CanisLucidus

Not my best dream control, but hopefully I can learn from this!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #218: Empty-Handed

I hear my oldest son E calling for me. It feels like it’s very early morning and the sun’s still not up yet. I walk through the dark hallway into his room to find him sitting up in his bed. “Daddy! I’m up!” he announces and hops off of the bed. “I’m going to go tell Mommy.”

I follow him back down the hall, feeling disappointed that the morning’s starting so early and that I missed my chance to have a lucid. As E starts climbing up into bed to shake Wife awake, I’m hit with a huge wave of regret to have missed out on having a lucid dream. I decide to make one last desperate move and try to phase through the wall, phasing right through and falling into the void.

I’m floating through the darkness now so I just relax, rubbing my hands together and repeatedly muttering to myself that “I’m having a lucid dream...” It takes an uncomfortably long time, but after maybe 30 seconds of this, a bright new scene forms around me.

It’s mid-morning and I’m outside, standing by the exterior of what looks like a movie theater. I look up at the bright sky and notice that the clouds are moving across each other in all kinds of odd, crisscrossing directions. “I like that!” I shout, pointing up to the clouds. “Very nice!” I experimentally drag my right foot along the pavement and it feels like I’m wearing running shoes.

The dream is feeling really stable to me now so I decide that it’s time to summon Dreamer and earn some challenge points. I reach my right hand behind my back and say, “[Dreamer], grab onto my hand!” Nothing at first… then a slight prodding feeling on my hand!

I turn around to find a brown-haired woman in her late 30s, hunched over and poking at my hand with her index finger. (I decide that this is definitely not Dreamer.) She’s up really close, staring at my hand like it’s the strangest thing she’s ever seen. I feel frustrated and annoyed that she’s messing with me while I try to summon. “Cut it out!” I say, and she hurries away.

Something bad has happened to my confidence at this point, though, and I feel this combined surge of self-doubt, disappointment, and anger, and in a few seconds I wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #217: Jazz Hands

I’m standing at the foot of the stairs, droning on and on to Wife about lucid dreaming. “Remember!” I tell her. “You have to let me summon you.”

“Okay, fine, fine!” she says, seemingly in a hurry and darts away into the kitchen. I’m confused for a moment -- wasn’t I intending to summon Dreamer for the challenge? I realize that I’m dreaming and head for the front door, phasing out onto the front walk.

It’s a clear morning outside and I walk out to the sidewalk and then start running to the east, ready to attempt the summon. I reach my right hand out, slightly behind me and out of sight and say, “[Dreamer], I know you’re here!” I feel a hand and then two sharp tugs and when I look to my right, Dreamer is running/floating along beside me. She beams and starts floating while doing a silly “jazz hands” move with her right hand.

I decide to fly as well and wind up soaring into the air. Dreamer seems to be sticking at a lower altitude, though, and now dangles calmly from my right hand. I can see trees going by far below her feet.

I haul her up and she wraps her arms around my shoulders while still dangling underneath. She seems very relaxed about the whole thing but I start having trouble controlling my altitude and feel like I’m going to nosedive back into the earth. The scene collapses into the void but I still feel like we're flying. The fear of crashing is still there, though, and after a few more seconds I’m awake.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #216: Through the Roof

It’s some time after 4 AM and I’m wandering around downstairs, badly wanting to get some sleep to have a lucid dream. Somehow, Wife’s still awake watching something on her computer and I’m worrying that she really needs to get to sleep. “Well, I’m heading up,” I hint.

“Good night,” she says, still staring at the computer.

I head upstairs into the master bedroom. It’s dark, but there’s enough light that I can clearly see Wife curled up in bed. Wife downstairs and Wife upstairs? Dream! Since I’m in the bedroom, I get the sense that I’m supposed to start the lucid in the OBE style and “roll out of my body”. But I’m standing. How would I even do that?

Instead I decide to just float up through the ceiling, phasing out of the house and into the void. I thrash about a bit in the darkness and do a half-assed summon. Something that feels like a dry erase marker pops into my left hand, so I jam the end into my mouth and start chewing on it. With my right hand I make awkward swimming motions and imagine that I’m making forward progress.

