CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #263: Judo and Giants

As I lay back down post-WBTB, I get the sense that I’m starting to fall asleep. Just before bed, Dreamer had skyped me her most recent dream where she transitioned to WILD by rolling onto her side and partly more onto her stomach. (This one!) I try the same thing, worrying for a second that moving will spoil things, but it’s all fine. There’s a low buzzing sound and a dream starts to take shape. After a little more patience, I find myself outside on a street at night.

Among the people going by, I see a lost boy wandering around calling out for his mother. I ask him who his mother is and he says that it’s RBBB, someone I know from college. I decide that she’ll be close by, and sure enough I see her kneeling in an alcove carved out of a nearby brick building. I bring the boy to her and say, “Hey, [RBBB]! It’s [Canis]. Your son was looking for you.” She gives me a curt, rather cold nod and goes back to fervently praying as her son curls up next to her.

I review my goals and remember my two main ones: first, my 5-year-old son E’s idea to find him, take him to a playground so he could play with Elsa and Anna from Frozen. Second, Iokheira’s (aka NewArtemis) idea to find her and transform into wolves. :canislucidus:

I head down the street to start looking for E, but the DCs on the street start running in terror from something up ahead. There’s a stone giant stomping along the road ahead of me, and he grabs a car from the side of the road and flings it across the street into a grassy courtyard.



He comes straight for me, and I try to think of some way not to turn this into a fight, but it’s just not coming to me. The stone giant seems way too hostile, and the only option that comes to me is to try to end the combat as quickly as possible. I move my hands away from each other in a ripping gesture to pantomime tearing the stone giant apart. It works, and the giant blows apart into a huge scatter of boulders and pebbles.

I hurry past, but almost immediately the rocks start rolling back toward one another so that the giant can reform. Soon I catch sight of his shadow chasing after me, but I resolve not to turn around and instead just ignore him. Sure enough, he vanishes!

I come to the top of a tall series of stacked platforms that descend into the ground, sort of like a reverse parking garage. Every floor is packed with these large, amazing water fountains that flow into one another. I drop down a few levels, expecting to find my son E. And he’s there! He’s curled up in the corner crying, and I scoop him up in my arms. “Hey, don’t cry, buddy! This is a lucid dream! I’m going to try to take you to meet Elsa and Anna!” This settles him down, and I leap off the side of the fountain structure, floating softly about 80 feet or so to the ground.

At the bottom is a playground! I hop up on one of the wooden structures and set E down so that he can walk on his own. Together we cross a wooden bridge and in the middle we meet Elsa and Anna! “[E], look who it is!” They look similar to their appearance in the films, although their facial features occasionally rearrange in unusual, Picasso-like ways. E runs up to them and hugs Anna around the leg.



A crowd of DCs start pouring in, and we get separated for a moment. I feel a loss of stability and grab onto this old guy’s stomach to restabilize. To my surprise, I can feel that he’s clearly got abs. I say, “Dude, you’re like 60! How have you got abs?... Oh right, you’re a DC.” He and some of the other DCs laugh.

I return to where E and the Frozen princesses were, but they’ve been replaced by clear imposters. (The Elsa imposter is non-animated, black, and in her mid-50s!) I talk with the imposters for a bit but decide to move on to Iokheira’s idea, so I leave the playground, finding myself walking down the stairs in a house.

Up ahead I see Iokheira sprint by! I follow her path into the shadows of a living room, but when I get there, she’s gone. I turn back and look around for a bit before someone else comes down the stairs I entered from, a young strawberry blonde woman in her mid-20s. I ask her where Iokheira is and the woman answers that “Sorry, [Iokheira] doesn’t live here anymore.”

As I’m turning to leave, the strawberry blonde woman runs up and starts aggressively kissing me. It’s exciting to some degree but also a little scary. She pulls away for a moment to admit to me that she’s a “very slobbery kisser”, and sure enough, she becomes quite slobbery. Then she says, “And check this out!” As I watch, her left eye moves into the center of her forehead. She checks my face, seemingly expecting a horrified reaction. Instead I laugh and for a moment she seems disappointed not to have frightened me. She returns to aggressive kissing, and after things move on to sexytime, the dream fades...

I hold on for DEILD and I’m quickly back. I’m roaming the hallway of a house, and I continue a room-to-room search for Iokheira. In one of the rooms the light switch doesn’t work and I remark out loud that “That’s a bullshit schema!” I leave the hallway and enter a huge cathedral-like chamber that’s snaked through with all of these suspended balconies.

I run along one of these balconies until I’m confronted by an archeress, a brown-haired woman in her mid-40s. I try to ask for her help, but she starts saying a variety of strange, threatening things and looks like she’s going to take a shot at me. I grab onto her and do a Dreamer-style sacrifice JUDO throw, and it totally works! The archeress is still yelling at me, but I run away from her into a new room as the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #259: Flurries on the 58th Floor

I’m an operative infiltrating an office building. My enemies have seen me before and know my face, so I have to enter as stealthily as I can. I enter through some side entrance high up on a section of rooftop, and I have a vague memory of arriving by helicopter. There’s a huge “59” written on the wall -- this is the 59th floor.

I run up, but it’s a dead end that leads back out to another roof. Okay, down instead. As I arrive at the 58th floor, I hear a door open nearby and a security guard steps into view. He looks like an easygoing family man, black, mid-40s, naturally cheerful face. But I can’t let myself get found out. “I’m sorry,” I say, and I rush forward, punching him in the face and then kicking him in the chest.

He somehow bounces away down the hall and I lose track of him. I run down the hall after him, and it twists and turns confusingly as I go. This all seems so strange and I remember that I must be having a lucid dream. In preparation for this dream, I used Dreamer’s goal-chaining technique, and as I become lucid, the excitement of lucidity is followed by the sense of cold, and I remember my intent to summon snow for Dreamer. (She’s never seen snow in waking life!)

