Verre

Ritual: I'm coming out of my longest dry spell yet, but it was clearly a problem of motivation. Even when I had the superficial motivation to LD (I always do), the deeper motivation that makes it actually work was thwarted. In time I came to recognize the reason for this. At the end of last semester I started talking to a colleague that I knew was very interested in dreams. Even though their interest had been shaped by Freudian principles, I ventured to reveal my interest in (and practice of) lucid dreaming in the hope that we might have an interesting dialogue across perspectives. Well, the colleague promptly stopped talking to me, and I was so annoyed and embarrassed that it took a terrible toll on my dreaming. Not just lucidity—even the quality of my NLDs and my ability to remember them faded drastically. And even after I finally diagnosed what was causing the problem, I couldn't seem to dismantle the emotional block. I would just get irritated whenever I thought about it. I think this combined with the natural cyclic tendencies of my dream practice—I have too many interests and hobbies so all of them seem to wax and wane at various points to make room for one another—but hopefully my dreaming is now on the verge of a comeback. I can't think of a better New Year's resolution.

I went to bed early last night (11pm) hoping that would help to get lucid, and for good measure spent some time browsing DV. I woke up a few times during the night and it seemed like it was going to be a bust, since I barely had any dream impressions. But the last dream I had before waking (at around 7:45am) was lucid and controlled and clear, if not ultimately successful in completing my intended task.

DILD, "Making Rainbows": I was in a warehouse-like space with tall shelves crammed with every imaginable object, though everything looked old and used. I was having a conversation with someone about the place, though I don't feel like there was anyone walking with me; I think I was speaking aloud, but the other person was answering in my mind. I was observing that many of my own dreams (the comparison suggests that I did not yet recognize this as my own dream) included environments just like this, crammed full of objects, often taking the form of stores, libraries, archives. I proposed the hypothesis that these kind of object-archives were a metaphor for the mind, for the way it stores impressions or information. I wondered if I could put that idea to the test. (This idea suggests that I did recognize that I was in a mentally-constructed environment. What did I think it was, if not my own dream? Maybe the dream of the person I was talking to.)

This next section is ambiguous in that I can't be sure if I had the name and was looking for the object or holding the object and was looking for its name or shelf location, but it was definitely a matching exercise between object and name. The object was a tool of some kind, flat strips of somewhat oxidized metal bent into a particular configuration with a short chain attaching some sort of polygonal fastener. It vaguely resembled one of those old metal spring traps, but not exactly, and its function was unclear. I had never seen or heard of such a thing, but I learned that it was called a "streng." I either got the name at the outset from the voice I was talking to and then found the object, or (and I think this is more likely since I have memories of holding the object as I walked), picked up a random object and then had to find out its name by looking for its shelf. But this is a false dichotomy... dreams don't always divide so neatly between what, in waking light, seem like the logical possibilities.

At any rate, I was putting the idea of this warehouse as a kind of memory archive to the test by trying to match an object with its name. The mental effort took, I reasoned, as long as it actually took me in the dream to find the shelf. Given that it sometimes takes me a day or more to recover some sought-after piece of information from memory, this doesn't seem too far-fetched. I'm sure my archives are, like my physicial spaces tend to become, terribly cluttered with extraneous matter, making it hard to find anything. I actually commented at one point, looking at all the crap on the shelves, "I can't stand to throw anything away." But the details that make this whole exercise less plausible as a valid hypothesis of mental functioning was the object itself: neither the name "streng" nor the metal object it described corresponded with anything in waking life. The whole process seems at best to have been metaphorical.

After this improvised task was complete, I wondered what to do next and remembered, sinced I'd just browsed DV before bed, that I still had a couple unfinished TOTY. At this point it occurred to me that if I'm now taking conscious control of my intentions and the dream environment, I must be lucid, but it didn't feel like there had been any qualitative change in my mental state. Rather, the difference between being non-lucid and lucid seemed in this case to come down primarily to whether I was acting spontaneously within the structure of the dream (as in my former task) or whether I was accessing memories and intentions that I had earlier established with waking consciousness.

I wondered if I should try basilisk or leprechaun, and decided on the latter. Its no wonder that I'm stuck on these last two. I think I have a mental block against leprechauns because my mental imagery is composed primarily of cheesy cereal commercials; maybe that's why I have yet to actually meet one. Meanwhile I keep avoiding basilisk because it explicitly instructs killing DCs, which I am reluctant to do. I have no problem killing NPCs in RPGs and computer games, or experimenting with different ethical alignments in those environments, but dream feels different, like the stakes are higher. I'm not sure why. At any rate, given the options, I went with leprechaun again.

Would it be possible to create a rainbow indoors? I thought it over and figured that in dream, that should be entirely reasonable. And even though the shelves in this warehouse were only a bit over head-high, the ceiling itself was vastly higher overhead: the space was huge. So I started trying to conjure a rainbow. At first nothing happened. I put my hands together in front of me, touching at the sides with the palms up, and tried to use this as a focus to create a rainbow directly from my hands, arcing upward. I managed a weak one a few times, but they quickly fizzled out.

