CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #220: Purple Haze

I’m walking through a hallway in an art school, getting ready to attend a class. I recall a previous dream where a lot of money had been stolen from my wallet and I dig for my wallet in a panic. I recall my intent to LD, get suspicious and nose pinch RC my way into lucidity.

I remember my intent to summon Dreamer for the challenge as I walk into one of the classrooms, but as I walk in a cluster of art students engage me in conversation. Before I know it, I’m blabbing about lucid dreaming until I’m only semi-lucid. Something prompts me to take out my iPod and check it. It acts just like waking life, but one of the words on-screen is “Kentucky”. Look away, look back, the letters are now a jumble, and I’m lucid again.

Wary of being distracted again, I duck back out into the hallway, which is now empty. I walk along for a while, thinking about how I’ll do my summon. I want to try rolling with what the dream gives me and using an existing DC. I step into an atrium where I see a handful of DCs walking around. I point at the closest one and say, “You’re Dreamer!” Immediately I notice that her hair is purple and she’s walking toward me. I lean in to make sure and it’s a perfect match!

“Yeah it’s me!” she says, as if nothing could be more obvious.

We hug and I start describing my plans for the dream. I tell her that I’m planning for us to do something together but that I’m having some trouble remembering Task of the Month. “That is Task of the Month!” she says, laughing. (Good call!)

“Oh right,” I say, “that’s Basic. [Note: Wrong, that’s Bonus!] But what’s advanced?”

She furrows her brow and then shrugs. We walk down the hall together and I tell her that I have an idea for something cool to do outside. We talk a bit more but I’m feeling like all this walking is compromising my lucidity, so I say, “Hey, let’s just fly, okay?” I turn my back toward her because for some reason I think she needs to ride around on my back. (How insulting!)

“Okay!” she says, and hops onto my back, “seatbelting” herself on by reaching her right arm over my right shoulder and her left hand under my left arm, then clasping her hands together. I hop up into the air and fortunately the flying feels effortless. We go soaring through the atrium into an area that looks like a shopping mall. There are a number of DCs milling about below and I’m surprised to see that a few of them also have purple hair!

We swoop low past a bench of DCs and a few of them run. I laugh at this, and Dreamer does too (though a little less maniacally than me.) We’re heading toward a low wall and I have a little trouble pulling up, my dream body kind of “oozing” awkwardly over the top. Made it, though! I see a set of doors off in the distance, so I set us down and head for them, determined to get outside. All the while I keep talking about how all of this is a lucid dream.

As I’m talking Dreamer starts taking over more and more of the conversation. I keep my left hand on her right shoulder as I walk in order to keep her “stuck” as part of the scene. But after a bit I notice that her accent, perfect at first, sounds all wrong and she’s changed the subject from dreaming to how I really should go back to art school. I nearly lose lucidity, but look over in time to see that Dreamer has been replaced by a young, dark-haired woman who looks Thai. “You never go to your art classes!” she says. “How can you expect to succeed if you don't go to your art classes?”

“You are not Dreamer!” I declare, pointing a dorky finger in the air and running for the exit.

“Wait!” says the woman, and I feel her grab onto my ankle. I ignore the sensation, though, and fly out through the door, phasing outside to a parking lot. There are a number of DCs milling about, mostly women, and all of them have purple hair!

I swoop toward the closest DC, a stout, middle-aged woman with glasses. “You’re Dreamer!” I say, pointing dramatically at her and kind of dropping into a goofy lunge. She says something noncommittal so I follow up with, “Don’t worry, you will be,” which she seems to accept with some surprise.

I tell her that my Task is to eat a huge dessert (somehow I’ve finally remembered) and she tells me that there is a “Chili’s” nearby. I point to a building and leadingly say, “You mean there, right?” She agrees and somehow I wind up inside of this restaurant, the purple-haired woman no longer around.

I’m walking forward in a huge line in order to enter the restaurant, which winds through some kind of indoor forest. I zoom in close to the tree’s detail and see ants crawling along the bark. I study the way that the lighting and shadows play off of the trees in real-time and I brag about all of this detail to the DCs, gushing that “This is all inside my head!” They nod politely and look a little uncomfortable.

We come to a long spiral staircase downward that leads to a cavern floor blanketed in mist. I don’t want to wait so I leap over the side, floating down to the floor and then moving into a dark tunnel. I remember how Dreamer had good luck producing a flame from her finger and how Xanous had focused on the pain of the experience to create fire in his hands. I hold up my thumb and expect this to happen for me as well but there’s nothing.

Now I expect pain and heat. There’s a slight tingling ache, but it’s little more than a nuisance. “The big fire!” I say. Nothing. I exit the tunnel into a large, darkened movie theater. I try to shout “The big fire!” but I get the sensation of my waking life voice croaking out the words and I’m startled awake.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #212: The Guadalupe Airport

I’m in a cafe talking to an art student in his early 20s as he walks out the door. I’m complimenting him on some piece of digital art that I saw in his online portfolio when I realize that I can’t remember his name. I ask and he says, “It’s Bradley,” as we shake hands. I think that this is a student in my 3-year-old son’s class, somehow all grown up.

Bradley leaves and I just stand there, confused about how this much time has passed. After a brief mental struggle, I realize that these facts just don’t fit together and I become lucid.

