CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #187: The Hybrid

I have a false awakening in a strange bedroom that I think is some kind of condominium. Wife is here along with my two young kids E and R. I wonder whether I can go back to sleep and try to have a lucid dream but then realize that I’m having one right now.

I charge toward the window but feel someone short grab onto my arm. “Who is that?” I ask, looking down to find my 2-year-old son R clutching me. “It’s [R], Daddy. I want to go with you. Daddy, let me go with you!” For a moment I consider it, but once I think about my Task of the Year goal (turning into a fish-man and acting out The Little Mermaid), I decide no way. I’m way too nervous about bringing one of my kids’ DCs into the ocean.

R’s grip slips off of me as I phase through the window. I feel a little guilty for a moment, but I remind myself that this isn’t really him. I’m wound up in my backyard during what looks like mid-morning. I jump up into the air, imagining that there will be an ocean where my eastern neighbor’s yard ought to be. But when I get up there, it still looks like waking life.

I have some momentary flight trouble, but I psych myself up with a few phrases until things are going the way I want them to. I fly west for a bit, slowly turning southward and expecting to see water until… I see the ocean just ahead of me!

I pop up into the air and then plunge straight downward into the water, happily swimming about beneath the waves. The water’s darker than I’d like, but I try not to get too nervous or worked about this. I imagine my lower body turning into that of a fish, swim around that way for a bit, then look down to check my handiwork. It’s close, but not quite right… each leg is still there but all scaly like a fish’s body with a fin on the end.

I look away again, swim around a bit more, trying to make it all feel natural. I check again and it’s looking better, just about right, but now I’m feeling paranoid about my breathing. I feel like I can’t breathe underwater and need to surface. Panicked that something is wrong with my breathing in waking life, I push for the surface and fall into the void. I keep doing repetitive swimming motions, though, trying to hold onto the dream. After a while of this, I wonder if I’m making swimming motions in bed. This finally transitions me into...

… a false awakening where I’m lying in a large bed next to Wife. The room’s not my own, though. I recognize this as the condominium from the beginning of the dream, and realize that I’m still dreaming. I roll over to Wife’s side of the bed and start getting frisky. She murmurs sleepily but when I tell her that “this is all a dream”, she becomes more engaged. We make out for a little bit, but the dream hits the void.

After a moment, though, there’s a transition into an office environment. Wife’s still here with me so we continue making out.

Spoiler for Sexytime:

I notice one of the office workers, an attractive Hispanic woman in her late 20s, holding a stack of papers and talking to another employee. I tell the woman that she wants to join us and she responds, "Okay, good idea," and begins to undress while still sort of continuing to work. I guess my attention wanders, though, because after a moment she walks off to do some work thing, still partially undressed.

After that Wife and I enjoy some sexytime before…

… the dream ends.

This was one of those rare lucids that I had without employing WBTB. Some pre-bed MILD work did the trick! (Edit: Almost forgot -- thanks to Art for psyching me up to have an LD yesterday! Totally helped.)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #183: The Inventor

I’m sitting on a park bench, working on plans for an invention. It’s some kind of very high-end computer device and I’m drawing up some tweaks for making it much less expensive and bringing it to the mass market. I’m writing all of these plans with pencil on a rectangular, shiny piece of green plastic.

A woman wearing workout tights jogs by. She looks great and I blatantly stare at her. I become dimly aware that I shouldn’t be staring at people and start to wonder what’s making me act this way. It dawns on me that I’m dreaming.

I get up from the bench and look out over the park that I’m in. It’s grassy, dotted with trees, and maybe 200 feet further on is a brick building that looks like a schoolhouse. There’s a low stone wall behind me. To my left there’s a street with a few cars driving down it.

I’m convinced that it’s a dream but everything is so vivid that I feel a little worried. One of my contacts feels like it’s drifting in my eye and my vision shifts just as if this had actually happened. Now I try drawing on the green plastic with my pencil and I’m able to scratch out persistent lines that look completely convincing.

I wonder whether I’ve finally confused waking life for the dream world. I feel some paranoia settle over me, but I dissipate it by drifting back and forth over the grass without taking a step. Okay, yes, definitely dreaming. I cap it off with a nose pinch reality check and I feel settled again.

