Recent DJ Posts

I walk into a room where I have to complete some challenge, a kind of game. I have a vague sense of danger, it's not quite a nightmare but it feels similar, as if it has the potential to become one. I'm semi-lucid, in that stage where I'm aware that I'm dreaming and can easily control my surroundings, but still following the dream storyline. Small rings of light form around my wrists - at first I'm not sure what this is, then I think of it as both something that this room provides for the challenge, and something that I summoned myself. I decide that the user has to make the light take a solid form before it can serve its function. Focusing on it, the light condenses into a metal cuff around my right wrist; the left one fails, it remains light. Looking at the right cuff, I decide it represents a kind of shield, a personal force field. I focus on the left one again, without looking at it this time, trying to make it condense into the other cuff, and I decide that it's worked, though I don't want to risk looking down to check; I can now feel the shield working in the air just around me. I move further into the room and start the game, which involves running a course and using the shield to deflect small projectiles. A woman's voice keeps score. At the first curve in the course, everything goes black.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

Due to a conflict with someone else, an immortal has been forced to enter another immortal's territory. Although they appear to be different species - the one the territory belongs to is a sphinx, the other one looks like a human man - they're still similar enough to require separate territories, so this has led to a confrontation, although on the surface it looks like a casual conversation. It's night. The one that looks like a man is saying something about how anyway, this isn't the same city he agreed to stay away from - it's partially joking (the city's changed names in the years since that agreement), but it's also partially serious, grasping at straws, looking for an out. The sphinx has no particular ill will towards him, and understands his situation, but nonetheless can't permit him to stay here.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

A vampire guy's in a subway car, picking out a meal. There's a small group of others with him, people he'd turned, but he's the only one doing the hunting. One of the others, recently turned, is impatient with him. Finally she says to him, come on, let's just take the whole car, let loose once in a while, please? The other vamps are a little annoyed with her - they're impatient too, but she's being childish - but he's considering it. I'm in first person now, though I'd started out in 3rd and I have no sense of when I switched; as one of the other vamps, I look around at the number of people in this car. There's a lot of them; the car's not full, but there's enough that they outnumber us. I'm thinking about crowd control. I notice a couple of them looking this way, starting to pay attention to the conversation between our leader and the new girl. Without saying anything, I get up and move to stand by the door to the next car, to block the exit. I look through the window into the next car, and consider the number of people in that car, too.

(Woke up. Back to sleep.)

There's a man I think of as a legendary king riding on the back of some enormous reptile through a completely black space. He's not human, at least not anymore, and this isn't a physical space; he's something that is sometimes summoned into the physical world. The creature he's riding is covered in trunks and carpets and cages piled so high that I think of it as a moving mountain; I can't tell how much is luggage and how much is the body of the creature itself, but the whole thing is maybe four times the height of the man riding it, who is sitting cross-legged just behind the creature's head, front and center. At the very back of the creature, the king's servant is opening the top of one of the cages. It contains a small and unhappy creature that they've just captured, something very rare; the top of it opens up like a flower and contains a kind of liquid, which contains some 'essence' that the king is after.

There's three people riding a motorboat through a river in a jungle. They stop when they pass a man standing waist-deep in the river, working at something, and one of the guys in the boat talks with him about a foreign researcher who's made some big discovery that's driving up prices in the area. The guy standing in the river is saying that pretty soon they're all going to be out of a job. The guy in the motorboat says it wouldn't be the first time they've had to live out of tents; they'll survive.

30.11.2013

Comet ISON tracking, Sphinx revival and flight. (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I had a false awakening and it was night. The room was very dark, darker as usual and my wife was not there. I went to the living room and saw my wife looking at the TV, even though, the TV was off.

There was an iPad laying on the TV (note, we own Samsung, not iOS) and it had a real time tracking software on comet ISON and it was beeping every two seconds. My wife told me she was tracking the comet to see if it survived the sun or not.

I looked outside the window and I could see a sky full of stars. I realized that there was no electricity at all. Even though, my computer was working. I wondered if the grid went down, but a few seconds later, all the street lights started to lit and the stars went away. I dozed off.

