Glieuaeiel's DJ

Swimming Pool (7:15) (LUCID)

The play I'm watching turns out to be rather experimental. First they pretend like the play was over, then they keep going. Then they even turn on the house lights and go offstage, but somehow I know that the play's not actually over yet. I wonder how they're going to catch everyone's attention again to continue the show.

Later, walking down a hallway, I realize that I'm dreaming. Time to go on an adventure! I'm carrying a backpack, which would be an annoyance to deal with, so I get in an elevator to take it back to my room first. But then I realize that that's stupid. I'll make it disappear instead. Setting it against the wall of the elevator, I focus on it. How to make it disappear? I imagine being able to see the corner of the elevator through the backpack--just a wireframe. Then fill it in with some colors . . . the dream doesn't feel stable . . . it was a bit dangerous to try to control things this directly . . . but just a bit more . . .

Suddenly, the backpack disappears! Immediately, the dream feels twice as vivid, twice as stable. Success! Now I go straight to the floor of interest, instead of going back to my room first. After getting out of the elevator, I start taking off my clothes. Then I pause to do a reality check: I wouldn't want to be doing this in real life. Although, now I think on it, why would I want to do it in a dream, either? It's kind of taking a lot of time to remove every blasted item of clothing. Well, whatever. As I continue, I think about what I want to do with this dream. I remember one of my dream goals: "swim beneath the ocean."

Later, I look through a window. Gravity and architecture aren't quite behaving properly; the exterior of the building slants diagonally away from the window, ending many stories below in a pool at ground level. I dive out the window and splash into the pool. Darkness and confusion reign for a few moments as a bodiless voice narrates something about symbolic significance of water, representing protection from the danger of the outside world. Moments later, I break the surface and see undulating hills of water all around, like small ocean swells. The narrator then says, "You know what else represents protection?" and suddenly a girl floats into view and up to my side. She's not wearing anything.

Obviously, the expectation is that I'll take this chance to have sex. "Squirt me," she says with an encouraging smile. I give her a wry look and reply, "No." I'm not interested in doing that right now, although I do "squirt" off to the side just to acknowledge the temptation, or something. We pick a direction and start swimming that way. On a whim, I decide to go in for some manual stimulation and reach between her legs. She doesn't react, though. "That doesn't do anything for you?" I ask after a few moments. She shakes her head and replies, "Like I said, I'm trying to quit." Soon, I wake up.

Personal Tutoring (8:20) (LUCID)

Alone, I'm exploring a castle. After a while, I realize that walking is taking too long, so I take out my bike and start riding around instead. But even that gets boring, and I start wondering what else I could be doing. Just like that, I remember my dream goal about swimming in the ocean, and I realize that I'm dreaming.

Moments later, I find myself again underneath the water in a swimming pool. Dumbledore is tutoring me in dream control. Rather than trying to force myself to the surface, he says, I should trust the dream to buoy me. This strikes me as real wisdom. I hold myself in cannonball position and focus on the sensation of being lifted and turned by the water. Soon, I wake up.

Christian String Quartet (9:00)

I'm sitting in a public area when suddenly I hear an acoustic guitar behind me. Cool, live music! When the string quartet starts playing a song, I'm not sure exactly what it's about at first, but I suspect (slightly uncomfortably) that it's Christian rock.

Previous hours:
Feb 25, 0:27-8:40
Feb 26, 2:38-9:03

Sex with My Cousin (LUCID)

[Okay, yes, awkward subject. The label "lucid" makes it seem like incest was a dream goal of mine, which I assure you is not the case. And it should go without saying that in waking life, although I do think she is attractive, we are certainly just relatives, with all that that entails. Please don't shun me!]

I'm outside, near a cottonwood tree, when I realize that I'm dreaming. I try to force things to happen, but the dream blurs, and I remember that it's better to try to work within the dream logic. How might I fly into the air within this system? I notice a strong wind at my back: perfect! I let myself be blown into the sky.

What next? I know that it's considered cliche and unrefined to try to have sex in a lucid dream, but at the moment I feel like doing it, and to hell with what everyone else thinks. Again, I try to think of how to make this element come naturally into the dream. Where would I find an interested girl? Hmmm. Probably I can just imagine that she's flying in the sky somewhere out there in the distance where I'm going. And indeed, I soon notice a distant speck growing larger, which turns out, unexpectedly, to be my cousin. We hold on to each other to keep from flying apart. Clothes disappear and not much copulation happens, because I wake up.

Frags:

• playing a really awesome new platformer

Previous hours:
Feb 15, 1:40-3:25
Feb 16, 3:50-9:00
Feb 17, 23:56-9:26

Virginity

I'm at a party talking with a girl I sort of know when somehow we begin making out. Surprised, I think I want to stop this before it goes too far--this is not how I envisioned I would make my "sexual debut." But no, this is fun! That's what sex is about, right? Sex is just fun and there's no need to memorialize the first time. So I go with it.

Some time later, we're naked in a bed together. I realize that despite the obviously sexual nature of our activities, absurdly, I'm still technically a virgin. But then the girl takes the initiative, and, shifting her position, slips me inside. I'm impressed that she managed to do so without using her hands, but I suppose she knows more about this than me. Anyway, yes, it feels different; I'm not sure how I imagined it would feel.

A few minutes later, we're still going. I'm impressed with myself for lasting this long. In fact, we never actually finish. Eventually we just stop. I realize that this whole time, we've been clasping ourselves together like we're hugging, with our chin over the other person's right shoulder. I'm not sure we ever did any kissing. In order to rectify the situation, I slide my cheek back along hers, and we kiss. As I draw back, she gives me a strange look (or so I think), so I panic and wonder if that was too romantic a thing to do after a one-off fling like this. But when I explain my concern, she laughs and says that kissing is absolutely fine.

