CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #100: The World Is Yours

I'm flying high in the sky around what looks to be a computer-generated globe that's populated with little dots. I feel like I'm on a plane with Wife but I don't see a plane. It's just me and my floating perspective as we circle slowly and gracefully around this globe.

I tell Wife, "This is a music video for a Phil Collins' song called 'Julia' from 1980." (Not true.) The song immediately starts playing. In it, Collins sings of how this globe is "not CGI" and that the dots represent people around the world. He sings that the dot he remembers best ("the one I best recall") was one of him over the ocean, flying on a plane to be reunited with his beloved Julia.

As the song ends, I suddenly find myself falling downward out of the sky. I hope that this is a dream, I think, and of course it is.

I immediately halt my fall and find myself hovering over a huge, vivid cityscape -- highways, skyscrapers, cranes, bridges, traffic jams, all arrayed for me down below. I want to fly around and explore this city, but when I attempt to fly, I'm unable to move. For some reason, I feel totally confident that I'll come unstuck. Stop asking, I think.

I ignore what the dream is telling me and I imagine that I'm already flying Iron Man-style around the city. A second later, I'm flying effortlessly, cruising anywhere I like. I get briefly stuck a time or two, but I just ignore it, imagine that I'm succeeding, and immediately start flying again. Eventually, the little glitches stop.

I see a tower that I remember from waking life -- it's one that I pass during my commute. I fly up to the top and circle around it. I glide low over roadways and high above a cluster of skyscrapers, then descend back to one of the bridges that spans a piece of some unfamiliar bay.

My confidence is soaring, and I decide try some large-scale dream control. I put my hands out in front of me and then bring them apart like I'm performing the breaststroke. As I do, I rake cars off of the bridge in either direction and dozens of them go plummeting toward the water. I bring my hands back together and I watch as time rewinds and they return to the bridge, unharmed. I fly back toward the skyscrapers, select a pair of them, and then begin moving them up and down, one for my left hand and one for my right.

I look to my left and see an enormous fire ogre (a la "Orcs Must Die") stomping toward me down one of the city streets. He towers over most of the nearby buildings, at least 100 feet tall. I wonder whether maybe I'll be fighting him later. I feel no fear at all. I reflect for a moment about what it would be like to have this much control and confidence in every LD. Nothing could stop me. What sort of things would I do if I had years of this kind of power?

Leaving the fire ogre behind for now, I fly over my city for a while and just let my dreaming brain show me what it can do. I look out at the waters of the nearby bay and think about using all of this overflowing confidence for some Task of the Month parasailing, but the dream soon ends.

Although this wasn't the right location, I did at least successfully find/conjure/whatever NewArtemis. Forgot all about swapping gestures and keywords, but it's all good... dry spell broken!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #99: Walking the Path

I'm walking a beautiful nature trail. I sense that this is a place of peace and sanctuary outside of a hospital. I remind myself that I need to be sure that I'm not dreaming and I quickly realize that this is a dream.

I hear two female voices from the trail up ahead and somehow I know that this is NewArtemis and her cousin. (No clue whether she even has a cousin IWL.) Art's cousin appears first, with Art trailing maybe 15 feet behind. "Come on!" calls Cousin. "You were right! It worked!"

Cousin walks right past me, saying, "Hey! I'm [NewArtemis]'s cousin. She was so nervous this wouldn't work. She's been spinning her ring nonstop. That's what she does when she's nervous." With that, Cousin disappears from the scene, never to return.

"Hey, [NewArtemis]!" I say, giving her a hug. "Good to finally see you!" ("Finally see you" is a little weird since I've encountered Art's DC a bunch of times -- was I implying this was "the real her" for the first time? Or just flapping my gums?)

"Did you just break your dry spell, CL?"

"I did!" We continue walking in the direction Art and Cousin were going, which has me doubling back toward wherever I came from. "Dude, I'm trying so hard to remember what I was supposed to do when we met up. I remember parasailing but I don't think that's right."

She rubs her forehead or kind of scratches her head. "I don't remember anything either. Definitely not that we're supposed to go parasailing." (Art called this one right -- the parasailing thing was Task of the Month, not anything we'd talked about.)

I hear road noise from nearby and I make some kind of comment about wondering where it's coming from. The scene shifts to where we're walking through the corridor of a hospital. I remember something I wanted to ask. "Hey, is it true what your cousin said? That you spin your ring when you're nervous?"

She shakes her head. "No, that's total bullshit. My ring is kind of loose in the winter though." On the nature trail it felt like spring to me, and I'm able to remember that IWL it's summer.

Art holds up her hands to demonstrate and I see that she's wearing rings on four or five of her fingers. Then she kind of wiggles her hands and now she has even more rings, including a thumb ring. She does this ring reconfiguration trick a few more times and I think it looks super cool. I wonder whether she's got the right number of fingers but she's moving around too much for me to count.

We come to a T-junction where another hall comes from the left to meet the one that we're walking. I see my two boys E and R running off down the hall to make mischief. Art asks why we wound up here of all places rather than the Alamo. I say that I don't know. The dream ends.

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.

The second of two LDs from the morning of 05/18/2013. This was a big, big dream, and this dream and I did not always get along. This was my first serious attempt at meeting NewArtemis for a dream sharing attempt.

I also got into a big fight with a powerful DC that escalated into a me against the world situation. I could have handled this a lot better. My self-control wasn't what it should be... but it was still kinda awesome.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #96: Clash at the Alamo

I'm Marty McFly from Back to the Future, driving my DeLorean on a set of rails that stand hundreds of feet over a bay. The DeLorean starts to shake as it picks up speed and before I can make a time jump, the rails end and the car goes plummeting toward the sparkling water.