I had another false awakening in some weird warehouse. I kind of realized that I was dreaming, as I did not know the place where I woke up. The dream was very low quality and I could not make it stable well, so I opened a small window and started to fly to make it stable, but lost the dream.

I had another false awakening in the same warehouse and now there were people. I somehow believed I was still dreaming, so ran outside. I met a guy and asking him where to go to exit there. He looked at me like if I was nuts and pointed the exist. As I exited, I was in a forest with a lot of trees. I tried to take of flying but I could not, even gravity felt normal. I told myself, "Well, I am dreaming, I think..." And looked at my hand. My fingers were made out of energy and wavy, so I indeed was dreaming and reminded myself flying is an easy task to do for me, so I took off.

As I was flying, I saw a desert and reminded myself in the tasks of the year. I recalled I had to do the Sphinx one, so I landed and was near the Great Sphinx. There were other buildings around (western buildings) but the pyramids were there, and specially, the Sphinx .

I flew to the top of her and placed my hands in front of her nose, which was chipped and damaged. I started to channel healing energy like I use to do in real life and a new nose spawned. Easy and done, lucky me...

Suddenly, the Sphinx started to move and I flew on her above the pyramids. As I was flying, the pyramids shrunk and some weird metallic buildings spawned out of nowhere, after a short while, the Sphinx landed and then, she flew away. She kind of looking half stone half flesh, but, I flew on her so I was good to go.

I started to focus on making an L-DEILD and get the last task of the year done, but I started to feel my body in bed and rapidly, lost the dream and woke up.

Entry 2/2

I stay still for DEILD, although my leg feels uncomfortable.

DEILD: The very first moments are a bit vague, but the next thing I know, I am in what looks like the desert (I don't fully realize this yet, just acknowledge I am in). There are a number of DCs randomly walking around and I take some time to feel comfortable in the scene. I notice a jade colored large crystal in the sand, pick it up and remark how beautiful it is. There are more crystals now and in the midst of them I find the most amazing piece (fist size) I have ever seen. It has a variety of bright colors and really interesting structure.

The sun is shining brightly and the whole scene is super vivid too. As I keep staring at the crystal I get the feeling that it is about to change, so move my eyes away. There is a DC guy nearby and I comment on the beauty of the crystal, then look at my hand again. I am now holding several pieces of smaller gemstones, deep colors of blue and green. I address the DC and ask him for advice. I really wish I could take those gemstones with me, can he tell me how to do that. I clasp my fist as tightly as possible to hold on to the crystals.

I look around and examine the surroundings. I remember I wanted to do TOTY and briefly wonder if there might be something suitable here. The sky is deep blue, the sun is shining and there is sand in every direction. Finally, it dawns on me that the Egypt task could fit here (although I haven't reviewed it in a while). I think about the pyramids and get the pyramids plus sphinx complex but very far in the distance. It's more like a single clearly distinguishable pyramid and the sphinx in front of it. Anyways, I think it's too far so decide to get another sphinx somewhere nearby. I do my looking for object subcon summon - look from left to right with a bit less focus, scanning the surroundings and expecting to spot the desired object (quite similar to looking for something lost at home).

My mind begins to make the scene more Egyptian now. A few palms appear in the distance, (I only notice them vaguely), Egyptian statues and a number of small sphinx-like statues. One catches my attention (it's one of those winged sphinxes) and I decide that will be it. Part of it is missing. I briefly remember about the nose. Then I see a light beige to albino lion, very beautiful but kind of scary. I am thinking it looks less friendlier than tigers. I try to ignore it and get on the sphinx statue which is about the size of a pony. In the meantime, I notice that I am still holding my fist tight and continue to do so. The lion comes closer and I try to start the sphinx statue to move (forgetting about the nose), but instead it only rocks back and forth like those spring rockers for a while, then the dream fades.

I try to DEILD once again, but the same leg position is terribly uncomfortable now. My fist is tightly clenched and I slowly open it, with the childish hope that I was able to bring those beautiful crystals back with me.

Lucid
((The parts where I see him as Liam and become Saja feel different, like I'm on the edge of being lucid, but I don't make any choices. I just have clarity.))