Now I see Wife and my oldest son E approaching me from the direction of the schoolhouse. They look completely realistic and again I fight the unsettling sense that I’ve confused reality for a dream. I hit another nose pinch to settle myself down. How can everything look so real?

A huge, lean brown dog approaches us. His head is as high as my chest. It’s the first surreal thing I’ve seen in the dream so far. Wife is focused on rummaging through E’s schoolbag and doesn’t acknowledge that the dog is here.

The dog starts to growl and bark at us, approaching uncomfortably close. Wife and E don’t react. “You see that dog, right?” I ask them.

“Sure,” says wife nonchalantly. I don’t want the dog bothering my family’s DCs so I offer him my left forearm. He bites down on my arm and whips his head back and forth. I’m sure there’ll be no pain, though, and of course there isn’t.

After a moment of this, the dog lets go, sits down, and starts panting. He seems friendly now and I'm almost glad he's there. It helps make me sure that this is all a dream. Wife finishes up with E and we walk together past the low stone wall as the dream ends.

This dream is from the morning of 12/15/2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #176: Chariots in the Sky

I have a false awakening in a fancy hotel room. My kids E and R are running around as I sleepily come to my senses. Wife gets out of bed first and I think that I should get up to help her with the kiddos. But I somehow “jump” to being on my feet and I realize that this is the start of a lucid dream.

I head for the window, phase out, and find myself clinging to a steeply slanted rooftop under a dark, cloudy sky. Everywhere I look are other rooftops just like this one, very steep and dotted with lit windows. The texture on the roof shifts oddly, jumping from one repeated pattern to another.

I leap to another roof. There’s nothing but dark void below. Each building is about 50 feet apart and floats freely through the sky. I make a couple of more leaps, and as I look around I note that there are flying chariots with large passenger cars flying through the sky. These flying chariots feel like my ticket to a less hostile scene, so I leap onto one.

As I crash onto the floor of the passenger car, the DCs on board look at me with surprise and shuffle away before returning to normal. Most of them are dressed in a mix of medieval and classical Greek garb.

I’m willing the chariot to encounter something handy for me as it flies through the sky, particularly something I could use for Task of the Year. I’m mainly looking for the Great Pyramid or the Colosseum. We fly past lots of cool-looking buildings (including the Temple of Zeus and a series of huge medieval castles) but they’re not quite the ones I’m looking for. I’m contemplating just jumping for one and exploring when we pull up close to an arena that looks like a shorter version of the Colosseum!

I glide off of the chariot toward the Colosseum when I see an attractive but angry-looking woman in her early 30s dragging a red-haired teenager off of the chariot by his collar. She’s dressed in what looks like a Roman toga and she’s giving the kid an earful: “Do you know how shameful it is to have a knight running around in an enemy chariot?”

I don’t know what she’s talking about, because the kid looks way too young and (frankly) wimpy to be a “knight” of any kind. It also seems like she’s a little young to be his mom. The kid’s cowering and whimpering as she drags him along. I turn back toward the Colosseum and move only a bit further before the end of the dream.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #172: Bedroom Mirror

I either DILD or WILD into a scene where I'm walking with my oldest son E across a parking lot. There are only a few cars here but there are a huge number of DCs wandering around. It looks like the parking lot is immediately adjacent to an Olympic pool that's surrounded by a high chainlink fence, so I decide to head that way.

As we're walking along, I spy my friend F. He and E haven't gotten to see each other in person for a while, so I think it'd be fun to have their DCs interact. "Hey F!" I say. "We're heading for the pool. Walk with us."

"Sure thing, man!" he says and immediately bolts off ahead of me, hopping around like a kid. Each of his "hops" have him bounding around about 6 feet up in the air. Meanwhile E stays obediently close by, and I find the role reversal amusing.

Walking all the way to the pool takes a distressingly long time and I start feeling like I'm overcommiting to this one scenario. I see it through, though, and when we get to the pool, E and F start running around. There are a lot of people here and the two of them are quickly lost in the crowd. I think I could find them again if I put my mind to it, but I decide to just flow into a different set of goals. I notice a football stadium a ways off past the pool, so I fly over to that to investigate, thinking I can make the switch of stadium to Colosseum for Task of the Year.

