CanisLucidus

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.

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 #170: Spellcasting 101

I'm standing in what looks like a hotel room with a spellcaster, a brown-haired girl in her late teens or early twenties. She's holding her palms out in front of her, and a miniature tornado whirls and dances in each of her hands. Each cyclone is about a foot high and spins rapidly but quietly, the tip of the funnel stuck to the same spot on her palms. This trick is new to her and she darts her eyes at me as if to say, "Did I get it right?" I nod approvingly.

For some reason, a flame catches around the upper rim of each tornado and she starts to lose her calm. "Why's it doing that?" The flame begins to spread down the funnel and she starts to panic. I become lucid as the fire spreads down the tornado and wraps ribbons of flame around her arms. I can see that the flames are just wrapping around her, though, and she's not actually catching on fire. It looks like some kind of fire spell is building up that she doesn't understand how to operate or control.

There's a door just behind me that looks like it leads down to a basement. I usher her toward the basement, saying, "Let's go downstairs to practice that. It'll be safer there." She's starting to panic but she starts moving toward the basement as the dream ends.

I hold on for DEILD, imagining myself running down a dark flight of stairs. It takes a moment for the imagery to coalesce again, and when I emerge back in a dream, I'm alone in a different hotel room, running around the room. I'm sort of prancing around on the carpet using just the balls of my feet. It's very dainty-looking and super un-macho but the sensation on my feet's very vivid and is helping me keep fears of an unstable dream at bay. (I know to ignore these, but there they were anyway!)

I run around the room like this for a bit more and then switch to rubbing my hands together. I continue this pretty much throughout the rest of the dream.

I walk out through the hotel room door into a darkly-carpeted hallway and walk for a long way. On my right I see a door that looks just like the one that led to the basement in the previous dream, so I follow it, expecting to find the young spellcaster again. I tromp down a flight of wooden stairs into a well-lit anteroom where an Hispanic woman in her late 30s is sitting behind an old-style cash register. She gives me a friendly smile and I remember the Task of the month to ask a DC for a gift.

"Hey!" I say. "Go ahead and give me my gift now." She nods, reaches under her desk, and pulls out a greeting card in an envelope. I will the greeting card to be open and the envelope just sort of vanishes. The cover of the card is some kind of abstract painting and the inside just has some simple handwriting in pen that read: "THANK YOU FOR THE CARD!" I'm trying to process what this means when the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #159: Bears

I’m in a restaurant fashioned like a log cabin, talking on the phone with my friend “Dragon”. He’s telling me about the new job that our friend “AJ” just got and he’s chiding me because I know so little about it. We finish talking and I wander outside to find myself on a wooden deck high up in the mountains.

Now I feel like I’m part of a video game and I’d forgotten to do something important. Three pale bald men in dark trench coats (sort of like the guys in Dark City) come floating toward me. I turn to run, but one crashes into me, pushing me off the side of the mountain. I fall, unharmed, to some rocks far below. I want to get the hell away from these guys, so I duck into a little cave and wind up in some kind of white-walled room that looks like a lab. I wonder whether I’m actually playing a video game or just dreaming and realize that yes, I’m dreaming.

There’s a bed in the room that I’m in and a few other people milling around. Their identities don’t seem to be all that stable, but for much of the dream, one of them appears to be Anna Kendrick. I feel like they’re all trapped here, so I say, “This is all a dream. You don’t have to stay here!” I head for the doorway and they all follow.

When I get close to the door I remember my goal of cranking my dream vividness up before anything else. I decide not to let myself get in too much of a hurry. There’s a weird section of carpet by the door so I kneel down to touch it, telling everyone with me to do the same. “This is my lucid dream. None of us have to believe that this is real.” (I’m addressing them, but mostly reminding myself.)

There’s a box of toys on a shelf to my left, and I rummage through it, intending to bring myself even more into the scene. I’m surprised to find a stuffed bear that I gave to Wife when we were teenagers! I pull it out and take it with me, sort of hugging it to me the way a little kid would.

We emerge from the lab into a chamber with hallways in four different directions. I try to remember my goals, but all I can remember is the Great Pyramid. I know there’s another one I’m not remembering but I can’t figure it out. I start to feel pretty stressed about my memory and get worried I’ll wake myself up if I get too wrapped up in this. (I was forgetting Great Barrier Reef!)