The beginning is a little hazy. I was a member of an archeological dig in the desert. A man from the government came in to

find a missing woman and debunk our findings. He was being an irritating, arrogant ass, who kept ignoring facts and wouldn't listen to me.
There's a tent pitched alongside a wall, the wall looks like it belongs to the outside of the house I grew up in in MA. Out of the corner of my eye I see a dirt floor and observe all the 7x10 photographs tagged to the canvas. The government agent, Jack, is speaking to a blond woman who pins another photo up and then exits the tent. It annoys me that he's still following the evidence this way, because he's ignoring the danger. He has his back to me, he's wearing a black suit, white shirt, with a thin black tie. He considers the line of photographs, hands on his hips.

I can't help myself. "Still refusing to follow the facts, I see." I say to him. He turns around and drops his eyes to the floor, smiling

a little.

"Oh. Hello again, Brenna." ((I've never been a Brenna before. Huh.)) He ignores my jab and looks after the blond woman

as she makes her way down the narrow canvas hall. "I was sad to see that she had dyed her hair."

"Oh? Why's that?"

"I have a particular weakness for women with black hair." He gives me a significant look, it's almost playful. He's giving me the

option to ignore it. It's only then I realize that I'm Saja. My hair is waist length, black and wavy. I'm even wearing one of her dresses, the hem falls mid-calf, it's a spring green-yellow with a white apron. I draw my hair over one shoulder and smile. He walks over to stand beside me and examines another line of photographs. As he crosses the floor, the wind snaps the canvas overhead creating gaps for the sunlight to stream in. Where it shines on his hair, it makes it look less brown and more red. The longer I look at him the more red there is. He suddenly reminds me of Liam. It's only when he's standing next to me that I realize he's the right height, too. Before I had seen him as my enemy and would not allow myself to find him physically appealing, but he's opened a door and I can't ignore it. Because he looks like Liam.

I turn to face the wall of photographs. They all look the same to me. It's dimly lit snow with a faded splash of blood.

"Well. As long as we're sharing. I can't help but notice how much red you have in your hair...and I have a certain fondness for

redheads." I stare at his profile while he looks at the pictures, and see a smile tug at the corner of his mouth.

I fix my gaze on the pictures, pretending to look at them, knowing that as I turned away he looked over to study my profile.
"Look at us. Being civil. Can't have that, can we?" He comments wryly. "Why did you come here?"
"I want to try one more time to help you see the truth, Jack."
"Brenna." his tone is sharp, warning. His expression turns cold. "I don't have time to listen to your tripe."
"TRIPE?" I exclaim, suddenly outraged. "Oh YES. Why bother with facts when you can make up whatever story you like!"
"You were falsifying your findings and when you needed proof that these 'creatures' exist, you murdered a young girl to fit your story."
"You are so incredibly wrong. How can anyone stand to be around you?"
"Well, naturally I'm offended by deception. Honest people get along with me nicely."
"Oh, I'm sure." I snap sarcastically.

There's a lapse. It's after dark. I'm fleeing the tent because I've stolen evidence. Jack caught me at it and is pursuing me with ill

intent. I also overhead him talking about the undercover agent in our unit that was meant to disrupt the core stability of our group, to try to suss out who exactly the murderer is. The landscape looks like the yard outside the house in MA. Where there is a small hill leading down into the neighbor's yard, the lawn fades into sand and the landscape becomes a desert.
I'm barefoot and I can feel the cool sand under my feet. I get a brief bird's eye view of his pursuit. I'm shouting over my shoulder as I run.

"How can you be so willfully blind? When all the evidence is right in front of you!" The dune to my left is, I know, actually a

sphinx that has been swallowed by the desert. I run my hand along the front paw, clearing it of sand. There's some sort of creature nesting between its front legs, close to its chest. I eye the thing and hope it hasn't noticed me. A little ways further there's a stone wall and a line of open doorways. I think I've lost him for now. I jog up the next dune and at the bottom of the following valley is our research and living trailer.
I'm inside now. I pass a guy who looks exactly like Sendhil Ramamurthy. I ask him where Nate and the new girl went off to and he says to the kitchen.

"Will you get them for me, I just found something interesting." He says.

