The Lab Notebook

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

I see a beautiful, blue sky with lots of puffy, white clouds in it. I realize that this is a dream [I'm not quite certain, but I believe I became lucid by first realizing that I didn't recall how I had gotten outdoors where I could look up at the sky], and ground my awareness in the dream by focusing on the clouds in the sky. The sky expands to fill my field of vision, covering up and washing out the gray nothing behind it.

I realize I'm in the backyard of the house I lived in as a child, and I'm with two girls I knew in elementary school. I walk around the neighborhood with them for a bit, exploring the yards of the houses. They are fenced in, and many of them are on very steep hills [which was not the case in real life]. At one point, a man who lives in one of the houses sees us. Eventually, I stop following them and start following two DCs who are young women closer to my own age now, a blonde one and an Asian one. [I typically prefer to spend my lucid-dreaming time exploring my dream world on my own, but this time, I thought I could maintain a longer, more stable lucid dream if I focused my attention on following two dream characters around, instead. It seems to have worked.]

We end up wandering from the suburban neighborhood we're in to a well-lit, wood-paneled mall. We end up in front of a hair salon, where the salon owner stops us and presents the Asian DC with an award for her hairdressing skills. I notice that she is suddenly wearing a pretty, fancy dress appropriate for accepting an award at an awards ceremony. After she accepts it, we continue wandering around and exploring. The next time I notice the Asian DC, I see that she's wearing casual, comfortable clothes again. I exclaim in disappointment, "Aw, man! I wanted to do the finger-snap thing!" [Meaning, I wanted to consciously and actively change her from one outfit to another by snapping my fingers, Q-style. I was disappointed that she had performed the transformation on her own. ]

Our wanderings continue to take us through indoor environments, and we eventually end up in a spacious church where the service is just about to start. A greeter hands me a service bulletin, which is a single large sheet of paper that you have to fold up yourself. I wander through the sanctuary, from front to back, just as the procession is starting.

As I wander outside again, I remember that the next time I found myself lucid dreaming, I had wanted to do the 'pinch your nose shut and try to breathe through it' reality check, so I do so. It still works the same as ever - I can still feel myself breathing even while pinching my nose, which I still think is the coolest sensation. However, this time, my dream-sense of touch tells me that I'm missing part of the tip of my nose. [I thought, "Maybe I've been reading too many A Song of Ice and Fire books?"]

I see the aforementioned blonde dream character again, and for the first time, we actually stop to talk. When I ask, she tells me that her name is Julia, and it turns out that she knows that I'm the dreamer. She refers to me as the "universe goddess." [There's a gap in my memory here; I don't recall how we got from just talking to this next part, but:]

Julia is now mostly submerged in a tank of water, and I lay one hand on the crown of her head, which is sticking up above the water, and say: "I, [my full, legal IRL name], do hereby name you Julia." As she climbs out of the tank, I add, " [Nickname] is short for [my full first name]." [I often explain that to people when meeting them for the first time IRL.] After Julia is out of the tank, I ask her if I can do that again, because I didn't use both hands. I ask her what her middle and last names are, and she says "Tilly El-Haz[something, I don't remember exactly]." We stand facing each other, and I lay both hands on the top of her head and name her with her full name. [She looked like she could have been Supergirl, or otherwise related to those Els.]

[Hmm. Fascinating. I've only met one or two other dream characters who exhibited any awareness that we were in a dream, and this is the first time one has referred to me in terms like "the universe goddess." This dream put me in a great mood, as my lucid dreams always do.]

(This is a catch-up post. This dream took place on the night of August 22-23, 2012.)

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

My mom and I are watching a play together. The play features a girl and a creepy, life-sized puppet that is designed to be a body double of her. I see that $OfficeBoss is there, watching the play with his family. Then, my mom and I go out to the parking lot and drive away in the same car together, even though we both have cars there. We can only start one of our cars, not the other one, because neither of us has the right key for that one.

