CanisLucidus

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.

Long dream! I think that in all this dream may have gone for about 30 minutes. It's got me excited about the Great Pyramid Task of the Year again!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #139: Kunoichi

I have a false awakening in some kind of luxury hotel suite, feeling frustrated that I failed to have a lucid dream. All of the lights are on, and a digital clock on the kitchen counter tells me that it's 4:45 AM. Okay, I still have a little time left to have a lucid dream.

Suddenly I realize that Wife isn't here and I panic. I have a false memory that she went out just as I was going to sleep and I start freaking out that something has happened to her. Two men walk into the suite from the adjoining balcony and I run at them, demanding that they tell me where she is. They look bemused by the intensity of my reaction and I wonder whether this could all be a dream. I try the nose pinch reality check and become lucid.

Ignoring these two random guys, I phase through a glass door out to the balcony. Rather than go leaping off, I float up a few feet first (just to be safe) before flying out into the early morning sky. I'm about 80 feet up, and I swoop down toward a park that I see below me, landing near a tree. I notice that the tree looks amusingly pixellated and I remember my goal of trying to maximize dream vividness. I focus on drawing out the detail of the tree, feeling its bark and studying its needles until it becomes extremely vivid.

I follow a dirt path toward a mall, scooping up a handful of reddish dirt and (for some reason) popping it into my mouth. (It tastes about like you'd expect.) At this point, there's a long segment of the dream where my memory gets a little hazy, but I recall that it was fairly long, involved me travelling through a shopping mall and flying around a bit between levels. I remember flying close by a harried-looking mom struggling to manage a pair of kids and a pair of shopping bags, a bright central area, and at one point a black guy in a purple dress shirt gives me a thumbs up when I fly by.

Finally I leave the mall through an emergency exit and emerge in an alley. A man slouches lazily against the wall and farther away a dark-haired teenage girl is sitting on a stack of shipping palettes. I look at each of them in turn and they immediately return my gaze. I'm struck by the subtlety in the way their faces move, blink, and shift so realistically.

As I'm deciding which way to go down this alley, I remember the Africa Task of the year (fix the Great Sphinx then ride her to the top of the Great Pyramid.) I decide that the Great Pyramid is just at the end of the alley, imagine it in detail, then turn around with the image still firmly in my end.

I'm shocked by how well this works. I walk out of the alley onto a windy landscape of sand dunes. In the distance I see an enormous version of the Great Pyramid dominating the horizon, probably four times larger than the real thing. Dark storm clouds roll violently above the Pyramid. At the top of the Pyramid, the wind is so strong that I see stones rolling off of the top and tumbling down the side.



I run over the dunes toward the Pyramid and as I get closer I see not just one Great Sphinx but probably a dozen of them scattered near the Pyramid's base. Some of them are in a horrible state of disrepair, but this doesn't worry me. If I can fix her nose, I can fix everything else too.

As I'm approaching the top of one dune, a pair of female ninja dressed in red appear and come racing toward me, each wielding a pair of sai. The first one leaps at me and I force-push her to the side so that she flies past me. The second I force-push directly forward and she flops onto her back on the dune. I walk past her and I watch over my shoulder as the two of them regroup for another attack. I hold out my hands toward them and jokingly say "Now kiss!" They glare at me like I'm a huge pervert and I feel a little embarrassed. (This is a nerdy reference to this meme.) One ninja gives the other a quick peck on the cheek and then they return to glaring at me.

I say something about how I was only joking and that I drank a lot of peppermint tea before bed, and as I'm going on and on explaining myself, the two ninja start making out. I realize that all my blah blah blah is only making things worse and I'm feeling sexy and distracted. I turn back toward the Pyramid but the landscape doesn't seem stable anymore. I wind up in the void.

I rub my hands together to stay locked in and start feeling the floor, trying to turn the ground back into sand so I can return to the Pyramid. I go at this for a good while. After roughly a full minute, the floor starts feeling like carpeting and I emerge in what looks like a dormitory. I walk out into a nearby hall and run into a college friend that I've lost touch with (and is notorious for being hard to reach.) I ask him how he's been and he gives me an email address (!) and promises to respond if I email him at that address. I make him repeat the promise (which amuses him) and bid him goodbye before phasing through a glass door to a second-floor walkway.

My father-in-law is standing nearby with a few elderly Asian men and women. I jump onto the railing and start pulling myself onto the awning when I feel hands grasping at my legs and shouts of "You'll hurt yourself!" and "Are you crazy?" They pull me back down to the balcony and my father-in-law starts explaining to the other DCs that I'm "special". I fly down the walkway to provide a visual aid and the DCs react by speaking in astonished Mandarin. I think about how amazingly realistic this Mandarin sounds but then think, oh yeah... of course it sounds realistic to me. It's what I think Mandarin sounds like.