After a bit of swimming, the void lifts and now I’m standing in my bathroom, all of the lights blazing. The bathroom looks mostly like it does in waking life apart from the fact that the mirrors are a little fogged up and have these odd creases in them. I can see my double in the mirror, making chewing motions with his mouth but he has no dry erase marker in his mouth. I grin and my double grins back, his mouth still shaped like he’s got the dry erase in it.

I dash around the room for a bit, keeping my eye on the mirror and my double does the same. I remember my intent to summon Dreamer. I reach behind me and try the summon, remembering my tip to Xanous to “try to just feel the person’s hand as if it’s already there”. To my complete embarrassment, this doesn’t work at all.

I try again and it’s not working. I become paranoid and wonder if it’s because I’m trying to summon in front of mirrors. I realize this is stupid but decide to try getting out of the room to see if that helps. As I’m walking to my left, I get this sense that I’m stumbling forward and the dream ends.

Finally got one for the challenge! Now we've got a competition...

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #214: The Challenge

I have a false awakening in the early morning, worried that I’ve run out of time to have another lucid. I get up, pee, and return to bed. To my dismay Wife has already removed the sheets from the bed. The clock says “5:50” and I complain to her that this is way too early to be up. “This is so unlike you!” I whine. She’s too busy to pay much attention.

I walk over to the gym and lay down on the floor, tossing and turning for a while. I have another false awakening in a field near a tent where a movie is being filmed. I walk around and explore for a while, feeling oddly comfortable and in charge, like this is my place even if it’s not familiar to me. I enter a nearby building where I’m required to remove my shoes, then move further on to find my friends PM and RP standing under an open rooftop. I try in vain to point out how much the clouds look like the ones we’ve worked on in our game project, but they’re too busy to pay attention.

I move further through the building, moving through a confusing maze riddled with dead ends until I emerge in a retro arcade. I stop at a machine that’s a multicade which features Street Fighter II and a library of 8-bit Nintendo games. I’m considering firing up Double Dragon when I realize that this has to be a dream.

I move outward from the arcade back to the main entrance. I’m still shoeless, so I produce some running shoes and walk off into the night. I’m on a concrete driveway and hordes of DCs on bicycles go whizzing by, not a trace of lights or reflectors on their bikes and bodies. They’re super hard to see, getting too close, and making me nervous, so I step off into the grass and move over to a sidewalk.

Now I remember my challenge goal of trying to summon Dreamer. I reach my hand behind my back, expect her to grab it, and immediately feel someone grab on. I turn around and she’s right there, purple hair and all! When I see her I exclaim, “Well that worked!” She seems to find this hilarious, squeezing her eyes shut and doubling over with laughter. I try to say something else but the dream destabilizes into a false awakening at my parents’ house.

My mom asks me if I need to go to work and I tell her no, just let me sleep as long as possible. She asks me to help clean their now-green pool (false memory, they have no pool) but I tell her that I’ll do it after I get some sleep. I crash back down on the bed, transitioning into…

...a false awakening on a bare mattress in a dark, candle-lit room. I get up and see that there are 4 or 5 similar mattresses here, too. There’s an Asian woman in her early 50s laying on one bed, tossing and turning restlessly. Some unseen male narrator tells me that, “She wants to dream but in here, she can’t. In this place, nobody can.” I’m disturbed by this, and I move toward the wall, hopeful that I’m dreaming right now. I phase right through, and the wall crumbles in cubes around me -- lucid again!

I float about twenty feet down to a poolside area with ankle deep water next to wall covered by a large mirror. The dream threatens to fade but I rub my hands together and splash around in the water. I again remember my summoning goal and reach my hand behind my back, summoning Dreamer for a second time. For some reason, I point to the mirror to help “prove” to her that she’s been summoned and say, “Look! It worked again!”

Dreamer seems fascinated by this, reaching out to the mirror and then waving her hands back and forth. “Look at this,” she says, bending forward at the waist a couple of times as her reflection copies her actions. I wonder whether this counts as two points in the challenge or just one.