Attachment 4750 I suck at describing this crap, so I made another layout. I cross the living room and go to hall, the door to the kitchen is slightly open and Nate has his back to the door and the new girl, who is Jack's undercover agent. She doesn't feel right somehow, she is raising a large kitchen knife.

"HEY." I say loudly. They both turn around, she drops the knife and looks a little embarrassed. "Looks like we found something.

You wanna follow me?"

They follow me back to Sendhil. We act like I didn't just find the new girl about to murder Nate. Sendhil talks about how he

just found some proof that our group had been infiltrated, but we won't know by who until we can get all the hands together in the morning. The new girl looks extremely awkward, I wonder why I'm not saying anything.

"Jack is on his way here."
"We can meet him outside if you need some time." The girl offers.
I grin at her a little, her cheeks flush. "Sure. Whatever you like."

There's a lapse. Sendhil is trying to show me something, it's a really confusing image. We're looking at something like a mirror

or a tv screen. There a thin metal frame around it and it glows a dim blue. He's sitting right behind me, chin on my shoulder, urging me to look and see for myself.
I see my own face, and his. I can't really remember what happens here. I notice the shape of my eyes, and the curve of my jaw.

There's another confusing moment after another lapse, he says he's going to meet Jack outside. I say I'm going to follow but

when I pass the mirror in the living room I'm a fat young man with pale green eyes and cork-screw curly hair. Then I try to put on my shoes but I forget my socks, and my shoes are shaped all funny. They look more like a walking cast. I don't want to get sand in them when I go outside. So I take them off and try to find socks...

There's another lapse and the story picks back up. I have traveled to a snowy place up north, I have tipped Jack off, telling him

that if he follows me there he will find the proof I've tried to convince him exists. That the woman he thinks I've murdered is actually here and alive. I meet him outside the house, he's huddled next to the wall. I sit down across from him.

"Oh, I didn't realize you'd be here." He says.
I let him pretend I wasn't the one who gave him the tip, and remain silent.
"He said he'll come get me. The girl wakes up every morning at the same time, like clockwork."
"I'm glad you're here." I whisper.
"Are you? Well. There's that at least." he pauses. "We're on different sides."

He looks so much like Liam that I forget he's Jack. "LIAM." I say, leaning forward so my nose is almost touching his. "Do you really think I care about that?"
He doesn't look startled or confused that I used the wrong name. He meets my eyes squarely and shakes his head once, just a little. I can feel my name on his lips. I want him to say it. He's never used my name in the dream.
I will him to call me Saja.
He opens his mouth like he's going to speak and then closes it.

"At least put your arms around me, then?" I say, disappointed.
"I..."
"It's cold."
"I can't."
I want to kiss him on the cheek but I don't. "Fine."
"I'll...see how things play out."
"As you wish."

He smiles a little but he looks sad. We hear the front door of the weathered shack open and we go inside. The girl we have come here to see, lost her fiance out in the snow. They thought she would die. Physically she recovered, but once she woke she would just do nonsensical things and spout gibberish.

"Can we speak with her?" Jack asks.
"You can try." Says her grandfather. "I'll give you ten minutes." He leaves the house and we proceed in trying to talk to her.

I don't remember any of what she says, but she goes over to this small round table by the door.

"You might want to be car---" she deliberately runs into it. "Yes. That's right, keep running into the table."

She and picks up the lamp, "You might want to not---" she then leans forward and knocks her head against it. Hard. "Okay, sure. Knock yourself out."
Jack kind of rolls his eyes at my sarcasm.

"I don't think we'll get anything useful from her, do you?" I ask him.
"I'm gonna talk to the grandfather again."

Now the girl is laying on the table, cuddling with the lamp, her head hanging off the edge. Her skin has an unhealthy blue cast and her eyes look strange.

"Odd are the hours that meet us at the gate." She says. I frown at her.
"What gates?"
"The ones on the edges. IT lives beyond the gates. Follows every grain."

She's really freaking me out and I get the sense that she actually did die out in the snow and whatever THIS is, is no longer human. She's changing into something else. Her lips look blue. She reaches out and grabs the front of my shirt. I tear it out of her grasp and join Jack outside. I'm am done with this creepiness.
He gives the grandfather his best and we start to leave.