I walk through the hall, spending a little time examining my surroundings and narrating out loud that “this is a lucid dream.” Once I feel settled, I tell Dreamer that she’s here in this office building too. She doesn’t appear right away, though, so for now I focus on summoning some snow. I imagine myself smushing up snow in my hand to form a snowball, and as I do that, snow begins gently falling around me as well. The snowball is a little too small and rock-like to be fun, so I discard it.

I walk into an office enclosed by glass walls, and a group of 4 or 5 women follow closely behind me. One of them is Dreamer! She’s pushing a stroller! She looks like herself but older, maybe ten years older than she is now, and she’s wearing a purple head scarf like she came prepared for the cold.



The other women are close friends or relatives, and they’re all here on some kind of important business to do with the baby in the stroller. Amazingly, I don’t look to see who or what is inside the stroller! I say to Dreamer “You’re here!” and do a little ta-daaaa with my hands. “I’m having a lucid dream!”

She laughs like I’m joking and says no, she’s got to focus. This meeting is really important to her. I insist that this is a dream, saying something like: “I was infiltrating this place and then bam! Lucidity! I used your goal-chaining technique, just like the last lucid!”

“Ah,” she says, “like when I had the [???] series!” The other women nod and smile at the apparent memory. “We had some fun with that one!”

“Yeah!” I tell her. “I wanted to show you this!” And the snowfall begins again.

Dreamer looks up and smiles. “Is that snow?” She looks excited and torn between enjoying the snow and following through with the story behind the dream plot. She looks like she's toying with the idea of opening her mouth toward the ceiling and letting snowflakes fall onto her tongue.

I see a handful of people dressed in suits waiting at a desk for the meeting with Dreamer and her posse. I ignore the suits, focusing my energy on the snow, and hoping they’ll fade into the background. There’s a bit more quiet snowfall before the dream ends.

This lucid is from an afternoon nap on November 30th, 2014.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #257: The Word of Power

I’m participating in an extreme sport where I have to walk along a skinny white railing, then jump and rope-swing onto the surface of a yacht over and over again. The crowd goes crazy every time that I do this!

Oop, now I’m in a stone chamber below some kind of battle arena, dressed in a badass robotic exoskeleton. Apparently all of that was just training for an upcoming combat. There’s some other exoskeleton-clad guy here who looks like Kevin Durant, and I apparently believe he’s my partner. There’s a grimy mechanic here (an attractive, dark-haired woman in her late 30s) attaching a minigun to his suit.



Kevin Durant hoots with joy and sprays gunfire around the room, shouting about what a genius the mechanic is and how much ass he’s going to kick in the upcoming battle. The mechanic smiles in amusement and calmly walks out of the chamber. All of the action gets me all excited too and somehow it occurs to me that this is like a dream, bringing me into lucidity.

The presence of the Kevin Durant character fades and all I can think about is testing out this suit I’m wearing. I wonder whether it has a “bull charge” feature that lets me go charging forward to crash into stuff and whoooosh, there I go! I smash into one of the chamber’s stone walls. (The dream’s frame rate drops dramatically as I do this.) There’s a large button on the wall, and I throw a punch at it. Satisfyingly, it lights up when I hit it!

I go back and forth, crashing into the walls of the chamber until I’m pretty happy with this feature. At some point I notice a huge bearded guy (probably about 10 feet tall) standing in the middle of room in handcuffs, looking surly. I think that he’s supposed to be some kind of sparring partner, so I throw a completely guilt-free punch at him. It just taps him, though, and he doesn’t react beyond shifting his surly gaze to me.

I think that I need to focus my dream control more, and I remember how effective it’s been for me to vocalize my intention and sometimes even use profanity. “Yaaarrrggh!” I blubber, punching the giant in the ribs. It doesn’t feel very effective, though. I follow up with a kick to the upper thigh, loudly exclaiming...

Spoiler for Very crude language:

”Buttfuck!!”

as the kick lands. The strike feels really solid and forceful, and the giant grimaces before turning around and walking off. I immediately feel embarrassed that I’ll have to journal that this is how I improved my dream control and wish that I’d chosen a different word.

I start investigating whether there’s a way into the main arena, and as I approach a dusty upward ramp, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #222: The Australian Odyssey

I’m standing in line with my friends SC and MR along with some other people that I false remember as people from my past. I’m trying to introduce these “old friends” but it’s hopeless because I can’t even remember their names. Very embarrassing, and to my relief the line moves ahead and we walk into a large video arcade.

SC, MR, and I watch this one game for a while that’s a cross between a sandbox-style game, a racing game, and a platformer. I get confused after a while and wander to another part of the arcade, when some creep elbows me aside and then flicks me on the back. The creep stares at me as he walks by with a “what are you gonna do about it?” look. He’s a short little guy with a mustache. “You’re short,” I observe out loud.

This enrages him, and he charges at me, taking an unbelievably slow swing at my head. I push him gently aside and he falls to the floor. “Stop it,” I tell him. “I don’t want to get arrested.” I move away from him down a hallway but he chases me down and tries to hit me again. I scoop up his right ankle and he falls backward to the floor.

I say, “I’m not hurting you because I don’t think you can hurt me.” As I’m walking away I start doing some pondering out loud: “But… what if you try to hit me 5000 more times? Wouldn't all of that practice make you dangerous to me?” Convinced by the dream logic, I pick up a toddler-sized chair and say, “Next time, I’m going to hit you with this chair! In the face!” I shake the chair for emphasis. He ignores my warnings and again comes charging for me. I smash the chair into the center of his forehead and he crumples to the ground.