Contentious Parking Spot (LUCID)

[The alarm woke me up at 10:00, but I fell asleep at about 10:07 and had this dream sometime after that. Content warning: some sex at the end.]

The field trip is over and everyone's figuring out how to get back home. A tallish guy walks down the line of students, trying to make eye contact with me. I'm pretty sure he's trying to ask me if I want to take the bus with him, so we'll both have company. When he reaches me, I assure him that I will (after verifying that he's talking about the same route as me); in fact, I had been planning to take the bus anyway. Our stop is at 58th street.

I get off at an underground stop and ascend the stairs to the surface. I emerge a couple blocks south of my dorm, in a neighborhood I usually try to avoid for safety reasons. The trouble is, I don't want to look scared, either. Thugs would find that encouraging, and innocent residents would find it insulting. So I try to maintain a measured pace as I walk to the corner.

I see two men my age coming my direction. I now have an agonizing decision to make. Do I run and be labeled as a prejudiced bigot, or do I keep walking and be mugged? Fortunately, they're far enough away from the intersection that I think I might just reach it far enough ahead of them that I don't need to worry. Unfortunately, when I turn the corner, I find that the dorm is still two blocks away, rather than the one I thought I remembered. Holding my pace, I try to stay calm.

Soon I'm in a car, turning a corner to find some empty street parking. In fact, there's a sign that states only people from my home state are allowed to park here, and two of the spots are labeled with the logo of the university in my home town. (I go to college out of state.) Apparently they're very organized about their parking around here. I pull into the spot. When I step out of my car, though, one of my high school friends is standing there.

"I'm going to have to move your car," he jokes. Apparently he uses it on a daily basis. Perhaps he even has a claim on it, because he actually goes to school at that university. [IRL: I'm not sure where he goes to school.] I assure him that he needn't bother; since I barely use my car anyway, I'll just put it in one of the long-term spots in the nearby underground parking garage. It's a bit of a nuisance, but hey, I'm a nice guy.

The parking garage is four stories deep, with a curving ramp going down. Once, I miscalculate the turn, and end up having to perform an elaborate K-turn in order to get the car aligned well enough to go down to the next level. On the third level, I find some empty spots, but they're far enough away from the ramp that I'm worried I wouldn't spot the car right away. It's a given that by the end of the quarter, I'll have forgotten completely where I parked. It'll be easier to find the car if I put it in one of the close spots on the fourth floor. So I keep going down, find a spot, and park.

Now my car is disguised as some kind of lightweight wooden framework [??], and I realize it would be very easy for some obnoxious fellow to pick it up and move it somewhere else. In fact, there's a guy trying to do so right now. I walk back to the car, thanking him not to do that any more, and I try to manifest some tent stakes into my hand so that I can pound them into the ground and hold the car in place. But obviously, if I'm manifesting things into my hands, I must be dreaming, and of course tent stakes are then a ridiculous waste of time.

I'm a bit fed up with half-lucid dreams where I get nothing done, so I throw caution to the winds and try to force the dream to change to one where I'm having sex. To my surprise, the dream doesn't immediately fall apart, and a few seconds later I'm lying on the floor with a plump woman in a white sweater leaning over me.

"You get two kisses," she says with a stern look, clearly implying that I will get no more. I accept this. The first kiss seems a little off, though, and this isn't really what I wanted to be doing anyway. I change my mind and try to change the dream to actual sex. The woman, now directly on top of me, thins somehow and becomes naked, and now this is definitely a sex dream. The girl says something about being 18 again. A few seconds later, it's over, which wakes me up.

Frags:

• I remember no details, but . . . sex was involved

[Side note: I just got home after finishing finals.]

Hot Porn

I'm re-watching an unusually good porn video. There's a strange jump cut in the middle, though, that confuses me.

Frags:

• "Thanksgiving plot (which class? hwk done?)"

Privacy

I'm walking to a party in my dorm. There are these two girls following me; first-years, I think. They seem kind of giggly, possibly drunk. I'm not sure what they're up to, and I don't think I want to find out. I speed up my steps to get to the party before they can catch up to me.

I stay at the party for a while, then leave. I'm only a few steps down the hallway when one of the girls follows me out. Just one, this time. I'm not able to find a group of people in which to hide, so she catches up to me. She proposes that we have sex. [I don't remember the exact wording, but that's the gist of it: she's in the mood to have fun, somehow I caught her eye, and she thinks we should do it.] Immediately, I feel that I should escape. She doesn't really seem in control of herself, she's probably at least two years younger than me, and I really don't want my first time to be under these circumstances. I go into a different room, but she follows me, still talking.

"How drunk /are/ you?" I ask. In response, she proposes a race: first person to touch the ceiling of the room wins, then we can have sex afterwards. While I'm contemplating whether to do the race just to humor her, she starts climbing. The room is a big warehouse, with shelves and piles of foam cubes of various sizes. It would be a difficult thing to climb, but it might be fun. After hesitating another fraction of a second, I start up after her. She has a huge head start. I'll have to go fast to catch up, but she's drunk enough that I might still win. Quickly, I clamber over piles of cubes and stumble around on top. She's up ahead of me. She hasn't reached the highest point yet, but for some reason she's stopped, and she's trying to jump to touch the ceiling instead of climbing higher. I run past her and touch the ceiling an instant before one of her jumps finally succeeds. I'm dumbfounded for a second about how well that played out. It was almost cinematic.

