The Lab Notebook

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm driving through the parking lot of a shopping center, at night. There is a violent physical altercation going on in the parking lot, and it turns into a gunfight.

I'm now riding my bicycle through a nearby residential neighborhood, where there is more violence going on. It's still nighttime. As I ride, I pray that I won't get hit by a stray bullet. I also reflect that I could be driving to my destination, which is my old church, but I like bicycling better than driving. [This is true.] I miss the turn to get to St. Mark's.

I'm no longer riding my bicycle; I'm now standing in a black nothing. [I suspect that I might have DEILDed here, but I'm not positive.] I think of the destination I was just trying to get to, the parish hall at my old church, and cause a knife from the parish hall's silverware drawer to appear in my hand. A second later, the parish hall appears around me.

I walk through the room, appreciating the dream environment, as usual. A lot of people are there, including my parents. My dad comes up to me and offers to give me a hug, and I accept it and hug back. All the people are there for a big reception, with a lot of food laid out on tables.

After the reception, when everyone has left except me, my parents, and two or three other people, there is still a huge platter of thinly-sliced roast beef left over. I try to give it away to those two or three other people.

I wake up in my current bedroom, very pleased to have just had a lucid dream. I remember to grab my phone, which is running Ev's Lucid Dreaming App for Android, and draw a star on the screen with my finger to indicate that I just had a lucid dream. I draw the star, but very sloppily, with one point much bigger and longer than the other points. I'm concerned that the program won't recognize the gesture, but it does. It displays the gesture I just drew with the caption “lucidity!” underneath it, in the same font it always uses for those captions.

When I woke up for real, I thought to myself, You know, I bet I didn't actually record that lucid dream. The app wouldn't recognize the star if I drew it that poorly, and the caption always just says "lucid dream." I checked my actual phone and, sure enough, no "lucid dream" mark on my graph. That had, indeed, been a false awakening. I felt slightly frustrated, as well as highly amused that the app had shown up in one of my FAs.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Side notes:

Wow. I'm pretty pleased with this DEILD, if that is indeed what it was, and with my sudden mastery of changing the dream scene. To be fair, though, I did change it to the destination I had been trying to reach in my non-lucid nightmare.

I didn't realize until after I woke up that the part where my dad hugged me was day residue. On the evening before I had this dream, I hadn't bothered to get up and hug my dad when he left the house, and I had regretted it. I thought it was awfully nice of my subconscious to give me a second chance to do that.

Non-lucid, Possibly lucid?, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm trying to drive to a destination, and I go through an intersection and end up on a winding road that leads down the side of a mountain to a lake. I recheck my directions and realize that I was supposed to turn right at that last intersection. I start retracing my route and going back up the hill.

I'm at an outdoor amphitheater in Disney California Adventure. I'm way in the back of the amphitheater area, on some bleachers, watching a stage show. There is a bizarre structure on the horizon as you're looking at the stage; it looks like a pyramid with the points sticking out in a bunch of different directions, like what you would see if you put a normal pyramid in the center of a spherical structure with mirrors on all the inside surfaces. The show starts out with red fireworks that shoot out from the vicinity of this structure. The first round explodes in the sky above and to the right of the audience, the second arcs down to and explodes on the round, concrete slab of a second amphitheater behind and to the right of the audience, and the third explodes just above the audience's heads. I'm afraid that I'm going to catch on fire, but I don't.

On stage, there's some sort of announcement from a villainous character in the show that we need to prepare to be tortured. He also says that all the women should stay in the main viewing area, while all the men should move to the building at the back of the theater with the indoor concession and souvenir stands. They all do so. Then, large snakes appear throughout the viewing area. One is close enough to me to touch me with the end of its tail, which I know is poisonous [um, what?]. It's very long and all coiled around on top of itself. I visually pick out its head and tail from among the mass, and try to avoid them as I pick it up and attempt to toss it away from me. This doesn't work. It wraps itself around my waist and legs, binding me in place. I'm scared, but I resign myself to it when I realize that I can't get it off and that it's just a part of the show anyway.

