CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #2??: One Last Mission

I’m heading upstairs to change my lightbulbs, but arrive to find that we’ve got tons of people upstairs visiting while my father-in-law changes them for me. I feel embarrassed, as if it looks like I never take care of anything around the house. He even somehow installed light bulbs with little solar panels attached to them, which I’ve never even heard of!

I head downstairs, feeling inadequate. I see that we have a big video screen that greets people at the front door. I see that it’s programmed to show a big story about turncoat spies within some US government agency. It’s some kind of huge story and these traitors are all over the news. As I’m heading into the kitchen, thinking about this fancy video monitor and the fancy lightbulbs, I realize that this feels a whole lot like a dream.

My father-in-law joins me downstairs and I say, “Hey, [Father-in-law], I’ve got an even cooler way to change lightbulbs!” I gesture at one of the recess lights in the kitchen ceiling and with a couple quick hand gestures, pull it out, summon a new one, and place it into the socket. It lights up!

He looks amazed and asks me how I did that. “This is actually a lucid dream,” I admit. “You can really do anything here.” He nods in acknowledgement, still looking impressed.

I recall my conversation yesterday with Iokheira where we were talking about cool dream ideas that people had never, ever done. I chose one of the ones we had decided was awesome enough that we were going to try: werewolf skydiving! :canislucidus: I phase through an external, curtained door out onto a back patio.

There’s a long row of side-by-side deck chairs here, with lots of people lounging around and relaxing. I look at the woman closest to the wall, but no, this isn’t Iokheira . One chair over, though is a group of three women sitting together, and on the left is Iokheira ! She hops out of the chair and we hug.

“It’s great to see you!” I say.

“Great to see you too!” she says and then starts nodding as I’m about to say, “Do you remember what we’d planned to try in this dream?” I can tell that she already knows the plan is werewolf skydiving.

Iokheira throws on a pair of aviator sunglasses, grabs my hand, and strides forward. We walk through a large yard into some suburban streets. She says, “Dylan (??) and Romero tried to tell me that this is my last mission. We’ll see about that...” I get the idea that she’s some kind of spy or secret agent. “The agency’s in [turmoil? chaos?] right now.”

I’m strongly sensing a backstory where she’s an agent in some kind of secret government agency. I wonder if it’s some kind of special division for werewolves. We go past a bus stop to a grassy field, while she continues to explain some more of the backstory. I wonder whether there will be a cliff at the end of this field for a possible BASE jump! Before we get to anything like that, though, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #265: Pinbasketball

I’m lying in bed in a false awakening, frustrated to be tossing and turning instead of lucid dreaming. I get a vague sense of floatiness and decide to roll out OBE-style. I imagine my legs oozing over the side of the bed onto the floor and now I’m on my feet in my bedroom, fully lucid.

I remember my intent to slow down and take my time, inspired by one of Dreamer’s recent lucid dreams (this amazing one.) I look back at the bed and see Wife still lying there. For some reason I feel a little scared to approach, like this might destabilize things. But no, the whole idea with this dream is not to be afraid of stuff.

I float up on the bed and stand over Wife. I watch for a moment just appreciating her beauty. I'm attracted to her and fascinated by her realism I don’t feel tempted to engage in sexy shenanigans. Wife opens her eyes a bit and looks at me sleepily. “Poo,” she says firmly. “Poo poo poo poo poo.” I laugh and say something like, “Okay, I’ll let you sleep…”

I phase through the wall into the night and the dream feels very dark. I don’t worry about it and instead just rub my hands together. They feel numb and distant, so I imagine that I’m wearing thick, leathery gloves, which I peel off. More hand-rubbing, vision returns, and now it looks like early morning on a mix between my street, an amusement park, and the Las Vegas strip. I walk for about 10 minutes or so, just enjoying this, passing opulent hotels, workers sweeping the streets, a stone statue.



Eventually I wander into a plaza that looks a little like a Disney World food court. I remember my goal of summoning Iokheira and transforming into wolves. :canislucidus: I hold out my right hand and look at the ground, expecting her shadow to form. But instead she bounds into the scene from the right and jumps right in front of me, smiling hugely.

I give her a hug and ask, “Did you want to do the wolf transformation right away or should we look around first?” She says that she’d “rather play” so we set off, looking around the park. We talk for a bit about lucid dreaming and (I think) video games. I describe how I’m trying to use Dreamer’s method of slowing the dream. I remark that we have “tons of time” and she agrees.

