strange about the time of day and after a moment of feeling strange, I realize that this is a dream.

I walk to the hotel room window and phase through to the outside, finding myself 25 feet or so up in the air. I drift gently to the ground, finding myself in an alley during daytime. I’m behind a brick building and sign with fancy lettering reads:

“←Tavern→”

This sounds interesting, and apparently either way will take me there. I hop along through city streets until I come to a plaza at the base of a tall office building. I quite unexpectedly encounter an old friend “Rucksack”.

“Hi!” I say. I’m surprised, because he and I haven’t really talked in a few years.

“Hey,” he says. “I really like the stuff that you’re doing on DreamViews and I wanted to buy you some extra <dream control tricks?>. When you log on, you’ll see a $50 donation. That’s from me!”

I thank him, and he quickly leaves. I wonder what this new dream control could be. Unsure what to do next, I bound joyously around the plaza for a bit before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #231: Fedoras and Flatulence

I wake up feeling disappointed that I didn’t manage to have a lucid dream. Well, too late for that -- Wife and the kids are up and getting ready and my folks are here too. I feel grumpy and sorry for myself, but I get started with the day. Lots of mundane stuff happens and eventually we all wind up sitting at a cafeteria table across from a pedestal.

The pedestal fascinates me. It has the vague outline of a statue on it, which will fade from looking fully physical to almost completely invisible. It’s a statue of Artemis, and I know that nobody can see it but me because I’m the only lucid dreamer in this whole place. As I’m staring at this statue, a brown-haired woman in her early 20s sits down in the chair next to me, a little closer than appropriate. She touches me on the shoulder flirtatiously and leans in. “Hi! What are we looking at?”

I feel uneasy about how close she’s getting but also attracted and flattered. I feel like I don’t know how much information I should reveal about being a lucid dreamer, so my answer is guarded: “That’s supposed to be a statue there.”

“Well, what do you see?” she asks.

The truth: “It’s a statue of Artemis. I can see it because I’m a lucid dreamer.”

“That’s amazing!” she says. She makes a few more comments about lucid dreaming and then stands up. Her inner thigh brushes my left hand as she gets up and I again get that mix of attraction and discomfort. She smiles. “You should call me if you ever want to talk to me about it.”

I think that I’d have no way to call her because I don’t have her phone number. I’m about to ask her what it is but stop when I realize how bad that would sound. This all feels strange to me now. I look to my right and my family isn’t here with me. It’s just me. I take the nose pinch reality check and I blow right through, becoming semi-lucid but just not completely convinced. .This feels so real, am I sure? I hit a second nose pinch and now I’m fully lucid.

I get up from the table and move into an adjacent room, remembering my intent to summon Dreamer. My go-to method has been transforming an existing DC into her, so I look around at the few dream characters wandering this scene and confidently grab the nearest one. It’s a short, pudgy Asian male, overall a really abysmal candidate for this transform into Dreamer. I want to be confident though so I go right ahead with trying to transform this dude.

I press my hands along his scalp, spreading Dreamer’s purple hair color along his scalp. He’s smiling and kind of chuckling at this, seeming to find it funny. The purple is coming out but whatever paint is coming out of my hands feels really clump and uneven. The guy’s scalp is kind of sweaty, too, and the purple paint even starts running down his face. His hair isn’t even half purpled before I get frustrated after a long time trying. Okay, maybe he looks too different, try changing the face. I start mashing on his face with my hands, trying to change his look into Dreamer. He seems to be getting kind of pissed at me for this and the whole thing just becomes awkward.

Okay, move on. I leave and walk into another room with a strange, gently wavy floor. I try the behind-the-back summon, narrating that “I feel Dreamer’s hand over here,” but I feel this doubt like I’m not doing things properly. I call out “[Dreamer]!” (using her real name) and vaguely hear a response, and I decide that she must be up ahead in some nearby room. I decide to use my old trick of demanding that the dream show me the way, and now when I call for Dreamer, a doorway glows with bright yellow light.

