...from the dark corners of my mind...

DJ Log: June 13, 2012 – 5:00AM (USA Eastern)
• NON-DREAM • NOTES • DREAM • LUCID •

(Note: I woke up around 3:00AM and decided to get up for a bit. I poured a tall glass of organic apple juice with a little elderberry concentrate added, and then I sat at the computer reading some posts on the DV forums. I read a thread titled I returned to bed around 4:00AM.)

I find myself standing in a small bathroom in an unfamiliar house. The walls have a dark floral wallpaper and the ceiling is covered with decorative square copper tiles. There is no toilet, but there is a tall urinal along the wall. The bathtub is an antique copper claw-foot tub. I look at the fancy copper trimmed mirror and I do not see my reflection. I immediately become lucid and jump into the mirror.

Once on the other side of the mirror, I am standing in an old musty root cellar. The walls are covered with sagging wooden shelves which are full of old dusty wine bottles. There is a single light bulb hanging by its wires in the middle of the ceiling. I walk over and pick up a bottle and I struggle for a second to read the label. I try to pull out the cork, then I reach in my pocket and pull out a cork remover. The wine smells like pungent cheese but it tastes like water. I take a second taste and the flavor slightly develops a sweet rose wine flavor which fades quickly.

Thinking that my lucidity is fading with the flavor, I look up at my surroundings and see that the root cellar has changed into a dungeon. There are rusty chains and shackles hanging on the walls and there are torches on posts sticking out of the floor. I walk over to the wall and feel one of the chains. The rust is gritty and the metal is very cold. There are thick sheets of cobwebs covering all of the walls. When I pull the chain away from the wall, another mirror is revealed. I see my reflection for a split second, then I decide not to get stuck in the mirror. I pull the chains away and take a step back, then jump into the mirror.

On the other side of the mirror, I find myself standing in a small dark bedroom. There is a small dim lamp on a table next to an open window. The curtains are hanging out of the window, blowing in the wind. The bed and dresser are antique Victorian style and there is scratchy music playing from an antique phonograph in the corner. The hardwood floor is dusty and creaks as I walk. I stop and look at a painting on the wall of an old farm scene when I hear someone cough. I look over to see that fOrceez is sitting on a chair next to the phonograph, reading a book. I take a couple of steps toward him and he lowers the book and looks at me over the top of his reading glasses, then he asks me, “How was your flight?” I reply, “It was quite fun, but I'm not done yet!” I quickly turn around and see that the mirror is still on the wall where I came through. I take several steps back and run into the mirror. The surface does not give way at all and I bounce off and fall on my ass. fOrceez laughs as I stand up, dust myself off, and glare at the mirror. I cannot see my reflection, rather just a dark gray TV static pattern. Deciding that I'll just find another mirror elsewhere, I jump out of the window and fall into the ocean.

(Note: For the first time that I can recall, falling did not wake me up or trigger a FA. I'm marking the last part as non-lucid because I think my lucidity was lost during the fall, but I'm fairly certain that I remained in the same dream.)

I hit the cold water and struggle for a moment to swim back to the surface. Once I regain a couple of breaths, I find that I am swimming in a very stormy ocean far from land. Just as I turn around to see if I am near anything, lightning strikes the water just in front of me. I suddenly wake up with the sound of the thunder still rumbling through my head.

DJ Log: January 15, 2012 – 12:30AM (USA Eastern)
• NON-DREAM • NOTES • DREAM • LUCID •

(Note: I wasn't feeling very energetic yesterday, so I took a short nap in the early afternoon. During this nap, there was a brief dream, but I had no recall. By 11:00pm, I was falling asleep in my chair as I was surfing the 'net.)

I went to bed and my body fell asleep very quickly. I felt a couple waves of rumbling vibrations, so I opened my eyes for a moment and could see my room. I closed my eyes again and the vibrations returned for a brief moment. After the second set of vibrations had passed, I feel a strong lateral shifting. It felt as if there were an earthquake and my bed was rocking sideways. I struggled to remain motionless and enjoy the ride. During this time, I could hear a sound which sounded like a heavy train was going at full speed down the tracks. After a moment, the feeling of motion subsided and the sound faded out.