After the show, which felt like it had lasted about 50 minutes, I make my way down to the stage. One of my college girlfriends is getting married here at Disney California Adventure. Several of the other girls from our group are bridesmaids, and they're all wearing long, grayish-white dresses with Disney vacation scenes on them. Two of them are pregnant, including EB. I'm here to attend the wedding, too, but I don't talk to any of them. When the wedding party starts taking pictures, I walk back to the concession and souvenir building at the back of the amphitheater.

My walk there takes me along a gently-curving grass path marked with steppingstones with the shapes of different Disney character heads on them. This path marks the edge of the amphitheater seating area. When I get into the concession and souvenir building, I talk to one of the men who was watching the show. He says the boys had their own torture: during the entire time the show was going on, they were all held in one area and none of them were allowed to pee. I tell him that the free T-shirts can be picked up at the Great American Icee stand, over there.

The dream I've been having fades to black [it may have been the one above, or a different one, I'm not quite sure]. When it does, I realize exactly what's going on, close my eyes, and think, When I open my eyes, I will be back in another dream. I open them, and I'm back at the same amphitheater, but the scenario is different.

[I'm not 100% sure I was lucid for this next part, though.] This time, there are a whole bunch of patriotic greeting cards in boxes at the back. Everyone there has been making them to send to the families of military members and people who died in the 9/11 attacks. Some people are still making them. I see that one lady in the back row has a plate full of lasagna, and take a bite with a fork. She tells me not to eat the lasagna, that it's for the people being honored.

Another show starts in the amphitheater. As it starts, people in front of me stand up, which forces me to stand up, too. I talk with the family to my left. They ask me about a “magic wand” that can be used to uncover secrets and extra content in the park. I point out one that a Cast Member down on a walkway that we can see from our seats is using. It looks a lot like a big, black metal detector, with a bunch of black tubes on top that form a Mickey head shape in the center. It detects sensors embedded in the ground and plays a sound when it finds them. The family climbs up onto the roof of the pagoda structure covering the back of the stands to get a better view of the stage, which is easy to do. I say, “Hey! That's rude!” but follow them up there anyway.

[Later, I had another dream in which I was definitely lucid, but I don't remember how it started or very many of the details. Here's what I do remember:]

I'm in an indoor environment, just walking around and admiring the scenery. I know none of this is real and acknowledge that fact in my mind, but I deeply appreciate how the scenery and the daylight illuminating it look completely real.

When I get to the top floor of the building I'm in, I attempt to fly through the ceiling, but it doesn't work. I just bump into the ceiling, which is completely solid to me. It's a stucco ceiling.

I'm flying around above a city, observing it from the air. Another female dream character [no one I know in real life] is flying with me. I take it slow, finding that I have full control over my speed and direction, but not wanting to do any more than relax and take it all in. I increase my altitude, and the other girl follows. We talk while flying. [I don't remember about what.]

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

[Last night, I had probably the longest and certainly the most highly lucid dream I've ever had. I'm writing this at the end of the day. I tried to recall this dream as best I could upon waking, and I made some handwritten notes, but by now, although I remember the highlights of the dream, I've forgotten what order they went in and how I moved from one to the other. This is my best attempt to reconstruct the whole, long sequence, but some of these are most likely not in the correct order. I do remember that I consciously chose to move from one activity to another in the dream, though.]

I’m in a large room with a really cool indoor playground in it. I observe that they’ve added more decorations and more play elements to the playroom since the last time I was there: there is now a long chain with brightly-colored wooden blocks in various shapes (cylinders, hexagons, and others) threaded onto it hanging across the ceiling, and there are more things to climb and play on. I climb up one of the climbing walls, along with another girl. We press against each other as we climb it.

Later, elsewhere in the same room, I’m looking at my reflection in a mirror. I notice that my neck looks strange, and tilt my head back to see. I see that my neck appears to have been replaced with a shiny, silver metal bar that appears to be a piston. This causes me to realize that I’m dreaming. I pinch my nose to confirm and find that I can still breathe. The familiar sensation pleases me, and I'm very happy to be in a lucid dream. I have a slightly higher degree of lucidity than I've ever had before.