I fly off of the walkway, landing in front of an entrance to the same mall I was at earlier. I decide to retrace my steps through the mall, and I pass through a store that sells little pet sweaters for tiny dogs. Little sweater-clad dogs roam everywhere. I exit the store and it isn't long before I have a false awakening back in the same dorm room, no longer lucid.

I walk outside to find that it's daylight out. NewArtemis and her husband are standing nearby. We say hey, not at all surprised to see one another. Art lays down on the sidewalk, still participating in the conversation but also trying to sleep by curling up with this big canvas bookbag she's holding. I tell Art and her husband about the dream I just had, mentioning that I went through a store "that sells sweaters for those little yappy dogs". Immediately a little white yappy dog comes crawling out of Art's book bag, dressed in a green sweater. "Seriously?" I say, feeling like a jerk. "I'm sorry." She laughs and says it's cool.

Art seems to kind of fall asleep and I talk with her husband for a while about dogs, telling him they did the right thing by not getting huge, crazy dogs like us. I look down and notice that Art's hair has changed and become really curly and sort of red. It seems weird to me but since her husband doesn't say anything, I figure this is normal. He and I talk about other random stuff for a while until the dream ends.

An insane chain of eight DILDs, DEILDs and false awakenings from this morning. Completely crazy! I apologize for the length, but it was a ton of dreaming. I gave the dreams headings to hopefully make the breaks clear. What a ride!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #129: Map of the World

Choline
I'm standing in the kitchen with Wife as she holds our two-year-old son "R" in her arms. She asks me when I was planning to take my choline bitartrate. When I tell her that I've already taken it, R starts to wail pathetically.

"How could you take your choline without letting him watch?" she says, annoyed at my apparent thoughtlessness. "You know that he loves that!"

I'm stammering out some excuse when it occurs to me that this has to be a dream. My vision goes a bit crazy and I go more or less blind. I fumble my way around the kitchen, feeling my way from the countertop to the breakfast table and sit down heavily in a chair.

"Are you okay?" asks Wife. I really think that I'm dreaming but I feel uneasy enough that I nose pinch and blow through. Suddenly, my vision is dominated by a huge still-frame close-up of my own unshaven face shouting something. Other than that, I'm still blind. "Are you okay?" she asks, more insistently this time.

Highlander
I have a false awakening back in bed, still suspicious that I'm dreaming. Wife snuggles closer to me and I hit the nose pinch, blowing right through again.

Wife rolls on top of me and sits up. I feel excited about where things seem to be going but rather than doing anything amorous she starts saying strange stuff about the Highlander series of movies: "Did you know that Michael let us borrow Highlander I through XV? I didn't even know there were fifteen. He and [female name] love those movies."

The Full Xanous
Another false awakening back in bed, and I roll out immediately. My vision is very blurry and the whole dream scene feels wobbly to me. I think that I need to get myself anchored in and I remember my intention to try the technique of "making out with the dream scene", suggested (jokingly) by DarkMatters and put into practice by Xanous. I'd promised to try to test this so I could talk about it on a future podcast.

I move around to Wife's side of the bed. I briefly that I can test this method by just making out with Wife instead, but I realize that I'm just telling myself that as an excuse to get frisky with her. Instead I attack the corner of the mattress, totally making out with it. The sheets feel like t-shirt material against my tongue. After a moment, all sensation disappears, and I'm awake, my mouth kind of moving around. (In waking life, I believe. Pretty embarrassing. )

22:48
I DEILD into a bedroom scene and roll out. The computer monitor on the nearby desk is on, which it rarely is. The computer is showing the old Windows XP "Bliss" background with the grassy hill. The computer's clock reads "22:48".

I want to get out of the house, so I try to dive through the window. It feels oddly gummy, though, and I wind up with my torso stuck through the window. On the other side I just see blackness. I decide to back out, imagine a new scene, and try again. I'm about to make another run at it when I sort of fall back into...

Amazon
A false awakening where I'm lounging on a window seat in a sunlit room. A group of three women are standing nearby, laughing and chatting over stories about their kids. I nose pinch reality check (blowing through) and get up from the couch. As I stand up to my full height, I notice that one of the women is really tall (probably about six feet even) and very fit. As I walk nearby, she turns to look at me -- long brown hair, probably mid-30s, and very good-looking.

She starts walking toward me and it occurs to me that if I don't get away, the dream's probably ending in this room. As she joins me by the window, my quick internal deliberation ends in a verdict of "worth it". After about 20 seconds of making out, I wake up.

The King of the Colosseum
I quickly DEILD into a scene where I'm standing in my bedroom. It's very dark, so I let the void overtake me and start rubbing my hands together. I get onto my hands and knees and feel the floor, imagining sand between my fingers, thinking that the Colosseum is all around me. After a while, I can see the sand, and then the stone walls of a huge chamber. It's not the Colosseum I see, though, but more like a huge throne room with no ceiling. It's close, but just not quite right.

