The Lab Notebook

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm walking around on the ground floor of a large, three-story shopping mall. The interior is a very bright, airy space, with white walls and a glass ceiling through which the sun shines. While I'm walking along, the realization suddenly hits me: This is a dream! I'm so shocked that the scene around me immediately starts to become less clear, filling up with gray pixels that multiply quickly [they look a lot like static on an analog TV], just like it always does when my dreams start to destabilize. Oh, dammit! I think. I immediately drop to my hands and knees on the tile floor, focusing on touching the floor and on staying focused on the scene around me, and thinking reassuring thoughts to myself: It's okay. It's okay. In 30 seconds or so, the scene is clear and stable again. I get up and start walking again, exploring the place I'm in.

As I look around me, I look up at the ceiling, three stories above me, to see winter greenery with ornaments on it and big, shiny bells in red, gold, and green lined up in a recessed space just below the edge of the ceiling. “They haven't even taken down all their Christmas decorations yet,” I remark. I find that I've come upon the entrance to a vacant department store, currently being used as a storage space for the Christmas decorations that have been taken down. Among other things, there is a large, haphazard pile of blue and white styrofoam wreaths. There's no gate or other barrier to entry across the entrance to the store, so I spontaneously decide to jump into the pile of wreaths as if they were dry leaves. It's fun! Some of them break, and I just say, “It's my dream world, and I'll destroy the wreaths if I want to.”

When I get up, I wonder what's on the floor above me, and I decide to explore it. I look to the side and see that there's a side entrance to the department store, and there's a flight of stairs outside that entrance, which I can see through the window. I could take them, but it would be quicker, easier, and cooler to just levitate myself through the ceiling above me, so I decide to do that. I close my eyes and, with an act of will, start rising upward.

[Note: I don't really remember where in the sequence the following two paragraphs went, but I'm sure I was lucid, so I put them here.]

Now I'm in a big, industrial-looking building complex with multiple floors, walkways, and sets of stairs running through the vast interior space. It's dark inside; all the walls and floors are black or dark gray, and there aren't very many lights. This area is [somehow] part of the Star Wars galaxy. As I wander around here, I can hear a dialogue between a post-redemption Darth Vader [he's still speaking in the James Earl Jones voice, though] and some other random character. The other character addresses Vader as “Rash,” apparently using it as a first name. Vader, offended by this, replies: “Rash?! I may have acted rashly, but my name is Anakin.” I smile.

[Somewhere in here,] I meet and interact with another young woman about my age. She leads me on a walk through the area, talking to me. Our walk ends at a spot overlooking a view of a natural, green valley. Then, she says something like, “Instead of waiting around for them to break your heart, like I did, go out and grab hold of what you want.” I wonder if this is my best self giving me advice.

When I open my eyes again after a scene transition [which I'm pretty sure I remember being the levitation one mentioned above, but again, I don't remember in what order the above two scenes happened], I'm standing on the second floor of a building, overlooking a very beautiful view. There is a clear, sparkling swimming pool in front of me, but it's big enough to be a small lake and wraps around three sides of a tall, stucco community clubhouse building with a red tile roof. The pool is in a park, surrounded by green grass and trees. Off to the left is a street, on the other side of which are houses that match the style of the clubhouse. The scene is so beautiful that I exclaim, “Man, I wish I could take pictures!” ...So I could post them on DreamViews to show everyone! is the thought behind that remark.

I decide to go swimming. The tower I'm in has exterior stairs on the side facing the pool. I start going down the stairs. As I do, I pass a window and look at my reflection in it. I'm pleased to see that I'm already wearing a swimsuit, a fact which I attribute to my decision to go swimming. My face looks completely normal. I try smiling, but my reflection stays the same for a moment, then returns a crooked smile, using only one side of its mouth. 'Cause it's a dream mirror, not a real one, I think. It doesn't work like a real one would.

I walk to the side of the pool and jump right into the deep water [something I don't usually do in real life, because I suck at swimming]. It feels wet. I swim around on the surface of the water much more easily than in real life, enjoying the experience. Several times, I lower my head so that my nose is under the water and enjoy the fact that I can still breathe normally. I want to swim completely underwater and open my eyes, but I don't, because I have the very realistic sensation of having water in my right eye, forcing me to keep it closed.

