It's been a while since I had a WILD and this one had by far the most violent transition I've experienced yet. Kinda cool! Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid Lucid #124: The Rodeo I've been awake a while post-WBTB and I feel anxious "Am I ever gonna sleep?" thoughts creeping in. I roll to my side, relax my mind, and try to focus on hypnagogia while counting backward in a style like "100... I'm dreaming... 99... I'm dreaming..." Around the low 90s, I feel something like a thump in my head and then a loud crackle of electricity, followed by the sensation of shaking. My WILD transitions are usually very low-profile, so this surprises me. The whole thing is jolting but more exciting than unpleasant. I try to stay relaxed, prepared for the possibility of more weirdness. Now everything is dark and I hear voices whispering in my ear. It's a bit creepy, but I know that this is normal and that I'm probably beginning to dream. I imagine myself oozing out of bed OBE-style. My body stretches like a piece of rubber, my feet meet the floor, and I'm standing in my bedroom. I'm wearing my orange-tinted safety glasses instead of my sleep mask, so it's really, really obvious that this is a dream. Everything is dark, jumpy, and unstable. My body is moving too quickly and I keep crashing into things. I look at myself in the mirror and I can make out the shape of a man but visual quality is so low that I can't see much beyond that. I drift into the master bathroom and run straight into the counter. Then I float back to the master bedroom, going too far and wind up standing right over Wife. I reach down and touch her hip and shoulder and try to get myself anchored, but when she stirs I feel bad thinking about her DC waking up to see a creepy ghost looming over her. The whole scene feels only half-painted. Okay, let's just get out of here. I run for the window. The shutters are closed, but I dive through, phasing into the void and then immediately rubbing my hands together to keep things stable. I kneel down and touch the floor, which feels like it's covered with dirty industrial carpet. I try to shift this toward being the sand of the Colosseum's floor, and as I keep touching it, it starts to feel more and more like a really dirty carpet. Hoping this is close enough, I start to imagine the arena all around me. Now I can see my hands brushing over patterned, dimly illuminated carpet. The lighting is poor, and without thinking I look up to see that I'm inside a dark, empty stadium. I can't tell where the light's coming from but just at the edge of the light, I can vaguely make out empty stands. I remember podcasting about low light and I try to use my own advice of imagining how bright it is, but can't find any light source. I look hopelessly up at the ceiling, feeling embarrassed that I can't even make my own suggestion work. Okay, next idea, also from the podcast: quit worrying about it. I jump up and start flying around the stadium, looking for people in the stands. There -- a group of 3 or 4 about halfway up. I keep circling, spotting more and more people. And as I look for them, the light in the scene grows to accomodate my expectations. After doing this for a while, there's a healthy crowd gathered in the stands and the scene is well-lit. Happy with this change, I land to find workers scurrying back and forth on the stadium floor preparing it for some kind of event. Everyone's in Western wear, and when I check, the crowd is too! It looks like they're putting on a rodeo in this stadium. An announcer, a man in his late 40s with a bushy mustache and a cowboy hat, is under the spotlight and speaking into a microphone to warm up the crowd. I forget what he says, but they think he's great, and they cheer wildly at his words. I approach him and he holds the microphone up to me. "Uh," I say. "I want to turn this into the Colosseum." He replies into the microphone, warmly but firmly: "No can do, boss." The crowd applauds. I think about forcing the change anyway, but I feel overwhelmed by the scope of the task. I just can't seem to build up the confidence that I need. I wander out through an exit hall, leaving the rodeo behind me. I'm outside now and it's night. I walk through a narrow street, emerging near a restaurant patio. I'm close to the ocean. I see the water and I can hear the sound of the surf. Nearby a woman talking on her cellphone glances up at me, gives me a nod of acknowledgement, and walks away, still talking. I walk along the oceanside road for a little while, coming to a shopping center. A dark-haired woman in her late 20s approaches me. "Hi!" she says. I notice that she has a somewhat upturned nose. I also notice that I'm finding her very cute. "I'm looking for the Colosseum," I tell her. "Can you show me where it is?" "Oh, I'm really sorry! I have no idea where that is." I feel discouraged and stuck. I tell her about my Colosseum goal and she nods along with my explanation. I no longer know what my plans are for this dream. Somehow I wind up telling her that I want to kiss her, she says go ahead, and so I do. As I'm kissing her (eyes open, dream stabilization style), I see three younger girls ranging from maybe 8-14 or so watching us with expressions ranging from horror to mild amusement. I notice that these three have her same upturned nose. Are they her little sisters? Her kids? Feeling embarrassed and a little confused, I pull away. "Bye!" she says brightly, and the four of them wander off together. I continue through the shopping center, coming to a slightly darker hallway with shops on each side and a planter with a large palm tree in the middle of it. I hear Indian music coming from somewhere down the hallway, and as I walk toward the music, the dream ends.
