CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #162: One More Season

I'm lying in bed, waiting to fall asleep. I can hear an episode of Breaking Bad playing somewhere in the room, and after a moment start catching visual flashes of the program itself. Walt and Jesse are driving somewhere, Jesse at the wheel. Hank and Gomez are surveiling them somehow, listening to every word that they say.

Spoiler for Breaking Bad Spoilers:

Spoiler for Seriously:

I realize that it's strange for Hank to now be alive again, although I don't consider it odd for Walt to be back from the dead.

I realize that this might all be a dream. I rub my hands together, and audio from the episode continues while I'm laying in the void. Jesse swerves close to a nearby car and a panicked Walt chastises him for being so careless. Hank signals something to Gomez and one other DEA guy. I start up some repetitive motions, mostly swinging my right arm. I do this for a good while, just trying to prepare myself and enjoy the audio as it continues on without a picture. After I've done this for long enough, I feel ready to take some action.

I will myself to roll out of bed and I stand up as my left leg oozes to the ground. My right leg, unfortunately, remains stuck and I'm unable to walk. I hop forward on my left foot, but my right leg stays clamped to the bed, apparently stretching far enough to allow me to get several feet away from the bed and close to the corner of the room. All the while, I keep hearing audio from the Breaking Bad episode.

Finally I let go of the idea that my leg is stuck to the bed and generally stop thinking about my leg at all. Now I feel free to move.

I look in the corner of the bedroom to see a bicycle leaned against the wall where my work desk would normally be. I approach the bike, thinking it might be fun to ride it around the house, but the dream ends before I can get there.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #153: Foiled Creativity

I'm riding with my family in a car and we pull up near a curb in a shady-looking part of town. When the car stops, my two young children "E" and "R" leap out of the car and bound away toward a group of maybe half a dozen grimy-looking people that are huddled near a wall. I run after the boys and when I catch up to them, I see that the grimy-looking people are muttering angrily and trying to hide some kind of drugs they're using.

I hustle the kids away back to the car and Wife gets out to join us. "We can't just let the boys go running off over here!" I tell her. "Those people over there are using drugs." I look into the car and see Jesse Pinkman (from Breaking Bad) sitting in the front passenger seat. "Pinkman!" I say. "What's that they're using? Is that meth?" He slinks down in his seat and doesn't respond.

Wife and the boys move off together into a nearby building. When I follow, I catch sight of them taking a right into a bathroom, but when I enter they're nowhere to be found. I consider that I might be dreaming, nose pinch, and become lucid.

The scene gets shaky and I move into the void. I rub my hands together, keep walking forward, and mutter reminders to myself that I'm having a lucid dream. After perhaps 20 seconds of this, I get a vague image of a dark-haired woman in her late 30s trying to speak to me. I kiss her, partly to draw myself into the scene and partly because it seems like a fun thing to do. After a few moments of this, she pulls away sort of gestures at the room. I see that I've stepped into a big living room with a high ceiling and hardwood floors.

There's a couch nearby with a gold-stringed violin lying on it. I look at it closely and run my fingers over the strings, trying to make the scene as vivid as possible. Vividness goes up sharply and the strings jangle pleasantly beneath my fingers. I try playing a few open-string notes pizzicato and the dark-haired woman silently observes, looking a little amused. The music sounds nice, but after a few attempts the notes grow soft, almost too soft to hear. I look down at the golden strings and see that they've all broken and hang limply downward. They still look beautiful, though.

To my left there's a projector showing a huge image of a computer desktop. My friend "Conan" is standing nearby, working on a computer, and characters fill the screen as he types. I think that this will be a good opportunity to engage my creativity. "Hey [Conan]! Let's work together to make some kind of game on this computer."

He goes into a long speech about how he got screwed over in his most recent business dealings. Now he never enters into any business arrangement unless everthing is in writing. "No, you don't get it," I tell him. "This is all a dream. Let's just make a game or something." But he's steadfast, telling me again how "careful" he has to be. I'm disappointed, but I let it go.

Now I think about the Colosseum. I announce to the room that I'm going to the Colosseum and I see that the dark-haired woman is observing from a few feet away, saying something encouraging. There's another woman watching from a different part of the room, mid-20s, light brown hair. I think she's someone familiar but I'm not sure of her identity.

I'm determined to change this room into the Colosseum. Oddly, I notice that there's some kind of turban on my head and a something like a long, red satin blanket spills out from the turban over the right side of my head. I find this all super weird but I use it to block out my vision of the rest of the room so that I can change it. I turn slowly around, trying to switch the room into the Colosseum but I can't stop seeing that hardwood flooring. I'm feeling a little stuck so I head outside through a door in the wall, emerging in a grassy field. The elegant house I just walked out of now looks like a temporary building. As I'm deciding what to do next, the dream ends.

This was the first of two lucid dreams from last night, and my first serious Great Barrier Reef attempt.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #130: The Turtle

I'm swimming in a shallow cove with my 4-year-old son "E". I tell him that he's helping me practice for a planned dream about the Great Barrier Reef and he seems excited to help. We come across a cave just under the waterline, swim into it, and emerge in a cavern where all these other kids are hanging around. I wonder whether all these kids are helping their moms and dads prepare for a Great Barrier Reef dream. This feels strange to me and I become lucid.

There's either a scene change or a memory gap at this point, because my next memory is of walking by myself through the grounds of a university. I pass two men who stare silently at me as I walk by. They're both in their late 20s and look almost like identical twins, except that one is dressed in a suit while the other wears glasses and a flannel shirt. I think that there's something I need to ask them, but I can't remember what it is. (I think I'd meant to ask them the meaning of life for Task of the Month.)