Other people are swimming in the pool. We hang out and talk a little. After a while, I get out and keep exploring the park I'm in.

In another area of the park, there are a series of big pieces of plastic playground equipment, white with pastel accents, with a miniature golf course built around and through them. I start climbing the largest one, using the metal handles and small platforms built into the structure to climb. This climbing route goes up toward the main body of the play structure in an arc, and each foothold is only supported by a single column or bar, so it looks like there's mostly open space below you, and you can see exactly how far you are off the ground. I'm not afraid at all, though, because I know it's a dream and I can't get hurt.

Just as I reach the main body of the play structure, the memory of the current Task of the Month suddenly hits me: set off fireworks in a crowded place and record how the people there reacted. I recall how other DV members have done it. I slide down the slide that's in front of me, determined to complete the task.

Not far from the play equipment, some people are beginning to gather at some tables for a picnic. I start trying to obtain a firecracker [because that's what several other DV members used]. I reach behind my back and try to make one appear there, but it doesn't work. I try looking around corners in the scene and expecting one to be there, but that doesn't work either. I really suck at summoning things, I think. Then I think of another approach: find an existing object and transform it.

On the ground, under a tree a few yards from the picnic area, I find the pointy half of a broken-in-half yellow pencil. I pick it up and sandwich it between my two cupped hands, focusing my will on it and willing it to turn into a firecracker. When I open my hands, it has swollen up and gotten round and puffy in the middle.

All the picnic tables are now full of people, and I see that some of them have their marching band instruments with them, which makes me realize that they're a marching band. I see at least one trombone in the group. I stand a couple of yards back from one of the tables and throw my pencil at the group of people. It hits the center of the table and explodes with a loud crack. No one takes any particular notice [at least, not that I can recall]. When I retrieve the pencil, the lead has shot out of the tip and gone limp, like a piece of spaghetti. I decide to continue in my search for a firecracker.

I end up walking through the halls of a dusty building that resembles my section of the university library where I used to work. I continue trying to summon a firecracker or firework by expecting one to be there when I look around a corner or into a room, but it still doesn't work. In one storage room full of random stuff, I hear a hissing sound that I think is the sound of a firework fuse burning at first, but then I realize it's the sound of the small air blower on a strange, old machine that is running in the middle of the floor. I continue searching this room for a firework, but I woke up in the middle of my search.

Color-coding key:
Awake, Non-lucid, Possibly lucid? (not sure), Lucid, Lucid 'dream within a dream,' [Commentary made while awake]

[This morning, my alarm went off at 7:30. I had planned to get up and write, but I still felt so sleepy that I decided to sleep in. I believe I had all these dreams during the extra hour I slept in. Again, I don't remember the transitions that connected them, if there were any, which is why this entry may seem fragmented.]

I'm out somewhere with my parents and T&P [some real-life friends of ours]. We're in a gravel parking lot, getting into our cars to go somewhere. I'm driving my own car by myself. I follow the other car, which has my parents and T&P in it, out of the parking lot and along a narrow, gravel-covered alley. There are two big rocks in the middle of it. I watch the other car drive over them and worry that my car isn't high enough off the ground to clear them, but it does, with no problem.

I have a small patch of thick, dark-brown hairs growing out of a mole on the right side of my chin. I want to pull all the hairs out with tweezers, but I look for the tweezers and can't find them. Later, I look in the mirror again and have a short, but thick beard, with only a couple of long hairs straying outside of the beard zone. I still can't find the tweezers, so I try to pull them out with my fingers, but can't; they're too solidly rooted. I continue playing with those hairs with my fingers as I go about the rest of my day. [Funny how at no point during this sequence did I think to question the situation; I'm a girl! I do, however, find and pull on stray hairs like that often in real life.]

I'm explaining to someone, over the phone [I think], that J&L have passed away. The conversation continues, and I say something about how hard it must be for the other person to find this out. [J&L are the original owners of the house I'm now renting. I've had this conversation over the phone at least twice in real life. Even though I never actually met them, it's still hard to tell people that news.]

