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    1. Drawing a Sword/Ozymandias (DILD)

      by , 09-07-2015 at 11:41 PM
      Ritual: I went to bed at midnight and found myself quite awake at 5am, so I got up and worked for an hour. On going back to bed, I realized that although I had not intended a WBTB, the conditions were good for LDing. I had to get up at 8, so I didn't want to spend the time on a formal WILD attempt, but I thought about what task I should do if I got lucid. All I could remember of this month's TOTMs were "fart" and "draw," so picked the latter. I decided I would draw a dinosaur, since I never got around to riding one last month.

      DILD: I think I was outside my workplace—something I rarely dream of—when I reached down to pick up something off the ground. As I straightened, I realized with clear certainty that I was dreaming. I wasn't sure what had triggered the awareness, so thought it over, but there didn't seem to be any specific anomalies that I had noticed, and I hadn't RC'd either. On this occasion I just felt very naturally aware of the dream state.

      I had originally planned to draw a dinosaur and bring it to life for the TOTM, but now I decided to start with something easier. I had been at my HEMA class yesterday, so I decided to draw a sword, then manifest it and do some practice. My initial strategy was to simply draw the sword in my left palm, so that I could manifest it directly in my hand (I am right-handed, so I was using my right hand to draw with). However, the lines changed as soon as I had set them down, turning into a cartoon-like character. I figured fine, I can work with that, it doesn't matter what I manifest... but my intention to transform the drawing into a real being fizzled. Nothing happened except that the drawing changed into a different character, and then faded.

      Changing strategy, as I found myself walking next to a building I drew a sword right on the wall. It was a poor drawing, chunky and ill-proportioned, but I figured I could fix it in post-production. I put my hand over where the hilt was drawn, intending to grab the sword as it manifested. Nothing happened. I wondered if it would help to reach into the wall, in case the sword was inside it. I pressed my right hand against the wall, which consisted of a reddish, textured stucco. It resisted at first, but I kept pressing, and eventually it yielded like a crumbly semi-moist clay, and my hand went right through. I closed my hand over an object and pulled it out. Unfortunately it was not the sword I was trying to create, but a comic book.

      It occurred to me that I was always trying to make the dream state conform to my will, and I should pay more attention to the things that it offered me unexpectedly, so I took a moment to flip through the comic book as I walked on past the building. The hero of the comic was a young boy, but nothing caught my interest, so I tossed it on the ground. Lucidity got a little weak, and I found myself grilling a piece of chicken for my husband's dinner. The image of the piece of meat on the grill was, in retrospect, an obvious bit of day residue from a Facebook post I had seen last night.

      While getting the dinner ready I found myself indoors, where I made a third try at drawing the sword, inscribing an outline on the wall again. Since there was a DC in the room with me, I thought I would be clever and asked him to grab the sword off the wall and give it to me. I figured it would still count for the TOTM as long as the drawing transformed into a three-dimensional object by any means. But he couldn't do it either!

      Later I got fed up and just manifested a sword directly into my hand so that I could actually get some practice in. For some reason I found it easy to create a sword in my hand out of nothing, even though I had been unable to do it from the drawings! I went through a few rounds of the "flow" movements I had learned in my HEMA class, but found myself wondering why I was wasting precious dream time practicing something that I could work on just as well in waking life, so I flew off to further explore the dream.

      Only then did I notice the beauty of my surroundings. Some dream environments are drab, but this was one of those landscapes that is gorgeous beyond anything you've seen in waking life. Pink-tinged clouds of beautiful hue and texture filled the sky. All around me was water, interspersed with strips of inhabited land, like a strange city straddling the sea. The water was full of beautiful sailing ships of many varieties.

      I felt a bit lonely in all this splendor and wished I had a friend to hang out with. Something inspired me to seek "Ozymandias," though the name has little relevance for me (outside being vaguely aquainted with its literary source) and has never come up in a dream before, nor can I trace it to DR. I loudly called "Ozymandias!" but no one appeared. Then I had an intuition that one of the boats was his, a small craft with a complex array of small square black and red sails.

      I flew over and landed on the boat, which was not much bigger than a rowboat despite its magnificent sails. There was a tall vertical form in the prow that I had assumed was Ozymandias, only to discover that it was made of wood and evidently served as the steering apparatus. The boat was empty, even though it was not anchored but sailing freely in the harbor. Something caught my eye and I knelt down to find some single earrings and a few tiny beads in the bottom of the boat, as though a woman had been here. Though I retained a degree of lucidity, I found myself being drawn into a dream narrative. I lingered in the boat until it drifted vertically down a tall waterfall, although the movement was gentle and not frightening.

      I wanted to figure out why Ozymandias had apparently disappeared from his boat, so I transported myself to an office where I could speak to a harbor official. I told him about the empty boat and the evidence that a woman had been on board.

      "The only other person allowed in his boat is Delphine," the clerk informed me. Something made me suspect Delphine was a courtesan, so I asked about the local brothels, and the clerk described two locations.

      As I went in search of the brothel I became confused.... now I began to wonder if I was Delphine, that is, if that was the character I was playing in the dream. But if so, why hadn't the clerk recognized me, since he had appeared to be familiar with her? Could it be because I don't currently resemble her, and instead look like my waking self?

      Without resolving these doubts, I went to the brothel and asked if they knew what had become of Ozymandias. "We don't give information about our clients," the madam informed me politely.

      "He might be dead!" I insisted, explaining my discovery of the empty boat. That persuaded them to give me a piece of paper listing the dates that he had visited. That was as far as I was able to pursue the mystery before I woke up.

      Updated 09-07-2015 at 11:44 PM by 34973

      Categories
      lucid , task of the month