task of the month

Lying in bed, trying to WILD/fall asleep. Watching FMA Brotherhood with wife. Scar is speaking; wife comments on his scarred face. He looks a little weird to me--part of his face is white (Scar's character is brown-skinned in the show). Fast-paced outro music begins:



It seems clear that Scar is going to die in this next episode. My wife talks about them playing up his sacrifice. I am now looking at a Super Mario Bros. screen. Realize it is a dream, but am not sure if this is a transition so do nothing. Currently I have no body. Playing Mario Bros. 3 world 1 map music: (sorry gang, couldn't post two videos--look the second one up!)

Mario flies off wearing his cape from Super Mario World. The game transitions to some weird game with a naked baby's butt. Dream has solidified now and I have a body. I slap the baby's butt through the screen to see if I can interact with the game. I don't feel anything except for the t.v. screen, but the character reacts. I try to pick the baby up this fails. Danie Radcliffe from Harry Potter is sitting in a hot tub. He criticizes me for not picking up the baby correctly. I knock him backwards into the water. Move around the screen a bit--maybe some kind of office in isometric third-person view, like the old Crusader games. Some zombies wandering around. I decide I don't want to play a game for my entire LD, so I get up and leave the room.

Emerge in my mom's house, then remember to observe the dream. A thought comes up: can I remember any of the January tasks? Ah yes, I remember to new ones. Shouldn't be hard. But I'm not going to try hard. Just observe, and if the necessary tools emerge, then use them. I think I see a component resting on a cabinet, but when I look it is not there. I am looking inside of a cabinet when I wake up. Lie still and begin DEILD transition. Roll off of the mat and am falling through space. Seems to be going well, but keep knocking against something as I fall. I try to ignore it but then wake up. Try once more, then RC and write this down.

WILD at bedtime. Lots of body vibrations (not normal for me) and then transition in NREM. The sensation is similar to diving under water, and all of a sudden the world is quiet. I wait for a bit to see if something will happen. A helicopter appears. We are flying. I imagine that it's snowing, and begin to hear jingle bells in my head. I silence them, though, because this seems like a military dream, and those are out of place. Once the scene sets, it is snowing

I am set down on a watch tower. A man on a tower across from me yells, "Let's move it, rookie!" This seems to me like a Call of Duty dream. I tell him to extend the drawbridge to me. He drops a ladder to the ground. "No, John," I say, "the button underneath." He fumbles for a minute, and seems like he is having trouble. I remain calm. Can't remember what happened, but think he extended the bridge, because I remember being very pleased with my dream control

I somehow make it across; while I am running over, I try to recall the other tasks besides the snowball. On the other tower, inside a room, there are some dogs lying on a bed--two pit bulls, black and white spotted. I recognize this as my "doubles" dream sign, but of course don't RC because this is already a dream. I go down the ladder, looking for snow. It seems it has all dried up, but I think that if I run around the corner of the building, there will be some left. There is. I run over and pack a snowball. Cold! My feet are cold too, but I remind myself that it's a dream and that it isn't real cold. I start climbing the ladder with the big snowball and wake up.

FA. "Awake" from stress dream with wasps. I am lying in the guest bedroom at my aunt's house. I am disappointed that I did not become lucid. Thinking about getting up, but don't want to. I then hear an all-call: "Wake up call for [dream uses my full name]." Really? I imagine this must be a dream. I nose pinch. Sweet! I am relieve to be lucid after a tough night. I find it difficult to phase through the bedroom door; it finally just falls off of its hinges, and lands flat with me on top of it. I am thinking about the winter tasks. I head out to the kitchen/patio area. Before I get to the main door, I imagine snow. I even hear sleigh bells in my ears. I open the door.

Nothing but green grass. I decide if I run up the street I might find some snow. I am heading out the screen door when I am confronted by a little squirrel with big bat ears. He is trying to get into the screened-in area. I remind myself that this is a dream, and then let him in. He latches onto my leg, and begins climbing up me. I'm nervous about him biting and really don't want him on me. He climbs up and nestles between my neck and shoulder. Eh . . . . I keep expecting a bite on the neck but it never comes. I am trying to ignore him and continue my walk down the street when I wake up.

Wake from an NLD. I lie still and wait to DEILD. Body begins to roll to the side, which signals beginning of REM sleep. I roll off of the mat and fall through space. Eyes flicker open somewhat, and I can see stars in a black sky. I accidentally open my WL eyes, though, because I can suddenly see light streaming in from beneath my sleep mask. I close them and wait for my "dream eyes" to open on their own. They do, and I see I am flying swiftly over a dark, deep purple ocean. The stars are still out. I can feel the wind on my face. Ahead of me, on the horizon, a white number one appears.

