CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #264: The Lone and Level Sands

I’m walking near the corner of our house with my 5-year-old son E, inspecting some kind of odd, muddy buildup that’s caked all along the side of the house. It looks like it was sprayed there. For some reason I think that my next door neighbor sprayed this mud from his yard onto the side of my house. I become fretful that our relationship has soured somehow and wonder whether there was some conflict that I’ve forgotten about. As I think more about all of this, I realized that I have to be dreaming.

I turn to the east, looking toward my neighbor’s house. But everything to the east is a vast, quiet desert. Where my neighbor’s house would be is just the skeletal frame of a house, long abandoned. And now when I turn back to where my house was moments ago, there’s nothing but a ruined frame.



E is still beside me. The desert sun is bearing down on us now. I feel like we’ve just witnessed the passing of centuries, and that everything we know is long gone. I want to be someplace else, so I take a step forward and suddenly we’re in a stone chamber looking out through a long, horizontal window at the desert scene.

“Daddy, what happened to the house?” asks E. I don’t answer, but just tell him (and myself) that this is a dream.

The view through the window grows brighter and brighter, and I’m drawn into and through it, back outside, but this time into a quiet, unspoiled grassland. I sense that this is my neighborhood again, but now centuries before humans arrived in North America. I expect to see bison, and of course I see a lone bison off in the distance.



I walk with E through this quiet paradise for just a moment before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #263: Judo and Giants

As I lay back down post-WBTB, I get the sense that I’m starting to fall asleep. Just before bed, Dreamer had skyped me her most recent dream where she transitioned to WILD by rolling onto her side and partly more onto her stomach. (This one!) I try the same thing, worrying for a second that moving will spoil things, but it’s all fine. There’s a low buzzing sound and a dream starts to take shape. After a little more patience, I find myself outside on a street at night.

Among the people going by, I see a lost boy wandering around calling out for his mother. I ask him who his mother is and he says that it’s RBBB, someone I know from college. I decide that she’ll be close by, and sure enough I see her kneeling in an alcove carved out of a nearby brick building. I bring the boy to her and say, “Hey, [RBBB]! It’s [Canis]. Your son was looking for you.” She gives me a curt, rather cold nod and goes back to fervently praying as her son curls up next to her.

I review my goals and remember my two main ones: first, my 5-year-old son E’s idea to find him, take him to a playground so he could play with Elsa and Anna from Frozen. Second, Iokheira’s (aka NewArtemis) idea to find her and transform into wolves. :canislucidus:

I head down the street to start looking for E, but the DCs on the street start running in terror from something up ahead. There’s a stone giant stomping along the road ahead of me, and he grabs a car from the side of the road and flings it across the street into a grassy courtyard.



He comes straight for me, and I try to think of some way not to turn this into a fight, but it’s just not coming to me. The stone giant seems way too hostile, and the only option that comes to me is to try to end the combat as quickly as possible. I move my hands away from each other in a ripping gesture to pantomime tearing the stone giant apart. It works, and the giant blows apart into a huge scatter of boulders and pebbles.

I hurry past, but almost immediately the rocks start rolling back toward one another so that the giant can reform. Soon I catch sight of his shadow chasing after me, but I resolve not to turn around and instead just ignore him. Sure enough, he vanishes!

I come to the top of a tall series of stacked platforms that descend into the ground, sort of like a reverse parking garage. Every floor is packed with these large, amazing water fountains that flow into one another. I drop down a few levels, expecting to find my son E. And he’s there! He’s curled up in the corner crying, and I scoop him up in my arms. “Hey, don’t cry, buddy! This is a lucid dream! I’m going to try to take you to meet Elsa and Anna!” This settles him down, and I leap off the side of the fountain structure, floating softly about 80 feet or so to the ground.

At the bottom is a playground! I hop up on one of the wooden structures and set E down so that he can walk on his own. Together we cross a wooden bridge and in the middle we meet Elsa and Anna! “[E], look who it is!” They look similar to their appearance in the films, although their facial features occasionally rearrange in unusual, Picasso-like ways. E runs up to them and hugs Anna around the leg.