(Note: I'm marking this first segment as non-lucid, but I already had a low level of lucidity. I usually don't flag anything as lucid unless I'm fully lucid.)

I am standing in absolute darkness, listening to a loud partially squelched screaming in my ears. It sounds like a mixture of microphone feedback, white noise, and a low rumble. The sound crackles and fades in and out quickly. I reach up and cover my ears, but the sound just gets louder.

I look forward and can barely see that I am standing in front of a mirror. The light is very dim and I can see my face in the mirror, but things get a bit interesting. As I look into the mirror, the sound fades away. The edges of my face are irregular and are moving slowly. I become fully lucid and attempt to stabilize. I lift my arms so I can see my hands in the mirror. Upon examination, I count 6 fingers on each hand. I look back at my face and it is melting in the mirror. My nose falls off and my eyes are turning sideways and melting off my face. Suddenly, I remember that there is something I am supposed to do.

I remember the basic task of the month, so I look around for the right place to set off some fireworks. There is nobody in this area, so I momentarily look at the ground and teleport to a crowded library. Looking back up, I can see that I made it to the library. There are ~100 DCs in there, some of them just staring straight at me. I guess I startled them when I suddenly appeared in the middle of the room.

I reach into my pocket and pull out a lighter. Looking in the shelf next to me, I see a huge roll of firecrackers. I flick the lighter and light the fuse. As the fuse sparkles and smokes, I look around the library and see that nobody seemed to notice. The fuse burns into the roll and the first firecracker pops. I suddenly wake up, cussing.

DJ Log: September 24, 2011 – 5:15AM (USA Eastern)
· NON-DREAM · NOTES · DREAM · LUCID ·

(Note: I drank a full glass of mixed organic tart cherry, pomegranate, and apple juice about an hour before going to bed. Additionally, during WBTB, I drank another half glass of the same, then repeated the following mantra while falling asleep, “Earth, Air, Fire, Water: I will lucid dream tonight.”)

I awaken on a couch, stark naked, trying to figure out where I'm at. I ask myself, “How much did I drink last night and who ended up taking me home with them?” I rub my eyes for a moment, then look around the room while asking myself, “Where the fuck am I? Why does my head hurt so much? Did someone put something in my drink again? Have I been raped again? God, I hope they at least enjoyed it, because I can't remember anything.” As my eyes start to clear up, the living room triggers a lot of distant memories. This is a place I have been many times before.

I sit up on the couch while looking around the room, trying to put the pieces together. The familiar medium oak wood paneling on the bottom half of the walls and light floral wall paper, separated by a dark chair rail. The large wooden console TV adds a hint of familiarity, as well as the classic 1970's dishrag color scheme sofa. A familiar canary yellow Western Electric rotary-dial phone is hanging on the wall and I've seen these yellow and pink floral curtains before. The circular textured tan and brown ultra-shag carpet only appears in one place in my memory cells. After a brief moment, I fully realize that I am in my grandmother's old house-trailer and quickly become lucid.

I look around the living room and kitchen for my grandmother, but she is nowhere to be found. The couch is not comfortable to sleep on, so I pick up my pillow, blanket, dream journal, flashlight and a couple bottles of water, then wander toward the bedrooms to find the spare bed. The master bedroom has a king size bed with 2 people sleeping in it. Strangely, neither of them is my grandmother. The guest bedroom has no bed at all and is packed full of random junk. I go back into the living room and drop everything on the floor, and then say to myself, “Let's try this again.”