"Wow, that was close," I say.

By now, I've decided that I should stop being so phobic about sex. I should just accept her offer so I can stop making such a big deal out of it in the future. So now I have to find a comfortable, private place for us. The first place we try is an outdoor swimming pool. I wade around for a bit while she runs off to do something or other. I'm not wearing a shirt anymore. When she comes back, she walks right up to me with a grin and starts feeling my torso. This girl is nothing if not forward. I'm reluctant to let her find out that I've gone hard, but it might be interesting to see how she'd react. Probably she'd start groping me. But somehow this pool is unsatisfactory (for one thing, there's a poolside restaurant with big windows that look right out at us), so we leave.

We go into a nearby museum. It's basically empty. There are a few security staff members around, locking things up for the night. We avoid them and go to a higher floor. But then a man sees me and says, "Sir, we're closing for the night." I have no choice but to turn around and leave, but in the spirit of exploration I decide to leave a different way than the way I came in: the fire escape. Hopefully the guard will understand. As I'm leaving, he remarks incredulously, "Wow, you're comfortable from the waist up!" By which he means that I'm again not wearing a shirt. I'd forgotten. Somehow I laugh it off and walk down the iron staircase to the sidewalk.

As I'm walking down the night-darkened streets, suddenly there is a violent male scream and my head starts vibrating as though caught in the jaws of an angry dog. After a second of this, I wake up with my heart racing.

[Similar things happened on 8/22 and 9/14 of this year. I'm not sure what to think about them, yet. Maybe I have some kind of condition?]

Frags:

• something about relatives [I know I woke up earlier last night right after a dream, but I decided not to write it down or try to remember it. I guess I was tired.]

Camera Project (7:06)

My sister needs to borrow my camera ASAP for a class project which I assume is due this morning. I give it to her somehow and head to my own class, Discrete Math. On the way I get a text from Mom saying that my sister has gotten really depressed about this project, since now she can't get the pictures off of the camera. I feel stupid for not realizing that she would need the CD to install the camera's driver onto her computer. I'm not even sure where that CD is, nowadays. I might have packed it in one of those boxes I've been meaning to send home. It'll take a while to find it for her. But that's actually okay, I suddenly realize, because I don't have class this morning--it's Monday, and Discrete Math is on Tuesdays. Today I don't have class until the afternoon. Only, maybe the project was already due, in which case I can do nothing to help. On the off chance it will do some good, I head back towards my dorm.

By means of a cutscene [or something], I see that Dad's given my sister a call, to say in no uncertain terms that he is totally unsympathetic to her plight. I also see that my sister is standing in a grassy lawn, crying, waiting for her boyfriend to come with roses and make her feel better. I think that's a bit of an immature thing to use a boyfriend for.

Old Folk's Home

I'm about to walk away from the building when I decide, regretfully, that I might as well go back there to practice viola. I don't like that building. That one weird professor lives in it, and it's basically an old folk's home. I turn around and walk back, noticing that there are a lot of string quartets and small bands rehearsing on the sidewalk, all in a row. Huh.

Inside, I wander around the building for a while. There is a shallow spiral staircase to the second floor. I feel old myself as I climb them, since my recent sickness has left me lethargic enough that I have to put both feet on each step. This frustrates me, so I decide to challenge myself and try the other staircase: a much steeper one going up the middle of the spiral staircase, with golden steps that are individually suspended on ropes from the ceiling. It turns out to be very hard, since there's nothing to stop the steps from swinging back and forth like so many swings. I have to grab a rope to prevent myself from falling off. One of the women working at desks on the second floor notices my plight and demonstrates proper use of the staircase. She has no trouble walking all the way down. But there's not really a trick to it; you just have to be very coordinated. I can't believe anyone thought that this staircase was a good idea. It seems dangerous. In describing this staircase, later, I call it a "Margo Walk."

Back on the first floor, I meet a nice old woman and her friend. As a test, the woman has us alternate numbers, counting to ten in German. It gets off to a slow start, because I was confused by her accent and I expected she was going to ask for Korean. Then I ask her how to say "forty" in German, because I only know twenty and thirty. [IRL: I didn't even know "thirty"; I was confusing it with "thirteen."] She seems confused, thinking that I should have asked how to say "forty-four," I guess because it's more fun to say. It's an interesting approach to linguistics, I suppose. She has to think a long time about "forty." Has she been speaking English for so long that she forgot her native language?

Then it's time for lunch, and as a group we set off for the dining room. I wonder if the'll want me to sit next to them. I decide not to risk being unwelcome, and I sit at the end of the table instead. Then I notice that somehow my place doesn't have a plate with food, while almost everyone else's does. I decide I'll just be patient, but in the meantime I'm worried that some of the people here will start fussing over me, thinking that my not having a plate is a dreadful tragedy, or something. I look around the table at the old faces around me, trying to reconcile myself to the idea of old age. I guess for the most part they're good-looking, in their own ways.

[I think I came back to this lunchroom on various other occasions. I began to feel a bit like a freeloader for eating lunch here almost every day, but on the other hand I would feel rude abandoning everyone just before the meal. And the food was pretty good.]

Are We Watching Porn?

Spoiler for sexual content:

I'm in the basement with a group of kids my age. There are about a dozen TVs down here, all showing similar videos. At first, the content is pretty innocuous. But there's this one video with two women. Somehow their clothes start disappearing, and somehow what they're doing is stimulating to one of the women. After a minute she gasps and says, "That was SO GOOD!" At this point, I'm a little confused and uncomfortable (and aroused); I thought these videos were about something else. Everyone else seems confused too; another guy asks, "Are we watching porn?" In response, a few people laugh. By now, everyone in all of the videos is naked.

