CanisLucidus

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.

This is an interesting lucid that happened about 40 minutes or so after first falling asleep. These are very unusual for me! Also had a much more nightmarish start than most of my lucids.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #247: Happier!

I’m standing by my pool, which looks distressingly green and nasty. While I’m stressing out about how this happened, a large snake comes slithering out of the pool toward me. “Whoa, are you kidding me?” I shout, running a few feet away toward a stone wall that’s about eight feet high. I scramble up to the top before the snake can get me. I notice that this felt easier than it should have, and I become lucid.

I let go of the wall and float away, my feet rotating gently upward until I’m lying on my back, looking up at the sky. I’m in some kind of miniature canyon, and the green water is now just a calm pond rather than my pool. I fly down toward the only exit, which seems to lead into a cave.

The cave interior is well-lit but feels sinister. The walls are stained red as if they’re covered with blood and strange growls echo off of the walls. Further down the slope I see dim, hulking figures shambling through the fog. I think that they look like zombies. I remember that I want to summon Dreamer but I want to wait until the environment becomes more pleasant.

I walk further down the slope and a huge, crazed-looking man with a black beard charges at me, his hands outstretched for my throat. That’s not real, I think, and I feel only a dull impact as he passes through me. Out loud, I say to Dreamer, “I know you’re here with me. I’ll call you in soon.” (I still don't want to call her in while the dream's still going all horror show on me.)

Another crazed figure charges me, decayed flesh hanging off of his face. Yuck! Why is this dream trying to be so scary? I turn away, knownig that he’ll pass right through me, and he does. I emerge from the cave into a large tiled room that looks like an industrial kitchen. About a dozen or so zombies are in here, rising up from the floor, shambling forward, and then collapsing with a sigh into a heap of bones. Then the cycle begins again. It’s gruesome to look at and I really want to fix it.

I decide that the zombies and I are all going to sing together! I come up with some song where the chorus goes, “Happier! Happier! Happierrrrrrrr!!” I belt it out with all I’ve got, and the zombies join in with me. Each cycle they look more and more normal, until after about 30-40 seconds, all of the zombies are now blond guys wearing shades, suits, and sporting 80s looking haircuts.

I keep singing with these guys for a while, really enjoying the turnaround of this dream. I realize that I should think about other goals, and as I’m making my way into the next room, the dream thins out and fades.

This was the first of two LDs from last night. My primary goal was to focus on vividness and I really think it helped. Great vividness on this one!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #136: Neon

I'm walking along a road at night, going over a (mostly) false memory that I just had a shared dream with my son "E". I wonder whether I'm dreaming right now, too, and with a nose pinch reality check, I confirm that I am.

Immediately I remember my goal of trying to make the dream as vivid as possible before doing anything else. To my left is a strange, 20-foot high stack of flattened stones sandwiching layers of damp newspaper over and over. I run my fingers over the stone and the paper, noting the detail and the way that my hands look as they pass over them. As I listen, I hear the sound of people talking and celebrating, and I think it's coming from just over the other side of this stack.

By now the dream feels really vivid and I begin to climb the stack of rocks. To climb, I squelch my fingers into the soft layers of damp newspaper between the stones and work my way up. My body feels light, so the climb is natural and easy. I climb up to the top, stand on the top of the stack, and look out on a lively scene. It's like an old west town that's just drenched in neon lights. DCs dressed in western wear are walking happily back and forth between wooden buildings covered with neon signs. A young couple shares a laugh, and she leans her head against his shoulder as they walk across the dusty street to what looks like a bar.

The scene is so vivid that I become overwhelmed. I've got this huge grin and I feel like I'm crying with emotion. I wonder whether it's possible to cry in a dream, and laugh a little at the thought.

I jump down to the ground and walk slowly through the dusty street, enjoying the sight of the DCs passing by around me. At the end of the street is a building without any neon lights. It looks like a schoolhouse and I walk up to the door before turning around to look back toward the stack of stone. Behind the stack I see hills lining the horizon. The shape and height remind me of the Hollywood Hills. Dozens of green signs float over the hills, each with the name of a town or city and the city's population painted on it. I try to remember some of the names but it feels like they're changing. I let it go and turn back to the schoolhouse.