We wind up in an area filled with carnival games and enter a building that has this cool-looking game that’s a combination of pinball and one of those games where you have to shoot a basketball. In this one you throw the basketball into a hole, where it flies up a ramp, bounces off of a wall, and hurtles toward the basket. We play for a while, and I notice that when I get too into the game, both Iokheira and I forget to give the other person a turn.



We decide to keep looking around, and as we’re leaving I notice that Iokheira now looks a decade or so older than in waking life and I mention this. As we pass by a line of 5 women waiting in line to buy something, I see that she’s transformed further, and now looks like a completely different person, a woman with short brown hair in her early 50s. The woman looks like she feels ill and asks me to help her. I scoop her up and carry her outside where we crouch on the ground. She apologizes: “I’m sorry that I don’t look right. I don’t think I’m her anymore.” I tell her not to worry and that I’ll help her either way.

The woman lies down on her left side and vomits loudly onto the plaza stones. I feel enormous compassion, and I sit with her for a while, rubbing her back a bit until she’s able to sit up. She seems shorter now than before but also like she feels okay. She again apologizes for not being Iokheira anymore. I reassure her that “this has been a great lucid” as the dream starts to fade. As I’m pondering my next move, the dream ends.

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 #260: The Prancing Pied Piper

A false awakening takes me downstairs where I putter around for a bit doing silly "chores" like moving chairs around. Then I head back upstairs, totally focused on having a lucid dream when I “return to bed”. Just so that I’ll get in the right mindset, I do a nose pinch reality check and oh hey, check it out, I’m already having a lucid dream! I hold the nose pinch and start leaping and prancing about, waving my other hand in the air. I sing about lucid dreaming while I do this.

I head into my youngest son R’s room, but instead of R, I find my 5-year-old son E sleeping on his bed. “Daddy, what are you doing?” he asks getting out of bed.

I keep singing, prancing, nose-pinching, and waving one arm. I sing, “Lucid dream, lucid dream, lucid dreeeeee-eeeeeeam!” E laughs and says, “Daddyyy!” I think about returning to the master bedroom in the hopes of finding Wife and enjoying some sexytime. But those plans fall through when E gets out of bed, and starts following me around, prancing the same way that I am.

I reflect on the joy of being lucid and this emotion takes me to a desire to hear beautiful music. (I’d chained these feelings together using Dreamer’s goal memory technique.) This is in pursuit of Jenkees’ dare to do cool stuff to a lucid orchestral soundtrack. E and I go prancing into the master bedroom as I realize that I need to stop singing if I’m going to get a new soundtrack.

The lights are on in the bedroom and instead of me or Wife, my friend KS is lying in bed next to some blonde guy with surfer hair. KS gets out of bed and rubs her eyes like it’s the morning. I ignore her and surfer guy, instead phasing my face through the shutters so I can look out into the night. I start creating an orchestral soundtrack in my head.

It sounds nice, but I realize that I’m forcing every note manually and composing it as an act of will. I want it to emerge organically instead. Maybe if I go do something outside. I phase through the window and leap out into the night with a yell. As I’m preparing to take flight, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #256: The Swim to Sin City

I’m standing at my kitchen again, looking out into the darkened back yard. This is so familiar… I remember that my last lucid dream began the same way. I perform a nose pinch reality check and now I’m lucid.

I phase through the exterior door to a nighttime scene in my back yard. The pool is here, but it’s been drained dry. I phase through the pool fence and stand at the edge. I recall (incorrectly) that OpheliaBlue is attempting to complete a dare to go swimming. I think, hey, maybe I’ll swim in a lucid tonight, she will too, and it’ll be badass synchronicity tomorrow.

I raise my hands from waist to shoulder height, knowing that the pool will fill back up with water. It does, and I’m super pleased. I try to play it cool and not be so shocked when dream control comes through. I dive into the water, happily swimming about and noting that the water feels quite real. After a bit, my vision fades, and I’m in the void. A few more seconds of swimming, then that sensation fades, and I start rubbing my hands together, determined to come into a new dream scene…

… I emerge back in the kitchen, then phase back through to the outside. Through the pool fence, back into the pool, and more swimming. After diving down a bit, my vision goes dark. I try not to worry about this, though, and just swim forward as hard as I can. I go for a while before the swimming sensation dims a bit. Soon I feel some kind of hard surface and find myself…

… standing on a table in a Las Vegas casino, next to some kind of big, blocky control box. To my left, there’s a man sitting at a slot machine. He pulls the handle and I decide to make his day and get him a jackpot. Quarters start pouring out of the machine and the man dances with excitement. A man in a suit (a casino employee, I guess) points at me, looking annoyed, then points at the big control box that I’m standing next to. I have strange thoughts where I contemplate whether my dream powers actually affected this control box and not the slot machine directly.

