CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #261: Have a Badass Day

I’m standing in a store that looks like a cross between a barber shop and a clothing store. There’s a mirror on every wall and as I catch sight of my own reflection, I see that Dreamer is standing just behind me and to the right. She acknowledges me with a casual nod, like it’s totally normal that we’re both here.

Dreamer goes back to shopping and as I think about how she might have gotten here, I realize thatthis has to be a dream.

“[Dreamer], I’m having a lucid dream!” I say.

She gives me a skeptical look and says something like, “Right now? You’re sure?” Dreamer looks about ten years older than in waking life, and I notice that her hair is short, very light blonde but shot through with streaks of purple.

At first I think about working to convince her, but decide that no, once things get rolling, she’ll believe it too. I grab her hand and we run toward the store’s exit. There’s no door, just an open air exit that leads out to a street made of interlocking stones.

There’s a high stone wall ahead, and we have to turn left to make it around. There’s a shaft of yellow sunlight covering the road where we need to go, and for a moment I wonder whether it’ll block us. As I think this it shimmers like a glass barrier. We have some quick discussion about this as we approach it, and I say something about this “will be easy to phase through.” There’s a moment of pressure as we cross this threshold and then we’ve phased through.

We emerge on a dusty street that has a Mad Max vibe to it, like we’re in a post-apocalyptic desert. It looks a bit like something out of screenshots I’ve seen from Rage.



There’s an enclosed tunnel of metal and glass that stretches across the dusty road, and I become curious what’s inside. Still gripping Dreamer’s hand, I try to fly up there. There’s a little sticking point, though, and as I narrate my intent, for some reason I get the urge to sing. I start belting out whatever comes to mind, and an electric guitar immediately starts playing along in the background. (Yes, these are the actual lyrics... I "performed" them into my phone upon waking. )

I want you to know that I’m happy to be here,
Let’s fly up in the sky,
And have a badass day!

I really belt out the last part. I try to keep going, but I’m too busy laughing about the very silly lyrics that I’ve already sung. We manage to fly up just a bit above the tunnel, and as I’m trying to get a view of the rest of the town, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #255: Narcissus at the Symphony

I’m standing in the kitchen with Wife and my two boys E and R. I feel incredibly tired, like I can barely keep my eyes open or even stand. The exhaustion gets the better of me and I collapse, falling flat on my face. “Oh my God! Are you okay?” asks Wife, rushing to my side to help me up. I feel embarrassed that I’ve worried everybody when I’m only tired… surely I could have stopped myself from falling like that!

I stagger over to the sink, noticing that I’m wearing glasses (extremely rare in waking life.) I lean against the sink, noticing odd patterns and spots in my vision. Something’s definitely wrong with me, but I feel like it’ll all be better if I can just fall asleep. It occurs to me to look for the dream and when I hit the nose pinch reality check, I become lucid.

I’m shocked that this is all a dream, and I say out loud, “That countertop right there -- that looks exactly like waking life.” I run my hands over it. It’s in a different configuration from waking life, but the texture, the look, it’s all perfect. Amazing. I catch my reflection in the mirror. I look like me, but my movements are just a bit delayed from my dream body’s movements. I wave my arms above my head and watch in amusement.

I remember Jenkees’ dare to play an orchestral soundtrack. I raise my arms in the air, willing one to arise. I hear something! But it’s very faint, sounding like nothing more than an orchestra tuning up before a concert. Yes, that makes sense, cool soundtrack will come from doing cool stuff.

I walk toward my den but now I’m somehow in the hall of a building, walking past a big mirror. Hey look, I’m shirtless! I look just like myself but with just that little added bit of dream buffness. I flex for a little while, shamelessly indulging in vanity. This goes on for much longer than it should and then I continue along the hall out into a balcony where well-dressed DCs go wandering by. Hey, I bet that I’m at a concert hall! I decide that I should attend a symphony concert to complete Jenkees dare.

I find another mirror and think to summon Dreamer. I don’t want to get too fixated on immediate success, so I say, “Hey, [Dreamer], you can join me if you feel like it!” And in the mirror, Dreamer appears next to me! She sports the usual purple hair, but a heavier build than waking life. I look to my right to catch a direct view of her, but instead of Dreamer, I see my friend “Topspin”! He bears not the slightest resemblance to Dreamer in appearance or personality, being a dude of a completely different height, race, face shape, and demeanor from her. I look back and forth from Dreamer to Topspin. Both of them are smiling at me in amusement and I laugh, saying something like, “Okay, follow along with me if you like!” (Nobody does.)



