CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #199: 1985

I’m hanging out with my friends “Leroy”, “Captain Kirk”, and “R” in a hotel room. I’m explaining to them that if we all think of the same time period at once, we’ll begin a shared dream that transports us to that time.

“Think of 1985!” I cry excitedly. Everyone gets a look of concentration on their faces and I become lucid as a “shared dream” of 1985 begins.

I spy a bin full of socks nearby. “Everyone wear their socks like they did in 1985!” I say, and everyone grabs a pair of long socks and pulls them all the way up. (I don’t think people really wore their socks this way in 1985, but oh well.)

I yank my socks up to knee height. “It’s hip to be square,” I say, and the DCs laugh at my awkward 80s reference. For some reason I think this is hilarious, and Hip to Be Square starts playing faintly in the background. (Not released until 1986! )



We walk outside of the hotel room to a nighttime scene at a gas station. “Captain Kirk” points toward a nearby Bronco at a refueling station and says, “We need to put some gas in the car.” We all walk over there and he starts filling up the tank. (I don’t recall him paying in advance with a credit card.)

Leroy suddenly looks worried and says, “We lost [The Schwartz]!” (“The Schwartz” is another friend who hasn’t yet appeared in this scene.) I have a false memory of The Schwartz being in our group earlier and think we’ve lost him. I know that the disappearance of a DC isn’t anything to get worried about, but I agree that we should look for him.

There’s a brick building nearby. Leroy and I enter it through a metal doorway and we wind up in a huge room that’s clearly bigger than the building itself. It looks like some kind of trap-filled dungeon, complete with a large pit of bloody spikes and stone walls lined with torches. On a ledge maybe fifteen feet above, we see The Schwartz gripping a rope and preparing to swing across the pit like Tarzan.

I’m still aware that this is a dream, but I’m not sure that I want to see how this plays out. Leroy and I implore the Schwartz to come down from the ledge and not go swinging over a pit of dream-spikes. Noticing us for the first time, he waves down to us. The dream ends shortly after.

This was a fun but weird DILD that hit right at the end of a very long NLD. The sudden introduction of this "Dream Coordinator" character was interesting. I enjoy it when my subconscious plays back at me like that.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #66: The Dream Coordinator

I'm on an epic quest, roaming on foot across the United States with several odd characters: a man in his 50s dragging around an 8-foot potted plant, an 11-year-old anorexic boy, and a pretty, short-haired woman in her mid-40s named "Mrs. Rearden". I've been journeying with Mrs. Rearden the longest and I trust her completely.

It's a foggy morning, and we're all sitting for a moment on a long couch outside of a gas station. I notice that gas is "$1200 / 1000 gallons". I think, "$1200?? God, that's expensive." But I take a moment to do the math and realize that this gas is actually super cheap. "Ah... tricky, tricky!" I think.

I see one of those gas station signs with the changeable letters. It reads, "DUDE THIS SUCKS", which I find surprising. I look closer and see that it has changed to "YES WE'RE OPEN!" Just below the sign I see a row of frightening stone gargoyles perched along one of the gas station walls. Finally I've been bombarded with enough clues and now I know that this is a dream.

The other DCs stare silently ahead, so I ignore them and take a look around. It's still foggy, but I realize that I'm not outside at all but rather in what looks like an enormous airplane hangar. There are windows high up in the corner and I float toward one, planning to phase outside. As I reach the window, though, my vision goes black.

I feel myself floating back down, so once again I imagine that I have a gladius in my hand and start swinging it around everywhere. I land back on the ground, but everything stays black. I can still feel the weight of the gladius and my moving arm, though, so I feel fairly relaxed. I start probing at my dream body and discover that I seem to be wearing nothing but my boxer shorts. Suddenly worried, I check to make sure that my wiener is still there. Yes, all is well.

I've been in the dark longer than I'd like so I call out for help. "Somebody come help me! Mrs. Rearden, I need you to help me!" There's no response. I poke and slap at my face, hoping something will happen. Finally, I decide that maybe something will happen if I take off my boxer shorts. As soon as I attempt this, I hear Mrs. Rearden shout, "Don't do that! Stop it! Here, I'll help you." She grabs my left hand, gives it a hard yank, and pulls me into a new dream scene just outside of a door.

I keep a grip on her hand and we walk through the door. We're on the second story walkway of a mall. Mrs. Rearden looks frightened. She mutters, "This is not where the Coordinator wants us to be."

I'm stunned by this. "Who? The Coordinator?"

"Yes," she says. "The Dream Coordinator. This was not what he had planned." She is really upset and keeps looking nervously around the scene

I tug at her hand and move with her further along the walkway. As we approach an elevator, I say, "There is no Dream Coordinator. This is my dream and we don't answer to anybody. But you don't have to come with me any further. I think I'm okay on my own now."

She responds that she wants to help, but as she's speaking, I become disconnected from my dream body. My perspective sinks down to the busy food court on the mall's first floor. I feel like an insubstantial apparition and I'm desperate to regain physical form. I try the gladius trick but it feels all wrong.

There's a guy with a shaved head nearby, black, in his 30s, wandering happily around the food court. I move toward him, hoping that if I make physical contact it'll bring me back into the dream. He sees me floating toward him, though, and takes off at a dead run, screaming in terror. I don't blame him -- if a ghost in nothing but boxer shorts came after me, I'd run like hell, too. With nowhere else to go, I run out of steam and the dream ends.