CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #266: Whoopy Cough

I’m gazing out the window of my kitchen at my back yard. The fence is oddly low, and I see a young girl walking by with her dog. I’m astonished to see that the girl has the head of a blue hippo stuffed animal. When I mentally reality check in response to this, I realize that I must be dreaming.

I turn away from the window and the scene gets a little unstable, breaking into three rectangular pieces that seem to move independently and slide past one another. I relax and take it slow, rubbing my hands together, walking calmly around, talking out loud, and finally licking each hand.

The scene feels reasonably stable, but my vision is almost entirely faded out now. I imagine that I have a big pair of glasses covering my vision and take them off. (The glasses look just like a set of Oculus Rift virtual reality goggles.) Immediately, my vision is crystal clear and I have a completely realistic view of my kitchen!

Wife is standing in the den near my desk. “Hey!” I say to her. “I was having trouble for a second, but we’re in my lucid dream right now!”

She looks around a bit, saying something like, “Is that what this is?”

“I was thinking I’d either take you for a fly or…” I say.

“Yoooouuuuuuuuu…” Wife interrupts, pointing her finger at me dramatically, “want sex!”

“Or, right, that was my other idea.”

Spoiler for Somewhat strange, rather racy part:

We walk over to the couch, and now she’s wearing a negligee, which she quickly shrugs off as she lays down on the couch. She looks amazing! I'm incredibly excited but as I approach, her lady parts produce a loud, unmistakable coughing sound.

“Did you... just cough from there?” I ask, shocked but still no less interested than before.

Wife looks behind her and to the right, as if she heard someone or something approaching. “Hurry, we haven’t got much time!” she says. Just before we get started, though...

...the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #225: Temple of the Dog

It’s the middle of the night and our dog keeps escaping out through the house into the neighborhood. Our house contains a labyrinthine series of tunnels that passes through an old stone church, and I’m convinced that the dog is escaping through some back exit of this church.

I step into the church. It’s mostly dark outside but bright light pours in through a stained glass window to my right. It strikes me as ridiculous to be looking for my dog in an old church that’s somehow bolted onto my house and I become lucid.

I leave the church the way I came in, heading into a dark tunnel. The dream feels wobbly, so rake my hands along the wall to engage my sense of touch. My fingers feel numb and I’m not engaging as much as I’d like. I start scooting sideways down the hall so I can keep my hands locked on and hopefully get this dream to hold together.

The hallway’s starting to get really dark now, though, and I decide to head back for the light. I break off from the wall and rub my hands together as I make my way back into the church. The light’s even brighter now.

I see my dog looking down at me from a previously unseen wooden platform high above. I turn toward the stained glass window, now almost unbearably bright and start moving toward it as the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #223: Final Heart

I have a false awakening in my childhood bedroom and as I’m contemplating going back to sleep, I realize that no way am I really sleeping in my old room. I become lucid and attempt to get out of bed, which fails. I try rolling out OBE-style and after some clumsy attempts, I’m finally on my feet.

I walk out to the living room, looking at my hands. They’re darker and more grayish than they’d be in waking life, but other than that they look pretty much just as they should. The dream’s feeling a bit dark, so I shout, “Let there be light!” Embarrassingly, nothing much happens, so I just wander around in the den some more, trying not to focus too much on this.

I look to my left to find my doppelganger (a lookalike or double of me) standing at the door I emerged from. He’s dressed like I do to sleep and he’s sort of got bed head. He smirks sleepily at me and I walk toward him, but as soon as we get close to each other, I snap suddenly to his perspective (more or less) and find myself alone again. I drift toward an external wall and phase outside onto the street.

Outside it feels like early morning. In the neighbor’s yard I find a woman in her late 40s standing around as 4 small dogs scamper happily at her feet. She nods a casual greeting. I remember my goal of summoning Dreamer, so I say to the woman, “Ahh, you’re Dreamer.” She seems confused at first, but even as I watch I see her becoming friendlier, younger and more familiar. She’s starting to look like Dreamer, but the transformation’s not complete.

“I will be soon,” she says, smiling. I smile back and we walk through the yard together. I drape an arm over her shoulder as I explain (to her and to myself) the plans for this dream. I lose the dream, though, and wake up.

I sit tight for DEILD and wind up back in the kitchen of my childhood home. A couple of Brazilian men are sitting at the dining room table saying unkind things about my brother-in-law “Muppet”. One sarcastically calls him a “phenomenon.” I feel myself becoming invested in this plotline, but no, let it go, it’s a distraction.