I walk further along the balcony and see a brown-haired woman in her mid-20s pretending to take pictures by forming her hand into a camera shape. She points her “camera” at me and I’m caught by surprise when it flashes and making a picture-taking noise! I laugh at this and say “Nice one!” She springs up and does these amusing, highly exaggerated photographer poses while taking a few more pictures.

I think she’s hilarious and attractive, and I kiss her. Things turn sexual, but as we head this direction I notice that her reactions are almost precise mirrors of my own. The experience is fun but feels artificial somehow, and I decide to let the dream go in another direction. We’re on a crowded street at daytime now. I give the photographer a hug and afterward she turns around and wanders away. I start down the road, but after a little bit, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #244: Headphone Cornucopia

I’m in some kind of big apartment with Wife, who sends me to the other side of the place to take care of some task. I stop in a hallway with a wall mirror, noticing that hey, I have a pair of headphones on my head and music’s playing! I stand there, just appreciating the music, enjoying myself and completely slacking on my assigned task.

Eventually I start feeling guilty that I’ve been loafing around while Wife waits for me, so I take the headphones off and throw them on the floor. But somehow the music keeps playing and I still have headphones on! Okay,this must be a dream! I take off this pair of headphones and toss them, amusing myself that fresh headphones keep appearing on my head. I do this 5 or 6 more times before finally deciding to move on. I decide that the tune was only “pretty good” so I don’t get too obsessed with bringing it back to waking life.

I walk down through a doorway and turn to my left to find myself in a large, rectangular hallways with a floor of red industrial carpet. What were my tasks? Ah right, to play a musical instrument that doesn’t exist in waking life. I walk through to the end of the hall and find myself in a large movie theater facing the screen. I turn to my left to look out over the audience. There’s a good crowd for the show, but fortunately the theater is so huge that it’s not exceedingly crowded.

I look out over the crowd, deciding that Dreamer will be seated somewhere in this theater. I point at the crowd, sweeping my finger left and saying, “There you are, Dreamer!” Yep, there she is! She’s seated in the middle of a long row further back, maybe 30 feet away. She’s blond rather than purple-haired and her hair is pulled back into a bun. She’s sitting with her feet on the chair, her knees pulled up to her chest. She grins when I point her out.

I float up, stepping lightly from the back of one chair to the other. I say, “[Dreamer], you’ve got an instrument for me!” Her grin bends into a knowing smile and she sits up in her chair, her right hand reaching across her body toward some unseen object on her left side. I keep hopping along, but I don’t quite reach her before the dream ends.

I've posted the lucid dream at the bottom of this entry but I'm going to start with some non-lucids. I don't usually post my non-lucids in the Dream Journal, but this was a cool series of four NLDs all from the same night as the lucid. All of the NLDs featured Dreamer as well as some other DV folks. The first dream about the magical fox was probably one of the funniest I've ever had.

NLD#1: The Magical Fox

Lots of people on DreamViews are in a big, active study group on advanced dream control. There are 40 or 50 of on this subforum and everyone’s got workbooks that they update regularly. Definite participants include me, Dreamer, Xanous, sivason, NyxCC, and Sensei.

There’s tons of excitement and everyone’s improving rapidly. At some point, we come up with a strange plan to capture a rare, magical animal to use as a class pet. This will somehow improve everyone’s dream control even more. We come up with this awful plan to cut down all of these ancient trees in an old growth forest to drive the creature out of its habitat so that we can more easily capture it.

I’m embarrassed to say that I and nearly everyone else in the class was totally for this plan, but Dreamer is dead-set against it. She objects, begging the study group not to do this and not to destroy this creature’s way of life just to improve our skills a little bit. But everybody’s too excited about the plan to listen.

Dreamer puts a desperate plan into motion. She announces in her workbook that, “I just GASSED!” (Meaning “passed gas”.) And somehow this amazingly strong, room-clearing stench hits the nose of every DV member at same time that she makes this announcement. Everyone stops what they’re doing, horrified.

Now that she has farted her way into everyone’s attention, Dreamer gives a rousing, moving speech about how what we’re about to do is wrong and that we have to change out ways. She says that this magical creature should be free and that it should serve as an inspiration for us out there in its natural home. We shouldn’t be destroying the place that it loves.

She convinces everyone and we halt our plans to deforest the fox's home. Instead, the study group travels out to the forest to commune with the creature and learn advanced dream control this way. The dream ends with a scene of several people sitting down meditating and several others talking about how inspired we all were by Dreamer’s speech.