Memory is fuzzy here. Certain I did not lose consciousness, but unsure of how narrative unfolded entirely. I land down in the water, and there is some sort of game being played by a bunch of DCs. I try to persuade one of them that she is strong enough to lift me up and throw me out of the water. She says she is not. "Oh come on," I say. "Look at those triceps!" She laughs and tries to throw me. She just sort of pushed me out of the water. She says she can't. "But really," I say, "You can." I'm trying to get the dream to bend to my will a bit! She tries again (and throws me a bit higher) and reiterates that she can't do it.

I mess around for a bit more (can't remember what I was doing--interacting with DCs, asking questions and what not, and I specifically remember rubbing my hands to stabilize--and then it occurs to me to complete the tasks of the month. I think about what the tasks are, and remember the leaf task. I am in a back yard. I begin thinking I will materialize the leaves by pretending they are on the other side of a wooden fence. I say, "You're around this fence!" and run around the fence. I briefly see the outline of what looks like a pile of leaves, but then that pops out of existence. I try two more times, and nothing happens at all.

I run around for a bit, thinking I might find a pile of leaves somewhere. Nope. I then think to call for help on my phone, and pull it out of my pocket. I figure it will take too long to punch in the numbers though and toss it away. Instead, I head inside to get help from a DC.

Near me is a blond girl. She attempted to assist me earlier in the dream, but I rebuffed her because DCs are too unreliable. I now ask her if she knows where any leaves are. We go inside the house, and she nods and points to some storage boxes. One of them is black and I open it up. Inside there are only Christmas lights. "These are just Christmas lights," I say, and then get annoyed. This always happens. DCs always trick me and waste my time. I run out of the house. The DC runs after me, trying to get me to come back. I ignore her. Looking around, I see a bunch of leaves lying around on the grass. I think I might be able to rake them up, but then pull an Ophelia and scoop some up in my arms. Some of them are crackly, but others are rotten and gross. I make a very small pile. I look at it and decide I'm not jumping in that.

I try to think of the other basic. Oh yeah, tell a kid they are dreaming. I am on a path in the woods, and a jogger is coming towards me. She is a kid, maybe like a high school student, but I check just to be sure:

"How old are you?" I ask.

She stops running and faces me. "16."

"You're dreaming!" I say.

"If you don't shut up, I'm going to hit you," she says.

I back off, and she continues jogging.

I continue on the path until I find a small cabin/mobile home (don't ask) in the woods. Inside are some DCs. More conversation that I can't remember. However, I hear voices up inside a treehouse-like loft. They are discussing someone messing up their abilities to dream. I ascend the wooden ladder up, and see two people I know semi-well from WL. However, I understand that they are DCs and not their real selves. They are crouched over a dream journal. When they see me enter the room, the girl (it's a girl and a guy) moves to cover up the DJ so I can't read it.

"It's just me," I say. "The dreamer." They are smiling now in a mocking way. I sort of lose it here, and demand to know "why you guys (meaning DCs in general) always tease me?"

"Because we can," the girl responds.

"But lots of dreamers get help from their DCs. They teach them fun things like how to fly. You guys always try to trick me."

The girl now laughs and says, "You can't even fly."

I get mad and grab the guy in my fist. He instantly turns into a small, faceless rag doll. The transition was seamless and sort of shocked me. The girl disappeared altogether. I fling the doll down on the ground and leave.

Back in the house, I remember the advanced task--cut off your hand and serve it up for Thanksgiving dinner. I look around and see a half-eaten plate of food: there is some cornbread there and some other stuff I don't remember. I realize that if I hadn't scared the DCs away I could have served them my hand. I leave and begin running back to the first house (where I tried to complete the leaf task.

Once inside the original kitchen, I approach the block of knives. They all appear to be light, serrated blades, and I am not keen on sawing through my wrist. I am hoping for a cleaver, and find a small one, but it is not heavy enough. I finally settle on a knife that probably does not exist in WL, but resembles a butcher knife. I RC to make sure I am dreaming. I then (to be honest, fearing the pain) test the knife by slicing into my index finger. I don't feel anything, and think maybe I missed (lol). However, a line appear on my finger, and I start bleeding. The dream quickly fades and I wake up.

Wake up from NLD consciously, decide to DEILD. Feel body begin to roll over, but feel like I am losing consciousness as well. Fight a bit to stay lucid. Some dream imagery--bright colors--but can't remember upon wakening.Lose consciousness, then FA in bedroom. Nose pinch. Meh, can sort of breathe. Probably a dream. I get up and walk to the bedroom door. There is an envelope stuck in the door. I take it and walk into the living room. It is dark. I now remember that my wife in WL has already woken up, and so it should not be dark in living room. Definitely a dream. I find a stream of light from a window and open the envelope. A check stub for $5,004 and a ticket stub that reads JANE MOSHER BUDDHA. Cool. Cats are meowing at me but I ignore them sorry kitties.