At the other end of the room, a cartoon king sits on his throne. He's a slimy-looking Jafar lookalike dressed in flowing red robes, and I think that he'll make the perfect opponent for Europe Task of the Year (the Colosseum battle.) As soon as I decide this, he lunges from his throne and charges toward me, a scimitar in his hand.

As he closes the distance, I decide to summon NewArtemis to help with the fight. "Jafar" is moving too fast, though, and he's practically on top of me before I can even start the summoning. Not even close, I'm on my own. I try to swing a sword at him, but in spite of my expectations, my hand is empty. My movement seems to surprise him, though, and as he stands there unsure of how to react, I grab his hair with my left hand and strike him hard on the side of the neck with the edge of my right hand.

His head pops cleanly off in my left hand. There's no gore involved, and the injury doesn't seem to slow him down much. The head spouts a series of angry curses at me before suddenly changing into the head of penguin. This shocks me into...

Map of the World
Another false awakening in my bedroom. I decide to get out of the house the direct way this time, running out of the master bedroom, vaulting over the baby gates as I move down the stairs (both gates higher than in waking life), and phasing through the back door into the yard. It's early morning now, and the pool has overflowed into the now-swampy back yard. Random objects like boxes and beach balls float in its waters. Floodlights are strung up in the trees all around me, shining brightly down on the yard.

I marvel at these changes before hopping over the fence. Rather than the neighbor's yard, I find myself in a construction site near a pile of steel girders. I try to fly, but I can't seem to get off of the ground. I walk for a while, moving past a cage composed of chainlink fencing where they're holding some kind of Little League practice. As I pass by, the kids and parents keep trying to talk to me about baseball, but I ignore them, trying to stay focused on the Colosseum.

As I walk further on, I somehow end up on a ledge on the side of a building, high above the city, with nowhere to go. I try to fly again, and this time it's easy. I shoot upward to an incredible height, moving all the way past the clouds, higher and higher until I can see the world laid out under me like a map. Some of the continents are even labeled in flowing calligraphy. I pick a spot below me, deciding it's the Colosseum, and fly downward. I'm shocked, though, when I land after flying only a few feet downward. Now I'm standing on an enormous stone floating through space. The "world" has disappeared entirely, and I'm walking on a painted mural of the Earth.

With nowhere to go, I suddenly remember the success that bemistaken just had with closing her eyes and mentally teleporting. I close my eyes, imagining the Colosseum. Without meaning to, I think of the possibility that I'll wake up when I open my eyes. I'm really worried about this, and I start hurrying. This flows into...

Commercial Break
A false awakening in what looks like an office kitchen. It's the early morning and Wife is here with me eating a bowl of cereal and watching a small, staticky television set. On it, two Russian men are arguing about photo editing software.

"Sorry if I woke you," she says. "I knew you'd want to see this!"

"I wish you'd let me sleep," I whine. "I was having a lucid dream."

"Oh really?" she says. "It sounded like something erotic was happening."

I think of saying something like "I only made out a little with a six-foot-tall woman" but this doesn't seem like much of a defense. So I just say, "Well, that's embarrassing."

"Ew," she says, wrinkling her nose and going back to her television program. I finally nose pinch, realizing that the teleport didn't wake me up at all! All of this was expectation. I get excited thinking about this, and the dream falls apart, finally ending this crazy chain of dreams...

It's been a while since I had a WILD and this one had by far the most violent transition I've experienced yet. Kinda cool!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #124: The Rodeo

I've been awake a while post-WBTB and I feel anxious "Am I ever gonna sleep?" thoughts creeping in. I roll to my side, relax my mind, and try to focus on hypnagogia while counting backward in a style like "100... I'm dreaming... 99... I'm dreaming..." Around the low 90s, I feel something like a thump in my head and then a loud crackle of electricity, followed by the sensation of shaking. My WILD transitions are usually very low-profile, so this surprises me. The whole thing is jolting but more exciting than unpleasant. I try to stay relaxed, prepared for the possibility of more weirdness.

Now everything is dark and I hear voices whispering in my ear. It's a bit creepy, but I know that this is normal and that I'm probably beginning to dream. I imagine myself oozing out of bed OBE-style. My body stretches like a piece of rubber, my feet meet the floor, and I'm standing in my bedroom. I'm wearing my orange-tinted safety glasses instead of my sleep mask, so it's really, really obvious that this is a dream.