A young girl, maybe eight years old with blonde hair, noticed what I was doing and approached with an offer to help. "Sure," I said. I don't remember exactly what form her help took, she might have just added her concentration to my own, but with it my rainbows were getting better. I managed to make one finally that had bright colors, though there were only four of them and they were oddly separated into tube-like strips resembling neon lights, and shining with the same fluorescent intensity. Good enough for the task? I gazed at it critically, annoyed that there were only four colors. In response, the second tube from the left split down the middle and became two different colors. Good enough, I figured, and started looking for the end of the rainbow. But then that one flickered out, too.

Every time a rainbow failed, I regrouped and tried to improve my concentration. The four-color failure made me realize I needed to focus on what the colors of a rainbow actually were, so I started chanting them as I concentrated: "Red orange yellow blue indigo and violet...." I had a hard time keeping them in the right order, and after I woke up I realized that I had completely left out "green," an interesting difficulty given that while awake, I can easily and accurately recite the colors of the rainbow without a second thought.

The little girl continued in her role as my assistant, and now that I was working on the getting the colors straight we managed to produce a bright, very proper-looking rainbow. Best of all, it touched the floor right in front of us, so all we had to do was dig, presumably, to find the leprechaun and his gold. But no sooner had we rushed up to the spot than the rainbow disappeared again. This was getting annoying.

Just then I became aware of a commotion in the building. We were now standing outside one wide entrance to the warehouse, which opened onto what looked like an atrium of a shopping mall, still an enclosed space but walled with plate glass windows. People were rushing over to the windows in excitement, and through the windows I could see the people outside down below (we were around four storeys up) moving in the same direction.

The view through the glass looked out over an urban street and the row of buildings on the far side, beyond which the city ended at steep brown hills of nearly barren rock and earth. Everyone inside with us was pointing and staring at the hills, or hurrying outside to get closer to them, and the moment I looked out the window I could see why. An extraordinary rainbow had spontaneously appeared outside, and its end was clearly visible where it touched the side of one of the hills. The rainbow actually resembled the four-colour neon one that we had created earlier, but this one was exceedingly large and bright.

The hills were probably at least a mile away and too steep to climb by foot, so I knew I would have to fly. I started pushing out the large square glass panes in the wall above me, wondering if this was the most efficient way to leave the building, or if I should just walk the thirty yards or so to the exit everyone else was taking. (The exit occupied the space to our right that had formerly led into the warehouse, which was no longer visible.) The exit led onto a sort of sky bridge that crossed the road, so it would also be a fine place to take off from. I chastised myself for wasting mental energy deciding between trivialities and decided to just continue with the window.

After pushing out four panes to make a larger square, I grabbed the girl's hand and asked, "Have you ever flown before?" She shook her head. "Well, hold on tight." I levitated both of us up and through the space I had made. I did not feel physically obstructed by the metal frame that criss-crossed between the four panes of glass I had removed, though I felt a bit annoyed by the way I had so blithely floated through it. It felt careless. I mean, why bother taking out the glass at all if I was just going to pass ghost-like through the frame? I realized that again, I was letting myself getting bogged down with unnecessary and unhelpful mental baggage, but I've never felt comfortable "cheating," even in dream.

We flew high over the street and buildings bordering the city, and I realized how startling the experience of flight must be to someone who was unaccustomed to it. Indeed, the girl felt very tense at my side, and murmured plaintively, "I want to sit down." I felt it would be cruel to ignore her terror, so as soon as we cleared the city, I aimed for a flat outcropping of rock at the base of the hills. We came down fast and landed hard, much harder than I had ever landed when flying on my own, so I attributed it to her fear weakening my own buoyancy. As soon as we landed, I asked her, "Are you alright continuing?" She shook her head and I prepared to take off on my own, but even as my feet left the ground I felt myself waking up and was unable to forestall it.

Ritual: I've had a bit of a dry spell lately, and even worse than the lack of lucid dreams has been the sensation of diminished overall awareness: my sleep lately has been distressingly ordinary. I'm still waking up frequently during the night, but now I can't even tell what time it is—usually I can guess accurately within ten minutes or so. When sleeping properly I always wake up a few minutes before my alarm, no matter what time I set it for, but lately the alarm has been waking me. I've been having an ordinary number of dreams, but they too are lacking even in rudimentary awareness. In the past, stressful periods at work have boosted my LDing, but I feel like maybe I'm getting a bit burnt out, so I've started using sleep as a form of escapism, instead of an opportunity for more interesting kinds of work. I've become a lazy sleeper!

Probably because of this lack of awareness, this time even when I started wondering if I was really dreaming, I continued to find the environment and events extremely persuasive and followed the plotline to its end. Only then did I take the time to deliberately RC. The only aspect of this that isn't disappointing is the fact that, once having noted I might be dreaming, I did manage to hold that thought and then come back to it, instead of just forgetting. I also felt as though my rational mind was functioning well in the way it recognized the dream sign, something that hasn't always been reliable.