NLD #2: The Dreamsign
After Dreamer and I exchanged Skype messages during WBTB, I had the following dream (and a huge missed dreamsign):

I look over to see that I’ve received a skype message from Dreamer. It says, “You did wind up falling asleep, right?” I feel guilty for still being “awake” and looking at the clock instead of trying harder to get into a dream. I fret about this for a bit before finally replying with something jokey.

It never occurs to me that she was basically trying to tell me that I’m dreaming right now.

NLD #3: The Watch
This one’s a little hazy, but Dreamer and I have come into possession of a complex, advanced wristwatch that an elderly black woman constructed by hand.

From the top of a parking garage, we get into a car and ride around in the back seat, me watching as Dreamer disassembles the watch into all of these tiny pieces. I worry a bit about how to keep the pieces from getting lost in the car.

We go to some other building to do something important and possibly dangerous, but I can’t recall what was involved.

NLD #4: Hot Street Fighter II
This dream was a cross between skyping and exchanging DV forum posts, the conversation taking place entirely between me and Dreamer.

Dreamer: “I had a dream where you had these super HOT scenes with ladies from Street Fighter II.”

She goes on to mention that she was telling a couple of other DV friends (including KristaNicole07) about the dream. She asks, “I wanted to know if it was okay to tell them you don’t have a beard.”

I ask why they’d need to know that and Dreamer responds: “It’s really relevant to what happened in this dream.” Whatever the reason is that this is relevant, it appears to be highly amusing to her.

After I woke up from this one it occurred to me that there is only one female character in the original Street Fighter II. Maybe we can count Cammy of Super Street Fighter II. Because otherwise, the dream implied that I had a “hot” scene with Blanka or Ken or one of the rest of the crew.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #230: Bold Talk

I’m at home, walking through the master bathroom toward the gym. I’m clumsy, staggering around like I’m dizzy or drunk. Out of nowhere there’s a buzzing noise, electric and unbearably loud. It reminds me of the transition into a dream and I realize that I’m dreaming right now.

I don’t feel stable right away but I furiously rub my hands together, immediately remembering my goal to try to gain total control and confidence in this dream.

“This is my lucid dream!” I bark. “I can do anything!” The gym looks dark and I don’t want to double back. It doesn’t matter, I remember right away that the next thing I want to do is phase outside. I phase through an external wall, expecting to end up outdoors but end up in some new, relatively empty room. It looks like it belongs in my house but it’s not a room that I recognize. Fine. Again! I try another phase through the outer wall…

And wind up in a larger, more bare version of my master bathroom. I’m a little annoyed but I figure that confidence will carry me through this in the end. I hit a nose pinch reality check, breathing in and out a couple of times to cement in my mind that this is a dream.

There’s a mirror and I look over at it to see a more hulking, slightly angrier-looking version of myself. I decide to try to summon Dreamer. I say, “There’s a woman here, right behind!” There’s an uncertain stir in the mirror’s image. I remember to hurriedly add, “And it’s gonna be Dreamer!”

This isn’t working and I don’t have a DC to repurpose as Dreamer. I turn away from the mirror, intending to switch to a handshake summon, but the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #228: The Fall from Orbit

I’m lying in bed when I sense a shift and suspect that a WILD has begun. Something feels not quite real about the situation. I rub my hands together. It’s close, but it feels like I’m dreaming this rather than experiencing it in the waking world. I feel Wife stir next to me and wonder if she can sense me moving around.

I try to speak but all that comes out is a strange, reluctant croak. There’s no doubt that it’s a dream now. The sense of being in bed becomes less and less clear and I feel like I’ve at least partially entered the void.

I wait for a while, relying on hand-rubbing to keep me in the dream but finally call out: “Dreamer, pull me out of here!” I feel the sensation of a hand grabbing my right arm and pulling me down toward where the “bed” would have been, and I get the sense that I’m rotating. When I’ve turned about 180 degrees I suddenly feel massive acceleration ahead of me and slightly downward, like something attached a rocket to me!

The acceleration halts and a new scene comes into view. I’m flying high above the Earth in lower earth orbit! The clouds look slightly pixelated but convincing enough that the effect is very dramatic.



I remember that all of my goals are on the surface of the planet, so I point myself downward and imagine myself shooting forward at top speed. I take off like a rocket, the ground rising dizzyingly fast to meet me. I’m shooting toward a bunch of buildings, headed directly for a house!