Nearby is a plaza with a tall stone column at each of its four corners. Perhaps a dozen DCs are walking around this plaza, looking happy but aimless. I exchange a glance with one tough-looking DC as I walk across the plaza, and something about him just rubs me the wrong way. I take a half-hearted swing at him, as if I'm trying to slap him upside the head. He ducks out of the way, and immediately I wonder why I would do something like that.

The DC moves aggressively toward me and I move to dissolve this problem that I've caused. I hold up my right hand to the DC and walk casually away, saying, "It's cool." The tension abates and he walks away. Whew.

I remember my intention to get to the Great Barrier Reef. I hulk-jump high above the Earth, knowing that I'll see water nearby. Sure enough, there's a sparkling blue ocean to my right. As I descend, I notice a cute DC standing in the water, waving at me as she watches me come back down to Earth. As I near the water, I realize that she's Wife!

Before I can say anything, I plunge into the water. This is one of only a handful of times that I've been underwater in an LD, and I'm pleased to see that I can breathe normally. I try my voice, and it's perfectly clear: "[Wife]! Can you hear me?" There's no reply and I don't see any sign of her. Okay, focus. I need to ride a sea turtle, find a great white shark, and bite it. Without dying. The task feels really intimidating to me but I start searching.

I swim in random directions for a while until I finally catch sight of a turtle. The turtle has no interest in my company, though, and speeds away from me underwater. I don't have any plan as to how I'm going to catch him, so I just try to swim faster. He kites me along like this for quite a while until I have a false awakening in some kind of hospital.

Wife and I are here trying to improve our dreaming abilities. I'm astounded but pleased that she's interested in dream work now. She tells me that she's trying to hit her REM cycles by setting alarms that correspond with the take-off times for airplanes. Skyler White (from Breaking Bad) walks into our room and starts speaking to Wife in a husky, almost male voice. She's apparently a researcher at this hospital. This all seems strange to me and I briefly become lucid before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #28: REBMEVON rejected

I'm watching as Breaking Bad's Walter White (dressed as Heisenberg) plans to set fire to a Jeep full of laughing teenagers. He pours gasoline all over the kids in the car but they don't react, somehow not understanding what's going on. I'm panicked and horrified and feel like I can't let him get away with this. The intense emotion makes me lucid and the scene vanishes.

Now I'm sitting in what looks like a log cabin, staring at a simple television that's no longer switched on. I see daylight through a nearby doorway so I run outside, passing through a short alleyway before I emerge in a grassland with mountains on the distant horizon. It's a beautiful scene and I'm so relieved to be free of the nightmare that I start flying.

I've been in the air for only a couple of seconds when the Task of the Month occurs to me -- I need to write "November" backwards. I've created a mnemonic device that instantly brings the correct word ("REBMEVON") to mind. (My chosen mnemonic device is my friend Von introducing himself to Reba McIntyre.)

I try to produce a pen and paper from behind my back but only manage a pen at first. I try writing on my hand but can only fit "REB". That won't do, so I do another "behind the back" object creation to get a notebook. I try to write the word but end up getting sudden strings of garbage characters like "REBhjklhlhlh". I scratch it out and try again, but only get a similar string of garbage characters as soon as I get past "REB".

I can see the word perfectly in my mind so the garbage character problem starts making me feel agitated and doubtful. It's not long before I wake up.

This was a Task of the Month attempt and my first lucid in several days. This was a fun dream and it was exciting to be back in the saddle.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #19: The (Headless) Man in the Mirror

I'm in an office kitchen and I happen to run into L, an old friend from high school that I barely ever see. I ask how married life has been and whether anything exciting is going on with her. She reveals that she's expecting and is "3 weeks along". I remark that I couldn't tell (duh) but she doesn't respond.

Assuming she didn't hear me, I repeat what I just said, only to realize that she has vanished. A young woman taps me on the shoulder and says, "Are you okay? You look like you're talking to someone but there's nobody there." Immediately lucid, I nod to her. "Thanks. Everything's fine. I'm dreaming." She seems to accept this, walking away. My mind is immediately on the Task of the Month and I walk through the nearest doorway.

I wind up in a large classroom that looks like it might be for first- or second-graders. Daylight streams in from a large window on the far side of the room. I'm the only person in the room and there's a pumpkin in the middle of every short little table. Yes, conditions are perfect for removing my own head.

I walk around the room, thinking of mirrors, expecting to see one around every corner. Finally one of those odd, distorting fish-eye mirrors appears but I figure it'll be fine. I check my reflection and I'm wearing extremely thick black glasses and a purple tank top. My hair looks all 90s and hair-sprayed. I decide not to get too attached to this new look as I shall be ridding myself of this head shortly.

I begin to think about how all my life I have had the head of a Lego man, attached to my neck by nothing but a short knob. I place both hands under my jaw. Even though I can feel my hands on my face, my reflection's hands are a few inches away. I go ahead anyway, smoothly pushing up, and my head pops right off, just like a Lego piece. There's no blood and no pain. All of this feels perfectly natural.

I need to find a pumpkin now so I unceremoniously chuck my head onto the floor. It makes a sound like a softball as it lands. I grab a nearby pumpkin and see that it's already carved like a jack-o-lantern. I wonder whether this is a violation of the rules that I'm supposed to carve it. I decide that once I put it on I'll add features. (Maybe a mustache?) I return to the mirror to complete the procedure but find that my original head has grown back. I feel a flash of surprise and the mirror disappears.

I start looking around the class for more mirrors. One pops up but vanishes as soon as I try to look into it. I grumble about this and my voice suddenly sounds like the growl of an old man. I find a third mirror. When I look into it, Walter White from "Breaking Bad" is staring back at me. He (is this me or someone else??) is wearing the trademark Heisenberg pork pie hat and dark glasses. The dream fades and I'm awake.