Everything is dark, jumpy, and unstable. My body is moving too quickly and I keep crashing into things. I look at myself in the mirror and I can make out the shape of a man but visual quality is so low that I can't see much beyond that. I drift into the master bathroom and run straight into the counter. Then I float back to the master bedroom, going too far and wind up standing right over Wife. I reach down and touch her hip and shoulder and try to get myself anchored, but when she stirs I feel bad thinking about her DC waking up to see a creepy ghost looming over her.

The whole scene feels only half-painted. Okay, let's just get out of here. I run for the window. The shutters are closed, but I dive through, phasing into the void and then immediately rubbing my hands together to keep things stable. I kneel down and touch the floor, which feels like it's covered with dirty industrial carpet. I try to shift this toward being the sand of the Colosseum's floor, and as I keep touching it, it starts to feel more and more like a really dirty carpet. Hoping this is close enough, I start to imagine the arena all around me.

Now I can see my hands brushing over patterned, dimly illuminated carpet. The lighting is poor, and without thinking I look up to see that I'm inside a dark, empty stadium. I can't tell where the light's coming from but just at the edge of the light, I can vaguely make out empty stands. I remember podcasting about low light and I try to use my own advice of imagining how bright it is, but can't find any light source. I look hopelessly up at the ceiling, feeling embarrassed that I can't even make my own suggestion work.

Okay, next idea, also from the podcast: quit worrying about it. I jump up and start flying around the stadium, looking for people in the stands. There -- a group of 3 or 4 about halfway up. I keep circling, spotting more and more people. And as I look for them, the light in the scene grows to accomodate my expectations. After doing this for a while, there's a healthy crowd gathered in the stands and the scene is well-lit. Happy with this change, I land to find workers scurrying back and forth on the stadium floor preparing it for some kind of event. Everyone's in Western wear, and when I check, the crowd is too! It looks like they're putting on a rodeo in this stadium.

An announcer, a man in his late 40s with a bushy mustache and a cowboy hat, is under the spotlight and speaking into a microphone to warm up the crowd. I forget what he says, but they think he's great, and they cheer wildly at his words. I approach him and he holds the microphone up to me. "Uh," I say. "I want to turn this into the Colosseum."

He replies into the microphone, warmly but firmly: "No can do, boss." The crowd applauds. I think about forcing the change anyway, but I feel overwhelmed by the scope of the task. I just can't seem to build up the confidence that I need. I wander out through an exit hall, leaving the rodeo behind me.

I'm outside now and it's night. I walk through a narrow street, emerging near a restaurant patio. I'm close to the ocean. I see the water and I can hear the sound of the surf. Nearby a woman talking on her cellphone glances up at me, gives me a nod of acknowledgement, and walks away, still talking. I walk along the oceanside road for a little while, coming to a shopping center. A dark-haired woman in her late 20s approaches me. "Hi!" she says. I notice that she has a somewhat upturned nose. I also notice that I'm finding her very cute.

"I'm looking for the Colosseum," I tell her. "Can you show me where it is?"

"Oh, I'm really sorry! I have no idea where that is."

I feel discouraged and stuck. I tell her about my Colosseum goal and she nods along with my explanation. I no longer know what my plans are for this dream. Somehow I wind up telling her that I want to kiss her, she says go ahead, and so I do. As I'm kissing her (eyes open, dream stabilization style), I see three younger girls ranging from maybe 8-14 or so watching us with expressions ranging from horror to mild amusement. I notice that these three have her same upturned nose. Are they her little sisters? Her kids? Feeling embarrassed and a little confused, I pull away. "Bye!" she says brightly, and the four of them wander off together.

I continue through the shopping center, coming to a slightly darker hallway with shops on each side and a planter with a large palm tree in the middle of it. I hear Indian music coming from somewhere down the hallway, and as I walk toward the music, the dream ends.

This was the second of five lucid dreams from last night/this morning.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #107: Menthol and Marriage, the Sequel

I'm helping my friend "Leroy" and his wife prepare for a huge party. For reasons unknown, Leroy sticks an ice cream cake in a heated oven, and it melts to a puddle in seconds. "No, man, don't do that!" I say, too late to be of any help.

Leroy gives me a pathetic look and asks, "Do you think it can be fixed?" Solemnly, I shake my head no.

I then have a false awakening on the floor of my master bedroom. The lights are all on and Wife has spread circuit boards and other electronic gizmos all over my side of the bed. "What's all this stuff?" I ask. "How am I supposed to get back to sleep?"

She ignores my second question. "Did you know that [son E] had all of this stuff in his room? I don't even know what he was building but I've got to figure out what it's supposed to be."

I'm super tired and very annoyed that this project is going on. "Can't we figure this out tomorrow? I'm trying to get some sleep. It's..." I look at the clock. "12:30." Wait, my WBTB was at like 3 in the morning... I realize that I'm dreaming. "Sorry, you're right. Keep looking into it. I'm going to look around outside." With that said, I phase through the external wall. I don't emerge in any particular dream scene, though, and fall immediately into the void.