I walk off down the hall, hoping nobody saw me do that. Something about all this strikes me as completely crazy and I become lucid. I walk down a long hallway lined with school lockers, and at the end I find a dirt ramp leading downward. I follow the tunnel downward into a large temple built with big stone blocks. There are gaps in the stonework near the high ceiling and shafts of sunlight cut across the room from above.

It’s a beautiful place and I begin slowly flying around the room, overcome with joy to be lucid. “Fucking lucidity!” I say, feeling like I might cry with emotion. After flying around for a bit, I walk outside of the temple to find myself in a Venice-like city of canals. A few boats drift gently by.

I look back at the temple and see a large, golden statue of an angel sliding down a ramp from the ceiling to the door right in front of me. From somewhere a voice says, “Although we recognize Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we believe this church is powered by the Holy Spirit.” I get the sense that the voice is trying to explain what they use for electricity. After admiring the statue for a few moments, I step into one of the boats and set off.

It’s not long before I find myself at the edge of the city, heading out to sea. I get the feeling that I’m in Australia and the beauty of the story and the scenery eventually drain away my lucidity. Dreamer starts narrating: “Parts of Australia are dirty, polluted, and not as nice as you might think.” As she says this, I notice oily water lapping against the side of the boat.

I set sail away from the city, staying close to the shoreline, Dreamer narrating here and there. The water is clear and beautiful now. Dreamer says that I’m trying to find my way to the islands of the “Hawthorne Formation” but I don’t know my way there. The sea is calm and I feel peaceful and relaxed. Eventually my boat lands on a sandy beach where Noah Bennet from Heroes is working at a carpentry table. I think he’s my dad and that he’s counting on me making this journey to the Hawthorne Formation to get help for my mom and sister. (100% false memories and characters.)

“Son,” he says, “draw me a map of where you think you are.” I draw a globe on a piece of plywood and sketch out Australia. I think it looks pretty good until I see all of the lines of longitude converging in its center. I realize that I’ve put Australia where Antarctica is supposed to go and feel really embarrassed.

Noah Bennet sighs. “Here’s the Hawthorne Formation,” he says, drawing a series of 4 islands off the southwestern coast of Australia.” He draws an arrow pointing northeast into the middle of these islands.

I thank him and return to the boat. “Good luck, son,” he says, and the dream fades.

Finally on the board for Task of the Year 2014!!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #206: The Giant Killer

I sense a transition into the dream state, but just as it begins I hear our dogs start barking downstairs. Wife stirs in the bed next to me and I wonder how much of this is pure dream and how much of it might be sounds and sensations from waking life bleeding over.

I will myself to roll out of bed OBE-style and I decide to phase downstairs to see what the dogs are on about. I pass through walls and the floor like a ghost and I think to myself that “I’m spirit walking.”

I pass through one last set of walls and the geometry gets weird for a moment and I wonder if I’m losing this dream. I rake my fingers across the floor but I pass right through. Still, it seems to bring me back into the experience and there in front of me are our 2 dogs laying on the floor panting.

Their food and water bowls both lay empty and I figure that’s what they were making a fuss about. Even though I’m still floating like a ghost, I’m able to grab the water bowl and sling it across the room and it clangs realistically against the floor. I consider asking Wife the next morning if she heard any of this commotion.

I head out into the garage, walking like normal now. Rather than phase, for some reason I lift the garage door manually and walk out into the night. I move past the circular driveway to the grass, thinking of the Jack and the Beanstalk Task of the Year. I dig a quick hole and everything’s feeling very vivid now. I do a behind-the-back summon of a seed which feels very half-hearted but fortunately still does yield a tiny seed. I quickly cover it over with dirt.

For water I move my hands in a little sprinkling motion over the little mound and a few drops of “rain” fall. The plant immediately springs up through the ground and stretches skyward. It looks like a normal vine at first but as it continues up it looks more like a twisting rope bridge that goes all the way up into the clouds.



I grab the lower rung and start hauling myself up but I feel like I’m getting nowhere and won’t ever be able to tackle all that distance. I decide that the planks are being reeled in from above and are pulling me up toward the clouds. It works! In a couple of spots the planks twist and turn oddly as if they’re trying to throw me off, but I ignore this and before long I’m at the top! I float up over the edge into what looks like a restaurant that’s being prepared for a party.

Two women standing nearby appear to be in charge of the scurrying wait staff. One of the women, an attractive lady in her early 40s, looks up at me as I walk nearby. She has a streak of her short brown hair bleached almost white. My task is the defeat the giant that lives up here, so I ask, “Where’s the giant?” She points behind me and to my left.

When I turn, there’s a guy roughly 9-10 feet tall walking through the door of the restaurant. He’s mid-40s with dark hair and a thick, barrel-chested build. “So you’re the giant?” I ask leadingly.



“That’s right,” he says and immediately takes a swing at me. His punch catches me square in the face but I decide that it will have no effect. I wind up not feeling anything or even falling back and it kind of feels like cheating. I strike at the man, trying what I for some reason think is a “kidney punch” but actually hit him in the side of the gut. He winces a bit but doesn’t move much.

I follow this up with a kick to the body and the giant clutches at his chest. I feel like this is working but I become paranoid about losing the dream, so I leap up and grab onto the giant’s face. I try to do this thing where I burn him with my hands but it completely fails. The failure makes me kind of vicious and desperate, so I gouge at his left eye with my right thumb and then strike him on the neck with my forearm. He collapses hard to the ground and I go with him. As I’m picking myself up to see what’s next, the dream ends.

Very close call on Task of the Year! I'll definitely have to go for this one again.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #188: CL and the Beanstalk

I WILD into a scene filled with fleeting hypnagogic imagery which quickly fades into the void. I start waving my dream-hands in a repetitive motion, waiting for a scene to form. Nothing happens right away, though, so I start licking my fingers for a while to see if that works.