My lucidity’s starting to fade a bit, and then I see a young boy in the lobby ahead, throwing up into a trash can. There’s a frazzled-looking man attending to him, and the man shouts that he’s not the boy’s father and who left this kid here? This additional distraction costs me my lucidity. I jump down off of the table to go help out. I spend a while wrapped up in the dream plot of trying to find this kid’s parents until the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #254: Adobe

I’m driving through a city, looking for some place to park. My dream family is here with me -- a dark-haired woman is my wife, my young daughter is in a car seat in the back, and there’s maybe a 2nd child (a son?) as well. We’re exhausted and homeless, living out of our car. I pull into a parking space next to a hill and sleep for a while. A cop car pulls up soon, though, and we have to move on.

Now we’re driving down a dusty freeway that’s under construction. Workers wander back and forth, while a thick cloud of tan dust obscures my vision. I can barely see 30 feet in front of me and I’m really scared that I’m going to hit someone. A worker walks right in front of the car and I swerve, barely missing him. I’m so afraid that I’m going to kill somebody and I panic myself into…

… a false awakening. I believe that I’m anotherdreamer and that I need to write this dream down before I forget it. My surroundings are alien to me, though, and I’m feeling super lazy, way too tired to get out of bed to journal. Something seems odd, though, and I flow into…

… another false awakening as myself! :canislucidus: I still feel really tired and lazy, but this time since I’ve “really woken up”, I decide to do the right thing and journal. I grab my DJ and walk into the bathroom, but as I’m holding the DJ I notice that the journal isn’t as thick as it usually is. (I keep a pen jammed in it.) I try the nose pinch, blow through, and now I’m lucid. I walk back into the bedroom and my vision dims until I’m in the void.

I rub my hands together, recalling the idea to try a little singing the next time I’m in the void. I sing a line about how “this is a lucid dreeeeeeam” and my voice comes out like half-badass/half-joke rock like Tenacious D. After some more singing and hand-rubbing, my vision comes back and I’m in my bedroom closet. I walk back out to the window and try some air guitar. It’s lame at first, but after a few tries, I hear some distant chords of electric guitar that actually sound pretty good.

I look out through the bedroom window onto a nighttime desert scene. As far as I can see there are rows of adobe buildings lit by neon signs. It looks like fun, so I phase through the window and hulk-jump off the side of the house toward the buildings. I do some mid-air guitar playing during this jump, too, and kind of flail my legs around like I’m trying to do some kind of rock star jump thing. I land between one set of restaurants and buildings on a dusty street, then hop into the air again.

While I’m up in the air, I decide that I want to try summoning Dreamer to hang out at one of these places to talk and pig out on a bunch of dream food. Out loud I say, “Okay, I know we’re supposed to meet here…” and then “Don’t be late!” I nag. When I land, though, the DC waiting there is a woman I don’t recognize, tall and pale with short brown hair, a pierced nose, and multiple piercings on each ear. She starts speaking to me in this really caustic, unpleasant American accent, berating me about my guitar playing.

“Your guitar playing was all bullshit,” says the woman. “That wasn’t even you!” She walks up to me, continuing to scold and complain about my guitar playing, telling me that my playing sucked, etc. I find this pretty annoying but for some reason I don’t think to just leave.

I don’t find this DC appealing, but I decide to turn things around by saying, “There’s no need to be so weird about it. If you wanted to have sex with me, you should have just asked.” As I say this, she takes on a different countenance, her hair darkening, her body growing a little shorter, a little more athletic-looking, and a softer, more attractive face, probably mixed-race. She approaches me and we kiss. We awkwardly lose our balance and do this not-at-all sexy fall onto the road. I make an attempt at escalating things to sexytime, but my vision has faded out. There are a few more seconds of void-kissing before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #252: The Struggling Artist

I’m power-walking up a hill with Mom, describing a dream from earlier in the night where she’d had me take her to a spooky house to ghost-hunt. “That’s just over the hill!” she says, and as she walks up ahead, I become lucid.