We walk back inside and it’s another creepy room with those anti-dreaming mattresses. Dreamer stiffens her fingers like a spear and drives them into one of the mattresses and digs around like she’s looking for something but doesn’t seem to find it. I ask her what she’s looking for but she doesn’t say. I sweep my eyes around the room but when I look back to where I expect to find Dreamer, instead there’s a brown-haired girl of about 8. I kneel down and ask, “Are you Dreamer?” She gives me a you can’t be serious look and then walks out of the room.

There’s a mirror on the wall here and I get the idea to try summoning NewArtemis into the dream now. I keep watching myself in the mirror as I try to perform this summon, but it keeps failing. I realize I'm making this harder for myself but I can’t seem to help it. I want to see what she looks like when she actually materializes. I give three separate efforts to summon NewArtemis, but they all fail. I feel like something is wrong with me or with this room. Now I try to summon Dreamer. Another failure.

I feel like my mojo is fading out in the room, so I run for the wall and throw myself through it. There’s a glass shattering effect and now I’m falling through the darkness, air rushing past me. I fall like this for a few seconds until I wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #207: Christmas in April

I’ve joined up with a bunch of other people and rented a blue-carpeted condominium. There bedroom of this condominium houses the entrance to a vast cave system and we crawl downward to explore it. I have to do sort of a funky sideways roll to slip under the entrance.

The cave’s well-lit, but I start feeling claustrophobic. I turn back to make sure that I can easily get out and I’m shocked to find that when I execute my little sideways roll to escape, that I just barely make it out. This means that in only a few seconds, the entrance has gotten shorter! I warn the others that the entrance is closing but they ignore me.

I relax against the wall and for some reason start imagining that my hands are moving. I’m surprised to see my hands really are moving. I can’t believe how vivid my imagination is and I think If my imagination is this good, it’s like being able to lucid dream any time I want! And then it occurs to me that I’m dreaming right now.

I dig my fingers into the thick, blue carpet for a moment and then stand up, rubbing my hands and arms together. I move slowly, relaxing and letting the dream continue as I explore the apartment. I move through a total of four rooms, studying the layout and furniture of each as I pass. I recognize the den from the non-lucid portion of the dream and it’s almost entirely unchanged from before. I walk a quick circle around the wooden coffee table, confirming that the scene and all of its contents are unusually stable.

It concerns me that I seem to be stuck in just one type of scene so I move for the wall and phase through it. The phase is quick and I end up outside at night in the front yard of my house. I try to remember goals, but they just won’t come. I really focus on this for a moment but I feel the dream starting to wobble and destabilize. Back to some arm-rubbing, and I forget goals for now.

I look west down the street. Everything looks realistic but it’s way too dark. I turn around, think There’s some light behind me, and then spin back around to face west again. About two blocks down, I spy a lone Christmas tree festooned with lights. I’m pleased by this, and I try to just let this idea flow. Soon there are lit Christmas trees in front yards all up and down the street. Looks like my darkness problems are solved.

I head west to the end of the block then turn south. It looks like my street for a bit but as I continue it transitions into something more like a crowded outdoor mall. DCs bustle back and forth, and just as I’m passing a wooden bench and a free-standing sign that looks like a mall directory, I see a teenage boy and a smaller kid of about 8 (his little brother?) walking past. The older brother tells the younger, “Don’t worry about them. All these people have never done a goddamn thing for you.”

Again I get the desire to remember my goals. This time I really push for them. I dig too deep, though, lose focus on the dream, and am too late to save it before it ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #200: Runway

I’m walking out through the exit of an airport when I realize that I’ve left my cell phone inside, possibly on the plane. I want to turn back to get it but I’m feeling disoriented and can’t find my way back inside.

Now I’m walking along the runway as planes taxi back and forth around me. I know that this is a bad idea but I can’t figure out what else I’m supposed to do and I wonder why they make airports so confusing. A plane rolls by on my right, uncomfortably close, and as I cringe away from it, I realize that this is all a dream.

Calmer now, I walk along the runway toward an odd series of doors set into a metal frame. The frame’s set up right next to a long patch of grass and seems to lead nowhere, but when I walk through one of the doors, now I’m standing in the lobby of an ornate hotel.

There’s a fancy, circular bench covered in some sort of red pillowtop. I walk around it to the foot of a grand staircase. For some reason I decide not to go up and I walk down a hallway around the side of the stairway. I realize that a group of people including my cousin SU is following close behind me. I don’t turn to address them but instead continue on slowly and deliberately, enjoying the vivid, stable feel of the dream.