The dream plot was based on waking life residue. Last night (in WL) around 1:30am we heard the sound of someone going through our trash bins outside the house, even though the bins are through a gate which, although it has no lock, clearly demonstrates a property boundary. Unfortunately there is no window through which to observe that area, and by the time I went out with a flashlight the person was gone.

The same thing happened in the dream, except that the person had left behind bags of newspapers, and I was worried they might contain criminal evidence. I wasn't sure if I should call the police, as I had already moved some of the bags, so my prints were now on them too. There were many more minor details and events that would only be tedious to record here, so I'll skip them.

Later the garbage-pickers come back, and I realize I can see them if I get the right angle through a window (not true in RL). I want to take pictures for evidence, but I have trouble pulling up the camera on my phone, normally a very simple operation. Even when I do get the camera working, it is too zoomed in and I can't frame the shot properly. I recognize these technical difficulties as dream signs, but at the moment I'm too caught up in events to RC.

The garbage-pickers leave before I can get a good shot, so I go around the front of the house for another try. The camera is still giving me trouble, and once again I notice how much it resembles a dream sign, even though this doesn't feel like a dream. After a few more minor incidents that plotline wraps up, and I now realize that I can give my full attention to checking whether or not I am dreaming. Everything has felt very real and convincing, but I know well how little that sensation can be trusted.

I jump... inconclusive. I came down quickly enough, but the jumping itself felt easier than I think it should, as though I am not lifting my full body weight. I jump a couple more times, trying to draw out the moment at the apex. It might actually be lengthening as I focus on it. My suspicion grows, I jump a bit more, and then sure enough, I find that I can pause at the top, hovering in the air. That clinches it. It was a dream all along.

What now? It's been so long since I've been lucid that I just want to explore and enjoy the environment. I look out the glass wall of the living room and see an expanse of snowy fields and pine forest stretching to a distant low mountain, utterly unlike the RL scenery. I feel satisfied with this prospect, so I fly through the glass without hesitation and start soaring over the landscape, looking down and enjoying the clarity of visual detail. I'm reminded of a recent conversation with a WL friend who also turned out to be an LDer, who mentioned that he prefers not to do tasks but would rather just fly around and enjoy the environment. Today that feels just fine.

I fly to the top of the mountain and land, hoping to explore on foot. There is a problem with scale, however: I am huge in relation to the mountain. My feet cover its entire upper surface. I take off into the air again, hoping I didn't crush too many trees and little creatures. The distorted scale now makes everything feel artificial, and the dream destabilizes. I exert will to remain in the dream state as it deconstructs, and for a moment I find myself flying through a black boundless space marked with thin white lines running horizontally and vertically in three dimensions. It strongly resembles the conception of virtual space in the movie Tron. I recognize that this is unconstructed dream space, and try not to let it disconcert me that the dream has faded, and I feel very close to being awake... I remind myself that if I should be able to enter a new scene if I can just be patient and maybe suggest something.

I'm trying to stay relaxed, so I imagine lying in a bath of warm water. This makes me realize that my flying feels like swimming so I use the idea. I am swimming underwater in a pool of water that is no different from my body temperature—that's why I don't feel it. And of course I can breathe underwater, because why not? These thoughts in mind, I now think I can see the glimmering underside of the water's surface just above my head, so I fly up and break it, preparing to find myself in a new scene. I notice how seamlessly my breathing remains the same as I transition from breathing water to air, and again this feels too artificial for my liking, but I try not to let it disrupt the dream.

I am in an empty tiled space containing a pool. The lining of the pool is made of identical square beige tiles as the walkway around it and the low walls bounding the space. It appears to be outdoor because the walls don't go up all the way, but there is no impression of any surrounding environment, much less sky or weather. It is still very vague and plain and artificial; perhaps it could be described as "semi-constructed dream space." I look around for something notable, perhaps a DC, and I begin to hear music. It is a simple melody on a plucked string instrument, like a medieval lute. I don't see anyone else, but vision isn't perfect now, so I keep listening and looking. The song ends, and a woman's voice says, "Thanks, I really enjoyed this one song." There is a kind of parenthetical remark appended to the sentence in the same voice that I perceive simultaneously, though I don't seem to "hear" it as literally as the words just spoken. The parenthetical remark is: "...after a moment's reflection." In ordinary text one could write it as:

"Thanks, I really enjoyed this one song (after a moment's reflection)."

But that wouldn't quite convey the effect that the parenthetical part was not spoken aloud, and that it had a kind of simultaneity with the statement itself.

Feeling confident that I will momentary see the singer, I keep looking around... and feel paws on my face, my real face. The cat has chosen just this moment to come back to bed, waking me. Damn!