I spend a few moments looking around at the DCs in the cafe but they all seem fairly generic. I don’t have goals in mind and I’m anxious that I’ll waste the experience, so I head through the first door that I see, winding up in a bathroom. Somebody flushes from one of the stalls. I am not spending a lucid dream listening to people flush toilets, I think, and head back out through the bathroom, back through the cafe, and out into a mall.

I’m feeling less passive now and I try hard to remember what my goals were. Somehow I dredge up that a Task of the Month is to keep repeating whatever a DC says to you. I approach a balding, blonde-haired guy with glasses in his early 40s. He’s wearing a t-shirt that says something about the Windows registry and he’s looking at me like he wants to tell me something.

“Talk to me!” I say.

He happily launches into an explanation of something about computers, but he’s speaking too rapidly for me to follow. I eventually start catching him mid-sentence. “If you have a memory block that…” and I babble back “If you have a memory block that!”

He scowls at the interruption. “You know what? I don’t think you’re actually into this!” And with that, he turns and walks away, looking offended.

I continue on, drifting through the crowd. I spot one guy that’s unusually tall and for some reason get the nasty impulse to mess with him. I kick him in the right shin and he falls forward, stopping just short of hitting the ground. Then he rises back up, looking angry and annoyed. “Sorry, that was stupid,” I say, scurrying away from him. He floats after me for a moment but I make an effort to think about other things as I evade him, flying down an escalator to the first floor.

I move through a relatively empty hallway, worrying for a moment about whether I’ll be able to remember what’s happened in the dream and take a moment to reflect on how cool this is.

Now I’m back in the main thoroughfare with the crowd. I spot two attractive women nearby, both Indian, one in her mid-twenties, the other in her mid-forties. I fly past them and they say something about going to Las Vegas. I want to impress them for some reason so I boast that I’m having a lucid dream and could travel to Las Vegas instantly. They laugh nervously and sort of edge away.

I say something like, “Here, I’ll show you!” and start flying away, slightly out of control. There’s an open chunk in the ceiling and I pass through it, turning and flailing a bit. Somehow I find myself flying along an airport runway at night. I hear “¡Happy Birthday Guadalupe!” by The Killers playing over what sounds like a clock radio and I worry that a morning alarm is going off. I fly up to a tall column of carved stone in the middle of the runway and reach out to touch it as the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #201: Copilot

I’m standing in a brightly lit cafe near the serving counter. There’s a row of three toilets placed directly next to a huge window that looks out onto a shopping mall. In spite of the people passing by just a couple feet away from the window, I decide that I need to sit down on one of these toilets.

As I’m sitting there I realize that I don’t really need to go after all. I wonder why I am even sitting on this toilet publicly embarrassing myself. Some kid, a boy of about 9 or 10, sits on the toilet next to me and starts talking to me about something. I don’t relish the idea of having a conversation while seated this way so I get up to leave (not having “accomplished” anything.) The kid gets up as well and I see that he’s left a horrible, putrid mess in his toilet.

He points to the awfulness he left in the toilet and tells me, “Eww, you did that!” I sputter with indignation and outrage until it occurs to me that this has to be a dream.

The kid disappears and I spend a moment taking in the scene. From behind the cafe’s counter, a guy in a paper chef hat stares back at me. I look to the left and see a staircase leading down, with a man in his early 40s standing at the bottom.

I decide to try teleporting by taking over the man’s perspective and it works almost instantly! Now I’m viewing the same scene from the bottom of the stairs. I run up, wondering if I’ll see another version of myself or the man I switched with, but there’s nobody there now.

I see my 4-year-old son E standing nearby at a table and walk up to him. “Hey, buddy!” I say, and walk with him out into the mall. We’re on the second floor walkway and across a sort of interior courtyard I see an atrium with a beautiful skylight. Daylight pours in through the glass and I think it looks like a great flying spot.

I scoop E up in my arms and he feels realistically heavy. He drapes his hands around my neck more lightly than he would in waking life but the grip seems firm enough to get started. I take to the air, flying with him over the balcony railing. The flight feels very floaty, like something that’d happen in zero gravity. E’s legs float out to the side and I realize that I’ve lost the feeling of his weight.

For some reason we’re drifting away from the skylight toward another section of the mall. I make a hard right turn, dragging E behind me, and we begin to travel down a darker, previously unseen corridor. Before we make it very far this way, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #184: Be Still My Beating Heart

I’m walking through a parking lot into a mall, recalling an earlier dream where Dad had brawled with some pellet gun-wielding high school kid in a parking lot just like this one. As I enter the mall, I recall my intent to have a lucid dream, and one begins.

I walk past a set of red metallic benches, taking in the detail and comparing it to waking life. I marvel at how completely realistic it looks. As I continue down the walkway, I turn toward a woman walking with her two young daughters and half-shout, “Can you believe this is all a dream?” They smile politely and scurry away.

I take a brief detour through a clothing store, walk past a few more places, and then exit onto some kind of outdoor boardwalk area. There’s a tattoo parlor to my left with a wood-carved sign overhead which depicts two attractive, dark-haired, pale-skinned women with intricate sleeve tattoos. The place is called “Nutjob”. I think how cool it’d be to get tatted up in a dream and start to head inside. It looks a bit more like a boutique when I get closer and I suddenly get this irrational fear that things will turn sexy in this place and that I’d better avoid it.