I’m prepare to plow into this house, but my fall stops short, my feet rotate back under me and I’m now standing gently on the ground next to a miniature house and a cluster of miniature buildings. What looked like a city seconds ago now looks like a bunch of little model buildings. The room is fully enclosed and dimly-lit but I can still see well enough to do what I want.

I want to summon Dreamer but there aren’t any DCs around to use. I remember my behind the back summoning tech, but I’m not feeling sure about how I executed it. It fizzles. I walk to another corner of the room and try it there. Still nothing.

I approach another part of the room where there’s a bar and a broad mirror above it. When I look into the mirror, I see myself standing there but in a completely different scene. My reflection is on some cobblestoned street, outdoors and it’s daytime. I strafe back and forth to test the reflection and he reacts as expected.

Now I spy the building’s glass front door and through it I see the cobblestoned scene I’d just viewed in the mirror. There’s a guy trying to get into the room, an Asian guy in his mid-twenties wearing glasses. Not the easiest DC to transform to Dreamer, maybe, but nothing I can’t handle!

I go up to the door to let him in and start messing with the lock. Then I realize what a waste of time this is. Why not just phase instead? I start the phase, my right arm passing straight through the glass but as I’m about to go the rest of the way, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #216: Through the Roof

It’s some time after 4 AM and I’m wandering around downstairs, badly wanting to get some sleep to have a lucid dream. Somehow, Wife’s still awake watching something on her computer and I’m worrying that she really needs to get to sleep. “Well, I’m heading up,” I hint.

“Good night,” she says, still staring at the computer.

I head upstairs into the master bedroom. It’s dark, but there’s enough light that I can clearly see Wife curled up in bed. Wife downstairs and Wife upstairs? Dream! Since I’m in the bedroom, I get the sense that I’m supposed to start the lucid in the OBE style and “roll out of my body”. But I’m standing. How would I even do that?

Instead I decide to just float up through the ceiling, phasing out of the house and into the void. I thrash about a bit in the darkness and do a half-assed summon. Something that feels like a dry erase marker pops into my left hand, so I jam the end into my mouth and start chewing on it. With my right hand I make awkward swimming motions and imagine that I’m making forward progress.

After a bit of swimming, the void lifts and now I’m standing in my bathroom, all of the lights blazing. The bathroom looks mostly like it does in waking life apart from the fact that the mirrors are a little fogged up and have these odd creases in them. I can see my double in the mirror, making chewing motions with his mouth but he has no dry erase marker in his mouth. I grin and my double grins back, his mouth still shaped like he’s got the dry erase in it.

I dash around the room for a bit, keeping my eye on the mirror and my double does the same. I remember my intent to summon Dreamer. I reach behind me and try the summon, remembering my tip to Xanous to “try to just feel the person’s hand as if it’s already there”. To my complete embarrassment, this doesn’t work at all.

I try again and it’s not working. I become paranoid and wonder if it’s because I’m trying to summon in front of mirrors. I realize this is stupid but decide to try getting out of the room to see if that helps. As I’m walking to my left, I get this sense that I’m stumbling forward and the dream ends.

Finally got one for the challenge! Now we've got a competition...

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #214: The Challenge

I have a false awakening in the early morning, worried that I’ve run out of time to have another lucid. I get up, pee, and return to bed. To my dismay Wife has already removed the sheets from the bed. The clock says “5:50” and I complain to her that this is way too early to be up. “This is so unlike you!” I whine. She’s too busy to pay much attention.

I walk over to the gym and lay down on the floor, tossing and turning for a while. I have another false awakening in a field near a tent where a movie is being filmed. I walk around and explore for a while, feeling oddly comfortable and in charge, like this is my place even if it’s not familiar to me. I enter a nearby building where I’m required to remove my shoes, then move further on to find my friends PM and RP standing under an open rooftop. I try in vain to point out how much the clouds look like the ones we’ve worked on in our game project, but they’re too busy to pay attention.

I move further through the building, moving through a confusing maze riddled with dead ends until I emerge in a retro arcade. I stop at a machine that’s a multicade which features Street Fighter II and a library of 8-bit Nintendo games. I’m considering firing up Double Dragon when I realize that this has to be a dream.

I move outward from the arcade back to the main entrance. I’m still shoeless, so I produce some running shoes and walk off into the night. I’m on a concrete driveway and hordes of DCs on bicycles go whizzing by, not a trace of lights or reflectors on their bikes and bodies. They’re super hard to see, getting too close, and making me nervous, so I step off into the grass and move over to a sidewalk.