I look at the floor and watch my feet lift off the carpet. I hover slightly off the floor and look toward the bedrooms again. I feel the dream collapsing quickly, so I look back at 'the floor and rub my hands together. My vision is almost completely blacked out, so I slowly close my eyes and yell, “STABILIZE NOW!!!” as loud as I can. I gently open my eyes and see that I am back in the same room and the clarity has improved significantly. Now, I can smell the mold in the air conditioner and the woody smell that the house-trailer always had. My eyes are able to perceive the flickering of the circular fluorescent ceiling light and my ears can detect the soft buzzing from the ballast. The extra plush carpet tickles my feet slightly as I hover just slightly above it.

I glide my way back to the bedrooms again. This time, the master bedroom is absolutely huge with four king size beds in it that they are all empty. I float through, then turn around and go towards the guest bedroom. The guest bedroom is even bigger than the master bedroom and it has a king size water bed next to a couple of windows. On the opposite wall is a huge sectional sofa with a low table and some lamps. I turn back to the bed and decide that this is where I am going back to sleep at. The water temperature is perfect and its covered with a huge, fluffy blanket. There are several pillows stacked up and it looks really comfortable. The headboard has bookshelves on both sides that are full of antique books and various ornamental items.

As I stand there looking at the bed, something sparkles in the window. I walk over to the window and see nothing but darkness outside. Deciding that I must see what's on the other side, I try to open the window, but it's stuck. I look around the room for something to break the window with, but there is nothing solid enough. I hold my hand in front of my face and summon a baseball bat. I put my hand down and see a wooden baseball bat leaning in the corner. I pick up the bat and whack the window, knocking a small piece of glass out. Realizing that the glass is going to put up a fight, I draw the bat back behind me and pummel the ever living shit out of the window. After several strikes, the glass gives way and falls out of the window frame.

I float up and climb out the window. There is a ledge under the windows which connects to a large 3rd floor deck. I hover around for a moment, and then do a nose pinch RC to reassure my lucidity and validate the dream state before I do something stupid, like jumping off a 3rd story ledge. I step to the edge of the ledge, then jump up and fly into the sky. My first thought is that I want to fly as high as I can and see if I can still see the house. I start to fly and the dream starts to fade. I stop and rub my hands together again and stabilize once again.

Suddenly, I remember the tasks of the month: walk on water and control at least two of the elements. I look down and see a swimming pool. I fly down and hit the water, but sink quickly. I jump out of the pool, and then look to my right to see a couple of DCs hanging some very large balloons on a clothes line. I take a couple of steps toward them and they immediately stop and look at me with a frightened look. I raise my arms into the air and command the air to fill one of the balloons. The balloon quickly inflates and floats upward on the clothes line. As this happens, the DCs eyes get wide as they take a couple of steps back and stare at the balloon, gasping in disbelief. I look at them and say, “What's wrong? Wanna see that again?” I inflate a second balloon, but the others will not take any air because they have large holes in them.

I jump up and fly past the balloons, then realize that I need to control another element. I turn around in mid-flight and look at the balloons that wouldn't take air. While in flight, I raise my left arm and clench my fist, then point my fist down toward the Earth. When I raise my arm, there is a hole in the Earth and the displaced dirt is floating just above me. While keeping the displaced piece of Earth up with my left hand, I use telekinesis to push the balloons and the clothes line into the hole, and then I bury them with the dirt that I was keeping elevated with my left hand. At this point, both DCs shriek in terror and run away.

Feeling quite satisfied, I start to fly away, then realize that I should try the pool again. I fly over to the pool and land on the deck by the water's edge. I stare intently at the water for a moment, then take a step onto it. The surface gives way, but I am able to walk about ankle-deep in the water. The water is very squishy and soft, but it supports my weight. As I walk, the water makes a sound similar to that of walking in wet shows. I walk across the pool, then I turn around and raise both arms, commanding the water to solidify. Instantly, the ripples in the water stop moving and the surface takes on a matte finish. I carefully step onto the surface again and it feels sort of like walking on a water bed. The surface feels solid, but it's squishy underneath. I walk across the pool again and step off onto the deck.

