CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #235: Plush

I'm walking through an opulent hotel room, excitedly considering the idea of lucid dreaming. I take a moment to consider the idea that I'm having a lucid dream right now… and realize that I am!

I'm standing on a fancy rug, looking through the marble-floored living room out of a picture window that offers a view of the sky. There's another hallway further on and I see a couple of DCs milling about. I want to see what's outside of the room, though, so I open the door to the hallway outside of the room.

Before stepping through, I think to get myself really pulled into the scene by plunging my fingers into the plush rug. I love the way that it feels on my hands, so I dive into it face first and give it an experimental lick.

I crawl out into the hallway on my hands and knees, and the carpeting out here is just as plush and and nice as the rug. There's a group of children playing out here, all of them in the 6- to 8-year-old range. "I'm having a lucid dream!" I explain. One of the girls giggles.

I turn away from the kids and crawl down the hall, delighting in the feel of the carpet. I faceplant again and enjoy the feeling of my tongue on the carpet as I move forward like a snowplow.

I hear the kids laughing behind me and I get up, turning to look. All of the children are trying to imitate me, crawling along on the carpet feeling it with their hands or licking it. I say something like, "You don't really have to do that in a lucid dream." I wonder if I'm teaching them to emphasize the wrong stuff in their own lucid dreams. I move away from them down the hall and the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #233: Rucksack

I have a false awakening in a hotel room. It’s dark and my oldest son E is standing nearby. He asks me where Wife is and when I don’t know the answer, I feel terribly worried.

Another false awakening, and this time Wife is lying on the bed. She stirs and sits up. Confused, I complain to her that she shouldn’t have just disappeared earlier without telling us where she was going. She says something strange about the time of day and after a moment of feeling strange, I realize that this is a dream.

I walk to the hotel room window and phase through to the outside, finding myself 25 feet or so up in the air. I drift gently to the ground, finding myself in an alley during daytime. I’m behind a brick building and sign with fancy lettering reads:

“←Tavern→”

This sounds interesting, and apparently either way will take me there. I hop along through city streets until I come to a plaza at the base of a tall office building. I quite unexpectedly encounter an old friend “Rucksack”.

“Hi!” I say. I’m surprised, because he and I haven’t really talked in a few years.

“Hey,” he says. “I really like the stuff that you’re doing on DreamViews and I wanted to buy you some extra <dream control tricks?>. When you log on, you’ll see a $50 donation. That’s from me!”

I thank him, and he quickly leaves. I wonder what this new dream control could be. Unsure what to do next, I bound joyously around the plaza for a bit before the dream ends.

This lucid is from the morning of 5/19/2014. (I think so at least. I'm embarrassed to say that my records got spotty right here.)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #211: The Bag Lady

I’m high up on a hotel walkway that encircles an atrium. The room’s huge and bustles with people. I see a group of familiar people from my life seated in plush, comfy-looking chairs and realize that I’m dreaming.

I walk up to “Cyclone”, a friend from high school that I occasionally catch up with. I try to explain to him that I’m having a lucid dream. He’s trying to respond but I’m confused and unable to understand what he’s trying to say. As I grow frustrated by this, the dream fades into a false awakening.

I get up from what I believe is a hotel room and walk out to the street. I’m someplace that looks like New York City and it’s early morning. I walk out onto a brick-lined path toward another building. Maybe 30 feet away, there’s a bad lady standing near a little planter that looks like it contains a vegetable garden.

She seems to notice me and comes staggering over. I hope she won’t approach and try to scurry cowardly away. As I do this, she lets out a blood-curdling scream and starts flying after me. I feel a combination of embarrassment at my wimpy reaction and outright fear that I’m about to get mauled on the street. Her hand grabs my shoulder and I think that come on, this has got to be a dream. What a relief that it is in fact a dream!

The bag lady screams in my face and grabs at my chest and shoulders with clawlike fingers. I’m not feeling very calm at this point, but I try to calm her down by saying “Shhhhh…” and raising my hands in as nonconfrontational a gesture as I can manage.