I head back through a door into the mall and encounter a grinning, friendly-looking British woman in her late 20s. I remember Task of the Month and ask her, “Who is my true love?” She says some stream of hilarious nonsense about waffles, and we both start laughing. I think she is super cool. “I’m not going to be able to remember that. Can you answer again?”

She laughs even harder and then starts singing “Polly Wolly Doodle” in a British Donald Duck voice. (The kids have an Easter toy that does this, but not with a British accent.) I can’t stop laughing and I try not to think about whether you can laugh yourself awake from a lucid dream.

I start thinking about what the other tasks were and she wanders off as I do so. I remember something about your heart, and then spy Wife walking in the mall about twenty feet in front of me. Still in an incredibly good mood, I run up to her, get her attention, and after she says, “Hey!” I make out with her for a little bit. This is fun, but okay, back to tasks! I’m supposed to pull my still-beating heart from my chest and give it to a loved one.

“Here, watch this!” Wife keeps looking at the nearby stores instead of me. “You really need to watch. I’m only going to do this once.” She looks back and I reach my hand inside my body. I feel something about the size of a softball pulsing very softly. The movement is a bit too weak for a heart muscle, but whatever. I pull it from my chest and when I present it to her… my hand is empty!

“What are you trying to do?” asks Wife. I explain the task and she furrows her brow. “You really don't need to do that for me,” she says before wandering away into a nearby store.

I wander through the mall some more, baffled by how long and stable this LD is. I pass through a busy arcade area where I see a mom busily taking care of 10-12 girls shouting demands during a birthday party. There’s cake being passed around which I sort of want to try but I feel like I am at enough kid birthday parties in waking life.

As I’m heading back into the hallway, an attractive Asian woman with waist-length hair passes by. We look at one another and the guy she’s with, some generic dude in his late 40s with thinning hair, seems to jealously take notice. He kind of freaks out, storming around and I say, “You want to go to the parking lot.” He obediently leaves. But when I turn back to the woman, blood’s pouring out of her nose like he just hit her. I’m confused because I didn’t notice him do this. I worry that my confusion means the dream is ending.

I pass my hand in front of her face and she’s healed. When I glance over my shoulder, the guy is back, glaring at us. “You’re not coming back here again,” I say, and again he leaves. I say something to the woman about how this is a dream and she agrees. The dream is definitely fading now but we still manage a bit of sexytime before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #181: Big Band

As I’m leaving a shopping mall, there’s an announcement that the mall is under lockdown because someone has stolen a baby from a stroller. This all seems too strange to me and I become lucid.

I’m in a large, empty room that looks a bit like a warehouse, a bit like a mall entrance. It’s only half lit but I can make out the ceiling maybe fifty feet above me. I remember that I wanted to make the dream as vivid as possible so I slowly rub my hands together, nothing how real they look and feel. The one difference I notice is that they leave visible streaks across my vision when I move them.

I can’t remember any goals beyond vividness, so I raise my hands to the ceiling and say, “I’ll take whatever you have to give me.” Nothing happens, so I add, “Show me something amazing! Anything!” Again I wait, and I start to feel a twinge of nervousness.

“I think we need more light,” I say, and the light comes up a bit. Now I hear music behind me, like something from a band. I turn and see a large open-air exit from the mall with a big band playing on a set of risers near the exit. I make my way over to the band, only partly able to hear the music. The risers go up about 3 levels and there are maybe 20 or 25 band members there. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to how they’re organized.

The band members are wearing these cool suits with thick, vertical black and white stripes. “Nice suits,” I say. “I’m wearing one too!” And when I hold out my arms, sure enough I’m dressed like I’m part of the band.

On the top level I spot the only female in the group, a woman with dark, curly hair drawn back in a ponytail. I can’t remember what instrument she plays, but she has a cool vibe and smiles at me in acknowledgement. I float up to her level on the riser and we briefly kiss. Afterward I probe at her temples, forehead, and scalp with my fingers as a sort of vividness-enhancing thing. She wrinkles her nose and squeezes her eyes shut when I do this.

Looking out past the risers I see the ocean. I pick her up and carry her with me, floating toward a strange beach where some huge metallic device has somehow permanently trapped a wave just as it crests. A dozen surfers stand happily atop the wave, gliding back and forth while moving neither forward nor back.

As I reach the edge of the water, the woman from the band shifts uncomfortably. “Do you want to go with me or stay here?” I ask. She says that she wants to “stay here”, so I set her down at the shoreline. I float/swim further out into the water, my feet dragging along as I go. Eventually I start swimming, and the visuals fade from the dream. The sensation of swimming continues for a while, though, before the dream ends.

Long dream! I think that in all this dream may have gone for about 30 minutes. It's got me excited about the Great Pyramid Task of the Year again!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #139: Kunoichi

I have a false awakening in some kind of luxury hotel suite, feeling frustrated that I failed to have a lucid dream. All of the lights are on, and a digital clock on the kitchen counter tells me that it's 4:45 AM. Okay, I still have a little time left to have a lucid dream.

Suddenly I realize that Wife isn't here and I panic. I have a false memory that she went out just as I was going to sleep and I start freaking out that something has happened to her. Two men walk into the suite from the adjoining balcony and I run at them, demanding that they tell me where she is. They look bemused by the intensity of my reaction and I wonder whether this could all be a dream. I try the nose pinch reality check and become lucid.