I walk down one of the halls until we step out into an amphitheater filled with apparent worshippers. They're performing some kind of sinister chant and at the bottom of the amphitheater, a huge crackling ball of dark purple energy is taking shape. Everyone’s participating in the chanting except me now, including Anna Kendrick and the rest of the companions from the lab.

I become sure that they’re summoning some kind of dark god. I know that I shouldn’t worry about stuff like this, but I just want to get away before this causes me a problem. I turn around and decide to ignore their evil ritual before it becomes a nuisance for me. Slightly annoyed by my own fear, I clutch the stuffed bear to me again, hugging it roughly as I flee up a set of stairs..

There are a couple of guys sitting near the top of the stairs as I emerge into daylight. One of them, a black guy in a checkered shirt, asks me, “What’s with the teddy bear?” I explain that I’m using the bear to help keep myself anchored into this dream. I hand him the bear just as a crush of people come trampling down the stairs like it’s rush hour. Pretty soon I can’t see the guy anymore through the crowd.

Rather than get frustrated trying to recover the bear, I move on. At the top of the steps, I see my son’s green Beanie Baby bear, so I scoop it up and hold it as a replacement. I walk onward, passing by the front entrance of a hotel. A couple of guys come up to me and offer me a $1200 discount on a Hawaiian Airlines flight. I think that this sounds like a great deal but I tell them, “Sorry, I’m having a lucid dream, though. So maybe offer that to someone who can use it.”

I lose the dream, wake up, and hold on for DEILD. The DEILD works and I emerge back into a second-story bedroom. I grab onto the bedding, kneading it with my hands, focusing on making the scene super vivid. It works, and I keep doing this for a while until I realize I’m sort of afraid to let go. Stop being a weenie! I force myself to let go and take a flying leap at the window, intending to phase through.

The phase gets stopped cold, though, and I bounce right off the window. I will the window to come down, which it immediately does… and behind it is another pane of glass! I lower that one as well, seeing a third pane. I’m starting to feel slightly irritated by this, and fortunately when I lower this pane, it’s a clear shot to the outside.

I scramble through the window, catching my reflection on the outside of an office building across the street. Even though I’m crawling through the window, my reflection is walking upright like there’s nothing in the way. My reflection and I both laugh at the error.

When I drop down to the street below, I feel the sun bright to my left side, which I believe is west. I feel slightly nervous about heading into such bright light, so I turn eastward. I know that the Pyramid is somewhere ahead of me. There’s a slight wobble in the dreamworld, but it stabilizes as I walk on. I take to the sky, and with one final wobble, the dream collapses for good.

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #145: Sleeping Body

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spoiler for Sexytime:

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

I wake up.

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...

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #115: Sandwiches for Skeptics

I DEILDed during this dream and wound up really scrambling the beginning. Pity. Anyway, I think this was a DILD. I remember something about a prison, finding my way through an office building, and being attacked. Somewhere along the way, I find Wife and my oldest son E. My memory becomes very clear here: It's morning and I'm walking through an empty, gray city with Wife and our oldest son E. I hold E's hand as he bounces and scampers beside me, pointing and jabbering excitedly.

We pass under a bridge and walk up a sloped street. All around us are gray vacant lots, brownstone tenements, and the occasional piece of newspaper carried on the wind. The one swatch of color is a bus stop to our left that bears a beautiful ad for Arby's. Below the Arby's logo it reads, "Sandwiches for Skeptics".

I find this very amusing but also really unlikely to be the new Arby's slogan. I tell Wife that "I'll have to google that later" but she doesn't respond. I run my fingers over the sign, appreciating its detail. There are even some air bubbles underneath the paper as if it wasn't pasted down all that carefully. I take my time with this, thinking that it can only help to draw me into the dream.

Task of the Year occurs to me. I'm fired up about going to Angel Falls, and I imagine that it's out there, just past the vacant lot and a row of buildings. As I do, I see little sprays of water coming up from over the tops of the buildings. I'm amused that the "graphics" for this water are absolutely terrible. The little puffs of water look like repeated, low-resolution particle effects with no animation.

Okay, enough thinking. Time to fly. I consider summoning NewArtemis to join us but then remember that I need to stay focused -- I'm already trying to bring two DCs with me. A summoning is pushing my luck too much. I take to the air, still holding E's hand, and his reaction is surprisingly subdued. From the ground below, I hear Wife say, "Oh okay... bye, guys!"