Nothing’s shaping up yet, though, so I try seeing how far I can stick my tongue out. I can feel it extending outward from my mouth seemingly on and on, and after a few moments I can vaguely see it extending away from my face into the distance. Curious how large I can make it, I will the tongue to expand and it balloons out in a huge, rectangular shape as large as a room. After a couple of seconds, I can see that yes, it actually is a room…

Now I’m standing high up in an office building, looking out over a city skyline through enormous windows. It’s late afternoon. I enjoy the sight of the skyline for a moment, rubbing my hands together.

As I’m doing this, a helicopter rises into view from below my line of sight, turns itself directly toward me, and opens fire with dual-mounted miniguns.



The office windows shatter and I feel myself being pelted with glass and bullets. There’s no pain, but each impact feels like a definitive hit. I know that it’s a dream but I can’t stop myself from shying from the window, crouching down, and nearly cowering. I hold my hand out toward the helicopter then swipe it quickly to the right, flinging it away from the building and out of sight.

The wrecked office is filled with random debris now, and I make my way past it to stand at the edge of the now-empty window. I recall Task of the Year (find and plant some magic beans, climb the beanstalk, and defeat the giant at the top.) My immediate goal is to get back to ground level, so I instinctively point to a lower rooftop perhaps 7 or 8 stories down and will myself to float to it. It works and I’m pulled smoothly down.

Now I’m really enthused about this pointing thing, so I point at the street below, once again pulling myself down. I’m filled with confidence after this, so I just start knocking out Task of the Year steps as quickly as I can.

I need bare earth, so I scoop the roadway aside, leaving a bowl-shaped hollow for my seed. I close and then open my hand, expecting the seed to be there. It is! (Looks like a pine nut.) I stuff the seed in the hole, cover it over with dirt and pat it down. A stalk immediately starts growing out of the ground and I jump onto it as it goes by. The stalk’s growing fast and since I hitched a ride so early, the plant’s doing the climbing for me.

I streak past the nearby buildings and head into the clouds. Immediately a shirtless, ape-like giant with a long beard comes loping toward me, about 100 feet away. I’m preparing to do something violent and decisive to make absolutely certain that I nail Task of the Year, but excitement gets the best of me. The scene collapses into a false awakening back in my bedroom.

I need to use the bathroom, so I get out of bed, head in there, and start peeing. My aim is terrible and I keep hitting the seat, the floor, the tank, everything but what I’m aiming at. This really frustrates me and I assume that I must be super tired.

Just then I notice a strange, robotic laundry machine sloshing water onto the floor. Its label indicates that it’s some kind of diaper-washing contraption. Our kids barely use any diapers these days so I wonder why we have it and why it’s here flooding our bathroom.

My 2-year-old son R walks into the room, followed soon after by a sleepy-looking Wife. Her hair is standing up in all kinds of crazy directions, including one nearly two-foot spike that’s going straight up. “Your hair is pretty awesome right now,” I tell her. She giggles and checks herself out in the mirror. We have a good laugh about this until the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #186: Michael Scott Vs. the Zombies

The cast of The Office is sitting around in a big room that looks like a warehouse with a random bathroom stall stuck in the middle of it. Michael Scott is attempting to give a rousing speech to cheer everyone up but instead just makes everyone feel really uncomfortable.

“Cheer up, gang,” says Michael, flashing a toothy grin. Everyone slinks down in their seats. Stanley looks back disdainfully. “Everyone, you are about to experience one of the best things about my youth… the 1980s.”

The scene changes into a video game where I’m now playing as Michael Scott from a first-person perspective. I see some cash lying on the seat of a toilet. As I gingerly try to pick up the money, I realize that I can’t take it because my cash is already “full” in this game.

There’s an abrupt shift into the front of a restaurant. An unseen female voice narrates: “In this scenario, Michael must act violent and unstable so he can gather information about <something something>...” I see a zombie shuffling around at the base of a short set of nearby stairs. I vault over the rail and kick him in the face mid-leap. This is great fun. I remember my intent to have a lucid dream, so I decide that I can’t get too into this video game or I might forget. And it finally hits me that I’m dreaming right now.

A huge, balding zombie comes shambling toward me and I punch him in the face. I leave the room and move into another hallway, relaxing my mind until the zombies stop coming toward me and instead just pass harmlessly by without paying me much attention.

I reach a bend in the hall, rub my hands together, and move toward a large, open area. Just then, a female zombie puts a hand on my shoulder and groans. I’m relaxed about this and say, “You,” (I point at her), “are a dream character!” She smiles, her face changing until she looks like my high school English teacher. Then she walks away.

The room I’ve entered is a huge atrium with a glass roof, 5 or 6 stories high. Two young women, maybe college age, are seated at a table handing out some kind of literature. I’m mildly curious what they have to say but I see a nighttime street scene just through the door. I’m having huge trouble remembering my goals so I think it’d be better to get outside.

I get outside, start to fly, and then abruptly have a false awakening back in bed. I’m staring at the alarm clock. Oddly, rather than showing the time, it’s counting down from 9. I have no idea what this means. I hear Wife whimpering in her sleep next to me. She says, “If people look into my brain, they’ll steal my ideasssssss…”

The alarm clock hits 1, goes dark for a moment, and then starts at 9 again. I realize that I’m still dreaming, but it’s just a moment before I wake up for real.

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 dream is from the morning of 1/1/2014.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #177: The Rivals

I'm sitting at a table with Wife looking through some photos when I somehow become lucid. She steps away from the table and leaps onto a nearby bed, posing and smiling seductively. I feel super amorous and move eagerly toward her. But to the side of me, I notice four other guys moving toward her, all of them looking just as eager as me. Wife looks playfully at each of us as if she's choosing.