I come to a large glass window and I move toward it to phase. As I approach, I vividly see the reflections of SU and the 2-3 others behind me. I take the phase slowly, marvelling at the detail of not only the reflections behind me but the sensations of the phase itself. The glass feels like a cool, insubstantial liquid as I pass through it.

I make my way into a busy, two-floor restaurant. It’s a fancy place and I stop to study it. I notice that the waitstaff is all women in their late 20s or early 30s wearing a long brown ponytail.

I remember some snatch of an earlier Task of the Month that I think has something to do with wearing green. As I recall this, all of the waitresses turn to look at me for a moment, all of them now dressed in green pants and a white dress shirt. I notice no transition to the green pants. It’s just as if this is what they’ve been wearing the entire time. I know that I’m not remembering anything relevant about any task, so I let it go and the waitresses turn their attention back to the other DCs in the restaurant.

I walk up the carpeted stairway to another row of tables full of nicely dressed DCs enjoying dinner. It doesn’t look like there’s a free table in the whole place. I walk along for a bit, wanting to explore further, but the dream ends.

Yet another near miss on Task of the Year! I really need to work on learning to close these. Lots of fun though!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #193: Magic Carpet School

I’m part of a large parenting group that’s exploring a gloomy cavern illuminated by translucent pools of water. After quietly exploring this place for a while, we all wind up back at one of the mom’s houses. Somebody suggests that we do a group hug, and we all awkwardly move toward the middle of the room.

I notice that Andy Bernard from The Office is part of the group. He looks sweaty and awkward and I think, “Hey that guy who plays Andy Bernard sure looks sweaty and awkward in person.” I do a quick mental check to see whether this is a dream and decide that yes, it definitely is.

I walk out of this living room into an elementary school classroom that’s in the middle of some kind of lesson. I pass through without interacting with any of the dream characters, wanting to get outside for a Task of the Year attempt. (The Aladdin’s lamp task with a magic carpet and three wishes.)

Leaving this classroom takes me to a second classroom and I start worrying that I’ll spend this whole lucid wandering through an endless series of grade school classes. I head for a wall, announcing that “This is a phase outside,” before plunging right through. I wind up in the void, but my hands and forearms are still brightly illuminated and clearly visible.

I rub my hands together and slowly the void becomes filled with a swirling field of stars. This fades into a scene from the Matrix that has the Youtube logo and controls underneath it, and I see that I am watching a video whose length is “0:98”. I briefly wonder if I went to bed wearing VR goggles or something and that the images are penetrating my eyelids. Scenes from The Matrix flash by and the image slowly rotates.

Now there’s a crackling sound and my vision fills with a series of strange characters that I can’t identify. I feel a sharp tug backward and I wait for the new scene to form. My vision reforms into… another elementary school classroom, this one a little bigger with an adjacent windowed playroom. I head immediately for the exit and I’m pleased to find myself in an entrance area. I bolt through a set of glass doors and now I’m outside.

Immediately I start attempting the lamp summon by “finding” it behind my back, but my hand just keeps coming back empty. After three failures, I’m really frustrated by this. On the last attempt my hand comes back with some little piece of dirty, wooden-looking junk about the size of a sugar cube. This time I pretend that this is the lamp but it’s just way too small. “Bigger… bigger…” and do a little magician-esque gesture. It plumps up nicely into a real magic lamp! It’s way too light to be realistic, but who cares, next step!

I rub the lamp, wishing for the magic carpet. I decide to be really specific, saying, “A magic carpet. Make it rolled up.” A simple little rolled-up rug appears on the ground. I immediately think, Why’d you ask for it rolled up? That’s just a pain in the ass. I expect the magic carpet to unroll and it does, so I quickly sit down. As I do, it lifts me up into the air and starts flying leisurely forward.

For my second wish, I quickly say “Delicious cookie!” and a tiny little sliver of cookie appears in my hand, like someone had already eaten most of it. I find this awfully stingy for a magic lamp but I stuff it in my mouth. It’s chocolate chip, not bad at all.