She seems to settle down and I notice she looks a fairly normal person now. She’s in her late 30s, wearing a hood and shawl. Kind of cute-ish, even. Her teeth are still bared but now she just looks like she’s upset rather than truly demonic. For some reason I start kissing her, and she seems to calm down completely.

I hear another scream from nearby and I see a second dangerous-looking bag lady quickly approaching. Time to go. I make for the building entrance, a simple looking glass door into what looks like a darkened school hallway.

As I make my way down the hallway, nobody follow. That’s a relieft. I emerge from the hallway into what looks like ground floor fo the hotel atrium I’d been in before. I wonder if I can make my way back up, but the dream ends before I can find out.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #200: Runway

I’m walking out through the exit of an airport when I realize that I’ve left my cell phone inside, possibly on the plane. I want to turn back to get it but I’m feeling disoriented and can’t find my way back inside.

Now I’m walking along the runway as planes taxi back and forth around me. I know that this is a bad idea but I can’t figure out what else I’m supposed to do and I wonder why they make airports so confusing. A plane rolls by on my right, uncomfortably close, and as I cringe away from it, I realize that this is all a dream.

Calmer now, I walk along the runway toward an odd series of doors set into a metal frame. The frame’s set up right next to a long patch of grass and seems to lead nowhere, but when I walk through one of the doors, now I’m standing in the lobby of an ornate hotel.

There’s a fancy, circular bench covered in some sort of red pillowtop. I walk around it to the foot of a grand staircase. For some reason I decide not to go up and I walk down a hallway around the side of the stairway. I realize that a group of people including my cousin SU is following close behind me. I don’t turn to address them but instead continue on slowly and deliberately, enjoying the vivid, stable feel of the dream.

I come to a large glass window and I move toward it to phase. As I approach, I vividly see the reflections of SU and the 2-3 others behind me. I take the phase slowly, marvelling at the detail of not only the reflections behind me but the sensations of the phase itself. The glass feels like a cool, insubstantial liquid as I pass through it.

I make my way into a busy, two-floor restaurant. It’s a fancy place and I stop to study it. I notice that the waitstaff is all women in their late 20s or early 30s wearing a long brown ponytail.

I remember some snatch of an earlier Task of the Month that I think has something to do with wearing green. As I recall this, all of the waitresses turn to look at me for a moment, all of them now dressed in green pants and a white dress shirt. I notice no transition to the green pants. It’s just as if this is what they’ve been wearing the entire time. I know that I’m not remembering anything relevant about any task, so I let it go and the waitresses turn their attention back to the other DCs in the restaurant.

I walk up the carpeted stairway to another row of tables full of nicely dressed DCs enjoying dinner. It doesn’t look like there’s a free table in the whole place. I walk along for a bit, wanting to explore further, but the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #197: The King

It's modern times, and I’m the king of a small nation. I’m sharing a smallish hotel suite with several royal guests. A few of the royal guests in the adjoining room are very upset with me about something and I’m pacing the room, dreading that I have to talk the issue over with them.

I inspect one of the hotel desks and see two narrow drawers. Somehow I realize that the drawer on the left contains a picture of the girl that my son E (who I think is a prince) is engaged to. I open the drawer and see that the future princess is a cute girl in her late teens with long brown hair. I think for a moment how odd this pairing is since my son is only 4 years old. I struggle with this for a moment, thinking I’ve forgotten my son’s age, until I realize that I’m dreaming.

I walk into an adjacent room where I think my kids are sleeping. There’s a crib here but instead of a child, the crib contains my friend R (who appeared in a few of my early lucids way back when). R is squatting in the crib, not doing much of anything, so I grab him under the armpits and hoist him out of the crib. I tell him that I’m having a lucid dream and that I hope he’s having one too (or maybe that I just hope he’s having a lot of them recently.)

He walks back to the main part of the hotel room with me, briefly exploring the kitchen area, before we turn toward a large picture window overlooking a lake. I invite him to come fly out over the lake with me, but he seems hesitant and apprehensive. He remarks that he doesn’t think he’s got the skills to pull this off.

