The Lab Notebook

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

I’m in a building that is something like a conference center. There is a conference/camp event going on here for students in the $Program program. [Name has been hidden to prevent members of the program from finding this journal.] Most of the people attending the conference are teenagers and young adults. I go from the hallway through a door into one of the conference rooms, where there is a check-in and registration table set up. It’s covered with the papers that belong to that schema: lists of registered attendees, conference schedules and other materials for the conference, and calendars of upcoming events. I check in, then take a look at the calendar and see that there’s an overnight event coming up that includes attending a local high school’s football game. I want to go, but I think it conflicts with something else that I have going on.

At this conference, each $Program group that is attending has a different nickname or theme; my group is the “villains” group. The check-in table for each group is in a different room. After I've checked in, I walk back out into the hallway and encounter a girl, my age or a little younger, looking for her check-in room. Her name tag reads “Eliza.” I encourage her to join one of the “good” groups [by which I mean, any group that isn't villains-themed], because she's new to $Program. I expect that I'll be the only one from my $Program group who participates in the larger group activities offered by the conference, because everyone else in my group is an older adult and most of the other conference attendees are teenagers or young adults. Besides, LN teaches high school for a living; she probably doesn't want to spend her off-hours with teenagers, too.

I start climbing the stairs to the second floor of the building to get to the conference meeting rooms. There are two flights of stairs that cross in an X in midair, joining together at the point where they cross to form a platform. A third, smaller flight of stairs extends down from this platform to the floor I want to get to. There are others climbing the stairs along with me.

[I don’t remember the transition, but] I’m outside the building I was just in. I’m on a beautiful college campus. It has trees, grass, and winding, paved paths between the buildings. The ground is not level, but contoured, rolling up and down. In this scene, I realize that I’m dreaming. [I don’t remember why or how; I just did.] I jump/float down one of the inclines, grabbing a handful of grass at the bottom of the incline as I land on another path, which [I think] has a low wall that stands between the path and the incline I've just jumped/floated over. I'm touching it to keep the dream stable by engaging my senses. It feels like real grass and is very soft and supple. I walk down the path I've just landed on, heading toward a small tree, covering ground much more quickly than I would in reality. [Here, I experienced that phenomenon I've read about here on DV where, in order to get somewhere in a dream, you focus on your intention to arrive there and suddenly, there you are, having skipped over the boring part where you traveled there.] When I reach the small tree, I touch it, wrapping my hand around its narrow trunk. It feels rough, like a real tree. I'm just happily enjoying being in a dream.

A little further along the path, just beyond the small tree, is a large, square, paved area, in front of the entrance to a building. A woman is standing in this area, alone. She’s older and has wispy brown hair, which she wears up in a loose bun. She has lines and wrinkles on her face, and has a patch of shiny, lavender-pink eyeshadow all over the center of her face. She’s wearing a long dress the same color as the eyeshadow.

I suddenly recall the current Task of the Month [which I had just looked up, just before going to bed]. I approach the woman. In the distance, behind me, I can hear all the teenagers and young adults who are attending the conference/camp singing together:

“Day-oh, day-oh. Da-a-ay-oh, da-a-ay-oh. Daylight come and me wanna go home.”

I sing along with the young people as they begin the next repetition of this segment of music: “Day-oh.” As I sing, I look right at the older woman, expecting her to sing along, too.

“Day-oh,” she mumbles softly, looking down shyly at the ground to my left.

“Da-a-ay-oh,” I sing to her, still looking at her and expecting her to sing along.

“Da-a-ay-oh,” she mumbles, still looking down. I figure that she simply lacks confidence in her singing voice and encourage her by saying enthusiastically to her, “Come on, you can do it!”

“Daylight come and me wanna go home,” she sings, now looking up and demonstrating self-confidence. She proves to have a beautiful singing voice.

Pleased, I continue singing along with the young people, who have been singing the song all this time. The older woman continues singing along as well. “Come, Mr. Tally-Man, tally me banana. Daylight come and me wanna go home.”

Somewhere in the midst of those two lines, the dream faded and I woke up, probably because I was so excited about having completed the Task of the Month for the first time since February.

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Side notes:
I just looked up what the current Tasks of the Month were last night. I think this knowledge helped motivate me to want to have a lucid dream. I'm thrilled that I completed the basic task the same night! The euphoria from my achievement lasted for several hours into my waking day.
I'm also excited to have used a new dream control ability for the first time. I'd read that you could control what happened in your dreams, including controlling the actions of DCs, by expecting particular things to happen, but this was the first time I'd ever actually done it.