I continue moving through another series of 3-4 doors this way, demanding to be shown the way and the dream complying. I wind up in a large, cavernous room filled with DCs. There is a group of nuns near one side of the room that are dressed in unusual red habits. A large number of adults wander the room (more women than men) and close to the center of the room there’s a shallow pit where a large group of children are playing together. I ask the dream to show me where Dreamer is, but the glow effect always seems to be slightly out of view, frustrating me. I demand out loud that “Everybody point to where [Dreamer] is in this room.”

Every character in the scene turns toward a young, blond girl that’s playing in the pit. She’s about 6, her hair much shorter and lighter than I would have imagined, but I feel like this is her. I walk up to the child, who looks up at me with a goofy, slightly crooked-toothed smile. I place my hands on the sides of her head and say, “This is you, you’re [Dreamer].” As I say this, she grows to full height and now she looks completely like herself, apart from the fact that she has the little girl’s short, blond hair.

“Thank you for finding me!” she says. Dreamer puts her arms around my neck and we briefly hug. Almost immediately, all of the DCs in the room move toward, all of them smiling at her, greeting her, and wanting to interact with her. Some of them congratulate her. I stand by a few feet to the side, interested and amused. As each of the DCs greet her in turn, at one point a man comes up with a tiny fedora and placed it onto her head as if he’s crowning her.

The happy throng of DCs congregate around Dreamer as they all walk toward one of the room’s exits. I feel sad to see her leave the dream scene so early but all of this feels very natural to me, so I don’t resist it.

Once I find myself alone, I walk through another exit into an office scene with lots of people working at desks. It looks like we’re high up in a skyscraper. I make some mischief in here with telekinesis, throwing a plastic sign, tossing a desk, picking up one poor guy who’s just trying to get his work done. The office workers start seeming uncomfortable with my presence, so I look for an exit.

Off to the side is a platform with a waiting helicopter, so I climb aboard. Another DC tries to get on with us, and there’s a brief argument about who should get to come aboard. The pilot says (referring to me) “He can do whatever he wants,” and we take off. We fly over the city for a good while and I spy a few buildings that look reminiscent from spots in Breaking Bad. Eventually the helicopter hovers over a forest clearing near a building and I jump out. The helicopter flies off and I’m alone again.

I remember that I have a lucid dare from Dreamer that requires me to perform a Super Advanced Fart (one which is “very long, loud, and powerful”). At first I feel like this will be impossible. My body isn’t giving me “the signal” that anything can be conjured up. I know that this is a dream, though, so I convince myself that a bubble of pressure is forming in my stomach. Once that’s there, a good push sends me into a full eruption. The emerging fart is ultra loud and super powerful, lifting me gently into the air. It feels like there’s a hand or a platform under my butt lifting me upward. I wobble around unsteadily in the air, leaning left and right and bobbing a bit. It feels like I have a jet pack on.

I’d hoped to have enough propulsion to reach lower earth orbit, but I never get more than 15-20 feet off the ground. As the “event” ends, I settle back down to the ground. Dare achieved!

I’ve still got some dream left, so I decide to find Dreamer again. I ask the dream to show me where she is, and a door glows on a nearby building. I head for the door but before I reach it, I have a false awakening at the foot of a bed. Wife is lying on the bed, completely unclothed, writing on a notepad. I feel extreme sexual attraction and I curl up next to her. The moment that I kiss her neck, though, her clothes reappear. Then she shows me that she’s making a list of personality quirks that makes her good at Jeopardy questions. I’m still trying to figure out how to turn things frisky when my dad walks by on the way to the kitchen. The mood is officially ruined, so I get up for the day before waking up for real.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #223: Final Heart

I have a false awakening in my childhood bedroom and as I’m contemplating going back to sleep, I realize that no way am I really sleeping in my old room. I become lucid and attempt to get out of bed, which fails. I try rolling out OBE-style and after some clumsy attempts, I’m finally on my feet.

I walk out to the living room, looking at my hands. They’re darker and more grayish than they’d be in waking life, but other than that they look pretty much just as they should. The dream’s feeling a bit dark, so I shout, “Let there be light!” Embarrassingly, nothing much happens, so I just wander around in the den some more, trying not to focus too much on this.