I brace for impact and the DeLorean flies to pieces as it strikes the bay. Miraculously, I'm unharmed, and I thrash about for something to hold on to so that I can get my bearings and figure out what to do. One long, fin-like piece of metal from the car bobs to the surface and I grab onto it. The moment that I do, an unseen engine roars to life and takes off like a jet ski.

As I'm racing across the bay, I realize that this has to be a dream. After riding for a moment, I'm perhaps a hundred feet from shore. I leap off the impromptu "jet ski" and fly the remaining distance, landing in a stone plaza that stands at the water's edge.

I remember that I'm planning to meet NewArtemis at the Alamo for a shared dreaming experiment. I turn toward the water, raise my hands up in the air, and make an announcement to all of the DCs. Most of the passerby stop and turn to look at me. "The Alamo is right behind me! That's right -- Alamo right behind me!" I imagine it in detail, rebuilding my mental map, forgetting and scrubbing out the buildings that were there before and replacing it with my image of everything that I remember about the Alamo. I continue this until I can think of nothing of what's behind me except for this image of the Alamo.



I turn around, expecting to see the Alamo... and there it is! The stone's a little darker and the construction looks a little too new to be quite right, but it's more than close enough of a lookalike for me. I walk around past the front entrance to a courtyard. The geography is different in this dream from that of the real Alamo, and I come to a stone wall with a little alcove and a bench. There's a woman sitting on the bench and we look at each other immediately.

She gets up and approaches me right away. She doesn't look like NewArtemis' DC has in the past, but I'm not sure of anything yet. She speaks first: "I'm here to meet someone. How about you?"

"So am I," I say, studying her. She's roughly the same height as Art's DC but her skin is paler, her hair curlier, her build heavier, and her face is different -- broader, different nose, different shape... just different. "But you're not her, are you? I don't think you're [NewArtemis]."

She smiles noncommitally, but I continue. "That's okay," I continue. "Let's still do the passphrases and gestures." I speak my chosen word to the DC and perform my chosen gesture. She doesn't bother speaking a passphrase in return but she does perform a gesture. (These have been reported to a 3rd party who is not NewArtemis just in case she's able to guess them.)

"Well, I need to go!" the woman says. She walks out of the alcove and passes me. As she goes, she becomes a much older lady, blonde, mid-50s. She grows to an enormous height, probably close to 8 feet tall. She's wearing shorts and I see that her legs are covered with a crisscrossing patchwork of scars.

I contemplate following, but I'm distracted by a man who's sitting at the top of a stone wall nearby, staring at me with a malicious grin on his face. He's in his late 30s with close-cropped reddish-blonde hair. The guy keeps staring at me with that joyless grin and I know that he's looking for trouble with me. I want no part of it, so I turn and walk away.



He hops down from the wall and grips my right forearm with his right hand, twisting my arm around so that my hand is near my head. I try to pull my arm out of his grip but when I yank, it doesn't budge. He laughs, shaking his head as if he can't believe that I would bother trying to defy him. "You're never leaving here," he says. "I mean it. You are never leaving here." I yank my arm again but I feel as weak as a kitten.

I know I have to turn this around fast. I grab him by the back of the head with my left hand and begin to imagine my adversary as frail and lethargic. "You're so weak and tired," I tell him, trying to sound compassionate, even though I'm boiling with rage. "There's just no strength left in you at all." And I gently move to lay him down on a nearby table. I think of him as totally weak and barely able to move. His grip slips from my arm and he flops backward onto the table.

"And small," I say, pressing on his head with one hand and his feet with the other. He begins to shrink. His hair has turned jet black now, and his eyes close. I squeeze him together, thinking of him as so tiny, and soon he shrinks to the size of a child, then to the size of a baby, then disappears into his clothes entirely. My self-control cracks and I ball up his clothes, throw the bundle on the ground, and give it a vicious stomp. I wonder for a moment whether I've gone too far and hope for a moment that the bundle was empty. I walk through a nearby archway, not sticking around to find out more.

I emerge in a cafeteria. A table of 6 or 7 teenagers immediately looks up from their meals at me. "It's him," one of them says, and they all get to their feet and come after me. I fly through a nearby doorway and emerge in a large, empty room with a skylight. I fly up to the skylight, intending to phase through it, but something seems to restrain me from getting high enough. I run through a doorway into a drugstore that dead-ends in a frosted glass window. I vault toward it, phasing through onto a street scene.

There are police everywhere on the street. I know that they're looking for me. There are strange little ball-shaped hoverbots scanning the streets with cameras, also trying to track me down. I sprint up to one and kick it against a nearby wall. With a pop, it breaks into two smoking, fizzling halves.

Everything seems to be happening too fast for me to control. I run down the street, looking for some way out of this fear. I want to buy time to calm down, so I phase through the door of a nearby house. Cops are turning the place over while the family, a husband and wife and their little girl of about 8 are glued to the TV. One cop notices me as I walk in, but I swoop in on him, grab him from behind, and choke him unconscious. The other two cops don't seem to notice any of this, and the little family stares obliviously into their TV sets.

I watch the TV for a moment. It's some sort of political propaganda which claims that the moral code of their "great society" is built upon a foundation of classic arcade games like Centipede, Pac-Man, and Donkey Kong. I'm torn -- on one hand, I find top-down, statist morality codes repugnant. On the other hand, I sure do love classic arcade games.

I phase out through the back of the house into the yard. The cops yell at me as I pass and I hear them calling for backup. The back yard is peaceful for a moment before the wail of what sounds like an air raid siren fills the air. I look up at the sky, feeling helpless, trying to find peace for a moment. But all I can think is They're coming for me. The dream ends...