I think about how close I am to completing the task and the excitement gets the best of me. I get one last look at the roof of a one-story building as I float over it before the dream ends.

Interestingly, this was my second lucid in a row that hit very close to the onset of sleep. I woke up to write this down around 1:15 or so in the morning after being late to bed. I'm not sure what to make of it, but it's definitely encouraging me to continue my pre-bed MILD work!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #192: The Shadow of the Pagoda

I’m sitting at a table with some random people, working on something with pen and paper. My mind’s wandering and as I recall my intent to have a lucid dream, I almost immediately pass into one.

From here, I fall quickly into the void. I rub my hands together, expecting a new scene. Before long I emerge into a false awakening in early morning, sort of seated at the edge of my bed. Some kind of suction is drawing me away from the bed and toward our closet. This worries me for some reason and I ask Wife to “Pull me back in…” in this thin, weak voice.

She kneels on the bed and strains forward to reach for me, whimpering and fretting like she wants to help but doesn’t know how. I recognize that I’m starting to get caught up in this sense of powerlessness, and I let go, falling into the void again.

I make my way forward and emerge in a fancy-looking house, facing a set of glass doors that open to a veranda. For reasons I can’t recall, I decided to head deeper into the house and wandered through a series of rooms. The house is attractive but large and confusing and I start regretting my decision to stay inside.

I wind up in a bedroom with a simple but comfortable-looking bed that has a large stuffed teddy bear laying on top of it. Wife is standing off to the side near one corner and I remember to ask her for her middle name (for Task of the Month.)

When I ask for her middle name, she responds, “Ba ba!”

“Your middle name is ‘Ba ba’?”

She laughs. “Oh, sorry! I actually meant ‘Ba ba ba ba’.” I’m amused but I consider asking her a third time. The teddy bear catches my eye for a moment and when I turn back Wife has vanished. I think about asking the teddy bear for its middle name but decide instead that it’s time to move on.

I leave and walk through a dining hall where my son “E” joins me and starts to follow. I say something to him that I can no longer recall and we walk through more confusing rooms. At one point I’m in a dimly-lit kitchen and notice that my vision has gone blurry. I stare at my hands to draw out the detail and it works pretty well, though not as completely as I might have hoped.

I walk through another dining hall with E and as we’re exiting, the door shuts automatically behind me, cutting me off from him. I see him through the door as it closes and I feel a moment of concern that I’ve left him behind. No, let it go. I continue to a series of glass-panelled doors at the rear of the room and phase through, with some minor difficulty.

I emerge from the phase in a shady courtyard. Towering above me is an immense pagoda, stretching far away into the sky. Even in a dream I’m amazed by how tall and broad it is, far out of scale with everything else surrounding it. It’s at least 500 feet tall and dominates the landscape.



Two women walk by at the other end of the courtyard, casually chatting. They look like they’re from the 1900s, each wearing a large hat and carrying a parasol. I contemplate taking off for some flying and exploration, but the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #190: Menthol and Marriage, Part Three

I have another false awakening in bed, but I quickly realize that it's a dream. I hop up immediately and phase out through the wall onto our street. The scene is dark, and after I’ve taken a few steps along the street, it collapses into the void.

I rub my hands together and keep walking forward. No scene takes shape, so I start thinking of directing where I want to go. For some reason I remember my personal goal of traveling to the Taj Mahal. I imagine that it’s in front of me, but can’t quite seem to get anything to take shape.

Suddenly, there’s a hard transition and a feeling of backward acceleration like I’ve been yanked back hard by a long cord. I think “Hell yeah” and get excited about where this will take me. But I’m super disappointed to find myself back in bed in a false awakening.

The room looks just like waking life, so I assume that the dream blew up on me. It feels very “obvious” that this is a real waking, but I try a nose pinch reality check “just in case”. I’m shocked and pleased when I inhale a rush of air past my pinched nostrils.

Immediately I start floating upward toward the ceiling, OBE-style. The room seems brightly lit now. I marvel at how convincing this feels, and as I roll over in the air, I see Wife laying in bed right where she’d normally be. She looks really hot to me so I float down to the bed beside her, feeling very amorous. I say something super cheese like “Hey girl, you know what I want.” Even in-dream it dawns on me that I sound like a doofus and I chuckle a little bit.