My front door has five door handles and is also made of glass. I open the handle in the middle and push the middle section out. It occurs to me that I could phase, but I don't really care enough Outside, the sky is slanted oddly, and reminds me of a hallucination I had as a child. Weird! It is early morning out, and I magically have a grassy backyard with trees in it (and not a dirty street, as it is in WL). What did I want to do? I know I wanted to fly into space, but, eh, not now. What else? Oh yeah, TotM! I look around and see a pumpkin on the grass. Neat. I walk over to it, and realize it is mostly collapsed in on itself and is rotten. Easier to get inside! I begin digging through the black, rotten innards. At first, seems like nothing in there. But I think, Come on, pumpkin! I know you've got something! And there was something! It was a d4:


It is blue and cream swirled. Nothing super special, but still kind of cool. I look at it for a moment, then carefully place it on the patio (part of me wants to say I place it on top of an 8-ball? Not sure how that makes sense!). I then remember I want to transform into a tree. I find a big oak in the grass (there are some others in the dirt but I want to walk on the grass ). I place my hand on the trunk and begin trying to fuse with it. My hand and arm are changing color to match the trunk when I wake up.

(7:39 AM): On my sleeping bag, trying to fall asleep. I hear a "meow" and see my little kitten on the bed, looking at me. I start petting her, but then ask, "How did you get out of your room?" as she is not allowed in the bedroom. I nose pinch and can breathe. I immediately remember the toilet task. I phase through the bedroom door and enter the bathroom.

There is a bunch of stuff spread out on the toilet seat, so I sweep all of this away and lift the lid. It's clean inside I realize I am wearing jeans so I strip these off (though I have some issues getting them off). Finally I am free, and go after my underwear, but I am having difficulties getting my legs disentangled. I finally realize it doesn't even matter so I jump into the toilet with my underwear still hanging from my leg, and squat all the way down. I then press the flush button.

The bowl fills with water, but nothing is really happening. I try to spin my body around, to get some momentum, and I do spin now--sort of like a lazy turd. The spinning has also teleported me and the toilet to an outdoors location, on a small, wooden screened-in porch. I try to imagine one of those powerful toilets that just suck shit down with ease. No dice. The cookie task occurs to me, but I keep focusing on getting sucked down. I wake up.

12:02 AM: I am back in high school, in a hallway. I am walking to class but need to pee really bad. I see a toilet in the hallway and begin using it. Some guys have their backs to the toilet so I use them as cover. They turn around, see me peeing, and start laughing at me. I suddenly realize I am dreaming, so I step back and raise my aim a bit to start peeing all over them They are super pissed , and I am laughing. I pinch my nose. I then say:

"Guess what, boys--I'm dreaming." I look at their wet shirts. "Not sure if you guys are, but I sure am." I am really celebratory about the whole thing. One of them looks down at his soaked shirt.

"I took it like a champ," he says.

I congratulate him and head off. In my mind, a goal appears: find Haruhara Haruko (from FLCL):



I set off to find her, but then remember that I did not actually plan to do this (though the goal is awesome and I may do it very soon ). I decide to try anyway. I set off in search of her, or DCs I could turn into her. None of the kids in the hallway look very close, and some of them are young kids. I suddenly remember that I wanted to do Dreamer's suggestion for TotM September (don't think I'm going to wait for that one ). I begin looking for the necessary implements for the task. As I jog down the hallway, the school turns into a mall. I am looking around in stores, but don't see anything helpful.

I then see my wife seated at one of those make-up kiosks. I run over to her. This almost turns into sexy time, but I manage to keep it together. I notice that the dream seems unstable. I rub my hands together. My wife then asks if I want pictures or something else. Sweet, I think--pictures! I could use those. She pulls out some cool-looking cards of some DBZ-style fighter. The cards are about the size of a Tarot card. I use some stretching dream control to enlarge and expand the picture. Unfortunately, I get so caught up in how neat the card looks that I forget about the task. Meanwhile, my wife is talking to me about the history of this particular card--how it has gone through several different printings due to popularity. The dream now destabilizes a final time and I wake up.

Last night felt distinctly lucid twice only to lose the dream upon reentry.

In the first, I am in a bedroom, and having a discussion on lucid dreaming (while lucid).In hypnopomia, I even review the dream so as not to lose it (if I had had my shit together, I would have simply awoken and recorded the dream). Once fully awake, the dream memory vaporizes in front of me, more or less.