I'm in a classroom now that's filled with other parents watching their kids play. There's a fascinating array of toys like train sets that encircle the room, some kind of clunky robot that walks around, and lots of other cool stuff. I see my son "E" playing here as well, kind of jumping around watching the train go.

I glance back up at the other parents, then back down at the room -- and the kids and toys have vanished! Everyone is milling around and talking about what a great time the kids had. I tell them something to indicate that I'm dreaming and walk back out through the door.

The neon wild west town is gone now, and I step directly out onto a street that's busy with pedestrian traffic. Across the street I see an Olympic swimming pool built into what looks like a big basketball court. I think that I'll use it for the "Great Barrier Reef" Task of the Year.

I start toward the street. Two young women are talking as they walk past me. I notice that one of them is really cute, mid-20s, dark hair, and very short (maybe 5 feet tall!) I have an impulse to kiss her and as soon as I think this, she turns toward me, smiling. Her friend walk off without her, oblivious and now treating her like a stranger. At first I think this is cool but then I think better of spending my time kissing DCs. Need to focus!

I will the DC to stop crushing on me but something goes wrong with the dream control... and now she seems to actually hate me.

She bares her teeth angrily and walks toward me, her hands clenched into fists. I can tell that she clearly intends to kick my ass. I want no part of any of this and try to scurry across the street but she jogs after me, still looking like she wants to flatten me. I hurry away and kind of wave her off, saying, "Just leave me alone!" Then I turn completely away and ignore her, hoping that she'll disappear on her own. I make it across the street without being mauled, but as I'm getting close to the pool, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #135: Caught in a Net

I'm in my childhood home, discussing a business venture with my friend "Leroy" and another friend "Crispy", someone I lost touch with a few years back. I have a false memory that we've been in business together for a long time and we're discussing the fate of a fourth partner, a guy I knew in high school that we'll call "Lucky Bastard".

Crispy wanders off somewhere and as she leaves, Lucky Bastard joins Leroy and me at a small conference table. Lucky Bastard reveals that his plan for the business is to inject hostile code into the video game Trine and upload it to a file-sharing service. I ask him how this is supposed to make us any money. He has no clue. Leroy and I look at each other. I tell Lucky Bastard that he's fired. He cries a bit and shrinks down, turning into a small gnome-like creature. I find this awkward, so I leave the room and walk down the hallway.

It still looks like my childhood home and I pass by a guest room. There's a queen size bed in there now and I see Crispy lying in it next to a man and a child, neither of whom I know. I worry that Crispy will be upset that I fired Lucky Bastard without including her in the decision but as I consider telling her, I see that she has disappeared. I become lucid.

I wander back into the hall to the living room. It looks the same except for the fact that all of the furniture has been removed. Something makes me worry about the stability of the dream, so I rub my hands together a few times. This helps, and I remember my plan to use my voice for added stability. I do a really loud yell and it comes out really low, roaring, and generally bad-ass. The walls of the house shudder.

Now I'm feeling like a bigshot. I try to yell "Clarity now!" but the words catch in my throat. I try again, and once again there's this awkward catch in my throat when I try. I feel humbled and a little embarrassed. Not wanting to get too caught up in this, I phase through the window out to what should be the front yard. Instead of this, though, I find myself standing by a pool.

A few different people are sitting around the pool in beach chairs. One guy who looks sort of like Jared Leto asks me whether I'm "from DreamViews". I tell him that I am and he says that he is too and that he used to go there a lot back in 2010. I don't really believe him but I decide that it'd be smart to give him some kind of password just for fun. I make something up and say it to him, and he nods, committing it to memory. (Too bad I forgot it immediately afterward. )

I stand at the edge of the pool, preparing to jump into it for Task of the Year Australia. I want to put a bunch of sand and corral into it and make it turn into the Great Barrier Reef like NyxCC suggested. As I do this, a tan guy dressed like a lifeguard stands there watching me. I'm a little uncomfortable that he's staring at me, but I go ahead with jumping into the pool.

I jump in a cannonball style so that my butt will strike the water first. But just as I hit the water, somehow the lifeguard is scooping me out of the pool with a leaf net. He says something about how unsafe what I'm doing is. I'm very annoyed by this and as I stand at the side of the pool contemplating what to do, I wake up.