I'm in the Phoenix, Arizona metro area on vacation, visiting my good friend, JM. I have my own car [which I never do when I go to visit him, because I always fly there and get rides around town with him and his friends - this should have been my first clue that I was dreaming, but it wasn't], and I'm driving east along the freeway, heading in the direction of JM's house. The scenery around me is incredibly beautiful and lush, with lots of desert plants.

JM and I are hanging out in a bar together, totally chilling out on a sofa. I'm drinking a beer that someone else abandoned on a table. We walk out of the bar, which is located in a shopping mall. As we're on our way out of the mall, we find another friend of ours, ET [a human - yes, those are his initials], in another of the mall's shops. I realize it's him when I hear his voice. A bunch of our friends are with us now. ET hugs everyone in the group (myself, JM, CF, and a couple of others), except for RD. RD doesn't want to be hugged, and uses her fingers to climb up the side of a door to get away from ET. ET tickles her on the small of her back instead.

I'm walking through a beautiful Arizona landscape of desert farms, and at this point, I finally realize that I'm dreaming. I focus on the fact that the guard dogs that many of the farms have cannot really hurt me when I'm in a dream. I run away from one of them by flying straight up, and then start flying over the lovely scenery, admiring it. Looking southwest, I can see downtown Phoenix, which has skyscrapers and a giant stone head with a big, wide-open mouth. Just after I've started flying, my alarm goes off and wakes me up.

Awake, Lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

After I've woken up in the night and am going back to sleep, I feel that sensation of floating, of being untethered from gravity and from anything else physical. I know that I can enter a dream from here if I let myself float away. I do so, and immediately find myself in a dream. [I have to admit, though, I'm not 100% certain that my consciousness remained continuous from the time I woke up to the time I entered the dream, so I'm only willing to use my WBTB and DILD tags for this entry, not my WILD one.]

I'm in a bright, sunny, pedestrian-oriented shopping area, with a wide, winding sidewalk that leads between a series of large, curving, mostly-white buildings, each of which contains many different shops and restaurants. One of them has a large Cold Stone Creamery sign on the outside. It's very pretty, and looks very real. I'm very pleased to be in a lucid dream again.

At some point while exploring this new dreamscape, I see several friends of mine from earlier periods of my life [high school and/or college - I don't remember this part all that clearly]. Then, I wander through a small exterior door in one of the buildings, which leads into a classroom. In this classroom, the desks are set up in several sets of rows that are set at right angles to each other. The aisle between the rows of desks begins near the door and goes right through where the corners of those right angles would be. All the desks are filled with young adults, like me, but I don't know any of them. I walk down the aisle toward the front of the classroom. There is a male teacher there, leading the class in a discussion about something, but he doesn't complain or try to shut me up when I interrupt him and say to the class:

“Anyone want to help me out with this possession thing?”

[Or some similar words to that effect.] By this point, I've remembered one of the current Tasks of the Month and decided that with all these DCs around, it should be easy to give it a try. [I'm not surprised that I asked if one of my DCs would willingly act as the possessee. Possessing someone by force or surprise doesn't appeal to me at all; I already knew that about myself.]

A woman in the front row, on my left (the teacher's right), raises her hand and stands up. She's maybe an inch taller than I am, but stockier, and has dark red hair and green eyes. Both of us are wearing jeans. She follows me to the back of the classroom.

“I want my gold star, dammit!” I say, just before I go to work on possessing her. [I was talking about the gold wings I was going to earn here on DreamViews (or rather, the silver wings - in the excitement of the moment, I completely forgot that we had switched the basic and advanced tasks early in the month), but my exclamation came out as the commonplace expression meaning a reward or recognition for an achievement. My subconscious betrays my true colors: I really want recognition for my lucid dreaming achievements. Wow, I'm shallow. :blush: ]