She speeds away over the hill, which now looks oddly vertical and impassable. When I follow the line of the hill all the way up, I see a ceiling, and realize that I’m now indoors. It looks very much like my childhood home. I remember my intent to try bonus Task of the Month (play an instrument that doesn’t exist in waking life) with Dreamer, so I attempt a summon, saying something about how now we’re going to do the concert that we talked about. I also dimly recall that Dreamer is actually playing music right now in waking life. (True!)

I try a few different varieties of summon, first assuming she’s there, then reaching my hand behind my back, and finally the old “spin around, there you are!” Each time, I get a flicker of presence but I’m just not able to properly finish the summon. I wander into a version of my parents’ bedroom and I see Dad snoozing on his right side. Through the window I see that it’s morning outside.

I still want to try playing a dream instrument, so I hook my right pinky and left thumb together to form a pantomime trumpet. I blast a few notes into this “trumpet” and it sounds like very realistic but very, very poor trumpet-playing. I’m pleased that I made some dream music this way, but I still don’t consider this to be the success that I was going for.

I walk past my blissfully snoring dad to the window and start phasing through. I briefly get hung up on the mini-blinds but after a moment of calming down, I’m all the way through. I drift down to the ground (for some reason I’m on the second floor, unlike waking life where this room would be on the ground floor.) I again attempt to summon Dreamer, by imagining that she’s behind me. It doesn’t work, and I spin around for a few more of these attempts before deciding to focus on the instrument for a bit.

I hover on my back for a while, looking up at the reddish early morning sky, imagining that the dream instrument will take shape in my hands. I feel a sensation like bubbles pressing gently against my fingers, but I can’t seem to turn this into anything musical. I descend back to the ground, coming back to my feet again. There’s a pine tree here like when I was a kid, and I grab a hunk of bark off of the tree in frustration and stuff it in my mouth to gnaw on it. It tastes about like you’d expect, and I blow the chunks of bark out of my mouth in a big, satisfying spray. I’m not sure what to do now and I move half-heartedly toward the deck as the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #250: Open Your Eyes

There’s a long sequence where I help set up a first date between a male friend and the twin sister of a female friend. Proud of having helped, I wander off to a hallway adjacent to where they’re having their date. There’s an old lady here staring at a set of wall hooks and commenting about how she’s a lucid dreamer and always checks wall hooks “just in case she’s dreaming.”

Interesting idea, I say, and notice that the shape of the hooks keeps changing. I spot a wadded up piece of paper and decide to make it float, just to see. It takes some effort, but float it does, and now I’m lucid. I walk through a nearby door into a warehouse stacked with boxes, intending to encounter Dreamer here.

As soon as I enter the room, I see Dreamer carrying some huge, heavy-looking cardboard box. She seems to be doing grunt work for some kind of retail job and there’s a disagreeable-looking young woman behind her shouting at her to hurry up her work. Dreamer sees me and gives me an apologetic look as this supervisor hustles her along. I approach the pair of them and tell the supervisor, “She’s all done with her work now, isn’t she?” The supervisor seems to accept this and wanders away.

I grab Dreamer’s hand and we run as I babble to her about how this is all a lucid dream. We leave the way I came in, but now it’s a marble entrance hall. Then we’re out on a crowded street, people walking in either direction down the sidewalk and cars rolling up and down the street. I shout something bold to the dream world about how this is my dream and nobody’s going to cause me any trouble. A lot of the DCs stop and turn to me at this, and one of the cars veers off of the street and comes rolling toward us.

Dreamer and I leap onto the hood of the car, run along the top of it, and jump into the air as we reach the trunk. She hangs on as we take flight, wrapping her arms around my neck and left shoulder. I comment on how silly it was of me to start thinking about dreamworld hostility when everything had been absolutely fine. Fortunately, none of it feels like a big deal, and we say something about how it should sort itself out.

The flight’s a lot of fun but at some point I lose my sight. Dreamer says, “The dream is still here. Open your eyes.” I’m nervous about this, but I try it. For a second they feel like they’re glued shut and I think this has to be my real eyes opening. But a little more effort and they’re open! We’re high above the clouds now, and I do a hard dive back to earth, determined that this time everything will be easy and peaceful. I somehow hit the ground sooner than expected and faceplant in some grass. Dreamer seems to be gone now.