I hold still for DEILD and after a little bit, a half-dream of an alleyway starts taking shape. I can navigate a bit but I'm not yet part of the scene. I can feel my arm sort of tucked behind the pillow and I try to imagine it waving around in a repetitive motion, hoping that this will draw me in. I try for a while, but after a bit the alley scene collapses.

I go for DEILD again, and get sharp auditory HI of my son "E" going "Yeah!!" followed by Wife saying, "Don't teach him that kind of thing!" It's very realistic and I'm pulled too far out to continue the dream chain.

The power was out at our house for the afternoon and overnight, so I had no excuse not to go to bed on time. Discipline at last! This is the first of a pair of lucids from last night.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #132: The Raccoon

I'm sitting at our breakfast table with Wife, my two kids "E" and "R", my mom, and my dad. R's in his booster seat and positioned close to the back door (which is made of glass.) A huge raccoon walks up to the back door, gets onto his hind legs and starts pawing at the glass. "I think he likes [R]!" remarks Dad.

I wonder whether I should be concerned that we have 3-foot raccoons wandering through our back yard. After pondering this for a moment, I decide that this is a little strange and use the nose pinch reality check, breathing clearly and immediately becoming lucid.

Immediately I want to head outside, so I phase through the glass into the yard. Everything looks more or less like waking life. My goal is to get to the Great Barrier Reef for Task of the Year and I think about using the pool as a transition point. The plan: fall backward into the water, imagine that I'm actually in the ocean, then turn around. Hopefully then I actually am in the ocean.

I walk up to the edge of the pool, turn around so that my back is to the pool, and fall backward into the water. I go under briefly but quickly surface. I imagine that I'm on the edge of a huge ocean, but when I turn around, I still just see the other side of the pool. I swim around for a while, wondering what to try next. I'm getting ready to try to imagine an ocean behind me again but before I can, I wind up in the void.

From the void, I probe at my dream body but after only a couple of seconds I experience a shuddering sensation and hear a crackle like electricity. It reminds me of a violent WILD transition. Almost immediately a new scene forms -- a tan, smoothly curved, dumbbell-shaped object spinning by itself in the void. I want to reach out to it but I don't seem to have a dream body. I can shift my perspective, though, and I "move" closer to the tan dumbbell. It seems to be lit by some unseen light source behind me. I spend a few more seconds here before the dream ends.

The second of two lucids from playing Myst at WBTB.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #123: Walking Backwards

I'm walking by a pool with Dad toward a pile of towels on a beach chair. He asks me how to get really lean for the summer. I'm going through some long-winded explanation and he keeps asking the same really basic questions, apparently understanding almost nothing I'm saying. I wonder why he's so slow to grasp what I'm saying but then realize that I'm dreaming.

Dad has vanished and I'm standing alone by the empty pool. It's long and skinny, like a stretched out Olympic pool. I fly over it toward a doorway on the opposite side. I walk through the doorway into a busy two-story mall. I decide to allow myself a couple of minutes to walk around and take in the sights.

I pass a few stores, turn a corner, and suddenly feel a jolt of fear that the dream won't be stable. I start narrating out loud: "I'm having a really stable lucid dream." I rub my hands together, continuing to narrate out loud to the DCs passing nearby. "And now I am rubbing my hands together. You cannot forget to do that shit!" I yell.

I remember wanting to get to the Colosseum and expect to see an Exit sign. There it is, on my left, near a bank of doors. I walk toward the doors when I spot my friend "Chia" approaching me with a sort of vacuous grin on her face. "Hi!" I say. She repeats it back: "Hi!", still grinning, but her face is sort of morphing into a stranger's face. It's not stable.

I tell Chia that I'm going to the Colosseum and that I'll talk to her later. She nods, and rather than turning away, she walks backwards, not looking where she's going. She's walking near a support column that for some reason is covered with awful stuff like barbed wire and Orcs Must Die-style wall blades. "Watch where you're going!" I say, really feeling distressed. But she just smiles blissfully, circling around the column and out of sight.

Okay, back to the task at hand -- Colosseum. I head for the exit doors, shoving the door open with the crash bar, expecting to wind up in one of the tunnels under the Colosseum. The next hall is a tunnel but it still looks like part of the mall. As I'm deciding what to do next, I'm thrown into the void.