Now I remember my challenge goal of trying to summon Dreamer. I reach my hand behind my back, expect her to grab it, and immediately feel someone grab on. I turn around and she’s right there, purple hair and all! When I see her I exclaim, “Well that worked!” She seems to find this hilarious, squeezing her eyes shut and doubling over with laughter. I try to say something else but the dream destabilizes into a false awakening at my parents’ house.

My mom asks me if I need to go to work and I tell her no, just let me sleep as long as possible. She asks me to help clean their now-green pool (false memory, they have no pool) but I tell her that I’ll do it after I get some sleep. I crash back down on the bed, transitioning into…

...a false awakening on a bare mattress in a dark, candle-lit room. I get up and see that there are 4 or 5 similar mattresses here, too. There’s an Asian woman in her early 50s laying on one bed, tossing and turning restlessly. Some unseen male narrator tells me that, “She wants to dream but in here, she can’t. In this place, nobody can.” I’m disturbed by this, and I move toward the wall, hopeful that I’m dreaming right now. I phase right through, and the wall crumbles in cubes around me -- lucid again!

I float about twenty feet down to a poolside area with ankle deep water next to wall covered by a large mirror. The dream threatens to fade but I rub my hands together and splash around in the water. I again remember my summoning goal and reach my hand behind my back, summoning Dreamer for a second time. For some reason, I point to the mirror to help “prove” to her that she’s been summoned and say, “Look! It worked again!”

Dreamer seems fascinated by this, reaching out to the mirror and then waving her hands back and forth. “Look at this,” she says, bending forward at the waist a couple of times as her reflection copies her actions. I wonder whether this counts as two points in the challenge or just one.

We walk back inside and it’s another creepy room with those anti-dreaming mattresses. Dreamer stiffens her fingers like a spear and drives them into one of the mattresses and digs around like she’s looking for something but doesn’t seem to find it. I ask her what she’s looking for but she doesn’t say. I sweep my eyes around the room but when I look back to where I expect to find Dreamer, instead there’s a brown-haired girl of about 8. I kneel down and ask, “Are you Dreamer?” She gives me a you can’t be serious look and then walks out of the room.

There’s a mirror on the wall here and I get the idea to try summoning NewArtemis into the dream now. I keep watching myself in the mirror as I try to perform this summon, but it keeps failing. I realize I'm making this harder for myself but I can’t seem to help it. I want to see what she looks like when she actually materializes. I give three separate efforts to summon NewArtemis, but they all fail. I feel like something is wrong with me or with this room. Now I try to summon Dreamer. Another failure.

I feel like my mojo is fading out in the room, so I run for the wall and throw myself through it. There’s a glass shattering effect and now I’m falling through the darkness, air rushing past me. I fall like this for a few seconds until I wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #203: Mirror Mockery

I’m at the top of an old, wooden tower, looking out over a dirt road and nearby farmland. I’m pursuing someone, some criminal that I need to catch and confront. I climb down from the tower, and as I make my way down, I notice that night’s falling much too fast and I become lucid.

Something still compels me to find this man I was trying to catch. I have this sense that he’s nearby but that I’ve got some ground to cover, so I think about the idea of commandeering a car. Off in the distance I see a horse-drawn chariot thundering down a dirt road, the driver leaned forward and furiously whipping the four horses at the chariot’s front.

I try to catch up to the chariot on foot to take it over but it’s not even close. The thought of teleporting to it doesn’t occur to me until it’s too late. The whole idea of going after the criminal I was looking for starts feeling like a lot of trouble, so I walk past a nearby farmhouse and somehow enter a room in a fairly large wooden structure with a lot of people milling around.

I’m interested in the DCs at first but I see a pair of mirrors hanging on the wall to my left and stop to check them out. I notice that I’m shirtless as well as totally buff so I start hitting some poses in the mirror. I’m overcome with vanity and just keep doing this for a while.

After a bit, I see in the reflection an extremely fit woman walk right up next to me and also stare at the mirror. She’s short with curly brown hair and she’s in fitness model shape. She briefly looks at me and then back at the mirror before striking a series of exaggerated flexing poses that poke fun at what I’m doing and how silly I look doing it. I start laughing at this and she grins back at me.

I feel somewhat attracted to her but nah, let that go. She walks away and I then begin studying the roomful of DCs. My friend “Leroy” is there directly in front of me, and I take a moment to study how realistic he looks. I don’t seem to have his attention so I don’t take the time to speak with him, but I note how lifelike his appearance is.

