CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #262: Arcade Action

I’m walking through an arcade, heading somewhere but in no particular hurry. It’s a huge place with a very high ceiling and lots of cool-looking games. I come to one beat-em-up game that looks sort of interesting. It’s got a pair of joysticks (one for each player) and a “Kick” button. The “Kick” button looks sort of messed up and mashed to one side.

I notice an odd message flashing on the screen: “Press Kick to Start”. It looks like someone left a credit in this machine! I look around to see if the credit belong to anyone nearby. There’s a black guy in his late 40s walking by and I ask him whether this is his game. He seems confused by my question, so I turn back to the machine, and become lucid as I reflect on my good fortune.

I press “Kick” to start the game, slightly nervous that the dream won’t be stable if I play games. I start singing an impromptu song about dreams and video games (in my lucid dream voice, which is much much better than my waking life voice!)

The game begins and rather than a beat em up, it’s some kind of shooting gallery game where you have a little video game hand with a gun. The graphics look 8-bit, and there are these little circular targets that I’m supposed to be aiming at. When I move the joystick, the gun moves, and pressing kick makes the gun shoot. I miss a couple of times, and then hit a target, which shatters!



The shooting gallery attendant walks out and resets the targets. Unlike the rest of the game, she’s completely lifelike, a petite Asian woman with a medium build, probably in her late 20s. I do another round of shooting. Aiming the gun is kind of a pain, but I eventually shoot two more targets, and the attendant walks out to reset the targets.

I think about trying to change the game into a beat-em-up, but the attendant turns to face me. I see that she looks Thai or Cambodian, and her appearance is very vivid and attractive. She asks me…

Spoiler for Sexytime:

... whether I want to have sex with her. I have no idea how I’m supposed to do this, but sure, I'm interested! As sexytime commences, I find that my dream body’s able to be in two places at once; I’m both standing in the arcade playing the video game and living in the game and doing things with the shooting gallery attendant. (This goes on for about 90 rather action-packed seconds.)

Afterward, I emerge fully back into the video arcade and wonder whether I can play the game some more. The attendant looks toward me, seemingly ready to set up another round. As I’m messing with the controls, the attendant wanders off, leaving the shooting gallery in sort of a half-ready state. I mess a bit more with the game controls, but I’m feeling less tied into the dream, and pretty soon I’m awake.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #260: The Prancing Pied Piper

A false awakening takes me downstairs where I putter around for a bit doing silly "chores" like moving chairs around. Then I head back upstairs, totally focused on having a lucid dream when I “return to bed”. Just so that I’ll get in the right mindset, I do a nose pinch reality check and oh hey, check it out, I’m already having a lucid dream! I hold the nose pinch and start leaping and prancing about, waving my other hand in the air. I sing about lucid dreaming while I do this.

I head into my youngest son R’s room, but instead of R, I find my 5-year-old son E sleeping on his bed. “Daddy, what are you doing?” he asks getting out of bed.

I keep singing, prancing, nose-pinching, and waving one arm. I sing, “Lucid dream, lucid dream, lucid dreeeeee-eeeeeeam!” E laughs and says, “Daddyyy!” I think about returning to the master bedroom in the hopes of finding Wife and enjoying some sexytime. But those plans fall through when E gets out of bed, and starts following me around, prancing the same way that I am.

I reflect on the joy of being lucid and this emotion takes me to a desire to hear beautiful music. (I’d chained these feelings together using Dreamer’s goal memory technique.) This is in pursuit of Jenkees’ dare to do cool stuff to a lucid orchestral soundtrack. E and I go prancing into the master bedroom as I realize that I need to stop singing if I’m going to get a new soundtrack.

The lights are on in the bedroom and instead of me or Wife, my friend KS is lying in bed next to some blonde guy with surfer hair. KS gets out of bed and rubs her eyes like it’s the morning. I ignore her and surfer guy, instead phasing my face through the shutters so I can look out into the night. I start creating an orchestral soundtrack in my head.

It sounds nice, but I realize that I’m forcing every note manually and composing it as an act of will. I want it to emerge organically instead. Maybe if I go do something outside. I phase through the window and leap out into the night with a yell. As I’m preparing to take flight, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #254: Adobe

I’m driving through a city, looking for some place to park. My dream family is here with me -- a dark-haired woman is my wife, my young daughter is in a car seat in the back, and there’s maybe a 2nd child (a son?) as well. We’re exhausted and homeless, living out of our car. I pull into a parking space next to a hill and sleep for a while. A cop car pulls up soon, though, and we have to move on.