I look to my left to find my doppelganger (a lookalike or double of me) standing at the door I emerged from. He’s dressed like I do to sleep and he’s sort of got bed head. He smirks sleepily at me and I walk toward him, but as soon as we get close to each other, I snap suddenly to his perspective (more or less) and find myself alone again. I drift toward an external wall and phase outside onto the street.

Outside it feels like early morning. In the neighbor’s yard I find a woman in her late 40s standing around as 4 small dogs scamper happily at her feet. She nods a casual greeting. I remember my goal of summoning Dreamer, so I say to the woman, “Ahh, you’re Dreamer.” She seems confused at first, but even as I watch I see her becoming friendlier, younger and more familiar. She’s starting to look like Dreamer, but the transformation’s not complete.

“I will be soon,” she says, smiling. I smile back and we walk through the yard together. I drape an arm over her shoulder as I explain (to her and to myself) the plans for this dream. I lose the dream, though, and wake up.

I sit tight for DEILD and wind up back in the kitchen of my childhood home. A couple of Brazilian men are sitting at the dining room table saying unkind things about my brother-in-law “Muppet”. One sarcastically calls him a “phenomenon.” I feel myself becoming invested in this plotline, but no, let it go, it’s a distraction.

I phase back outside and it’s nighttime now. I want to find Dreamer again and for some reason decide that a playground or dog park is the way to go. I fly up high into the air at high speed, piercing the cloud cover. When I look back down, I expect to see a park but nothing is showing up. I try to pretend that I already see it but when I pierce back through the clouds back to Earth, I’m half a block away from where I started.

There’s a badass three-wheeled police car here that looks a little like The Dark Knight Batmobile. It appears to be stuck because it hit another car and the officer seated inside is berating a teenage girl, blaming her for what happened. I just want the car, though, so I open the top of the car and boot the cop out of the driver’s seat with my left foot and drive off down the street.



I have a fun time driving for a couple of blocks until I come to an intersection where a cement truck is gushing this huge, oozing wave of wet cement everywhere. I avoid it by driving up onto someone’s yard and going around, but all the bumping seems to make the car sort of disappear within a half block or so.

I walk out onto DA street to see this amazing parade of armored elephants going by. There must be dozens of them, marching slowly and regally in single file. There’s something sad about their demeanor and from out of nowhere Wife is standing next to me, saying, “This last march they do is called their ‘Final Heart.’” She’s moved by what she’s seeing and I am too in spite of not really understanding it.



Further down the road I encounter a vertical sandstone wall with small outcroppings that could be used as handholds. When I look across the street to my left, I see my doppelganger already climbing up an identical wall! He looks over at me and grins. I decide that this is a great opportunity to practice my dream climbing, so I make my way up about twenty feet or so. I keep looking over at my double as I go, a little envious of how quickly and confidently he can make the climb. As I’m climbing, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #221: The Singing Robot

I’m taking an unusually long time to fall asleep after WBTB and I sense a shift which makes me wonder whether the dream has begun. I will myself to roll out of bed and I find myself floating in the air about 3 feet above and to the left of where I normally sleep.

The sun shouldn’t be up yet but a trickle of daylight’s coming in through the shutters. I roll a couple of times, a little out of control. When I try to fly I wind up just heading straight downward, soon faceplanting in the floor. The scene goes dark and I hold on for DEILD. After a while I give up,I incorrectly thinking I’ve failed and have a false awakening, feeling disappointed that the dream was “so short”.

I log onto DV and see that Dreamer has left a series of comments on one of my DJ entries. Rather than text, these comments are a series of giant images that are larger than my screen, so I have to scroll around to see the entire picture. The first is one of Dreamer standing with one foot on a balcony railing, looking back at the “camera” and grinning. She’s holding her other foot over her head almost straight up in the air like some kind of crazy ballet move.

The next few pictures show different angles of a similar scene from a Japanese manga and I see that she’s just creating some favorite piece of a manga she likes. I think that this looks dangerous but I chuckle at her cleverness.

Soon the dream ends and I hold on for DEILD. I feel another shift and I once again roll out of bed into the air. This time I’m able to fly again but my dream body feels slight and insubstantial. It’s daytime, just as before, and I phase out through the shutters. The dream’s feeling really thin, and I try to rub my hands together but I can’t even manage that simple act. The dream soon falls into the void.

