Xanous' Dream Journal

This lucid dream is a part of a study with University of Missouri St. Louis conducted by SleepingSYNAPSE.
http://www.dreamviews.com/research/1...ticipants.html
I had to the opportunity to visit the campus and examine a room (Red) in waking life and revisit it in a lucid dream to measure dream memory. I was unaware of the other room (Blue) as being apart of the study and I found that I had very little waking memory of it.

SleepingSYNAPSE, I am including additional info that may not be in the packet as well as this more thorough account of the dreams. Yes, dreams. I actually had a hard WILD before the more successful but the first yielded undesirable outcomes. I didn't have the extra papers for two dreams so I recorded the better of the two. Still, I think you will be interested in reading both here.

On a more personal note, thanks for meeting with me on a Saturday and for the good times we enjoyed afterward. I was hesitant meeting a stranger in a big city, but I feel I have gained a friend. You are a good person. Your hospitality was appreciated by my wife and I.

Pre-bed Supplements: A shot of cherry flavored vodka in a small juice glass with Coke.
Bedtime: 9PM
WBTB time/length: 1:00AM / 3min
WBTB Supplements: 8mg Galantamine, 400mg Choline, cold pre-made mug of peppermint tea/4 bags (menthol)


#354 - WILD - 2:10AM

I enjoy a smooth WILD but enter a very unstable world. I do my usual dash for the front door and make it outside. I feel I need to rush to get the task done so I move quickly. I decide to "Hulk Jump" in the general direction of my goal.

When I visited the university in waking life, I took careful note of the building's exterior. There is a nice park there with a pond. I had decided beforehand to make that my landing site since it is a unique feature of the campus.

I make a giant leap over some trees and land in Bug Lake at the university with a splash. There are no physical feelings here; just the sound. I have some dark void issues so I splash around with my arms to stabilize as I think of the interior of the building.

I am now in a hallway, but it doesn't look like I recall. The walls are colored like some sort of abstract mural painting. Grass and sky? The dream crashes.

DEILD - I have some floating sleep paralysis sensations for a full minute or two.

I visualize and re-enter the hallways. I see something like an "under the sea painting" on the walls. There are way too many rooms and I feel lost. I really focus on finding the Red Room and eventually find a door that looks close enough. The dream is still really unstable as I enter the room. It's dark inside and I think to feel for a light switch but I know this almost never works.
I feel like I am in the void again so I focus on seeing.

When the lights come on, I see that I am in an empty and really tiny version of the room. I stretch my arms out and my hands touch adjacent walls. I wake up and think to DEILD but for some reason the dream felt really long so I decide to journal instead.

#355 - DILD (In-dream-WILD) - 3:16AM

After the first dream, I tried to WILD and again and thought I had done it but I later recall other things that happened first.

There was something about being worried about alarm clocks. I was afraid of it getting too late to get lucid and having to wake up. I look at the clock and see that its about 4:4[?]... almost 5am (Wake up time). I have a really hard time making out the last digit. It gets blurry and morphs a little. I recognize what is happening here and lay back down to complete my WILD efforts.

After a second and some SP sensations, I realize there is no need to still be laying here so I quickly get out of bed. I notice I am in my childhood home of Luling, TX. I find this annoying and try to imagine being at the university again. I look down as I walk and try to visualize some common tiling or an imagined version of what I think may have been the flooring at the university. I see some generic brown speckled tiling but I am still in the same house. I try to deny it, but I just can't make it change over. Time for plan B.

I go to the front door and have to actually unlock the dead bolt to get the door open. I recall the conversation with SleepingSYNAPSE about the guy that had a semi-lucid dream where he locked his wallet in the house and thought to summon the keys but not the wallet. This felt equally dumb, but I let the thought go as I start down the sidewalk.

At the end, there is a dark colored compact car running with headlights on. It's dark but when I get to the car, I see Jeremy B, from work sitting in the driver's seat. I recall how this scenario worked well for the Angel Falls Task Of The Year and get really excited. I look into the open window on the passenger side and Jeremy says something that I perceive to be really dorky but mildly funny (much like waking life). I think I may have found an intelligent and somewhat witty DC, but I am not sure what he said so I ask.
He stares at me like I am the dumb one for a second then says, "Oh nevermind. Just get in."
When I sit down in the passenger seat, I find myself teleported to the driver seat. Jeremy is now standing in the street peering in the open window on the driver side. Without a word he plugs his nose and jumps feet first into the blackness of the street as if it is deep water. Seeing him do this seems extremely cheesy and bizarre. I chuckle and say, "Well... Ooookay. Thanks."

I drive to the end of the block and make a right. As I do, use expectation to believe that the part of the university I want is on the next block. That would be the direction of my old high school in waking life so this allows an easy connection in my mind. The building looms just ahead in the night. There are the scattered trees with Bug Lake to the right. I grip the steering wheel for the first time... or maybe I just pull back on it like airplane controls, but I will the car to fly to a window, second from the top story. I don't bother counting floors this just feels right and I know it's all what I want to believe anyway. It's the fourth floor in waking life.

As I am about to crash through a large window, everything seems very much like something from a Harry Potter movie. A suit of armor spies me through a whimsical-style, barred window and runs out of the way. I phase the car more than crash and I see a Filch-look-a-like just outside of the room. Any other time this would have been freaking awesome as I have a "Patronus" goal in mind for the future, but at this moment I am very focused on the task. I dismiss the oddities without a second thought. Actually, I am more worried about the interior being too dark. The room has red carpet and looks vaguely medieval with gas wall sconces on either side of an open door giving very little light. However, the hallway that Filch was meandering down is brightly lit.