I'm in a body of water, and there's this little cartoon guy swimming in the water. He has a mask and a snorkel on. There is a song playing: “let's go swimming under the sea!”, it says, or something like that. I'm following the little cartoon guy as he swims through the water. I have my own snorkel, but no mask. I don't really need it, though, because when I duck my head below the surface, I can see underwater just as clearly as if I were wearing a mask, and the water doesn't sting my eyes at all. Then, the little cartoon guy starts diving deeper under the water. I think to myself, It annoys me when cartoon characters do that when they only have a snorkel. [Somewhere toward the beginning of this dream, I became aware that I was dreaming, but I don't remember precisely when, nor what triggered it.] I want to continue following him under the water, and I think to myself, I can breathe underwater in dreams. My known dream ability to breathe water activates at this thought. I abandon the snorkel and continue following the little cartoon guy. We're in what looks like an ocean. The water is deep blue, and there are sea creatures of some kind swimming in it.

I'm in an unfamiliar bedroom, going to sleep. I even feel sleepy. While I'm getting into bed and falling asleep, I think about the fact that I'm going to be in a a dream as soon as I fall asleep, and that I'm going to be lucid and take conscious, intentional action while I'm there. [I remember having a specific mission in mind, but I don't remember what it was.] After a few seconds, I roll sideways out of bed and know that I'm in the dream world. [I think some kind of dream followed, but I don't remember it now. After that dream ends,] I'm back in the same bedroom again, and I go through the same sequence of falling asleep and knowing that I'm about to enter a lucid dream. This time, I sit up in bed to enter the dream, and then climb out of bed and step away from it, towards the door of the room. I cast a sidelong glance over at the bed and get a glimpse of myself, lying asleep. I quickly look away. I think, I know this is a dream room, and that that isn't actually my real body, but still, it's creepy. [I'm pretty sure I was aware that I was dreaming throughout this entire sequence, even the parts where I was falling asleep.] The reason I know that the whole experience is just a dream is that the bedroom I'm in isn't mine. The walls are painted a dark, cool color, the bedclothes match the walls, and the room is longer and narrower than my real one.

From that unfamiliar bedroom, I walk out into a plaza surrounded by buildings. It is a sunny day. There are signs in the plaza directing people to an area where a birthday party is being held for a child. I walk into that area and find a table with a bunch of party food set out on it. From that table, I take a cupcake and start eating it, without bothering to take the paper off first. I want to take advantage of the opportunity to do that. I know that this is my dream body, so I don't have to worry about the paper doing me any harm, and in addition, I don't have to worry about what the DCs around me will think if they see me eating the cupcake paper. The cupcake itself feels and tastes exactly like cupcakes do in real life. I walk around while eating it, observing all the people walking around and the kids running around and playing in the courtyard.

As I continue to explore the dream environment, I come upon another sign reminding everyone that it's time to go and complete the paperwork to register their cars. I follow the directional arrows on the sign, and end up entering a building that contains an office with a reception desk front and center as you walk in the front door of the building. I go up to the reception desk, tell the woman there my name, and ask for my car registration form. It turns out that the form is filed under my old address from when I was living in Florida. She gives it to me to update. The sheet of paper she gives me is the top sheet of a piece of carbon paper. It's a sheet I already filled out back when I was living in Florida; it has all my information from those days on it, in my handwriting, in blue ballpoint pen. I start working on bringing the information on it up to date.

The top section of the form contains several multiple-choice questions with checkboxes below them. These questions are all about your religious beliefs, and they're really only on the form as a formality. They ask about whether or not you believe in the Bartel Water Bug, and the boxes indicating non-belief are already checked. I read over this section and then start updating the form with my current address, but then it occurs to me to think: Why am I wasting dream time filling out a form? I look up from the paper to see what the woman behind the desk is doing. She has turned away to do something else. I set down my pen, turn around, and walk quickly out of the building while she's not looking.

Back in the courtyard, I discover that the item I've decided [in real life] to use as a totem, which in my case is a thimble, behaves in a very interesting way when thrown or tossed in a dream. Namely, it acts like a magnet. Whenever it comes anywhere near another person [yes, even if the other person is just a DC], it flies away from them as if it were being repelled by their presence. Then it flies back toward me, straight into my hand, as if it were magnetically attracted to me. I encounter a family that I know in real life, walking along the edge of the courtyard. I say something like, “You're gonna get this thing thrown at you,” to the 7-or-8-year-old daughter in the family, and then I throw my thimble at her. When it gets within about a foot of her, it flies away from her and back toward me, and I catch it. [That's the last I remember.]