I rub my hands together and probe my dream body, trying to device what exit I'm going to use. I decide that I'll call NewArtemis to pull me out and wind up at the Alamo (or wherever she happens to be.) I extend my hand, calling out twice, but there's no immediate response. This isn't alarming since it's normal for this stuff to take some time. I'm getting ready to "expect" a hand to reach out to pull me through, but before it happens...

... I have a false awakening back in my bed. It's dark now. It's an excellent replica of waking life, but somehow I'm not fooled. I look over at Wife's side of the bed and she's there, fast asleep. It's tough to discern detail in the dark, but it's obvious that she's scantily clad. Things proceed in a fairly predictable fashion and we have a couple of very fun but very private minutes of dream sex before...

... I have a false awakening back in bed. I wrongly believe that I've woken up for real. Wife rolls over to my side of the bed and hits me with a make-out style kiss. I think how cool it is that "waking life" is imitating the dream. She stops for a moment and says, "You're not kissing me the way you usually do. It feels different."

"I was just dreaming. Maybe that's what it is."

"Oh, right," she says. "This is a dream. That's what's different." She kisses me again. I find myself hoping that this is some sort of Groundhog Day scenario. Unfortunately, I wake up soon after, this time for real.

Blame it on the menthol.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #98: Menthol and Marriage

I'm watching my son E perform some kind of a play with other 3-year-olds. At one point he's supposed to pretend a wiffle ball bat is a magic wand, but of course he goes waving it around dangerously close to other kids' heads. I run over to intervene but another mother gets there first. "I'll take that," she says, plucking it out of his hands.

"Sorry! Thanks for grabbing that from him," I say, embarrassed that she got there first. The woman gives me an unfriendly "where were you?" look. This annoys me, but as the father of the kid who was going nuts with a wiffle ball bat, there's not much I can say. I look back over at the play and E, laughing merrily, leaps over a low stone wall and goes running off God-knows-where. I take off after him...

...and have a false awakening in complete darkness. I hear Wife stir in the darkness and she asks me why I'm awake. I tell her that "I had this crazy dream where [E] almost hit a bunch of other kids in the head with a wiffle ball bat." I move to settle back against the pillow and realize that it's way, way too dark in here. "I'm dreaming," I tell her.

"Mm-hmm," is her sleepy reply, and I hear her roll over.

"It's super dark in here," I say. "I can't even see you." She doesn't respond but she rolls over again, leaning her head against my shoulder and putting her hand on my chest. I'm feeling really frisky and I think about asking her whether she wants to "make out a little bit."

Before I can unleash this suave line on her, she exclaims, "God, your breath!" and rolls away in horror. As she says that, I notice that the inside of my mouth feels nasty and vaguely thick, like my pre-bed dental care has totally worn off.

My confidence is a bit punctured, but I respond, "This is a dream. I can't possibly have bad breath in a dream."

"Okay, if you're sure," she says.

I move toward where her voice is coming from and try to kiss her. I wind up just finding her feet, which start flailing around when I touch them. "Why are you facing the wrong way now?" I ask, confused and a little exasperated.

"I don't know!" she responds. Holding on to an ankle, I very clumsily sort of turn her around. Since it's dark, I can just imagine that she's now facing the right way. As I do, the light in the scene increases ever so slightly until I can see her. I've managed to put my "death breath" from earlier out of my mind, so we kiss.

As they say, "one things leads to another", and the dream ends with roughly 4 minutes of very vivid LD sex before I wake up. Describing this part in detail would be a little too personal and graphic, but even after having a fair number of lucid dreams, the realism and detail of LDs still amazes me.

Last night was a potpourri of lots and lots of unstable little WILDs and DEILDs. Very very confusing night, but I was glad that I managed to tough it out and keep spooling up more dreams.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #92: DEILDs and Demigods

The WILD sticks me into a hazy, insubstantial scene. I have a dream body, but I can't tell where I am. I try to Hulk jump to someplace new and upon landing, I wake up...

I hold still for DEILD, repeating "here and now" and "I'm dreaming". Everything's still dark, but at some point, I feel like I'm dreaming. I mentally move my right hand to my face, pinch my nose shut, and try to breathe, blowing right through. I get out of bed, fall through the floor, and have a false awakening back in bed.

I'm still suspicious, so I hit the nose pinch again and confirm that I'm still dreaming. This instability has rattled me a bit, so I wait for a dream scene to form, temporarily forgetting how to handle myself in the void. Rather than take me anyplace, the dream fades out and I wake up for real.

Come on. Stay in there. I try not to worry too much about this, but I'm a little rattled. I stay still, working for DEILD, and finally a scene starts forming that looks like the inside of a cave. I try rubbing my hands on the floor of the cavern and it feels real -- I'm in.