In the darkness of the void, I clearly sense my dream body. But when I try to rub my hands together, I can't make it happen. Awareness of my physical body starts to creep back in. I keep trying to move my dream hands but I'm not getting any response. After attempting this for a while, I finally wake up.

These were the most realistic non-SSILD false awakenings I think that I've ever had. Made for a fun series!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #121: Barefoot

I'm dimly aware that I'm dreaming in some scene that I can't remember, and as I become lucid, I'm thrown straight into the void. I hang on for dear life and start rubbing my hands together like crazy. It feels solid and realistic and pretty soon I feel comfortable that I'm anchored pretty well into the dream.

Right away I remember that I want to get to the Colosseum. Like the previous dream, I want to build the Colosseum scene from the void. This time I choose to do so by constructing the Colosseum's inner stone wall. I reach my left hand out and yes, it feels like it's dragging along stone. I walk along this wall, dragging my fingers upward until they reach a... ceiling? No, that's wrong. I deny the ceiling's existence and after a bit my fingers keep climbing until they reach the wall's top.

Now I'm feeling the top and side of the wall with both hands. It feels very realistic now, and the scene comes sharply into focus. I see that I'm rubbing some isolated piece of stone that's standing in a modern-looking, well-lit library. It's very cleanly decorated and only sparsely populated with bookshelves, and two spiral staircases lead up to a second floor. I see a couple of friends standing around. Near a table is "AJ", and standing across from her is "LS". Neither notice me. Further away I spot an extremely attractive female stranger (Asian, mid-20s, long hair). I suppress a strong impulse to approach her for "that thing" and instead turn toward the glass door, phasing through to the outside.

Outside is a plaza with a broad set of bricked steps leading down to a grassy area. At the top of the stairs to my right, two teenage girls are seated at a white metal table having a meal (lunch?) "Which way to the Colosseum?" I ask them, and one girl points immediately across the plaza, swallowing like she has a mouthful of food she wants to down before speaking. "Thanks!" I say, and start flying in that direction. I get high enough to spot a distant tower and a tree-lined street nearby, but the sound of a wet sneeze over the baby monitor sends me into the black. I keep my eyes closed, trying to DEILD, but I hear Wife groan unhappily, and now I don't think I can get back to sleep.

I open my eyes and find myself lying in bed in our darkened bedroom. (False awakening.) I get out of bed and reach over to grab my journal, expecting my Kindle Fire to be on top, but it's missing. Where the hell did it go? I step into the master bathroom, close the door so I don't disturb Wife, and try to flip the light switch on. Instead the fan comes on. I try the other switch. Fan again. Come on, what the hell? I'm going to forget everything. Both switches at once, and still no light, just the fan. I hit the nose pinch and blow through. Amazing.

I go back to the bedroom and it's brighter now. Wife's missing, and the shutters are open. I leap up, phase through the window, and perch on a dream balcony that's outside. The balcony overlooks a courtyard far below, very much unlike the geography of our real house. I fly out over the courtyard, soon coming to a forest of extremely tall trees. The trees are like pines that stretch far into the sky, coming close to touching the cloud cover. I think that if I can just get over these trees, I'll be able to look down at a huge chunk of the landscape, spot the Colosseum, and fly there for Europe Task of the Year.

I fly higher and higher, trying to crest just over the treetops. I get close to the top but keep feeling resistance. I know that it's mental, so I keep shrugging it off, insisting to myself that I am flying higher each time. I approach a cloud and do this flailing little grasp for it. For some reason, I briefly see stars and get the sensation of my heartrate increasing. This takes me straight into...

A false awakening in our bedroom. I look at the clock and see that the screen's completely dark. I nose pinch and blow through. I approach the window, phase through, and hop out onto a ledge. I'm over another courtyard (this one with a pool), and about 3 stories up, suddenly feeling very nervous about attempting flight. I just became lucid. Am I sure? I hit a secondary nose pinch and make sure that this feels vaguely like "dream gravity". I think about the phase and the multiple nose pinches, and decide that I should be okay.