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Side notes:

When I woke up for real and reflected on the part of my dream where I kept dreaming about waking up and falling asleep within the dream, I thought, "Cool! My mind came up with a kind of hybrid dream experience, incorporating characteristics of the lucid dreaming experience that I learned from Inception (the knowledge that I was about to fall asleep and immediately find myself in a lucid dream, the experience of entering that dream from within another dream), as well as characteristics that I learned from DreamViews and from EWOLD (the perception of rolling out of my dream body and the knowledge that that room was itself a dream)." To those people who looked down on the newcomers who jumped on the lucid-dreaming bandwagon after Inception came out: I was one of those bandwagon-jumpers, even though I tried not to be too obnoxious and annoying about it, and I believe that we newcomers are perfectly capable of learning and growing into the world of lucid dreaming as it is actually experienced outside of the movies.

Awake, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

The moment I see my old college campus start to appear out of the darkness, I realize, Oh, cool, a dream is starting. There are lots of multistory buildings all around me, and it's a beautiful day with a vivid blue sky and puffy white clouds. The dream is fairly vivid [and remains so throughout its entire length]. I observe that the environment around me is consistent with the environment I've observed in previous dreams set on my old college campus. [Although, now that I think about it, I think the dreams I have that are set there feel similar more than they look similar. Being in the environment always feels the same, but I think the layout, the spatial relationships of buildings, is slightly different each time. The style of the buildings is always pretty much the same, though.]

I walk along among the buildings, and eventually [possibly after a dreamskip?] find myself inside somebody’s house. The living room has been filled with chlorinated water and turned into a big, deep indoor pool. The second floor of the house is open to the living room, and has a balcony-like walkway that surrounds the living room on three sides. The water comes almost all the way up to the level of the walkway. When I see the pool, I think, This is a dream. I should be able to breathe underwater. I get into the water and start swimming down into the pool, testing this hypothesis. It proves to be correct. By consciously focusing on the knowledge that I can breathe underwater here, I can breathe underwater. While I'm swimming, I feel the resistance that one normally feels from the water when swimming, but not the wetness; I still feel completely dry. I also notice that breathing feels exactly the same as it normally does when I'm breathing air; those parts of my body don't feel any resistance from the water, whereas my skin and limbs do feel it. [I think this experience further demonstrates the same phenomenon that lies behind the nose-pinch reality check: doing something that would obstruct your ability to breathe in reality will not obstruct it in a dream, because your real body is still breathing normally.]

I resurface, then dive again, this time going all the way to the bottom of the pool. I find a small, square sticker there, part of a board game. I retrieve it and bring it to a dream character who is sitting on the walkway at the side of the pool opposite where I came into the room. He's playing the game that the sticker came from. I hand him the sticker, saying something like, “Here. This is part of your game. I brought this back for you.”

The dream character accepts the sticker and asks me to go over to the far corner of the room (near where I came in) and retrieve another, similar sticker that he dropped. I agree to do so. Before I dive under the water again, I pretend to take a deep breath and hold it, for the sake of appearances. I don't want any of the several dream characters who are around to realize that I have superhuman abilities. I dive toward the bottom corner of the pool at the far end of the room, where two walls come together at an acute angle. I find not only another sticker like the first one, but also a die, a playing card, and other, similar small objects from games. I pick them all up.

I decide to try to get back to the second floor by flying. [Apparently because I want there not to be,] There's no water around me anymore. With a short grunt, I try unsuccessfully to take off. I decide to just climb the nearby stairs to get up to the second-floor walkway.

I walk along the walkway and stop in front of the male dream character playing the game. He asks me, “What was that grunt?”

“I was trying to jump up and fly back to the second floor,” I answer.

“Why?” he asks.

I throw my handful of small game pieces at him. “Because you're a dream character!” I exclaim. [Or it might have been, “Because I'm dreaming!” I don't quite remember. The main point is that I dropped all pretense that I was a regular person with no superhuman abilities at this moment, and admitted to being the dreamer.]

A second later, my conscience kicks in. “Wait. I don't know why I did that,” I say. “That was rude. I'm sorry.”