“I’m having a lucid dream,” I say, but my voice comes out very gargled and robotic. I don’t want to lose the dream, so I try singing. It works, but every word comes out in this strange, metallic robot voice:

This is a dreeeeeeam,
This is a dreeeeeeeeeeeam…
<pause> Dream dream dreeeeeeam…

The audio holds together for longer than I expect, but eventually I lose even this and wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #219: The Conga Convention

I’ve arrived for work at some kind of computer lab where we build or test hardware. Dreamer works here, too, and when I walk into the back room I find her interviewing a candidate, a young woman in her early to mid-20s. Dreamer’s in the middle of having the candidate assemble the scattered parts of a computer, so I decide not to bother them.

I return to the front room to find the door blocked with tables and computer parts. I figure that Dreamer moved all this stuff to make room for the interview but I’m confused as to how it all got here. The idea of lucid dreaming crosses my mind, so I try the nose pinch and I’m lucid. My breathing is clumsy and difficult, though, and I lose stability, falling into the void.

I rub my hands together and talk out loud to myself about lucid dreaming until a new scene forms where I’m walking through a large, nearly empty room with a few tables against the wall. I think this may be the office again and that Dreamer will be here, but there’s only one unfamiliar, dark-haired woman in her early 30s sitting at the table writing on a clipboard.

I walk through a door into a large, brightly lit convention hall, filled with DCs seated at round tables, most of them sitting in front of plates of nondescript convention food. I remember that I need to summon Dreamer for the challenge so I say, “That’s Dreamer right over there,” and turn my gaze to the right while doing this sweeping gesture with my hand. When I turn I see a tiny child (about a foot tall!) with purple hair standing between two of the tables. This mini-Dreamer giggles, hops up in the air, and scampers away. When she’s run about 20 feet, she disappears in a purple flash. Several of the DCs look at me in confusion.

This was not what I had in mind, so I circle the room for a while, rubbing my hands together and thinking about how I want to do this. Okay, new plan. I do a vague, sweeping gesture at several tables and say, “Ah, Dreamer, you’re sitting over here.” A very tall woman is hunched over at one of the nearby tables and I see that purple hair cascades all around her head, hiding her face. She’s covered in layers and layers of shawls, rags, and wraps to the point where she just looks like a big pile of rags and hair.

The enormous woman begins to stir, slowly unfolding herself to full height. When she finally draws herself up to full height, it’s Dreamer, but a seven-foot-tall (2.1336 meters ) version of herself draped in colorful, purple-hued cloth. She smiles and then walks past me before I can say anything else, vanishing behind me.

I’m getting agitated about these summons, so I decide to go for Task of the Month instead. All I can remember is the “get naked” task, so off comes the shirt. Next I whip my pants down, but they get stuck around my shins like I’ve gotten sweaty or something. I get a little annoyed by this and simply will myself to be de-pantsed. Should have thought of that first!

The problem is that none of the DCs are taking notice that I’m in my birthday suit! I throw in a few booty-shaking dance moves, hoping for more of a reaction, and now the DCs start picking up on it. They start getting up from their tables, strip off their clothes (only down to underwear, interestingly) and start dancing as well. A big conga line starts forming to my left and after a moment the whole underwear-clad room is conga-ing around the entire place.

While all of this is going on, I just watch for a while. As I'm doing this, I experiment with looking away from dream characters and looking back to see how they change. They seem to mostly stay the same except some of the DCs seem to undergo slight changes in make-up or facial appearance. As I’m toying with this persistence trick, an attractive blonde woman in her late 20s drapes her arms around my neck and kisses me.

Spoiler for Awkwardness:

She tells me that she wants sex, and what do you know? Apparently I do too. But when she removes her undies, her entire body is made of some kind of smooth, rubberized plastic like a life-sized Barbie doll. She positions herself seductively, but the doll effect is so unbelievably off-putting that I decide to just wander to some other part of the room and pretend all of this never happened.

The conga line dies down and I seem to be dressed again. The DCs are all dressed and seem to be heading for the exit of the convention hall, and after a bit of wandering I decide to give the Dreamer summon another good shot. As I’m heading toward a double door, I pick one of the women at random and say, “Okay, there’s Dreamer…” One quick morph later and now I’ve finally got a proper, purple-haired, normal-heighted Dreamer walking toward me.