Ignoring these two random guys, I phase through a glass door out to the balcony. Rather than go leaping off, I float up a few feet first (just to be safe) before flying out into the early morning sky. I'm about 80 feet up, and I swoop down toward a park that I see below me, landing near a tree. I notice that the tree looks amusingly pixellated and I remember my goal of trying to maximize dream vividness. I focus on drawing out the detail of the tree, feeling its bark and studying its needles until it becomes extremely vivid.

I follow a dirt path toward a mall, scooping up a handful of reddish dirt and (for some reason) popping it into my mouth. (It tastes about like you'd expect.) At this point, there's a long segment of the dream where my memory gets a little hazy, but I recall that it was fairly long, involved me travelling through a shopping mall and flying around a bit between levels. I remember flying close by a harried-looking mom struggling to manage a pair of kids and a pair of shopping bags, a bright central area, and at one point a black guy in a purple dress shirt gives me a thumbs up when I fly by.

Finally I leave the mall through an emergency exit and emerge in an alley. A man slouches lazily against the wall and farther away a dark-haired teenage girl is sitting on a stack of shipping palettes. I look at each of them in turn and they immediately return my gaze. I'm struck by the subtlety in the way their faces move, blink, and shift so realistically.

As I'm deciding which way to go down this alley, I remember the Africa Task of the year (fix the Great Sphinx then ride her to the top of the Great Pyramid.) I decide that the Great Pyramid is just at the end of the alley, imagine it in detail, then turn around with the image still firmly in my end.

I'm shocked by how well this works. I walk out of the alley onto a windy landscape of sand dunes. In the distance I see an enormous version of the Great Pyramid dominating the horizon, probably four times larger than the real thing. Dark storm clouds roll violently above the Pyramid. At the top of the Pyramid, the wind is so strong that I see stones rolling off of the top and tumbling down the side.



I run over the dunes toward the Pyramid and as I get closer I see not just one Great Sphinx but probably a dozen of them scattered near the Pyramid's base. Some of them are in a horrible state of disrepair, but this doesn't worry me. If I can fix her nose, I can fix everything else too.

As I'm approaching the top of one dune, a pair of female ninja dressed in red appear and come racing toward me, each wielding a pair of sai. The first one leaps at me and I force-push her to the side so that she flies past me. The second I force-push directly forward and she flops onto her back on the dune. I walk past her and I watch over my shoulder as the two of them regroup for another attack. I hold out my hands toward them and jokingly say "Now kiss!" They glare at me like I'm a huge pervert and I feel a little embarrassed. (This is a nerdy reference to this meme.) One ninja gives the other a quick peck on the cheek and then they return to glaring at me.

I say something about how I was only joking and that I drank a lot of peppermint tea before bed, and as I'm going on and on explaining myself, the two ninja start making out. I realize that all my blah blah blah is only making things worse and I'm feeling sexy and distracted. I turn back toward the Pyramid but the landscape doesn't seem stable anymore. I wind up in the void.

I rub my hands together to stay locked in and start feeling the floor, trying to turn the ground back into sand so I can return to the Pyramid. I go at this for a good while. After roughly a full minute, the floor starts feeling like carpeting and I emerge in what looks like a dormitory. I walk out into a nearby hall and run into a college friend that I've lost touch with (and is notorious for being hard to reach.) I ask him how he's been and he gives me an email address (!) and promises to respond if I email him at that address. I make him repeat the promise (which amuses him) and bid him goodbye before phasing through a glass door to a second-floor walkway.

My father-in-law is standing nearby with a few elderly Asian men and women. I jump onto the railing and start pulling myself onto the awning when I feel hands grasping at my legs and shouts of "You'll hurt yourself!" and "Are you crazy?" They pull me back down to the balcony and my father-in-law starts explaining to the other DCs that I'm "special". I fly down the walkway to provide a visual aid and the DCs react by speaking in astonished Mandarin. I think about how amazingly realistic this Mandarin sounds but then think, oh yeah... of course it sounds realistic to me. It's what I think Mandarin sounds like.

I fly off of the walkway, landing in front of an entrance to the same mall I was at earlier. I decide to retrace my steps through the mall, and I pass through a store that sells little pet sweaters for tiny dogs. Little sweater-clad dogs roam everywhere. I exit the store and it isn't long before I have a false awakening back in the same dorm room, no longer lucid.

I walk outside to find that it's daylight out. NewArtemis and her husband are standing nearby. We say hey, not at all surprised to see one another. Art lays down on the sidewalk, still participating in the conversation but also trying to sleep by curling up with this big canvas bookbag she's holding. I tell Art and her husband about the dream I just had, mentioning that I went through a store "that sells sweaters for those little yappy dogs". Immediately a little white yappy dog comes crawling out of Art's book bag, dressed in a green sweater. "Seriously?" I say, feeling like a jerk. "I'm sorry." She laughs and says it's cool.

Art seems to kind of fall asleep and I talk with her husband for a while about dogs, telling him they did the right thing by not getting huge, crazy dogs like us. I look down and notice that Art's hair has changed and become really curly and sort of red. It seems weird to me but since her husband doesn't say anything, I figure this is normal. He and I talk about other random stuff for a while until the dream ends.