"I guess that settles it. You didn't murder her."
"Someone sure did."

He stops me and gestures at my shirt. There's a splash of luminescent blue on the front. Just beyond him I see two tonberry trundle out from the darkness, carrying their lamps and stylized blue knives. There's a glowing blue orb on the ground, they're attracted to it. One of them starts to come toward me. Jack pivots and sees the tonberry.
"Uh oh."
We watch as the second tonberry viciously stabs the blue orb and absorbs its energy. The other one stops in front of me and makes a weird keening noise. I take off across the snow.
"What are you doing?" Jack hisses after me.
"I'm running ya moron. I'll be fine."
The tonberry follows me to the edge of the lake. Running is fluid, so easy. I dive in, and hear a splash as it moves out into the water. Swimming is even easier, I glide effortlessly through the water until I reach the other side and leap to the bank. There's a large snowdrift there, and on the other side I know is the road. I climb over the drift and fall into the snow on the far side startling three strange turkey-peacock creatures into flight. There are three giant zebras in the road. They are the size of draft horses, I know they are extremely aggressive. I grab a handful of snow and pelt the zebra stallion's flank hard, and then dive into a snow drift to hide.
A second later the tonberry bursts through the snow hill I climbed over, the stallion is offended, thinking that the tonberry hit it with a snowball...so the zebra tramples the hell out of it.

Gleefully triumphant that my plan worked, I wake up.

After trying and failing so much in the last several weeks, I finally made it to the Great Pyramid! I didn't complete the Task of the Year, but I had one fantastic lucid dream.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #59: On the Back of the Sphinx

I'm standing by a hedgerow on a suburban street, waiting for the hedges to part and let me in. Through these hedges is the party I'm supposed to attend. The hedges part for me, then close as I move toward them. "No problem," I say, covering up a sting of rejection. "I'll come back when you're ready for me."

I wander across the street to wait. I wonder whether I'm dreaming. I decide that I'll reality check "in a few minutes". (You slacker!) No -- I don't need to reality check. This is a dream! I look at my hands. No distortion, waviness, extra fingers, or discoloration. Still, I'm sure that I'm dreaming.

The dream feels sharp, vivid, and stable. I feel like I have tons of time and potential. I sprint across the street, leap over the hedgerow, and with a shout I soar into the sky. I'm flying over a rain forest now and my skyrocketing confidence level makes me shout, "L-dopa!!!" (Although I was displaying behavior in line with high dopamine levels, I've never taken L-dopa. Don't know what got into me.) After flying over the rain forest for a while, I wind up in a cloud bank and lose my bearings. Afraid of getting stuck here, I turn back toward the neighborhood, content to take a different direction.

I fly back out of the cloud bank, but a fierce gust of wind kicks up from the other direction and pushes me back toward the clouds. "Okay," I say. "You're taking me to the Pyramid." I relax as I pass back through the cloud bank, emerging over an ocean. I let the wind push me further on and soon I'm flying thousands of feet over a desert dotted with stones. It's dark, and the sand looks as gray as a moonscape. I descend headfirst toward the sand, sure that I'm going to find what I'm looking for.

It's nighttime when I land. I look to my right, and there's the Pyramid, illuminated by artificial light! I'm no more than twenty feet from it. The sphinx lies directly at the base of the Pyramid. I note that in the physical world she'd be further east toward Cairo, but the inconsistency doesn't bother me. Instead it reminds me even more strongly that this is my world.

The sphinx's stony skin is white like alabaster and she has Asian characters tattooed along all four legs and in a single stripe along each side of her body. She's far smaller than I'd expected, no more than thirty feet long. Her entire face has crumbled away (not just her nose.) I'm overcome with this urge to help her. Even setting aside Task of the Year, this is now something I badly want to do.

I press my palms against her face and say, "I'm going to fix you." I feel the stone first roiling then smoothing out against my hands. In a few seconds her face is repaired and her head starts to move. Her face looks mostly feline but there's still a vaguely humanoid quality to it. She licks my hand once and her tongue is the fleshy, rough tongue of a cat. Her head turns vaguely toward my face but her eyes are pupil-less, blank alabaster so I can't tell whether she's looking straight at me.