I look at the other DCs for a bit, turning my gaze here and there around the room until the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #172: Bedroom Mirror

I either DILD or WILD into a scene where I'm walking with my oldest son E across a parking lot. There are only a few cars here but there are a huge number of DCs wandering around. It looks like the parking lot is immediately adjacent to an Olympic pool that's surrounded by a high chainlink fence, so I decide to head that way.

As we're walking along, I spy my friend F. He and E haven't gotten to see each other in person for a while, so I think it'd be fun to have their DCs interact. "Hey F!" I say. "We're heading for the pool. Walk with us."

"Sure thing, man!" he says and immediately bolts off ahead of me, hopping around like a kid. Each of his "hops" have him bounding around about 6 feet up in the air. Meanwhile E stays obediently close by, and I find the role reversal amusing.

Walking all the way to the pool takes a distressingly long time and I start feeling like I'm overcommiting to this one scenario. I see it through, though, and when we get to the pool, E and F start running around. There are a lot of people here and the two of them are quickly lost in the crowd. I think I could find them again if I put my mind to it, but I decide to just flow into a different set of goals. I notice a football stadium a ways off past the pool, so I fly over to that to investigate, thinking I can make the switch of stadium to Colosseum for Task of the Year.

I land in a broad, grassy field near the stadium. The crowd's even thicker here but one extremely attractive woman catches my eye as she walks past. She's Asian, about 30, and strangely dressed, wearing a long, purple, velvety coat that reaches down to her knees. For a moment I return to my Colosseum idea but just can't get the DC off of my mind, so I decide to spend some time with her instead.

When I turn back she's still, looking at me with a bit of confusion. I explain what I have in mind and she nods slowly, her eyes narrowing in concentration as if it's really hard to make sense of what I'm saying. But eventually she gets the picture and approaches me. We make out for a second and then we fly off together to get away from the crowd.

Somehow we wind up in a huge, elegant, marbled bedroom and very vivid sexytime begins. After about a minute or so of great fun, I notice that there’s a large, angled mirror on part of the wall, and I check whether I can see us in it. In the mirror I see another couple doing the same thing we’re doing, but they’re completely different people (an Asian male and a totally different Asian female.) The woman from the mirror and I stare at each other in shock and amusement for a moment.

I notice another mirror on a different part of the wall and when I check it I see an entirely new scene -- it’s the same couple from the other mirror, now grown old and sitting together on a bench, their hands clasped together. The old couple shares a laugh and look into each other’s eyes as the dream ends.

This is the second of two lucid dreams from the morning of September 6, 2013. So glad I caught that emotion dream sign for this one because it gave me an exit from a nightmare and brought me into a really nice lucid.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #144: Cooling Off

I'm in a furniture store, looking around at couches. A plump Hispanic woman is seated nearby, answering my questions. The front of the store is a huge glass window with a clear view of the street outside.

Spoiler for Upsetting dream premise:

A big luxury car pulls up outside and a man in a light gray suit gets out. He has a mustache and is wearing shades but I can't see him well enough to make out the details of his face. I see other men in the car that look just like him. The man reaches into the car and pulls two teenage girls out of the car by their forearms and tossing them to the ground. He jumps back in the car and it speeds off.

I run outside. Both girls are weeping and it's obvious that they've been terribly mistreated by these men. They're bruised and bloodied and their clothes are in tatters. I help them inside the store where they disappear together into the store's bathroom. I'm boiling with rage and at the same time feel like I'm close to tears.

I tell the woman that these girls have been abused by these men and that we have to do something. She says, "I know" and then calmly tells me that these girls are her daughters and that she willingly sold them to the men. Now I'm yelling at her, telling her that she's an awful person, demanding that she tell me who these men are and where I can find them. I stalk back and forth in the store's aisle, the anger getting worse and worse. Again I demand that she tell me where I can find these men so that I can dispose of them personally.

The rage is so over the top that it feels bizarre to me. I can't remember feeling this way any time in waking life, so I reconsider my situation and I become lucid.

Immediately I feel this huge sense of relief as I realize that there's nothing to be angry about and that none of these awful things have actually happened. I'm still a little shaken from the preceding scene, and I walk to the bathroom where the girls retreated to earlier. I open the door and to my relief it's empty. I close it again.

I take a few deep breaths, cooling off the last of my anger and reminding myself that I'm dreaming. The anger has been replaced by happiness and a sense of peace. I feel contentment at the idea that I took control of this nightmare.

Now happy and relaxed, I remember the goal of getting to the Colosseum. I imagine that the bathroom door now leads to one of the tunnels beneath the Colosseum. I open the door, but nope, still an empty bathroom. I close the door again and walk to the back of the store.