Being thoroughly satisfied with the accomplishments, I decide that I should wake up and write it all in my dream journal. I close my eyes and say, “Wake up! NOW!” I awaken into my bed and reach over to grab my dream journal. I flip open the cover and slide the pen out of the coils. I reach up above my pillow to turn on my flashlight and it won't turn on. I think to myself, “Shit, I must have bumped it last night and the batteries are dead.” I open my eyes and see a dark room. I press the switch on the flashlight again and the circle of light appears on the ceiling, but no light is reflected onto my journal, nor the rest of the room. I look at the flashlight and the bulb looks like a black hole which is sucking in all of the light around it. I press the switch again and the bulb lights up brightly, but there is no light in the room.

I give myself a nose pinch RC and it passes. Becoming a bit confused now, I look at my left hand and count 7 fingers and a thumb. I say to myself, “Nice! False awakening strikes again, dumbass!” as I become lucid once again. I quickly jump out of bed and turn around to see myself still laying in the bed. I think to myself, “This is very nice, but I don't have time for an OOBE.” I slap myself in the face a couple of times while yelling, “WAKE UP AND WRITE THIS SHIT DOWN BEFORE YOU FORGET IT! ...WAKE UP NOW! ...DO IT! ...DO IT NOW!”

I wake up in my bed once again and pass both a nose pinch and finger count. I reach over and grab my dream journal, flip it open and slide the pen out of the coils. I reach up and press the switch on the flashlight that is wedged between the mattress and the wall. The flashlight lights up properly and I commence logging this entry.

(Note: My maternal grandmother passed away about 17 years ago. She was the only relative that would listen to me and what I had to say. She was always interested in having conversations about anything I wanted to talk about. Most of my other aunts and such were not open to hearing anything that a younger person had to say. They would always say things like, “Children should be seen and not heard.” My grandmother was also the only relative that was not obsessed over the fact that I had no interest in girls. My aunts and uncles would always harass me and ask when I was going to get married and start having kids. Needless to say, it was always an enjoyable time to visit with her, and it was a very sad moment when she passed on.)

DJ Log: May 30, 2011 – 8:30AM (USA Eastern)
Text color legend: · NON-DREAM · NOTES · DREAM · LUCID ·

I am driving into a shopping center parking lot to meet up with several friends. It is a large strip mall with a grocery store on the right side and several smaller stores on the left. A few friends are already parked in front of the grocery store and are standing around talking behind their cars. I drive through the parking lot and select a front row parking space a couple of rows away from the grocery store.

As I am preparing to back into a parking spot, this old guy in a Buick jumps into my parking spot. I stop and yell at the guy for stealing my spot. He just looks at me with a puzzled look and continues to back into my spot. I put my truck back into “drive” and floor the accelerator to do a power slide, turning around to face the guy. I use psychokinesis to push the car out of the way, then I pull into the parking spot. After parking, I decide that I don't like this spot anymore, so I back out and drive over by the grocery store where my friends are at.

I park in the end row near where my friends are parked at. We bullshit for a little while then start walking toward the store. As we near the store, I see a guy wearing a giant fro-wig. He looks a lot like this guy Moritz who does an awesome synth jam-out session on YouTube (LINK). As I'm watching, he takes the wig off and reveals medium-length blonde-streaked hair underneath. I think to myself, “Yay! The mystery of what's under the wig is now solved.”

We all walk into the store and I retrieve a shopping cart. I walk through the second set of automatic doors and wake up.

While making this DJ entry, I realized that I completed the basic task of the month a second time in the same month. Now, if only I could get the advanced task.

DJ Log: May 24, 2011 – 4:00AM (USA Eastern)
Text color legend: · NON-DREAM · NOTES · DREAM · LUCID ·

I am walking around in a large laboratory with another DC, investigating a recent murder which occurred in this room. We are looking for any clues that may be left behind. There are police lights flashing outside and I can hear a dog barking in the background.

As we are searching, we walk near a domed part of the ceiling which has windows around the dome. There is blood dripping from the ceiling here. As we both stop walking and look upward, a body and some debris crashes through the ceiling and lands on the floor. I close my eyes for a brief moment, then I look back up and see that there is nothing wrong with the ceiling. The blood is now gone and there are lights where the windows were just a moment ago. I say to myself, “Why do these things keep changing? What kind of a fucked up dream is this?”