I feel the grass a bit with my hands, and it feels phony, like mini-golf grass. A couple of DCs I know from another dream pass by, greet me, and I follow them into a building, through halls into a glass-walled office on the 2nd story. Somehow it’s night outside. An easy-going guy named Gary (black dude, friendly, on the tall side) joins us and I incorrectly remember that the Task of the Month is to pull a prank on a DC! (Oops, this is one from a previous month! )

As a prank, I decide to pretend that the window is sucking me out into the night. I act scared and start shouting as I phase through, landing on the corner of a nearby section of roof. I complete the prank by humping the corner of the roof. The guys inside start laughing uncontrollably and I float down to an outdoor restaurant patio that’s just below.

I think about whether I’ve got a chance to encounter Dreamer again and think about doing either another task or whatever the heck I feel like. As I think this, a woman seated at one of the patio tables turns to face me, and it’s Dreamer! She’s wearing a dress and has long blond hair, but otherwise looks and seems like herself. I talk a bit about tasks, but again lose my vision.

In response to this, she starts singing a strange Australian song about “marching around” and tells me to try marching around myself. As I’m flailing about, I feel myself kick over a table or two and I hear some people shout in surprise. “See how silly that is?” she says. “Just open your eyes!” I have some trouble at first, but after a little encouragement, my eyes come open just fine and I’m still in the same scene. Dreamer runs up and gives me a big hug before we walk off together, talking again about what we should do next. We never get around to anything before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #238: Patronus Interruptus

I'm standing in a busy hotel lobby thinking about how I need a mini-USB cable to charge my phone. I reach down and dig one out of my backpack but realize that I’ve actually just stolen it from this other guy crouched nearby. “Sorry about that, dude!” I say, clapping him on the back. He turns to me and smiles politely. He’s an Indian guy and I recognize him as a random guy from the shopping area where I met Wife for lunch earlier in the week. I realize that I’m dreaming.

I’m excited to be lucid and the overreaction starts pulling me out of the dream and into the void. I rub my hands together, determined not to lose the dream. My hands feel stiff and oddly angled and I start tumbling forward over and over. I keep at it, though, saying something like, “I am having this lucid dream!”

After a bit of a fight, the scene resolves itself into a room on the second story house with two windows. I move toward the first window, attempting to phase, but the window feels stiff and resistant. I move to the other window and attempt it again, once again having trouble. This irritates me and makes me stubborn, so I head right for the wall this time instead, saying out loud that “There’s nothing there, you know.” I cut cleanly through the wall this time and float down to the front yard.

I remember my intent to summon Dreamer and say, “[Dreamer], yeah, you’re just… you’re right over there!” and gesture at the front entrance of the house. Dreamer steps out from the shadow of the front entrance. She looks like herself apart from her hair being pink rather than purple. She’s wearing a purple jumper that looks like fleece.

We approach one another and I realize that something seems off about her personality. She seems not to have much personality at all yet but I feel relaxed about this and that if we keep talking she’ll get set right. I give her a peck on the bridge of her nose and she reacts with surprise, smiles, and runs off down the street. I jog along behind her, and start telling her about her appearance in a previous non-lucid from that night. “Hey, in this last dream, you’d written a book!”

Dreamer stops. The area we’re in looks abandoned and urban. Now she has a huge smile on her face and seems like herself. “Tell me about this book!”

“Oh, I almost forgot!” I say, and give her a hug. It’s nice and I remember how she used thoughts of our friendship to produce her patronus. I also remember her words of “encouragement” a few nights ago for my own patronus attempt:

“I wonder if your patronus will be a giant turd!”

Chuckling a little, I extend my left hand out while continuing the hug with my right arm. Dreamer and I are both watching my outstretched fingers with anticipation but when I try to shout, “Expecto patronum!” I do a choking gurgle instead. I get antsy and lose the dream.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #234: Tavern

Wife and I are standing across the table from another couple, a guy with brown hair and a lady with blond hair. The table is covered with a messy array of partially consumed peanut butter jars and jelly jars, which we’re examining in order to do some kind of inventory.

The guy and I are talking about how hard it is to find time for important non-work related activities like this jar thing. He says how impressed he is with his wife for finding time to run and that she wears “SXN 400 running shorts”. He says something about how hot Wife probably looks in those.

For some reason, I don’t find this impolite. Instead, I turn to Wife and tell her she’s beautiful, and compliment her for staying in such good shape even with the challenges of having and raising two kids. She accepts the compliment without awkwardness (tough for her in front of people), scooches closer to me and begins a long monologue. She’s switching rapidly from subject to subject and I’m having a hard time understanding her. I realize that I must be dreaming.

