CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #242: The Return of the Rabbit

I’m riding in the back of a Suburban with several of my business partners. “PM” is the man behind the wheel and we’re driving slowly around a dirt loop, listening to the soundtrack from the video game that we’re working on. The music for our battle scene concludes and breaks into a slower section.

There’s a new part, a soft solo of a guitar-like stringed instrument that I’ve never heard before. It's beautiful! PM turns back to say, “I thought this part sounded fucking badass.” I enthusiastically agree that the new music sounds “all badass”. PM’s driving very erratically but not very concerned about it. I become semi-lucid, noting that this is probably a dream. I start laughing when he plows right over a stop sign and now I’m sure that this is a dream. PM is laughing too, and stops the car.

We all get out and there are several of the guys here, PM, “Leroy”, and probably “Z” as well as maybe more. I put my hand on PM’s upper back/shoulder and kind of massage it, wanting to stay really connected to the dream. “Hey man,” I say, “this is a lucid dream. This is the first time that you've been in one of these with me. I’m really happy you’re here!” I feel very happy to have these guys here with me and I enjoy the swell of positive emotions. I tell PM that I’ll do my best to remember the new parts of the song and that I wonder whether he’ll remember them too.

We walk down a dirt path through some trees and night falls quickly. We’re moving through an industrial area by the water and I think that I’d like to summon Dreamer. I look down to see that there are 4 shadows in the group. Must be me, PM, Leroy, and Z? I hold out my left hand, imagining that Dreamer will take hold of it. I feel something vaguely like a hand, then look down again to see a fifth shadow (in a dress!) holding onto my hand.

I look over and Dreamer is standing next to me! Her hair is blond rather than purple now and very short, the bangs bluntly chopped almost in the form of a bowl cut. She’s just wearing a shirt and some kind of pants, though, not a dress. We smile at each other. “Hey guys, this is…” and then attempt to introduce Dreamer several times. I’m mortified that twice in a row I completely goof her waking life name before finally getting it right. I feel awful about this, very embarrassed.

The guys continue ahead and Dreamer and I walk just behind, coming to an abandoned wharf. I recall that we had recent, very specific plans for this dream (to try to heal one another’s sniffles, ha ha…) I ask her whether she remembers and she replies, but I have a hard time understanding her. I move really close to Dreamer’s face, trying to understand her or read her lips or anything, but it’s not working. For a moment I wonder whether there was a kissing task, but no, that wasn’t it, maybe that was someone else’s lucid dare. (Correct, actually -- this was a dare that Dreamer completed a while back!) I quit focusing on her lips and on this mumbling problem, assuming that her speech will sort itself out if I just quit worrying about it.

As we walk further along the water, we talk about how nice it is to just stroll through the dreamworld. I tell her that I’m glad that we’re getting to hang out in such a stable dream and how relaxing this is. I feel peaceful and happy, which reminds me of the patronus task. I tell Dreamer that I want to try the patronus and she moves close to wrap me up in a hug. I extend my right arm and she places her left hand under my wrist, almost to support it. I tell her that I feel super happy in this dream and that I think the patronus is going to be easy! She enthusiastically agrees.



Immediately, pulses of blue energy pour out of my fingers and float to the ground in a big ball. And now scampering along the ground near our feet is my bunny patronus. “Oh, he is cute!” says Dreamer. As he hops around, the bunny turns from a blue, glowy patronus into a real bunny. He hops further along the wharf. Dreamer grabs my hand and pulls me along to follow him. We follow him for a while through an old, crumbling breezeway until the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #239: Patronus, Part Two

I’m reading a comic book with Wife about spies on a dangerous ocean voyage. There’s a lot of discussion about an acronym MBME and what it means. The meaning keeps changing, which makes me feel vaguely suspicious, but I don’t become lucid yet.

Somehow we become a part of the story and wind up in an RV that we decide is a classroom for my son E. We meet with one of his teachers for a while and at the end of the meeting I start gathering up all of my stuff. Stack of papers. Backpack with my work laptop. Our test iPad from the office. I’m exasperated that I brought so much stuff and left it lying around everywhere, and the whole thing overall feels strange. As Wife and I duck out of the RV, I consider my situation one more time and I become lucid.

We’re outside in a grassy field. I still have the goal of summoning my patronus with Dreamer, which I misremember as wanting to summon the patronus with Wife. “Come here, let’s summon my patronus!” I tell her.

“Oh, okay!” she responds. I take her up in a hug and kiss her for a moment. Then I extend my left arm out and expect a patronus to form.

There’s nothing at first, but I say, “Look, there’s something,” and now there are wisps of silvery, smoky mist flowing from my fingertips. The wisps coalesce into some little critter who leaps to the ground behind a passing DC. I lose sight for a moment and start looking around to see where the patronus has gone.

“Look, he’s so cutie!” says Wife. I turn to find my patronus, a silvery, wispy little bunny, hopping around in the grass under the RV. He turns back to look toward us and his little nose twitches. He returns to nibbling at the grass.



Wife says a couple more things about how cute he is, and I notice that the ground is becoming insubstantial. I think that maybe I rushed around too much in this dream, and it soon ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #238: Patronus Interruptus

I'm standing in a busy hotel lobby thinking about how I need a mini-USB cable to charge my phone. I reach down and dig one out of my backpack but realize that I’ve actually just stolen it from this other guy crouched nearby. “Sorry about that, dude!” I say, clapping him on the back. He turns to me and smiles politely. He’s an Indian guy and I recognize him as a random guy from the shopping area where I met Wife for lunch earlier in the week. I realize that I’m dreaming.

I’m excited to be lucid and the overreaction starts pulling me out of the dream and into the void. I rub my hands together, determined not to lose the dream. My hands feel stiff and oddly angled and I start tumbling forward over and over. I keep at it, though, saying something like, “I am having this lucid dream!”

After a bit of a fight, the scene resolves itself into a room on the second story house with two windows. I move toward the first window, attempting to phase, but the window feels stiff and resistant. I move to the other window and attempt it again, once again having trouble. This irritates me and makes me stubborn, so I head right for the wall this time instead, saying out loud that “There’s nothing there, you know.” I cut cleanly through the wall this time and float down to the front yard.

I remember my intent to summon Dreamer and say, “[Dreamer], yeah, you’re just… you’re right over there!” and gesture at the front entrance of the house. Dreamer steps out from the shadow of the front entrance. She looks like herself apart from her hair being pink rather than purple. She’s wearing a purple jumper that looks like fleece.

We approach one another and I realize that something seems off about her personality. She seems not to have much personality at all yet but I feel relaxed about this and that if we keep talking she’ll get set right. I give her a peck on the bridge of her nose and she reacts with surprise, smiles, and runs off down the street. I jog along behind her, and start telling her about her appearance in a previous non-lucid from that night. “Hey, in this last dream, you’d written a book!”

Dreamer stops. The area we’re in looks abandoned and urban. Now she has a huge smile on her face and seems like herself. “Tell me about this book!”

“Oh, I almost forgot!” I say, and give her a hug. It’s nice and I remember how she used thoughts of our friendship to produce her patronus. I also remember her words of “encouragement” a few nights ago for my own patronus attempt:

“I wonder if your patronus will be a giant turd!”

Chuckling a little, I extend my left hand out while continuing the hug with my right arm. Dreamer and I are both watching my outstretched fingers with anticipation but when I try to shout, “Expecto patronum!” I do a choking gurgle instead. I get antsy and lose the dream.