I go outside the building. There is a grassy lawn outside it. I have a discussion of systems for play and discovery with MA [a real-life friend and colleague] and another dream character.

I then decide to explore a bit. I walk away from the large building and head toward another complex of buildings that appears to be an elementary-school campus. As I start walking, I say to myself, “Again, why am I walking when I can fly?” So I start flying over there. I find a party in progress on the far side of the elementary-school campus, where there are some picnic tables. People are hanging out and drinking beer. I obtain a pint glass for myself, but leave it sitting around on or near one of the walls as I wander away.

I see the entrance to a mall, and enter it.

I fly up into the air to get an overview of the area. From up here, I can see that the town I'm in is on the ocean and has a beach. I think, That makes sense. Oceans and beaches are part of my schema for what a broad overview of an area of land should look like, because of where I grew up.

I'm walking along a rolling dirt path. While walking, I eat yogurt out of a plastic cup with a metal spoon. It's raspberry-flavored and smooth and creamy, and it tastes exactly like real yogurt. Then, I find a handful of coins that someone has dropped on the side of the path, along with a bronze medallion. The medallion has some text inscribed on it that says the name of the country I'm in and what the medallion was awarded for. [I don't remember what it said now, although I could definitely read it in the dream, and the country name wasn't the name of any real country.] The coins are all common U.S. coins, but there's also a fifth coin, a brass-colored one that's shaped like a little house [a square shape with a pointy roof]. I pick all these items up.

I wake up in a car with MA, JL, and one other friend. One of them is driving, and I'm in the back seat. I remember that I had just been dreaming, and pinch my nose. Yep. Still dreaming.

While exploring the grassy, park-like area outside the building I started in, I spot a silver, metal, quarter-spherical shape rising up out of the ground. I say, “Ooh!” because I see an opportunity here. The structure is roughly the same shape as the baseball backstop I once fantasized about flying to the top of [see my DJ entry dated April 28, 2011], even though it's solid silver rather than chain-link, and it's maybe two-thirds to half the size of the real one. I take off and fly to the top of it, stopping myself by grabbing hold of the top edge of the hollow quarter-sphere with my hands and then swinging myself up onto it, so that I'm sitting at the top with my lower legs dangling over the edge. I'm facing a crowd of DCs standing on the ground, one of whom is a burly man who flashes me a thumbs-up sign. I proudly declare, “I'm the coolest kid in school!” The DCs seem to approve, but then they start flooding into the hollow space inside the quarter-sphere, filling the space and causing the structure to tip over backward. I climb off as it slowly tilts over, unhurt.

Having accomplished both the old goal of flying to the top of the backstop [well, sorta] and my other goal of trying dream food, I say aloud, “Okay, chores over. Time to have fun.” I fly up and let the wind carry me away.

The dream fades, and I find myself lying down. I try to move my arm, but judging by the feel of it, I realize, No, that's my real arm! I don't want to do that! [Whether or not this was actually true, I couldn't say for sure, but it sure felt like it was at the time.] After a brief moment of feeling stuck in that position and trying to figure out how to get back to exploring the dream world, I roll over and fall out of my bed. I think, Wow, that actually works! I quickly determine that I'm back to the lucid-dreaming state, and remind myself that all that's around me only exists inside my mind, as I read in EWOLD.

I'm looking at a different, grassy lawn. There is a little red demon thingy growing out of the grass. He has red roots that run all over the surface of the lawn. I have a magic sword, so I hold it out, wondering if it'll help and what I can do with it. The demon takes the sword and kills himself by using the sword to sever all his roots. When he and his roots have all disappeared, a small chair rises up out of the plus-sign-shaped hole in the ground where he had just been. It is a reward for my defeat of the demon. I take the chair and carry it with me as I fly back over to the party, which is still in progress.

When I get there, I use the chair to help me grab onto some structure to arrest my motion and land. Flying is easy, but stopping is hard, I think. I can't find the glass of beer I left there earlier, but I decide it's no big loss. I take my chair and sit down at the corner of one of the portable tables that are set up in the party area. I'm facing the outside wall of the elementary-school complex. Up against the wall I'm facing is another table with a clear pitcher of beer on it.