A crowd of DCs start pouring in, and we get separated for a moment. I feel a loss of stability and grab onto this old guy’s stomach to restabilize. To my surprise, I can feel that he’s clearly got abs. I say, “Dude, you’re like 60! How have you got abs?... Oh right, you’re a DC.” He and some of the other DCs laugh.

I return to where E and the Frozen princesses were, but they’ve been replaced by clear imposters. (The Elsa imposter is non-animated, black, and in her mid-50s!) I talk with the imposters for a bit but decide to move on to Iokheira’s idea, so I leave the playground, finding myself walking down the stairs in a house.

Up ahead I see Iokheira sprint by! I follow her path into the shadows of a living room, but when I get there, she’s gone. I turn back and look around for a bit before someone else comes down the stairs I entered from, a young strawberry blonde woman in her mid-20s. I ask her where Iokheira is and the woman answers that “Sorry, [Iokheira] doesn’t live here anymore.”

As I’m turning to leave, the strawberry blonde woman runs up and starts aggressively kissing me. It’s exciting to some degree but also a little scary. She pulls away for a moment to admit to me that she’s a “very slobbery kisser”, and sure enough, she becomes quite slobbery. Then she says, “And check this out!” As I watch, her left eye moves into the center of her forehead. She checks my face, seemingly expecting a horrified reaction. Instead I laugh and for a moment she seems disappointed not to have frightened me. She returns to aggressive kissing, and after things move on to sexytime, the dream fades...

I hold on for DEILD and I’m quickly back. I’m roaming the hallway of a house, and I continue a room-to-room search for Iokheira. In one of the rooms the light switch doesn’t work and I remark out loud that “That’s a bullshit schema!” I leave the hallway and enter a huge cathedral-like chamber that’s snaked through with all of these suspended balconies.

I run along one of these balconies until I’m confronted by an archeress, a brown-haired woman in her mid-40s. I try to ask for her help, but she starts saying a variety of strange, threatening things and looks like she’s going to take a shot at me. I grab onto her and do a Dreamer-style sacrifice JUDO throw, and it totally works! The archeress is still yelling at me, but I run away from her into a new room as the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #260: The Prancing Pied Piper

A false awakening takes me downstairs where I putter around for a bit doing silly "chores" like moving chairs around. Then I head back upstairs, totally focused on having a lucid dream when I “return to bed”. Just so that I’ll get in the right mindset, I do a nose pinch reality check and oh hey, check it out, I’m already having a lucid dream! I hold the nose pinch and start leaping and prancing about, waving my other hand in the air. I sing about lucid dreaming while I do this.

I head into my youngest son R’s room, but instead of R, I find my 5-year-old son E sleeping on his bed. “Daddy, what are you doing?” he asks getting out of bed.

I keep singing, prancing, nose-pinching, and waving one arm. I sing, “Lucid dream, lucid dream, lucid dreeeeee-eeeeeeam!” E laughs and says, “Daddyyy!” I think about returning to the master bedroom in the hopes of finding Wife and enjoying some sexytime. But those plans fall through when E gets out of bed, and starts following me around, prancing the same way that I am.

I reflect on the joy of being lucid and this emotion takes me to a desire to hear beautiful music. (I’d chained these feelings together using Dreamer’s goal memory technique.) This is in pursuit of Jenkees’ dare to do cool stuff to a lucid orchestral soundtrack. E and I go prancing into the master bedroom as I realize that I need to stop singing if I’m going to get a new soundtrack.

The lights are on in the bedroom and instead of me or Wife, my friend KS is lying in bed next to some blonde guy with surfer hair. KS gets out of bed and rubs her eyes like it’s the morning. I ignore her and surfer guy, instead phasing my face through the shutters so I can look out into the night. I start creating an orchestral soundtrack in my head.