I phase back outside and it’s nighttime now. I want to find Dreamer again and for some reason decide that a playground or dog park is the way to go. I fly up high into the air at high speed, piercing the cloud cover. When I look back down, I expect to see a park but nothing is showing up. I try to pretend that I already see it but when I pierce back through the clouds back to Earth, I’m half a block away from where I started.

There’s a badass three-wheeled police car here that looks a little like The Dark Knight Batmobile. It appears to be stuck because it hit another car and the officer seated inside is berating a teenage girl, blaming her for what happened. I just want the car, though, so I open the top of the car and boot the cop out of the driver’s seat with my left foot and drive off down the street.



I have a fun time driving for a couple of blocks until I come to an intersection where a cement truck is gushing this huge, oozing wave of wet cement everywhere. I avoid it by driving up onto someone’s yard and going around, but all the bumping seems to make the car sort of disappear within a half block or so.

I walk out onto DA street to see this amazing parade of armored elephants going by. There must be dozens of them, marching slowly and regally in single file. There’s something sad about their demeanor and from out of nowhere Wife is standing next to me, saying, “This last march they do is called their ‘Final Heart.’” She’s moved by what she’s seeing and I am too in spite of not really understanding it.



Further down the road I encounter a vertical sandstone wall with small outcroppings that could be used as handholds. When I look across the street to my left, I see my doppelganger already climbing up an identical wall! He looks over at me and grins. I decide that this is a great opportunity to practice my dream climbing, so I make my way up about twenty feet or so. I keep looking over at my double as I go, a little envious of how quickly and confidently he can make the climb. As I’m climbing, the dream ends.

Finally on the board for Task of the Year 2014!!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #206: The Giant Killer

I sense a transition into the dream state, but just as it begins I hear our dogs start barking downstairs. Wife stirs in the bed next to me and I wonder how much of this is pure dream and how much of it might be sounds and sensations from waking life bleeding over.

I will myself to roll out of bed OBE-style and I decide to phase downstairs to see what the dogs are on about. I pass through walls and the floor like a ghost and I think to myself that “I’m spirit walking.”

I pass through one last set of walls and the geometry gets weird for a moment and I wonder if I’m losing this dream. I rake my fingers across the floor but I pass right through. Still, it seems to bring me back into the experience and there in front of me are our 2 dogs laying on the floor panting.

Their food and water bowls both lay empty and I figure that’s what they were making a fuss about. Even though I’m still floating like a ghost, I’m able to grab the water bowl and sling it across the room and it clangs realistically against the floor. I consider asking Wife the next morning if she heard any of this commotion.

I head out into the garage, walking like normal now. Rather than phase, for some reason I lift the garage door manually and walk out into the night. I move past the circular driveway to the grass, thinking of the Jack and the Beanstalk Task of the Year. I dig a quick hole and everything’s feeling very vivid now. I do a behind-the-back summon of a seed which feels very half-hearted but fortunately still does yield a tiny seed. I quickly cover it over with dirt.

For water I move my hands in a little sprinkling motion over the little mound and a few drops of “rain” fall. The plant immediately springs up through the ground and stretches skyward. It looks like a normal vine at first but as it continues up it looks more like a twisting rope bridge that goes all the way up into the clouds.



I grab the lower rung and start hauling myself up but I feel like I’m getting nowhere and won’t ever be able to tackle all that distance. I decide that the planks are being reeled in from above and are pulling me up toward the clouds. It works! In a couple of spots the planks twist and turn oddly as if they’re trying to throw me off, but I ignore this and before long I’m at the top! I float up over the edge into what looks like a restaurant that’s being prepared for a party.

Two women standing nearby appear to be in charge of the scurrying wait staff. One of the women, an attractive lady in her early 40s, looks up at me as I walk nearby. She has a streak of her short brown hair bleached almost white. My task is the defeat the giant that lives up here, so I ask, “Where’s the giant?” She points behind me and to my left.

When I turn, there’s a guy roughly 9-10 feet tall walking through the door of the restaurant. He’s mid-40s with dark hair and a thick, barrel-chested build. “So you’re the giant?” I ask leadingly.



“That’s right,” he says and immediately takes a swing at me. His punch catches me square in the face but I decide that it will have no effect. I wind up not feeling anything or even falling back and it kind of feels like cheating. I strike at the man, trying what I for some reason think is a “kidney punch” but actually hit him in the side of the gut. He winces a bit but doesn’t move much.