I land in a broad, grassy field near the stadium. The crowd's even thicker here but one extremely attractive woman catches my eye as she walks past. She's Asian, about 30, and strangely dressed, wearing a long, purple, velvety coat that reaches down to her knees. For a moment I return to my Colosseum idea but just can't get the DC off of my mind, so I decide to spend some time with her instead.

When I turn back she's still, looking at me with a bit of confusion. I explain what I have in mind and she nods slowly, her eyes narrowing in concentration as if it's really hard to make sense of what I'm saying. But eventually she gets the picture and approaches me. We make out for a second and then we fly off together to get away from the crowd.

Somehow we wind up in a huge, elegant, marbled bedroom and very vivid sexytime begins. After about a minute or so of great fun, I notice that there’s a large, angled mirror on part of the wall, and I check whether I can see us in it. In the mirror I see another couple doing the same thing we’re doing, but they’re completely different people (an Asian male and a totally different Asian female.) The woman from the mirror and I stare at each other in shock and amusement for a moment.

I notice another mirror on a different part of the wall and when I check it I see an entirely new scene -- it’s the same couple from the other mirror, now grown old and sitting together on a bench, their hands clasped together. The old couple shares a laugh and look into each other’s eyes as the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #167: In the Game

My friend “Leroy” and I are meeting with another programmer at a restaurant to discuss a video game design decision. We’re seated outdoors having an animated discussion about some finer point of the design of a first-person shooter video game.

The dream turns from a discussion of the concept into the three of us actually in the game, all armed with sci-fi style weaponry and fighting for our lives against some kind of menacing cyborgs.

There’s one particular boss character that can warp in from out of nowhere, making him especially dangerous. and we’re debating the best way to face him down. At first we talk about hunkering down somewhere kind of back to back, but in the end decide to get to higher ground and try to ambush him.

I believe on some level that this is a video game and as the three of us storm up a gently turning ramp, I marvel at the “graphics” of the game. I wonder how the game would look with lower graphical detail, and immediately everything looks pixellated and 90s. This is enough to make me realize that this is a dream.

I continue to the top of the ramp. Leroy is still with me but the other programmer has vanished. We’re in a high-ceilinged room with organic, alien-looking walls, perfect for the setting of the game we’re in. Everything feels far less threatening now and I feel sure that the cyborg isn’t coming after us any more.

My youngest son R (2 years old) is running around here. He runs into me, bounces off my leg, and goes sprinting happily away again. A girl from my oldest son’s class wanders by with her mother. She looks like she’s a couple of years older than IWL and her hair is twisted into an unusually long braid that encircles her head.

The girl takes R’s hand and begins leading him toward a downward ramp. I step in front of them and sort of herd them back onto the platform, feeling uneasy about them wandering off into the world of a first-person shooter. Then other kids start showing up, some that I recognize, others that I don’t. They start wandering in various directions and I fretfully start trying to keep everyone together.

It takes me a moment, but I finally realize that I need to just let this go. I watch as the kids wander off various directions. The girl with the braid leads R out of sight down a ramp. It feels strange to just let this happen, but I sense that if I just relax, everything will be all right. As the kids disperse all around me, the dream transitions into a false awakening in my bed.

I roll out of bed, grab my journal, and prepare to write down the dream. Just as I’m doing this, I hear my oldest son E shout over the baby monitor that “Daddy!! I! Need! Waterrrrrr!!” I put the journal down, hoping that I can remember the lucid dream for later, and head off to help E. I perform a few mundane steps of this before the dream ends.

This is the first of three lucid dreams from this morning.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #163: Indoor Swim Lesson

I’m standing in the master bedroom, thinking about lucid dreaming when it occurs to me that I’m having one right now. I hear Wife getting the kids ready for an activity nearby. My first instinct is to go see what they’re up to but instead I decide to work on a task.

I remember the Great Barrier Reef Task of the Year. I walk around the master bedroom a bit, trying to figure out whether there’s anything here I can use as an easy bridge to the Great Barrier Reef.

I wind up standing in front of our closed television cabinet, staring. I have some vague idea of watching a related TV program, but it all sounds too complex. Instead I start trying to swim my hands and imagine that I’m in the water. There’s a confusing moment where my feet float off the ground for a moment but I pretty quickly plunge into the void after that.