I'm so angered by this turn of events that I punch the closest rival in the face. He crumples to the floor, his face immediately becoming a bruised mess. He shrinks into a little troll monster with a pinched, sour expression and then just sits there, not moving. Now the other men have all vanished and I leap triumphantly onto the bed and sexytime commences.

We get about fifteen seconds of fun before Wife does this strange transformation into a half-sized Wife replica doll. Total mood killer. I pick up the doll and it's light as a feather. I feel sad and guilty, wondering if my attack on the DC caused this. I walk out the door carrying the doll and it transforms into a slightly wilted bouquet of flowers before disappearing entirely.

Now I'm in some sort of indoor carnival. I walk past a vendor with curly, slightly 80s-looking hair and a mustache. I slow down and note how vivid everything is. I remember that it's been a few weeks since my last lucid and I reflect on what a shock it is to experience the realness of lucid dreaming after some time off.

I approach a circle of benches and there's Wife, sitting by herself on the right side of one. I approach her calmly, hoping I can keep her DC more stable this time. She looks up at me and we smile at one another as the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #149: Chicken Fight

I'm working as a consigliere and fixer for a 20-year-old Filipino billionaire. He's a natural genius, a derivatives trader that controls a global financial/oil and gas empire. He relies on me and a talented, resourceful woman named Rachel as his on-the-ground "problem solvers".

I'm in a dark room watching a movie projection on a wall. The presentation is talking about some aspect of derivatives trading. I get some kind of message or phone call with a new assignment, and I hurry out of the room. There's somebody that I need to apprehend and speak to that's a spectator at a nearby cockfight. I know that both my boss and Rachel are counting on me to handle this and I feel a tremendous sense of responsibility to get it done right.

It's night, and I take a set of metal stairs down to a dusty street, hanging a right into an alleyway. I see a metal door to my right and hear some faint crowd noise -- that's where the cockfight is being held. I detect movement to my left and I sense that a huge man is lunging toward me to tackle me. I twist my body around and throw a right-handed haymaker that catches the man right in the mouth, stopping him short. I knee him underneath the short ribs and he staggers back. Something tips me off that this is a dream and I become lucid.

The man comes stalking back toward me, as fat and muscular as a bear. I'm struggling with what to do next. I have a strong urge to get right to lucid goals but I'm trying to process in my mind what will become of my boss and Rachel if I fail this task. I slowly retreat from my assailant, not ready to act until I'm sure that I'm not letting down real people who depend on me.

I finally convince myself that Rachel and my boss are just dream characters. My attacker is about four feet away when I wind up and hit him with a two-handed force push that sends him flying violently back, where he lands in a heap. His body has gouged a nearly foot-deep furrow in the dusty ground and, more surprisingly, has turned into a huge roasted chicken!



I walk onward as calmly as I can. I hear a few DCs chattering in surprise behind me but I try to put it out of my mind. They don't care. They're just looking.

Walking between two compact cars and onto an empty paved road, I look up at the sky. The stars are out tonight and I can see far more of them out here than I can with all of the city lights that are near my home IWL. I jump up, getting a good fifty feet into the air. I'm on the edge of a much larger city, one where I'm sure that I can find the means to accomplish my Task of the Month and Task of the Year goals.

I hit a second jump, this one slightly higher than the first, but start to sink down again. No, now I'm flying. I imagine myself catching an updraft the way a hawk would catch a thermal. I shoot upward, high above the city. The sky becomes thick and bright with stars and I know that I can go anywhere that I want. I decide that the Colosseum is just a little ways off in a darkened portion of the city. I begin flying that direction when I suddenly feel Wife's hand slam into my pillow in waking life. She rolls over a couple more times. I try to go in for DEILD but I'm a bit too adrenalized to make it back under.

Asia Task of the Year! (Vandalize the Great Wall of China and battle the authorities with kung-fu.) This was the second of two lucids from last night and the level of vividness in this one was incredible. It was literally more vivid than waking life, which is such a difficult experience to describe or recapture. Pretty amazing stuff.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #137: The Great Wall of China

I have a false awakening in my childhood home, wandering into the dining room to find that my parents are hosting a breakfast. Wife is walking beside me, my folks and brother-in-law "Muppet" are seated at the table, along with Mom and Dad and a few other strangers standing around nearby. As I approach the table, I realize that I am not wearing a shirt and feel embarrassed. Then I see myself in the mirror and I look really in-shape. Now I feel better. Still seems a little inappropriate but I sit down, hoping nobody will make a big deal out of anything.

I'm waiting for the food to arrive when something tips me off that this might all be a dream. I nose pinch and breathe in and out 2-3 times. I announce to everyone that I'm having a lucid dream, get up from the table, and phase through the window to the street outside. I hear Mom and Dad telling me to wait, that I'll miss the breakfast, asking me whether I'm sure that I'm dreaming. But yeah, after phasing through the window, pretty sure.

I take a moment to make the scene as vivid as possible, looking over all of the detail that I see around me, the sound of my voice, the way that the morning air feels (chill and humid.) Thick, spiral-shaped clouds hang in the street, totally immobile and so thick that you can't see through them. When I touch them they literally feel like cotton balls pushed together and just floating in mid-air.

I walk down the street for a while, checking out my hands for inconsistencies. They look completely lifelike, with the one exception being that I can't extend my left ring finger. Every time I try, it resists me and just winds up bending again. The street is still foggy but it's a more natural-looking fog now. The other strange thing is that every tree on the street is decorated with dozens of dreamcatchers that sway in a gentle breeze. The vividness is stunning.