My method of possessing people is as follows: I stand directly behind the red-haired woman, and we clasp hands with our fingers interlaced. Then, I press the trunk of my body into her back, with our shoulders aligned, and push myself forward until our bodies merge. It's a somewhat slow process at first, since the substance of her body offers some resistance to mine, but it works. [I already know how to become intangible to walk through things in dreams; why didn't I think to make use of that ability and adapt it to this purpose? I don't know.] In a few moments, I'm standing in her body and controlling it from the inside. It has an awkward, heavy feeling to it, but it's really cool. When I've made it all the way forward, I notice that I've done an incomplete job; I can still feel our hands clasped together, and my feet are sticking out above hers, because she was taller than me to begin with. “We're supposed to merge them together,” I say. I straighten out my fingers and merge them with hers, and push down with my feet so they're merged properly. Then, I walk forward, one step at a time. It feels heavy and awkward, like I'm wearing several layers of really heavy clothes. I walk out through the door of the classroom into the sunlit walkway. Then, I collapse onto the ground and try to extricate myself from my DC. I only succeed in discarding the pair of jeans the DC was wearing, leaving them lying on the ground.

I get up, go back into the classroom, and try again to release my DC from possession. This time, it works. The DC steps forward and away from me, and calmly walks back to her seat. The other DCs in the class seem to approve of the successful possession. [If my DC now wasn't wearing pants, none of the characters in the dream seemed to take any notice, including the red-haired DC herself. I think she just had a long, dress-like blouse on.]

I want to practice this newfound skill again, so I look around the classroom. In an aisle seat on my right (the teacher's left), a man with black hair in a ponytail is sitting. That'll be different, I think. [Being in a man's body will be different, I mean.] I look at him, and he gets up and allows me to take possession of him in the same way. This time, it's a little bit easier and goes a little faster. Unfortunately, I woke up shortly after this point.

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

I'm walking around on the ground floor of a large, three-story shopping mall. The interior is a very bright, airy space, with white walls and a glass ceiling through which the sun shines. While I'm walking along, the realization suddenly hits me: This is a dream! I'm so shocked that the scene around me immediately starts to become less clear, filling up with gray pixels that multiply quickly [they look a lot like static on an analog TV], just like it always does when my dreams start to destabilize. Oh, dammit! I think. I immediately drop to my hands and knees on the tile floor, focusing on touching the floor and on staying focused on the scene around me, and thinking reassuring thoughts to myself: It's okay. It's okay. In 30 seconds or so, the scene is clear and stable again. I get up and start walking again, exploring the place I'm in.

As I look around me, I look up at the ceiling, three stories above me, to see winter greenery with ornaments on it and big, shiny bells in red, gold, and green lined up in a recessed space just below the edge of the ceiling. “They haven't even taken down all their Christmas decorations yet,” I remark. I find that I've come upon the entrance to a vacant department store, currently being used as a storage space for the Christmas decorations that have been taken down. Among other things, there is a large, haphazard pile of blue and white styrofoam wreaths. There's no gate or other barrier to entry across the entrance to the store, so I spontaneously decide to jump into the pile of wreaths as if they were dry leaves. It's fun! Some of them break, and I just say, “It's my dream world, and I'll destroy the wreaths if I want to.”

When I get up, I wonder what's on the floor above me, and I decide to explore it. I look to the side and see that there's a side entrance to the department store, and there's a flight of stairs outside that entrance, which I can see through the window. I could take them, but it would be quicker, easier, and cooler to just levitate myself through the ceiling above me, so I decide to do that. I close my eyes and, with an act of will, start rising upward.

[Note: I don't really remember where in the sequence the following two paragraphs went, but I'm sure I was lucid, so I put them here.]

Now I'm in a big, industrial-looking building complex with multiple floors, walkways, and sets of stairs running through the vast interior space. It's dark inside; all the walls and floors are black or dark gray, and there aren't very many lights. This area is [somehow] part of the Star Wars galaxy. As I wander around here, I can hear a dialogue between a post-redemption Darth Vader [he's still speaking in the James Earl Jones voice, though] and some other random character. The other character addresses Vader as “Rash,” apparently using it as a first name. Vader, offended by this, replies: “Rash?! I may have acted rashly, but my name is Anakin.” I smile.