Ritual: I thought it might be nice to get lucid again, so I read DV before bed, though my motivation was considerably reduced when I realized that the time change had caught me unawares, and I was going to bed an hour later than I had intended! Also drank some sage and mugwort tea before bed. Those are the only relevant factors I can think of. WTB at 3am, woke 9:15am with dream.

DEILD: I came out of an NLD and started going over it in my mind, when it dawned on me that I had not fully woken up. I was in a hallway carrying a large package; to confirm, I tossed it in the air and sure enough, it hovered for a moment before drifting back down. It occurred to me that maybe I should take up the habit of tossing things into the air in waking life as a kind of RC. But it would have to be something smaller than a large box, something more like a coin or small ball. I produced a small black ball and tried again. To my amusement, this one behaved as if gravity were operating normally. Maybe not such a good RC unless I actively intervene: I tossed it again and concentrated on holding the ball in the air. That worked well enough. I resolved to spend more time in WL trying to move small objects with my mind.

I exited the building and thought I might try a TOTM. Even though I had just reread the list before going to bed, I now realized that I couldn't remember any of them. Thinking hard, I finally recalled the one about the dream guide.

"I'm ready for my dream guide!" I shouted. I've never had a dream guide before, so I had no expectations. I shouted a few more times until a woman showed up. She was of hefty build, with straight shoulder-length dark hair, and looked to be in her late forties. On the right lapel of her uniform-like black jacket, resembling that of a hotel clerk (or more to the point, a tour guide) was a name tag reading "RUSH." There was something very blank and bureaucratic about her demeanor that immediately put me off.

"Take me on a tour," I instructed.

"A Grand Tour?" she asked. Lately I've been reading about the Grand Tours eighteenth-century travelers would take in Italy, so I assumed this was merely waking life residue.

"Take me on a tour of Hogwart's," I proposed instead.

The woman must not have understood, because she started saying things about temperature and time that sounded like the details of a technical process—brewing coffee, I guessed. I was getting impatient.

"This isn't working out," I told her. Perhaps I should have been more patient, but she reminded me of one of those blank, automaton-like DCs that never have anything interesting to say. I turned my back and walked away, determined to try again.

"I'm ready for my dream guide!" I resumed shouting, trying to muster a sense of optimism. Nothing changed at first, but I persisted, shouting about five times before another figure drew my attention. He was a short brown-haired man standing next to a bar, gazing at me with a slightly amused expression. As I walked over, I was startled to see that he was the spitting image of Michael J. Fox. This perplexed me, because I have no particular attachment to that actor, nor did I recall having encountered his image recently in waking life. I remembered that in WL he had developed a terrible disease and I couldn't remember if he was still alive. This DC looked like the younger version of him from the 1980s or '90s, and his cheerful confidence created much more favorable impression than the last DC.

"Are you my dream guide?" I asked uncertainly. He replied with something casual, along the lines of, "If you want me to be."

"Let's give it a try," I said. "First, take me somewhere beautiful. Then, take me somewhere that I will find interesting." Since I'd never had a dream guide before or thought much about their proper role, now I was acting on the assumption that their job was to give me tours. In retrospect that's kind of funny.

As we walk out of the building together, he expresses a sexual interest. I'm surprised at his bluntness, but tell him okay, it's natural that there might be sexual tension between us, I can accept that. He seems relieved, telling me that many of the applicants ruled it out from the start. In fact, a lot of the essays he received closed on that note. I commiserate, noting how even from a purely rhetorical standpoint, that does seem like a terrible way to end an application essay.

We continue through a park-like setting, and as we descend along a wooded path I see a tree with several conjoined trunks. Emblazoned across it like a light projection is the name of a website, "www.tabu.com." I look again to make sure and the text shifts. "www.tabut.com." I wonder what it means. Is this in reference to the Polynesian word "tabu," the basis of our English "taboo"? [I looked them up as I was writing this and...seriously, it's a big world out there, how could these websites not exist?]

We walk right to the edge of a wide shallow lake. I realize we'll probably need to travel somewhere by a means other than walking, and let him know I'm familiar with some basic methods: "How are we going to get there? I can spin and teleport, if you like. And I know how to fly."

He offers another possibility: "See that brown line?" He points to somewhere behind us. I look back, and without thinking about it we automatically start rising into the air and drifting toward a brown line that runs across the grass of the lawn. "That's where we'll transition," he explains. We start gliding toward it, and sure enough, a moment later we are flying across a completely different scene.

The previous landscape was park-like, but we emerge higher in the air over a vast landscape. Distant hills, distinctive coloring, shades of red in the earth and sky. Everything becomes a bit clearer. "Okay, this is beautiful," I acknowledge aloud. He's definitely succeeded in the first task I set him.

We drift closer to the ground and I notice an odd detail: an enormous fence of thick horizontal wires strung between vertical poles that must be at least 50 feet high, stretched across a valley between two steep hills. There are only a few of the wires, maybe eight, strung in pairs of two. It would be no barrier for a person at all, or any earthly creature—it's so big it doesn't even obstruct the view—but then I see what it is keeping in. They look like giant green mantis-like creatures, clearly insectoid, but enormous. Despite the monstrosity of the creatures, the enclosure reminds me of a nature reserve. Are the fences for our protection, or theirs? Perhaps both.