I follow this up with a kick to the body and the giant clutches at his chest. I feel like this is working but I become paranoid about losing the dream, so I leap up and grab onto the giant’s face. I try to do this thing where I burn him with my hands but it completely fails. The failure makes me kind of vicious and desperate, so I gouge at his left eye with my right thumb and then strike him on the neck with my forearm. He collapses hard to the ground and I go with him. As I’m picking myself up to see what’s next, the dream ends.

This was one of those rare lucids that I had without employing WBTB. Some pre-bed MILD work did the trick! (Edit: Almost forgot -- thanks to Art for psyching me up to have an LD yesterday! Totally helped.)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #183: The Inventor

I’m sitting on a park bench, working on plans for an invention. It’s some kind of very high-end computer device and I’m drawing up some tweaks for making it much less expensive and bringing it to the mass market. I’m writing all of these plans with pencil on a rectangular, shiny piece of green plastic.

A woman wearing workout tights jogs by. She looks great and I blatantly stare at her. I become dimly aware that I shouldn’t be staring at people and start to wonder what’s making me act this way. It dawns on me that I’m dreaming.

I get up from the bench and look out over the park that I’m in. It’s grassy, dotted with trees, and maybe 200 feet further on is a brick building that looks like a schoolhouse. There’s a low stone wall behind me. To my left there’s a street with a few cars driving down it.

I’m convinced that it’s a dream but everything is so vivid that I feel a little worried. One of my contacts feels like it’s drifting in my eye and my vision shifts just as if this had actually happened. Now I try drawing on the green plastic with my pencil and I’m able to scratch out persistent lines that look completely convincing.

I wonder whether I’ve finally confused waking life for the dream world. I feel some paranoia settle over me, but I dissipate it by drifting back and forth over the grass without taking a step. Okay, yes, definitely dreaming. I cap it off with a nose pinch reality check and I feel settled again.

Now I see Wife and my oldest son E approaching me from the direction of the schoolhouse. They look completely realistic and again I fight the unsettling sense that I’ve confused reality for a dream. I hit another nose pinch to settle myself down. How can everything look so real?

A huge, lean brown dog approaches us. His head is as high as my chest. It’s the first surreal thing I’ve seen in the dream so far. Wife is focused on rummaging through E’s schoolbag and doesn’t acknowledge that the dog is here.

The dog starts to growl and bark at us, approaching uncomfortably close. Wife and E don’t react. “You see that dog, right?” I ask them.

“Sure,” says wife nonchalantly. I don’t want the dog bothering my family’s DCs so I offer him my left forearm. He bites down on my arm and whips his head back and forth. I’m sure there’ll be no pain, though, and of course there isn’t.

After a moment of this, the dog lets go, sits down, and starts panting. He seems friendly now and I'm almost glad he's there. It helps make me sure that this is all a dream. Wife finishes up with E and we walk together past the low stone wall as the dream ends.

This WILD was amazing. Very vivid and realistic, rich content, successful summoning, and a Task of the Month success (plus a failure.) Forgive the length of this entry, but the dream was 25-30 minutes, and a lot happened! (Edit: After further review... best LD ever.)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #90: The Night of the Weredog

I experience a sharp transition that feels like a short fall face-first onto a paved surface. My arms are splayed out over my head and I can't move. I can see just a bit and it looks like I'm on a basketball court at night, but I'm afraid to open my eyes more to look around.

I'm totally paralyzed. I'm conscious and aware but for some reason can't move, and I think I'm experiencing something similar to REM atonia. I know it's all in my head, though, so I start peeling my dream-arms out of this fake physical body by rotating them forward into the ground using thought rather than my muscles. It takes a little effort, but eventually I feel this set of "dream-arms" separate out and move independently. Soon the rest of my dream-body follows and I'm able to exit completely and get to my feet.

It is a basketball court -- four of them in fact, all arranged together in one giant rectangle. I'm alone on this court but teenagers are playing small, informal games on the other courts. The courts are surrounded by concrete stands and a metal railing. For fun, I stunt-jump off of the metal railing and land back on the court, then see Wife approaching out of the darkness. She's dressed for bed and looks groggy. "You're still up?" she says. "Shouldn't you get to bed?"

"Shhh, it's okay," I say. "Go back to sleep. I'm having one of my dreams." She nods, yawns, and wanders off into the darkness. False awakening averted.

I roam around the basketball court for a while before regaining focus on my goals for the dream -- summon NewArtemis and have her do the werewolf tranformation for Advanced Task of the Month. I put my right hand out for the handshake summon and look away, pointing my gaze over my left shoulder. I don't feel anything at first, but I'm relaxed about it. I know it'll work if I just give it time. I imagine the sensation of a hand pressing into my palm, and then slowly, vaguely it takes shape. After a few moments, I give the "hand" a squeeze and it squeezes back.