First of two from the morning of 05/18/13.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #95: The Garage

I'm backing our SUV out of the driveway. As always, it's a little tight so I'm focused on what I'm doing. I catch sight of a bearded, creepy man advancing up the driveway toward the car. He makes me nervous, so I pull the car back into the garage.

Once I'm safely back in the driveway, I look back out to find that the man has vanished. Relieved, I get ready to leave again. But now Wife's car is at a funny angle that blocks me from leaving. Come on, [Wife], why would you park me in like that? I try shoving the back half of the car so it'll spin around and get out of my way. Amazingly, this works! I'm immediately sure that I'm dreaming.

I try turning Wife's car back and forth a few more times. It spins as smoothly as if it were on a turnstyle. I think about picking it up and flipping it over but realize that there are other things I need to be doing.

I remember that I have a goal of getting to the Alamo for a shared dreaming experiment. I try to look outside and see that the garage door is closing. It's only about 3 foot away from shutting completely. Even though I should know that this doesn't present any permanent impediment, it feels important that I don't let it shut on me. I hurry to the garage entrance, flop down on my side, and log roll under the garage door.

Outside now, I get to my feet on the driveway and look around. It's a cool, clear evening and the street's quiet. No weirdo in sight. I plan to Hulk-jump to the Alamo but as I begin to make my move, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #93: Rolling

I'm in an old-school first-person shooter video game. It's some sort of very metallic, clean-looking sci-fi setting, maybe a spaceship or some kind of alien base on a distant planet. I've got a numeric health meter in the lower-right of my view, ranging from 0 to 100. I don't seem to have any kind of weapon, but I'm speeding around the level, dodging enemy fire from generic-looking storm trooper-style enemies.

At some point, a laser beam starts waving wildly around the room in front of me. I'm not sure what it does so I try not to touch it. I slip up at some point, though, and the laser grazes my leg. My health instantly drops from 100 to 7. This seems unfair and really upsets me. I feel like I'd been doing well and have been punished way too severely for this minor slip.

I perform a diving roll to dodge the beam and I notice that I'm actually experiencing the sensation but that it feels different from waking life. I realize that I'm dreaming and the scene suddenly looks less like a space ship and more like a dimly-lit room with hardwood flooring. It feels a bit dark and unstable, so I perform another diving roll since that seems to be something I've got down. This goes well, so I immediately do another one.

I realize that I'm having a really good time doing these so I keep at it. I figure that I'll just keep dive-rolling until I figure out what it is that I want to do with this LD. I remember that I wanted to try NewArtemis and/or Xanous out on their werewolf transformations, but I'm having a little trouble remembering what specifically I needed them to do. I stop rolling after 5 or 6 tries to give myself a chance to think.

I'm in some kind of long, dark hallway with hardwood flooring and occasional doors leading off adjoining rooms. The scene feels very empty and I'm worried that I'm understimulated, so I go back to dive-rolling for a while. I do this for quite a while, probably another 20 rolls or so. I then decide that I should reverse directions, so I attempt a back flip. This isn't something I've actually tried in waking life, so I'm curious how I'll do. I go right over but land on my shins rather than on my feet. Still, not half-bad!

I perform a couple of other back flips, and on about the 4th attempt, land proudly on my feet. I'm in a bedroom now with a window that's letting in some morning sunlight. There's a man of about 25 sitting on a bed, his head in his hands. He looks up at me and I see that he has a goatee, a nose ring, a lip ring, and at least one earring. He sees me and tries to say something, but I'm being pulled in the opposite direction and can't hear what he's trying to say. He stands up and walks toward where I am, but I'm drifting away faster. He tries to shout something, but I don't hear any of it, and I wake up.

This lucid dream was very unusual for me because it occurred less than 25 minutes after falling asleep, right at the beginning of the night.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #91: Talking to Myself

I'm seated at a restaurant, talking to a couple of friends, including "Leroy". I'm making a point about some amusing fact I'd heard when a waiter seats himself at the fourth chair at our table. I say, "There's even this study where..." and trail off when I realize that the waiter isn't going away. I turn to him and say, "Uh, how's it going?"

"It's going well," he says. "I was wondering if you needed anything." He says this last part with some concern, like I might be very unwell.

I look back at the rest of the table and see that my friends are gone. I'm confused and a little embarrassed. "Were there two other people here...?" I ask. The waiter gravely shakes his head. I start worrying about myself for a moment before realizing this is all a dream. "Don't even worry about it. This is a dream."

"Ah, very good, sir," he says, standing from the table and gesturing toward the exit.

I get up from the table and walk toward the exit. There's a glow coming pouring through the cracks at the edge of the door as if something as bright as a star was behind it. I phase through the door, winding up in a room that has plywood flooring and a ceiling that's sloped like the top of a roof. It looks like an attic. At the opposite end of the room, maybe 25 feet away, I see the source of the light: a fiery, brightly glowing furnace.

I walk toward the furnace as it spits these little gobs of liquid fire onto the floor. I'm close now, but I don't feel any heat. As I close to within just a couple of feet, the view of the furnace fades and I find myself on a set of sharply descending stairs. Each stair is only about 4 inches long but drops almost 2 feet. As I walk down them, I'm descending so fast that it's almost like slowly falling into a pit. I can't see where I'm going. I wind up stepping onto the railing and slowly making my way down that way. Somehow that seems to normalize the slope of my descent.

I get to the bottom of the stairs and I'm in what looks like a family room with hardwood flooring. There's a board game laid out on the floor. The dream starts to fade around the edges, but I manage to hold onto my view of the board game for a couple more seconds, seeing that it's composed of a game board, a stand with some cards, and some sort of gently-spinning purple sphere. I can no longer move and my field of vision shrinks rapidly until I'm awake.

