CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #138: Hot Coals

Wife and I are searching the city for rare items that are needed to build some kind of important machine. We crouch on some dirt and gravel road and Wife draws a diagram in the dirt, telling me what I need to do to infiltrate a nearby house. When I'm there, I'm supposed to listen in on a phone call in order to gain an important piece of information.

I somehow make my way into the house and sneak past a woman who's busy preparing some food. Her husband, a guy in his 60s, is talking on the phone and walking nearby. I press my back against a column, trying to stay hidden. But now a clone of the husband is also on the phone, coming around the column from the other side. I realize that I can't hide from both the husband and the clone and become frantic at the thought of being discovered. I briefly consider whether this is a dream and my answer is "yes".

No longer worried, I walk through the living room into a large, spacious room with white marble floors and a skylight. I take a door to my right and step into some kind of sun room. The old man is standing by a door that leads outside and he gasps in shock when he sees me, saying, "You!" He's still holding the phone, and he clutches it to his chest.

"This is a lucid dream," I say, "so I'm not going to be doing this whole thing." I point to each of us in turn. He immediately nods, breaks character, and walks off like an actor leaving a movie set.

I leave the sun room and step out into a stone courtyard, the sky cloudy above me. There's a cheerful-looking guy with a mustache grilling some meat over a pit of hot coals that are glowing a fiery orange. Two women and one other man are standing nearby as well, looking relaxed as they watch him work. I wonder what I could do goals-wise with this scene. The Great Barrier Reef task doesn't seem like a natural fit, but I think about somehow using the hot coals to perform the "travel to Hell and have a beer with Old Scratch" task.

I notice that the vividness of the scene is pretty good and I finally remember that my primary goal right now is to try to enhance dream vividness. I feel a slight jolt of "oops" concern that I should have been focusing on that instead.

I have a weird thought that goes (and I quote) I'm going to stare into that crimson, chocolaty fire. I walk toward the pit of coals and the dream ends. I try to DEILD and get some rapid flashes of HI, but my heart rate is too high for me to slip under quickly enough.

This lucid was extremely short (perhaps 20 seconds), a length that I'd normally consider a micro-lucid and not journal here. But it was so vivid and striking that it's really stuck with me. It's one of those dreams where you just remember every detail.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #73: On a Dark Rooftop

I'm pawing at hypnagogic imagery, and I sense that I can reach out with my hand to touch a solid floor. It works, and a dream scene takes shape. It's night and I'm crouched on the rooftop of a one-story house on the crest of a hill. I'm dressed in head-to-toe in black (yes, I admit, like a ninja ) and I feel silent, coordinated, and infinitely agile.

I look all around me. Suburban streets lie in every direction. There's a faint reddish glow on the horizon, and I sense some kind of threat or danger gathering in the distance.

In my head, I clearly hear the voice of an old man: "Even in these dark days, my people yet retain a shadow of their former glory."

His words fill me with an enormous sense of urgency -- I have work to do. A cold wind picks up. I prepare to leap to an adjacent rooftop, but the dream ends.

I work at DEILD for a while, but just can't get back in.