[Somewhere in here,] I meet and interact with another young woman about my age. She leads me on a walk through the area, talking to me. Our walk ends at a spot overlooking a view of a natural, green valley. Then, she says something like, “Instead of waiting around for them to break your heart, like I did, go out and grab hold of what you want.” I wonder if this is my best self giving me advice.

When I open my eyes again after a scene transition [which I'm pretty sure I remember being the levitation one mentioned above, but again, I don't remember in what order the above two scenes happened], I'm standing on the second floor of a building, overlooking a very beautiful view. There is a clear, sparkling swimming pool in front of me, but it's big enough to be a small lake and wraps around three sides of a tall, stucco community clubhouse building with a red tile roof. The pool is in a park, surrounded by green grass and trees. Off to the left is a street, on the other side of which are houses that match the style of the clubhouse. The scene is so beautiful that I exclaim, “Man, I wish I could take pictures!” ...So I could post them on DreamViews to show everyone! is the thought behind that remark.

I decide to go swimming. The tower I'm in has exterior stairs on the side facing the pool. I start going down the stairs. As I do, I pass a window and look at my reflection in it. I'm pleased to see that I'm already wearing a swimsuit, a fact which I attribute to my decision to go swimming. My face looks completely normal. I try smiling, but my reflection stays the same for a moment, then returns a crooked smile, using only one side of its mouth. 'Cause it's a dream mirror, not a real one, I think. It doesn't work like a real one would.

I walk to the side of the pool and jump right into the deep water [something I don't usually do in real life, because I suck at swimming]. It feels wet. I swim around on the surface of the water much more easily than in real life, enjoying the experience. Several times, I lower my head so that my nose is under the water and enjoy the fact that I can still breathe normally. I want to swim completely underwater and open my eyes, but I don't, because I have the very realistic sensation of having water in my right eye, forcing me to keep it closed.

Other people are swimming in the pool. We hang out and talk a little. After a while, I get out and keep exploring the park I'm in.

In another area of the park, there are a series of big pieces of plastic playground equipment, white with pastel accents, with a miniature golf course built around and through them. I start climbing the largest one, using the metal handles and small platforms built into the structure to climb. This climbing route goes up toward the main body of the play structure in an arc, and each foothold is only supported by a single column or bar, so it looks like there's mostly open space below you, and you can see exactly how far you are off the ground. I'm not afraid at all, though, because I know it's a dream and I can't get hurt.

Just as I reach the main body of the play structure, the memory of the current Task of the Month suddenly hits me: set off fireworks in a crowded place and record how the people there reacted. I recall how other DV members have done it. I slide down the slide that's in front of me, determined to complete the task.

Not far from the play equipment, some people are beginning to gather at some tables for a picnic. I start trying to obtain a firecracker [because that's what several other DV members used]. I reach behind my back and try to make one appear there, but it doesn't work. I try looking around corners in the scene and expecting one to be there, but that doesn't work either. I really suck at summoning things, I think. Then I think of another approach: find an existing object and transform it.

On the ground, under a tree a few yards from the picnic area, I find the pointy half of a broken-in-half yellow pencil. I pick it up and sandwich it between my two cupped hands, focusing my will on it and willing it to turn into a firecracker. When I open my hands, it has swollen up and gotten round and puffy in the middle.

All the picnic tables are now full of people, and I see that some of them have their marching band instruments with them, which makes me realize that they're a marching band. I see at least one trombone in the group. I stand a couple of yards back from one of the tables and throw my pencil at the group of people. It hits the center of the table and explodes with a loud crack. No one takes any particular notice [at least, not that I can recall]. When I retrieve the pencil, the lead has shot out of the tip and gone limp, like a piece of spaghetti. I decide to continue in my search for a firecracker.

I end up walking through the halls of a dusty building that resembles my section of the university library where I used to work. I continue trying to summon a firecracker or firework by expecting one to be there when I look around a corner or into a room, but it still doesn't work. In one storage room full of random stuff, I hear a hissing sound that I think is the sound of a firework fuse burning at first, but then I realize it's the sound of the small air blower on a strange, old machine that is running in the middle of the floor. I continue searching this room for a firework, but I woke up in the middle of my search.