I immediately become lucid and take a much closer look at my surroundings, while trying to utilize any many senses as possible. The windows are back where they should be and there is a large hole in the ceiling. There is a body and a large safe in the midst of a pile of debris in front of me. I can smell rancid flesh beginning to fill the air around me. The lights are all making a buzzing sound and I can hear a lab refrigerator running in the distance. I can feel small particles of debris fall out of my hair when I shake my head. I look around a bit and decide that there is nothing I want to try tasting in here.

I look back at the safe and remember the basic task of the month. I stare at the safe and attempt to move it with my mind. Instead of moving the safe, I develop x-ray vision which allows me to see that there is a gun inside the safe. I look at it again, and after struggling for a moment, the safe elevates from the pile of debris. I lift the safe all the way up to the ceiling using psychokinesis and then smash it against the wall to break it open. The safe smashes apart and the gun slides across the floor. I look back at the other DC, who is standing there completely dumbfounded. He looks at me with a really strange look, then walks over and picks up the gun with an evidence bag.

I lose my lucidity and start to walk around the lab again. All of the details disappear from the room and the dream fades away rather quickly.

I wake up and spend a moment with my eyes shut, recalling as many details as possible. I grab my flashlight and journal, then write it all down. This is my first lucid since I quit smoking cigarettes. Yay!

DJ Log: March 20, 2011 – 7:30AM (USA Eastern)
Text color legend: · NON-DREAM · NOTES · DREAM · LUCID ·

(Note: During WBTB I was a bit hungry, so I drank a full glass of apple juice and are a PBJ sandwich. I always thought the claimed effect of these was placebo, but this may change my mind. It was extremely vivid and detailed, although I lost most of the fine details during recall and logging. ...If only I could connect a DVR to my mental image sensor...)

I am walking through the main lobby of a huge apartment building, looking for my new apartment. The main lobby is open all of the way to the fourth floor and there are large chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. As I walk down the hallway, I see that there are numbers on the doors, but they are constantly changing. I walk up a large set of stairs to the second level and walk down the hall, looking at the numbers on the doors. One side of the hall has paintings between the doors and the other side is open into the main lobby area. At the end of the hallway is a common area with a couple of chairs and a fireplace. I go up another set if stairs and arrive on the third floor. It also has a common area, but there is no fire in the fireplace. I walk down the hall, looking for my apartment.

After quite a bit of searching, I find my apartment. It has a huge main room with several smaller rooms that each have a fancy wooden door. The top half of the walls are green and the lower half is a medium wood paneling with a chair rail separating the top and bottom halves. The kitchen is very industrial looking as it is mostly stainless steel. There is a fireplace off to the side in an attached dining area. A set of double stained glass doors leads onto a large balcony that overlooks the main lobby. There is a small stairway off to the side of the balcony that leads up to the fourth floor, but the door at the top of the stairs is locked. I look through the window on the door and see that it leads into another large apartment. I turn around and go back down to my balcony.

As I come back in from the balcony, I run into a friendly middle-aged black lady that walked in from the apartment next door. She tells me that she is the apartment guide and would like to show me around the new place. She walks me all around the apartment, then shows me where the laundry room is. All of the rooms are empty except the laundry room, which has a washer and dryer in it. She sees that I don't have any furniture yet and offers me her futon to sleep for the first night. I accept her offer and follow her back to her place. I take off my shoes and sit down on her futon. She walks away for a moment, then returns with a glass of water. When I lay down, I close my eyes and transition into a different dream scene.