The second of two lucids from playing Myst at WBTB.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #123: Walking Backwards

I'm walking by a pool with Dad toward a pile of towels on a beach chair. He asks me how to get really lean for the summer. I'm going through some long-winded explanation and he keeps asking the same really basic questions, apparently understanding almost nothing I'm saying. I wonder why he's so slow to grasp what I'm saying but then realize that I'm dreaming.

Dad has vanished and I'm standing alone by the empty pool. It's long and skinny, like a stretched out Olympic pool. I fly over it toward a doorway on the opposite side. I walk through the doorway into a busy two-story mall. I decide to allow myself a couple of minutes to walk around and take in the sights.

I pass a few stores, turn a corner, and suddenly feel a jolt of fear that the dream won't be stable. I start narrating out loud: "I'm having a really stable lucid dream." I rub my hands together, continuing to narrate out loud to the DCs passing nearby. "And now I am rubbing my hands together. You cannot forget to do that shit!" I yell.

I remember wanting to get to the Colosseum and expect to see an Exit sign. There it is, on my left, near a bank of doors. I walk toward the doors when I spot my friend "Chia" approaching me with a sort of vacuous grin on her face. "Hi!" I say. She repeats it back: "Hi!", still grinning, but her face is sort of morphing into a stranger's face. It's not stable.

I tell Chia that I'm going to the Colosseum and that I'll talk to her later. She nods, and rather than turning away, she walks backwards, not looking where she's going. She's walking near a support column that for some reason is covered with awful stuff like barbed wire and Orcs Must Die-style wall blades. "Watch where you're going!" I say, really feeling distressed. But she just smiles blissfully, circling around the column and out of sight.

Okay, back to the task at hand -- Colosseum. I head for the exit doors, shoving the door open with the crash bar, expecting to wind up in one of the tunnels under the Colosseum. The next hall is a tunnel but it still looks like part of the mall. As I'm deciding what to do next, I'm thrown into the void.

In the darkness of the void, I clearly sense my dream body. But when I try to rub my hands together, I can't make it happen. Awareness of my physical body starts to creep back in. I keep trying to move my dream hands but I'm not getting any response. After attempting this for a while, I finally wake up.

This was the fifth of five lucid dreams from last night/this morning.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #110: The Substitute

I'm walking through a mall when I pass my friend "JR". Walking a bit further along, I pass by a yogurt place. Manning the counter is another person who looks almost exactly like JR. I think about how odd this is and after a moment's contemplationg, realize that this is a dream.

My prospective memory is fully engaged and I immediately remember that I'm trying to meet up with Art. This time I don't even bother getting to the Alamo. I keep walking through the mall, extending my hand behind me, and say, "[NewArtemis], I know you're already here. Grab my hand when you're ready to go." Immediately, I see a female-looking shadow appear on the floor walking next to my shadow. Soon after that, there's a grip on my hand. Confident that the summon has worked, I turn to look and find myself shaking hands with...

...a complete stranger! She's in her mid-20s, black, short, and very friendly-looking. "Uh, how's it going?" I say.

"Hey! I'm [NewArtemis' first name] Campbell!"

"Ah, nice to meet you," I say. "I was actually calling up a friend of mine." I pause. "Are you the [NewArtemis] that I know, just with a different look? Are you Art?"

"No," she says. "I'm sorry! You must be so disappointed."

"Nah, it's all good. You seem cool. You want to hit Angel Falls with me? I can do Task of the Year there."

Ms. Campbell agrees and as we approach the mall's exit, I realize that it's kind of weird that I'm still gripping her hand in a handshake (or has it turned into a hand-hold??) I turn to look at her but as I pass my gaze through the sunlight that's pouring in through the nearby glass door, she seems to vanish from the scene. This leaves me a little confused, so I pause for a moment, looking around the nearby area of the mall and wondering what I'll do next.

As I'm looking, I see my friend "Fry-guy" loitering near a set of stairs. I go up to talk to him and I'm astonished when he greets me with a British accent. (Fry-guy is from middle America.) He starts speaking exuberantly about a history book that I lent him named Idiots that's all about the litany of crucial mistakes made by various idiots that have set civilization on a bad course. (There's no such book, as far as I know.) After that, I explain to him that I'm having a lucid dreaming, and we have a quick discussion about that next.

Strangely, there's some classroom nearby taking a test, and a couple of the pupils keep stage-whispering to us to be quiet. I walk with him away from the class back toward the mall exit, continuing to talk lucid dreaming until the dream ends.

This was a a very vivid, pleasant lucid dream. My Task of the Month attempt didn't succeed, but it was a beautiful experience nonetheless. Also, this is the third time that my dad's DC has hinted to me that I'm dreaming and finally I listened!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #86: Rock Candy

I'm standing at the door of a lakehouse with Dad, recounting an extraordinarily vivid dream from earlier in the night. I lean against the doorframe, looking out over the water. "I can't believe how much of this stuff you remember," he says. "And then that whole 'vivid dreaming' thing you do."

"Yeah," I respond. "It's actually called 'lucid dreaming'." It hits me that this is all a dream. I step outside to a wooden walkway, leap over the railing and take flight over the lake. "I'm dreaming right now!" I shout over my shoulder.

"That's amazing," I hear him say as I cruise away over the lake. I pass through a cypress canopy and get high enough to survey the lake. The lake stretches as far as I can see, its surface criss-crossed by dirt paths that are decorated with beautiful marble archways.