I give Dreamer a hug and start walking with her toward the exit, explaining out loud my plans for the dream. She nods and “uh-huh”s along but before we get to any of this, the dream fades out into a false awakening in an outdoor courtyard with a garden. There’s a woman in her late 40s with curly hair standing nearby and I tell her about the dream that I just had.

“I just had a lucid dream myself,” she responds. “I’m glad that one ended. It was getting strange. I think that REM cycle was all played out, so I’m up for the morning.”

“I’m going for more,” I tell her. “If you just wait long enough, there’s always another REM cycle.” She nods, pondering this. I wander the garden for a bit until the dream fades for good.

Not my best dream control, but hopefully I can learn from this!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #218: Empty-Handed

I hear my oldest son E calling for me. It feels like it’s very early morning and the sun’s still not up yet. I walk through the dark hallway into his room to find him sitting up in his bed. “Daddy! I’m up!” he announces and hops off of the bed. “I’m going to go tell Mommy.”

I follow him back down the hall, feeling disappointed that the morning’s starting so early and that I missed my chance to have a lucid. As E starts climbing up into bed to shake Wife awake, I’m hit with a huge wave of regret to have missed out on having a lucid dream. I decide to make one last desperate move and try to phase through the wall, phasing right through and falling into the void.

I’m floating through the darkness now so I just relax, rubbing my hands together and repeatedly muttering to myself that “I’m having a lucid dream...” It takes an uncomfortably long time, but after maybe 30 seconds of this, a bright new scene forms around me.

It’s mid-morning and I’m outside, standing by the exterior of what looks like a movie theater. I look up at the bright sky and notice that the clouds are moving across each other in all kinds of odd, crisscrossing directions. “I like that!” I shout, pointing up to the clouds. “Very nice!” I experimentally drag my right foot along the pavement and it feels like I’m wearing running shoes.

The dream is feeling really stable to me now so I decide that it’s time to summon Dreamer and earn some challenge points. I reach my right hand behind my back and say, “[Dreamer], grab onto my hand!” Nothing at first… then a slight prodding feeling on my hand!

I turn around to find a brown-haired woman in her late 30s, hunched over and poking at my hand with her index finger. (I decide that this is definitely not Dreamer.) She’s up really close, staring at my hand like it’s the strangest thing she’s ever seen. I feel frustrated and annoyed that she’s messing with me while I try to summon. “Cut it out!” I say, and she hurries away.

Something bad has happened to my confidence at this point, though, and I feel this combined surge of self-doubt, disappointment, and anger, and in a few seconds I wake up.

Finally got one for the challenge! Now we've got a competition...

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #214: The Challenge

I have a false awakening in the early morning, worried that I’ve run out of time to have another lucid. I get up, pee, and return to bed. To my dismay Wife has already removed the sheets from the bed. The clock says “5:50” and I complain to her that this is way too early to be up. “This is so unlike you!” I whine. She’s too busy to pay much attention.

I walk over to the gym and lay down on the floor, tossing and turning for a while. I have another false awakening in a field near a tent where a movie is being filmed. I walk around and explore for a while, feeling oddly comfortable and in charge, like this is my place even if it’s not familiar to me. I enter a nearby building where I’m required to remove my shoes, then move further on to find my friends PM and RP standing under an open rooftop. I try in vain to point out how much the clouds look like the ones we’ve worked on in our game project, but they’re too busy to pay attention.

I move further through the building, moving through a confusing maze riddled with dead ends until I emerge in a retro arcade. I stop at a machine that’s a multicade which features Street Fighter II and a library of 8-bit Nintendo games. I’m considering firing up Double Dragon when I realize that this has to be a dream.

I move outward from the arcade back to the main entrance. I’m still shoeless, so I produce some running shoes and walk off into the night. I’m on a concrete driveway and hordes of DCs on bicycles go whizzing by, not a trace of lights or reflectors on their bikes and bodies. They’re super hard to see, getting too close, and making me nervous, so I step off into the grass and move over to a sidewalk.