Without looking, I check for a forearm, probing all the way up to the elbow. "[NewArtemis], is that you?"

"Hey! Yeah I'm here!" Cool, I think, but I want to be sure the summon's really solid before I look. I check the DC's arm -- quite thin, but it's there. I reach her shoulder and I'm a little worried when it just feels like bare skin.

"So before I look... uh, what's the story with your clothing situation?"

"It's fine, I'm dressed!" she says. "Come on, quit worrying so much!"

Slowly, I turn to look. I'm shocked to see that I'm shaking hands with a short, middle-aged woman in a blue business suit. There's about a half second of sudden blackness and then a hard scene transition -- now I'm shaking hands with NewArtemis (no longer the businesswoman and back to her usual DC appearance) on some beachside boardwalk at night. Success! "Told you!" she crows. "Let's go!" She sprints past a burly, mustachioed man eating an ice cream cone, heading toward the sand. I follow, flying to keep up.

As she reaches the beach sand, she notices that I'm flying. She looks annoyed. "You know, I can't seem to get my flying to work right now." I notice that I'm unable to fly more than a few feet off of the ground. I try a Hulk jump and can only manage a measly 20 feet or so. Seeing this, she tries a Hulk jump of her own and manages about 50 feet. "Ha!"

There are some dunes along the shore and we practice competitively Hulk jumping up and down the dunes as we continue along the water. After doing this for a bit, we come to a long line of black-robed cultists standing at the top of a dune in a long series of rows, torches in hand. They're droning and chanting, obviously in the middle of performing some dark ritual. There are probably 50 of them in total and I think that this looks like a perfect place to go for the "mythical creature" Task of the Month. "[NewArtemis]! Do your werewolf transformation! These guys are just begging to get eaten by a werewolf."



She looks doubtful. "I'm not so sure," she says. "Isn't this just a bunch of college kids doing a fraternity initiation?"

Just as she says this, one of the "evil acolytes" flips his hood back. He's a friendly-looking blonde guy with a goofy smile. "Hey guys! Sorry if we freaked you out! We're just a bunch of college kids doing a fraternity initiation!" (He uses her precise wording.)

I sigh. We continue for a little while longer, coming to a well-lit swimming pool. "Maybe we should go ahead now and do your werewolf transformation while we're thinking about it," I suggest, and the moment I say this, she changes fast into a big, black dog, bounds ahead of me, and leaps joyfully into the pool! She splashes playfully in the pool for a while, panting and grinning.



But as she kicks up more water, the playful splashing turns into thrashing and now the black dog has turned into my 3-year-old son and he's sinking fast. I'm still aware that it's a dream so even though I badly want to pull him out of the water, I don't feel as freaked out as I would in waking life. I dive into the pool and even underwater I can hear my son calling to me. I can see and breathe without any trouble and I swim to the bottom of the pool, scoop him up, then fly back out of the water, landing poolside to tend to him. He seems unharmed and the moment I set him down, he runs off into a nearby grotto.

I follow my son into the grotto, a low-ceilinged cave with a shallow pool of water, partially bricked walls, and some form of dim light that reflects off the water and plays across the cave ceiling. I find that my son E has changed back into NewArtemis in human form. "Sorry about the pool thing, man," Art says, rolling her eyes. "Hey, do Task of the Month on these DCs!" She gestures at a family of tourists that are exploring the grotto. (The task is to tell a DC they're not real and see their reaction.)

I'm impressed that she reminded me of this. "Good idea! Hey kid," I say, addressing a boy of about 11, "you're not real."

"Nuh-uhh..." the kid counters, looking cross and uncomfortable. Okay, that should be good for a Basic completion, but I'm looking for more.

Now I address a bearded man in his mid-60s, who I assume is the boy's grandfather. "You're not real. This is all happening inside my dream."

"Nonsense," the grandfather says, "you're not real. I'll prove it." He flicks me on the left arm, looking proud of himself. I counterargue by levitating him a couple of feet off of the ground and setting him back down. He blubbers for a moment, then looks off at one of the cave walls, mentally processing this existential crisis. I feel a little bad for him.

"[NewArtemis], you should do this too, get those Basic wings," I say, only partly joking. She doesn't respond, and when I look over, she's changed into a man in his late 20s, short-haired, prematurely balding, and slumped against the wall in fatigue. He mumbles something about how long the dream has been and how tired it's made him. I throw the guy over my shoulder and carry him out of the grotto. When I set him down outside, he's turned back into a tired-looking NewArtemis. "Are you okay?" I ask. She says that she is, but everything has started to feel wobbly and unstable.