It sounds nice, but I realize that I’m forcing every note manually and composing it as an act of will. I want it to emerge organically instead. Maybe if I go do something outside. I phase through the window and leap out into the night with a yell. As I’m preparing to take flight, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #255: Narcissus at the Symphony

I’m standing in the kitchen with Wife and my two boys E and R. I feel incredibly tired, like I can barely keep my eyes open or even stand. The exhaustion gets the better of me and I collapse, falling flat on my face. “Oh my God! Are you okay?” asks Wife, rushing to my side to help me up. I feel embarrassed that I’ve worried everybody when I’m only tired… surely I could have stopped myself from falling like that!

I stagger over to the sink, noticing that I’m wearing glasses (extremely rare in waking life.) I lean against the sink, noticing odd patterns and spots in my vision. Something’s definitely wrong with me, but I feel like it’ll all be better if I can just fall asleep. It occurs to me to look for the dream and when I hit the nose pinch reality check, I become lucid.

I’m shocked that this is all a dream, and I say out loud, “That countertop right there -- that looks exactly like waking life.” I run my hands over it. It’s in a different configuration from waking life, but the texture, the look, it’s all perfect. Amazing. I catch my reflection in the mirror. I look like me, but my movements are just a bit delayed from my dream body’s movements. I wave my arms above my head and watch in amusement.

I remember Jenkees’ dare to play an orchestral soundtrack. I raise my arms in the air, willing one to arise. I hear something! But it’s very faint, sounding like nothing more than an orchestra tuning up before a concert. Yes, that makes sense, cool soundtrack will come from doing cool stuff.

I walk toward my den but now I’m somehow in the hall of a building, walking past a big mirror. Hey look, I’m shirtless! I look just like myself but with just that little added bit of dream buffness. I flex for a little while, shamelessly indulging in vanity. This goes on for much longer than it should and then I continue along the hall out into a balcony where well-dressed DCs go wandering by. Hey, I bet that I’m at a concert hall! I decide that I should attend a symphony concert to complete Jenkees dare.

I find another mirror and think to summon Dreamer. I don’t want to get too fixated on immediate success, so I say, “Hey, [Dreamer], you can join me if you feel like it!” And in the mirror, Dreamer appears next to me! She sports the usual purple hair, but a heavier build than waking life. I look to my right to catch a direct view of her, but instead of Dreamer, I see my friend “Topspin”! He bears not the slightest resemblance to Dreamer in appearance or personality, being a dude of a completely different height, race, face shape, and demeanor from her. I look back and forth from Dreamer to Topspin. Both of them are smiling at me in amusement and I laugh, saying something like, “Okay, follow along with me if you like!” (Nobody does.)



I walk further along the balcony and see a brown-haired woman in her mid-20s pretending to take pictures by forming her hand into a camera shape. She points her “camera” at me and I’m caught by surprise when it flashes and making a picture-taking noise! I laugh at this and say “Nice one!” She springs up and does these amusing, highly exaggerated photographer poses while taking a few more pictures.

I think she’s hilarious and attractive, and I kiss her. Things turn sexual, but as we head this direction I notice that her reactions are almost precise mirrors of my own. The experience is fun but feels artificial somehow, and I decide to let the dream go in another direction. We’re on a crowded street at daytime now. I give the photographer a hug and afterward she turns around and wanders away. I start down the road, but after a little bit, the dream ends.

This dream is from the morning of October 24th, 2014.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #251: Let Them Eat Cake

I’m in a big kitchen with lots of family and a few friends, including Wife, my kids E and R, and my brother-in-law Muppet, and several others. As I’m looking around this huge kitchen, my mantra to “look for the dream” returns to me, and as I consider my situation, I become lucid.

I announce to the room that I’m dreaming. Muppet responds with some skepticism, so I say, “No, it’s true!” and levitate him up to the kitchen ceiling. This makes him become skinny like a piece of paper, which disturbs me enough that I reverse the levitation. He laughs and seems to accept that this is a dream.