Now we’re driving down a dusty freeway that’s under construction. Workers wander back and forth, while a thick cloud of tan dust obscures my vision. I can barely see 30 feet in front of me and I’m really scared that I’m going to hit someone. A worker walks right in front of the car and I swerve, barely missing him. I’m so afraid that I’m going to kill somebody and I panic myself into…

… a false awakening. I believe that I’m anotherdreamer and that I need to write this dream down before I forget it. My surroundings are alien to me, though, and I’m feeling super lazy, way too tired to get out of bed to journal. Something seems odd, though, and I flow into…

… another false awakening as myself! :canislucidus: I still feel really tired and lazy, but this time since I’ve “really woken up”, I decide to do the right thing and journal. I grab my DJ and walk into the bathroom, but as I’m holding the DJ I notice that the journal isn’t as thick as it usually is. (I keep a pen jammed in it.) I try the nose pinch, blow through, and now I’m lucid. I walk back into the bedroom and my vision dims until I’m in the void.

I rub my hands together, recalling the idea to try a little singing the next time I’m in the void. I sing a line about how “this is a lucid dreeeeeeam” and my voice comes out like half-badass/half-joke rock like Tenacious D. After some more singing and hand-rubbing, my vision comes back and I’m in my bedroom closet. I walk back out to the window and try some air guitar. It’s lame at first, but after a few tries, I hear some distant chords of electric guitar that actually sound pretty good.

I look out through the bedroom window onto a nighttime desert scene. As far as I can see there are rows of adobe buildings lit by neon signs. It looks like fun, so I phase through the window and hulk-jump off the side of the house toward the buildings. I do some mid-air guitar playing during this jump, too, and kind of flail my legs around like I’m trying to do some kind of rock star jump thing. I land between one set of restaurants and buildings on a dusty street, then hop into the air again.

While I’m up in the air, I decide that I want to try summoning Dreamer to hang out at one of these places to talk and pig out on a bunch of dream food. Out loud I say, “Okay, I know we’re supposed to meet here…” and then “Don’t be late!” I nag. When I land, though, the DC waiting there is a woman I don’t recognize, tall and pale with short brown hair, a pierced nose, and multiple piercings on each ear. She starts speaking to me in this really caustic, unpleasant American accent, berating me about my guitar playing.

“Your guitar playing was all bullshit,” says the woman. “That wasn’t even you!” She walks up to me, continuing to scold and complain about my guitar playing, telling me that my playing sucked, etc. I find this pretty annoying but for some reason I don’t think to just leave.

I don’t find this DC appealing, but I decide to turn things around by saying, “There’s no need to be so weird about it. If you wanted to have sex with me, you should have just asked.” As I say this, she takes on a different countenance, her hair darkening, her body growing a little shorter, a little more athletic-looking, and a softer, more attractive face, probably mixed-race. She approaches me and we kiss. We awkwardly lose our balance and do this not-at-all sexy fall onto the road. I make an attempt at escalating things to sexytime, but my vision has faded out. There are a few more seconds of void-kissing before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #250: Open Your Eyes

There’s a long sequence where I help set up a first date between a male friend and the twin sister of a female friend. Proud of having helped, I wander off to a hallway adjacent to where they’re having their date. There’s an old lady here staring at a set of wall hooks and commenting about how she’s a lucid dreamer and always checks wall hooks “just in case she’s dreaming.”

Interesting idea, I say, and notice that the shape of the hooks keeps changing. I spot a wadded up piece of paper and decide to make it float, just to see. It takes some effort, but float it does, and now I’m lucid. I walk through a nearby door into a warehouse stacked with boxes, intending to encounter Dreamer here.

As soon as I enter the room, I see Dreamer carrying some huge, heavy-looking cardboard box. She seems to be doing grunt work for some kind of retail job and there’s a disagreeable-looking young woman behind her shouting at her to hurry up her work. Dreamer sees me and gives me an apologetic look as this supervisor hustles her along. I approach the pair of them and tell the supervisor, “She’s all done with her work now, isn’t she?” The supervisor seems to accept this and wanders away.

I grab Dreamer’s hand and we run as I babble to her about how this is all a lucid dream. We leave the way I came in, but now it’s a marble entrance hall. Then we’re out on a crowded street, people walking in either direction down the sidewalk and cars rolling up and down the street. I shout something bold to the dream world about how this is my dream and nobody’s going to cause me any trouble. A lot of the DCs stop and turn to me at this, and one of the cars veers off of the street and comes rolling toward us.

Dreamer and I leap onto the hood of the car, run along the top of it, and jump into the air as we reach the trunk. She hangs on as we take flight, wrapping her arms around my neck and left shoulder. I comment on how silly it was of me to start thinking about dreamworld hostility when everything had been absolutely fine. Fortunately, none of it feels like a big deal, and we say something about how it should sort itself out.