There is another handful of coins on the table near me – again, standard U.S. coins, all of them shiny and brand-new, plus the odd house-shaped coins I saw before. I decide to swallow some of them, because I know I can't do any harm to my real body by doing so. I see another girl at my table doing the same. It feels good. I can feel them going down my throat, but the sensation seems to be weaker than would be realistic, which isn't surprising, since I haven't actually done this in reality [and certainly never will]. After swallowing a few coins, I decide I want more beer to go with them, so I get up and get myself another cup. The beer is cold and rich and flavorful; it tastes exactly how I like my beer to taste.

I've run out of coins, but I still want more. I cup my hand, place it on the table palm side down, look away, and think about what I want to have happen. I feel little pops under my hand, like bursts of compressed air, as more coins pop into existence. Then I feel the coins themselves against my hand as the pile grows. I remove my hand and continue swallowing coins. I'm very pleased that I've suddenly become so good at summoning objects.

My dad is sitting right next to me, at the end of the table, so his chair is perpendicular to mine. He sees me swallowing coins and absolutely freaks out. He recoils from me in disgust, asking me, “What are you doing?” I simply respond, in an “it's not a big deal” tone, “It won't hurt my dream body.”

Then I woke up for real and waited while the last of the SP faded away, concentrating on remembering all that I'd dreamed about. I was very pleased to have accomplished so much and to have been lucid for so long. [In fact, I got to check two goals off the big list in my profile today: trying dream food and summoning an object. ]

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

Night of December 7-8

I'm in the kitchen of House #1, looking up somebody's phone number on my cell phone. It looks like a calculator, but it has a two-line display, and the number is stored in it. Then, my dad, P. and I have a conversation via text messages about camping. I see the text messages on the screen of this calculator-phone thing. My dad says, “Want to go camping?” I say, “I love camping! Do we have to go in winter, though?” My dad says he doesn't expect us to go in winter. [There was a text message from P. in there somewhere, but I don't remember what it said.]

Then, my dad comes into the room, and he and I argue about how to retrieve the phone numbers of past incoming callers from the house phone. [My dad and I had figured this out together in real life the evening before I had this dream, but the phone in the dream had a much bigger, much more complicated two-panel display than our real house phone has.]

Night of December 8-9

There's an area where some sort of armed conflict has been taking place. There is an organization of people called “Help the Hungry” who are providing food to the survivors by parachuting in with it and by air-dropping it.

I'm in the bombed-out, roofless, empty remains of a small, single-story house that had only one or a few rooms. There is a rectangular box in the middle of the floor of the largest room. All the sides of the box are on fire, but there is a single hard-boiled egg in the center of the box, and it's not burning. I know that it was air-dropped there by Help the Hungry. Oh, a dream, I realize. I decide to go out of the house and explore. I turn around, toward another section of the house, a rectangular section where the wall at one of the narrow ends has been blown up. There's too much rubble between me and the opening for me to walk through conveniently, so I fly over it.

Once I get outside, I discover that the house is in the middle of a wide-open, flat, grassy field, lined with trees around the edges. [Now that I think of it, it resembles the one at the park closest to House #1, only the one in the dream is bigger, has more trees, and has no roads or other buildings in sight.] There is only one other person there, standing right near me as I'm flying just a few feet above the ground. He says something to me [that I don't remember now]. His tone doesn't sound hostile, but I know that he's part of the group responsible for bombing the house, so I want to get away from him quickly. I start flying straight up to escape. He makes a grab for my legs to catch me, but misses. I continue ascending, and the dream starts to fade. Gray blotches appear and spread, blotting out the sky around me.

When I found myself back in bed, I thought, No, I'm not done yet, with resolve. I didn't want this dream to be over already. I remained perfectly still and concentrated on visualizing the dream I'd just been having. I remember thinking, Please... please... please...