“Oh hey, [Wife]!” I say. “You’re going to love this!” And I summon this buttery, bready, poofy baked good for her on a small saucer. I hand it to her, but I’m unable to resist rudely tearing off a piece and stuffing it in my mouth. So delicious! I mean, it’s just ridiculous how good this thing is. Wife chows down, too, and for a moment I can taste this awesome bread thing through her mouth as well.

I’m having an incredibly good time with all of this eating, so I decide that I want to make something for Muppet as well. I wonder whether it’s his birthday IWL but can’t remember. As I think this, everyone in the big kitchen starts singing “Happy birthday” to Muppet. I produce a huge birthday cake slathered in buttercream icing and now Muppet’s carrying it in his hands. “Thanks, man!” he says.

Family members start taking slices of the cake, and I scoop out a big handful of it like a barbarian and start eating it. It’s really good, although the icing is almost disgustingly creamy and decadent. I shove it down my pie-hole as fast as I can.

Wife says, “Hey, is this vegan?”

“This is a dream! Everything in here is vegan!” I happily enjoy several more huge bites of cake, stuffing icing in my face in a way that I haven’t done since I was a little kid. I’m munching away happily as the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #240: Voices

I’m relaxing in a cabin with Wife and my kids E and R. I step outside through a wooden door, catching a view of a beautiful, placid lake. It feels dreamlike, and when I consider my situation, I realize that I’m dreaming.

I decide that I want to attempt the patronus task again with Dreamer to once and for all answer the question of whether I’ll produce a magnificent mythical creature… or the dreaded “pootronus” that she has promised me. “Dreamer, you’re here!” I call out, but she’s nowhere to be seen.

I walk around the edge of the lake and see a distant wooden fenceline. “Ah okay, you’re right behind that fence!” I say, and a woman steps out from behind the fence and begins walking away toward a large wooden building in the distance. She’s got purple hair, so I’m sure that it’s Dreamer!

I hop and fly after her, ending up in the wooden building with her. She’s still somewhat distant so I call out something to her about wanting to do the patronus task. She turns around and calls out, “First say something in your accent voice!” I take this to mean that she wants me to say something in an Australian accent.

“Let’s see how my accent voice sounds,” I say, sounding totally Aussie. Way better than waking life. I kind of talk over Dreamer saying something about “singing”, which I don’t catch.

She grins. “Oooh, how about something in your noise voice?” I’m not sure what she means by a "noise voice" but I notice how precisely her voice matches her waking life voice. I move closer to her, thinking what a “noise voice” could be, and as I’m lost in this question, Dreamer disappears.

I look around, calling out for her until a woman in her late 20s with glasses and dark, curly hair emerges from nearby a stack of hay. As she walks toward me, I say, “What am I worried about? You’re right over here.” She seems to be somewhat agreeable to getting transformed, but when I get close, she’s trying to say something that I can’t quite hear. I reach out but my hand passes through her shoulder.

I keep looking, calling out here and there without much of a plan, but no DCs appear this time. I say a rather pathetic, “Come back, I miss you!” not long before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #239: Patronus, Part Two

I’m reading a comic book with Wife about spies on a dangerous ocean voyage. There’s a lot of discussion about an acronym MBME and what it means. The meaning keeps changing, which makes me feel vaguely suspicious, but I don’t become lucid yet.

Somehow we become a part of the story and wind up in an RV that we decide is a classroom for my son E. We meet with one of his teachers for a while and at the end of the meeting I start gathering up all of my stuff. Stack of papers. Backpack with my work laptop. Our test iPad from the office. I’m exasperated that I brought so much stuff and left it lying around everywhere, and the whole thing overall feels strange. As Wife and I duck out of the RV, I consider my situation one more time and I become lucid.

We’re outside in a grassy field. I still have the goal of summoning my patronus with Dreamer, which I misremember as wanting to summon the patronus with Wife. “Come here, let’s summon my patronus!” I tell her.