A woman about my age with short, dark hair joins our conversation at this point. She starts off by addressing me, saying something like, “That's right. You're dreaming.” She, the game-playing DC, and I all proceed to have a long, in-depth conversation on the subject of lucid dreaming. [Unfortunately, I don't remember much of what we said. What I do recall is an overall impression that this woman was an expert on the subject, and that her attitude toward me was that of a supportive older mentor. She seemed interested in my progress and how much I had learned so far.] The dark-haired woman asks me something like, “This is your fortieth or so lucid dream, right?”

“Forty-seventh, or fiftieth, something like that,” I answer.

At another point during the conversation, another guy my age, named Andy, is also there in the room. The dark-haired woman points him out to me as another dreamer. [I had no intention of anything like that happening to me. If it did, it was completely without my desire or consent.]

Andy, the woman, the game-playing DC, and I all walk out of the building onto the coast by my university. We're facing a sea cliff with train tracks running along it. We walk along and come to the grassy, topmost level of an amphitheater, built into the land where it slopes down toward the beach. Below the grassy part are many levels of bleachers made out of a metal mesh.

“I really like floaty things,” I observe, addressing the woman. I point out that there are a lot of colorful helium balloons around, and a lot of the other people who are around are flying small, colorful kites. I have one myself.

The other DCs who are there are passing around a strange contraption. At its center is a device that has a chamber in which marijuana leaves are burning, and a fan. The fan is keeping the semi-transparent plastic garbage bag that surrounds the device inflated. The bag is there to keep the marijuana smoke in, but there is a tear in the plastic near the knot, allowing the smoke to escape at a limited rate so that one might inhale it. One of the other, female DCs in the scene comes over to me and my group and offers us the contraption. The other DCs in my group accept it first and take hits from it, then offer it to me. My immediate reaction to getting the opportunity to try marijuana is, Yay! I can do this without getting in trouble or risking the health of my real body, and if I do it, I can brag about it on the forums! [Meaning DreamViews, of course.]

I accept the blown-up garbage bag and maneuver it so that the tear in the plastic is near my face. This isn't easy to do with the fan device constantly inflating the plastic from the inside and making it move around. When I've gotten the tear as close to my face as I can, I inhale some of the smoke through my nose. It has a plant-like smell. The drug doesn't make me feel any different, nor does it change the environment around me.

My companions and I sit down on the metal mesh bleachers to watch a concert [or something like that]. As I sit down, I try to be careful not to get the string of my kite tangled up with the strings of my companions' kites.

There is a blue reusable shopping bag from Wal-Mart lying just to my left on the metal bleachers. It comes to life and starts wrapping its handles around my left arm and constricting its handles tightly, much like Devil's Snare from the Harry Potter universe. I'm not sure if this occurrence is a weed-induced hallucination or just ordinary dream weirdness. I look up and to my right at the dark-haired woman, who is sitting next to me. She looks back at me with an expression that communicates, “Yeah, this is what I was expecting would happen; how are you going to deal with it?”

I'm a little frightened by the shopping bag attacking me, but I'm still secure in the knowledge that this is a dream, so I'll be safe and sound when I wake up. I close my eyes and think to myself, Take me home. [By which I mean, “Take me back to the real world.”]

I then woke up for real, just as I had desired to do. I was amazed to discover that a full 6 ½ hours had passed since I'd gone to sleep. When I recalled my reaction to the opportunity to smoke marijuana, I laughed derisively at myself and thought, Oh, boy. I need to sort out my priorities.

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Side notes:
It's certainly fitting that I dreamed about smoking marijuana on the morning of 4/20. I first learned about 4/20 from peers in college, but on a conscious level, I had completely forgotten about it until I found the “Happy 4/20!” thread on DreamViews this morning. My subconscious sure remembered, though. :-)

I've never tried marijuana in real life, so I can't compare the reality to the dream. That might also be why it didn't really make me feel any different: my brain doesn't really know what it's supposed to feel like to be under its influence. I have drunk alcohol in real life, but I haven't done so in a dream yet. If I ever do, I expect it will probably feel just like it does in reality.

I noticed something today: When I write dream journal entries, I write like a scientist. I write down what I've observed and compare my new observations to previous ones. Sometimes I draw conclusions from all these observations. Often, I perform experiments within the dream and report on their results.