Probably one of the first two dreams of the night, which historically are not great moments for dream recall for me. However, I think I have been lazy with recall per se, as I have been experiencing lots of day residue and "garbage" dreams that I have neglected to record in any great detail. Maybe this is the impetus I need to get back into recording my dreams in detail.

Second dream: I am lucid and attempting to complete the tasks of the month, but don't remember scenery or whether or not I succeed at any of the tasks, or indeed even remember them correctly. Gab has developed software to assist dreamers while they are still dreaming, and to publish their attempts at the TotM. She publishes mine (in a tiny newspaper), describing my attempt.

The dream drifts into asemi-lucid where I am running a foot race through an apartment complex (maybe my old digs) with a WL friend. He is extremely fast, and while I am able to manipulate the dream to make myself faster than I normally am, he is still beating me. We are running at night alongside a chainlink fence, and there are several hairpin turns in the grass. I epicly jump over the fence and into some undergrowth, but am still daunted by how fast my opponent is. I attribute this in dream to his long legs.

Finally, I am able to use some of my minions (apparently I had minions) to help me cheat. One of them grabs my WL friend through the fence while I am able to take off and finish the race. However, my awareness stays with my friend and is in fact shifted into that of my minion. At the moment when I feel I must release him (as he's fighting me the whole time) another minion grabs him, my awareness shifts into that minion, and then I turn mine and his hands into stone (I am grabbing him by the wrists). During all of this I more or less feel that I am dreaming, but just don't "get" it.

I tried a different method of MILD than what I am used to, and think I will continue the experiment tonight. I will keep you all updated

This was completed for Dreamer's DV Challenge!

Finding Fris
I am trying to lead meditation for my mom and sister. My mom criticizes me for laying out the cushions incorrectly. I have already had to interrupt my own meditation to help them, so I am not pleased. My sister is taking a very long time to get here! I finally say f*** this and get into my car and drive off.

I am driving through my hometown, and suddenly appear in the city where I live. I am driving through a college campus. I know I need to get to work soon, but realize I did not tell my wife where I was going. I reach for the phone to call her, but realize I have my old phone from college, and that I will not be able to contact her on this. I also realize I've brought my cat along by mistake, and that when I open the car door she will probably get out, and not be able to defend herself. I am starting to get stressed out by current events!

I find myself now walking in a mall that also happens to be a college campus, and it occurs to me that I might be dreaming. I do a nose pinch and can breathe. Lucid. I pause for a moment to just breathe and look around. Everything becomes strikingly vivid. I try to remember my tasks. At first, nothing comes, but then . . . Find Fris! I set off. I am very happy to have remembered the goal! I try to call Fris on my old phone, but this does not work. The phone only has one large green button in the center, and when I press this, I hear a voice come out, but for whatever reason (can't remember now) I am not satisfied with what I hear. I think I toss the phone away.

I begin running around calling out, "Where's Fris? Where's Fris?" A DC stops me and says he's found him. He points to a storefront ad for cigarettes. The add has a silhouette of a cartoon character on the front. I tell the DC that this is not good enough and continue my search. Different DCs stop me, either with rumors or reports, or just false information. As I am making my way down the thoroughfare, I notice an extremely beautiful DC -- maybe the most beautiful woman I've ever seen -- walking past me. I almost lost the objective and run after her, but then wrench my eyes away and continue on. Other male DCs were looking at her as well!

A friend from WL finally stops me as I am ascending some stairs and points me in another direction. "I just saw Fris over there, but watch out, because there is a crowd." I'm like, "Wtf, a crowd?" I run over to this spot and have to shove some DCs out of the way to get to the inner circle. Fris is sitting on a brick bench. He is a rapper, and all of the people are his fans. I ask him if he is really Fris, and he says, "Yeah, yeah." I wonder if I have to do anything else to meet the task. I ask Fris for his autograph (I mean, he is a famous rapper, right?). Fris agrees and is signing my paper when he sees my ring. He asks me if I am a mason. I say yes, I am. We talk about Freemasonry! Fris has all of these interesting skull rings on. He then asks me if he can hold my ring. I say certainly. He tries to work the ring off of my finger, but he is going so slowly. "Just pull it off," I say, "You're being too gentle." He finally gets it off and is examining it. By this time the crowd has dispersed (they walk away as we are talking). He takes out a lock-smithing tool kit and begins fiddling with my ring. I realize that he is trying to resize the ring to his own finger! I get kind of pissed about this, but then remember I am dreaming and that he can't do anything to my ring. I just shrug and watch. He is very meticulous. I then contemplate whether or not I've removed my ring in WL, and seem to feel my WL hand holding my ring. At this point the dream destabilizes and I wake up.