I try to keep up the swimming motion but for some reason my right arm is now pinned to my body. I feel very confused about this. I wonder if I’m sleeping on my stomach and becoming aware of my physical body, but quickly try to shift away from this unhelpful line of thinking.

I flail around trying to swim with just my left arm for a bit. It feels awkward but at least I seem to be in some kind of water. My feet brush along the bottom of this “ocean” I’m in and it feels like my bare feet are touching sand. My breathing starts feeling a bit choked (not like drowning, but more like my throat needs to be cleared) and I wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #160: Siberian Stache

I have a false awakening and get up out of bed. Wife stays snuggled under the covers. It's daylight outside and it feels like we badly overslept. Our female Siberian Husky "K" is sitting by the door, slouched over lazily and panting. Something feels off about this and I realize that I'm dreaming.

Wife gestures at K (the dog) and asks, "What's she doing here?"



Even from several feet away, I notice that K's whiskers look oddly thick and prominent. The effect reminds me of a mustache, so I do this thing with my fingers where I "paint" a mustache in the air. When I'm done, she has a thick, brown handlebar mustache. I laugh a bit at this and K looks back at me, seemingly crestfallen from behind her enormous mustache.

I feel ready to go fly around and for some reason decide I should take the dog with me. As I approach K to pick her up, Wife says, "Wouldn't you rather take [E]?" (Our oldest son.)

"Oh, is he here?" I ask. And of course, there he is, standing close by in our room.

I look up at the ceiling and it's gone -- there's just open sky overhead. I prepare to take flight, but the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #153: Foiled Creativity

I'm riding with my family in a car and we pull up near a curb in a shady-looking part of town. When the car stops, my two young children "E" and "R" leap out of the car and bound away toward a group of maybe half a dozen grimy-looking people that are huddled near a wall. I run after the boys and when I catch up to them, I see that the grimy-looking people are muttering angrily and trying to hide some kind of drugs they're using.

I hustle the kids away back to the car and Wife gets out to join us. "We can't just let the boys go running off over here!" I tell her. "Those people over there are using drugs." I look into the car and see Jesse Pinkman (from Breaking Bad) sitting in the front passenger seat. "Pinkman!" I say. "What's that they're using? Is that meth?" He slinks down in his seat and doesn't respond.

Wife and the boys move off together into a nearby building. When I follow, I catch sight of them taking a right into a bathroom, but when I enter they're nowhere to be found. I consider that I might be dreaming, nose pinch, and become lucid.

The scene gets shaky and I move into the void. I rub my hands together, keep walking forward, and mutter reminders to myself that I'm having a lucid dream. After perhaps 20 seconds of this, I get a vague image of a dark-haired woman in her late 30s trying to speak to me. I kiss her, partly to draw myself into the scene and partly because it seems like a fun thing to do. After a few moments of this, she pulls away sort of gestures at the room. I see that I've stepped into a big living room with a high ceiling and hardwood floors.

There's a couch nearby with a gold-stringed violin lying on it. I look at it closely and run my fingers over the strings, trying to make the scene as vivid as possible. Vividness goes up sharply and the strings jangle pleasantly beneath my fingers. I try playing a few open-string notes pizzicato and the dark-haired woman silently observes, looking a little amused. The music sounds nice, but after a few attempts the notes grow soft, almost too soft to hear. I look down at the golden strings and see that they've all broken and hang limply downward. They still look beautiful, though.

To my left there's a projector showing a huge image of a computer desktop. My friend "Conan" is standing nearby, working on a computer, and characters fill the screen as he types. I think that this will be a good opportunity to engage my creativity. "Hey [Conan]! Let's work together to make some kind of game on this computer."

He goes into a long speech about how he got screwed over in his most recent business dealings. Now he never enters into any business arrangement unless everthing is in writing. "No, you don't get it," I tell him. "This is all a dream. Let's just make a game or something." But he's steadfast, telling me again how "careful" he has to be. I'm disappointed, but I let it go.

Now I think about the Colosseum. I announce to the room that I'm going to the Colosseum and I see that the dark-haired woman is observing from a few feet away, saying something encouraging. There's another woman watching from a different part of the room, mid-20s, light brown hair. I think she's someone familiar but I'm not sure of her identity.