[This is a catchup post. These dreams are from the night of July 15-16, 2011.]

I'm at a high school football game between my high school and another school called Bell High School, which has white and purple as its school colors. [I'm sure there is a real Bell High School, but I do not know what its school colors are in real life.] At halftime, both school's marching bands combine to perform a semi-rehearsed field show together. It's based on my high school's field show from last year [which I didn't even see in real life; within the dream, however, I recognized the show I was watching as being based on the show they had done the previous year]. Although I could go out and join in performing the show if I wanted to, I just watch it. I would have known how to perform most of the show I'm watching if I had been in marching band last year, but I wasn't, so I don't. Besides, I don't have my clarinet with me. The show involves pushing low, wheeled wooden boxes around on the field and crouching down to hide behind them.

[Different dream.] I'm walking around in a public space naked, hoping not to be seen by anyone. [Yes, again. This time,] I'm in an enclosed, single-story retail mall with a tae kwon do studio in it. [At one point during the dream,] I have some sort of blanket or piece of cloth that I clutch around my body as I sit down against a wall in a hallway. There are people I one of the shops I pass through [it looked like a cafe], but, thankfully, they don't seem to take any notice of me. [There must be some unresolved issue somewhere in my mind. This dream has been recurring a lot as of late.]

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

I'm at the mall in my town, standing at the outside edge of the big parking lot on the north side of it. The parking lot is empty because it's been blocked off, and the route for the annual Race for the Cure, which runs around the edges of it, has been marked off. There are lots of people walking and running around the track. This is a practice run for the actual event. I remark to myself that I need to train for this event, because it is a race, and that I'm glad to see that they've repainted some of the lines on the parking lot while they've had it blocked off, because the lines really needed repainting.

From there, I start flying around the west side of the mall. [I think I remember realizing at some point during this sequence that if I was flying, I had to be dreaming. I'm not totally sure, though.] As I go from the north to the west side of it, the terrain changes from flat parking lot to natural land that rises and falls slightly. I'm holding onto a small, rectangular, round-cornered, solid plastic board, slightly larger than a sheet of paper. It catches the wind, and I fly by using it like a sail to pull me along, holding it perpendicular to the ground, with both hands, with my arms straight out in front of me. It's a lot of fun to fly this way. The wind carries me up and over each little rise in the land; every time I go over one, I have to pull my legs up to make sure my feet clear the top of the rise. They do, every time. This entire scene is very clear and vivid; I can feel the air moving around me, the pull of the wind on my arms, and the motions I make, and can see the land and the trees around me clearly.

Someone else passes me on my left, flying past in the opposite direction. As she does so, she holds up a bunch of white pieces of paper, fanned out, with big, black letters printed on them. They spell out “SLOWPOKE!” I don't take any offense at this, because that's fair; this method of flying is indeed slower than my normal self-powered, superhero-style flight.

[Different dream scene.] I'm at a place that seems to be a restaurant, but has a dark ride in the back, meeting a man named Harley Davidson, for whom the company was named.

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

I'm on a dark ride at Disneyland. When I concentrate on the images that are moving vertically in front of me, I can accept and maintain the optical illusion that traditional animation is taking place right there in the space in front of me on the ride.

Later, I'm in a dream version of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion. This version is two-story and walk-through, with a large, rectangular open space in the center of the house where you can see the walkway that runs in front of the entrances to the second-floor rooms. I think, They've redone this entire place again? It's actually this realization that makes me aware that I'm dreaming. I've dreamed about this attraction many, many times before, and it's different every single time, so if I'm on yet another new version, I must be dreaming. I continue to make my way through the house, being scared [in the good way] by some of the ghosts that jump out at me.