I find myself in a hallway made of cinder blocks. There's some kind of socket wrench lying on the floor and I scoop it up. I feel like playing so I throw the socket wrench at the wall. With a thump it embeds about half an inch into the cinder block. I grab it, prying it back out and throw it toward a nearby mirror. Crack! The mirror cracks rather than breaks, but I'm delighted by how realistic the sights and sounds of this are.

There's a door at the end of the hall that leads outside. I step out into the sunlight, seeing a pavilion with long, wooden eating tables to my left. I remember to hook myself into the scene before continuing further, so I kneel down and run my hands over the small stone squares that make up the flooring. As I run my fingers over the cracks, I see that a tiny river of brown water runs through the separation between each stone. Somehow I can dip my fingers into this tiny stream and it feels cool to the touch.

As I make my way through the lunch pavilion, I lock eyes with a blonde woman in her early 30s. I'm stunned by how realistic she looks. Something about me seems to surprise her as well. For a moment I wonder what she's reacting to, but in the end figure she's just mirroring my reaction. I hop over some tables, reach the other side, and look back at the crowd of people calmly eating lunch. This is why I work so hard at lucid dreaming, I think. I wish that there was some way to permanently capture this experience, but I know there's nothing that can completely pierce the veil between waking and sleep to bring this experience back to me.

As I leave the pavilion, I see an ampitheater up ahead of me. I'm contemplating how to work this to my advantage when the dream ends.

This was the third of five lucid dreams from last night/this morning.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #108: The Torrent

I'm watching one of the Star Wars films with some friends. We're sitting on the floor of some strange classroom and even though I hate to miss any of the movie, I have to pee so badly that I can't wait. I get up and enter some public restroom, approach the urinal, and start going.

While I'm doing this, some guy comes in to use one of the stalls. The bathroom has this horrible design where there's a mirror on the wall which is angled so that I can see straight into the stall. The guy sits down on the toilet and commences his business without bothering to close the door. It's an awful sight. "Shut the door!" I wail. He obediently slams the door shut.

Meanwhile, I keep peeing and peeing. The guy in the stall finally finishes his business, washes his hands, and leaves... yet I'm still going. Something's not right about this, and I realize that this is a dream. I still need to pee just as badly as when I first arrived, and there seems to be no stopping things. I'm vaguely worried that I'm wetting the bed but I figure that whatever is happening to my waking body, the die has been cast. Time to get out and enjoy this LD.

I step away from the urinal, still peeing all over the place, and exit the restroom. I emerge in a huge store that looks like a Walmart. I survey my surroundings, and every time I look in a direction, I start peeing all over the floor that's in my field of view. Most of the DCs in the store ignore this, but a few run away. Fortunately, after a few seconds, the urine seems to just disappear.

There's a huge mirror covering one wall next to a crudely-constructed wooden stage. I check how I look -- exactly like myself, except I'm pissing all over the place. I find the actual sight of myself doing this totally revolting and devote some dream control effort to making it stop. Soon it does, and all is forgiven (or forgotten.)

I hit a quick double-biceps pose in the mirror, and it occurs to me that the Advanced Task of the Month is to get naked in front of a crowd. I leap onto the stage and all of the DCs in the store turn to look at what I'm up to. I grab my shirt by the back of the collar with both hands and rip the shirt off of my body. It looks like I'm just in jeans and socks now. (No idea where my shoes went -- did I go into the men's room in just socks? Gross!) With one quick downward move, I simultaneously pants myself and pull off the socks, now stark naked.

I feel strangely relaxed and confident about all of this and throw in a few little stripper-style dance moves. Scanning the crowd, I notice that every audience member is now female. I'm not sure whether that's strictly a trick of the menthol or just something that somehow makes me feel more comfortable but I take note of it. With the task satisfied, I jump off the stage, imagining myself clothed once again.

I can't remember what else I'd wanted to do so I have a bit of fun wrecking displays in the store -- I force-push some chairs into a shelf of goods, levitate a bunch of stuff in the air, and generally act like a bad kid. As I'm looking around for my next bit of mischief, an attractive, dark-haired woman in her late 20s approaches me. She's wearing a close-fitting, dark blue dress. Menthol? I think.

"Hi," she says. "What were you hoping I was going to say to you?"

The truth: "I was sort of hoping that you were looking for sex." In spite of myself, I feel pretty embarrassed when I say this.

"There's an honest answer! But don't you think that you ought to get to know me first? Here, sit down," she says, gesturing at a long row of wooden chairs. "I'm Gina."