I say some reassuring words, and when I turn back to the big picture window, the scene has changed from a lake to a large office filled with cubicles. There’s a woman with long, dark hair and glasses working quietly at a desk, and when she looks up to see us seems completely astonished.

The change is a surprise to me, so I decide to head out the other way from the hotel room. I don’t press the issue with R and let him just hang out in the hotel room. The hotel room exit takes me into a library with a high ceiling. I take advantage of the ceiling space by flying around. I help myself navigate around the room by pointing where I want to go, and it works great!

After a moment I remember that I need to pursue my goals, so I land and make an attempt at the Jack and the Beanstalk Task of the Year. I produce a seed from behind the back and then plunge my hands into the industrial carpet of the library floor. I find that I can dig it up easily and all these little chunks of foam pop out of the hole I leave behind. I use them to cover the seed back up and start thinking about how I should water it to help it grow.

As I’m thinking my way through this, the scene goes dark and I feel myself lying in bed. I’m super hopeful that it’s just a false awakening, and I even hit the nose pinch. Too bad -- I’m awake!

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.

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #142: Hotel OBE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is probably the first time that I've done high speed flight since I flew into space so long ago. Very exciting to experience!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #112: Water Pressure

It's the middle of the night and I'm walking around the front yard of my childhood home. The sprinklers are all on and it's my job to somehow turn each sprinkler head off by touching it. As I do this, I'm narrating out loud to one of my waking life friends what I'm doing. (Can't remember which friend this was, since they were "off camera".)

"These big sprayers at the front of the yard are the worst ones!" I explain to my friend. As I approach the sprinkler head, it hits me with a powerful jet of water that starts pushing me away from the yard and out into the street. "See what I mean!" I shout as the jet continues to shove me.

Pretty soon I'm tumbling and sliding all the way down the street, trying to fight my way back to the yard. Okay, this has got to be a dream... The spray continues to hit me, pushing me along faster and faster as I slide down the street. Somehow it's not getting me soaked but it is pushing me at an incredible rate of speed. I'm sliding past houses like I'm on a bobsled attached to a rocket.

I leap into the air and start flying, still going really, really fast. The speed is absolutely dizzying, easily ten or more times faster than any lucid flying I've ever done. I soon leave civilization behind and I'm flying at super speed over grassland and hills. The sun is now up and early morning light is illuminating the landscape. My flight control isn't perfect and I do a couple of unintentional barrel rolls, fly higher than I mean to, then lower than I'd like.

Just as I'm flying over the top of another set of hills, I find myself in the void, suddenly moving much more slowly. Except it's not a complete void. I see a distant dream scene in front of me, almost like something I'm watching on television through a long, dark tunnel. I'm moving toward this new scene, rubbing my hands together and preparing to enter it.

It's a scene from some sort of grand luxury hotel, bright and really classic-looking. The men look sharp but indistinguishable from one another and the women are dressed in crazy feather- and sequin-clad dresses like something from the Roaring 20s. I'm now a part of the scene, standing in this hotel lobby, looking up as these amazing DCs pass by on the balconies above. I try to remember what I'd intended to do next, but the dream ends.

I'm recovering from an illness so it was a coughing, uncomfortable, rough night. I finally had to take 1.5 mg of melatonin to tip myself into sleep at around 4 am to get this LD (which explains the melatonin reference in the dream.) Given all that, I'm really pleased to have gotten lucid. I just wish I'd gotten more than 4 hours of sleep!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #75: Floodlights

Wife and I are staying in a hotel room and having some disagreement about the use of melatonin in cooking and laundry. She tells me that she will never bake melatonin into bread or use it to wash our towels. Peeved, I hide around the corner out of sight, and sulk about how unreasonable this ban on melatonin baking is.

Then we're in bed trying to fall asleep. I roll over to my right side and find that there's a hammer in bed with us! I think about how horrible it would be if REM atonia malfunctioned and one of us had some kind of combat dream. (I've had a vague but long-standing fear of REM behavior disorder since I was pretty young.) I'm pissed that the hotel staff has left this in our bed and I get up, deciding that I have to get rid of this hammer.