"Just follow us!" I shout back to her.

There's no reply, though, so I focus on flight. Looks like it's just me and E now. As we fly high enough to look over the tops of the surrounding buildings, I see that the entire city rest atop a huge mesa that rises high above an ocean. At the edge of the mesa I see a waterfall -- Angel Falls!

The Falls are a long way off, so I focus on flying faster and faster. We get up some good speed, but the dream is starting to feel thin and insubstantial. All I can think to do is speed up, but I'm not fast enough. We're still about a quarter mile away from the falls when I feel the sensation (real or imagined) of my eyeballs moving around and I'm awake.

I relax and go for a DEILD. I quickly enter a new dream scene, flying again, but this time as an observer with no dream body. I'm on a long, spiraling slope built out of stone blocks. The sides are unwalled and I can see that this tower stretches far above the clouds. I slide smoothly upward along the slope, making at least 3 full revolutions. I'm aware that I'm dreaming but I make no attempt to exert control. I'm content to just know where the tower leads. I keep spiraling upward and either lose lucidity or slip into the darkness between dreams...

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #114: The Vampire Apocalypse

Wife has opened a restaurant and somehow all of the recipes have been lost. She and I are in some place that looks like a choir room, desperately searching through a pile of hundreds of envelopes for the one that contains them. Suddenly I become lucid, but it's a very low level of lucidity. I grasp that I'm dreaming and I understand that this gives me awesome powers, but I have no idea that I could just ignore this whole recipe thing.

I point at the pile of envelopes, willing the recipes to emerge. One of the envelopes floats a couple of feet in the air and opens, freeing a few sheets of paper that I know have the recipes on them. I grab them out of the air and hand them to Wife. She starts talking excitedly and waving her hands in these grand gestures, but I soon wake up.

I hold still for DEILD, but after a brief wait emerge non-lucid sitting in a small, boxy room that's shaped vaguely like a confessional booth. My friend "Dragon" and I are laughing and swapping stories of all the stupid stuff we did when we were kids. From outside my friend "RF" knocks on the booth and then sort of phases or melts through the wall. I realize that this has to be a dream but immediately wake up.

Back down for DEILD, again winding up in a non-lucid, this time in the hallway of my childhood home. Our neighbor "Mr. G" from when I was a kid is wandering around in our backyard, holding a bag of lawn clippings. I know that he's helping me try to find a 4-leaf clover in this bag of clippings. He becomes angry that I'm not helping and starts throwing the lawn clippings everywhere. I suddenly remember trying to DEILD and become lucid again. There's a door at the back of the house that's not usually there and I walk toward it, preparing to phase. The door swings open just as I approach, though, and again, the dream ends.

I look for another DEILD and again come up non-lucid. I'm at home with Wife now and she's telling me a story of how someone was attacked by a vampire downtown today. We worry about what this means and whether she's safe going to work.

Time advances, and now it's early morning. The sun's just coming up and I'm at the back door, looking out over our back yard toward the horizon. I see a swarm of bats approaching and I know that overnight vampirism has become a plague that's spread throughout the world. I tell Wife that we have to hide, and we run upstairs to the bedroom to bunker ourselves in.

Once upstairs I peer out of a tiny window to the street below. About a dozen vampires are congregating on the street with a handful of human prisoners. The leader of the vampires, blonde and dressed completely in black, shouts bizarre warnings and threats to those of us holed up in our homes. He kicks one of the prisoners, a middle-aged man, to the ground, sprays him with liquid from some kind of squeeze bottle, and lights him on fire.

I duck down from the window, shaken and frightened. "They're killing everyone," I say to Wife. "Is this like what happens in The Passage? I haven't read that far yet." (The Passage is a book that I'm slowly reading.)

Wife nods. "It's exactly the same."

"Okay," I say. "What did they do? How do we fight these things?"

She shakes her head gravely. "I can't give spoilers."

I think this makes complete sense. "You're right. Maybe if we shoot them in the head...?" I now have the AR-15 in my hands.

"That won't work," she says. Then from out of nowhere, she very graphically and directly demands that we have sex. This is so completely out of character (particularly in a vampire apocalypse) that I realize it's all a dream.

"Don't worry," I say. "It's just a dream." I kiss her for a moment. In spite of her earlier insistences, the mood is completely non-sexual. I stand up, thinking about phasing outside.

"What are you doing?" she says. "Stay down!"