I'm determined to change this room into the Colosseum. Oddly, I notice that there's some kind of turban on my head and a something like a long, red satin blanket spills out from the turban over the right side of my head. I find this all super weird but I use it to block out my vision of the rest of the room so that I can change it. I turn slowly around, trying to switch the room into the Colosseum but I can't stop seeing that hardwood flooring. I'm feeling a little stuck so I head outside through a door in the wall, emerging in a grassy field. The elegant house I just walked out of now looks like a temporary building. As I'm deciding what to do next, the dream ends.

This LD was the first of two from the morning of 9/17/2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #147: Train Station Cafe

I'm in a wood-panelled room looking at some kind of device with Wife and a woman that I think is NyxCC. It's a small wooden box about the size of a cigar box with a mirror-like screen on it when you flip the lid open. There's a big window to our left with a view of an endless forest. After we're through looking at the device, we walk down a long hallway into an area that looks a bit like a train station. NyxCC and Wife are talking animatedly about types of art projects they both like to work on.

On our left is a busy cafe with walls made entirely of glass, and we step inside to find a table. NyxCC and Wife sit down at a table, leaning forward, elbows on the table, still talking about this art thing they're into. Before I sit down, I realize that I've forgotten something back in the room we just came from.

I turn to leave just as I notice that NyxCC's jaw looks thinner and longer than it did a moment ago. I think about this as I'm preparing to exit the cafeteria, trying to think whether Nyx looks different than she used to. The whole thing makes me think of lucid dreaming and a quick burst of critical thinking makes me lucid.

I turn back to look at the crowd, but Wife and Nyx have both vanished. I see one of our friends "LS" seated at a tall but narrow circular table nearby, but as I scan the crowd and return my eyes to this table, LS has turned into my four-year-old son "E", sitting by himself in some kind of boosted chair. I walk up to E's table and say, "Hey buddy, I'm dreaming."

"Uh-huh!" he responds, emphasizing the second syllable.

I grip the edge of the table with my hands, trying to draw out as much vividness as possible from the scene. My hands are a strange color, slightly pinkish. The table feels just like a cool, laminate table edge like you'd find in a fast food restaurant. I look up to see a waiter watching me, along with E.

I reach down and grab the table by its leg. "I want you to see what you can do in dreams," I say, pumping the table up and down over my head. "I can make it float away if I want to." For some reason, the ceiling is high above us, maybe a hundred feet up. The table floats upward for a while and then awkwardly disappears.

I look down to get one more glimpse of E and the water staring at me before I fall into the void. I rub my hands together then reach forward to see what's here. My hands land on what feels like the shoulders of a woman wearing a strapped dress. She's moving around a bit and seems like she might be trying to communicate or interact but none of it is getting through to me. I get a vague vision of her as a woman in her mid-30s with long brown hair, but before I can see her face, I wake up.

This LD was from the morning of 9/12/2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #145: Sleeping Body

I get the sense that a dream may have started, so I will my arm to move downward through the bed. It does, and now I'm floating blind through some sort of substance. It feels a bit like water but less substantial.

I swim through it for a few moments until I can dimly see that the stuff I'm swimming through is black and wispy. My right hand touches somebody else's who also seems to be swimming next to me. It's apparently Wife, because she says, "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

Now I'm back in bed. I can see, but the light's very dim. I roll out in an OBE style and walk toward the bedroom door. Before I leave, I think to look back at the bed to see whether I'm there... and yes, there's Wife on her side, and next to her, rolled on his (its?) side is my sleeping dream body. For some reason my sleeping body isn't covered by the sheets so I can see that it's glowing slightly and is wearing some kind of blue shorts.

I think about approaching my sleeping body but I decide that I don't want to get too caught up in this. As I'm thinking this, Wife sits up a bit in bed, looks toward me, and says, "What was that?" I wonder whether she's speaking to me or the sleeping body. I sense that this scenario is starting to challenge my lucidity, so I move on.

I walk toward the closed bedroom door and then hear phase through it, briefly entering the void. I decide that the phase is just taking a long time and (somewhat reluctantly) the hallway scene appears and I'm walking through it. It still looks like my real hallway, but very dark.

I continue into my son E's room and find that the place is littered with a bunch of huge toys. Near one window stands a four-foot tall plush zebra with plastic wheels. It looks like you're supposed to ride around on it. There are several other big toys as well, but I didn't get as good of a look at them and don't remember them as well.