Fortunately she’s not repelled by all of this and we get to enjoy a little bit of sexytime before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #189: Nice Throw

I have a false awakening in bed, but there’s something very static about the background and my hands look hyper-realistic. I know that it’s a dream. As I think this, a small statuette appears floating in front of me. I turn it with my hands and it floats serenely in space, unaffected by gravity.

I get out of bed and the scene starts to get dark. There’s a window on the wall to my right that’s usually not there and I decide this’ll be my way out of the house. I pick up a padded foot stool (that looks just like one from my parents’ house) and chuck it at the window. My throw is utterly puny, though, and the stool falls to the floor. The lame attempt kind of embarrasses me.

Instead of fooling with this any further, I phase out of the window into the side yard between our house and the neighbor’s. Everything looks realistic but way too dark. I run out into the street and decide to fly.

I remember the pointing technique I had used in the previous lucid and I employ it again here, pointing into the air and expecting to fly that way. Again it works great and I take to the air. I enjoy some flight for a while but it begins to feel like the dream is fading even more. I rub my hands and things snap back into focus.

I look out to my left and see a fairly vivid industrial cityscape. Bright fire is pouring out of the top of one of the buildings, which looks like some kind of processing facility. I fly toward it to investigate but the dream ends before I make it there.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #187: The Hybrid

I have a false awakening in a strange bedroom that I think is some kind of condominium. Wife is here along with my two young kids E and R. I wonder whether I can go back to sleep and try to have a lucid dream but then realize that I’m having one right now.

I charge toward the window but feel someone short grab onto my arm. “Who is that?” I ask, looking down to find my 2-year-old son R clutching me. “It’s [R], Daddy. I want to go with you. Daddy, let me go with you!” For a moment I consider it, but once I think about my Task of the Year goal (turning into a fish-man and acting out The Little Mermaid), I decide no way. I’m way too nervous about bringing one of my kids’ DCs into the ocean.

R’s grip slips off of me as I phase through the window. I feel a little guilty for a moment, but I remind myself that this isn’t really him. I’m wound up in my backyard during what looks like mid-morning. I jump up into the air, imagining that there will be an ocean where my eastern neighbor’s yard ought to be. But when I get up there, it still looks like waking life.

I have some momentary flight trouble, but I psych myself up with a few phrases until things are going the way I want them to. I fly west for a bit, slowly turning southward and expecting to see water until… I see the ocean just ahead of me!

I pop up into the air and then plunge straight downward into the water, happily swimming about beneath the waves. The water’s darker than I’d like, but I try not to get too nervous or worked about this. I imagine my lower body turning into that of a fish, swim around that way for a bit, then look down to check my handiwork. It’s close, but not quite right… each leg is still there but all scaly like a fish’s body with a fin on the end.

I look away again, swim around a bit more, trying to make it all feel natural. I check again and it’s looking better, just about right, but now I’m feeling paranoid about my breathing. I feel like I can’t breathe underwater and need to surface. Panicked that something is wrong with my breathing in waking life, I push for the surface and fall into the void. I keep doing repetitive swimming motions, though, trying to hold onto the dream. After a while of this, I wonder if I’m making swimming motions in bed. This finally transitions me into...

… a false awakening where I’m lying in a large bed next to Wife. The room’s not my own, though. I recognize this as the condominium from the beginning of the dream, and realize that I’m still dreaming. I roll over to Wife’s side of the bed and start getting frisky. She murmurs sleepily but when I tell her that “this is all a dream”, she becomes more engaged. We make out for a little bit, but the dream hits the void.

After a moment, though, there’s a transition into an office environment. Wife’s still here with me so we continue making out.

Spoiler for Sexytime:

I notice one of the office workers, an attractive Hispanic woman in her late 20s, holding a stack of papers and talking to another employee. I tell the woman that she wants to join us and she responds, "Okay, good idea," and begins to undress while still sort of continuing to work. I guess my attention wanders, though, because after a moment she walks off to do some work thing, still partially undressed.