Lucid?

[I remember that I was lucid at some point in the night. I was looking at a natural landscape and appreciating the detail. Then I tried to look upwards, and the lights dimmed and I lost all visuals.]

Stamitz Viola Concerto (9:23)

I'm talking to someone in the entrance hall of an old-ish building. I hear a viola behind me, and suddenly I recognize the music as the theme from the first movement of the Stamitz viola concerto. Sweet! I look around at the player, who turns out to be a forty-odd, balding man. I notice that he's playing the accompaniment parts as well, using double stops. For that reason, he's playing well under tempo. Also, sometimes he has to break a long solo note into repeated shorter notes, since the accompaniment underneath is changing. Wow, this guy's good. I feel very inept in comparison.

Ritual of the Children

I'm sitting in a common room when a girl comes in from outside. She starts talking to some friends of hers, telling them about a meeting she just attended with a famous person, who actually just sent out a tweet about the meeting that involved a play on words on the girl's name. She's pretty happy about this.

Later, I come back into the common room. The girl's already there. I sit next to her and try to start up a conversation. We talk about her name. Turns out her name is Sadie Hawkins, which is also the name of a type of school dance. I'm surprised I didn't make this connection the first time I heard it. I suppose that must be because I heard it in the context of a play on words. I try to explain this to her, but my explanation is something along the lines of, "Oh, I guess that makes sense, because . . . you know, it was . . . right?" Immediately afterward, I feel embarrassed for being so terribly awful at communication. I think I was afraid to explain it directly, because that would mean admitting that I eavesdropped on her conversation.

Then a bunch of ten-year-old kids come into the room and start doing a ritual. Then it's time for lunch, but we have time to shower first, if we want. I do want to, so I try to head down the hallway to the bathroom. But the entrance is like two feet too short for my head. I suppose this hallway must be reserved for the ten-year-olds. They have their own hallway? This is weird. Whatever. I go down the hallway to the left, which takes me to the bathroom.

It's dark in here, and crowded. I open the first door that I come to, but it's a toilet stall, not a shower. I keep looking for a shower, but instead I come upon a row of turnstiles in the right wall. The kids are lined up behind them, entering one at a time. If this is their entrance, then I probably went past the showers. And I'd better find one soon, because it will be even more crowded here before long.

Tropical Island

[I am awake at the beginning of this dream.]

I know that it is almost time to wake up, but I decide to see if I can fall asleep into a dream landscape of my choosing. [Sort of like a WILD, I guess, but I didn't use that terminology at the time.] I decide that I will attempt to enter the dream quickly by visualizing myself falling from a great height. I picture a field of rolling plains, and in the distance there is a tall group of rocks with almost vertical sides. I am at the top of those rocks, I decide. The view starts to zoom in on the rocks. I still feel like I'm just picturing this in my head, not dreaming it, which frustrates me. Eventually I zoom in on myself, and then I fall backwards off of the cliff. [I can't remember the details of the event.]

I've landed on a beach, in the surf, though it takes a few moments for me to get my bearings. Somehow this is not what I wanted to happen, but a voice tells me that I should be feeling very comfortable right now (seeing as how this is a tropical island), so I should try to enjoy myself. I wade into the water, but almost immediately I notice something floating in the water near me that looks like dog poop. Eww. I try to wade away from it, but a trick of the current seems to make it follow me. Once, I think I've gotten away from it, only to look again a moment later and find that it's back. Then I notice that there's a current under the surface that's making a lot of stuff collide with my legs on its way past me. Seaweed, perhaps. In any case, it's gross. This is not fun.

Modesty (6:57)

I've stayed the night at an acquaintance's house, but we're not exactly friends. In the morning, I'm looking for a bathroom when I pass a room where he's talking with some friends. They see me. I'm not wearing a shirt at the moment, and I hope they don't think that's rude of me.

Challenge Level (6:57)

I and a friend have decided to play the challenge dungeon in this game. It's the sort of freakishly difficult level that's unlockable at the end of a game in order to get the player to put in a few more hours playing it. So my friend and I are running around this dungeon, working together to kill monsters. So far, it's only been one monster at a time, albeit tough ones. Then we run around a corner and I accidentally step in a shallow pool of lava. I jump out again quickly. Then we're attacked by a Charizard. It almost kills us before we hide behind a corner. I charge up my breath attack, then step around the corner to hit the Charizard with it. It takes two shots, but finally, we succeed. Then there's a cutscene showing about a dozen monsters marching in formation down the hallway towards us. No more of this one-at-a-time business, apparently. This must be where the dungeon gets freakishly difficult. My friend and I share a laugh, accepting that this is probably the end of our playing today.

Spoiler for sexual content:

Now the camera switches to the inside of the next room. Sort of a sneak peek at what's waiting for us there if we get through the monsters. There's a naked woman having a conversation with some other people. She's distressed about something; something related to living in a dungeon. I'm impressed by the realism of the graphics for her body. It's definitely sexy. Another naked woman comes into the room, and to demonstrate her point about everyone always wanting her around just to be sexy, the first woman says, "Everyone always wants me to do this:" And then she and the other woman get on the floor and start grinding. A couple moments later, I wake up for the predictable reason.

Jedi Tricks (6:00) (LUCID)

I'm sitting in a room with my mentor and my fellow apprentice when a messenger comes running through the door. Someone is gravely injured, and they need our help in order to save her. Immediately, our mentor gets up to leave, and he beckons us to follow.