I don't see E, and I begin to wonder if he's here. I "sense" that there's a crib nearby and wonder if E is just younger than he was before. This train of thought is starting to distract me, so I move toward the window to phase outside. I wake up momentarily and then hold still for DEILD.

The DEILD once again starts from my bed, and like before, my arm sinks into the bed. I go into the void and float for a while.

Spoiler for Sexytime:

The scene stays dark, and I feel two women snuggle up on either side of me. I can vaguely imagine their shape but I can't directly see them. This doesn't seem to bother me, though, and I manage about 25-30 seconds of fun before...

I wake up.

This is the first of two lucid dreams from the morning of September 6, 2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #143: This Life or the Next

I'm sitting on a carpeted floor with my oldest son E. There's an IT guy here that I used to work with (who we'll call "Nick Burns"). The interesting thing is that Nick Burns is trying to sleep hanging upside-down from a light fixture like a bat. I believe that he's doing this in order to induce a lucid dream. I tell E that it's not necessary to go to such lengths in order to have a lucid dream.

Talking about lucid dreaming makes me wonder whether I'm dreaming, so I nose pinch and become lucid. I get moving immediately, walking to the adjacent room, which is nearly featureless apart from a deep, square-shaped window. It looks like it's daylight outside, and I'm up a bit off the ground, maybe the 4th or 5th story. I phase out through the glass and the scene changes to nighttime. No, it's daylight, I think and the scene changes to early morning.

I'm flying over a quiet town where all of the buildings are one or two stories, all shorter than the one that I just emerged from. The oddball in this whole scene is some kind of football stadium. (American football.) I fly toward the field to find a football game going on. I want to change the scene to the Colosseum, and I have this idea that I'll start reciting a line from Gladiator to help the scene form the way that I want. As I'm flying down toward the field, I recite Maximus' badass line to Commodus about how "I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next."

By the time I land on the field, I've transformed into a full gladiator outfit and I'm holding a gladius. The football players on the field mill about in confusion. I announce that "this place needs to turn into the Colosseum." I wave the gladius around my head a little bit for emphasis. The football players seem a little put off by this and begin to wander away from the field.

Nearby there's an old man in thick-framed glasses holding a microphone. Over the microphone, he declares that "there's been a little problem on the field, folks." The scene isn't transforming the way that I want, so I focus on the ground, thinking that I'll turn it to sand and work from there. The floor of the football stadium is made of some kind of bright blue carpet. I rub my hands over it for a while, willing it to become sand, but it stubbornly refuses.

I stand up, wondering what to do. A young woman, short, Hispanic, mid-20s, walks nearby. I'm trying to formulate some kind of leading question to get her to help me but the fact that I am confused and the fact that she is distractingly good-looking are making it tough for me to know what to say. Plus I'm self-conscious that I'm dressed as a gladiator. I'm too tongue-tied to say anything. As she walks away, I examine my surroundings again and notice that the stadium has transformed into an open-air restaurant, putting me even further away from my goals.

Okay, new idea. I step outside to a quiet street with a trickle of pedestrian traffic. I imagine that the Colosseum is over the next line of buildings, then I start flying again. As I'm gaining altitude, though, the dream ends.

This is the second lucid from the morning of September 3, 2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #142: Hotel OBE

During my mantra, I find myself staring at the ceiling of the hotel room we're staying in. I know that I'm wearing my sleep mask, though, so I'm positive that this is a dream. I will myself to roll away from my sleeping body, and now I'm on my feet.

Rather than walking, I'm just sliding around the room. The scene is dark and a little hazy, but everything looks just like I remember it. I don't look back at Wife or the spot where I was sleeping, although I wonder whether I've left a sleeping dream body behind in bed.

I slide into the adjacent room where the kids are sleeping. Now more things are different. My two kids R and E are each lying in separate cribs, both about two years younger than they are in waking life. R is now almost a newborn and E looks like he's about two. They're both sleeping blissfully on their backs, and I drift past them toward the front door.

When I phase through the hotel room door, I find myself in a darkened hallway that doesn't look very much like our hotel. I note how realistic the dream began and how quickly it diverged from reality. I want to turn on the lights and check out my environment. I give a grandiose shout of "Let there be light!"