...and then I'm back in the sky above that same grassy field, falling toward it just as fast as I had been flying away from it. I do a faceplant into the grass, but feel no sensation at all, neither impact nor deceleration nor pain. I'm now lying on my stomach in the grass. Three or four people about my own age are crouched down in front of me, watching me as I push myself up. I try to speak, but for some reason, although my mind is sending the right commands, my mouth won't work. Instead, I smile and wave at the young woman on the right, who smiles and waves back. As I'm getting up, I keep trying to speak, and after a few seconds, I succeed in getting my mouth to work. I say something like, “Hi, I'm (Emiko). Hide me from anyone other than the Help the Hungry people, will you? I don't think they like me very much.” By “they” I mean the group responsible for bombing the house, and the reason I don't think they like me very much is that I ran (well, flew) away from them. The others seem to accept me, and we all walk away across the field as a group. [That's the last I remember.]

--------------
Side notes:

I was getting to be kind of annoyed that I'd had dreams featuring House #1, one of my dream signs, for two nights in a row without going lucid. Last night, I started to do more serious RCs again, and changed up my before-bed affirmations, making them more along the lines of, “When I'm in an unfamiliar place, especially House #1, I realize that I'm dreaming.” It seems to have worked.

Also, this is the second time that a dream has started to fade right when I've been flying upward. I think it's because both times, I was concentrating exclusively on the act of flying, not paying any attention at all to the environment around me. Lesson learned: In the future, look around more when flying. (Yay for DEILDs, though! I'm so glad I know that trick and can pull it off successfully. )

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

[I apologize in advance for how much of the page this entry takes up. It was my longest lucid dream to date, though, and I wanted to make the best record of it I could.]

I'm at my old high school, outside the entrance to my mom's old classroom. The open-air entrance on one side of the classroom and the semi-enclosed atrium on the other side are reversed from the sides they're on in real life. I'm listening to an old woman [Betty J.? Aunt Edie? I'm not sure] talk about life. I also remember reading some text about how in the old days, we just lived together with love and respect for one another as a matter of course, without any need for external forces like social programs to manipulate or engineer good feelings between people. [Yep. That sounds like my mind, all right.]

I'm playing PackRat. [Again. I am so sick of dreaming about PackRat, and I know perfectly well that the only way to stop dreaming about it is to stop playing it. That'll happen at the end of this year, I hope.] I discover that the reason an old collection cannot be completed is that they created all the cards, with artwork and everything, but never actually made them available to players.

I'm looking through a rack of envelopes of photo prints, organized by the subject of the photos.

I'm reading a novel on a shiny, black electronic reader. The last page of one chapter has a small illustration of a rolling, bouncing boulder on it [this illustration is from a particular PackRat card]. The electronic reader has small, rectangular “previous page” and “next page” buttons in the lower right corner. It also has readouts in the lower left corner of the screen that show remaining battery life and how many inches from your eyes the screen is. It says that a distance of at least 9 inches is recommended. I see my reflection in its surface and am surprised to discover that I'm wearing glasses. [I don't wear them in real life, but I might have to, someday.]

I go to say good night to my dad. He shows me that he's discovered a way to screw this cylindrical part onto his guitar so that it still has its protective plastic cover.

WBTB at 3:58 A.M. I stayed up for 10-15 minutes, taking notes on the dreams I recalled so far. Then I listened to the second half of my binaural beats file and continued doing affirmations, this time including remembering to stabilize my dream as one of them. I then spent about 45 minutes being kept awake by my coughing and sneezing, but eventually, I managed to get back to sleep. I think I even experienced sleep paralysis for the first time ever; I remember a moment when it felt like my body was vibrating or shaking really fast.

When I find myself in House #1, I immediately know I'm dreaming. [Since I was lucid from the very beginning and can remember a little bit of the sleep paralysis, I think I may have just performed a successful WILD, even though I didn't originally intend to.] This time, I succeed in remembering to stop and take in the scene before doing anything else, in order to stabilize the dream. Once again, I gaze around in awe of the fact that my mind can create such a detailed and realistic environment. Everything looks real, even though I know it's not. I walk around the house a bit, and when I get to the sinks in the bathroom and kitchen, I look at the faucets and quietly expect them to turn on, and they do, without my touching them. [I think that's pretty cool.]