Now I remember my challenge goal of trying to summon Dreamer. I reach my hand behind my back, expect her to grab it, and immediately feel someone grab on. I turn around and she’s right there, purple hair and all! When I see her I exclaim, “Well that worked!” She seems to find this hilarious, squeezing her eyes shut and doubling over with laughter. I try to say something else but the dream destabilizes into a false awakening at my parents’ house.

My mom asks me if I need to go to work and I tell her no, just let me sleep as long as possible. She asks me to help clean their now-green pool (false memory, they have no pool) but I tell her that I’ll do it after I get some sleep. I crash back down on the bed, transitioning into…

...a false awakening on a bare mattress in a dark, candle-lit room. I get up and see that there are 4 or 5 similar mattresses here, too. There’s an Asian woman in her early 50s laying on one bed, tossing and turning restlessly. Some unseen male narrator tells me that, “She wants to dream but in here, she can’t. In this place, nobody can.” I’m disturbed by this, and I move toward the wall, hopeful that I’m dreaming right now. I phase right through, and the wall crumbles in cubes around me -- lucid again!

I float about twenty feet down to a poolside area with ankle deep water next to wall covered by a large mirror. The dream threatens to fade but I rub my hands together and splash around in the water. I again remember my summoning goal and reach my hand behind my back, summoning Dreamer for a second time. For some reason, I point to the mirror to help “prove” to her that she’s been summoned and say, “Look! It worked again!”

Dreamer seems fascinated by this, reaching out to the mirror and then waving her hands back and forth. “Look at this,” she says, bending forward at the waist a couple of times as her reflection copies her actions. I wonder whether this counts as two points in the challenge or just one.

We walk back inside and it’s another creepy room with those anti-dreaming mattresses. Dreamer stiffens her fingers like a spear and drives them into one of the mattresses and digs around like she’s looking for something but doesn’t seem to find it. I ask her what she’s looking for but she doesn’t say. I sweep my eyes around the room but when I look back to where I expect to find Dreamer, instead there’s a brown-haired girl of about 8. I kneel down and ask, “Are you Dreamer?” She gives me a you can’t be serious look and then walks out of the room.

There’s a mirror on the wall here and I get the idea to try summoning NewArtemis into the dream now. I keep watching myself in the mirror as I try to perform this summon, but it keeps failing. I realize I'm making this harder for myself but I can’t seem to help it. I want to see what she looks like when she actually materializes. I give three separate efforts to summon NewArtemis, but they all fail. I feel like something is wrong with me or with this room. Now I try to summon Dreamer. Another failure.

I feel like my mojo is fading out in the room, so I run for the wall and throw myself through it. There’s a glass shattering effect and now I’m falling through the darkness, air rushing past me. I fall like this for a few seconds until I wake up.

This lucid is from the morning of 5/11/2014.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #208: Carnival Chain

I have a false awakening where Wife is bustling about the room getting ready for something. I’m groggy and not seeing anything too well, but I follow her as she heads out the door. There’s some kind of event that we’re supposed to be getting ready for, but I have no memory of what it is. I do remember wanting to have a lucid dream, though, so I feel frustrated that I’m expected to get up.

I follow Wife for a bit and suddenly we’re outside by some docks. She’s dressed in a white sundress that I’ve never seen her in before, holding hands with our two children “E” and “R”. She looks beautiful. I wish that I could go with them but I’m almost too tired to move.

I tell her that I’m going back to bed, which she seems to accept. Somehow I stagger back to the bed and as soon as my head hits the pillow, I attempt to WILD. Right away I get the sense of motion and I can’t believe how quickly it’s working. I go with the momentum and experience a moment of massive acceleration before emerging in a mid-morning carnival scene that I know is a dream.

I’m not pleased with the vividness of the scene, so I rub my hands together and then stare at them, trying to draw out as much detail as I can. It takes a few frustrating moments but finally fine details start to emerge. One oddity is that my hands are covered with cuts and scrapes like I’ve been fighting or working with something sharp.