A stretch of floor in the hallway is unsafe--it collapses underneath you if you're not careful. Our mentor runs up to it and jumps across. It's a very long stretch of floor, so he has to use the force to propel himself horizontally. It's an impressive trick, and he calls it the "Seven-Meter Jump." I'm not sure I'm skilled enough yet to pull it off, but I jump anyway. It looks like I'm not quite going to make it, so I add an extra burst of horizontal motion at the end. Then I turn around to watch my fellow apprentice cross. He jumps up, grabs some handles on the ceiling, and swings across that way. Clever.

We reach the room with the patient. There are dozens of people already there--participants and helpers in the energy sharing ritual which our mentor will moderate. He starts giving orders, and everyone gets into position. There's even a big, shaggy dog involved. Then the ritual starts, and it's a bizarre sensation. It feels like it's over in moments. Afterwards, the other participants start enthusiastically talking about it and checking the time. We're all wondering how long it actually took. I overhear that it's a quarter after the hour now, but we came in there at around ten till. Wow, that ritual really messes with time perception.

I go back down the hallway with my fellow apprentice. We enter a stairwell with a railing, and I take this opportunity to practice some acrobatics--doing flips over the bar and bouncing off of the walls; that kind of thing. My friend does some, too. Then I realize that I must be dreaming--unrealistic acrobatics seem to be a theme, recently.

Without pausing to plan, I just start doing stuff. Nothing in particular, just whatever comes to mind--always making sure to observe what's going on and try to work creatively within the existing dream framework. For instance, I look at my hands to find I'm holding some Oreos. I squeeze my hands into fists and open them again to reveal handfuls of nuts. I decide I want to float around, so I start hopping up and down on the floor of my bedroom. Gravity's not behaving as leniently as I'd like, but I just keep trying. Somehow, some cubes get stuck to my feet, and bouncing on top of other loose cubes joins them all into two big cubes. Then gravity is a lot less strong, and I can float into the air at will. I'm approaching the ceiling, and I decide to try to go straight through it. After a moment of darkness, it works! I'm worried about waking my parents, though. A couple of times [I think], I return to the stairwell to do more acrobatics. They're really quite fun. At some point, I wake up.

Nonchalant (8:06)

Spoiler for vaguely sexual content:

I'm in the living room of the house, masturbating. One of my parents passes in a nearby hallway. I try to nonchalantly hide my penis behind my neck. [?? Obviously, this is not anatomically possible.] I suppose it works, because no one freaks out.

Rain, Rain (7:00)

I'm walking up five or six stories' worth of stairs with my dad and a friend of his. Somehow I take a wrong turn, and end up going up an outside staircase, rather than the indoor one we were using. I can seed Dad and his friend through the windows, sometimes. I decide that I'll just continue up this way. Maybe I'll even beat them to the apartment. But it's raining outside, so I have to try to hold my clothing in such a way that it won't get too wet.

The apartment's pretty nice. I meet some more adults there: acquaintances of my two companions.

Sexual Debut (8:03)

I'm walking along the sidewalk with a group of college acquaintances, listening to their conversation about wall jumps. Apparently there's a special kind of wall jump that many people from my house can do. One guy in the group is particularly good at it, so they want to see him do it again. He obliges: he jumps about a dozen feet straight into the air, then pushes away from the wall using one foot in such a way that he does a backflip before landing again. It's all very smooth and nonchalant; he controls his momentum somehow by moving one hand in a circle. The others are impressed. "Just how high can these wall jumps go?" one asks.

"Well . . ." he says, and he jumps again. This time he jumps all the way above the roof of the building (two stories up), and I'm not sure what he's going to use to push from. But he somehow curves around in the air over us and lands on a high tree branch on the other side of the sidewalk. Then he jumps again, doing another backflip and landing on the roof of a parked car.

That was amazing. And so dangerous, but he made it look easy. I had no idea that humans could--wait a second. I don't care how real this looks, I know for a fact that humans /cannot/ jump more than about three feet vertically. If he can do that, then I can set my hand on fire.

I spread my fingers in front of my face and watch as they artistically catch fire, dissolving into nothing and blowing away on the breeze. Then my hand goes, and my arm. I'm turning invisible. But my body's still there; I can feel it. Somehow this realization makes me decide that I should have sex. [Note: I'm not actually lucid at this point. I guess because I never did an RC, the moment of lucidity passed as quickly as it came.]

Spoiler for sexual content:

Moments later, I'm standing in a swimming pool with a girl. (I'm not invisible anymore.) We both know we're attracted to each other, neither of us have done this before, and both of us have decided it's time. There's another group of people in the swimming pool some distance away, but they're not paying any attention to us. We're not sure which sexual positions might work while floating in the water, so we just try a few, laughing. We must look exactly as inexperienced as we are, but that's okay. We end up spooning, and she makes an executive decision that this position will be fine. We sort of zoom around underwater while we do it. One thing about spooning is that it's easy to use my hands to help things along, and before long she has some convulsions that make me think she's probably done. Then she changes position to help me finish. I discover that I'm very ticklish in the area around my butt-hole.

Later, while we return to our original corner of the pool, it occurs to me that the pool staff might disapprove of what we just did. Having sex in a public swimming pool is perhaps not the most sanitary thing to do. I get a bit distracted worrying about this. Then we find a friend of ours waiting for us, congratulating us on finally having done it. I laugh and take her hands while saying, "Oh, so it's your turn now?" She laughs, too, shaking her head and saying, "Nooooo." She mentions something about a whiteboard. I tell her that I accidentally left it at my dad's friend's apartment. For no apparent reason, I suddenly wake up.

[Surprisingly, this was not a wet dream. Go figure.]