The good news for this LD is that the light switches worked great! The bad news is that my prospective memory wasn't the best and my DC summons didn't work like they should, but I had fun trying. Some more focused mental prep and reminding myself of my goals would have helped, I think, so I'll just blame the short WBTB.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #89: Under Construction

I'm walking down a hall in my office with my friend "Leroy" and one other guy. The hallway is dimly lit and even though we're far from any windows, somehow I know that it's night outside. We're looking for some room that we can use to host a remote meeting that's scheduled to start in a few minutes.

The door at the end of the hall has been replaced with a thick sheet of plastic and the entire area looks like it's under construction. I think, "How do I know that this isn't a dream?" and I become lucid. I run my fingers over the wall, and it feels just like the walls at the office. "[Leroy], I'm having a lucid dream." Leroy doesn't respond and just stares robotically ahead. I continue to mutter about how I'm dreaming, but the target audience is really just me -- Leroy seems to have checked out.

We reach the end of the hall and I phase through the plastic into the next room, which should be a large, windowed room of cubicles, adjoining offices and meeting rooms. The windows are there but all of the furniture is missing and the room is incredibly dark. I reach for a switch on the wall without looking, knowing that it will be there, and flip it. The lights come on and I watch as the room quickly populates itself with gym equipment! I see a treadmill, a couple of stationary bikes, and a weight tree with 45-pound plates appear. I stare at the weight tree for a moment, and the image wavers self-consciously, forming odd little rectangles and finally disappearing entirely.

I decide to "give the room a moment", and look over my right shoulder at the wall for a few seconds and then look back. The room is still mostly the same but now there are five or six arcade-style redemption games arranged back to back in a circle in the middle. (The sort of ticket-winning games that you might find at Chuck E. Cheese's.) I take a quick lap around the games to size them up. During the lap I notice that Leroy is still standing by the room entrance and still seems unresponsive, so I don't worry too much about him.

I have the nagging sense that I'm supposed to be doing something but I can't remember what it is. I try to think of the tasks that I had planned but nothing comes to mind, not Task of the Year or Task of the Month. I remember talking with NewArtemis about trying to see whether her DC could shapeshift the way that she can in dreams, so I attempt a handshake summon, averting my eyes and extending my right hand. I do it incorrectly, though, more asking for her to show up rather than expecting that she will. Nothing happens for a while and at the end I rather pathetically say, "[NewArtemis], don't leave me hanging!"

Now I've become fixated on summoning so I decide to try getting Xanous to join the scene. Again I do the handshake summon, but the result's the same. I think of shapeshifting again and realize that Xanous can do this too. For some reason I remember that he uses the term "blutbad" in conjunction with shapeshifting so I randomly blurt out "Blutbad!" like that's going to help somehow. No idea what that was all about, but it doesn't work!

Edit: I remembered one more part of the dream. I give up on the summoning for a moment and try speaking directly to the dream. "Show me something important!" Nothing happens, though, and I try this twice more before giving up.

Amazingly, the thought of simply phasing through the walls and flying off into the night doesn't occur to me. I turn my attention to the redemption games, hoping that this could be fun and might even reanimate Leroy. I stand in front of one machine that's about 6 feet high and has a joystick on the front and a tall, tapering tower of lights inside its case. The lights are illuminated in a wave that moves repeatedly from top to bottom. I place my hand on the joystick, noting the little red button on top, and the dream starts to fade. I feel it coming and ready myself for DEILD, but when I emerge from the dream I'm too awake to go back in.

This was a very long dream / lucid dream series, going on for at least 45 minutes to an hour. I lost lucidity early on and regained it, so the first part of the dream is extremely scrambled. Also, a little background on one portion: I recently found out that Wife thinks lucid dreaming is more or less a waste of time. I was disappointed by this and concerned about what her DC might be like in future dream appearances.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #88: Reconciliation Hour

I'm in a lucid dream where I'm in a current of strong running water. I'm taking things easy, reminding myself to be more patient in life. I have a false awakening into a completely rearranged version of my house, downstairs. I hunt around for my dream journal... there it is, on the counter! I reach for it and as I grab it, my friend The Schwartz walks up and asks, "Hey, whatcha doing?"

"Hang on, [The Schwartz], I've gotta get these dreams written down. My dream memory is good for like 3 seconds. If I think about anything else, it'll all go away." I feel my dream memories leaking out of my ears. (Figuratively.) He looks a little hurt and I remember that the message of the dream I just finished was to be more patient. "Sorry, man. I know I'm not as patient as I should be sometimes. My dream was about getting better at that. You were even in it." (I assume this is true but no longer have any memory of it.)

I crouch down by a coffee table and get ready to write. Just then a full-sized poodle noses aggressively toward me. "Hey puppy," I say, reaching out to pet it. The dog turns away, totally snubbing me, circles around behind me, and then bites me hard on the butt. Another dog, a German shepherd joins the poodle and behind them I see my real two dogs (Siberian Huskies) lying on the carpet, panting.

"[Wife]!!" I wail, going into the kitchen. "Why do we have four freaking dogs in this house now? Wasn't two bad enough?"

Wife is in the kitchen cooking huge pans of a strange, purplish, bubbling yogurt conconction with her mom. "Oh, those belong to sissy and [brother-in-law Muppet]. We're just taking care of them." I grumble at this but sit down to journal. All but the last 2 pages of the DJ are filled, and the last entry is really hard to read. It says something about 139 pounds, but everything else is blurry and shifty. I demand proof that I'm not dreaming and become lucid.

"Hey, [Wife]," I say. "I'm having a lucid dream."