“Oh, okay!” she responds. I take her up in a hug and kiss her for a moment. Then I extend my left arm out and expect a patronus to form.

There’s nothing at first, but I say, “Look, there’s something,” and now there are wisps of silvery, smoky mist flowing from my fingertips. The wisps coalesce into some little critter who leaps to the ground behind a passing DC. I lose sight for a moment and start looking around to see where the patronus has gone.

“Look, he’s so cutie!” says Wife. I turn to find my patronus, a silvery, wispy little bunny, hopping around in the grass under the RV. He turns back to look toward us and his little nose twitches. He returns to nibbling at the grass.



Wife says a couple more things about how cute he is, and I notice that the ground is becoming insubstantial. I think that maybe I rushed around too much in this dream, and it soon ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #237: I Melt with You
I'm standing high up on a viewing platform, looking over a view of the sparkling ocean below. Wife and my son E are standing nearby, looking silently out over the water. I realize that this is a dream.

I look back and E has disappeared. Wife doesn't react, and I tell her, "Don't worry. This is a dream."

She nods, smiling slightly. "Mm-hmm..."

I look out at the ocean again, resting my hands on the metal railing, which is cold to the touch. The sand of the beach down below has been replaced by a formless gray. I look back. Wife is still there, but a big chunk of the ocean is missing now.

I move toward Wife, cutting my eyes around the scene, more and more pieces falling into gray. Even the platform goes to gray. Soon there's nothing left but Wife and a vertical strip of ocean and sky to her left.

I wrap my arms around Wife and start intensely kissing her. Before long my vision goes entirely gray but I can still feel the sensation of kissing her. I run the fingers of my right hand through her hair, following the moment through until the end of the dream.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #233: Rucksack

I have a false awakening in a hotel room. It’s dark and my oldest son E is standing nearby. He asks me where Wife is and when I don’t know the answer, I feel terribly worried.

Another false awakening, and this time Wife is lying on the bed. She stirs and sits up. Confused, I complain to her that she shouldn’t have just disappeared earlier without telling us where she was going. She says something strange about the time of day and after a moment of feeling strange, I realize that this is a dream.

I walk to the hotel room window and phase through to the outside, finding myself 25 feet or so up in the air. I drift gently to the ground, finding myself in an alley during daytime. I’m behind a brick building and sign with fancy lettering reads:

“←Tavern→”

This sounds interesting, and apparently either way will take me there. I hop along through city streets until I come to a plaza at the base of a tall office building. I quite unexpectedly encounter an old friend “Rucksack”.

“Hi!” I say. I’m surprised, because he and I haven’t really talked in a few years.

“Hey,” he says. “I really like the stuff that you’re doing on DreamViews and I wanted to buy you some extra <dream control tricks?>. When you log on, you’ll see a $50 donation. That’s from me!”

I thank him, and he quickly leaves. I wonder what this new dream control could be. Unsure what to do next, I bound joyously around the plaza for a bit before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #227: The Dream Queue

I’m holding my oldest child E’s hand as we make our way down a crowded hallway. Something feels off to me and I realize that I’m dreaming. E pulls away from me and runs off down the hall, disappearing into the crowd.

I try to follow him but the dream feels very unstable to me, almost as if I’m drunk and can barely walk properly. I realize that the people ahead of me in this hallway are all waiting to have a lucid dream, but I’m having mine right now. I don’t belong in this line with them. I stagger to my right, crashing into a wall and fall into the void.

I rub my hands together, making my way through the dark. I can feel people passing close by me on all sides, so I still feel like I’m in the scene. After enough hand rubbing and lurching around, I finally get my vision back and find myself standing near a corner wall near a bin full of envelopes.

I reach out to touch the envelopes but ungracefully bat them onto the floor. They scatter everywhere. I flail out my arms to grab something else but the dream ends.

Not my best dream control, but hopefully I can learn from this!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #218: Empty-Handed

I hear my oldest son E calling for me. It feels like it’s very early morning and the sun’s still not up yet. I walk through the dark hallway into his room to find him sitting up in his bed. “Daddy! I’m up!” he announces and hops off of the bed. “I’m going to go tell Mommy.”