I swing my leg across her back and ask her to "Take me to the top of the Pyramid." She gets to her feet and starts walking around to the other side of the Pyramid. Her route takes us through a restaurant and bar where a number of women are dancing to this really amazing piece of world music. The melody is from some sort of brass instrument and it's backed by the mouth harp. (I had to google to even figure out what this instrument is called -- here's a good example of the mouth harp in action. I think it was in my memory banks from a video game I played about 15 years ago.)

As I ride through the dance floor, the music and dancing begin to draw me in. One particularly stunning dancer, an ebony-skinned young woman of about 25, is driving me to distraction. I feel the sphinx slowing down and things start to feel unstable. I try to refocus on the task at hand, but the dream falls apart.

I was driving in a car, I'm not sure what kind, down a large hill on a long, winding road. There were a few cars coming from the other direction and for some reason I thought there wasn't many for this time of day, it must've been rush hour or something. As I came to a bend in the road I looked over the guard rail overlooking a large cliff with a huge city in the valley below. I turned to my sister who was in the passenger seat and said, "We're almost there." We must've been going to whatever city that was. As we turned the corner I noticed temporary dividers in the middle of the road, like they would put down for construction, but nobody was working on the road. There weren't even any vehicles. As we continued down the road I noticed that there seemed to be an awful lot of police cars, the majority of whom were pulling people over. I wasn't speeding so I thought I was fine.

I distinctly remember passing a small, deep purple sedan with a cop standing next to the door. He was leaning into the car trying to reach something in the passenger seat. I didn't know what it was or why he was doing it but I continued on driving glad it wasn't me pulled over. Right as I thought this I saw blinking lights in my rear-view mirror; Damn, why me!? I continued around the next curve and pulled over to the side of the road. The officer got out of his car and had a very large hat on, much like troopers often wear but much bigger. He started walking towards our car and I began to get nervous. When he got to our car he didn't stop, he just kept on walking past us. He went around the next bend and when I looked behind me the cop car was gone. I looked over the edge of the cliff that the road weaved down and could see the officer standing at the bottom looking up at me. He winked.

For some reason this bumped me into lucidity. I'm not quite sure why but I didn't really question it; I was glad to have ended my dry spell and did a quick clock check for a RC. At first it said 3:17, pretty normal. I looked away and turned back to it. This time it said 9:62. Perfect, this was definitely a dream. I got out of the car and rubbed my hands together, not wanting to waste my first LD in a couple weeks. I asked my sister who was still sitting in the passenger seat and had been silent the whole time what I should do. She looked at me and said, "Weren't you asked to do some tasks or something?" Ah-ha! The TotY! The first one that came to mind was the Colosseum one but for whatever reason I decided against it. The next one that popped into my head was Africa, riding the great sphinx and fixing its nose.

I got back into the car and decided I would try a different way of getting there instead of just teleporting. I pushed a button that just appeared on the console and the car began to hover above the ground. I pulled back on the steering wheel which could now move like the controls of a plane and pushed the gas pedal. Away we went. I flew over the city, going quite fast since I figured we were in America and had to fly over the Atlantic. I looked down and couldn't quite tell what city it was but it was surrounded by desert and mountains beyond that. I figured either Las Vegas or Phoenix Arizona. It only took a few seconds to reach the mountain range and when we crossed it I could see the great pyramids over the other side. I opened the console of the car and found a staples button. Cheesy, I know, but I pressed it and a loud and, for some reason, female voice said, "that was easy."

I pushed down on the steering wheel and eased on the breaks. We landed about 200 yards from the sphinx and I knew I had to ride it up the pyramids but felt like something else was missing. Of course, the nose! As I looked it over I realized that its nose was completely intact; the whole thing looked like it had been completed just days earlier! What the heck, I was supposed to fix it . I figured since I had to fix it I might as well break it first. I flew up to its face and pulled my arm back, taking a good, solid swing at the nose. The tip fell off but I needed more, granted the whole thing was twice the size of me. I ran my hand along the bridge of the nose and then hovered over it and kicked down. The whole thing slowly slid down the face of the sphinx and it looked just like it did in the history books.