The hallway is now better lit, but it's still fairly dim. From out of nowhere, I hear Wife's from behind me: "And there waaaaas light!" She follows this up with a mocking trumpet sound like "doo doo doo DOOOOOOO!!"

I look back, and yep, she's standing there behind me. "Whatcha doing?" she asks.

"I'm having a lucid dream. This one is an OBE." I'm preparing to explain what that is when I remember that there's no need to explain anything to Wife's DC.

I jump-phase through the ceiling, my head going right through into the void for a moment. I try this again, and get the same void result. Okay, next time I'll imagine a new scene... too late, the dream ends.

This was the first of two LDs from last night. My primary goal was to focus on vividness and I really think it helped. Great vividness on this one!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #136: Neon

I'm walking along a road at night, going over a (mostly) false memory that I just had a shared dream with my son "E". I wonder whether I'm dreaming right now, too, and with a nose pinch reality check, I confirm that I am.

Immediately I remember my goal of trying to make the dream as vivid as possible before doing anything else. To my left is a strange, 20-foot high stack of flattened stones sandwiching layers of damp newspaper over and over. I run my fingers over the stone and the paper, noting the detail and the way that my hands look as they pass over them. As I listen, I hear the sound of people talking and celebrating, and I think it's coming from just over the other side of this stack.

By now the dream feels really vivid and I begin to climb the stack of rocks. To climb, I squelch my fingers into the soft layers of damp newspaper between the stones and work my way up. My body feels light, so the climb is natural and easy. I climb up to the top, stand on the top of the stack, and look out on a lively scene. It's like an old west town that's just drenched in neon lights. DCs dressed in western wear are walking happily back and forth between wooden buildings covered with neon signs. A young couple shares a laugh, and she leans her head against his shoulder as they walk across the dusty street to what looks like a bar.

The scene is so vivid that I become overwhelmed. I've got this huge grin and I feel like I'm crying with emotion. I wonder whether it's possible to cry in a dream, and laugh a little at the thought.

I jump down to the ground and walk slowly through the dusty street, enjoying the sight of the DCs passing by around me. At the end of the street is a building without any neon lights. It looks like a schoolhouse and I walk up to the door before turning around to look back toward the stack of stone. Behind the stack I see hills lining the horizon. The shape and height remind me of the Hollywood Hills. Dozens of green signs float over the hills, each with the name of a town or city and the city's population painted on it. I try to remember some of the names but it feels like they're changing. I let it go and turn back to the schoolhouse.

I'm in a classroom now that's filled with other parents watching their kids play. There's a fascinating array of toys like train sets that encircle the room, some kind of clunky robot that walks around, and lots of other cool stuff. I see my son "E" playing here as well, kind of jumping around watching the train go.

I glance back up at the other parents, then back down at the room -- and the kids and toys have vanished! Everyone is milling around and talking about what a great time the kids had. I tell them something to indicate that I'm dreaming and walk back out through the door.

The neon wild west town is gone now, and I step directly out onto a street that's busy with pedestrian traffic. Across the street I see an Olympic swimming pool built into what looks like a big basketball court. I think that I'll use it for the "Great Barrier Reef" Task of the Year.

I start toward the street. Two young women are talking as they walk past me. I notice that one of them is really cute, mid-20s, dark hair, and very short (maybe 5 feet tall!) I have an impulse to kiss her and as soon as I think this, she turns toward me, smiling. Her friend walk off without her, oblivious and now treating her like a stranger. At first I think this is cool but then I think better of spending my time kissing DCs. Need to focus!

I will the DC to stop crushing on me but something goes wrong with the dream control... and now she seems to actually hate me.

She bares her teeth angrily and walks toward me, her hands clenched into fists. I can tell that she clearly intends to kick my ass. I want no part of any of this and try to scurry across the street but she jogs after me, still looking like she wants to flatten me. I hurry away and kind of wave her off, saying, "Just leave me alone!" Then I turn completely away and ignore her, hoping that she'll disappear on her own. I make it across the street without being mauled, but as I'm getting close to the pool, the dream ends.

This was a very vivid, DC-heavy lucid from this morning. I finally remembered to do the "ask a DC about the meaning of life" Basic Task of the Month.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #134: The Dream Fairgrounds

I'm driving on a freeway with Wife and my 4-year-old son "E". Traffic's heavy and I'm in the middle of making a difficult merge but Wife is insisting that I adjust the air conditioning while I'm in the middle of this. I look down, quickly fiddle with a knob, then look back up to find that we're now driving backward down the freeway!