I follow him back down the hall, feeling disappointed that the morning’s starting so early and that I missed my chance to have a lucid. As E starts climbing up into bed to shake Wife awake, I’m hit with a huge wave of regret to have missed out on having a lucid dream. I decide to make one last desperate move and try to phase through the wall, phasing right through and falling into the void.

I’m floating through the darkness now so I just relax, rubbing my hands together and repeatedly muttering to myself that “I’m having a lucid dream...” It takes an uncomfortably long time, but after maybe 30 seconds of this, a bright new scene forms around me.

It’s mid-morning and I’m outside, standing by the exterior of what looks like a movie theater. I look up at the bright sky and notice that the clouds are moving across each other in all kinds of odd, crisscrossing directions. “I like that!” I shout, pointing up to the clouds. “Very nice!” I experimentally drag my right foot along the pavement and it feels like I’m wearing running shoes.

The dream is feeling really stable to me now so I decide that it’s time to summon Dreamer and earn some challenge points. I reach my right hand behind my back and say, “[Dreamer], grab onto my hand!” Nothing at first… then a slight prodding feeling on my hand!

I turn around to find a brown-haired woman in her late 30s, hunched over and poking at my hand with her index finger. (I decide that this is definitely not Dreamer.) She’s up really close, staring at my hand like it’s the strangest thing she’s ever seen. I feel frustrated and annoyed that she’s messing with me while I try to summon. “Cut it out!” I say, and she hurries away.

Something bad has happened to my confidence at this point, though, and I feel this combined surge of self-doubt, disappointment, and anger, and in a few seconds I wake up.

This lucid is from the morning of 5/11/2014.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #208: Carnival Chain

I have a false awakening where Wife is bustling about the room getting ready for something. I’m groggy and not seeing anything too well, but I follow her as she heads out the door. There’s some kind of event that we’re supposed to be getting ready for, but I have no memory of what it is. I do remember wanting to have a lucid dream, though, so I feel frustrated that I’m expected to get up.

I follow Wife for a bit and suddenly we’re outside by some docks. She’s dressed in a white sundress that I’ve never seen her in before, holding hands with our two children “E” and “R”. She looks beautiful. I wish that I could go with them but I’m almost too tired to move.

I tell her that I’m going back to bed, which she seems to accept. Somehow I stagger back to the bed and as soon as my head hits the pillow, I attempt to WILD. Right away I get the sense of motion and I can’t believe how quickly it’s working. I go with the momentum and experience a moment of massive acceleration before emerging in a mid-morning carnival scene that I know is a dream.

I’m not pleased with the vividness of the scene, so I rub my hands together and then stare at them, trying to draw out as much detail as I can. It takes a few frustrating moments but finally fine details start to emerge. One oddity is that my hands are covered with cuts and scrapes like I’ve been fighting or working with something sharp.

As the scene comes into better focus, I see that Wife is walking here with me at the carnival. We pass a sandwich vendor who stops us and begins an emphatic explanation of what it takes to make the turkey sandwich. He says that the “traditional” sandwich of “turkey on a donut” is outdated and that rye bread is the wave of the future. It sounds crazy to me, but I try to grasp the details, hoping for some flash of insight. It never comes, though, and the dream fades.

I hold on for DEILD, and in a few seconds I’m back in the carnival scene. I take a few steps but something seems to be stuck in my throat. I try to sort of gag and clear my throat, but it’s still there. I feel like there’s some kind of waking life problem and remember that I’m sleeping on my stomach. I have this vision of the pillow pressing on my throat and in a few seconds, I’m out of the dream.

I flop onto my side, get ready for DEILD, and re-enter the carnival scene a few seconds later. Wife’s here with me again, and says something flirtatious. I’m feeling very interested, so we make out for a bit before getting down to some sexytime. I’ll spare the details here, but it's interesting that after the "festivities" the dream continues long enough for us to wander around the carnival a bit more.