After that Wife and I enjoy some sexytime before…

… the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #185: Kaleidoscope

It’s morning time and I’m preparing to give my 2-year-old son “R” a shower. This strikes me as strange because R usually takes baths and Wife’s the one who usually bathes him. I dimly recall my intent to have a lucid dream and after thinking for a moment, accept that I’m having one right now.

The layout of the room’s exactly like waking life (so far as I can tell) and there’s a window high on the wall near the shower. I hop up to it, plant my hands on the sill, and phase my head and shoulders through to the outside. It’s morning, just after dawn, and the sky glows reddish-orange.

As I’m preparing to fly off, R says, “Daddy, I want to go with you but I don’t know how to do that.” (I take this to mean that he doesn’t know how to phase.)

“That’s okay, buddy,” I respond. “This is a dream.”

For some reason I have a surge of anxiety that the dream won’t stay stable and of course my vision gets a little crazy. I leap the rest of the way through the glass and fly for just a moment before I freeze in mid-air. Seconds later, my vision goes black and I’m in the void.

I rub my hands together for a moment and then decide to change scenes by plummeting downward to the ground that I imagine is still outside. I go rocketing downward but as I hit what would be the ground, there’s a “whomp!” sound and a puff of air as I pass right through. I continue accelerating faster and faster until I crash into…

...my bed. I’m lying on my stomach, my head turned to the left. My eyes are closed and it completely feels like I’m awake, but I’m suspicious, so I try to see through my eyelids. This works and after a few seconds I’m looking out at my bedroom. The center portion of my vision swirls and blends together like a kaleidoscope. I wonder if the effect will change if I open my eyes, but I decide not to mess with anything just now.

I will myself to roll out of my body and transition into an OBE, but I can’t seem to make it happen. The kaleidoscope vision effect continues for a while until the dream eventually fades out.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #180: The Dome of Stars

I have a false awakening in my house where I’m trying to do something as quickly as possible. What is it? Oh right -- I’m trying to get out because I’m having a lucid dream.

I move through the rooms as quickly as I can. The layout is similar, but just different enough to throw me off. I wind up in the garage and there’s a new hallway off of the south wall that wasn’t there before. I follow the hallway into what appears to be a bordello. Five or six women who look like Victorian-era prostitutes are standing or sitting near a set of mirrors. One of the seated women is reading a magazine, a couple of them are applying make-up, and some are just standing around not doing much of anything.

I feel like this is one of those LD scenarios where you’re supposed to be thinking sexy thoughts but the women mostly just seem like they’re relaxing on break. I really don’t feel like bothering them. I start asking them something about why they’re running the bordello in my house, but they start moving around and the scene feels a little confusing. I go ahead and phase out through the wall to clear my head.

Now I’m out on the street. Across the street I see a man standing under the branches of an oak. He looks Hawaiian, heavy-set with a salt-and-pepper hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. I remember the Task of the Month, and approach him asking, “What’s your New Year’s Resolution?”

He’s incredibly eager to answer, and a smile spreads across his face. “To make the most of things, <something something>, and…” He grabs one of my hands in both of his and finished triumphantly: “To cook with more cinnamon!”

His enthusiasm is contagious and I joyously shout, “Thank you for that great answer!” I pause for a moment. “But could you repeat that part in the middle?” He doesn’t seem interested in doing this, though, and wanders away.

Task done, now I just feel like exploring. I fly up past the top of the tree, reminding myself that “The world is yours…” I move up past the treetops and look out at the stars. It’s a beautiful night and I take a moment to enjoy the unfamiliar constellations. I notice one set of stars is exactly the same as a set in a different part of the sky. I laugh at my brain taking this “shortcut”. But then I wonder… did it only do this because I expect it to?

I fly up higher and higher until I can see that the sky is curving above me. In fact, there is no limitless sky but rather just a huge dome that I can reach the top of if I just fly high enough.

And I do! When I reach the very top of the dome, I see a small, glowing control panel! There’s a single flashing green button sitting there at the top of this dome of stars. But as I reach for it, I start losing altitude. I tell myself that “this is all mine” but I can’t shake the notion that I’m just not going to be able to reach that button to find out what it does. I reach up and up, trying to reach it, but the dream fades.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #179: The One Where I Fight Samuel L. Jackson

I have a false awakening but I notice that I’m alone (Wife is missing) and the bed has been turned 90 degrees. Right away I realize that this is a dream.