I somehow end up in the landscaped outdoor area around what appears to be a shopping mall. I look at my hands and see that they look normal [I've been doing this a lot in reality lately], but don't lose lucidity. I'm pleased to find that the dream is stable, my dream self feels real and normal, and that I'm not aware of my real body at all. I then remember my current personal dream goal and decide to start trying to walk through a wall. I see the orange-tan-colored outer wall of some restaurant and think, Maybe it'll be easier to go through if I don't know in advance what's supposed to be on the other side. [I don't even know.] I don't end up going through it, though. [If I attempted to, I don't remember it now.]

While walking around the outdoor area, I touch a metal hand rail and find that it feels real. I also try to walk through a low, rectangular concrete wall intended for seating, but it's just as real and solid to me as it would be in reality. [I think I just haven't fully convinced myself that I can walk through things like a ghost yet.]

I continue walking and find a small, amphitheater-like concrete area where there are big concert speakers set up, playing hip-hop or rap music. Facing the speakers is a picnic table with a bunch of teenagers sitting on it, all of whom are really into the music. One girl, however, is sitting on a bench off to the side by herself, reading a book. On the opposite side of the table from the speakers is a grassy lawn. Fifty or so yards away at the other end of the lawn, a live rock band is playing on another stage. I think it's kind of sad that the poorly-designed setup of the area, with the big speakers so nearby, means that no one is paying the band any attention. [What is it with me and rock concerts in my dreams lately? I don't have any plans to go to one in reality.] I think about talking to one of the teenagers there, but [for some unknown reason] decide not to.

The back of my left thigh started to itch, which made me aware of my real body again, which caused the dream to dissolve. I scratched it, now awake and disappointed at the interruption.

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

[I had several different dreams last night, two of which were lucid.]

[Dream #1] I'm playing Neopets. [In this particular dream,] Neopia is a fully-realized, three-dimensional world, but it's still a computer game that I'm playing using a mouse. The art looks just like it does on the real site. The game is played from a first-person perspective, and there are lots of rooms and areas to explore [just like the plot adventures on the real Neopets Web site]. One such area is filled with Neopets who are dressed in vaguely Arabian-looking clothes; they all have their noses covered with veils, which strikes me as somewhat ridiculous, since they all have such different shapes and sizes of noses. This scene makes me think, So Neopia does have something resembling an Islamic culture. I click my way into a hidden area and receive a special reward for finding it.

[Dream #2] I walk into my family's house, which is big and spacious and has two stories [and looks nothing at all like any of our real ones. House #2, our only two-story house, was nowhere near that big and was laid out very differently]. Suddenly, there are several men in the house with me. They're there to challenge me to a martial-arts tournament. I had known in advance that this challenge was coming. In the course of my conversation with them [which I don't really remember now], one of them eventually says that there is no challenge. Having become semi-lucid at some point during the conversation, I say boldly and firmly, “I have better things to do.” I begin making my way out of the house.

Then, I hear my mom yelling from behind me that the house is on fire and I should get out. I do so, thinking, I know I should just get out without stopping to try and rescue other people. I go out the front door and walk down a front walk that leads to a fairly high, steep flight of concrete stairs, which leads down a steep embankment, at the bottom of which are the public sidewalk and the street. I jump off the top step to get down to the front sidewalk more quickly. I fall in a long, slow arc, taking several seconds to get down, and land softly and gently on my feet. I had kind of known I was going to fall that way; I always do in dreams.

By this point, I'm definitely lucid. From the street, I take off and fly up over the neighborhood. Once again, it takes me two tries to take off. After the first time, I realize, I messed up – I wasn't concentrating right. I try again, kicking off with my right ankle and thinking about becoming airborne, as I always do, and this time it works. Flight feels like it always does, too.

