CanisLucidus

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 #229: The Note

I’m sitting in a restaurant and something feels off to me. I stand up to find Wife standing here beside me and I realize that a lucid dream has started. “Do you want to come along?” I ask Wife.

“Sure, okay!” she responds rather happily. This is a nice change because she’s normally more involved in the dream plot and not as cooperative.

I walk outside of the restaurant with Wife, opening the glass door to walk through. Oops, I’d meant to do a phase for the competition! I try to quickly phase through it while it’s open. I phase my arm through the door and then start moving the rest of my body through, Wife giving me a very strange look. The door becomes flimsy in the middle of the attempt and starts folding in on itself. I gyrate my hips, trying to hurry through before it collapses, and I’m very conscious that it totally looks like I’m humping it.

The door becomes completely unmanageable and the scene comes apart as I fall into the void. I hand-rub for a bit to wait this out but sense that something is close to my face, something that I can chew on. I bite down on it and it tastes like a soft, very mild licorice. I usually hate licorice but there’s something about this that makes it a little more bearable, sort of like it’s been crossed with bubble gum somehow.

I keep chewing and chewing, walking forward through the void. I eat fast, consuming yards of the stuff as I walk forward. After a while, it just feels like it’s been too long in the void and that I need to do something about it. For some reason I raise both of my arms over my head before calling out, “Dreamer, pull me out!” I don’t feel any physical contact, but almost immediately find myself standing in my darkened master bedroom, no longer in the void.

There’s a piece of paper stuck on the opposite wall covered with large, handwritten letters. I interpret this as being a note that Dreamer has left for me. It looks like gibberish, so I move forward, trying to get a better look. It rearranges itself, but it’s still unreadable. Then the letters rearrange into:

“Sorry couldn’t read reply, check the”

I interpret this as meaning there’s something I’m meant to read, but I don’t know what. This is relevant for later… see the end of this entry!

I wander out into the hall, which is lit up like it’s morning. I remember my intent to phase and try to phase through my youngest child R’s door. Unfortunately the door just comes open instead of letting me phase and I see R beginning to stir around in bed. This sounds like a good way to get wrapped up in a dream plot, so I back away into the hall.

I fly down the stairs to the kitchen area to see that the breakfast table has been moved far to the side and that almost the entire area is covered with Lego pieces. The coolest part is that most of them have been assembled into these amazing, moving models of roads, freeways, machines, amusement park carousels, and all kinds of other things. It’s really vivid, so much so that it’s hard to shake the feeling that I’m viewing a scene from waking life. I think that in this scenario, Wife must have stayed up all night building this.

I leave through the back door, finding myself in a park walking along a red dirt path dotted with autumn leaves. I follow the path into a building with large plate glass windows all around its walls. I look back at the park through the window, marveling at how realistic it looks when I shift my perspective. I feel excited and happy to see this, saying, “I can’t believe my mind generated all of this.”

I remember again that I’d meant to phase, so I walk toward one of the plate glass windows, anticipating an easy phase. Unfortunately, before I get there, the dream ends.

Notes: Here’s something cool. Immediately upon waking up, I removed my sleep mask and looked over at the clock. Just as I was looking at it, my iPod’s screen came on with a notification. I popped it open and just at that moment I’d received a Skype message from Dreamer.

This was really exciting to me because of what the note had said earlier (“Sorry couldn’t read reply, check the”), and the timing was perfect. I guess that the end of the message would have been “check the iPod”. Pretty cool!

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.

Very close call on Task of the Year! I'll definitely have to go for this one again.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #188: CL and the Beanstalk

I WILD into a scene filled with fleeting hypnagogic imagery which quickly fades into the void. I start waving my dream-hands in a repetitive motion, waiting for a scene to form. Nothing happens right away, though, so I start licking my fingers for a while to see if that works.

Nothing’s shaping up yet, though, so I try seeing how far I can stick my tongue out. I can feel it extending outward from my mouth seemingly on and on, and after a few moments I can vaguely see it extending away from my face into the distance. Curious how large I can make it, I will the tongue to expand and it balloons out in a huge, rectangular shape as large as a room. After a couple of seconds, I can see that yes, it actually is a room…

Now I’m standing high up in an office building, looking out over a city skyline through enormous windows. It’s late afternoon. I enjoy the sight of the skyline for a moment, rubbing my hands together.

As I’m doing this, a helicopter rises into view from below my line of sight, turns itself directly toward me, and opens fire with dual-mounted miniguns.