As the scene comes into better focus, I see that Wife is walking here with me at the carnival. We pass a sandwich vendor who stops us and begins an emphatic explanation of what it takes to make the turkey sandwich. He says that the “traditional” sandwich of “turkey on a donut” is outdated and that rye bread is the wave of the future. It sounds crazy to me, but I try to grasp the details, hoping for some flash of insight. It never comes, though, and the dream fades.

I hold on for DEILD, and in a few seconds I’m back in the carnival scene. I take a few steps but something seems to be stuck in my throat. I try to sort of gag and clear my throat, but it’s still there. I feel like there’s some kind of waking life problem and remember that I’m sleeping on my stomach. I have this vision of the pillow pressing on my throat and in a few seconds, I’m out of the dream.

I flop onto my side, get ready for DEILD, and re-enter the carnival scene a few seconds later. Wife’s here with me again, and says something flirtatious. I’m feeling very interested, so we make out for a bit before getting down to some sexytime. I’ll spare the details here, but it's interesting that after the "festivities" the dream continues long enough for us to wander around the carnival a bit more.

Finally the dream breaks, and I DEILD in one last time to the same carnival scene. Wife and I pass by a carnival barker who’s inviting passerby to try out the “lucidity machine”, a large, boxy contraption that he says is guaranteed to make you have a lucid dream for only “4 quarters”.

I encourage Wife to try this out. “But you’re already having a lucid dream,” she replies.

“Yeah, but you’re not.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Four quarters seems kind of expensive.”

“It’s not real money,” I tell her. “Please just try it.”

I’m exasperated by all of this. Wife shakes her head and continues to skeptically study the device as the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #196: Wonderful Distractions

I’m lying on my side anticipating a lucid dream. I sense the transition into a dream, but my dream body is lying on its side in the same position as my waking life body. I approach this in an OBE style and will myself to roll out of bed onto the floor. I ooze off of the edge of the bed and drift gently to the floor.

My vision is dark at this point, so I spend a moment chilling out and digging my hands into the carpet to build up my physical sensations of the scene. After everything feels right, I stand up and look out over the bed. Wife has completely buried herself under the comforter. I throw the covers back and she sits up, blinking in the daylight which streams in through the window.

I’m struck by the clarity of the scene. There’s a slight haze at the edges of my vision, but even though there’s a dreaminess to everything I see, it all looks incredibly realistic. She gets out of bed and I follow her toward our walk-in closet while I try to remember my goals.

The structure of our closet looks the same as waking life except for the fact that it’s grown much larger. There are two attractive women standing there, an Asian woman and a shorter lady with brown hair, just sort of hanging around and talking to each other. Hanging around three cute DCs makes me forget all other goals and (somewhat complex) sexytime commences.

After a few moments Wife says, “We forgot to close the bedroom door!” as if she’s afraid that the kids will barge in. I reluctantly leave the closet to go check on this, but find that the door’s already shut tight.

“Everything’s fine,” I say, and when I turn back to the closet, the other two women have vanished. I’m also surprised to see that it’s night outside now. I look out through the window and see that there’s a tow truck out front hauling off a cute little car that’s shaped like a phone booth. “Hey check this out!” I tell Wife.

“That’s a shame,” she says. We watch as the tow truck drives off.

When I turn back toward the bed, I see a freckled woman in her early 20s laying on our bed. She’s wearing shorts and flopped on her stomach, reading some kind of pamphlet. I’m too far gone to think of goals at this point, so this leads to some additional sexytime with Wife and this newest DC.

Afterward, I get up from the bed and feel the scene darkening. I look at my hands and I can see the light fading from the dream fast. I dig my hands into the carpet, but before long I have a false awakening where I hear my father-in-law shout, “3 AM faaaaail!” I'm confused for a moment and then “remember” that a bunch of us are staying at some vacation house and needed to wake up at 3 AM for some reason.

I walk out of the room, feeling sleepy, and see my cousin SU. “Hey, did you hear? JP Morgan is going under.” I’m astonished to hear this.

My brother-in-law Muppet says, “This pisses me off so much.”

“That we’ll wind up bailing out a huge bank?” I ask.

“No,” Muppet says, and launches into a long, disjointed speech about finance. After a while I realize that this person isn’t even Muppet anymore but some guy I don’t recognize. I wonder how I got so confused and eventually pull myself away from the conversation shortly before the dream ends.