I sit down with her and she pulls out a notebook that looks exactly like my written dream journal. "What's that notebook?" I ask.

"Dream journal!" she answers cheerfully. "You've got to write everything down if you want to remember it."

She looks like she's about to ask me something when a guy sits down in the chair next to her. He's a black guy, about 30, a touch pudgy. Gina leans back to let him speak, looking a little impatient. This new guy speaks to me in a lecturing tone, saying, "Do you think you can just close every door that you open?" I'm confused by what he's saying and as I'm preparing to ask him what he means, I wake up.

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.

I finally made it into space! Even though I had no idea how to handle myself once I got there, the fact that I flew up there was a huge milestone. Before this, stable flight had been a bit elusive for me. Big step forward!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #20: The Unprepared Astronaut

I'm a graduating senior in college, following around a guy who seems to think we're close friends. I feel pretty guilty because I have no memory of him at all. I'm accompanying him so he can say his post-college goodbyes to his girlfriend. We meet her outside of a dormitory, and I recognize her as a girl that I know from high school. I recognize how weird this is and quickly find myself lucid.

Both of the dream characters freeze in place, looking into one another's eyes. I decide to leave the love birds alone while I take another pass at Task of the Month. (In this case, I'm going to be trying to remove my head and replace it with a pumpkin.) I try to will a mirror onto the outer dormitory wall but nothing appears.

I remember how much more dream control success I have when I'm detailed and thorough. I try again, this time imagining an ornate mirror that's been worn by time, the paint on its frame beginning to chip and flake off. This time I get my mirror!

I look into the mirror but it's dirty and cloudy-looking. The reflection looks like a shirtless me but it's very hard to make out any detail. I wipe at the mirror but it just doesn't make any difference. Rather than get hung up here and waste a lucid dream doing glass-cleaning, I decide to spend my time trying out other things.

I leave the grounds of the dormitory and head out onto a quiet, empty street. The morning feels chilly and the city is covered with a blanket of fog. I wonder what this fog looks like from above, so I decide to try flying above it. This time, I focus on the little details. The chill of humid air against my fingertips. The breeze flowing past my hair and tickling my scalp. Concentrating on these sensations leaves me no time for doubt and I smoothly rise up into the fog.

The fog swallows me whole as I rise. I wonder how long it will take me to pierce it. I feel myself going faster and faster and soon I'm rocketing up through the atmosphere. The fog never seems to end and I feel like I must be high above the Earth.

Suddenly I break through into blackness. I stop rising, my momentum suddenly gone. I'm in the blackness of space and the fog is now a floor below me. I realize that it isn't just the city that was covered in fog -- it's the entire planet. I am able to breathe but I somehow can't keep myself from doing so in these desperate, shallow gasps.

My flight abilities have stopped working and my arms and legs flail helplessly. I will myself a pair of rocket shoes but I get confused trying to work the lever that turns them on. I start losing my cool and my breathing becomes even gaspier until I wake up.

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #14: The Kid Is Not My Son

Wife and I are attending a class led by my neighbor K, who is for some reason now a history professor. He's giving an interesting lecture on the early 20th century and every student in the class is captivated by his talk.

One very attractive student (who identifies herself as "Melinda") is shamelessly flirting with him. I lean over to Wife and whisper this to her but she insists that she hasn't noticed it.

I look to my right and notice that there's a mirror running the length of the wall. I see myself in this mirror except slightly from the back. Also apparent from my reflection is that I have chosen to attend class wearing no shirt. The combination of these two oddities brings me into lucidity.

My hair is cut short just like waking life but my physique is leaner and more muscular than in reality. I rub my hands together and my beefcake reflection does a perfect replica. Clarity is very, very high. I remark out loud that, "This lucidity is just incredible." Wife verbally agrees, "It really is! But quit checking yourself out in the mirror." I laugh because she totally caught me.

All of the students and Professor K are looking at me now. I see that Melinda is now wearing a Baby Bjorn that contains a squirming little blonde baby. Melinda looks Asian or half-Asian so the blonde hair is a bit of a surprise. A bigger surprise still is when Melinda says, "It's yours."

I'm left shocked and stammering for a response/denial/whimper. Melinda laughs, saying, "Not him! He's mine. She's yours." She points to my left. A nurse in scrubs and a surgical mask walks up to me and hands me a brown-haired little girl of about one. The little girl reaches for my nose and smiles up at me. I'm about to look for Wife's response to all of this but I wake up.