I land on one of these paths and walk along for a while, enjoying the serenity of the moment. I pass a bulbous, bright blue flower that's the size of a basketball. Its petals ripple gently in the sun and give off a glow that looks like a bloom effect you'd find in a video game. Just before I come to a marble archway, I find a pile of rocks and think of the Task of the Month (find a piece of coal and change it into a diamond.)

I dig through the rock pile, hunting for coal. The closest thing that I can find is a black, rectangular hunk of glassy, volcanic-looking rock. It looks too crystalline so I get the bright idea of crushing it into coal by popping it in my mouth and chewing it up. I bite a hunk of the rock off and begin to chew. The taste is amazing! It's like a homemade raisin bar with just a hint of chocolate. I'm immediately reminded of the goodies Mom would bake when I was a kid.

I wander the paths for a long while, contentedly passing under the shadows of archways, walking by strange, brightly glowing plants, and happily biting off pieces of this delicious black rock. I feel immensely pleased with what I've created for myself and unmotivated to change anything.

Eventually my path takes me to an ancient-looking stone wall. Oddly, there is a working escalator alongside the wall, and I board it, curious where it leads. As I ride up, I pass many people that I know, most memorably my friend DX (who I recently saw for the first time in over a year.) His short hair has been replaced by an enormous ball afro. We swap greetings, but the escalator quickly moves us past one another.

At the top of the escalator, I remember Task of the Month and spit out a bit of the black rock to see if it's coal-like enough to work. Unfortunately, it's more like slightly sticky, finely-chewed glass. I look back at the escalator and see Fedora, a guy that I used to know in college but was never friends with. I say, "Fedora, go ahead and give me that piece of coal you have." It works! Fedora hands me a perfect lump of coal and I get to work on squeezing it. It's becoming smaller and smaller, and I feel like a tiny diamond is beginning to form. Fedora demands that I give him the diamond when I'm finished since it's "his". I'm about to tell him that this is fine when the dream gets really unstable.

I prepare to DEILD, and it goes black. I'm very aware of my body now, almost awake. I release all awareness of my body and try to let the dream take me under. Apparently I let my self-awareness go too, because I'm shortly back in the dream, but no longer lucid.

I'm standing about twenty feet from the escalator talking with my friend The Schwartz and another person that I can no longer recall. "So what went wrong?" asks The Schwartz. I walk them through the last portion of the dream in detail. As I'm describing what happened, I see an attractive stranger in her early 20s eyeing me. She smiles and waves me over. Excited, I begin walking toward her but suddenly feel super guilty. I remember that I'm married and feel like a dirtbag. Then I remember that I'm dreaming and feel awesome again. The stranger smiles and turns away, an older guy (her boyfriend?) draping his arm over her shoulder and walking away with her. I start thinking about Task of the Month again, but the dream fades...

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.

This was the second of two lucid dreams that came out of an experiment with green tea during WBTB. In retrospect, I might have liked to take more time talking to this angry dream character to see whether I could learn more about what he was about. These sorts of things can be hard to remember in the moment, but I'll keep trying.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #45: Crowbar Clint

I'm in a mall clothing store and a crazed young man in a baseball cap is wrecking the place with a crowbar. Frightened dream characters give him a wide berth as he screams, curses, and knocks over racks of clothing. He shouts threats and abusive profanity, swinging that crowbar like a baseball bat. I'm frantically planning the best way to get out of here without taking a crowbar to the face when I realize that I'm dreaming. Somehow I also know that the young man's name is Clint.

I get a rush of positive emotion once I realize that I'm perfectly safe. I notice that I know one DC in the store -- T, a coworker of mine, is standing by the cash register making his purchases.

I speak urgently to Clint, like he's neglected some important task: "Clint! Buddy, you've got to get going. T is over there waiting for you to help him change out his hubcaps with that crowbar of yours." Clint looks at me, his anger turning into confusion. I keep repeating this new story to him over and over, placing a hand on his shoulder and leading him toward T. Clint, now docile, walks silently beside me.

Clint appears to be the only person who believes this story. Other DCs shuffle away nervously as we walk by. T seems to get what's going on as well but he plays along, saying, "Yeah, Clint, let's go have a look at my truck." They walk off into the mall and I follow a few feet behind them.

I step outside to find myself on a second story walkway near an escalator. T and Clint have disappeared into the crowds of shoppers. The sun shines through a large, arching skylight that spans most of the mall's ceiling.



It looks like a beautiful day outside, so I decide that I'll fly to the top and phase through the skylight. The sunlight becomes brighter and brighter as I ascend, but before I reach the ceiling, I wake up.

I enjoyed getting back to a dream that was just pure play. I was a bit of a mall rat as a kid, so perhaps that's where the setting came from. Only regret: not looking for the video arcade!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #43: The Flying Mall Rat

I'm in a mall walking through a jewelry store out into the main hallway. I have to maneuver around a family coming toward me. For some reason I employ a fancy (and physically impossible) spin-move to get around them, twirling all the way around and sliding several feet across the floor. It suddenly occurs to me that I need to remember whether or not I'm dreaming and in this case it feels very obvious that I am.