"Cool!" she responds. "Why don't we go to the park?" And then we're someplace else, holding hands and walking outside along a broad, grassy path with a great number of other people. We trudge past a flooded parking lot and the steel-toed boots I'm apparently wearing are soaked through. I'm annoyed at first, then remember that I can just fix it -- I do.

After walking for a long while, we get to a playground. The playground is a sort of cross between a playground and a petting zoo because all sorts of little animals like sheep and pigs are playing on the equipment as well, mingling with the kids. Our two kids (who weren't in the scene before) streak past us and join in the playing. My oldest son E sort of sits on another boy and I cringe, worrying that there might be some sort of confrontation. All is well, though, and everyone plays happily.

We do this for a while and then wander various paths in the park, the kids coming and going. There's an indoor scene as well where our son E gets to take a class and writes on the blackboard (something he can't do all that well IWL yet.)

Eventually we return home and put E to bed, except he's sleeping in a crib for some reason now. I'm happy, the way I feel after a great day out with the family. I keep looking at my hands as we put him to bed, reminding myself that I'm dreaming. Each time I do, I seem to grow an extra finger. The extra fingers even work pretty well although it seems to take extra special effort to move the "new" fingers vs. the old ones. By the end, my right hand has nine fingers.

As we leave his room, I show my freaky alien-looking hand to Wife and she laughs, saying, "That's awesome." I laugh too, peeling the extra fingers off like a glove and tossing it into the corner of a room where it lands with a rubbery thump. The fingers transform into a brightly-colored kerchief.

I say, "You know, I wish you felt differently about lucid dreaming." (IWL, Wife expressed that she thinks lucid dreaming is pretty much a waste of time.)

"I love that you have these dreams," she says, smiling.

I'm confused. "But you pretty much told me that this was a waste of time." She looks away, her smile fading. Then it hits me how caught up I am in confusing fantasy and reality, even while lucid. "Sorry. I forgot. Here and now."

She smiles again and turns to leave the room. I check her out as she's walking away. "Not gonna happen..." she says, without turning around, and bounds out of the room. I follow as the dream fades...

Finally -- Advanced Task of the Month!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #87: The Diamond

I'm driving somewhere in California, preparing to merge onto the freeway. Some guy in a Hummer blocks me from merging in, though, even steering his behemoth vehicle toward me so that I have to run off the road. I wind up on some semi-abandoned, crumbling old road, following one other car. The road's filled with enormous potholes and huge slabs of the road jut up at crazy angles. The other driver and I steer carefully around these chunks as best we can and I'm very worried that I'll break an axle. I think that this is all cause by California's ever-present budget woes.

The road ends at a marina but the other car has vanished. I get out of the car and sit by a wooden railing, pouting about my problems. As I look down at the water, I see a little girl crash a jet-ski into a dock, fly over the handlebars, perform three perfect back hand-springs, and walk off as if nothing has happened. I'm impressed by her athleticism and very relieved that she wasn't hurt.

There are narrow wooden walkways leading in a couple of different directions, but none of them are wide enough to fit a car. I need to keep driving but I don't want to leave my car here. I think that if this was a dream, I'd just go jack one, Grand Theft Auto-style. This thought makes me critically question reality and I realize that I'm dreaming!

I leap to my feet and take flight, soaring high enough to see the top of a nearby apartment building. There's a huge pool party on the roof of this building, lots of DCs milling around, and I decide to check it out. I discard the "Great Wall of China" Task of the Year for now and decide that I'll do the "make a diamond out of coal" Advanced Task of the Month.

I look for the DC who seems most in charge and central to the storyline of this party scene. A girl that's seated in a beach chair nearby seems to be the focal point of the scene. She's mid-20s, black, very cute, and three or four of her girlfriends stand deferentially around her as they all talk. While it's not an exact match, I notice that she looks a bit like Stacey Dash.



As I walk up to pseudo-Stacey, she and her friends turn to look at me. I say, "I'm going to give you a diamond." One of her buddies, a brunette holding a slender glass of what looks like champagne, laughs at this.

"Are you serious?" asks "Stacey".

"Totally serious," I say. "It's for a task. You just need to hand me that lump of coal that you're carrying around."

"Sure, take it!" she says, handing me a peach-sized lump of coal. Whew, glad that worked, I think to myself. Stacey and her friends watch me, intrigued. I give the coal one quick squeeze, imagining that it immediately feels sharp and hard like a diamond. I open my hand and yes it's a diamond! There are some lumps of dusty black coal-crap on it, but I quickly brush them away, revealing a sparkling, golf ball-sized, round cut diamond.

Her friends murmur appreciatively and I hand Stacey the diamond. "Aww, it's so nice!" she says, smiling appreciatively. She holds it up to the sunlight to admire it then stands up and approaches me. "Hey, will you help me out with a question that I had?" she asks.

"Sure. What's up?" I'm very intrigued about what her question is.

"What's the difference between..." she begins, pointing toward herself and circling her finger as if to indicate "me" or "all of me". Her voice trails off and I quickly wind up in the void. The excitement of TotM and the anticipation of the question get me too wound up, though, and I wake up before I can use the void to travel anywhere.

I buckle down for DEILD but I feel like I'm not going to fall back asleep. I try to really let go, and after waiting for a bit, I slip back into a non-lucid dream: "Stacey" is in a dark, wood-panelled office, seated across from a severe-looking woman in her 50s. Stacey is visibly upset and says, "You have no right hire someone else to ghost write my story! How can you do this to me?"

The lady, who I think is her publicist, is unsympathetic. "Not everything is about you." I wake up.