"This is a dream. There's nothing to worry about." But I can see that she doesn't believe me. I know that she's just a DC, but at this point I'm really attached. I decide that I'll just carry her out of this scene, change locations, and hopefully this nasty dream plot will die off. I kneel down to scoop her up as the dream fades...

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #92: DEILDs and Demigods

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This was a short but pleasant lucid after drinking a 3-bag brew of peppermint tea during my WBTB. I woke up for the WBTB on the late side (4:45 or so), so I didn't stay awake for very long. Probably because of this, my waking life memories were a little tough to access.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #64: The Menthol Arcade

I'm in a dark arcade playing Street Fighter II with my friend SC. We're talking smack and he says, "I bet you can't win a sumo wrestling match." I say something really brilliant like, "Bring it!" and the game starts.

I'm on the righthand side and both of us are playing as E. Honda. I look down at the game's controls and I'm disappointed to see that it has no joystick and each side has only 3 buttons instead of the usual 6. The weirdness of this sticks in my mind and after thinking it over, I realize that I'm dreaming.

The game starts and neither of us moves at first. I jam on the buttons a bit and my player starts E. Honda's signature "Hundred Hand Slap". I will him to start drifting to the left and he slides along for a few seconds.



Before I can land a shot, the screen goes black. I look over to my left and SC has vanished. I'm completely alone and all of the machines are off now. I turn away and start to explore the rest of the arcade.

The arcade's divided into two sides, and the side that I'm on is arranged around an enormous air hockey table that's at least 4-5 times larger than a normal one. I wonder what someone would do if the puck got stuck in the middle of that huge thing. On the opposite side of the room I see an emergency exit. I think about exploring the other side of the arcade but it occurs to me that I probably have goals I want to work on, and outside seems like a better bet.

I keep verbally reminding myself that this is a dream until I reach the exit. I push on the crash bar, the door swings open, and I'm staring out into a milky gray void. I'm nervous about walking out there but I feel like there's no going back now.

There's a bit of a drop as I step into the void, but my feet land on something solid a couple of feet down. I feel like I'm wearing my work shoes. The scene goes totally dark, but I'm ready to DEILD. I start swinging my arm around, imagining that I have a gladius. Nothing happens for a few seconds, but I still feel relaxed. I start swinging harder, throwing in a few man-grunts for emphasis.

Some sort of wind sweeps up from below and picks me up off of my feet. The wind starts to swirl and soon turns into a cyclone. I can feel myself spinning and spinning, and I think that this is great -- LaBerge suggests spinning as a way to change scenes. I'm confident it will work, and sure enough I see a colorful, spinning scene start to emerge.

The wind dies down, the spinning slows, and I'm gently set down on a vast, jeweled mosaic that stretches in every direction as far as I can see. There's a slightly reddish glow on the horizon and what looks like a set of distant mountains. I'm awestruck by what I see, but it's just a few seconds before the dream ends.

Another fun effort at Task of the Year. I just need to wind up in the right stadium next time. Again, with the gladius-waving DEILD tech that Xanous and I worked out. What a breakthrough that's been!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #61: It Has to Be the Colosseum!

I'm standing in front of a hotel, holding my 3-year-old son E. A van pulls up nearby and a gang of suspicious-looking men pours out. It looks to me like they're planning a robbery and I wonder what to do.

E points at the men and bleats, "Want to know what they are doing!" The men turn toward us, eyes narrowed. I feel like they're thinking, "Witnesses." I'm scared. I feel like they'll see us as loose ends to tie off, and I hustle back into the hotel lobby with E in my arms.

As I'm casting about for some place to hide, I realize that it's all a dream. I head toward a huge window at the back of the lobby, planning to phase out of the lobby and get into the air for a task. Everything has started to feel unstable and low-fidelity. The sunlight pouring in through the lobby window has started to look like one big blur. E no longer feels heavy and squirmy like a toddler. It feels more like I'm holding a backpack.

I relax and prepare myself for DEILD, and the dream soon goes black. Like I've done so often recently, I imagine that I'm holding a gladius in my right hand and start madly swinging it around. It takes a few tries to convince myself, but the feeling soon takes hold.

In a few more seconds, I hear a roaring crowd of spectators all around me. I know that I'm already out in the middle of the arena. Some people in the crowd seem to be counting -- don't know what to make of that.