I grab on for a nose pinch, remembering to calm myself and just breathe in and out. Wife’s speech becomes even more rapid and confusing. I tell her that I’m having a lucid dream, but she’s talking over me. I walk around the room, continuing to calm myself and breathe through the nose pinch, but my vision goes dark, like the void. Wife’s voice is still there, though, and I just keep walking, having faith that the scene will right itself.

Now a doorway with a stairwell appears in my vision. Good. I walk forward, enter the stairwell, and walk down to a nearby window. I phase through the window and lower wall, my foot getting slightly stuck on the way out, but no problem. I’m outside on a street again, and now I attempt to fly. I have some trouble with this, so I do a quick Hulk-jump to regain some confidence.

I remember my intent to summon Dreamer and take her… somewhere. I’ll have to figure that part out later I guess. “Dreamer, youuuuu… are right around the corner!” I say, just before turning the corner.

When I turn the corner, there is a young woman there! She doesn’t look all that much like Dreamer. Hair is blond rather purple, and her overall appearance is different. She's plainer, younger, shorter than Dreamer, but I don’t worry about that. I figure that she'll become herself after I just spend some time walking around with her for a while.

“Dreamer!” I say. “It’s you! Hey, purple up for me!” (meaning “change your hair to purple.”)

“Hey!” she says. Her voice is completely wrong, and she even has an American accent. I don’t worry about it though. “Normally I would, but I’m just not feeling it today!” Her blond hair instantly disappears and now she’s bald as a cueball.

With this, she races off in a run, and I run behind her to keep up. She’s really fast and I’m having a little trouble keeping up. I encounter the sign from the previous dream that reads “←Tavern→” and remember it from before.

We run down a few streets before entering what looks like a train station. I know there’s something specific place I’d planned to take her, but I’ve forgotten it. “I think I’m supposed to take you to a tavern for Task of the Month.” (wrong!)

She seems to consider this. “Whatever it is, I’ll think of it soon.” With this, she twirls once and runs up a set of stairs.

I run after her, thinking that my plan was to go to a tavern with her and do some lucid drinking. I’m not completely confident that this is right (it’s not!) but I go with it for now. As I’m partway up the steps, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #233: Rucksack

I have a false awakening in a hotel room. It’s dark and my oldest son E is standing nearby. He asks me where Wife is and when I don’t know the answer, I feel terribly worried.

Another false awakening, and this time Wife is lying on the bed. She stirs and sits up. Confused, I complain to her that she shouldn’t have just disappeared earlier without telling us where she was going. She says something strange about the time of day and after a moment of feeling strange, I realize that this is a dream.

I walk to the hotel room window and phase through to the outside, finding myself 25 feet or so up in the air. I drift gently to the ground, finding myself in an alley during daytime. I’m behind a brick building and sign with fancy lettering reads:

“←Tavern→”

This sounds interesting, and apparently either way will take me there. I hop along through city streets until I come to a plaza at the base of a tall office building. I quite unexpectedly encounter an old friend “Rucksack”.

“Hi!” I say. I’m surprised, because he and I haven’t really talked in a few years.

“Hey,” he says. “I really like the stuff that you’re doing on DreamViews and I wanted to buy you some extra <dream control tricks?>. When you log on, you’ll see a $50 donation. That’s from me!”

I thank him, and he quickly leaves. I wonder what this new dream control could be. Unsure what to do next, I bound joyously around the plaza for a bit 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 #229: The Note

I’m sitting in a restaurant and something feels off to me. I stand up to find Wife standing here beside me and I realize that a lucid dream has started. “Do you want to come along?” I ask Wife.

“Sure, okay!” she responds rather happily. This is a nice change because she’s normally more involved in the dream plot and not as cooperative.

I walk outside of the restaurant with Wife, opening the glass door to walk through. Oops, I’d meant to do a phase for the competition! I try to quickly phase through it while it’s open. I phase my arm through the door and then start moving the rest of my body through, Wife giving me a very strange look. The door becomes flimsy in the middle of the attempt and starts folding in on itself. I gyrate my hips, trying to hurry through before it collapses, and I’m very conscious that it totally looks like I’m humping it.

The door becomes completely unmanageable and the scene comes apart as I fall into the void. I hand-rub for a bit to wait this out but sense that something is close to my face, something that I can chew on. I bite down on it and it tastes like a soft, very mild licorice. I usually hate licorice but there’s something about this that makes it a little more bearable, sort of like it’s been crossed with bubble gum somehow.