I walk out into the main hallway and see that the mall is three stories high. There's mall music coming over the PA system. It sounds like it's three or four girls harmonizing, and they're singing about breaking up with some schmo. They're actually quite talented, with sort of a sound like a modern-day Andrews Sisters. The lyrics and the tune itself are utterly generic, but since it's my dream, I can be honest with myself and admit that I find it catchy.



I'm feeling excited and playful so I leap up onto the railing of a short stairway and grind down (in other words, ride down the rail on my shoes.) I want to see what things look like from higher up, so I hop up to the second floor, grab onto the railing and swing myself over. I then perch my feet on the railing and leap upward across the gap to the third floor's railing.

At this point, I remember the Christmas carol Task of the Month. For some inexplicable reason, I decide that "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" is a Christmas carol and try to see whether I can remember it. In spite of it being several years since I heard it, the first verse comes back to me without any trouble, and I go swinging and leaping around the mall singing it, vaguely worried that I'm singing in waking life. From what I read in the TotM thread, this is a very common worry.

I spend a few more minutes having fun soaring around the mall. As I reach the end of the main hallway, though, I notice the entrance to a movie theater. I land on the ground floor and step inside the theater, curious what's playing. The theater is packed and I'm surprised by how many people I recognize from my own life. I walk through the crowd for quite a while, greeting old friends and acquaintances as I pass by them. The lights in the theater aren't dark yet, but everyone returns my greetings with whispers, as if they don't want to talk over the movie.

I happen on one friend, S, who appears to be the size of a child in her seat. For some reason I feel like I need to make her look "right" and tell her "Oh, you're much taller than that." She starts stretching out until her height seems correct, but now her head has gotten distressingly skinny. I start getting flustered and fixated and it's not long before I wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #32: Rollercoasters and REBMEVON

I'm in a bar confronting an 8-foot tall blonde man about why his biker gang threw rocks at me me in front of my parents' house. It's all too weird and soon I'm lucid. The dream feels really stable so I let him finish what he's saying before heading out the door. When I leave the bar, I discover that it's part of a closed-roof shopping center. I try to fly up to the 3rd story but end up floating horizontally across the floor. This time I try leaping off the floor instead. I overdo it, though, and blast all the way through the ceiling.

It's nighttime as I break through, and I fly high into the air, probably 1500-2000 feet up. The city is almost completely dark below me. I shout a grandiose, rather dorky "Let there be light!" and a wave of illumination bleeds over the city from bottom to top. I'm up very high so I see a lot of buildings passing by under me but I don't know what any of them are. For some reason, I think that I need to go back to my old school, so I say, "Show me the university." A group of buildings below starts to glow and I point myself toward it.

I swoop down toward the university buildings but rather than land, I transition immediately into a false awakening inside one of the dormitories. I'm in a small, virtually empty bedroom that I don't recognize. Vividness is very high now.

I step into the hallway and there's a girl sitting at a desk studying, her back to a screened window. She doesn't notice me, and I think about phasing through the window and escaping back out into the night. I try the phase and instead of feeling like I'm passing through liquid glass, my hand feels like it's ripping through a screen door. Shreddings of the screen are in my hand and the girl turns to look at me, saying, "What the hell are you doing?" I do the nose pinch reality check, a bit worried that I'm no longer dreaming.



She's making me feel embarrassed and self-conscious so I step into the next room to get away from her. This room's a study hall that has a narrow desk with hotel stationery and a white pen on it. The hotel stationery has indentations on it like somebody has written on it before. I can't see what the person wrote, but the indentations look similar to my own handwriting! The effect is so realistic that I nose pinch and finger-through-palm RC one after the other. I remember the Task of the Month (write "November" spelled backwards), so I sit down at the desk, grab the pen, and start writing. With vividness so high, my confidence is really solid. I immediately write down "REBMEVON" all the way through and the letters come out correctly (unlike last time.)

Satisfied, I get up from the desk and follow an exit sign through a double door. I stumble into a shabby bedroom where a mother, father, and school-age daughter are sleeping on scattered mattresses. The father wakes up and looks at me, bleary-eyed and displeased. "How'd you get in here?" I want to explain about the exit sign but instead decide to just get out of there. Another exit sign points me toward an external door, and I gladly slip out.

It's daytime now and I step out into a huge carnival that's been set up in a mall parking lot. The rides are elaborate, though, and more like what you'd see in an amusement park: things like rollercoasters and swing carousels. Lines of people are waiting for rides and it's inconvenient to get around on foot. I try to fly over these lines but I go too low and have to step on some heads as I pass. Some of the DCs shout or curse at me as I go.



I get up into the air and start circling around the swing carousel, flying alongside the riders. Most of the DCs ignore me but one lady keeps pointing and repeatedly saying, "Holy crap!" After making a couple of cycles, I decide that I want to go for the other advanced Task of the Month, bringing a soul back from Purgatory. I've envisioned it as being placed in the oceans of the southern hemisphere, where Dante put it. I use the sun to get my bearings and then fly south, heading over a Macy's. A blonde kid with dreadlocks looks up at me as I fly overhead and the dream ends soon afterward.

This failed "Task of the Month" attempt ended up being a great time. I'm so happy to be getting more flight time after all of the trouble that I had with this initially. I was sure that I was doing to meet a Dreamviews member in this one but it just didn't quite happen!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #23: Halloween in the Sky Fortress

I'm walking through the mall with my friend T. We encounter a scrawny old man that I recognize (wrongly) as a professor at the university that T and I attended together. The "professor" excitedly describes his latest invention -- a self-propelled wheelchair that is guided and powered by your mind. With that, one of these wheelchairs pops out of an unseen hole in the floor, scoops T up, and starts racing around with him.