I go out into the study, which looks pretty much just as it did in reality, except that the space inside it is entirely filled with spiderwebs. I turn back and go back into the house, with spiderwebs sticking all over me. When I come back in, I accidentally let a spider into the house, too. It has a big, nearly spherical body with stripes in two different shades of gray. I squash it while it's walking along the wall in the master bedroom. Then I discover another, even bigger, red spider/crab thing on the carpet, and squash that one, too, saying something about how sorry I am for making a stain on the carpet. [The carpet I squashed the spider into was light brown and semi-shaggy. House #1 never had carpet like that; that's the kind of carpet we have in House #3. I didn't notice this until after I woke up, at which point I found it highly amusing that the details of the carpet had been off in one of my dreams and I hadn't noticed. ]

My mom is there in the house. [I don't really remember the specifics of this part, but] I lie down on the bed in the master bedroom and get under the covers so that my parents won't see that I'm quivering and shaking in the throes of SP. [I don't even know.]

I decide I want to leave the house and go explore other parts of this dream world, but I feel obliged to take leave of my parents first and tell them where I'm going, but I want to keep it a secret from them that I'm dreaming. I say to myself, “If I told them I was going to school, would they believe me? Given the setting, they might.” As I say this, what I have in mind is that I'm going to pretend to be setting out on foot for my junior high school. [Funny; that was the only school I ever took the school bus to. I did walk from my house to the bus stop, though.]

I walk through the side yard toward the front gate. I find my parents in the corner of the yard, where the wall with said gate in it meets the wall of the neighbors' house, doing some kind of yard work. I say, “I'm going to school. Bye, Mom!”

“Bye, (Emiko)!” says my mom, and it sounds exactly the same as it always does when my real mom says it. [Obviously, an unaltered memory.] “Have a good day!”

“You, too!” I say, or something like it. I walk out through the front gate and down toward the street. The neighborhood seems more spacious and spread-out than it is in reality. Now that no one is looking, I begin flying, taking off from the middle of the street and traveling parallel to it and upward from it at an angle, like an airplane taking off.

As I fly higher into the air, the dream and my dream consciousness start to fade away. Now, having read the DEILD tutorial, I had some idea of what to do. I lay absolutely still in my bed and concentrated intently on the dream I had just been having, willing myself to start dreaming again. It worked. [First successful DEILD, too! I was really on a roll last night!]

I end up in a group of interconnected, upstairs rooms in a building somewhere. I seem to have flown there. The rooms are white, and there are chairs, upholstered stools, and bookshelves in them. From reading a plaque on a wall near a doorway, I learn that these rooms are reading rooms dedicated to a strange alternate take on Christianity, centered around an alternate set of gospels written by different people. [I didn't recognize it as any sect that exists in real life.] One of the rooms has an analog clock on the wall. It doesn't have numbers, just a circle and two hands, all made of the same rough, gray metal. Even though I already know I'm dreaming, I deliberately look at the clock, glance away, and then look at it again to see if the hands have jumped. The first time I try this, they seem to be in pretty much the same position they were in, so I try again. The second time, they've jumped to a totally different position. I am pleased with myself; again, I was expecting that to happen, so it did.

I leave these rooms and start walking down a flight of stairs. The dream starts to fade again, but again, I manage to stay in it through sheer willpower.

The stairs end in a wide hallway. There is a set of double doors to the right, leading into a room. Judging by the decorations and items outside these doors and inside the room, it looks like there's a wedding going on. Am I the bride? I wonder, but when I enter the large, rectangular room and see the retail-style displays of clothing and stuff, I think, Oh, good. Just a fair, then. I see a real-life friend [I forget who] to my right, who says to me, “Cute dress, (Emiko)!”