All at once, the whole scene falls into place visually. I'm in a completely cel-shaded, cartoony world, and standing in the middle of an enormous football stadium, right on the 50-yard line. An Asian lady in a business suit walks hurriedly toward me saying, "Great, you're here. Let's get going."

My new handler looks in every way like a cartoon character, as does the crowd, the field, the stadium, and everyone in it. Some sort of production crew is wandering around on the field setting up camera and lighting equipment. This is so close to being what I need, but for Task of the Year, I need to be in the Colosseum.

I plead with her that, "It has to be the Colosseum!" but she doesn't seem to hear me. I repeat myself, "I know you're trying, but this isn't quite right. It has to be the Colosseum! Nothing else will work!"

Nobody hears me, though. Everyone seems to be too busy getting this cel-shaded sporting event ready and can't pay me any mind. I'm thinking about how I can change things in my favor, but I'm not far into this when I wake up.

This lucid was fueled by pure desperation. I've never fought this hard to save an LD that was going bad, but it paid off. I'm getting a lot of mileage out of this gladius thing.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #58: Generosity and Giants

A young woman named "Crystal Fleming" is collecting money for a charity, and I've pledged $33.13. I'm proud of my "generosity" and totally thrilled that I've found exact change down to the penny. But now I can't find Crystal. It's night, and I trudge across a snowy field to a picnic table where I think she might be waiting. But rather than Crystal, seated at the table is my friend W.

This is unexpected, and as soon as I question whether I'm dreaming, I know that I am. I tell W, "Gotta go, this is a lucid dream." His face is harshly lit, stony, and expressionless. I realize we're in a small, dark room now, getting darker by the moment. I head for the exit, but the scene fades...

Now I'm in the dark. I'm desperate for a lucid dream, though, so there's no way I'm letting this one go. I start swinging a gladius (ancient Roman sword) and willing myself to be in the Colosseum for Task of the Year. On top of this I shout, "This is still a lucid dream!"

I hear Wife muttering and rolling over nearby, and now I'm scared that I'm really yelling and waving my arms around in the bedroom. I want a lucid too badly to stop trying, though, so I jam the index and middle finger of my left hand into my mouth and start chewing on them. This all feels totally real, but I decide to ride it out to the end. If I look like a psycho, I look like a psycho. I'm not dropping this LD.

Suddenly, a sharp new dream scene forms: I'm standing on our bed, fingers in my mouth, swordless right hand swinging madly. The scene's extremely vivid, but there's a slight motion to everything that I see, like I'm slightly drunk. I hop down from the bed and run out into the hall.

The hallway outside of our bedroom is totally transformed. The carpeting is bright pink and the room is decorated floor to ceiling with stuffed animals. There's an exit to the right that doesn't exist IWL, so I explore it, curious where it leads. I find myself in a new hallway with a tall picture window overlooking an early morning street scene.

I phase through the glass out onto the street. The street is wet as if it rained overnight. A few cars pass by, headlights on. It looks like a work day that's just beginning. I fly up into the air, but my confidence isn't what it should be. My altitude is low and my speed's really pitiful. There's an entrance to a mall food court nearby, and the dream seems to be ushering me toward it. I don't resist.

In spite of the early hours, this food court is packed. It's a two story mall, so I try flying again, getting about 6 feet off of the ground and doing that slow drift again. I spot my reflection in the exit door on the opposite side of the food court. Except the reflection isn't me flying -- it's my 6'8" Uncle J walking toward the door with me flying over his shoulder. He looks solid, substantial, and real, while I look like some kind of phantasm. I look down, and he's not there. But in the glass's reflection, he's solid-looking and completely realistic.

Now I can't decide whether I'm me flying toward the door or if I'm my gigantic uncle, lumbering toward the exit on foot. I switch between feeling like I'm the one flying... then the one on foot... then both...

I raise my hand to phase through the door. Uncle J's reflection does the same. The phase fails. From below, an attractive DC calls to me, saying, "Hi! Come down here." The LD's starting to feel thin and I float down. The DC is about 30 with long, dark hair, and attractive almost to the point of absurdity. I remember reading Waggoner during my WBTB and want to ask her what she represents. I feel weak and insubstantial, though, and my voice is just a hoarse whisper. She looks at me, arms crossed, a wry smile on her face and the scene fades to black.