I an the main character in a first-person shooter game looks a lot like the classic Doom game. My health and stats are in my field of vision. I say to myself, “Wow, I'm in a video game!” I quickly become lucid and summon a keyboard so I can enter some cheat codes. I hear some shots being fired in the distance, so I enter IDKFA and my weapons repository fills up. I enter IDDQD and I feel a tingling sensation throughout my body as my health meter flashes, then expands to about three times the normal size. I select the grenade launcher and walk into the next room. There are a three characters in the room that look like the creatures from Aliens who immediately turn and start walking toward me. I fire the grenade launcher and blow one of them to pieces. I shoot the other two then run to the door on the other side of the room. I push on the door with my hand, but nothing happens. I tap the space bar on the keyboard and the door opens into another room.

This room looks like an IT closet. There are racks of servers and networking equipment all over it. I put away the grenade launcher and type something on the keyboard which morphs me into a small fly. I fly around in the room for a moment, then find a hole in the ceiling. I fly around above the ceiling tiles until I find another hole that leads me into another room. This room is very small on one side and there are cable management trays going through it. The other side of the room is about normal height and has some metal shelves against the wall. There is a fluorescent light on the ceiling that is flickering badly. I fly around the corner into another room that has a couple of empty metal shelves along one wall.

Suddenly, the door opens and a long blonde haired woman walks in. She looks straight at me and starts talking about something. Her words come out as total nonsense and I can't make out any words she is saying. Thinking it is a foreign language that I can't understand, I decide to keep exploring. I fly up into the ceiling and start looking around for another hole to fly into. Suddenly, I false-awaken back to the futon in the original dream.

I stand up from the futon and notice that I am wearing some kind of martial arts uniform. It's a thick, dark material and is formed like a sleeveless cape. It has some graphics on the front that looks like a couple of sword fighters. I look around for a bit, then reach up to rub my eyes and see that I have only 3 fingers on my right hand. This irritates me a bit, so I put my hands in my pockets, pull them out and look at them again. Now they have 4 fingers and a thumb each. I nearly lost my lucidity, but I pinch my nose and can still breathe through it, reaffirming my lucidity.

I walk out of the room into a large social area. There are several others wearing the same uniforms and they all look at me strange as I walk through to get to the bar at the other end of the room. A couple of them are practicing fighting with rubber knives. They both lunge at my throat with the rubber knives as I walk by. I extend both arms with my hands pointed upward and use telekinesis to shove them into the opposing walls as I walk between them. They both fall to the floor and quickly dissolve.

I arrive at the bar and ask the bartender for the House Special. As he mixes my drink, I look at the ceiling and see that all of the lights are off. I can barely see anything, except that there is a light switch on the bar. I flip the switch and nothing happens, so I look back at the lights and say, “Lights Now!” and a couple of the lights turn on very dimly. I repeat a couple of times and about half of the lights reach full brightness. The bartender comes back and hands me a very unusual looking drink. It's a slightly green margarita that's in a large fish bowl shaped stem glass and it has some dry ice in it. There is heavy steam bubbling out of the drink that is rolling down the glass and across the bar. I take a sip and it tastes like a green Jolly Rancher. I blow into the steam and see that there is a strawberry on a stick in the middle of the drink. I smile and remember the basic task of the month, then grab the stick and eat the strawberry. It tastes like chocolate and has a very gritty consistency. Once I swallow it, I set the stick down and look around the bar.

I look to my right and there is a younger guy who is becoming partially transparent and is looking around very nervously. A girl standing nearby tells him that he is destabilizing and he must spin if he wants to stay in the dream. He drops to the floor on his left hand and starts to push himself around in a circle with his feet, sort of like he's break dancing. After a moment, he fades back to normal and stands up again. He rubs his hands together for a bit then walks off with a smile on his face.

I finish my drink and walk back to my apartment. It appears that my furniture has showed up, but it is still in boxes and plastic overwrap. I walk back to the apartment where I slept at and look for my shoes. I find them, but the laces are untied. I try to tie them, but there are like 5 loops and at least 7 lace ends. I spend a while trying to untangle them, but the dream suddenly fades and I wake up.

When I wake up, I think to myself: What a perfect way to waste a really good lucid dream... ...tying my damn shoes...