YES! Another lucid dream!! I am one happy kitty
Of Swimming Pools, Skeletons, and Baseball Bazookas--January 7th, 2006
the first part of this dream was non-LD, and third person. I was on the Star Trek Enterprise... anyway "I" was the engineer dude... Trevor or Travis or something. A bunch of stuff happened--we got stranded outside the ship and had to launch through space to get back on, in one part--I can't remember much of this part.
Anyway, we eventually wound up at an onsen-like place. For those who don't know, an onsen is a Japanese hot spring--when you go in, you take off all your clothes (you don't even wear a swimsuit! Don't worry, there is a separate women's and men's side). In this dream version of an onsen, there wasn't a separate women's and men's side, but I didn't mind (I figured, what else are you supposed to do? Get your clothes wet?). The room I was in was small and very dim, with blue hues. The whole place was covered with shower tile which was pretty slippery, and there were American shower stalls along one wall.
I was helping a young woman with a walking disability get to the showers by supporting her as she walked there. I kept thinking, "Shoot, what if I slip?" Luckily, I didn't, and she sucessfully got into the shower, where she was very happy and started singing.
Afer a while, I started trying to get back out of the room into the main onsen area (I also switched into first-person at this time). I went to cross through the pool that was situated in the dead center of the room, since that was the way I had come. But I got lost in the pool... sheesh. Once I got in, it was suddenly a lot bigger and deeper than I had thought it was. Great. At least it was pleasantly warm. I swam around aimlessly, afraid to touch my toes to the bottom because of the drain (I am, at age 16, still deathly afraid of pool drains of any type). A couple of times I actually brushed my toes against the drain, and it sucked faintly at them, at which I promptly became scared senseless. What was worse is that there was a bunch of slimy stuff floating around the drain, and some of it clung around my toes after I swam through it (I promply kicked wildly to get it off).
Then, I started trying to see where the exit was, but everything was suddenly dark. I couldn't see anything at all. I forget how exactly I thought of how to get out, but I think it was by locating the singing of the young woman that I had helped, and swimming to the opposite side of the room from it (because I had gone in a straight line from the door to get to the showers). The first time I bumped against the edge of the pool, there was a wall, but the second time I was able to feel the steps and pull myself out of the pool.
Now, I'm not sure whether it was the 'chase' itself (lost in a pool, running from an evil drain) that triggered the thought, or whether it was that sense of triumph that I had felt in my last LD after 'defeating' the chase dream (and I had just 'defeated' the pool by getting out), but at that moment, crouching in the darkness in this freakish onsen, I thought, "....I'M DREAMING! YESSS! LUCID LUCID LUCID!!!" (Anyone who has realized that they are dreaming knows this feeling )
I immediately remembered how blurry and undefined my last LD was, and decided that I needed to quickly remedy that. So I rubbed my hands together. At this, the visible colors in the room suddenly became super-saturated... but then they dimmed back into the near-black that they were before. Then I tried looking at my hands... but I couldn't see them in the darkness. Shoot! I really needed some light in this place.
So I yelled, "Hey! Someone turn on a light!" And what would you know, a light appeared. It was a dim light that didn't light up the place much, but it was enough. I tried rubbing my hands again, but it didn't work. So I looked at my hands, concentrating on the outlines, the shapes, the whorls in my fingerprints... and it suddenly became very detailed. I thought, "Yes!"
But this wasn't the best surprise. When I looked up, I was nearly blown away by the level of detail in my dream. I could literally count the bathroom tiles in the entire place. The room was small, the light blue floor tiles contrasting sharply with the gray stone walls that looked like they came from a cathedral. There was now no pool in the center, and only one shower stall against the wall (I remember being confused at this discrepancy, because there had been more than one before). The reason why there had been no light was because the door to the main room had been barricaded off with a wall of bright blue shower tiles (the color that you get when you select 'blue' as the text color on this forum). I commanded these tiles to move, and a layer of them slid up, but then came back down again. Trying again yielded the same result. Because of this, and the fact that there were more than one layer of tiles to move, I gave up (why did I want to risk getting squished in the door so that I could go farther into the onsen anyway? I wanted to get OUT!
So I turned to the far wall, where the light was coming in from a circular window set into the stone. I went over, and thumped my fist against the window, causing the glass to pop out (with a small 'pop' at that). I climbed outside, and found myself looking out the second-floor window at what curiously reminded me of the courtyard of the college that I spent EFY at. In any case, my breath was once again taken away by the unbelivable detail of it. It was midday, and several trees were casting comfortable shade on the sun-drenched ground. About twenty feet away was a small gazebo.
I climbed out and crouched on the red-tiled roof/balcony thing that was under the window, collecting my thoughts. Where did I want to go? My mind temporarily spun with the fact that I could do anything, and how was I supposed to single out one single thing out of all those possibilities? But then, I remembered that in my waking thoughts I had resolved to go to Halloweentown and meet Jack. Alright, then, that is what I would do! But how would I get there? There were no doors around that I could use the 'magic door' trick on. Alright then... I would fly to Halloweentown.