I'm crouched on a long downward slope in a cavern of red rock. The tunnel is large and well-lit and a number of DCs in street clothes are watching me, seemingly anticipating that I'll do something. I decide to put on a little show, hopping into the air, floating gently along the slope for about 25 feet. There are gasps of astonishment and a crowd starts to gather.

"I'm dreaming all of this," I explain to the crowd.

Murmurs of disagreement from the crowd. One man walks up and says, "No. I've done lucid dreaming myself, and this is totally different." The people in the crowd start trying to convince me that I'm a demigod demonstrating my powers. I half-heartedly object, but they are unanimous, convincing, and very persistent. Eventually I'm persuaded and lose lucidity. I perform various dream control stunts like telekenesis and producing lightning. The whole time I think that they're god powers, even gratefully noting that lucid dreaming was great practice for becoming a "demigod". I do this for a while, shamelessly enjoying the adoration.

I wake up, slightly annoyed at my own stupidity. Quick bathroom trip, back to bed for a second WILD. I emerge on a street scene with several eye-catching female DCs walking by in different directions. I realize that I'm totally staring, think briefly about menthol, and then wake up.

I DEILD back into the void. I imagine that I'm swinging a gladius for a bit and eventually I find myself in a kitchen that looks a bit like my own. I'm muttering something about "sulbutiamine" (a drug I'd read a mention of recently.) An Asian woman in a business suit gives me an unfriendly look. "I've taken sulbutiamine," she says. Her demeanor darkens and her eyes turn completely black. "And I've taken drugs that made it so I never rotted in my coffin." Her face has grown pallid and vaguely zombie-like, and she advances slowly toward me.

I'm very creeped out by her but mostly I'm annoyed that she's trying to inject this nightmare nonsense into what was planned to be my cool lucid dream. I turn away and decide to just think about something else so she'll fade out. I walk over to the window and look out into the night. The dream fades and I wake up.

I go for DEILD once more... I'm on a street scene, standing next to a cute, tall-ish redhead. She's smiling warmly, and she has her arms open like she wants to hug. I feel exhausted and grateful, and I gladly hug her. She nibbles my ear and I respond by kissing her neck, coming close to losing lucidity. I shake it off, though, thinking that I need to ask her to help me back on the right track with this crazy sequence of dreams. I'm struggling to find the words, but she seems to understand, pulling away and somehow drawing up even taller. Now she's truly a giant, about nine feet tall. She reaches down, places a hand on the back of my head, and guides me toward a huge television.

My wife and kids are here playing some kind of video game and they happily invite me to join them. The interface is like a super-slick version of Steam. Soon there's a controller in my hands and we're playing a combination music and puzzle game. As I'm trying to learn how it works, I lose lucidity again, but still have a good time playing for a while. I keep thinking of great enhancements for the game and for this "Steam" interface and the ideas keep winding up in the game itself. I'm amazed by this. I feel impressed but sad that the developers "already thought of all my great ideas." We all play together for some time, and after that the dream fades to oblivion.

I doubled up the menthol at WBTB and I think it definitely had a strong effect on the early dream content. Also, it was cool to finally bring a DV member into a lucid dream! Reading DV during WBTB was a huge help, I think.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #68: Losing My Grip

I'm in a long bedroom, and immediately I realize that this is a dream. Wife is reclining on the bed in her winter pajamas, reading her Kindle. On the opposite side of the room is a large window with its curtains open. Sunlight pours into the room.

"Hey," I tell Wife, "I'm having a lucid dream!"

She looks up. "Good! Have fun." She returns to her reading. I know that I'd planned to go to Angel Falls for Task of the Year, but my head is buzzing with sexy thoughts. I look out the window for a moment. The sun's too bright to see outside and the window is consumed by a warm, yellow glow.

When I turn my gaze back to Wife she has changed. The Kindle has vanished and she's gone from lounging in flannel pajama pants to laying over the bed in a negligee and booty shorts. My urges are going crazy. I decide that I'm not getting any of my goals done this dream. "What did you just do?" she says, looking amused.

"It's the menthol," I tell her. "I had 6 bags of peppermint tea. I think it's making me frisky." She raises her eyebrows and tilts her head forward, looking skeptical. "It sounds like an excuse," I admit. "I make too much out of these drugs. Kind of like how I think galantamine gives me magical powers." For some reason, I turn and force-push a clock off of a nearby dresser and shout "Galantamine!!" (So embarrassing. What a dream-dork. )

I join Wife on the bed and start to kiss her. The sensation is incredibly vivid and I start getting caught up in these really strong fantasies about what's going to happen. (These were crazy, cosmic fantasies that involved space, time, and dreams-within-dreams. Sadly, most of the details got scrambled up.) The fantasizing quickly runs away with me, and I'm close to losing lucidity. Before we can start doing anything, I hear the sound of little feet on the floor near our bed and a little voice say, "I see Mommy!" I freak when I realize that our two boys are here and lose lucidity. The sexytime mood leaves the room as quickly as it arrived. Wife is now back in her flannel pajamas and it looks like nothing was ever happening. I'm relieved that she's so good at acting normal.