[Sunday, October 21st, 2012] I'm at a giant rodeo or an open area with a fence around it. There is manure everywhere you walk along the soft dirt. My Dad is with me, and so is Nathan. Nathan splits up from me as I go to help my Dad with work. I follow him around the area, just to lend a helping hand, when he tells me: "There are shrooms growing all around the rodeo.", and he pointed at the ground at a mushroom. He bent down to pluck it and placed it in a bag. He went inside a building and I followed him as he cut it up and shoved a slice into his mouth. "Hey Dad!" I was excited, "Did you know that mushrooms and humans have extremely similar DNA structures?" I paused as he nodded... Apparently, I had already told Casey and Casey had told him. "I hear some people talk about how experiencing higher human consciousness could be connected to mushrooms somehow." He smiled and nodded again. I aplogized if I was annoying him, but he dismissed it. He sat down in an odd chair that was built into the side of the wall, with a strange orange head-rest with a spiral painted on it. He leaned his head back and pressed a button and the headrest shoved his head forward, as if it were made to give him a concussion. He was leaning too far to his right and it didn't go off right, he tried it again and- <memory fades> I go outside and scan the ground for more shrooms. I would LOVE to do shrooms. I only see plucked stems and misleading tree stem stubs. I arrive at an open field area and find Nathan again. I tell him about the shrooms in the area and he's just as ecstatic as me! But his enthusiasm dies down and he starts to look around like a zombie. I look around and see only more stems... It's almost time to go, but I find one on the ground, carefully hidden from view and I shout, "YES!" I pluck it and plop it into my canvas bag. Me and Nathan leave with my Dad. <I wake up.> (I'm open my eyes and I'm still excited! FINALLY SHROOMS! Then I realize slowly that I don't actually have shrooms and I calm back down to sleep again.) <I go back to sleep.> I'm in an office-looking building and I saw my Aunt and I noted in my head that she looked really pretty. My Dad and Nathan were still with me in the room, sitting down. I pick up a phone and decide to call my Mom. She picks up and says that she's at a hospital? and she saw the Caller-ID and that it said Triad, so she picked up. She sounds unusually happy and I don't think she is mad at me anymore for not talking to her for a few days. I talk to her for a bit and actually have a sensical conversation that I would remember clearly in waking life. (I didn't because I waited so long to write this down.) I say goodbye and hangup. My Dad, Nathan, and I leave. ----- My memory fades in to where I'm back at our house (I don't recognize it in waking life.) My brothers are both there and we're all in the kitchen. I'm holding my canvas sack of shrooms (apparently there's lots of them now) and I reach into the freezer to pull out a Melon-Cucumber Gatorade. I open it up and drink a bit and am extremely happy to have it. I talk to Casey and Brent for a moment before heading back to a back room. Casey is in the room with me and on the TV I hear someone say something like, "I'm alone in the room with this nasty chick-" Another guy interupts him on the TV, "Please don't tell me you bumped uglies with her." I repeated whatever was said (it was close to THIS, but it was actually funny. I wish I could remember...) and Casey laughed his ass off.
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