I'm still nervous, though, and when I jump, I float to the ground rather than fly. The landing's soft, and I'm sure that I'm dreaming, but I decide not to push it with the flying just now. I walk around the pool, scanning the crowd for a while, seeing many familiar faces -- my friend "The Dragon" and his wife, my father-in-law, and a couple of other friends that I can no longer recall. I walk past the shallow end of the pool, past where some kids are playing some game with a ball. At the edge of the courtyard is an ivy-covered archway that I'm planning on walking through, maybe turning it into a gateway to the Colosseum.

I remember to try to summon NewArtemis. As I pass by the stairway out of the pool, without stopping, I extend my hand toward the pool, and say, "[NewArtemis], are you ready to go?" It works! Art emerges from the water, walks up the stairs, and hops out of the pool.

Her voice is faint, but as she walks along she says, "Don't want to wear shoes. Don't like to wear shoes."

I don't know what to make of this, so I just go back to my stuff: "The Colosseum's right through here. You ready?"

"Yeah!" Her voice is still faint, but much more enthusiastic. As we approach the doorway, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #120: Raiders of the Lost Colosseum

I'm an Indiana Jones type of character. I'm in a huge stone chamber, deep underground, sitting on a platform on the arm of some strange metallic device. The device appears to be some kind of scale, with two arms extending to the side, my butt planted firmly on the left arm.

There are square receptacles along each arm and I'm holding a square-shaped block. I'm somehow supposed to fit into the right spot in order to make the scale balance and unearth some kind of treasure.

It occurs to me that I might be dreaming and I quickly decide that I am. I'm fascinated by this device, though, and want to keep playing with it. I try the little square block in a couple of different receptacles, which seems to lower and raise the platform I'm sitting on. After doing this for a bit, I blank out and go into the void. It's pretty sudden, and I lose track of my dream body.

Now I'm seated at my kitchen table, semi-lucid and slightly confused. There's a weird cord hanging down by the back door like something that would go with a set of blinds. I don't recogznize it, and I realize that I'm still dreaming.

I phase through the door into the yard. It looks like my yard, but the sky is orange and the fencing around my pool is missing. There's a strange ripple in the water of my pool, and I walk toward it to investigate. When I'm a few feet away, though, my vision goes black and I wind up in the void.

I'm determined not to lose my dream body this time, so I quickly lick my right hand, then rub my hands together. (Why lick first? Nobody knows.) I poke at my jaw, chest, stomach, and weenie. All are present and accounted for, and I'm satisfied that my dream body is intact.

Now I want to get to the Colosseum. I drop down to one knee and rub my right hand in the ground, expecting to feel Colosseum sand in my fingers. Immediately I do. Now I recall that in the past I had imagined a gladius (ancient Roman sword) in my hand and started swinging it around to transition out of the void. I decide to do this again.

I feel the weight of the sword in my hand as I whirl it around like a crazed chimp. I can hear the noise of a crowd all around me now and my vision's beginning to form. It's still blurry, but I know that I'm heading in the right direction. The momentum seems to give out at some point, though, and I wake up.

Finally -- Advanced Task of the Month!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #87: The Diamond

I'm driving somewhere in California, preparing to merge onto the freeway. Some guy in a Hummer blocks me from merging in, though, even steering his behemoth vehicle toward me so that I have to run off the road. I wind up on some semi-abandoned, crumbling old road, following one other car. The road's filled with enormous potholes and huge slabs of the road jut up at crazy angles. The other driver and I steer carefully around these chunks as best we can and I'm very worried that I'll break an axle. I think that this is all cause by California's ever-present budget woes.

The road ends at a marina but the other car has vanished. I get out of the car and sit by a wooden railing, pouting about my problems. As I look down at the water, I see a little girl crash a jet-ski into a dock, fly over the handlebars, perform three perfect back hand-springs, and walk off as if nothing has happened. I'm impressed by her athleticism and very relieved that she wasn't hurt.

There are narrow wooden walkways leading in a couple of different directions, but none of them are wide enough to fit a car. I need to keep driving but I don't want to leave my car here. I think that if this was a dream, I'd just go jack one, Grand Theft Auto-style. This thought makes me critically question reality and I realize that I'm dreaming!

I leap to my feet and take flight, soaring high enough to see the top of a nearby apartment building. There's a huge pool party on the roof of this building, lots of DCs milling around, and I decide to check it out. I discard the "Great Wall of China" Task of the Year for now and decide that I'll do the "make a diamond out of coal" Advanced Task of the Month.