This was a a very vivid, pleasant lucid dream. My Task of the Month attempt didn't succeed, but it was a beautiful experience nonetheless. Also, this is the third time that my dad's DC has hinted to me that I'm dreaming and finally I listened!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #86: Rock Candy

I'm standing at the door of a lakehouse with Dad, recounting an extraordinarily vivid dream from earlier in the night. I lean against the doorframe, looking out over the water. "I can't believe how much of this stuff you remember," he says. "And then that whole 'vivid dreaming' thing you do."

"Yeah," I respond. "It's actually called 'lucid dreaming'." It hits me that this is all a dream. I step outside to a wooden walkway, leap over the railing and take flight over the lake. "I'm dreaming right now!" I shout over my shoulder.

"That's amazing," I hear him say as I cruise away over the lake. I pass through a cypress canopy and get high enough to survey the lake. The lake stretches as far as I can see, its surface criss-crossed by dirt paths that are decorated with beautiful marble archways.

I land on one of these paths and walk along for a while, enjoying the serenity of the moment. I pass a bulbous, bright blue flower that's the size of a basketball. Its petals ripple gently in the sun and give off a glow that looks like a bloom effect you'd find in a video game. Just before I come to a marble archway, I find a pile of rocks and think of the Task of the Month (find a piece of coal and change it into a diamond.)

I dig through the rock pile, hunting for coal. The closest thing that I can find is a black, rectangular hunk of glassy, volcanic-looking rock. It looks too crystalline so I get the bright idea of crushing it into coal by popping it in my mouth and chewing it up. I bite a hunk of the rock off and begin to chew. The taste is amazing! It's like a homemade raisin bar with just a hint of chocolate. I'm immediately reminded of the goodies Mom would bake when I was a kid.

I wander the paths for a long while, contentedly passing under the shadows of archways, walking by strange, brightly glowing plants, and happily biting off pieces of this delicious black rock. I feel immensely pleased with what I've created for myself and unmotivated to change anything.

Eventually my path takes me to an ancient-looking stone wall. Oddly, there is a working escalator alongside the wall, and I board it, curious where it leads. As I ride up, I pass many people that I know, most memorably my friend DX (who I recently saw for the first time in over a year.) His short hair has been replaced by an enormous ball afro. We swap greetings, but the escalator quickly moves us past one another.

At the top of the escalator, I remember Task of the Month and spit out a bit of the black rock to see if it's coal-like enough to work. Unfortunately, it's more like slightly sticky, finely-chewed glass. I look back at the escalator and see Fedora, a guy that I used to know in college but was never friends with. I say, "Fedora, go ahead and give me that piece of coal you have." It works! Fedora hands me a perfect lump of coal and I get to work on squeezing it. It's becoming smaller and smaller, and I feel like a tiny diamond is beginning to form. Fedora demands that I give him the diamond when I'm finished since it's "his". I'm about to tell him that this is fine when the dream gets really unstable.

I prepare to DEILD, and it goes black. I'm very aware of my body now, almost awake. I release all awareness of my body and try to let the dream take me under. Apparently I let my self-awareness go too, because I'm shortly back in the dream, but no longer lucid.

I'm standing about twenty feet from the escalator talking with my friend The Schwartz and another person that I can no longer recall. "So what went wrong?" asks The Schwartz. I walk them through the last portion of the dream in detail. As I'm describing what happened, I see an attractive stranger in her early 20s eyeing me. She smiles and waves me over. Excited, I begin walking toward her but suddenly feel super guilty. I remember that I'm married and feel like a dirtbag. Then I remember that I'm dreaming and feel awesome again. The stranger smiles and turns away, an older guy (her boyfriend?) draping his arm over her shoulder and walking away with her. I start thinking about Task of the Month again, but the dream fades...

Although the lucid portion was shorter than I'd have liked there were two awesome things about this dream: 1) I finally broke my dry spell. 2) I played the part of a bulked-up, ghost-hunting Stephen LaBerge. Who could ask for anything more?

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #85: Stephen LaBerge, Ghost Hunter

I am Stephen LaBerge, and I've been hired to investigate an apparently haunted cruise ship. The vessel's owners aren't sure whether the ship is haunted or whether this is all a dream. Therefore they've invited me, Stephen LaBerge, to investigate.

I'm standing outside the ship, waiting to board. The crew shuffles past me on the gangway, leaving the ship empty for me to investigate. I board the ship, and quickly become lost in a maze of hallways. Creepy, whispering voices and strange groans echo through the halls.

I feel wimpy, vulnerable, and way out of my depth. Looking for a place to hide, I duck into one of the ship's bathrooms. Suddenly it occurs to me that I should prove to myself that this isn't all just a dream. I quickly realize that I am dreaming after all.

The moment that I become lucid, my confidence comes flooding back. I check my look in the mirror, and find that even though I'm still Stephen LaBerge, I'm now enormously, cartoonishly muscular. I'm wearing a dress shirt that looks like it was torn to ribbons when I did my Incredible Hulk transformation. I hit a double biceps pose in the bathroom mirror and smile at the sight of Stephen LaBerge's head on this freaky, bulky body.

Suddenly, one of the stall doors in the bathroom slams shut. I'm still sort of stuck in ghost hunting mode, so this frightens me a bit. I hang onto lucidity, though, muttering to myself that "I'm having a really stable lucid dream..." I walk up to the stall door that slammed shut and kick it right at the latch. It swings wide open and I'm relieved to see that there's nobody in there.

I walk to the next stall in the bathroom and for reasons that I can't remember, I stick my head into this stall to see if there's anything interesting in there. This time, the door slams shut right on my face, striking me in the nose. It doesn't hurt very much but it scares me and makes me stagger back. Just then, a hand caresses the back of my neck and I absolutely freak, losing lucidity and running out of the bathroom into the halls.