We go downstairs with the kids and start going through a semi-normal morning routine. After a very long time spent doing mundane morning stuff, the boys are helping me bake bread in the bread machine. As I'm taking the bread out out, R (my 1.5 year old) climbs up on the counter. Before I can stop him, he burns himself on the bread, bonks his head on the bread machine, and tumbles all the way to the kitchen floor. This scares me but the accident is so comically absurd that I regain lucidity.

The boys run off and I see that Wife's looking at me. I tell her, "Don't worry, that whole thing with the fall was just part of this dream." She says okay and joins the boys in the den.

I notice that the living room is filled with a strange darkness. I catch figures moving in the darkness but I can't make out who or what they are. They don't seem hostile, and I somehow decide that they're DV members and that I want to pull one of them into the scene. NewArtemis, Alyzarin, Xanous, and OpheliaBlue are in there. I catch little flashes where I sort of "see" their faces without seeing them. (It's a little hard to explain.) I choose to bring Xanous in. (Even though the sexytime mood from earlier is long gone, I feel like it's a really bad idea to bring a female DV buddy into a menthol dream.)

I turn my head away from the darkness and extend my hand for a handshake. I expect Xanous to walk into the kitchen and shake my hand. After only a second or two, I'm gripped by a firm handshake... I turn to look, and hell yeah it's Xanous! He's in a gray t-shirt with some logo and he's laughing about something. Before I can say anything, he rapidly shrinks down until he's about a foot tall, but somehow I'm still shaking his hand.

My vision goes black but I still have a hold on the handshake. I ask Xanous what he thinks I should do but he just says something unintelligible in a weird robot voice. The handshake slips away and I fall back to the gladius trick. This doesn't do anything, and I alternate between swinging a sword and slapping myself in the face. It doesn't seem to get me anywhere.

After a bit, I wake up, staring straight at a wall. Wait, Wife should be where the wall is. Still dreaming. I try to move but I'm totally frozen. I start contemplating an OBE exit before I wake up for real.

This was a nice, very vivid LD where I was reunited with a long-gone childhood pet. It was more difficult than usual to connect to my tasks and goals. In fact, I could remember very little from waking life. I'm wondering whether this is because it was galantamine night, which required me to use an extremely short WBTB.

And my ever-reliable nose pinch RC let me down!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #63: After the Storm

I'm walking with my 3-year-old E in the back yard of what I think is our family home. The yard is vast, wild, and overgrown. As we walk, a Golden Retriever comes up to us and starts sniffing my hand. He looks almost exactly like the dog that I had when I was a kid, but I dismiss this as coincidence.

I wonder how this dog got into our yard. E, the dog, and I walk to to edge of the property and I see that the entire fence is destroyed. Nothing but a couple of snapped fenceposts remain. Looking further out, I see that our next door neighbor's house has been utterly destroyed. I think that this must be a dream. I perform the nose pinch reality check and can't breathe. I try it again and still can't breathe. "Oh shit," I think. "This is really happening."

The three of us walk further through town. Everywhere we look, houses are toppled and people sift dispiritedly through the rubble. I tell my son, "E, I think there's been a big tornado. Daddy's going to figure this out."

We walk across an empty four-lane road. Some of the shops on this road are open, which strikes me as odd. I RC again, pushing my finger into my palm. My left hand stretches like stiff taffy and I know that this is a dream.

I look down at the Golden Retriever and realize that he really is the same dog that I had when I was a boy! He's been gone almost fifteen years but now he's somehow standing right in front of me. I scratch him behind the ears. He just looks off into the distance with that big, goofy doggy grin. Even though I know that this is all a dream, it feels like a reunion.

E pets the Golden and starts fiddling with his ears. The dog pants and stares contentedly up at the sky. I decide that now is the right time for me to break off on my own.

I walk further along the road. I know that I had lots of plans for this lucid dream but I can't remember any of them. As I'm pondering this, a steady flow of traffic starts on the road and in a few seconds, cars are whizzing by in both directions. I remember a conversation with Xanous and Alyzarin about how they like to play in traffic during lucid dreams.

I start walking across the road. I'm halfway across when I suddenly realize that the cars are driving on the left side of the road (like in Great Britain or New Zealand.) The next thing I know, a small, strange, open-topped car is barreling toward me. Suddenly I'm scared that this car is going to flatten me and I try to force-push it to the side. The little car swerves to the left and its brakes squeal. I float up into the air, drifting slightly away.