I think about how my second instruction to my guide had been to take me somewhere interesting, and it would certainly be interesting if one of those things got out! However, I decide not to vocalize my thoughts or deliberately influence the course of events, instead waiting to see how things will play out.

One of the creatures catches sight of us and scuttles over, moving with astonishing rapidity for its size. It crosses several hundred yards in a matter of seconds. It pushes against the fence, snapping at us with its mandibles. It has surprisingly long reach and the wires of the fence are being bowed out by the weight of its body—they hold, but we have to dart away very quickly to avoid the initial attack. I realize the safest course is to fly directly upward, well out of its reach, in case the fence breaks. I can feel my adrenaline pumping and have to admit, that was definitely an interesting experience.

Abruptly the environment changes and we are back in a room that I think I recognize from earlier in the dream—but way earlier, the NLD sequence before I even got lucid. I realize the dream is ending, but I'm very pleased with how well this dream guide was able to fulfill my requests. "Can I meet you again?" I ask. His acquiescence is as casual and noncommital as when I first asked him to be my guide.

Ritual: Set vibrating alarm for 40m at 6:20am. I don't remember it going off, but I began dreaming that I was trying to fall asleep, until it gradually dawned on me that I was already dreaming. It was 7:19 when I awoke, so given that the dream must have manifested at some point after the signal went off at 7am (since it was not interrupted by it), it could have lasted up to 19m. I'm classifying this as DILD and not EILD since lucidity was not initiated by recognition of the device signal.

DILD: Initially I am on a beach, lying on a sort of cot, trying to fall asleep. There are other people all around me, and their activity and noise is keeping me awake. I mention aloud to someone nearby that I seem to be entering REM state even while awake, as I notice crisp and colorful visuals superimposing themselves over my visual field. Even though the new scene is layered over the old one, it is distinct enough that I can make out details: I am at the edge of a river running through a futuristic city. Some sort of V-shaped flying craft is flying in tripartite geometrical formations up above, the crafts each giving off light colored red, white, or blue, each grouped into a separate section. Is this meant to be a patriotic display?

I do not change position, but the cot I'm lying on becomes a sort of couch as the environment around me resolves into a room full of kids. Someone plays a video on a TV monitor, which annoys me because I am trying to fall asleep and the music is distracting. But then they mention that the video features Jonathan Tweet, and the name sounds familiar. When I remember it is one of my favorite game developers, I take more interest in the video and sit up.

Something makes me think this is a kind of school where the kids are learning lucid dream abilities. One boy, bald, sits to the left of me on my couch and he's trying to test his powers against me. He takes my hand in his, which begins to glow blue, and I realize that he's trying to "crystal" me, that is, harm me with the pale blue light he is creating. I counter it easily, however. This frustrates him and he begins trying to bite me. He opens a disturbingly wide mouth and tries to chomp down on my hand, but I counter him by softening both his flesh and his resolve, so that mouth sags toothlessly and he never completes the bite. We go through this cycle three or four times before I tire of the game and get up.

By now I'm aware that I am already dreaming, and I walk into the next room, recalling my personal goals. [I accomplish a personal task, finding a certain fictional character, then suggest that we become dragons to fulfill one of the TOTYs.]

I lead the way to a window and lift it open. We're about four storeys up, but I jump out without hesitation and spread my arms, letting the air catch me. As I fly off to the left, I focus on trying to develop the "feel" of a dragon body: four legs, wings, tail, scaly skin. I haven't tried this before and the results are so-so, a fluctuating hybrid between the new bodymap and my usual one. I am flying over what strikes me as a mid-twentieth-century city. There are no skyscrapers, just a mixture of low commercial and residential buildings that cover a wide expanse. I recall that the task requires me to destroy a village, but the city below seems too urban to qualify. Would a neighborhood count as a "village"? But my moral qualms kick in, and I hesitate to bring wrath upon an innocent residential neighborhood.

I fly further on, toward the edge of the city, looking for a more remote target, preferably one with few occupants. After exploring the land for a while, I find a spot that, while a stretch to call it a "village," at least satisfies my ethical preoccupations: it is a cluster of buildings around a large industrial apparatus, evidently a manufacturing concern of some kind. I don't notice any people wandering around, so hopefully there are not many on site to be harmed. I can't imagine I'll find a better target (at least in relation to my own concerns, rather than the specifications of the task), so I begin circling over the site, breaking the buildings and bashing them down. Meanwhile I focus on maintaining my dragon form; this takes constant vigilence because it is so unfamiliar, and too easily slips into sensations more congruent with human limbs.