“Thank you!” I answer, even though I think this is an odd thing to say, because all I'm wearing is a damp, clammy black blanket wrapped around me. It feels like it's made of swimsuit material. I continue further into the room, turning to my left and walking that way. I look down and to the left, between two racks of clothing, and see another real-life friend, Eleanor B. She's wearing a royal-blue bridesmaid dress [the one she was wearing the last time I saw her in real life, which was at the wedding of some mutual friends]. I call her name twice to get her attention. She looks up, sees me, and stands up to talk to me. I come over and talk to her. When I take a closer look at the clothes hanging on the rack we're standing next to, I say something like, “And are these the new Christmas sweatshirts from Target? Cute! I want!” The sweatshirts are white and have patterns on them of snowflakes made up of narrow lines, either in shades of pink or shades of teal. They also have hems and seams in those colors. I take one pink one and one teal one off the rack and carry them with me. They feel soft.

I leave that room and find myself outside. In the distance, I can see big mountains with snow on top of them. I continue exploring and somehow [I don't remember the exact route I took] make it into an old Japanese temple (or residence, or something). It has a very old, very traditional room with tatami mats on the floor. I pry off each of my sneakers in turn, using the toe of the other foot (suddenly, I'm wearing sneakers, I think). [Yes, I actually thought that while in the dream. Now that I think of it, I think I was suddenly wearing regular clothes, too.] Leaving my sneakers (the exact same ones I have in real life, I note) out in the passageways, I enter the room with the tatami mats and walk around in it. I can feel the mats and my socks under my feet. I say aloud to myself, “Wait – we're allowed to walk around in here? Oh – of course we are; that's what I was expecting.” Yet again, something is so because I expected it to be so. [In all my real-life experience visiting historical tourist sites in Japan, we were never allowed to actually enter the rooms with the tatami; we were only allowed to look into them from the outside. I always wanted to walk around inside them, though, so now, in a dream, I got my wish. Cool.]

Outside of this room are some passageways that are all painted a dusty shade of teal, and have wooden signs hanging in them. I walk around in here for a few minutes. One of the signs says “Telephone,” and indeed, there is a pay telephone on the wall in a wooden box. It looks like an old tourist facility.

One of the doorways within these passageways leads into a spacious, modern restaurant that I recognize as the one inside the onsen [hot spring] that I visited while I was living in Japan. There are a few people sitting at tables here and there. I walk through the restaurant, looking for one of my real-life friends [I don't remember which one now]. I don't find her there, so I decide to head for the restaurant's exit and go somewhere else.

The way to the exit is through a long passageway with a wall on the right side and an upholstered bench on the left side where guests can sit and wait for tables, which separates the passageway from the rest of the restaurant. There are two people sitting on the bench. As I approach the door, I think, What shall I do next? Task of the Month – cell phone – oh, yeah! For a split second I think of getting out my cell phone to text somebody, but then I remember the new Task of the Month for November. I turn to one of the two DCs sitting on the bench, the one sitting nearest the door, who happens to be a black, pregnant woman. “Hey, can I tell you what I'm thankful for?” I say to her.

“Okay.” She straightens, sitting forward on the edge of the bench, listening to me.

“I'm thankful for my family, and [something else I can't remember now], and my computer, and for being able to come here!” I say. [Meaning, to the dream world.] Unfortunately, the dream starts to fade again just as I'm finishing my sentence.

FA in which, instead of being me, I'm Cobb. Mal is there when I wake up, the real one. [They're characters from Inception.] We talk about something, probably the dream I just had. [I don't remember now exactly what it was we talked about, but dude. That was a really weird FA.]

FA in which I count my fingers while they're spread out against the legs of my jeans. When I find I have a sixth finger on my left hand, my reaction is, “Oh, damn. Gosh-darn it!” Apparently, I really want to actually be awake. But I'm still feeling sleepy, so I lie down, sprawling over the sides of the white, wooden bench I'm sitting on.

When I woke up for real, I just lay there for several minutes because my body still felt heavy. I recalled my dream and was pretty impressed.

--------------------------------

Side notes:

That was the longest lucid dream I've ever had. I'm also very impressed and pleased with the number of times I succeeded in controlling what happened just by expecting something to happen. I really got the hang of that skill last night. Finally, I'm amazed that I managed to stay lucid for that long, and to force myself to keep dreaming so many times when the dream threatened to end. Wow!