I slide the hammer flat along the floor and throw it into the hallway through the gap under the door. It spins round and round then clonks into the wall on the opposite end of the hall. It suddenly seems ludicrous to me that the hammer would fit under the door like that and I become lucid.

Vividness looks good, so I'm excited. I head for the window of the hotel room, passing two more double beds on the way out. (It occurs to me that the bed I was just in was crammed into the kitchen nook.) As I approach the window, I notice that a four-foot metallic cube is shoved against the wall. It's vibrating ever-so-slightly and there's a strange voice coming out of it saying something about "Orcs Must Die!" (I played this game before going to bed.) I think that the voice is telling me to "insert a coin". I'm really interested in this but I start feeling confused. Worried for my stability, I turn away from the cube and turn my attention back to the window and my goals.

I want to make my way to Angel Falls for Task of the Year, so I plan to phase through the glass. I halfheartedly try to push through it, but I know that I'm doing it wrong and my hand is stopped at the window. I struggle to remember what I'm supposed to do. Oh right -- the glass isn't even there. Just do what you want. I simply walk outside into the night, paying no attention to the glass, and find myself standing on a ledge looking out over a nighttime city scene, many stories off of the ground.

I don't feel like I can Hulk-jump from this tiny ledge, so I allow myself to rise up to get a better look at the city. I'm high up now, and I see a distant tower topped by a turning searchlight, clearly visible in the night sky. It intrigues me, but I decide to stick with Task of the Year. After floating upward for a while, I land on the hotel roof. I look to the sky above me and see a strange array of floodlights shining down on me like I'm in the middle of a sports arena. The lights are blindingly bright and my vision first goes completely white, then fades to black.

For some reason, I don't think of readying myself for DEILD but instead become fixated on asking the dream scene a question. While I'm fiddling around, everything collapses around me.

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.

I experienced some challenges in this LD and, sad to say, I didn't exactly pass with flying colors. I need to be confident with producing a light source and finding my way out when I'm lost in some building. I wish I'd remembered darknightedlady's observation that "Exit" signs seem to work well for me in navigation. They're a reliable tool for me and I need to keep them in mind.

Not my best work, but I very much enjoyed the exploratory romp anyway!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #37: Hotel California

I'm business partners with my good friend "Leroy", and we ride a bus to a conference at some sunny resort. We pass by a nice pool complex on our way in, and many DCs are soaking up the sun poolside. I recognize MS, a friend from high school, but she disappears into the crowd as we draw closer.



Leroy and I walk through the hotel entrance and move toward the elevator. There are smashed eggs all over the floor in front of the elevator door, and I say, "[Leroy], I'm tired of walking on eggshells around you." Two things dawn on me: a) That joke was terrible and b) This is all a dream.

Leroy has disappeared, but momentum still has me reaching for the elevator button. I stop when I see that the elevator only goes down. I remember that I'm trying to either witness the Trinity test or relive the Apollo 11 mission. Neither of those are likely to be in the basement, so I start looking for a way out.

I turn toward the hotel entrance and see that it has been replaced by a solid, slightly reflective metal plate. I try to phase through it the way I do with glass, but it feels totally solid. Unwelcome anxiety starts to creep in and I set off down a nearby hallway, hoping for an easy exit. A set of double doors at the end of the hallway takes me into a tunnel that's built of concrete blocks. I feel like I'm descending in spite of my best wishes. There's a door further down the hallway but it's one way and offers no handle.

I step through an open doorway into a dimly lit room. An unseen door closes gently behind me and now there's barely enough light to see. I hold my hands out, saying "Illuminate!" Nothing. "Illuuuuuuuuminate!" I squall, but nothing happens. Fear is growing in me, a helpless sense that there's no way out of this hotel. I try to shake that off, instead imagining that there's light coming from an unseen side tunnel... yes, I see it now.



I start crawling through this new tunnel on hands and knees, but it becomes a tighter and tighter squeeze as I move forward. There's light ahead of me, though, and I shimmy desperately forward. Anxiety begins to slip out of my control and I'm soon awake.