Frags:

• There are a lot of very loud birds outside my bedroom window. I decide to try to view the sound as peaceful and relaxing, rather than irritating. [Perhaps this actually happened. IDK.]

Sledding (9:03)

"As my first eccentricity," the groom declares, "I'm going to kick out a few tables." Someone has just said something to warn the wedding guests that the groom might be eccentric, and he seems to be wasting no time proving the warning right. "Let's have a look at some of these flags," he says. Each table has one special guest of some kind, each of whom brought a flag with a personal or national pattern on it. Of course, the groom comes first to my table (though, note that I'm not the special guest of the table; that's someone else). He handles the flag disparagingly, pointing out what he thinks are problems with it. It looks like the flag has two patterns, one on each side. One side looks a bit like the U.S. flag. Then the groom says that he's very sorry, but because of this flag, everyone sitting at this table will have to go. This is of course unreasonable and unfair, but I suspect reason will not work with him. I leave the wedding venue, which is a building on top of a tall hill.

Then I wonder whether I shouldn't have given up so easily. I decide this is a quest for justice and true love. (Everyone knows I'm the one who's supposed to be with the bride up there.) "There's some stuff back there that belongs to me," I declare to myself. For instance, my shoes. I took them off somewhere before going to my table, and I wasn't given enough time to collect them before leaving. I turn around and start back towards the main entrance. The groom starts making fun of me, specifically for the allies that I'm bringing along to help me. [I've no idea how he was doing this--physically, he was still at the wedding, nowhere nearby.]

What he doesn't know is that I chose my allies because they all have superpowers. We fall upon the wedding ceremony without warning. I try to invent a variety of superpowers and hand gestures to go with them. For instance, with a wave of an arm, one person can send out a wave of frosty air that freezes people in place, like icicles. There's one man in a hat standing calmly amidst the chaos, and I'm not sure if he's on my side or not. Inexplicably, my forces start retreating. I realize that hat-man must have a mind control superpower, and he's using it against me to make everyone run away. I wonder if they will all die, and I feel that's a terrible price for the main character to pay just to save one person and a pair of shoes. I run away from hat-man myself before he can take control of my mind, but not before separating the bride and groom in the snowstorm and taking the bride with me. The groom has a snarl on his face.

The movie cuts to an aerial shot of the heroes as they run away from the building. It was obviously rendered with a 3D graphics engine, and not very well, at that. The snow on the ground is too smooth and too reflective. I'm not impressed by their graphics team. The heroes are carrying a light, but I notice there's a second source of (badly rendered) light, as well. I wonder where it's coming from, and the movie cuts to a shot of the castle on the hill. There's a guard carrying a lantern around the outside walls--a sentry. The heroes must have been trying to sneak back in, and they had to run away when they saw the guard's light coming near. They'll probably try again soon. They do, and the guard sees their light. He raises a cry: "I see a cherry!" (referring to the size of the light, I suppose).

Spoiler for sexual content:

Again, the heroes turn and dash back down the snowy mountainside. The camera focuses on the main character and his long-lost lover. She's wearing a totally unadorned white silk dress. (There aren't even any visible seam lines.) Now that they've been reunited, nothing can stop them from enjoying each other's company. The man starts sliding down the snow on his back and the woman rolls on top of him--basically a sex position, except they also happen to be sliding down a hillside. [I suppose I should mention that this portion of the dream was from the guy's perspective, but I'm going to keep telling it in third person if that's okay with you. . . .] It's very comfortable, not to mention arousing, and they end up sliding into an area with relatively few trees. The man asks if this is an okay spot for her, and she says yes; the ground is flat, so it will be comfortable. He manages to respond (in a rather strained voice) that her body makes any place comfortable, but then he gets a bit too frisky and I wake up.

Superheroes (8:07)

To their surprise, a group of friends discover that they all have superpowers. The superpower is unique to the person. One of them can create force fields, which comes in handy when villains begin shooting energy bullets at them. Still, she barely gets up the shields in time, which makes her friends nervous enough to shout at her a bit. In the middle of a sentence, someone realizes that the villains just shot a "seminuclear bomb" at them. They all shout and panic, and the bomb goes off. From a distant perspective, you see a cylindrical shield appear around the group just in time to protect them from the blast.

Thinking they've succeeded, the villains approach the area of the ocean where the group of superheroes had been swimming. Soon after they reach the spot, the shield disappears, presumably releasing radiation poisoning into all of the villains. They all start making funny faces. I'm curious about how this movie is going to depict radiation sickness--it seems like something that would be difficult to cartoonify.

Autumn (8:07) (LUCID)

It's a beautiful fall day. I'm walking over the grass in a section of woods where all the trees are bare of leaves, and I'm not alone. There are dozens of people nearby, walking every which way, although I am traveling alone. I reach the crest of a small hill, but rather than walking down the other side, I keep on walking straight into the air. I suppose that must mean I'm dreaming, but I'm not sure I feel like doing anything about that.

On second thought . . . I do a reality check to get into the mindset of dream control. I still have to prove that I can exercise some kind of control over fire. I decide to try to use lightning. Looking at a nearby tree, I gesture at it somehow. To my surprise, with a flash and a bang, a bolt actually strikes the tree. It's on fire, now, but the fire is highly stylized. The tree is covered in a bunch of orange and black sprites--little crescent moons that randomly switch from left-facing to right-facing. I'm not sure that counts as actually starting a fire. I turn to another tree and try to hit it with lightning, too, but this time, nothing happens.