T shouts in protest, insisting that his legs work fine. I decide that this is completely insane and I become lucid. I ignore T and the professor, and they lapse into silence. I can see daylight coming in from around a corner so I start moving toward the exit, making my way through a food court that's packed with dream characters. Sprinting toddlers and their harried parents crisscross my path but always move aside in time for me to pass. I'm tempted to check out the food but my desire to get outside is stronger.

When I reach the automatic glass doors they don't open. For some reason, this doesn't worry me and I press my left hand straight through the glass. (I think that I owe this to reading about all of melanieb's phasing yesterday.) I phase the rest of my body through as well, feeling a slight chill as I pass through.

When I get outside, it's parking lot as far as the eye can see. The day is mild and breezy and all I can think of is what a perfect day it is for flying. I float up nicely but get hung up in the mall's entrance overhang. There are a few moments of grinding where for some reason I have trouble turning my perspective. Fortunately I manage to force myself sideways just far enough that I break free and shoot up into the sky.

Straight ahead there are hills shrouded in fog. I'm eager to avoid turning so I fly toward the fog, imagining that in these hills is the neighborhood where all of the Dreamviews folks are. (I want to perform the "trick or treat" Task of the Month.) As I near the fog, the wind increases to a howl, pushing upward and against me. Rather than force forward progress, I imagine that I am going the wrong way and that this wind is trying to guide me to the real Dreamviews neighborhood.

I turn with the wind and it carries me upward the way that a thermal column lifts a condor. This feels amazing! I'm being carried toward some kind of sky fortress. The "sky fortress" is an enormous collection of buildings connected by a tangle of walkways and I know that this must be where the Dreamviews neighborhood is. Dream characters move unafraid along the narrow, unrailed walkways and I see guards armed with rifles patrolling some of the paths and rooftops.

I arrive at a row of townhouses. Above the front door of each townhouse floats bubble letters that spell out the owner's name. The row stretches as far as I can see in either direction and most of the names are unfamiliar to me. I do see "Xanous" above one of the doors and I fly toward it, imagining that there's a huge DV party going on in there.

The door has a television screen in front of it that seems to show what's going on inside the house. I'm astonished that the screen displays a prairie dog splashing around in a big bathtub. "Xanous?" I ask. The prairie dog stares at me, a bit shocked. He barks, "Phil doesn't just open the door for anyone who knocks!" I can feel myself growing confused but don't know how to regain my composure. "Are you some kind of bodyguard? Are there Dreamviews people in there?" But the dream is beginning to unravel and soon I'm awake.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #16: Alone in the Dark

A friend is showing me around some mansion, delivering this nonstop harangue about the lack of baby proofing. I'm surprised by how angry she is until we reach a second floor balcony that overlooks a huge courtyard with a fountain. Next to the railing is a strange device that invites a baby to crawl onto it and then extends over the edge of the railing to "give the baby a better view" by dangling them hazardously over the side.

Now that I've seen this dangerous contraption, I get why she's so mad. Now I'm fuming too. But when I'm done whining and stop to study my surroundings again, I notice that I'm no longer in a mansion. I'm now alone on the second floor of a shopping mall. I don't understand how I got there. Everything looks very real, though, so I decide I'm probably not dreaming. I reality check "just in case" and I'm astonished when it fails. I hit a second nose pinch. This also fails and I think, "No way. I just did it wrong." Third try fails and now I'm finally lucid.

I'm shocked that this is a dream and my vision immediately goes black. I start rubbing my hands together, determined not to let this go. I test my dream body in a variety of ways to keep myself tethered to the dream: I rub my hands over my elbows, flick my teeth with my fingernail, lick my arm, flex and prod at my muscles, slap myself in the face. Everything works and I feel solidly locked in -- I just can't see anything. This goes on for quite some time and I'm having trouble staying calm.

Unsure what to do, I extend my right hand and plead for help. "I can't see. Please, somebody help me." Seconds later, someone grabs my hand, gives it a hard yank, and I stumble forward, my vision fully restored.

Of all people, my rescuer is Julia Roberts (an actress that I do not particularly like and haven't thought of in years.) I suddenly feel like a jerk for not really liking her work.

We're on a dilapidated pier by the seaside. I demand "Super high-def!" from the dream scene and everything sharpens nicely. I hear the creak of beams and the slap of seawater against the piers, as well as the distant cry of gulls. I know that I'm right on the water and think of getting to the Cretaceous seas!

Julia Roberts shouts at me that "You're almost out of time!" and runs off down the pier. I run after her, searching for some way to get to the open water. Dream characters peer at me from stalls on the sides of the pier, murmuring incomprehensibly to one another as I pass. I keep running, wondering whether I need to try something drastic to change things in my favor. Soon the dream fades to black, this time for good.

My heart rate's noticeably elevated and I can feel blood pumping through my carotid arteries. I'm too amped to go back to sleep. I wonder: why'd I lose this one? Simple excitement? Succumbing to a false sense of urgency? Or is this all just Julia Roberts' fault? Advice welcome!