What color dragon am I? I recall that D&D dragons can take many different colors, with corresponding breath weapons. On the ruins of the factory, I test acid and frost breath in turn, trying to decide which feels more natural. I like the effects of frost—after freezing metal walls solid they shatter in a satisfying way—but then I remember that the task specifies leaving flaming ruins in my wake, so I switch to fire. There isn't much in the way of visuals; rather than great gouts of flame, my fire breath is more of an intense heat that makes metal glow red. But I dutifully knock down and burn the factory into rubble.

Afterwards, I hover anxiously over the destroyed site to see if anyone was harmed by my stunt. (I know, I know, I make a terrible dragon.) I do spot someone—something?—running around frantically, but as I peer closer, it does not look human at all. Curiously, it appears to be a small white gem that I take to be a cubic zirconia, attached to a tiny wire loop that looks like it must have once been the pendant of an earring. The sense of scale has been skewing dramatically as I have been peering closer, and now I feel back to my normal human size and form, kneeling over ruined buildings the size of an architectural model. I look carefully and spot two more little gems running around. Unless there are more I don't see, three victims isn't too bad, and at least they're still alive, even if they're looking understandably anxious. (How do gems even look anxious? It was something in the way they moved.)

[I've been concentrating on my task and realize I have lost track of my friend. I look for him and we are briefly re-united before I wake up.]

Ritual: It's been over a month since I've done any deliberate dream practice, due to a combination of low motivation and being really busy in WL, so this morning I woke up early to feed the cats and decided to turn it into a WBTB. To reinforce my intention, I took a very small amount (2mg) of galantamine, backed up with alpha-gpc and l-theanine. I lay on my back and tried to concentrate on my intention to get lucid, but my focus was almost completely lacking, and eventually I dozed off only to be startled awake by my own snoring. I turned on my side and fell asleep without any further efforts.

I am in a store that specializes in custom-made, artisanal candy and chocolates. There is a table covered with samples, and I am surprised to see one set labeled with the names of my dad and a cousin, apparently commissioned by them for some event. It consists of three types of chocolate meant to be dipped into three different flavored creams. I want to try all three, but there is only one sample of each flavor and I am competing for them with other customers, so I miss out on one or two.

My disappointment is eased when the lady proprietor brings out more samples, but these turn out to be biscuits and candy, rather than the chocolates on the first table. Still, they are very appealing in all their colors and textures, and I am standing over the table unapologetically sampling one thing after another when I feel a strange tremor in the floor. The motion becomes more intense, and the other customers start to panic because they think it is an earthquake, but I recognize that it is a different kind of motion. It doesn't feel like the ground is shaking under the building, but rather like the building itself is sliding over the ground, which is of course impossible, unless...

"Don't worry, everybody!" I say authoritatively. "This is a dream." I open the front door to see if I was right about the movement, and sure enough, the whole building is sliding sideways through a forest at great speed. While I wait for our journey to end, I continue munching confections: I was particularly enjoying one fennel-flavored cookie shaped like twining leaves and tinted delicately green. Recalling that I was planning to resume my diet tomorrow in waking life, I figured I should take advantage of this opportunity to stuff my face with calorie-free dream food!

The building eventually came to a halt, and I went outside to explore the new environment. I recall it was now an urban area, but some of the transitional details are vague. Somehow I met up with my husband and another guy, no one I recognized, and we drove through the city in a really nice convertible sportscar (modeled on the picture of the BMW i8 he showed me last night in WL). I think we were going to see a movie but maybe it wasn't showing (I don't remember watching one) so we went back out to get the car. It was parked some distance away, so to retrieve it faster, I concentrated on making it drive itself back to us, and to speed things up even more, I had it fly through the air.

"Thank you, robot valet," I said, as the car gently landed in front of us at the curb. My husband got in the driver's seat, and I got into the back again, but when the DC squeezed into some weird sidecar niche, I climbed over to take the passenger seat. For some reason the car had a British layout, so the driver sat on the right with the passenger seat to the left.

Since I had demonstrated that the car could fly, we took off directly into the air to avoid street traffic. However, our flight path didn't feel stable: we were getting buffeted in strange ways. I pointed out that while this car was incredibly aerodynamic on the ground, it was not designed for flying: a sturdy little pod would be better for this purpose. We dropped back down to the pavement and now the car performed beautifully, hugging the ground with impressive traction even though the streets were wet, and roaring forward at incredible speed.

"Where are we going?" I asked. Even though I wasn't in the driver's seat, as the dreamer I felt like I was actually the one steering. My husband said he wanted to pick up some things from the Hall of Records, and helped me locate the building. Inside, it turned out he was retrieving some parcels that had been mailed to him. He mentioned that one package was three days late, because the sender had needed to mail out a movie script first. "Why didn't he just bring them both to the post office at the same time?" I asked, to which there was no satisfactory answer. The parcels contained research materials, and now that my husband had them in hand, he wanted to do some work. "Okay, you work," I said. "I need to go do something."