There's a bit of a memory gap here, but I spent a lot of time running lost through the halls and looking out of portholes. I can see the ocean through these portholes but I've lost sight of the docks or any kind of land. During this time, ghosts definitely keep touching me and it definitely keeps wigging me out.

Ultimately I make my way deeper into the ship. I end up in a hot, dark boiler room, engaged in a fistfight with some kind of green-hued stone man that I think is a demon. (He sort of reminds me of Frank Fontaine from the final battle in Bioshock.) We're punching, shouting, and cursing one another. I think of how odd it is that I am Stephen LaBerge fighting a green demon in the boiler room of a cruise ship and briefly become lucid before the dream ends.

I took a pass at Advanced Task of the Month (turn a lump of coal into a diamond) but was running into all kinds of cognitive and dream control problems. My brain seemed to be a little zonked. This was my first lucid where I'd taken Valerian Root for sleep, so it's something to consider. Still, a nice long dream, even just counting the lucid part! If I'd managed to get lucid earlier I might have even had more time (and avoided that chaotic freeway scene.)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #84: Vehicle Fire

Everything in the house is breaking at once. The plumbing is leaking all over the place, the dogs have destroyed a bunch of stuff, and I hear some kind of weird crunching noise from outside. To top it off, we're late picking up the kids from something.

I head outside to find my brother-in-law Muppet swinging around like a monkey on one of the external brick columns that supports our house. Each time he swings around, a couple of bricks fall off of the house and land nearby. Plus, the pillar is actually moving a little bit each time he goes around it. "What the hell are you doing?" I say to him. "You're gonna break our house!" I perform some half-assed reality check and it succeeds.

"What did you do just now?" asks Muppet.

"That was a reality check," I explain. "Everything is such a mess that I hoped I was just dreaming."

"Ah," he says, not especially interested. He points at our roof. Three objects that look like wooden shipping pallets are sticking out of it. "Hey, what are those?" asks Muppet. I grimace, thinking that they must have fallen out of a plane or something and wound up embedded in our roof. Muppet gets distracted, makes some remark about the flowers on the banana plants in our back yard, and then hops away over the top of our house. (Yes, over the top of our two-story house.)

Wife and I get in the car to go pick up the kids. We drive around the city for a long time but every road seems to be closed. Finally we take a tollway but traffic suddenly gets really heavy. I lightly bump some car as I'm driving around but nobody makes a big deal about it. Looking up ahead, we see the reason for the delay: ahead of us a disabled car is engulfed in flames. Black smoke billows up to the sky.



"We've gotta get off this road," I tell Wife, and steer the car toward a left exit. Just as I do that, though, a fire engine comes racing toward me, going the wrong way up the exit. I throw the car in reverse to try to get out of the way. I have to bump a lot of cars to clear a path, but I figure that's okay.

Finally, our car gets totally stuck, so I hop out and start pushing it sideways, kind of lifting it each time. I realize that I'm way too strong and become lucid. Wife has vanished, which is probably for the best -- the scene has grown totally chaotic, with cars driving around everywhere bumping into each other and the siren from the fire truck wailing in my ear. I pick up the car over my head and throw it across the road. In mid-air it changes from an SUV into a yellow Volkswagen Beetle. Then it becomes just the front half of a VW Beetle.

The license plate looks like a bar of soap with words carved into it in cartoony handwriting. I get closer so that I can study it. There are four words, but I only remember "ship" and "check".

Now I remember Task of the Month -- turn a lump of coal into a diamond. Unfortunately, I start trying to conjure a diamond at first. I'm very aware of my hands for some reason, and even when I put them behind my back I can't seem to make myself buy into the conjuration. I bring my hands back to the front of my body and see that now I'm wearing these black, rather lady-like leather driving gloves. Annoyed, I take them off and pitch them away. I try the conjuration again -- again, more lady-gloves. Then I remember that I wasn't even supposed to be conjuring a diamond in the first place but a lump of coal. I start working on that, wind up with lady-gloves again, and start getting frustrated. A car clips me as it goes by, I start getting agitated, and darkness comes over me, pitching me into the void.

I feel relaxed, and start probing at my dream body. It's only a few seconds before I find myself standing in my own bedroom, walking toward the door. I say something encouraging to myself like, "Hell yeah, sexy new dream body!" For a moment I contemplate turning around to see whether Wife is in bed and might be down for doing something sexy but I get scared that approaching the bed I'm actually occupying IWL would be destabilizing.

I head to the top of the stairs. The baby gate's blocking me but I just power through it and it sort of snaps open. I get nearly to the bottom of the stairs when everything stretches way, way out and takes on that stereotypical "endless hallway" look. I keep moving but no matter how far I go everything seems to stay in the same place. Then the entire room suddenly rotates 90 degrees, floor becoming wall, and I slide down the rest of the way to the first floor.

Our coat closet has been replaced with what looks like a giant iPhone. The screen is displaying a game with a 5x5 array of tiles. When you touch various tiles, you receive prizes in the form of troops for Clash of Clans. I earn 4 Minions and a Hog Rider just pushing tiles at random, but now I'm interested in learning what the rules of the game are. I'm trying to figure this out when the dream ends.

I was really going for the "sand" trick that I used in The Sands of the Colosseum but I never could figure out how to capitalize on it. I need to learn to be a bit more flexible and much less fearful of the dark. Given what I've learned, all of that concern about the dark is nothing but a bad habit. This was a good learning experience though!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #82: Afraid of the Dark

I believe that this was a DILD, but my first memory is of being lucid in a huge, empty office space with plain white walls, harsh fluorescent lighting, and blue-gray industrial carpet. It looks like a place where there'd normally be a cubicle farm, but the floor is totally clear.