I tried to fly down to the roof of the gazebo. Unfortunately, I could only gain a small amount of altitude before I glided down to the roof. This happened again as I flew to the ground. The closest thing I can remember to the sensation is how one flies with Kirby in Super Smash Brothers Melee--several small 'puffs' of altitude, that quickly run out, forcing one to coast back to the ground. Great. I couldn't fly there then. So I decided that when I rounded the corner, Halloweentown would be there. As I walked to the corner, I thought that it was kind of far-fetched to think that my brain could really conjure out all the details of Halloweentown, especially since it had been so long since I'd seen the movie. Therefore, I was not very disappointed when I went around the corner and there was just another stretch of street before me.
There were no more trees in this spot, so the sun was very bright. The street stretched out indefinitely, and there were a few buildings in the distance. Up ahead, I saw my little sister and my mom walk out from a building. This got me thinking, "Hey, I can go torture my sister by telling her that she is just a figment of my imagination! ...Hehe!" Filled with mischevious glee, I ran out to meet them, using my pathetic gliding abilities to cover ground faster.
My sister was dressed for a hot summer day with t-shirt and shorts, and had blonder hair than she really has. She didn't really look like my real sister... but she was my sister in the dream. she was holding a present, a two-foot-long, six-inch-high rectangular box with cream-colored paper and bright red ribbons and bow. When I got to her, my delight to see her (along with the delight that I was lucid, and that my dream was so detailed and stable, and that it was lasting so long) kept me from torturing her. Instead of saying that she was a figment of my imagination, I said, "Hey, guess what! We're in my dream and I'm lucid!" She became as delighted as me, and said "Hey, what if we were sharing dreams! When we wake up we can tell each other about the dream! Wouldn't that be cool!"
We chattered happily as our mom directed us towards a marketplace. Seeing that there were a lot of people, I got slightly nervous, thinking that my brain might not be able to process all those dream people and that I would lose lucidity (I was thinking about it in the same way that if you try to render a complicated 3D scene on a computer, that it goes very slowly and could crash the computer). Then I remembered my original plan of going to Halloweentown and thought, "Hey, I could meet Jack in the marketplace! Maybe he could help me get there." So I went in.
The marketplace was indoors, and there were tons of people there. It vaguely reminded me of the Brucken-Center (a German shopping center), but more antique-looking, with yellower lighting and more wood and 'warm' elements as compared to the dominant white color scheme of the real life Brucken-Center. I remember seeing a disproportionate amount of black men... who all had the same face... for some reason. Going along, I saw lots of animated skeletons that looked a bit like Jack, but were different in some way. One didn't have black eye sockets and looked too American (uh, as American as a skeleton can get, I guess...), one's skull was too rectangular to be the real Jack, one didn't have his long, spindly arms and legs. I tried again to fly, so that I could get an aerial view to find the real Jack, but once again I could only glide. I finally went into a sports store, where there was a Jack look-alike wearing a rather ugly sweatshirt, to ask him where the heck the real Jack was.
But before I could reach him, I had to duck as a baseball shot by my head! I looked back, and there was my sister, holding her present like a bazooka. There was a large, smoking hole blown in one end of the present. I could only conclude that she had some sort of mini baseball-shooting rocket launcher in there. I went over to her and yelled at her, why did you do that!? Then my mom came over and yelled at her that she couldn't use her baseball-bazooka yet, because she wasn't 'at the right level' yet (okay). I was exasperated at her, and decided that if I was ever going to get to Halloweentown, I needed to ditch these two. I began to run, trying to glide as much as possible to put more distance between us. My sis kept shooting her baseball bazooka, and my mom kept yelling at her that she was 'not at the right level' to be using it.
I finally reached a door to outside, and opened it. It was the same scenery as the place I started out in, but as I went to run down the stairs, the whole thing started to fade to black. The last thing I remembered was thinking, "No! I'm waking up! I still haven't gotten to Halloweentown!"...
And then I woke up.
ARRRRRGH.
My disappointment from waking up was overcome by my happiness at having such a long, stable, and detailed lucid. I am very happy! I think that my failure to go to Halloweentown or meet Jack is because I didn't (and don't) think that I can recreate the scenery or characters well enough to be satisfied with them, since I haven't seen the movie in so long. I will wait until the Nightmare Before Christmas DVD arrives next week before I try again, perhaps it will give me the 'jolt' I need to get there.
Regardless, I have changed my rank from 'lucid beginner' to 'lucid student'. Still learning, but I have managed to become lucid multiple times and stabilize my surroundings. I just need to work on my confidence and sense of control, now... I have so little self-esteem, and excercise so little control over my surroundings in the real life that I forget that I am literally capable of doing ANYTHING in my dreams!
Note: When I told this to my sister, she pointed out that I had never recalled putting on any clothes after coming out of the onsen!! Eeek!
Revised Lucid Goal (until I get that DVD): I will go to The Crossroads of Dreams and go play in the Temple of Water and Ice with Rayman ^_^
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