I had remained partly lucid the whole time, but I had been enjoying the dream enough to let the narrative play out. Now that things were wrapping up, I remembered that I had planned to catch a fish for the TOTMs. I went around behind the building and conveniently found a stream flowing by. The water was shallow and crystal clear, so I peered in to see if I could spot any fish. What I actually saw swimming underwater were... kittens!

"Actually this will make things easier," I reflected. Now I wouldn't need to bother with a fishing rod, hook, and bait. Kittens were much easier to catch! I dangled a length of ribbon over the water until a kitten surfaced and started batting at it, then lured it closer to me until I could scoop it right up in my arms. I concluded that the creature I had caught was a "catbird fish" (I'm not sure why it wasn't just a "catfish," but this was the term that seemed right at the time) and knew I should examine it closely so that I could write a clear description in my report.

Once I was holding the animal, it was no longer the size of a tiny kitten but had swelled into a plump armful. It was no longer quite cat-shaped, either: now looked more like a stuffed animal with the bodily proportions of a totoro: big rounded torso and very short arms and legs. Although my "catbird fish" didn't physically resemble a fish, I sensed that there was something fishlike about its bones, even if I couldn't see them.

I studied the head first, which was still cartoonishly cat-like overall, but with significant differences. The mouth was very unusual: more narrow and vertical than that of a real cat, almost beaklike the way it protruded, but with large exposed teeth. There were two large incisors on the top and bottom, but both sets of incisors were adjacent to one another in the center, more like those of a rat than a cat, but wider and flatter.

After studying the mouth closely, I looked back up and saw that the round, wideset eyes were now completely white. I recalled noticing normal pupils before and wondered if they were rolled back in the head. Just when I was thinking that the creature was starting to look a bit scary, with its weird mouth and whitened eyes, suddenly it spoke up in a very friendly voice: "Hello!" I responded in kind, smiled at it, and continued my examination.

It had the fur of a cat, brown tabby stripes with patches of white here and there: a white triangle on the throat and chest, a little white on the belly, and white gloves. I checked and determined that all four paws were white. After looking over the creature thoroughly, I returned the "catbird fish" to the stream.

The environment had shifted around me: the stream was no longer outside, but occupied a room in a building that had put together exhibits pertaining to different countries. I wondered which country had supplied my "catbird fish," and looked around until I saw the words "This is Canada," inscribed under the surface of the stream. I wondered what other countries were being exhibited—somehow I knew there were supposed to be five of them—and if I could find any rooms with bodies of water suitable for fishing. It would be cool to catch dream fish from several different countries!

I wandered around the building looking for the other exhibits, but to my disappointment, all the others were closed. I went to the front desk to ask about this, and became even more incensed when I noticed a sign informing me that the price of admission was $898.99. I complained angrily to the desk clerk: how could they justify charging so much when only one of the five exhibits was even open?! He simply pointed me to a second sign, which listed a complicated set of refunds that reduced the price of admission to only $1.25.

"Oh, alright then." I figured $1.25 was a reasonable fee for the one exhibit I had seen, and was willing to pay. I had a bunch of change in my left hand, and started trying to count out five quarters into my right palm. The first few attempts inexplicably failed due to the shifting numbers and appearances of the coins. "This is really hard to do in a dream," I commented, and wondered if it would be easier if, instead of trying to shift the correct number of coins from left hand to right, I put them directly down on the desk as I counted.

I started making a little pile of quarters, but had only counted out two before coins that had initially resembled quarters turned out to be square when I set them down, and I had to start a separate pile for them. The third round, quarter-sized coin that I managed to produce had a square hole in the center like those old Chinese coins, and the fourth one had three triangular holes, but by this point I realized that this would never get done if I was too much of a perfectionist. All I needed was one more vaguely quarter-shaped coin to complete my stack of five, but suddenly all the ones still in my hand appeared to be the wrong shape and size. I picked something arbitrarily to finish the stack. I was well aware of the irony of going to so much effort to pay for something in a dream, but since it was so unexpectedly challenging, I felt that it would be a good exercise to try to see it through!

I'm walking along the street when a shop catches my attention and I start to browse what they have on display. The shop interior is open to the street, separated from the sidewalk only by a waist-high display counter—it's peculiar that storefronts in my dreams are so frequently based on the Bangkok model, even though there may be nothing else distinctly Asian about the products or proprietors.

On the display counter facing the street is a variety of small bottles of essential oil. I examine the labels, and recognize a few types that I had purchased online recently. Would it have been better to buy them here and save on shipping? But I then I would be stuck with the sales tax, which might work out to even more.

From the conversation between the couple running the place, I get the impression that business has been slow today. I've spent enough time browsing that I feel like I ought to buy something, if only not to disappoint the proprietors. Besides, it will be good for the local economy. There's nothing in particular that I need, but I'm sure I can find something here I will use or enjoy.