Suddenly, the whole scene rocks and something pitches us forward. We both yelp and I fall flat on my face, my hands flailing out in front of me. I'm semi-paralyzed and the scene has gone dark, but I've managed to grab onto NewArtemis' left ankle where it feels like she's wearing some kind of thick winter sock. There's a loud rumbling in the background that sounds like an earthquake. "I can still move!" yells NewArtemis over the noise and she drags me slowly forward across some kind of rough gravel. My face is smashed down into the gravel so I can't respond. She keeps hauling us forward for about 15 more seconds before the scene collapses into...

...a false awakening in some unknown house. Mom is here and I excitedly start telling her about the incredible LD that I just had, going over as many details as I can recall. She tells me to keep my voice down -- my son R is sleeping in the next room over. I apologize, continuing the recollection in a softer tone of voice. After a while, this scene fades, too, and I'm awake.

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #88: Reconciliation Hour

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #82: Afraid of the Dark

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

This was a nice, very vivid LD where I was reunited with a long-gone childhood pet. It was more difficult than usual to connect to my tasks and goals. In fact, I could remember very little from waking life. I'm wondering whether this is because it was galantamine night, which required me to use an extremely short WBTB.

And my ever-reliable nose pinch RC let me down!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #63: After the Storm

I'm walking with my 3-year-old E in the back yard of what I think is our family home. The yard is vast, wild, and overgrown. As we walk, a Golden Retriever comes up to us and starts sniffing my hand. He looks almost exactly like the dog that I had when I was a kid, but I dismiss this as coincidence.

I wonder how this dog got into our yard. E, the dog, and I walk to to edge of the property and I see that the entire fence is destroyed. Nothing but a couple of snapped fenceposts remain. Looking further out, I see that our next door neighbor's house has been utterly destroyed. I think that this must be a dream. I perform the nose pinch reality check and can't breathe. I try it again and still can't breathe. "Oh shit," I think. "This is really happening."

The three of us walk further through town. Everywhere we look, houses are toppled and people sift dispiritedly through the rubble. I tell my son, "E, I think there's been a big tornado. Daddy's going to figure this out."

We walk across an empty four-lane road. Some of the shops on this road are open, which strikes me as odd. I RC again, pushing my finger into my palm. My left hand stretches like stiff taffy and I know that this is a dream.

I look down at the Golden Retriever and realize that he really is the same dog that I had when I was a boy! He's been gone almost fifteen years but now he's somehow standing right in front of me. I scratch him behind the ears. He just looks off into the distance with that big, goofy doggy grin. Even though I know that this is all a dream, it feels like a reunion.

E pets the Golden and starts fiddling with his ears. The dog pants and stares contentedly up at the sky. I decide that now is the right time for me to break off on my own.

I walk further along the road. I know that I had lots of plans for this lucid dream but I can't remember any of them. As I'm pondering this, a steady flow of traffic starts on the road and in a few seconds, cars are whizzing by in both directions. I remember a conversation with Xanous and Alyzarin about how they like to play in traffic during lucid dreams.

I start walking across the road. I'm halfway across when I suddenly realize that the cars are driving on the left side of the road (like in Great Britain or New Zealand.) The next thing I know, a small, strange, open-topped car is barreling toward me. Suddenly I'm scared that this car is going to flatten me and I try to force-push it to the side. The little car swerves to the left and its brakes squeal. I float up into the air, drifting slightly away.

The car has stopped and its driver, a woman of about 30, is leaned forward toward the steering wheel. Her eyes are squeezed shut as if she's in pain. I run or fly to the side of her little open-topped car, freaked that I've hurt her somehow when I did that force-push. "Are you okay? Are you okay?"

She doesn't respond, but she's clutching at her stomach. There's something horribly wrong with her. Her stomach is badly distended, stretching all the way down so that it rests on the floorboard of her car. I pick up her enormous, stretched stomach off of the floor and start feeding it back into her body. It takes some effort, but in the end it spools smoothly back into her torso as if nothing had ever happened.

She looks at me and smiles. I notice for the first time that she's incredibly attractive and I kiss her. (Guess I got over the stomach thing!) I pull away before I get myself totally distracted and she drives off, waving as she goes.

Again I try to remember my goals and again they won't come. I finish crossing the road and leap about twelve feet into the air, perching on a crumbling arbor by the side of the road. I look out over the ruined city and see that the destruction stretches for miles. I can't even seem to find my house anymore. Is the destruction getting worse? What's happening to this place?

I consider where to explore next but the dream soon ends.