I keep chewing and chewing, walking forward through the void. I eat fast, consuming yards of the stuff as I walk forward. After a while, it just feels like it’s been too long in the void and that I need to do something about it. For some reason I raise both of my arms over my head before calling out, “Dreamer, pull me out!” I don’t feel any physical contact, but almost immediately find myself standing in my darkened master bedroom, no longer in the void.

There’s a piece of paper stuck on the opposite wall covered with large, handwritten letters. I interpret this as being a note that Dreamer has left for me. It looks like gibberish, so I move forward, trying to get a better look. It rearranges itself, but it’s still unreadable. Then the letters rearrange into:

“Sorry couldn’t read reply, check the”

I interpret this as meaning there’s something I’m meant to read, but I don’t know what. This is relevant for later… see the end of this entry!

I wander out into the hall, which is lit up like it’s morning. I remember my intent to phase and try to phase through my youngest child R’s door. Unfortunately the door just comes open instead of letting me phase and I see R beginning to stir around in bed. This sounds like a good way to get wrapped up in a dream plot, so I back away into the hall.

I fly down the stairs to the kitchen area to see that the breakfast table has been moved far to the side and that almost the entire area is covered with Lego pieces. The coolest part is that most of them have been assembled into these amazing, moving models of roads, freeways, machines, amusement park carousels, and all kinds of other things. It’s really vivid, so much so that it’s hard to shake the feeling that I’m viewing a scene from waking life. I think that in this scenario, Wife must have stayed up all night building this.

I leave through the back door, finding myself in a park walking along a red dirt path dotted with autumn leaves. I follow the path into a building with large plate glass windows all around its walls. I look back at the park through the window, marveling at how realistic it looks when I shift my perspective. I feel excited and happy to see this, saying, “I can’t believe my mind generated all of this.”

I remember again that I’d meant to phase, so I walk toward one of the plate glass windows, anticipating an easy phase. Unfortunately, before I get there, the dream ends.

Notes: Here’s something cool. Immediately upon waking up, I removed my sleep mask and looked over at the clock. Just as I was looking at it, my iPod’s screen came on with a notification. I popped it open and just at that moment I’d received a Skype message from Dreamer.

This was really exciting to me because of what the note had said earlier (“Sorry couldn’t read reply, check the”), and the timing was perfect. I guess that the end of the message would have been “check the iPod”. Pretty cool!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #221: The Singing Robot

I’m taking an unusually long time to fall asleep after WBTB and I sense a shift which makes me wonder whether the dream has begun. I will myself to roll out of bed and I find myself floating in the air about 3 feet above and to the left of where I normally sleep.

The sun shouldn’t be up yet but a trickle of daylight’s coming in through the shutters. I roll a couple of times, a little out of control. When I try to fly I wind up just heading straight downward, soon faceplanting in the floor. The scene goes dark and I hold on for DEILD. After a while I give up,I incorrectly thinking I’ve failed and have a false awakening, feeling disappointed that the dream was “so short”.

I log onto DV and see that Dreamer has left a series of comments on one of my DJ entries. Rather than text, these comments are a series of giant images that are larger than my screen, so I have to scroll around to see the entire picture. The first is one of Dreamer standing with one foot on a balcony railing, looking back at the “camera” and grinning. She’s holding her other foot over her head almost straight up in the air like some kind of crazy ballet move.

The next few pictures show different angles of a similar scene from a Japanese manga and I see that she’s just creating some favorite piece of a manga she likes. I think that this looks dangerous but I chuckle at her cleverness.

Soon the dream ends and I hold on for DEILD. I feel another shift and I once again roll out of bed into the air. This time I’m able to fly again but my dream body feels slight and insubstantial. It’s daytime, just as before, and I phase out through the shutters. The dream’s feeling really thin, and I try to rub my hands together but I can’t even manage that simple act. The dream soon falls into the void.

“I’m having a lucid dream,” I say, but my voice comes out very gargled and robotic. I don’t want to lose the dream, so I try singing. It works, but every word comes out in this strange, metallic robot voice:

This is a dreeeeeeam,
This is a dreeeeeeeeeeeam…
<pause> Dream dream dreeeeeeam…

The audio holds together for longer than I expect, but eventually I lose even this and wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #220: Purple Haze

I’m walking through a hallway in an art school, getting ready to attend a class. I recall a previous dream where a lot of money had been stolen from my wallet and I dig for my wallet in a panic. I recall my intent to LD, get suspicious and nose pinch RC my way into lucidity.