I give up on the lightning, and try to set the grass on fire with a sweeping motion of my arm. A ramrod-straight, paper-thin line of flame about a dozen feet long appears on the ground, but it doesn't interact much with its surroundings. I try to make lava from the foothills flow down through a nearby riverbed, but that doesn't really work, either.

Carefully, I look up at the clouds above me. I worry that without any trees or grass in my field of vision, the dream will start to come apart. The sky is pretty, but I look down again quickly. A little later, and without any apparent warning, the dream just stops. My vision's not black, per se, but I can't see anything.

Novice Author (8:07)

A novice author has recorded a video explaining the story behind her recent short book. She starts by reading something apparently from a writing textbook, about how it's a good idea to write the ending first, then pretend to get flustered by all the complicated detail and explain to the reader that you'll have to go back and tell it all from the beginning. I recognize that technique from a lot of the books I've read, and apparently the author does, too, because she looks up from the book to interject a short phrase meaning something like, "Just like they do in the classics!"

While the video credits are rolling, the girl's roommate comes into the room wearing a bathrobe. She's just trying to get her laundry from the machine, but as a joke the vlogger intercepts her, and in the struggle the robe comes untied. Eventually the roommate does manage to put on a pair of underwear. Then the vlogger's top comes off, too, and they sit down on the ground and start kissing. I'm pretty sure this is the first time either of them have explored this part of their sexual orientation, so, good for them!

Frags:

• A volcano goes off and we have to climb up a series of gigantic, cubical cliffs in order to escape the lava flows. The cliffs have a consistency similar to tofu. I take a few wrong turns.

It's Your Destiny (6:58)

A red-haired anime girl repeatedly walks up to my character and hands him a note. Half the time, she folds it into a paper airplane and blows it at him like she's blowing a kiss. The other half is a similar animation that also involves her blowing something at him. It's obvious that only these two animations were made, and they alternate randomly for variety. In both, after she delivers the note, she uses a pink rod about the size of a penis, which turns into an umbrella, and she floats away.

Some girls I know who have played the game before tell me that no matter how you play it, your character ends up with that girl. It has something to do with your destiny. I'm resistant to this idea, but there's clearly a different girl following me around in the game to enforce my destiny. The next time I see her approach, I get ready to do battle. I'm not exactly excited at the concept. I have a premonition that this battle will involve throwing fireballs, though, so at the least it will give me inspiration for lucid dream control, when I ever have one again. [D'oh!]

Indeed, one or two golf-ball sized fireballs are thrown. We also try setting traps on various pieces of furniture, but I'm not sure exactly how to set them off. Anyway, this girl is herself not an expert at this kind of fighting, so I'm not completely flattened. Some people my age are standing in a nearby driveway (it's dusk), which complicates things, because I think we're supposed to keep our abilities a secret. As I'm looking around, I notice an uncanny coincidence: of the three groups of people standing nearby, all are holding or manipulating a car tailgate/rear bumper, and our spells start affecting all three bumpers at once. It's such a strange coincidence that I start to wonder whether maybe destiny has something to do with it.

There's a man walking around the bar, singing enthusiastically along with the background music (which is Copeland's Hoedown). Our battle ends at the same time as the music.

Gingerly (6:58)

My family is walking into a building through a room with a lot of dog poop in it. Fortunately, there's a clear path around the side. Unfortunately, my mom trips and falls into the dirty part, then rolls through the dirty part before coming to a stop. That last part was totally unnecessary. She could have stopped herself somehow. My sisters are making loud, disgusted noises.

On the way out, I consider going around the other way, but it turns out that there are a ton of cobwebs between the car and the wall of the garage. Not worth it. So I go ahead of the group back around the original way so that I can open the door. We're talking about how this was just a routine checkup for our dog, but last year's checkup was routine and it led to discovering an illness which she hasn't recovered from to this day. So we're hoping for good news, but we're worried. We're also trying to coordinate times and places, because there's something I need to go to on my own, and someone else will have to pick me up.

Burnt Sugar Cookies (6:58)

Last night, someone made SO MANY sugar cookies. Dad shows me the box. They're all a little burnt, so they're brown rather than beige. They're going to be used as rewards. Dad also shows me the container which is supposedly full of grease from all the cleaning that had to be done afterward.

We try talking to my middle sister about something stupid she's doing. Mom's been trying to convince her to stop, but she isn't listening. I decide to pipe up and try to calm things down. I admit to her that I don't know as many of the details of the situation as Mom does, but I still agree with Mom's assessment that she should stop. I try to give some reasons, but I'm not sure that she listens.

Later, we're sitting around the dinner table. Dad tells everyone about how I've solved some of my professor's "Challenge Problems." I hadn't been planning on bringing it up, because that would be bragging. But now everyone's looking at me expectantly, so I say yes, I solved two of them. "Both of which I've already seen from other sources," I add. My eldest sister says encouragingly that there's no problem with that; it's all about "unifying the notation." I nod. I'd never thought of it that way before.

Springtime Traditions (6:58)

Spoiler for Springtime Traditions:

There's a video choreographed to "Rite of Spring." Right now, we're at the frenzied section towards the end of "Mock Abduction." Perhaps unsurprisingly, the accompanying video shows three couples lying parallel to each other, having sex. The video cuts are all over the place. I have a feeling I know what's coming. Indeed, on each of the last chords before "Spring Rounds," everyone convulses together. A helpful white label appears on screen, too, saying, "orgasm." I wake up messily.