I fly up and observe the neighborhood from above. I can see a little bit of the fire coming from the house I just left. After a minute or two, I land back on the street and see a little model of a single-story house standing on a table. I examine the model, concentrating on it, and succeed in making tiles blow off the roof with my mind. This action is directly inspired by the scene in Inception where they're at the cafe and the dream starts collapsing when Ariadne first realizes that they're dreaming. While I'm making the model blow itself to pieces, I think about how, when the characters from the movie are dreaming, they might use Michael Caine's name [*see Side Notes at end] in exclamations of surprise/anger/frustration, etc., as if he were their deity, because he was the inventor of the dream-sharing technology. I immediately dismiss this as a silly idea, though. I keep up what I'm doing, and eventually blow away all the broken-up pieces of the roof, exposing the interior of the model. It has separate rooms inside. There's a small, light brown, flea-like insect inside, with a sort of sail on its back. I know that the insect is my dad. [I don't even know.] I let it crawl onto my finger, rescuing it from the destruction of the model and setting it down gently outside the model.

This scene is immediately followed by an animated sequence of two foxes romping around in a grassy field and falling in love. I know that this means that both of my parents are still alive and got out of the burning house all right.

[Dream #3] I'm outside, in the daytime, on a series of tiled walkways, terraces, and stairways, elevated and built into the side of a hill. Some boy is following me around, singing a creepy version of some children's song at me, changing the words all around to suggest that he would like to do something sexual with me. At the end of the second or third repetition of the short song, I stop, sing the end of the verse for him, then smack him in the face. Then, a passing man helps me throw the offending boy over a wall and down a long flight of stairs. I see him get up after he reaches the bottom, and am glad to see that he can still get up and that nothing's broken.

The scene shifts slightly, and now I'm on the surface-level streets, walking around a city that I remember visiting in a dream before. [Except now I don't – false memory, apparently.] The city is bright and clean and filled with big trees. There is a train station across the street from where I'm walking. On my side of the street, there is an enlarged replica of one of the stores on Main St. at Disneyland. Upon seeing the prominent train station, I remark that my dream city doesn't necessarily have to be in the States; it could just as easily be in the UK. [This, despite the fact that said train station had a sign on the outside that very clearly read “Amtrak.”]

I walk in the main entrance to the store that replicates the one from Disneyland, and find myself in a shop that is part of a mall. I walk through that first shop and into a second one that resembles a Hot Topic (all the walls are painted black), only it's girlier (there are a lot more dresses). This store also has living mannequins that look exactly like the ones they have at Old Navy. One of these mannequins tells me that she wants to try on the dress I'm wearing, which I had gotten from that store earlier. It's a strapless, knee-length black sundress with little pink polka dots, pink lace decorating the top of the bodice, and a pink tulle underskirt part that makes the skirt puff out. There are lots of similar dresses on the racks in the store. [For some strange reason,] I'm wearing mine over the T-shirt and shorts I was already wearing. I'm really enjoying just walking around, exploring this dream. I exclaim aloud, “My mind is so awesome!”

I walk out of that store and around a corner, through one of the hallways that form the connecting core of the mall. I find myself wishing I could change out of the shorts I'm wearing under my dress, and just wear the dress. I go into another store, this one a Sephora. While I was in there, the dream ended.

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

*Michael Caine's character's name is Stephen Miles (per the shooting script); that's what the other characters would say if they were to do that. I forgot that while dreaming, though.

Last night, when doing mental affirmations while falling asleep, I focused more on recalling the memory of what it feels like to be in a lucid dream, recalling past lucid dreams, and visualizing and imagining what it would have been like if I had become lucid in one of my memorable non-lucids. It worked really well.

As I was taught when I first tried to ski, people who are right-handed are generally right-footed as well, and are instinctively inclined to lead with their right foot and do most of their controlling of their movement with their right foot when skiing or snowboarding. I'm very pleased and not at all surprised to discover that this principle applies to my flying in dreams as well. I'm right-handed (and right-footed) in real life, and from the beginning, I've always instinctively used my right foot and ankle to kick off from the ground and launch myself into a takeoff.

[This is a catch-up post. This dream is from the night of January 4-5, 2011.]

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

I'm flying around a large, elaborate, indoor shopping mall that has an upstairs and a downstairs level. [I don't remember how I became lucid, but I did.] Like real malls I've been to with upstairs and downstairs levels, there are lots of open spaces connecting the two. I fly down through one of them to get into the lower level and explore it. Some of the people who are in the mall see me flying, and I talk to some of them.