The car has stopped and its driver, a woman of about 30, is leaned forward toward the steering wheel. Her eyes are squeezed shut as if she's in pain. I run or fly to the side of her little open-topped car, freaked that I've hurt her somehow when I did that force-push. "Are you okay? Are you okay?"

She doesn't respond, but she's clutching at her stomach. There's something horribly wrong with her. Her stomach is badly distended, stretching all the way down so that it rests on the floorboard of her car. I pick up her enormous, stretched stomach off of the floor and start feeding it back into her body. It takes some effort, but in the end it spools smoothly back into her torso as if nothing had ever happened.

She looks at me and smiles. I notice for the first time that she's incredibly attractive and I kiss her. (Guess I got over the stomach thing!) I pull away before I get myself totally distracted and she drives off, waving as she goes.

Again I try to remember my goals and again they won't come. I finish crossing the road and leap about twelve feet into the air, perching on a crumbling arbor by the side of the road. I look out over the ruined city and see that the destruction stretches for miles. I can't even seem to find my house anymore. Is the destruction getting worse? What's happening to this place?

I consider where to explore next but the dream soon ends.

A wild chain of false awakenings and DEILDs finally led me to a most interesting encounter with Wife's DC, who was even more irrepressible than usual. This was the first of two lucid dreams from last night's session with galantamine.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #46: The Blind Man, the Bully, and the Nerd

I'm in the kitchen with Wife. I'm talking to her but I'm almost completely blind. I'm embarrassed by my blindness, convinced that it's some side effect of the galantamine that I just took. Rather than seek medical attention, I try to slink up to bed so Wife won't know. Unfortunately, she keeps asking me to hand her things, and I flail around the kitchen knocking things over. "What's wrong with you?" she asks. I have a false awakening into...

...sitting on the floor of our living room as my 1-year-old son "R" runs around me. My vision is dim but I can see better than before. I'm still convinced that I'm suffering from some kind of bizarre galantamine side effect. R is sprinting around the room, pulling objects off of tables, knocking stuff over, and tossing various knickknacks into the recycling bin. I try to stop him, but he just laughs, squirting right through my arms when I try to grab him. He says, "This is so fun, Daddy!" and I briefly become lucid, remembering that he's way too young to speak like that.

I quickly wake up but keep my eyes shut and hold still for a DEILD... and I find myself lying in a bed in a room I don't know. I get up, ready to explore. A strange, gnome-like creature with a hooked nose hops off of the floor and gets in my face, waving his arms wildly about. He's about three feet tall, covered with warts, extremely agile, and very annoying. He brags to some unseen listener: "See? I can stop him from doing what he wants in this dream!"

I try to leave the room but the little gnome keeps hopping up in my face, cackling and poking at me. He jabs me in the eyeball and I get incredibly angry. I grab the gnome by the throat, push him to the floor and hold him there. He growls and kicks his legs, but he isn't able to move. Even though he's immobilized, I'm so out of control that I still punch him once, hard right under his left eye. I immediately feel terrible about this and release my grip, allowing him to scamper away.

I stand there brooding about this for a moment before the gnome walks back in. He no longer looks disgusting and infuriating, but just like a small little man. I tell him, "I'm sorry that I hit you. I didn't need to do that." He walks up to me, points at his blackened left eye and softly says, "Fix." I nod, touching his bruised skin, and the black eye immediately heals. "All right, hug it out," I say and I kneel down to hug the little dude. The dream fades...

I buckle down for another DEILD and in a few seconds I'm back in another bed room, although it's different from the last. I'm standing and Wife is here making the bed. "Hey!" I say. "This is a lucid dream. Quit making that bed and let's go play."

She keeps making the bed. "You can go do what you like, but this work still needs to get done."

I can't believe it. "But it's all a dream. You don't have to worry about whether beds get made. Come on, I've got lucid goals I want to work on."

She stops for a second, laughs, and looks at me, wrinkling up her nose a bit. "Lucid goals? What does that even mean? You better not be trying to arrange a threesome on the bed that I just spent all this time making!"

"Come on, get serious. You'll like this... I want to visit the Great Pyramid." Then I look at her, hold out my right hand and say, "You will come with me."

She laughs. "Oh my God, nerd! I can't believe you just tried to 'command' me. Is that the kind of stuff you do in these dreams of yours?"

I smile, amazed at how like herself she is and how much I'm enjoying her company. "I think I can do this, though," I say, and levitate her a few feet off of the ground. She looks amused.

I float her over to me and set her on the ground. When I try to kiss her she doesn't resist. I feel her fingers graze my left temple but then she turns to walk away. "I still need to make this bed," she says, as the dream fades.