Something grabs me by the leg, pulls me out of the bed, and drags me to the floor. I look up and Samuel L. Jackson is standing over me! He says something along the lines of “You’re not going anywhere,” and starts to stomp down at me. I think that I should do some tricky/clever dream control thing but I feel too much like I’m in a fight to get it together.

We struggle for a moment until I manage to get my arm wrapped around his ankle, push my foot into his crotch, and then push up, lifting him off of his feet. He falls onto his back and we wrestle around kind of grabbing at each other’s feet to gain control. His head looks close enough to reach so I lash out, kicking him straight in the face. He flops back and stops moving.

I sit up and as I approach Samuel L. Jackson, he changes into a smallish, delicate-looking woman in her mid-20s. She looks Mediterranean and overall completely different from Samuel L. Jackson. “Help me, I’m pretty hurt...” she says, sitting up just a little bit. I feel bad for her, so I pick her up and carry her with me. I notice that she’s very cute but the fact that 15 seconds ago she was Samuel L. Jackson makes me quite uninterested.

We phase through the wall of the house out into the night. I want it to be morning, so I do a hulk-jump or two, expecting the time of day to shift. It does, and before long it’s early morning. We’re on a sidewalk outside of a cafe with a canvas awning.

I walk inside the cafe to find Wife sitting at a table with two strangers, one a heavy, hipster-looking guy and the other a pretty woman in her early 30s with short, brown hair. “I’m having a lucid dream,” I tell them, mostly to explain the fact that I’ve just carried a woman into the cafe with me.

“Ah,” says Wife, giving me a “Oh, another one of those” kind of look. I join them at the table along with the woman formerly known as Samuel L. Jackson, who now seems relatively unhurt and integrates herself naturally into the conversation. The hipster and the brown-haired woman are authors and they’re talking with Wife about their new book. The conversation is strange and it’s hard to understand details.

I’m also distracted by the food. There are little plates of small chocolate bars that I keep sampling. They taste delicious but they fade too quickly, almost as if they were so light and insubstantial that you only get a moment to taste them. At one point, Wife remarks, “He even thinks this is dream food.”

“I admit it, I do!” I say. Everyone chuckles like I’m an amusing eccentric.

Somehow the scene changes to a featureless room with three books lying on the floor. The two writers and the woman who once was Samuel L. Jackson walk out through the door, chatting about something.

I examine the second book. It’s by the writers we ate with and it’s about how early civilizations made fantastic technological leaps forward by using ideas that came to them in lucid dreams. I’m excited by the whole premise of the book. I really believe that it must be true. (I'm also partly offended that they acted so skeptical that I was having a lucid dream.)

“I really want to read this book,” I tell Wife, and she agrees that it sounds right up my alley. Now that we’re alone, I enjoy a little time making out with Wife until the dream ends.

This is a dream from the morning of 12/15/2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #175: The War of Red and Blue

I’m in a building that looks like my new office, sitting next to my friend “Leroy”. He complains that his chair is uncomfortable and moves to a row of tables that’s just behind us. While Leroy goes on and on about how much more comfortable this part of the office is, I notice that Dwight Schrute from The Office is sitting here as well. I know that this is wrong and become lucid.

I walk over to the window and phase out to the street. The roadway looks similar to the one that the android and I saw in the previous dream, but now everything is vivid and quite detailed. It’s night and in the distance I see what looks like a spacecraft. Soon I see more and more ships flying through the sky. Before long they’re shooting at one another!

I take to the sky to get a better view and see that the sky is filled with blue and red ships firing at one another. Each building in the city is also apparently affiliated with either blue or red. You can tell because each window, rather than being simply transparent, glows brightly in either a blue or red.

I fly for a while and at one point a trio of red ships spot me and train their fire on me (just as I worry this will happen.) Fortunately, I shrug it off, feeling nothing more than a slight impact.

Flying higher, I soar over the top of the conflict. It’s just war as far as I can see, blue vs. red. Ships explode and buildings crumble, but from this high up I feel distanced from the whole thing. In spite of all the carnage below, the feeling is almost serene. I fly like this for a while, just observing until the dream ends.