The lower level is completely enclosed with no windows. It's all painted off-white and appears to be mostly offices, rather than shops. When I get into this enclosed area, I start walking. I encounter a female DC and we start talking. At one point, I actually tell her, “You're a dream character!” She either ignores this or doesn't hear me, I don't know which.

While exploring the corridors and passageways of this enclosed lower level, I find a door that is an entrance to the Arlington Theater. [Although I identified it as such, it didn't quite look like that in the dream. It looked like a big theater for live performances, but without the decorative, themed walls, and even bigger and wider than the real one.] When I enter the theater, I exclaim, “I was looking for this place!” Then it occurs to me, Couldn't you have used an ability to get here faster, rather than just searching for it? I go to take an empty seat next to some of my high school friends. The performance we're watching is a live-action version of Jaws. At the end, I walk up to the very front of the theater and take a picture of the audience.

Then, I feel a need to start floating upward, just like a helium balloon, so I allow myself to. The ceiling of the theater is made up of several layers of pieces of canvas stretched out with ropes. I make my way between the pieces of canvas, sometimes detaching a corner and folding it back, until I float out of the building and into the sky.

The next thing I remember is being on a street corner. My dad and sister bicycle past me and tell me to stop at the corner before crossing the street, to be safe. I say yes, I will. I walk along the road I'm on. I think vaguely of trying to do something else cool, like run really fast, but I don't do it. I look at a photo [presumably the one I took of the audience in the theater; I'm working off brief handwritten notes here] in what I at first think is reality before I figure out that it must still be in my head, because I know that I was dreaming when I took that picture.

While still outside on the street [I think; not sure of the specifics of the transition here], I suddenly find that I'm lying down, and my entire body is vibrating. When I look up and to my left, I see a sleep paralysis monitor. It's measuring how much I'm vibrating. It looks like an oscilloscope, kind of like this one, only in the dream, the screen is all black and there's only one bright-green line across it, that grows thicker and takes up more of the screen as the SP intensifies. Below that line is a numeric readout, also bright-green, that jumps from 40% to 88% as I watch. Below the numbers, I see the words “You did it!” appear on the screen.

So this is what sleep paralysis feels like, I think. I know what it is, but I'm still just a little freaked out by the all-over, shaking, vibrating sensation. I realized that I had to be waking up and thought, No! I don't want to wake up yet! Go back! I tried to DEILD, but I couldn't think of a scene to visualize, nor could I calm myself down enough to visualize one. Eventually, the feeling went away, and I was awake and back to normal. [First time I've ever woken up into SP. Very interesting.]

When I went back to sleep after that, I had another non-lucid dream. This time, I'm in my church. The room seems to be the same size and shape as it is in reality, but lots of things about it are different. The piano is front and center [rather than off to the side], and I'm sitting a few feet behind the piano bench, with my chair up against the windows that form the front wall of the room. I'm watching Wendi play the piano. We talk to each other about something. We're attending Betty's memorial service [which was held the Saturday after I had this dream, and I knew that both Wendi and I were planning to attend].

Later, when we're at the burial service, I look down into the box that forms the underground enclosure for the coffin, and I can see furniture inside it.

After the service, I leave the church building. Outside it is a big, complex interchange of road overpasses and underpasses that spans across a straight main road. Airplanes are using this main road as a makeshift runway. I walk across one of the overpasses with my family to get to the overpass on the other side.

----------------
Side notes:
This was the second night that I wrote down a goal before going to bed. This time, I wrote: “Goal: become lucid, look around at scene, make sure it's stable, then see what other verbal commands I can use.” This time, I accomplished the first two, but forgot about the second two. So far, based on two nights of experience, my working hypothesis is that writing down my goals is definitely helping me to achieve them, but that in the future, my goals should only consist of one or two actions at most, not three or four, because I don't seem to be remembering more than two.