Now I had to undo what I just did. I was a little annoyed at it but hey, I want to get this done! I floated back to the ground and picked up the nose. Even though my arms couldn't reach all the way around it I was still able to somehow lift it. I flew back up to its face and set the nose in place. I then pushed it into the face and the whole thing fit like a key. Apparently this was indeed some sort of key, for the sphinx immediately began to move. Slowly but surely the whole thing stood up, looked around, and gave a long stretch and yawn. It then proceeded to lick itself, damn cat.

I hopped on its back and tried to get it to move, granted the thing's back was 25 feet wide, it wasn't a horse. I squeezed my legs like one would to get a horse to move but the sphinx just looked around and then laid back down. What the hell, this was supposed to be fairly straightforward! I thought for a moment while it started to drift off to sleep and then remember seeing cats chasing the little red dots that laser pointers create. I reached into my pocket and, sure enough, there was a laser pointer! I pointed it at the pyramid and could faintly see a little red dot, not nearly enough to get this thing's attention. I figured that, if it were a little bit darker out the light would be easier to see. I looked down at my wrist and found a watch. It said 4:00 P.M. so I pulled out the little time-set thing and changed it to 8:00. As the hands moved forward the sun went down and the moon came up. This was pretty cool, given that I had never really changed the time of day before.

As the sun went down I could feel the dream begin to fade. Damn, I haven't done this in a while! I quickly rubbed my hands together which stopped the fading and brought back some clarity but I knew that I didn't have much time left. I patted the sphinx on its back, which was still quietly laying there. It began to stir and I pointed the laser pointer at the ground in front of it; it was easy to see now! The sphinx's ears twitched and its head perked up, clearly noticing the little dot. I pointed at the pyramids which were about 400 yards away. The sphinx jumped up and immediately began to bound towards that light. I squeezed my legs as tight as I could just to stay on.

When it got close to the pyramid, the sphinx jumped, trying to pounce on the light. I quickly moved it up about halfway to the top of the pyramid, but it still ended up hitting the base and knocking some blocks off. C'mon, kitty, don't knock the thing down! It regained its awareness and found the dot again and immediately jumped up, running up the pyramid. This thing was steeper than I thought, it had to be at least a 40 degree angle (after googling it, the actual angle is almost 52 degrees). The sphinx stuttered on a few steps as blocks fell out from under it but it continued to climb up the top.

I pointed the light right at the very peak and, right as we got close to the top, the sphinx jumped again, this time overestimating the height and clearing the entire pyramid. We both fell down for a few hundred feet and when the sphinx finally landed it began to slide down the side of the pyramid. The ride was quite bumpy and I could feel the dream beginning to fade. We reached the bottom just a couple seconds afterwards and I immediately jumped off, rubbing my hands to try and stabilize but to no avail. I decided that, since the dream was pretty much over and I had accomplished what I wanted to do, I would give the sphinx a treat. I waved towards the distance, motioning for something to come towards me. While doing this I envisioned a giant fish coming out of the horizon towards the sphinx. I tried to reward it for its hard work but just as I though I saw the fish come over the horizon I woke up in my bed, my arm over my head in the same position I was waving in. The entertainment isn't confined to just the dreams

One down, six to go. Hopefully the next one won't take three weeks just to get lucid

A short lucid, but it featured some of the most arresting visual imagery I've encountered so far. I'd wanted to see the Great Pyramid, but this was well beyond what I'd had in mind.

I like to think of my conscious mind as the "coauthor" of my dreams, but sometimes I have to wonder if it's anything more than a proofreader.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #33: The Poolside Pyramid

I'm swimming at a pool party. Rather than relaxing and enjoying the moment, I'm scrubbing furiously at algae blooms along the pool walls while trying to make sure that my two kids are keeping their heads above water. A tall, gray-haired man swims up and makes some unflattering remark about my scrubbing technique. First a flicker of annoyance ("this isn't even my job!"), then one of realization. He stops talking as soon as I'm lucid.

I want to go but I can't make myself leave until I'm sure my kids are safely out of the pool. Fortunately, when I check for them, I see that they've already disappeared. I tell the guy I've got lucid stuff to do and he responds, "Oh sure, man. Go for it."