I remember my intent to summon Dreamer for the challenge as I walk into one of the classrooms, but as I walk in a cluster of art students engage me in conversation. Before I know it, I’m blabbing about lucid dreaming until I’m only semi-lucid. Something prompts me to take out my iPod and check it. It acts just like waking life, but one of the words on-screen is “Kentucky”. Look away, look back, the letters are now a jumble, and I’m lucid again.

Wary of being distracted again, I duck back out into the hallway, which is now empty. I walk along for a while, thinking about how I’ll do my summon. I want to try rolling with what the dream gives me and using an existing DC. I step into an atrium where I see a handful of DCs walking around. I point at the closest one and say, “You’re Dreamer!” Immediately I notice that her hair is purple and she’s walking toward me. I lean in to make sure and it’s a perfect match!

“Yeah it’s me!” she says, as if nothing could be more obvious.

We hug and I start describing my plans for the dream. I tell her that I’m planning for us to do something together but that I’m having some trouble remembering Task of the Month. “That is Task of the Month!” she says, laughing. (Good call!)

“Oh right,” I say, “that’s Basic. [Note: Wrong, that’s Bonus!] But what’s advanced?”

She furrows her brow and then shrugs. We walk down the hall together and I tell her that I have an idea for something cool to do outside. We talk a bit more but I’m feeling like all this walking is compromising my lucidity, so I say, “Hey, let’s just fly, okay?” I turn my back toward her because for some reason I think she needs to ride around on my back. (How insulting!)

“Okay!” she says, and hops onto my back, “seatbelting” herself on by reaching her right arm over my right shoulder and her left hand under my left arm, then clasping her hands together. I hop up into the air and fortunately the flying feels effortless. We go soaring through the atrium into an area that looks like a shopping mall. There are a number of DCs milling about below and I’m surprised to see that a few of them also have purple hair!

We swoop low past a bench of DCs and a few of them run. I laugh at this, and Dreamer does too (though a little less maniacally than me.) We’re heading toward a low wall and I have a little trouble pulling up, my dream body kind of “oozing” awkwardly over the top. Made it, though! I see a set of doors off in the distance, so I set us down and head for them, determined to get outside. All the while I keep talking about how all of this is a lucid dream.

As I’m talking Dreamer starts taking over more and more of the conversation. I keep my left hand on her right shoulder as I walk in order to keep her “stuck” as part of the scene. But after a bit I notice that her accent, perfect at first, sounds all wrong and she’s changed the subject from dreaming to how I really should go back to art school. I nearly lose lucidity, but look over in time to see that Dreamer has been replaced by a young, dark-haired woman who looks Thai. “You never go to your art classes!” she says. “How can you expect to succeed if you don't go to your art classes?”

“You are not Dreamer!” I declare, pointing a dorky finger in the air and running for the exit.

“Wait!” says the woman, and I feel her grab onto my ankle. I ignore the sensation, though, and fly out through the door, phasing outside to a parking lot. There are a number of DCs milling about, mostly women, and all of them have purple hair!

I swoop toward the closest DC, a stout, middle-aged woman with glasses. “You’re Dreamer!” I say, pointing dramatically at her and kind of dropping into a goofy lunge. She says something noncommittal so I follow up with, “Don’t worry, you will be,” which she seems to accept with some surprise.

I tell her that my Task is to eat a huge dessert (somehow I’ve finally remembered) and she tells me that there is a “Chili’s” nearby. I point to a building and leadingly say, “You mean there, right?” She agrees and somehow I wind up inside of this restaurant, the purple-haired woman no longer around.

I’m walking forward in a huge line in order to enter the restaurant, which winds through some kind of indoor forest. I zoom in close to the tree’s detail and see ants crawling along the bark. I study the way that the lighting and shadows play off of the trees in real-time and I brag about all of this detail to the DCs, gushing that “This is all inside my head!” They nod politely and look a little uncomfortable.

We come to a long spiral staircase downward that leads to a cavern floor blanketed in mist. I don’t want to wait so I leap over the side, floating down to the floor and then moving into a dark tunnel. I remember how Dreamer had good luck producing a flame from her finger and how Xanous had focused on the pain of the experience to create fire in his hands. I hold up my thumb and expect this to happen for me as well but there’s nothing.

Now I expect pain and heat. There’s a slight tingling ache, but it’s little more than a nuisance. “The big fire!” I say. Nothing. I exit the tunnel into a large, darkened movie theater. I try to shout “The big fire!” but I get the sensation of my waking life voice croaking out the words and I’m startled awake.