I look for the DC who seems most in charge and central to the storyline of this party scene. A girl that's seated in a beach chair nearby seems to be the focal point of the scene. She's mid-20s, black, very cute, and three or four of her girlfriends stand deferentially around her as they all talk. While it's not an exact match, I notice that she looks a bit like Stacey Dash.



As I walk up to pseudo-Stacey, she and her friends turn to look at me. I say, "I'm going to give you a diamond." One of her buddies, a brunette holding a slender glass of what looks like champagne, laughs at this.

"Are you serious?" asks "Stacey".

"Totally serious," I say. "It's for a task. You just need to hand me that lump of coal that you're carrying around."

"Sure, take it!" she says, handing me a peach-sized lump of coal. Whew, glad that worked, I think to myself. Stacey and her friends watch me, intrigued. I give the coal one quick squeeze, imagining that it immediately feels sharp and hard like a diamond. I open my hand and yes it's a diamond! There are some lumps of dusty black coal-crap on it, but I quickly brush them away, revealing a sparkling, golf ball-sized, round cut diamond.

Her friends murmur appreciatively and I hand Stacey the diamond. "Aww, it's so nice!" she says, smiling appreciatively. She holds it up to the sunlight to admire it then stands up and approaches me. "Hey, will you help me out with a question that I had?" she asks.

"Sure. What's up?" I'm very intrigued about what her question is.

"What's the difference between..." she begins, pointing toward herself and circling her finger as if to indicate "me" or "all of me". Her voice trails off and I quickly wind up in the void. The excitement of TotM and the anticipation of the question get me too wound up, though, and I wake up before I can use the void to travel anywhere.

I buckle down for DEILD but I feel like I'm not going to fall back asleep. I try to really let go, and after waiting for a bit, I slip back into a non-lucid dream: "Stacey" is in a dark, wood-panelled office, seated across from a severe-looking woman in her 50s. Stacey is visibly upset and says, "You have no right hire someone else to ghost write my story! How can you do this to me?"

The lady, who I think is her publicist, is unsympathetic. "Not everything is about you." I wake up.

This was one of two lucid dreams that came out of an experiment with caffeine during WBTB that I tried last night. (Thanks, Xanous!) My beverage of choice was green tea.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #44: Pool Care in the Temple of Zeus

I'm standing outside of a pool where people are swimming around having a business meeting. They're fretting about the now-green condition of another pool that's one story down and perhaps 100 feet away from the one where the meeting is taking place. I jump into the clean pool, swim toward the meeting, and explain that all we'll need to do is get the Ph and stabilizer levels fixed up and then shock it with liquid chlorine or even household bleach. They're relieved and grateful, and I have one moment of contentment before I realize that I jumped into the pool wearing a backpack with a laptop in it and have probably ruined it. I'm pretty distressed by thus until I realize that I'm dreaming.

"Got to go, everybody! This is all a dream." The other swimmers seem mildly surprised by this but they quickly accept it and go back to their meeting.

In the distance I see that the pool ends at what appears to be a sheer drop-off. Past that, I see the skyline of a city in the early morning. Eager to explore, I try to rise out of the water but somehow have trouble getting into the air. I yell out that I am going to fly into the air and nothing will stop me. I employ some probably-unnecessary profanity in my speech. I shoot out of the water, knifing through some overhanging tree branches (where did these come from?) and land on the roof of a stone temple in the style of Ancient Greece.

I'm overlooking a large, open-air courtyard that's surrounded by Doric columns. Past the courtyard is miles of grassland and a sky that's dark with storm clouds. The clouds are lit up with occasional bursts of sheet lightning and I hear low rumbles of thunder.



There's a strange platform of gray stone suspended above me and it's hung low enough that I can't stand fully upright. I decide to phase and begin pushing my hand upward against the platform, which feels solid. I push harder, and my fingers start digging chunks of stone out of the platform. I'm somewhat pleased by this but I decided to refocus my efforts on phasing through the platform.

I push my hands and head into the stone and this time it feels cottony and insubstantial. My vision goes black as my head disappears into the stone and I feel my feet leaving the temple roof. I float upward through the "stone", gradually becoming disoriented. I feel like I'm in a bed now, but I don't believe it. Still blind, I reach out, grabbing onto a pillow. I suddenly become very aware of my sleeping body and wake up in my real bed.