At the end of the street is a house with a huge wall safe mounted above its front door. The safe keeps blowing apart in an explosion, reforming, and then blowing apart again, over and over. I pass by my college friend "Bear" as I turn the corner and then come to a roughly ten-foot stone wall that blocks me from going any further. I try to fly over it but end up just doing a weak jump and having to scramble over like this was waking life. From there I enter a mall area where I announce to the passerby that "I'm having a lucid dream." Some of them look at me with some interest, but nobody verbally responds. I find an exit and imagine that the Great Wall of China is right outisde.

I exit the mall and find myself in front of a six-foot tall replica of the Great Wall of China. Now we're getting somewhere! I walk a little further down a covered walkway and see a sign that reads "Joy's Toys" and under that "Great Wall". DCs are walking into a brick building near the sign that looks like a gift shop. I decide that this is a souvenir shop that's located right by the Great Wall, meaning that the real thing is... right behind me.



I turn around and there it is! It's much taller, easily 50 feet, imposing, and really ancient-looking. I vault over a random pile of building materials to get closer. There's a small crowd of DCs gathered near the base watching as three terra cotta warriors perform some kind of odd, stilted dance performance. The terra cotta warriors take no notice of me but I figure they'll be the ones coming after me when I vandalize the Great Wall for Task of the Year.

Advancing right to the wall, I haul back and punch it once, hoping that this will break a piece off. Nothing much happens. I grab at the wall with my fingers and manage to break a tiny piece off, but this doesn't feel like the serious vandalism I was going for. I decide to go with my premeditated plan of tagging up the Great Wall with spray paint. I summon an aerosol can into my hand and start spraying out some letters:

"DV 4 LIFE"

The paint runs and blurs a lot and generally looks like a mess, but I'm still incredibly pleased. Okay, the final piece of this dream is to defend myself against the authorities with kung-fu. I turn around, expecting an enemy... and find myself face to face with a pale, doughy guy in his 40s. He's wearing glasses and is dressed in brown slacks and a rather tight white cardigan that emphasizes his belly and spindly arms.

"So you're 'the authorities'?" I ask, trying to lead him to say yes.

"Certainly," he says curtly in a British accent. He stares proudly back at me.

Immediately I try to do some "kung-fu" on him. I do this atrocious little low kick that clips the side of his left knee. Then I throw another little kick that misses entirely. This time I scream something like, "A-GOCK!!" to make it seem more like I'm doing kung-fu. It comes out really shrieky but the effect is kung-fuey. My opponent does an awkward little hopping kick that misses by a mile. We both kick at the same time and kind of clash feet. We keep throwing these terrible little kicks at each other and I keep shrieking "A-GOCK!!" Finally my awful little kicks get the better of his awful little kicks and he seems to lose interest, and after a moment wanders away entirely.

I take another self-congratulatory look back at the Great Wall and then let myself wake up before I forget anything.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #125: He Had It Coming

I'm working with Wife, Mom, and Dad on a project where we're trying to restore a 30-foot replica of the Great Pyramid. The pyramid's sitting right on the edge of a neighborhood street where a house would normally be. We work on the interior for a while but it feels stuffy in there, so Wife and I go outside to do some work on the exterior.

It's nice outside, so Wife and I stand there for a bit enjoying the sun and the cool breeze. We're standing on something that looks like a driveway and about fifteen feet to our left is an elegant wooden side table with Wife's purse sitting on it. As we're standing there, a pair of tall, brutish-looking teenage boys approaches us. One starts rifling through Wife's purse and the other surrounds us from the other side. I'm angry and fearful, running through our "fight or flight" options when I realize that it's all a dream.

The guy who had been looking through Wife's purse is gone now. But when I turn back, the other kid has Wife by the forearm and she's cowering in pain. I'm overcome with a killing rage, the kind of anger you (hopefully) only feel in dreams. I'm aware that the thug is just a DC, but I want to stop him and I want to hurt him.

I hurry toward him, shouting a bunch of angry threats (including lots of profanity), and kick him squarely in the balls. The strike is perfect -- bone of the lower shin right into the "target".

As I deliver the kick, I'm amazed to see that I'm wearing white high-top sneakers like I did back in middle school. The combination of noticing this weird detail and the satisfaction of hitting the hated DC softens my anger a little.

Rather than double over, the DC stands rigidly straight, his feet lifting a few inches off of the ground and coming back down. His body is completely stiff and his face is frozen statue-like in agony. I get a hold of my temper enough to realize that if I keep fighting with him I might turn him into a real opponent. I really just want him gone from my dream scene. I force-push him high into the air and his paralyzed body flies toward a distant set of hills, quickly fading from sight.

When I look back at Wife, she's standing nearby, unhurt but nervously looking around. The place feels unsafe and I want to leave. There's no way that I can leave her behind after what happened, though, so I scoop her up in my arms. "We're going to the Colosseum," I tell her, and try to start flying. I can get about 3 feet off of the ground but after that I feel like I can't move both of us. Even though she's pretty tiny IWL, her weight feels "real" while my dream body feels almost totally weightless. It seems to be getting in the way of flying.

"Am I too heavy?" she asks. I show remarkably good dream judgment by ignoring this question. I try flying a few more times, each time with the same result. I know that I should come up with some creative solution to this but it's not coming to me. I think about throwing her over my shoulder or imagining her floating like a balloon but before I can do any of this, the dream ends.

Finally broke that dry spell! This was a really fun one. Emotions got the best of me at the end, but it was great while it lasted.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #113: Woodrow the Giant

I'm in a first-person shooter video game where I'm entering an airport. One of the people I'm with slips some kind of blaster into my pocket as we're walking through airport security. Won't that set off the metal detectors? I think of all this as just a game, though, so I give it a try.