Looking up from the essential oils on the counter, I see that there are several shelves of shampoo and conditioner on the side walls in front. That would be a practical purchase... but when I see the prices I hesitate. I don't like paying through the nose for bath products. I venture inside the store to see what else is available. The back wall contains a display shelf for books and magazines. Most of them seem to be about yoga. My eye falls on the title of one issue in particular: What Are the Benefits of Yoga Even When Doing it For No Reasons? I reflect that the title is biased; it implies that there is benefit. And the "no reasons" thing reminds me about the attitude so often demonstrated by American Buddhists regarding meditation, the idea that having any kind of reason suggests attachment, so one should meditate without a reason or goal... with the vague assumption that it is somehow good for you anyway.

Well, I'm not interested in yoga, and I'm certainly not interested in practicing yoga or meditation for no reason. My priorities are quite different, and very well-defined: I'm interested in whatever can help me improve my dreaming.

Gradually, I make a counter-clockwise sweep of the small store interior. On the left wall, a variety of objects are hanging on display. One catches my eye, a rectangle of black silk printed with a delicate pattern of flower buds. I take it down for a closer look, and note that the silk is pieced together in a curious, distinctive way. "What is this?" I ask the proprietors.

The man of the couple says, "You could use it for anything. You could even tear it up and just use the cloth."

I think—but don't say aloud—that the price tag is $90, an awful lot for a piece of scrap cloth! I take another look at the unusual stitching, and it reminds me of something. "Isn't it one of those Japanese cloths used for wrapping?" I'm sure I remember reading about these.

The woman affirms that it is, and seems surprised that I know about it. She clarifies that it is designed specifically to go around a 10x10x10" package. The art of making them is hardly practiced anymore, she says. I wonder if she means doing the wrapping properly—if the cloths were so rare, why would there be a random one for sale in this shop? And I'm sure I've seen them for sale before, if only in a catalogue.

I decide not to purchase the cloth as I don't have an appropriately sized 10x10x10" box to go with it. I'm about to peruse the essential oils again and pick something at random, when we are interrupted by a government raid. There is a moment when I wonder if I should avert this plot point entirely, but I let it happen—after all, what is the worst they can do, try to lock me up? And that won't amount to much. Instinctively I am aware of my invulnerability.

The scene shifts here, and now we are outdoors on a paved area, like a wide driveway, on top of a hill. However, I am aware that I am not far from the shop I was visiting; it is right at the bottom of the hill.

That agent is back again. What is this, the third time? He has threatened me before, but it has not gone well, so now he is threatening my host, the male shopkeeper. "I'll investigate every client," he warns. "No one can stand up to that kind of scrutiny."

I feel obliged to defend the poor guy and intervene. The agent should be dealing with me. I'm the real target; he has no business taking his frustrations out on random people who are accidentally associated with me. I get in his face and confront him.

"Why do you keep getting involved?" I still remember distinctly that this is the third time we have met, and that the previous two encounters have not ended well for him. This won't, either. I conclude my train of thought aloud: "You like it. You must like being humiliated."

The agent lies down on the ground, as if in demonstration of my point. I am annoyed and start berating him. I forget what I said initially, but I conclude, "And there's your shit-kicking foot." To make my point perfectly clear, I enact the metaphor literally. The agent's left leg extends to impossible length, his shoe and sock disappear, and his bare foot kicks a shit in a high arc away from us. To emphasize what has just happened, I ensure that it leaves a stain on his foot.

Afterwards the agent gets up to go, and I re-emphasize the pointlessness of his continued investigation of me. "My activities are confined to this circle. I'm not involved in anything in the wider world." I am aware that the 'wider world' is not even real for me; that I exist here within the circle of my own attention. This doesn't fully manifest as dream awareness, just the sense of my ontological difference from everyone else in this environment.

The agents, about four of them in total, all turn to go. They have three dogs with them. I laugh when one dog darts aside, seemingly smelling something in the bushes, and scarfs it down. Knowing the appetites of dogs, I assume it must have found the shit that was kicked.

I want to get back to the narrative from which I was so rudely interrupted; I still have business in the store at the bottom of the hill. I decide to fly for speed—and figure if the agents see me flying overhead, they might take my arguments more seriously and think twice before trying to interfere again. I swoop downhill at great speed, thinking about how I use the word "swooping," but when birds of prey dive like this, it is called "stooping." I realize I'm not sure precisely how such birds break their fall, so when I reach the bottom of the hill, I circle counter-clockwise twice to regain control before lightly letting my feet contact the ground again. The whole flight felt very graceful, and I am proud of myself, convinced that I am starting to get good at this. I'm not just flying anymore, I'm flying with style!

I momentarily wonder if the proprietors of the store will be startled to see me flying. As I reach the ground, however, I realize that I have lost interest in the original narrative—which was incredibly mundane, let's admit—and now want to write my report on what just happend. I still don't have a clear sense that I'm dreaming, as such, yet I understand distinctly that I need to wake up. It takes a bit of deliberate effort to push through the layers—they feel almost like a physical fog—that divide me from waking consciousness, but I persevere until I am sure I am definitely awake... at least as sure as one can ever be.