I'm happy to be lucid, but I want a new location. I want to perform the "sand trick", which involves focusing on the floor and rubbing it until I'm convinced that my hands are digging through sand. I start crawling around on the floor, find myself a spot, and start rubbing.

Nothing happens at first, so I focus harder on the thought that this is sand. Unfortunately, I'm looking right at industrial carpet and the thought won't go away. Finally a bunch of disgusting dust and dirt puffs up from the carpet and blows around, but it's not what I'm looking for. I try for a while longer but I feel myself becoming obsessed.

I get up and notice a set of doors in a far-off wall. I run over to it, place my hand on the doorknob, and imagine that the Colosseum is on the other side. I throw the doors open and instead of the Colosseum I see a darkened warehouse. I can't see in too far but I do make out a few scattered cardboard boxes.

"Too dark", I think. "Not going in there." I close the door, think about the Colosseum, and open it again. This time the boxes are gone and the room looks even darker.

I give up, close the door, and follow the wall to a closet-like cubby hole. I crawl around in here and again try to produce sand from the carpet. Even though this cubby is set off to the side, the lighting is unbearably harsh and I just produce more puffs of dust, like the carpet needs a good vacuuming. I try to close my eyes but they won't comply. It seems like this office scene is burned into my brain.

I jump to my feet and run around a bit, doing a quick dive-roll just for kicks. I round a corner and find one of my Siberian Huskies locked in a big cage. He whimpers and paws at the door. I fumble around for a latch but don't see anything.



I'm preparing to open the crate via telekenesis when Wife appears from behind me and says, "Oh here, let me take care of that!" I almost tell her that I'm having a lucid dream but I figure that she already knows. She crouches down and starts working the lock. I make the mistake of waiting around and lose lucidity.

The lock pops open and our dog comes bounding out. He runs past us and buries his face into a used-up paint can that's nearby. I look to see what he's doing and am horrified to see that he's happily chowing down on a couple of dead roaches. I'm about to tell him to stop but Wife hugs him around the neck and says, "Oh, such a good boy!!" I feel ill. Still, I decide to let it go because he's probably hungry.

Wife wanders over to a nearby window and I follow her. There are a pair of laser gun emplacements on the window sill. We each take one and she points across the dark city to a tall office building. Wooden boxes float silently out of the office building, flying off to destinations unknown. Wife explains: "Those boxes have dangerous cell phones in them that will give people cancer." We start firing our laser cannons at the evil cell phones, destroying as many boxes as we can. We get most of them but, I'm sorry to say, many get through. The dream ends...

This Task of the Year attempt was a big step forward for my teleportation from the void. I combined my idea of relying on tactile sensations to teleport with Chimpertainment's approach where he focuses on a single point while allowing the rest of the scene to build. The results were excellent. Even though I didn't manage Task of the Year, this was a pretty big one for me.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #80: The Sands of the Colosseum

I'm driving with Wife over a hilly, Dr. Seuss-like landscape in a car with giant tires. It occurs to me that this all might be a dream and I decide that it is. As I become lucid, Wife immediately stops talking.

I drive for a bit, wondering where I should take my funky new car. But then I remember my goal of touching and engaging with the dream world as quickly as possible to really draw myself into it. I stop the car (seemingly through an act of will) and feel the seat with my left hand. I reach my right hand over to Wife and begin to feel and massage her left thigh. My initial intent was non-sexual but right away I feel a stir of excitement and distraction, so I stop. I try to touch the seat with my right hand instead, but I somehow miss and transition into...

...a false awakening where I'm standing by the bed in a dark hotel room. I remember everything, though, and I remain lucid. I see Wife's vague outline in the bed, but darkness is already pressing down. I know the void's coming so I start rubbing my hands together. Soon everything is totally dark and I keep probing my dream body. I probe each side of my chest and try flexing just a bit. Everything feels totally realistic. I check my junk to make sure all is as it should be (yep, we're good ), and poke the outside of my thighs with finger-spears.

Comfortable with my dream body, I crouch down in the dark and move my right hand in a rubbing motion, imagining that I'm moving my palm over sand. Soon I feel something like a thin layer of sand. As I keep rubbing, the layer seems to grow thicker and thicker. Now I can actually see the motion of my hand and I can vaguely make out sand shifting around. I think specifically of the sand in the Colosseum, then dig my fingers deep into the sand. I feel them scrape what feels like a wooden board.

The sand comes fully into view, sharp and detailed. I keep staring at it, imagining that I'm surrounded on all sides by the Colosseum. I hear the crowd now, and after a few more seconds, I have imagined right where I'm standing in the Coloseum (close to one wall), what kind of day it is (sunny), and what I'll be trying to do (kill orcs.)

I stand up, raise my eyes, and I am there in the great arena. Every detail looks perfect. I sweep my gaze from side to side, grinning at the thought that I'm actually here. I think that it looks just like stepping into a scene from "Gladiator". I'm excited and happy to have finally made it!



I want to see more and more of the scenery, and without meaning to, I allow my perspective to float high up above my dream body. I scan the crowd for a while, eventually viewing the scene from high enough that I see the surrounding Roman streets. I suddenly zoom in on a street scene packed with Roman citizens. Lucilla from "Gladiator" is laughing and playfully hopping down the street. It feels strange because the whole scene is playing too fast.

Now I realize that I'm just watching all of this on my Kindle Fire and a little display tells me this is being played at "4x". I'm distressed that I'm now just watching all this on a screen and I try to "rewind" to the part where I was in the Colosseum. The controls don't seem to work properly, although I do manage to slow the scene down to normal speed.

I've lost all connection to my dream body and soon I wake up.