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    CanisLucidus

    1. The Lone and Level Sands

      by , 01-26-2015 at 06:06 PM
      Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

      Lucid #264: The Lone and Level Sands

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

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



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

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

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



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

      Updated 01-26-2015 at 06:13 PM by 57387

      Categories
      lucid
    2. Have a Badass Day

      by , 12-22-2014 at 02:45 AM
      Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

      Lucid #261: Have a Badass Day

      I’m standing in a store that looks like a cross between a barber shop and a clothing store. There’s a mirror on every wall and as I catch sight of my own reflection, I see that Dreamer is standing just behind me and to the right. She acknowledges me with a casual nod, like it’s totally normal that we’re both here.

      Dreamer goes back to shopping and as I think about how she might have gotten here, I realize that
      this has to be a dream.

      “[Dreamer], I’m having a lucid dream!” I say.

      She gives me a skeptical look and says something like, “Right now? You’re sure?” Dreamer looks about ten years older than in waking life, and I notice that her hair is short, very light blonde but shot through with streaks of purple.

      At first I think about working to convince her, but decide that no, once things get rolling, she’ll believe it too. I grab her hand and we run toward the store’s exit. There’s no door, just an open air exit that leads out to a street made of interlocking stones.

      There’s a high stone wall ahead, and we have to turn left to make it around. There’s a shaft of yellow sunlight covering the road where we need to go, and for a moment I wonder whether it’ll block us. As I think this it shimmers like a glass barrier. We have some quick discussion about this as we approach it, and I say something about this “will be easy to phase through.” There’s a moment of pressure as we cross this threshold and then we’ve phased through.

      We emerge on a dusty street that has a Mad Max vibe to it, like we’re in a post-apocalyptic desert. It looks a bit like something out of screenshots I’ve seen from Rage.



      There’s an enclosed tunnel of metal and glass that stretches across the dusty road, and I become curious what’s inside. Still gripping Dreamer’s hand, I try to fly up there. There’s a little sticking point, though, and as I narrate my intent, for some reason I get the urge to sing. I start belting out whatever comes to mind, and an electric guitar immediately starts playing along in the background. (Yes, these are the actual lyrics... I "performed" them into my phone upon waking. )

      I want you to know that I’m happy to be here,
      Let’s fly up in the sky,
      And have a badass day!

      I really belt out the last part. I try to keep going, but I’m too busy laughing about the very silly lyrics that I’ve already sung. We manage to fly up just a bit above the tunnel, and as I’m trying to get a view of the rest of the town,
      the dream ends.
    3. Adobe

      by , 11-10-2014 at 05:52 PM
      Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

      Lucid #254: Adobe

      I’m driving through a city, looking for some place to park. My dream family is here with me -- a dark-haired woman is my wife, my young daughter is in a car seat in the back, and there’s maybe a 2nd child (a son?) as well. We’re exhausted and homeless, living out of our car. I pull into a parking space next to a hill and sleep for a while. A cop car pulls up soon, though, and we have to move on.

      Now we’re driving down a dusty freeway that’s under construction. Workers wander back and forth, while a thick cloud of tan dust obscures my vision. I can barely see 30 feet in front of me and I’m really scared that I’m going to hit someone. A worker walks right in front of the car and I swerve, barely missing him. I’m so afraid that I’m going to kill somebody and I panic myself into…

      … a false awakening. I believe that I’m anotherdreamer and that I need to write this dream down before I forget it. My surroundings are alien to me, though, and I’m feeling super lazy, way too tired to get out of bed to journal. Something seems odd, though, and I flow into…

      … another false awakening as myself! :canislucidus: I still feel really tired and lazy, but this time since I’ve “really woken up”, I decide to do the right thing and journal. I grab my DJ and walk into the bathroom, but as I’m holding the DJ I notice that the journal isn’t as thick as it usually is. (I keep a pen jammed in it.) I try the nose pinch, blow through, and
      now I’m lucid. I walk back into the bedroom and my vision dims until I’m in the void.

      I rub my hands together, recalling the idea to try a little singing the next time I’m in the void. I sing a line about how “this is a lucid dreeeeeeam” and my voice comes out like half-badass/half-joke rock like Tenacious D. After some more singing and hand-rubbing, my vision comes back and I’m in my bedroom closet. I walk back out to the window and try some air guitar. It’s lame at first, but after a few tries, I hear some distant chords of electric guitar that actually sound pretty good.

      I look out through the bedroom window onto a nighttime desert scene. As far as I can see there are rows of adobe buildings lit by neon signs. It looks like fun, so I phase through the window and hulk-jump off the side of the house toward the buildings. I do some mid-air guitar playing during this jump, too, and kind of flail my legs around like I’m trying to do some kind of rock star jump thing. I land between one set of restaurants and buildings on a dusty street, then hop into the air again.

      While I’m up in the air, I decide that I want to try summoning Dreamer to hang out at one of these places to talk and pig out on a bunch of dream food. Out loud I say, “Okay, I know we’re supposed to meet here…” and then “Don’t be late!” I nag. When I land, though, the DC waiting there is a woman I don’t recognize, tall and pale with short brown hair, a pierced nose, and multiple piercings on each ear. She starts speaking to me in this really caustic, unpleasant American accent, berating me about my guitar playing.