I experienced some challenges in this LD and, sad to say, I didn't exactly pass with flying colors. I need to be confident with producing a light source and finding my way out when I'm lost in some building. I wish I'd remembered darknightedlady's observation that "Exit" signs seem to work well for me in navigation. They're a reliable tool for me and I need to keep them in mind.

Not my best work, but I very much enjoyed the exploratory romp anyway!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #37: Hotel California

I'm business partners with my good friend "Leroy", and we ride a bus to a conference at some sunny resort. We pass by a nice pool complex on our way in, and many DCs are soaking up the sun poolside. I recognize MS, a friend from high school, but she disappears into the crowd as we draw closer.



Leroy and I walk through the hotel entrance and move toward the elevator. There are smashed eggs all over the floor in front of the elevator door, and I say, "[Leroy], I'm tired of walking on eggshells around you." Two things dawn on me: a) That joke was terrible and b) This is all a dream.

Leroy has disappeared, but momentum still has me reaching for the elevator button. I stop when I see that the elevator only goes down. I remember that I'm trying to either witness the Trinity test or relive the Apollo 11 mission. Neither of those are likely to be in the basement, so I start looking for a way out.

I turn toward the hotel entrance and see that it has been replaced by a solid, slightly reflective metal plate. I try to phase through it the way I do with glass, but it feels totally solid. Unwelcome anxiety starts to creep in and I set off down a nearby hallway, hoping for an easy exit. A set of double doors at the end of the hallway takes me into a tunnel that's built of concrete blocks. I feel like I'm descending in spite of my best wishes. There's a door further down the hallway but it's one way and offers no handle.

I step through an open doorway into a dimly lit room. An unseen door closes gently behind me and now there's barely enough light to see. I hold my hands out, saying "Illuminate!" Nothing. "Illuuuuuuuuminate!" I squall, but nothing happens. Fear is growing in me, a helpless sense that there's no way out of this hotel. I try to shake that off, instead imagining that there's light coming from an unseen side tunnel... yes, I see it now.



I start crawling through this new tunnel on hands and knees, but it becomes a tighter and tighter squeeze as I move forward. There's light ahead of me, though, and I shimmy desperately forward. Anxiety begins to slip out of my control and I'm soon awake.

A short lucid, but it featured some of the most arresting visual imagery I've encountered so far. I'd wanted to see the Great Pyramid, but this was well beyond what I'd had in mind.

I like to think of my conscious mind as the "coauthor" of my dreams, but sometimes I have to wonder if it's anything more than a proofreader.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #33: The Poolside Pyramid

I'm swimming at a pool party. Rather than relaxing and enjoying the moment, I'm scrubbing furiously at algae blooms along the pool walls while trying to make sure that my two kids are keeping their heads above water. A tall, gray-haired man swims up and makes some unflattering remark about my scrubbing technique. First a flicker of annoyance ("this isn't even my job!"), then one of realization. He stops talking as soon as I'm lucid.

I want to go but I can't make myself leave until I'm sure my kids are safely out of the pool. Fortunately, when I check for them, I see that they've already disappeared. I tell the guy I've got lucid stuff to do and he responds, "Oh sure, man. Go for it."

I fly up out of the pool, thinking vaguely about my goal of reaching the top of the Great Pyramid. I'm shocked when on the horizon I see an entire pyramid complex, fully formed. In front of the Pyramid, in even more vivid detail is the sphinx and a towering statue of an Egyptian Pharaoh. Incredibly, the statue stands even taller than the Pyramid.

Rather than the dull sand-colored stone that I imagine when thinking of the Pyramid today, it's clad in brilliant white. The sphinx's face and body is either painted or perhaps decorated from top to bottom with colored stones, the eyes specifically ringed in deep blue, like lapis lazuli. The statue of the pharaoh is gold, similar in style to King Tut's burial mask.



Everything that I see ahead of me is far, far beyond what I'd incubated (or even imagined) for the Great Pyramid, and I'm thrilled with the idea of exploring it further. A little too thrilled, it seems, because not long after I start flying toward the pyramid complex, I'm awake. My heart rate is elevated (though not quite racing) and I can't seem to settle back in for a DEILD.

Ayiee! Let me back in!