As I phase out the driver side door of the car, I feel the entire thing dissolve. I have desire to look at the effect, but decide that I better not, just in case I ruin the effect. Plus, I feel I am much cooler this way. I feel like some grand wizard doing amazing things, but not being particularity impressed with himself. Mastery. I leave the room in search of the rooms.

I spend what feels like a lot of time lost in a maze of hallways until I find the main room of the study. I really can't recall much here, but I thinking it was mostly garbage imagery anyway.

Now, I am in a strong and fairly accurate representation of the main room. I see a red door on the left and a blue door and the right. There is a counter and a hood vent on the other side. As I grab the door knob to open the red door, I have a feeling of anticipation. I note how very vivid the dream is and I feel pleased.

Inside, the room is disappointingly very much empty, but it's at least the correct size this time. The first thing I note is that the shelves to the left are gone so this excludes several items. There is no digital painting in front of me. The desk and end table are gone. The walls are a pea green and this seems right. I recall a something sleepingSYNAPSE told me in waking life. When he dreams of his house he notices what things are missing or incorrect. I feel the same way about this room and begin copying what he said he did in his dreams. I point to the things mentioned and say stuff like, "That's wrong. This is gone. That's not right. This should be there."

Something catches my eye. Where the large poster of the blond white woman should be, I see a very different one in it's place. It's really blurry and watery so I step closer to take a near-sighted examination of the picture. After a moment, it clears. The face is blurry but I see an African American man wearing a blue graduation gown, standing with his arm up in triumph. There is a mock diploma in his right hand and a huge grin on his face. I get the feeling this is some sort of lame university advertisement. There is some large black lettering on the bottom but I have already lost interest. Suddenly, I remember the last object to look for. CLOCK!

I turn around and see it where is should be to the left of the door way, overlapping the trim. At first the numbers look Roman but as I get closer, still having some slight nearsightedness, the numbers look Arabic. I recall there is a time question on the sheet in waking life so I take note. The hour hand is on the 6 and the minute hand is one the 7. No, there is an 8 where the 7 should be. I will it to be a 7 but the number really wants to be an 8 and there is a type of tug-o-war with it seeming to morph into an 8 on its own as I struggle to keep it a 7. I decide this little detail probably doesn't matter since I recall the waking life time to be 6:15. I try to think what the time actually is here but I quickly realize that I can't even begin to think about how to read the clock so I just make note of the hand locations one last time and then step out of the room.

Feeling somewhat accomplished and a little surprised that the dream is still going, I am ready for the Blue Room. When I step back into the Main Room, I notice there are a few changes. Mostly, there is now an extra blue door and instead of having a large pill-shaped covering, they are now entirely covered in blue construction paper. In fact, it all looks gift-wrapped. I start to go for the extra door but it feels wrong and there is some instability so I decide to go for the more correctly located door.

When I open the Blue Room I am surprised to see a vast bedroom with blue walls and white trim. The style is sort of Victorian with 3 twin beds and a dark wood chest of drawers. There is a large mirror mounted on top with something like a wash basin. It seems like there was a dark colored rug on the floor but I may be be recalling that wrong at this point. I feel shocked and confused so I step back out into the main room not really noting anything there and then back in. The room is basically the same but there is a sense that the furniture has moved slightly.

At this point I pretty much forget the University task as I feel this part of the dream has played itself out. Not really recalling any secondary goals, I start messing around with the dreamscape on impulse. I walk around the room and come to a very low light fixture about chest level with 3 or so unlit bulbs. I recall a scene from Oculus where Karen Gillian thinks she eats a light bulb while thinking it's an apple when it actually is an apple (Yes this movie is that weird). So, I decide to try eating a light bulb as I know I won't cut myself like she did (or thought she did) in the movie. I think to unscrew the bulb but decide that is too much work and I just pull. It resists a little put easily pops free. I put the entire fat end in my mouth and look in the mirror. My lips are distorted from the effort but I notice I look even more strange than that. My features resemble River Song from Doctor Who but with shorter hair and a melding of my waking life facial features and hers. I stare at this for a few seconds trying to will myself to look right but it's not working very well. I remember the light bulb and decide to chop down. I am surprise when I feel like I am biting into a plastic ball-pit ball. I spit it out and step away from the mirror.

At this point, I think menthol starts having it's adverse (or desired as some see it) effect. It seems like a really good idea to reward myself for having put so much effort into this dream experiment. I recall how I did something similar for the Cretaceous Period Task Of The Month awhile back and start searching the beds for a female companion.


Before I go on, I think I need to explain something. I visited SleepinSYNAPSE's father's restaurant in waking life while in St. Louis (Very nice place and awesome food!). In the men's restroom there were several posters of vintage female movie stars. The one that caught my attention the most is this classic image of Marylin Monroe's Breakfast In Bed.



Almost immediately, I find her in a sheet with one leg out. I don't think of her as MM but I'm not really concerned with the face. I know it's a dream and it's all not real. However, during the act, I do happen to take a look at the face and notice a very ugly version of MM. The hair was right but the face was very distorted. I pause for a second, unsure if I want to continue but I decide to just focus on other parts as I quickly finish up.

I decide that this dream has gone on long enough and I should wake myself before I forget all the details. I fall into the void but don't wake right way. I realize what is happening and struggle to shift back to the physical. I have images of making dream notes on my Galaxy Player, but I know this is false. I hit SP but instead of struggling to move the dream body I am doing the opposite until I reenter the physical. The effect was like a reverse WILD or reverse OBE... Very strange.