Finally the dream breaks, and I DEILD in one last time to the same carnival scene. Wife and I pass by a carnival barker who’s inviting passerby to try out the “lucidity machine”, a large, boxy contraption that he says is guaranteed to make you have a lucid dream for only “4 quarters”.

I encourage Wife to try this out. “But you’re already having a lucid dream,” she replies.

“Yeah, but you’re not.”

She wrinkles her nose. “Four quarters seems kind of expensive.”

“It’s not real money,” I tell her. “Please just try it.”

I’m exasperated by all of this. Wife shakes her head and continues to skeptically study the device as the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #201: Copilot

I’m standing in a brightly lit cafe near the serving counter. There’s a row of three toilets placed directly next to a huge window that looks out onto a shopping mall. In spite of the people passing by just a couple feet away from the window, I decide that I need to sit down on one of these toilets.

As I’m sitting there I realize that I don’t really need to go after all. I wonder why I am even sitting on this toilet publicly embarrassing myself. Some kid, a boy of about 9 or 10, sits on the toilet next to me and starts talking to me about something. I don’t relish the idea of having a conversation while seated this way so I get up to leave (not having “accomplished” anything.) The kid gets up as well and I see that he’s left a horrible, putrid mess in his toilet.

He points to the awfulness he left in the toilet and tells me, “Eww, you did that!” I sputter with indignation and outrage until it occurs to me that this has to be a dream.

The kid disappears and I spend a moment taking in the scene. From behind the cafe’s counter, a guy in a paper chef hat stares back at me. I look to the left and see a staircase leading down, with a man in his early 40s standing at the bottom.

I decide to try teleporting by taking over the man’s perspective and it works almost instantly! Now I’m viewing the same scene from the bottom of the stairs. I run up, wondering if I’ll see another version of myself or the man I switched with, but there’s nobody there now.

I see my 4-year-old son E standing nearby at a table and walk up to him. “Hey, buddy!” I say, and walk with him out into the mall. We’re on the second floor walkway and across a sort of interior courtyard I see an atrium with a beautiful skylight. Daylight pours in through the glass and I think it looks like a great flying spot.

I scoop E up in my arms and he feels realistically heavy. He drapes his hands around my neck more lightly than he would in waking life but the grip seems firm enough to get started. I take to the air, flying with him over the balcony railing. The flight feels very floaty, like something that’d happen in zero gravity. E’s legs float out to the side and I realize that I’ve lost the feeling of his weight.

For some reason we’re drifting away from the skylight toward another section of the mall. I make a hard right turn, dragging E behind me, and we begin to travel down a darker, previously unseen corridor. Before we make it very far this way, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #197: The King

It's modern times, and I’m the king of a small nation. I’m sharing a smallish hotel suite with several royal guests. A few of the royal guests in the adjoining room are very upset with me about something and I’m pacing the room, dreading that I have to talk the issue over with them.

I inspect one of the hotel desks and see two narrow drawers. Somehow I realize that the drawer on the left contains a picture of the girl that my son E (who I think is a prince) is engaged to. I open the drawer and see that the future princess is a cute girl in her late teens with long brown hair. I think for a moment how odd this pairing is since my son is only 4 years old. I struggle with this for a moment, thinking I’ve forgotten my son’s age, until I realize that I’m dreaming.

I walk into an adjacent room where I think my kids are sleeping. There’s a crib here but instead of a child, the crib contains my friend R (who appeared in a few of my early lucids way back when). R is squatting in the crib, not doing much of anything, so I grab him under the armpits and hoist him out of the crib. I tell him that I’m having a lucid dream and that I hope he’s having one too (or maybe that I just hope he’s having a lot of them recently.)

He walks back to the main part of the hotel room with me, briefly exploring the kitchen area, before we turn toward a large picture window overlooking a lake. I invite him to come fly out over the lake with me, but he seems hesitant and apprehensive. He remarks that he doesn’t think he’s got the skills to pull this off.