An alarm sounds, surprisingly soft but unmistakable. I keep walking, just in case they think it was someone else behind me. As I head into a broad, bustling concourse, I see a few security guys heading toward me from different directions. They're dressed in plain clothes, which makes them seem less official and more menacing. I change directions and they change with me. I know I'm caught. One guy has his hand on his right hip like he's ready to pull a gun, so I decide to be first. I pull the banana-shaped blaster out of my jacket pocket and start shooting. My first shot catches the guy right in the chest and he crumples to the floor.

I immediately realize that this isn't a video game, but a dream. I remember goals: meet Art at the Alamo and Tasks of the Month. Since this is already a video game scenario, I think that it'll be easy to pull Art in. "[NewArtemis], I know you're right there behind me." No response. By now the other security guys have drawn their guns, although they oddly have not fired yet.

I shoot one more of them and he collapses to the ground. Still, nobody returns fire. "[NewArtemis], a little help!" A woman walking nearby turns around. She's wearing jeans and has dirty blonde hair, not at all the usual hair color for Art's DC, but it's definitely her!

"Hey there!" I say, thinking that it'll be fun to have her take care of the last of these security guys. But when I look for them, they're gone -- everyone is walking through the airport concourse like nothing has happened. I turn back to Art. "You dyed your hair...?" I half-comment, half-ask. (I sincerely doubt this.)

"Hey," she says, with a wry half-smile, ignoring the whole hair thing.

We hug and I say, "Okay, that's Basic. You feel like punching Woodrow Wilson?" (Advanced Task of the Month.)

She nods. "I'd love to punch that guy." (We have never discussed Woodrow Wilson, so I'm likely projecting here.)

I glance around for Wilson. "Let's do it," I say to Art, and then call out to the crowd: "Woodrow Wilson! I know you're here!" We walk along the concourse for perhaps twenty feet when I spot a huge man to our left. Somehow, even with everything around him brightly lit, he's hidden in shadow. The man is at least ten feet tall, probably closer to twelve, and he's flanked by two normal-sized men who don't look like they're doing anything in particular.

"Is that you, Woodrow Wilson?" As soon as I say this, the man's face is illuminated and it's definitely Wilson -- long, expressionless face, glasses, the whole bit. Weirdly, he's dressed in the style of a Catholic priest with a cassock and clerical collar. He strides toward us quickly and moves up very close to crowd me.

Wilson doesn't attack but just stands there towering over me, no expression on his face, his eyes unfocused. I've lost some emotional control and I'm starting to feel fearful. Art circles around on my right, grimacing a little, her hands balled into fists. She can help me, but I know that for Task I know that I need to hit the guy. I try to calm myself down while imagining myself leaping up and doing some kind of superman punch. I'm freaking out a little bit, though, and the dream falls apart.

The second of two LDs from the morning of 05/18/2013. This was a big, big dream, and this dream and I did not always get along. This was my first serious attempt at meeting NewArtemis for a dream sharing attempt.

I also got into a big fight with a powerful DC that escalated into a me against the world situation. I could have handled this a lot better. My self-control wasn't what it should be... but it was still kinda awesome.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #96: Clash at the Alamo

I'm Marty McFly from Back to the Future, driving my DeLorean on a set of rails that stand hundreds of feet over a bay. The DeLorean starts to shake as it picks up speed and before I can make a time jump, the rails end and the car goes plummeting toward the sparkling water.

I brace for impact and the DeLorean flies to pieces as it strikes the bay. Miraculously, I'm unharmed, and I thrash about for something to hold on to so that I can get my bearings and figure out what to do. One long, fin-like piece of metal from the car bobs to the surface and I grab onto it. The moment that I do, an unseen engine roars to life and takes off like a jet ski.

As I'm racing across the bay, I realize that this has to be a dream. After riding for a moment, I'm perhaps a hundred feet from shore. I leap off the impromptu "jet ski" and fly the remaining distance, landing in a stone plaza that stands at the water's edge.

I remember that I'm planning to meet NewArtemis at the Alamo for a shared dreaming experiment. I turn toward the water, raise my hands up in the air, and make an announcement to all of the DCs. Most of the passerby stop and turn to look at me. "The Alamo is right behind me! That's right -- Alamo right behind me!" I imagine it in detail, rebuilding my mental map, forgetting and scrubbing out the buildings that were there before and replacing it with my image of everything that I remember about the Alamo. I continue this until I can think of nothing of what's behind me except for this image of the Alamo.



I turn around, expecting to see the Alamo... and there it is! The stone's a little darker and the construction looks a little too new to be quite right, but it's more than close enough of a lookalike for me. I walk around past the front entrance to a courtyard. The geography is different in this dream from that of the real Alamo, and I come to a stone wall with a little alcove and a bench. There's a woman sitting on the bench and we look at each other immediately.

She gets up and approaches me right away. She doesn't look like NewArtemis' DC has in the past, but I'm not sure of anything yet. She speaks first: "I'm here to meet someone. How about you?"

"So am I," I say, studying her. She's roughly the same height as Art's DC but her skin is paler, her hair curlier, her build heavier, and her face is different -- broader, different nose, different shape... just different. "But you're not her, are you? I don't think you're [NewArtemis]."

She smiles noncommitally, but I continue. "That's okay," I continue. "Let's still do the passphrases and gestures." I speak my chosen word to the DC and perform my chosen gesture. She doesn't bother speaking a passphrase in return but she does perform a gesture. (These have been reported to a 3rd party who is not NewArtemis just in case she's able to guess them.)

"Well, I need to go!" the woman says. She walks out of the alcove and passes me. As she goes, she becomes a much older lady, blonde, mid-50s. She grows to an enormous height, probably close to 8 feet tall. She's wearing shorts and I see that her legs are covered with a crisscrossing patchwork of scars.

I contemplate following, but I'm distracted by a man who's sitting at the top of a stone wall nearby, staring at me with a malicious grin on his face. He's in his late 30s with close-cropped reddish-blonde hair. The guy keeps staring at me with that joyless grin and I know that he's looking for trouble with me. I want no part of it, so I turn and walk away.