Nowhere near a success, but at least the Task of the Year is on my mind!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #53: The Cestus

I’m in a bathroom, looking for a stall to use. I don't feel desperate, but I'm not being very careful as I swing one open. Inside I find a guy standing there peeing right into the drain on the floor. I bleat, "Sorry! Sorry!" as I try to hurriedly close the door. But unfortunately, the stall door has completely disappeared, leaving me no escape from this excruciating situation.

I’m embarrassed for him peeing into the drain like a barbarian and I’m embarrassed for me throwing open the door like an idiot. I stand there marinating in the awkwardness for a moment before it becomes so painful that I have a false awakening into...

...the same bathroom. I don't buy that I woke up in a bathroom, and I become lucid. The bathroom is empty now and I’m standing by a sink looking into a mirror. I note that the stall doors are all closed again and that I badly need a shave. I cannot handle the idea of leaving a bathroom without washing my hands, so I'm glad that the faucet works. I don't see soap anywhere but fortunately I manage to get over this.

I head outside into the hall and it looks like the hallway of a dark hotel, deep blue carpeting and flickering fluorescent lights. I can go left or right and I choose left. When I head to the left, though, I see a writhing black cloud of smoke at the end of the hall. It looks like the smoke monster from Lost. I mutter, “I’ll pass...” and head back the other way down the hall.

The electric lights flicker for a moment and then the whole scene starts to darken and press down on me. I rub my hands together and the details feel real, down to the deadlift calluses at the pinky, ring, and middle finger joints. When I do this, there’s an electric crackle and the lights come back on. I walk for a long way down the hall but somehow it just seems to get longer and longer. I want to either find a DC for basic Task of the Month or get to Rome for the Colosseum battle Task of the Year. I start to feel fretful that I'm going nowhere and the scene fades to black.

I feel it coming, though, and I relax and prep for DEILD. Another scene begins to form. I’m walking through a concrete structure that looks like a parking garage or the innards of a stadium. I’m wearing something like a cestus, a nasty-looking, studded leather wrapping around my hand. This isn’t the Colosseum, but I feel like I can turn this into the “Europe” Task of the Year. I’m armed and the location seems like something I could massage into the Colosseum with a little effort.



But I notice that I feel like I’m no longer able to breathe. The breath simply doesn't feel like it's coming anymore. I know it has to be an illusion but the sensation is terrifying. I try to relax and wait for this to play itself out but some part of me panics and I wake up.

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, a DEILD! It's interesting that I keep generating these "endless maze" type dreams for myself. At least I remembered the Exit signs this time.

BTW, the new neighbors in this house have not yet moved in, so it'll be interesting to see whether the dream got anything right about them.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #39: The Endless Farmhouse

I'm meeting our new neighbor "Anna", a fair-skinned lady with red hair in her early 40s. JC, A friend of mine from California, rides by on a recumbent bicycle. I tell Anna, "Oh hey, I know him... that's JC." She says, "Sure, I know him too." This strikes me as very unlikely and I become lucid. I'm lucid only for a moment before I wake up.



I sit tight for a DEILD, focusing on breathing and mantra until I emerge just inside the front door of Anna's house. She is standing several feet away with a little girl of about seven. The girl says, "What's he doing in here, Mommy?" I feel way out of bounds and tell them, "Sorry, it's a lucid dream. I was just leaving." The front door is wide open behind me and I hurry outside.

Outside I'm under a wooden covering that reminds me of an open air stable or farmhouse. A slatted wooden fence hems me in from the sides and I can see sun just outside. I move to the next area, but it looks much the same, only rearranged slightly. I move forward a ways more but it seems that no matter which direction I choose, I'm stuck in the shadows.

I jump up and take a swipe at the ceiling to make sure I stay properly bolted into the scene, but I manage to miss. I'm slightly annoyed that I can't do something I do in real life (something I do when nobody's looking, that is!) I slap a nearby candy striped support pillar and it feels satisfyingly realistic. I move up a steep embankment of dirt, but again it's just more fencing and wooden covering. I'm feeling stuck so I imagine an Exit sign that will guide me out. But before I even see it, my vision goes dark.

I keep calm, and rub my hands together. Feels okay. I rub my face, lick each arm, grab a handful of shirt... everything is as it should be. My vision doesn't budge, though, so I spend perhaps half a minute just waiting things out in the dark, considering what I ought to do. The idea occurs to me to get help as I'd done before, but things fade on me before I get the chance to act and I'm awake.