      “Your guitar playing was all bullshit,” says the woman. “That wasn’t even you!” She walks up to me, continuing to scold and complain about my guitar playing, telling me that my playing sucked, etc. I find this pretty annoying but for some reason I don’t think to just leave.

      I don’t find this DC appealing, but I decide to turn things around by saying, “There’s no need to be so weird about it. If you wanted to have sex with me, you should have just asked.” As I say this, she takes on a different countenance, her hair darkening, her body growing a little shorter, a little more athletic-looking, and a softer, more attractive face, probably mixed-race. She approaches me and we kiss. We awkwardly lose our balance and do this not-at-all sexy fall onto the road. I make an attempt at escalating things to sexytime, but my vision has faded out. There are a few more seconds of void-kissing before
      the dream ends.

      Updated 11-10-2014 at 06:16 PM by 57387

      Categories
      lucid , false awakening
    4. The Scorpion

      by , 02-24-2013 at 05:03 PM
      This is the second DV member lucid I've had in a row! For some reason, my subC is teeing these up for me right now, which is cool. Hope it keeps up.

      I noticed that I was fairly stupid throughout this dream, including the lucid portion. I took a pretty high dose of melatonin at bedtime, so I wonder whether that was related. Good vividness though!

      Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

      Lucid #69: The Scorpion

      I'm walking through the desert, heading down the slope of a tall sand dune. The sun is high and bright. I feel relaxed almost to the point of sleepiness.

      Suddenly, I feel a sharp, painful stab in my foot! I decide that I must have been bitten by a scorpion. I try to remember if you're supposed to die when that happens, but I think maybe it just hurts like hell. When I look down to find the "scorpion", all I see is an unhooked safety pin lying in the sand. The safety pin dances a bit and says, "It's me! Paigeyemps!"

      "Yeah right," I tell the safety pin.

      "Seriously, it's me!" The safety pin wiggles a bit. "I got shrunk down and I'm too small to go anywhere. So I found this safety pin and I stab people with it when they come by so that they'll help me. I'm really thirsty."

      I find this totally convincing and I feel bad for doubting her. "Of course I'll help you! Let me get you some water!" I look around and see that about 100 feet away is the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign. Oops. I feel silly wandering around in the desert when I'm this close to the Vegas strip.



      I walk toward the Las Vegas strip and somehow I find an empty cup and a big bottle of water. I fill up the cup and bring it back to Paigeyemps and her safety pin, feeling like quite the hero. The little safety pin waves around a bit and she says, "That cup is filled with bacteria! I can't drink that!" I'm sort of embarrassed that the cup is so dirty and I wonder how she's able to see bacteria so well. I figure it's because she's so little, but something seems funny about the whole situation. All of this "heavy duty thinking" seems to get my brain into a higher gear and
      I become lucid.

      Even though I'm lucid, I still feel very, very stupid. I think that maybe Paigeyemps could use a bigger signaling object than that tiny safety pin, so I conjure a knife into my right hand. It occurs to me that it would probably be bad to have her out here in the desert knifing everybody that comes close. I toss the knife over my shoulder.

      "Hey," I tell her, "I'm actually lucid now! Let me just shrink down to your size and see if I can help."
      (I wonder why I didn't try to make her bigger instead. ) She says something along the lines of "cool" and I focus my vision on the safety pin, willing myself to shrink down.

      The shrinking effect feels sort of like zooming on Google Maps. I focus on the spot where the safety pin is and will myself to move closer and closer to it. There's a momentary visual streaking effect and then everything looks bigger. After a few iterations of this, the grains of sand look more like huge rocks and for some reason they're glowing. From up close, they look beautiful.

      "I think it's working!" Paige shouts. "You look much smaller!" At this point, I see a tiny humanoid-looking figure hopping around among the grains of sand! Encouraged, I do a few more cycles. On my last zoom, though, I zoom in on the wrong spot and find her completely out of view.

      I call out to see if I can still find her but there's no response. I figure that I'm totally lost. I don't know how to proceed so I try hopping around like a sand flea for a little while. I get tons of height when I flea-hop like this and sand-boulders fly everywhere when I land. This is great! I do that a few more times until
      the dream ends.
    5. On the Back of the Sphinx

      by , 01-30-2013 at 04:22 PM
      After trying and failing so much in the last several weeks, I finally made it to the Great Pyramid! I didn't complete the Task of the Year, but I had one fantastic lucid dream.

      Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

      Lucid #59: On the Back of the Sphinx

      I'm standing by a hedgerow on a suburban street, waiting for the hedges to part and let me in. Through these hedges is the party I'm supposed to attend. The hedges part for me, then close as I move toward them. "No problem," I say, covering up a sting of rejection. "I'll come back when you're ready for me."