The office windows shatter and I feel myself being pelted with glass and bullets. There’s no pain, but each impact feels like a definitive hit. I know that it’s a dream but I can’t stop myself from shying from the window, crouching down, and nearly cowering. I hold my hand out toward the helicopter then swipe it quickly to the right, flinging it away from the building and out of sight.

The wrecked office is filled with random debris now, and I make my way past it to stand at the edge of the now-empty window. I recall Task of the Year (find and plant some magic beans, climb the beanstalk, and defeat the giant at the top.) My immediate goal is to get back to ground level, so I instinctively point to a lower rooftop perhaps 7 or 8 stories down and will myself to float to it. It works and I’m pulled smoothly down.

Now I’m really enthused about this pointing thing, so I point at the street below, once again pulling myself down. I’m filled with confidence after this, so I just start knocking out Task of the Year steps as quickly as I can.

I need bare earth, so I scoop the roadway aside, leaving a bowl-shaped hollow for my seed. I close and then open my hand, expecting the seed to be there. It is! (Looks like a pine nut.) I stuff the seed in the hole, cover it over with dirt and pat it down. A stalk immediately starts growing out of the ground and I jump onto it as it goes by. The stalk’s growing fast and since I hitched a ride so early, the plant’s doing the climbing for me.

I streak past the nearby buildings and head into the clouds. Immediately a shirtless, ape-like giant with a long beard comes loping toward me, about 100 feet away. I’m preparing to do something violent and decisive to make absolutely certain that I nail Task of the Year, but excitement gets the best of me. The scene collapses into a false awakening back in my bedroom.

I need to use the bathroom, so I get out of bed, head in there, and start peeing. My aim is terrible and I keep hitting the seat, the floor, the tank, everything but what I’m aiming at. This really frustrates me and I assume that I must be super tired.

Just then I notice a strange, robotic laundry machine sloshing water onto the floor. Its label indicates that it’s some kind of diaper-washing contraption. Our kids barely use any diapers these days so I wonder why we have it and why it’s here flooding our bathroom.

My 2-year-old son R walks into the room, followed soon after by a sleepy-looking Wife. Her hair is standing up in all kinds of crazy directions, including one nearly two-foot spike that’s going straight up. “Your hair is pretty awesome right now,” I tell her. She giggles and checks herself out in the mirror. We have a good laugh about this until the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #187: The Hybrid

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spoiler for Sexytime:

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

After that Wife and I enjoy some sexytime before…

… the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #185: Kaleidoscope

It’s morning time and I’m preparing to give my 2-year-old son “R” a shower. This strikes me as strange because R usually takes baths and Wife’s the one who usually bathes him. I dimly recall my intent to have a lucid dream and after thinking for a moment, accept that I’m having one right now.

The layout of the room’s exactly like waking life (so far as I can tell) and there’s a window high on the wall near the shower. I hop up to it, plant my hands on the sill, and phase my head and shoulders through to the outside. It’s morning, just after dawn, and the sky glows reddish-orange.

As I’m preparing to fly off, R says, “Daddy, I want to go with you but I don’t know how to do that.” (I take this to mean that he doesn’t know how to phase.)

“That’s okay, buddy,” I respond. “This is a dream.”

For some reason I have a surge of anxiety that the dream won’t stay stable and of course my vision gets a little crazy. I leap the rest of the way through the glass and fly for just a moment before I freeze in mid-air. Seconds later, my vision goes black and I’m in the void.

I rub my hands together for a moment and then decide to change scenes by plummeting downward to the ground that I imagine is still outside. I go rocketing downward but as I hit what would be the ground, there’s a “whomp!” sound and a puff of air as I pass right through. I continue accelerating faster and faster until I crash into…

...my bed. I’m lying on my stomach, my head turned to the left. My eyes are closed and it completely feels like I’m awake, but I’m suspicious, so I try to see through my eyelids. This works and after a few seconds I’m looking out at my bedroom. The center portion of my vision swirls and blends together like a kaleidoscope. I wonder if the effect will change if I open my eyes, but I decide not to mess with anything just now.

I will myself to roll out of my body and transition into an OBE, but I can’t seem to make it happen. The kaleidoscope vision effect continues for a while until the dream eventually fades out.

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #176: Chariots in the Sky

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #167: In the Game

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #163: Indoor Swim Lesson

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

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

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

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

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #153: Foiled Creativity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #142: Hotel OBE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #132: The Raccoon

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

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

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

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

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

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #129: Map of the World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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