He hops down from the wall and grips my right forearm with his right hand, twisting my arm around so that my hand is near my head. I try to pull my arm out of his grip but when I yank, it doesn't budge. He laughs, shaking his head as if he can't believe that I would bother trying to defy him. "You're never leaving here," he says. "I mean it. You are never leaving here." I yank my arm again but I feel as weak as a kitten.

I know I have to turn this around fast. I grab him by the back of the head with my left hand and begin to imagine my adversary as frail and lethargic. "You're so weak and tired," I tell him, trying to sound compassionate, even though I'm boiling with rage. "There's just no strength left in you at all." And I gently move to lay him down on a nearby table. I think of him as totally weak and barely able to move. His grip slips from my arm and he flops backward onto the table.

"And small," I say, pressing on his head with one hand and his feet with the other. He begins to shrink. His hair has turned jet black now, and his eyes close. I squeeze him together, thinking of him as so tiny, and soon he shrinks to the size of a child, then to the size of a baby, then disappears into his clothes entirely. My self-control cracks and I ball up his clothes, throw the bundle on the ground, and give it a vicious stomp. I wonder for a moment whether I've gone too far and hope for a moment that the bundle was empty. I walk through a nearby archway, not sticking around to find out more.

I emerge in a cafeteria. A table of 6 or 7 teenagers immediately looks up from their meals at me. "It's him," one of them says, and they all get to their feet and come after me. I fly through a nearby doorway and emerge in a large, empty room with a skylight. I fly up to the skylight, intending to phase through it, but something seems to restrain me from getting high enough. I run through a doorway into a drugstore that dead-ends in a frosted glass window. I vault toward it, phasing through onto a street scene.

There are police everywhere on the street. I know that they're looking for me. There are strange little ball-shaped hoverbots scanning the streets with cameras, also trying to track me down. I sprint up to one and kick it against a nearby wall. With a pop, it breaks into two smoking, fizzling halves.

Everything seems to be happening too fast for me to control. I run down the street, looking for some way out of this fear. I want to buy time to calm down, so I phase through the door of a nearby house. Cops are turning the place over while the family, a husband and wife and their little girl of about 8 are glued to the TV. One cop notices me as I walk in, but I swoop in on him, grab him from behind, and choke him unconscious. The other two cops don't seem to notice any of this, and the little family stares obliviously into their TV sets.

I watch the TV for a moment. It's some sort of political propaganda which claims that the moral code of their "great society" is built upon a foundation of classic arcade games like Centipede, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong. I'm torn -- on one hand, I find top-down, statist morality codes repugnant. On the other hand, I sure do love classic arcade games.

I phase out through the back of the house into the yard. The cops yell at me as I pass and I hear them calling for backup. The back yard is peaceful for a moment before the wail of what sounds like an air raid siren fills the air. I look up at the sky, feeling helpless, trying to find peace for a moment. But all I can think is They're coming for me. The dream ends...

Although the lucid portion was shorter than I'd have liked there were two awesome things about this dream: 1) I finally broke my dry spell. 2) I played the part of a bulked-up, ghost-hunting Stephen LaBerge. Who could ask for anything more?

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #85: Stephen LaBerge, Ghost Hunter

I am Stephen LaBerge, and I've been hired to investigate an apparently haunted cruise ship. The vessel's owners aren't sure whether the ship is haunted or whether this is all a dream. Therefore they've invited me, Stephen LaBerge, to investigate.

I'm standing outside the ship, waiting to board. The crew shuffles past me on the gangway, leaving the ship empty for me to investigate. I board the ship, and quickly become lost in a maze of hallways. Creepy, whispering voices and strange groans echo through the halls.

I feel wimpy, vulnerable, and way out of my depth. Looking for a place to hide, I duck into one of the ship's bathrooms. Suddenly it occurs to me that I should prove to myself that this isn't all just a dream. I quickly realize that I am dreaming after all.

The moment that I become lucid, my confidence comes flooding back. I check my look in the mirror, and find that even though I'm still Stephen LaBerge, I'm now enormously, cartoonishly muscular. I'm wearing a dress shirt that looks like it was torn to ribbons when I did my Incredible Hulk transformation. I hit a double biceps pose in the bathroom mirror and smile at the sight of Stephen LaBerge's head on this freaky, bulky body.

Suddenly, one of the stall doors in the bathroom slams shut. I'm still sort of stuck in ghost hunting mode, so this frightens me a bit. I hang onto lucidity, though, muttering to myself that "I'm having a really stable lucid dream..." I walk up to the stall door that slammed shut and kick it right at the latch. It swings wide open and I'm relieved to see that there's nobody in there.

I walk to the next stall in the bathroom and for reasons that I can't remember, I stick my head into this stall to see if there's anything interesting in there. This time, the door slams shut right on my face, striking me in the nose. It doesn't hurt very much but it scares me and makes me stagger back. Just then, a hand caresses the back of my neck and I absolutely freak, losing lucidity and running out of the bathroom into the halls.

There's a bit of a memory gap here, but I spent a lot of time running lost through the halls and looking out of portholes. I can see the ocean through these portholes but I've lost sight of the docks or any kind of land. During this time, ghosts definitely keep touching me and it definitely keeps wigging me out.

Ultimately I make my way deeper into the ship. I end up in a hot, dark boiler room, engaged in a fistfight with some kind of green-hued stone man that I think is a demon. (He sort of reminds me of Frank Fontaine from the final battle in Bioshock.) We're punching, shouting, and cursing one another. I think of how odd it is that I am Stephen LaBerge fighting a green demon in the boiler room of a cruise ship and briefly become lucid before the dream ends.