I fly up out of the pool, thinking vaguely about my goal of reaching the top of the Great Pyramid. I'm shocked when on the horizon I see an entire pyramid complex, fully formed. In front of the Pyramid, in even more vivid detail is the sphinx and a towering statue of an Egyptian Pharaoh. Incredibly, the statue stands even taller than the Pyramid.

Rather than the dull sand-colored stone that I imagine when thinking of the Pyramid today, it's clad in brilliant white. The sphinx's face and body is either painted or perhaps decorated from top to bottom with colored stones, the eyes specifically ringed in deep blue, like lapis lazuli. The statue of the pharaoh is gold, similar in style to King Tut's burial mask.



Everything that I see ahead of me is far, far beyond what I'd incubated (or even imagined) for the Great Pyramid, and I'm thrilled with the idea of exploring it further. A little too thrilled, it seems, because not long after I start flying toward the pyramid complex, I'm awake. My heart rate is elevated (though not quite racing) and I can't seem to settle back in for a DEILD.

Ayiee! Let me back in!

I and my brother stood in 'the square', a large, roughly square area of tarmac outside my granddad's house and surrounded bymultiple other two story abodes. On one of the 'sides' of the square was a speedbump, and beyond that a road that lead out into the rest of the village. The sky seems to be fairly overcast, though it isn't what you would call dark. Instantly, we both noticed something near the speedbump. There were two ramps descending into the earth on either side of it, like a path that goes under a motorway. both of us ran over to it and made our way down the ramp to the right.

We were now in a concrete path that runs under the road. It was about twenty meters long from one entrance to the other. The wall to the left of us was flat and smooth. The floor too was the same glossy, cold concrete. To the right of us though was something unexpected.

The floor continued to the right for about two meters, before dropping down. This space between this drop and the other wall was filled with a clear water, with some debris such as leaves floating in it. An arched tunnel in the wall behind the trench stretched off beyond what I could see, and the water lay there as well. An iron grating walkway went down the middle of the arch, but ended at the mouth of the tunnel. On 'my' side of the water there were the beginnings of a bridge, but the middle was missing. Presumably it was for maintenance purposes.

I and my brother made our way to another exit that had appeared next to the one opposite us. This led up, through smooth curvy passages, until we reached the 'top'.

Scene Change

I was on a large grassy plain. Some tall cliffs surrounded the grassland, with a few spruce trees dotted here and there. The sun beamed warmly, and the sky was a deep blue. A few clouds drifted lazily across it. The most noticeable thing were the buildings that stood before me. There were about eight that I could see, but more could have been covered up by cliffs. Each was like a huge steel box, covered in huge radiator gratings. They were very futuristic, with clear cut lines and bright faces.

Then I found myself inside one of them. They appeared to be connected together, like a modular building, in one long row. I walked down them. Each had a glass window to the left of the path, usually with blue screens surrounding them. Behind the glass I could see small white space-ships hovering in a bland room, empty save for the scientists that seemed to be monitoring them.

I eventually reached some of the scientists beside a long table, upon which people were laying. A scientist explained they had just come out of the pods. Apparently people would be 'grown' in these pods instead of a womb. One by one, the scientists woke up the people and asked them their names and how they were feeling. They all seemed to be fine, and could speak fluent english.

Scene Change

I walked up a muddy hill towards a large wooden hut , surrounded by brambles and bushes. Several bare windows lined the wall, and from each of these one of my friends dangled, seemingly as a test of strength. There were other people walking up the hill with us, and I myself walked beside the 'leader'.

Inside the hut it was quite cramped, as a second room took up the center of the building, leaving room around the outside. I walked around, chatting to people and eventually found my friend M., who I talked with about my aunt. Acording to him she had been attacked, but was fine.

Scene Change

An old man walked with his dog up a zigzagging path. He seemed to be in egypt as pyramids and sandstone structures lined the pathway. Suddenly, a stone sphinx ran at him. He punched it and it flew into a pyramid, smashing through the wall. The sphinx then came out and threw a gigantic block at the man, but he merely deflected it with his fist, causing it to rebound and smash the sphinx to pieces.