I gibber some kind of complaint about how this is why she shouldn't bother me when I'm driving, and the car turns back in the right direction again. This has to be a dream. Now that I'm lucid, I want to get up in the air and start figuring out how to accomlpish my goals. I feel weird abandoning Wife and E, though. I think about grabbing onto them and kind of phasing through the car with them, but it sounds intimidating. I wonder whether I could just fly the car itself around, and as soon as I think about this, it works -- our SUV is flying high above the freeway!

The city looks vivid and enormously detailed. Most of it is dominated by a huge fairground that stretches off as far as I can see. The fairground is a mixture of tents, stadiums, amusement park rides, golden domes, and even out-of-place landmarks like the Hagia Sophia. Scattered among these are more mundane buildings like banks. One of the rides is a looping starship ride that I remember from my childhood.

Everywhere I look there's something new. I'm overwhelmed and pleased by all of the detail and I laugh at the sheer quantity of images being thrown at me. The car flies quietly over the fairground for a while before I decide that we should land and look around. I look down at one of the rides and my perspective "zooms" down to that level.

The car is gone now and Wife and E are walking beside me. I feel excited as a little kid by this fair, and I'm amused (and dismayed) to see that every adult DC is a bored, miserable-looking parent with their face buried in a smartphone. I work my ass off at lucid dreaming to spend a few minutes a night in a place like this and you DCs couldn't care less!

We walk past the rides and attractions for a while and I see a lot of familiar people from my life, including my little nephew, my sister-in-law Sissy, brother-in-law Muppet, as well as The Schwartz and his wife and kids. Eventually it occurs to me that I need to get moving if I'm going to accomplish one of my goals, and I think of the Australia Task of the Year. I'm just about to jump up to fly off for a new scene, but luckily I remember the "ask a DC about the meaning of life" task.

I walk back over to E and say, "Hey, buddy. What's the meaning of life?"

He lays the side of his head down on a nearby crate and says, "To not die..." I'm not sure that I heard him right so I ask him to repeat that. He says, "Not dying." (He's been having anxiety about death lately, which is probably where this comes from.)

Wife's nearby, so I ask her too. She looks pensive for a moment. "To see the best of living."

Satisfied, I turn my attention back to my other goals. There's not much left of this dream, though, and before I can do much else it ends.

The power was out at our house for the afternoon and overnight, so I had no excuse not to go to bed on time. Discipline at last! This is the first of a pair of lucids from last night.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #132: The Raccoon

I'm sitting at our breakfast table with Wife, my two kids "E" and "R", my mom, and my dad. R's in his booster seat and positioned close to the back door (which is made of glass.) A huge raccoon walks up to the back door, gets onto his hind legs and starts pawing at the glass. "I think he likes [R]!" remarks Dad.

I wonder whether I should be concerned that we have 3-foot raccoons wandering through our back yard. After pondering this for a moment, I decide that this is a little strange and use the nose pinch reality check, breathing clearly and immediately becoming lucid.

Immediately I want to head outside, so I phase through the glass into the yard. Everything looks more or less like waking life. My goal is to get to the Great Barrier Reef for Task of the Year and I think about using the pool as a transition point. The plan: fall backward into the water, imagine that I'm actually in the ocean, then turn around. Hopefully then I actually am in the ocean.

I walk up to the edge of the pool, turn around so that my back is to the pool, and fall backward into the water. I go under briefly but quickly surface. I imagine that I'm on the edge of a huge ocean, but when I turn around, I still just see the other side of the pool. I swim around for a while, wondering what to try next. I'm getting ready to try to imagine an ocean behind me again but before I can, I wind up in the void.

From the void, I probe at my dream body but after only a couple of seconds I experience a shuddering sensation and hear a crackle like electricity. It reminds me of a violent WILD transition. Almost immediately a new scene forms -- a tan, smoothly curved, dumbbell-shaped object spinning by itself in the void. I want to reach out to it but I don't seem to have a dream body. I can shift my perspective, though, and I "move" closer to the tan dumbbell. It seems to be lit by some unseen light source behind me. I spend a few more seconds here before the dream ends.