Frags:

• Someone asks me my year in school, so I hold up three fingers. "Fourth?" they ask. I suppose the little short wall between us might have gotten in the way, so I raise my hand higher and say, "Ah, no, third," and they say, "Ah, of course." I wonder if my pinky wasn't folded over far enough the first time.
• There's a free bottle of alcohol lying around, so I grab it. Reading the label, I see that it's apparently bourbon. Excellent; I haven't tried that kind yet. [IRL I have this thing where I kind of want to try all the different kinds of alcohol, and then maybe never drink again after that. Who knows.] I put the bottle in my backpack. I still feel weird doing things like that; I feel like it should be illegal for me to possess alcohol. But it's not, anymore.
• I witness an awesome piece of scenery, and I try to impress it on my memory. It might have involved clouds.

Cave Channeling (6:58)

Rand al'Thor is in a giant cavern, being attacked by a fairly weak enemy creature. He tries to use the One Power to make its brain explode inside its skull. The first one or two tries are unsuccessful, and in the meanwhile, the creature is hurting him. But eventually he succeeds.

At another time, someone is trying to levitate a giant rock and drop it on his head. But he manages to deflect it and send it into the depths of a chasm.

There is a dock in this cavern that seems suspicious. Rand does something to it, and a round, apparently dead fish pops out of the water and lands on the wood. After making sure it won't suddenly come alive to attack him, Rand takes the fish back to the place he's made his camp, wanting to cook it. It seems like too much effort to conjure an entire stove to heat the fish, so instead he just warms up one patch of the rocks.

At another time, there is some kind of confrontation on a rock platform jutting out from a wall. The camera for this scene is level with the platform, but a great distance away. You see a woman run from the platform into a doorway in the wall, followed by a man. A heartbeat later, the man comes flying back out and slides backwards along the platform as though punched with considerable force. A few moments after that, there is a burst of fire from the doorway and the woman comes running back out, crying or screaming or in any case in desperate need of healing. I'm impressed by the creativity of the cinematographer, to shoot the scene from such an unusual angle as that.

Back on the platform, there is a discussion going on. One of the Forsaken, Sammael, is lying to a main character. He claims that he's not Sammael. There's another person from the Age of Legends present on the platform who knows the truth of Sammael's identity, though. That person frowns at Sammael whenever he lies about himself, but doesn't immediately say anything to the main character.

Asmodean and Sammael get to talking, and eventually it comes out that one of them is gay. He turned to the shadow mainly because of the difficulty he had in admitting this fact, and also because the other one didn't return his feelings. While watching this, I think wonderingly that it really has become cool to include gay people in all the new TV shows. I also hope that somehow having had this important discussion, the two of them will make up and get together and join the good side.

Passing the Time with Lanfear (6:58)

[Major spoiler for book five of WoT! Also, this dream involves sex.]

Spoiler for Passing the Time with Lanfear:

Lanfear, clad only in black underwear, is lying on a table, masturbating. She's in her headquarters, somewhere, and I guess this is what she does with her free time. I'm sad to learn that she's still alive, since that means Moiraine's sacrifice was for nothing. There are about three men in the room with Lanfear. One of them walks around and gets in a position to have sex with her from behind. I assume he's doing this without asking her, so chances are when she notices him, she'll blow him to smithereens, or something. But to my surprise, she doesn't do anything right away. Only, a few moments later, the man simply disappears, then reappears dressed in a woman's outfit, complete with a wide-brimmed, white hat with a flower.

At one point, Lanfear says something, and suddenly her underwear disappears. Somehow I suspect this was a trap laid by Rand. She triggered the trap a while ago, setting the weave, but it didn't do anything noticeable until just now, when one of the words that she just said set off the effect. Clever. She gets up as though about to go somewhere, and I wonder if she means to do it naked.

Gendered Web Browsers (6:58)

I'm talking to my grandma when she says something about web browsers "for girls." With an internal groan, I try to explain to her that web browsers aren't gendered. I realize that she's from an earlier time, where the distinction between the sexes was more marked, but I have to do what I can to advance the cause of gender equality. I expect to have to repeat myself a few times, since she's hard of hearing, but to my surprise she understands me pretty well. I look at her ear to see whether she's wearing her hearing aid. Her ear looks strange--it's more like a cavity in the side of her head than a projection on the outside of it--but yes, the hearing aid is in. Well, good for her.

Grandma takes me to a room full of computers to demonstrate her point. All of the computers are showing the desktop, and most of the desktop backgrounds are pictures taken by the computer's user. The pictures tend to feature moments from family history--birthdays, vacations, that sort of thing. Admittedly, a lot of these pictures look like they could only have been taken by a female. Grandma sort of has a point, but I still feel like there's something she's not understanding.

Urine (6:58)

Someone from my family is trying to shoot a pet video about a dog. We're all outside in the back yard. They try to get it to do some cute tricks and then howl for a while. They're going to autotune the howling into a cute melody. [Actually, while I'm watching them shoot the video, the howling is already autotuned. It's like I'm half watching-them-shoot, half watching-the-video.]

Later, there's a pet rat sitting at the top of the hill. It's about two or three feet tall. Its trick is that it can pee on command. When I learn that Mom and Dad are planning to have it do this trick, I try to dash out of range, but I'm not fast enough. It feels like I've been hit by a sprinkler from behind. That rat has demonically good aim, and it always makes sure to hit absolutely everyone in range. Well, crap. Now I'm going to have to take a shower.

I look around to see how fared the rest of the family. Mom's not wearing any pants or lower underwear, and she's peeing while standing up. [For some reason, I just take this in stride.] I start walking back to the house, carrying a jar of the rat's urine. My sister is saying something about how we should have collected more urine to donate, and my mom is disagreeing with her. She says that the place accepts only a small amount of urine with each delivery, so there's no point collecting more.