I say some reassuring words, and when I turn back to the big picture window, the scene has changed from a lake to a large office filled with cubicles. There’s a woman with long, dark hair and glasses working quietly at a desk, and when she looks up to see us seems completely astonished.

The change is a surprise to me, so I decide to head out the other way from the hotel room. I don’t press the issue with R and let him just hang out in the hotel room. The hotel room exit takes me into a library with a high ceiling. I take advantage of the ceiling space by flying around. I help myself navigate around the room by pointing where I want to go, and it works great!

After a moment I remember that I need to pursue my goals, so I land and make an attempt at the Jack and the Beanstalk Task of the Year. I produce a seed from behind the back and then plunge my hands into the industrial carpet of the library floor. I find that I can dig it up easily and all these little chunks of foam pop out of the hole I leave behind. I use them to cover the seed back up and start thinking about how I should water it to help it grow.

As I’m thinking my way through this, the scene goes dark and I feel myself lying in bed. I’m super hopeful that it’s just a false awakening, and I even hit the nose pinch. Too bad -- I’m awake!

Interestingly, this was my second lucid in a row that hit very close to the onset of sleep. I woke up to write this down around 1:15 or so in the morning after being late to bed. I'm not sure what to make of it, but it's definitely encouraging me to continue my pre-bed MILD work!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #192: The Shadow of the Pagoda

I’m sitting at a table with some random people, working on something with pen and paper. My mind’s wandering and as I recall my intent to have a lucid dream, I almost immediately pass into one.

From here, I fall quickly into the void. I rub my hands together, expecting a new scene. Before long I emerge into a false awakening in early morning, sort of seated at the edge of my bed. Some kind of suction is drawing me away from the bed and toward our closet. This worries me for some reason and I ask Wife to “Pull me back in…” in this thin, weak voice.

She kneels on the bed and strains forward to reach for me, whimpering and fretting like she wants to help but doesn’t know how. I recognize that I’m starting to get caught up in this sense of powerlessness, and I let go, falling into the void again.

I make my way forward and emerge in a fancy-looking house, facing a set of glass doors that open to a veranda. For reasons I can’t recall, I decided to head deeper into the house and wandered through a series of rooms. The house is attractive but large and confusing and I start regretting my decision to stay inside.

I wind up in a bedroom with a simple but comfortable-looking bed that has a large stuffed teddy bear laying on top of it. Wife is standing off to the side near one corner and I remember to ask her for her middle name (for Task of the Month.)

When I ask for her middle name, she responds, “Ba ba!”

“Your middle name is ‘Ba ba’?”

She laughs. “Oh, sorry! I actually meant ‘Ba ba ba ba’.” I’m amused but I consider asking her a third time. The teddy bear catches my eye for a moment and when I turn back Wife has vanished. I think about asking the teddy bear for its middle name but decide instead that it’s time to move on.

I leave and walk through a dining hall where my son “E” joins me and starts to follow. I say something to him that I can no longer recall and we walk through more confusing rooms. At one point I’m in a dimly-lit kitchen and notice that my vision has gone blurry. I stare at my hands to draw out the detail and it works pretty well, though not as completely as I might have hoped.

I walk through another dining hall with E and as we’re exiting, the door shuts automatically behind me, cutting me off from him. I see him through the door as it closes and I feel a moment of concern that I’ve left him behind. No, let it go. I continue to a series of glass-panelled doors at the rear of the room and phase through, with some minor difficulty.

I emerge from the phase in a shady courtyard. Towering above me is an immense pagoda, stretching far away into the sky. Even in a dream I’m amazed by how tall and broad it is, far out of scale with everything else surrounding it. It’s at least 500 feet tall and dominates the landscape.



Two women walk by at the other end of the courtyard, casually chatting. They look like they’re from the 1900s, each wearing a large hat and carrying a parasol. I contemplate taking off for some flying and exploration, but the dream ends.