Verre

Train—open—more and more crowded—trying to stay secure.

Earlier, plane—everyone had kissed the screen, identical lip print.

Bangkok—know the route from having taken many times.

Scenery from the train amazing, began photographing—tall earthy brown cliffs on the right; later on the left forest, enormous trees, figures of other beings like bas-relief in bark, then we were zooming through a city on the water, buildings alternating from Renaissance to modern faux-vernacular shopping plaza style.

Reminded myself to actually look at the photos after I took them, because when I woke up, they would be unlikely to still be on the camera. Some were amazing, and I was sorry they wouldn't last. Others not so great—we were moving fast, and I couldn't always capture the best angle.

"This is the clearest dream I've had in a long time." Happy because for a while dreams have been distant and dim, frustrating. How did I accomplish this? All I could think was that I had finally wanted it enough. But how did I get lucid? Thought back and tried to remember the moment—this actually destabilized the dream and began waking process, but it was gradual enough that I could think back a bit first—realized there was no "aha!" moment, the lucidity had dawned gradually, probably because it was right before I'd been planning to get up anyway—only genuinely lucid for those last few moments when I started thinking critically about the pictures and the dream itself. At the time, though, I felt not an alteration of circumstance, but a sense of continuity with what had gone before. To be aware that you are dreaming is not unusual; to be aware that you are aware that you are dreaming is to be lucid.

Was the lucidity that which allowed me to appreciate and experience the clarity of the dream? But an appreciation must have preceded lucidity because that's what prompted me to start taking the pictures, before I realized they wouldn't last. And even after I knew they would not persist—I couldn't help hoping that this time would be different from all the others, this time they might cross over, through some miracle.