This lucid is from the morning of 3/24/2014. Still going for Task of the Year!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #195: Indoor Gardening

I’m working in a busy office setting with my friend “Leroy”. The very popular manager of the office has just been fired and everyone’s gathered to hear a speech from some stuffed shirt corporate guy explaining why this was done.

“Losing a beloved manager is like losing a friend,” says the generic corporate guy.

Leroy farts loudly. I laugh, then turn to him and say, “I’m not sure how many friends you’ll have if you keep doing that.” He doesn’t seem to realize I’m joking and looks hurt. Now I feel sort of bad. I assume he’s sensitive because we just lost our manager.

As the corporate guy drones on and on, I start feeling very stressed. I realize that I’m late for an orchestra concert I’m supposed to be performing in. I sneak out of the meeting, looking for the auditorium. I walk down a long, carpeted hallway and find the auditorium doors on my left. When I step inside, I see that it looks more like a movie theater. I get a sense of how odd this all is and I’m enormously relieved when I realize that I’m dreaming.

The scene rapidly begins to fade, so I rub my hands together and run back and forth across the front of the theater. It takes a moment, but after maybe 3 or 4 trips from one end of the theater to the other, the visuals all come back.

The theater is large but there are only five seats right next to each other. I recognize one of the theatergoers as my friend “SKR”, but hers is the only familiar face. SKR seems to be looking for something under her seat so I decide not to just focus on tasks rather than trying to communicate.

I start going for Jack and the Beanstalk Task of the Year. I perform a behind-the-back summon of seeds, and my hand comes back with little nuggets attached to long wisps of cotton. I just go ahead like this is good enough and start digging into the floor. The concrete floor scoops easily aside, leaving a nice, shallow hole for the seeds. I stuff them into the dirt, cover it back over, and start looking for my beanstalk to grow.

The shoots start emerging, but when they get to be about 4-5 inches long, they flop over onto their side on the floor. I tug at them a bit but they just feel like limp, frayed green carpet. I give them a tug and try to imagine them shooting skyward, but I’m not able to get tons of energy behind this thought.

Now I see Wife walking in through the doors of the theater. There’s a sensation that’s sort of like waking up and then I find myself in my in-laws’ house. I “realize” that all of what I just experienced took place inside Unreal Engine 4 and I’ve now returned to the real world.

Wife gives me a stern look. “Do you have anything you should be telling me?”

I sheepishly admit that I skipped out on playing in my orchestra concert so that I could have a lucid dream. She gives a serious nod and walks away. I’m glad she’s not too pissed off about this. The dream ends...

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #194: Bold Talk

I have a false awakening where I really need to pee and I head into a darkened restroom with urinals along the wall. It looks like something that you’d find in the lobby of a nice hotel or a fancy restaurant. I remember that I fell asleep at home, so this all seems really odd, but when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go.

I start using the urinal for a bit when it occurs to me that I might be dreaming. Everything feels oddly realistic, so I stop, suddenly afraid that I’m wetting the bed. There’s a single sink in this restroom with a mirror over it. I walk up to the mirror and see my bleary-eyed self staring back. I bring up my hand for a nose pinch and so does my double. When I breathe right through my pinched fingers, I’m finally sure that this is a dream.

I walk out through the restroom door into a sports stadium that seems to be made up of a bunch of crisscrossed steel girders. On the outside of the stadium I can see huge red letters that are backward (from my perspective) and seem to spell out something like “B E A R S”. I look closer and now the letters are oriented to face me and spell “M E T S”.

Taking a glass door leading outside brings me to a large, covered pavilion filled with DCs standing around chatting and holding fountain drinks. I decide that I want another crack at Task of the Year, so I try to take command: “Listen up everyone!” They all stop what they’re doing and turn to face me. “You will all help me do task of the year.”

I get this sudden feeling of paranoia and add, “And none of you will attack me!” Agh, shut up, man, nobody’s thinking of attacking you! The DCs return to going about their business and walk past me, the pavilion area quickly thinning out until there are just a handful of people in there beside me. I start trying to work a magic lamp summon for the Aladdin Task of the Year but the dream collapses before I have any success.