      I wander across the street to wait. I wonder whether I'm dreaming. I decide that I'll reality check "in a few minutes".
      (You slacker!) No -- I don't need to reality check. This is a dream! I look at my hands. No distortion, waviness, extra fingers, or discoloration. Still, I'm sure that I'm dreaming.

      The dream feels sharp, vivid, and stable. I feel like I have tons of time and potential. I sprint across the street, leap over the hedgerow, and with a shout I soar into the sky. I'm flying over a rain forest now and my skyrocketing confidence level makes me shout, "L-dopa!!!"
      (Although I was displaying behavior in line with high dopamine levels, I've never taken L-dopa. Don't know what got into me.) After flying over the rain forest for a while, I wind up in a cloud bank and lose my bearings. Afraid of getting stuck here, I turn back toward the neighborhood, content to take a different direction.

      I fly back out of the cloud bank, but a fierce gust of wind kicks up from the other direction and pushes me back toward the clouds. "Okay," I say. "You're taking me to the Pyramid." I relax as I pass back through the cloud bank, emerging over an ocean. I let the wind push me further on and soon I'm flying thousands of feet over a desert dotted with stones. It's dark, and the sand looks as gray as a moonscape. I descend headfirst toward the sand, sure that I'm going to find what I'm looking for.

      It's nighttime when I land. I look to my right, and there's the Pyramid, illuminated by artificial light! I'm no more than twenty feet from it. The sphinx lies directly at the base of the Pyramid. I note that in the physical world she'd be further east toward Cairo, but the inconsistency doesn't bother me. Instead it reminds me even more strongly that this is my world.

      The sphinx's stony skin is white like alabaster and she has Asian characters tattooed along all four legs and in a single stripe along each side of her body. She's far smaller than I'd expected, no more than thirty feet long. Her entire face has crumbled away (not just her nose.) I'm overcome with this urge to help her. Even setting aside Task of the Year, this is now something I badly want to do.

      I press my palms against her face and say, "I'm going to fix you." I feel the stone first roiling then smoothing out against my hands. In a few seconds her face is repaired and her head starts to move. Her face looks mostly feline but there's still a vaguely humanoid quality to it. She licks my hand once and her tongue is the fleshy, rough tongue of a cat. Her head turns vaguely toward my face but her eyes are pupil-less, blank alabaster so I can't tell whether she's looking straight at me.

      I swing my leg across her back and ask her to "Take me to the top of the Pyramid." She gets to her feet and starts walking around to the other side of the Pyramid. Her route takes us through a restaurant and bar where a number of women are dancing to this really amazing piece of world music. The melody is from some sort of brass instrument and it's backed by the mouth harp.
      (I had to google to even figure out what this instrument is called -- here's a good example of the mouth harp in action. I think it was in my memory banks from a video game I played about 15 years ago.)

      As I ride through the dance floor, the music and dancing begin to draw me in. One particularly stunning dancer, an ebony-skinned young woman of about 25, is driving me to distraction. I feel the sphinx slowing down and things start to feel unstable. I try to refocus on the task at hand, but the dream falls apart.
    6. The War of the Wolves

      by , 12-12-2012 at 05:04 AM
      The second of two WILDs that I experienced last night on galantamine. This dream was much longer than it sounds, since I was in the mood to watch, go slowly, and take in the scenery. Once again I asked a question of my subconscious, and the "answer" struck me as much more ambiguous this time.

      Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

      Lucid #42: The War of the Wolves

      The WILD drops me at a dinner party in a fancy house. All of the DCs here are in cocktail dresses and tuxedos. All are strangers.

      I walk out into the night past a stone patio, looking up to admire the dome of stars above me tonight. Just past the patio is a sort of desert garden. It's a huge, man-made sandpit where well-tended cacti and yucca plants grow among carefully arranged boulders and signs that indicate the name of each species of plant.

      I decide to ask my subconscious a question. "Should I ever try galantamine again?" I shout. There's no vocal reply, but a large, gray wolf creeps from around one of the boulders. He looks at me, saying nothing, but slowly baring his teeth.

      My two Siberian Husky dogs (IWL pets) emerge from behind a boulder of their own, and charge at the wolf! They're much smaller than the wolf, but they unhesitatingly go after him. K (the female) lunges for his neck, but the wolf swivels his hind end around and parries her to the side. The wolf swats B (the male) in the face before pouncing on him and bringing him to the ground.

      The fight is ugly and one-sided, but (fortunately) completely bloodless. My two dogs run off further into the desert and the wolf approaches me. I'm afraid of him, but try not to dwell on it. I extend my hand toward him, palm forward, as if to say, "Stop." He seems to sense that this is more a plea than a command, and he lunges at me, biting down hard on my hand! For a moment, the pain is alarmingly vivid, but I do my best to ignore it.

      After a moment, the pain subsides and the wolf lets up his pressure. Silently, he turns and walks off into the desert. I walk further along, the coolness of the desert air quickly calming me. Eventually I happen upon a dark sea. By now I feel totally at peace. I stand on the shore and watch the waves for a while
      until the dream ends.

      Updated 01-11-2013 at 06:51 PM by 57387

      Categories
      lucid