The flight’s a lot of fun but at some point I lose my sight. Dreamer says, “The dream is still here. Open your eyes.” I’m nervous about this, but I try it. For a second they feel like they’re glued shut and I think this has to be my real eyes opening. But a little more effort and they’re open! We’re high above the clouds now, and I do a hard dive back to earth, determined that this time everything will be easy and peaceful. I somehow hit the ground sooner than expected and faceplant in some grass. Dreamer seems to be gone now.

I feel the grass a bit with my hands, and it feels phony, like mini-golf grass. A couple of DCs I know from another dream pass by, greet me, and I follow them into a building, through halls into a glass-walled office on the 2nd story. Somehow it’s night outside. An easy-going guy named Gary (black dude, friendly, on the tall side) joins us and I incorrectly remember that the Task of the Month is to pull a prank on a DC! (Oops, this is one from a previous month! )

As a prank, I decide to pretend that the window is sucking me out into the night. I act scared and start shouting as I phase through, landing on the corner of a nearby section of roof. I complete the prank by humping the corner of the roof. The guys inside start laughing uncontrollably and I float down to an outdoor restaurant patio that’s just below.

I think about whether I’ve got a chance to encounter Dreamer again and think about doing either another task or whatever the heck I feel like. As I think this, a woman seated at one of the patio tables turns to face me, and it’s Dreamer! She’s wearing a dress and has long blond hair, but otherwise looks and seems like herself. I talk a bit about tasks, but again lose my vision.

In response to this, she starts singing a strange Australian song about “marching around” and tells me to try marching around myself. As I’m flailing about, I feel myself kick over a table or two and I hear some people shout in surprise. “See how silly that is?” she says. “Just open your eyes!” I have some trouble at first, but after a little encouragement, my eyes come open just fine and I’m still in the same scene. Dreamer runs up and gives me a big hug before we walk off together, talking again about what we should do next. We never get around to anything before the dream ends.

This is an interesting lucid that happened about 40 minutes or so after first falling asleep. These are very unusual for me! Also had a much more nightmarish start than most of my lucids.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #247: Happier!

I’m standing by my pool, which looks distressingly green and nasty. While I’m stressing out about how this happened, a large snake comes slithering out of the pool toward me. “Whoa, are you kidding me?” I shout, running a few feet away toward a stone wall that’s about eight feet high. I scramble up to the top before the snake can get me. I notice that this felt easier than it should have, and I become lucid.

I let go of the wall and float away, my feet rotating gently upward until I’m lying on my back, looking up at the sky. I’m in some kind of miniature canyon, and the green water is now just a calm pond rather than my pool. I fly down toward the only exit, which seems to lead into a cave.

The cave interior is well-lit but feels sinister. The walls are stained red as if they’re covered with blood and strange growls echo off of the walls. Further down the slope I see dim, hulking figures shambling through the fog. I think that they look like zombies. I remember that I want to summon Dreamer but I want to wait until the environment becomes more pleasant.

I walk further down the slope and a huge, crazed-looking man with a black beard charges at me, his hands outstretched for my throat. That’s not real, I think, and I feel only a dull impact as he passes through me. Out loud, I say to Dreamer, “I know you’re here with me. I’ll call you in soon.” (I still don't want to call her in while the dream's still going all horror show on me.)

Another crazed figure charges me, decayed flesh hanging off of his face. Yuck! Why is this dream trying to be so scary? I turn away, knownig that he’ll pass right through me, and he does. I emerge from the cave into a large tiled room that looks like an industrial kitchen. About a dozen or so zombies are in here, rising up from the floor, shambling forward, and then collapsing with a sigh into a heap of bones. Then the cycle begins again. It’s gruesome to look at and I really want to fix it.

I decide that the zombies and I are all going to sing together! I come up with some song where the chorus goes, “Happier! Happier! Happierrrrrrrr!!” I belt it out with all I’ve got, and the zombies join in with me. Each cycle they look more and more normal, until after about 30-40 seconds, all of the zombies are now blond guys wearing shades, suits, and sporting 80s looking haircuts.

I keep singing with these guys for a while, really enjoying the turnaround of this dream. I realize that I should think about other goals, and as I’m making my way into the next room, the dream thins out and fades.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #245: The Third Arm

I’m sitting next to Wife at a little craft table, both of us working on our laptops. I don’t know what she’s doing, but I seem to be writing some code for the game. My iPod is laying on the desk next to me, and I try to cue up some music on it. I swipe and poke randomly at the screen, and a song starts playing. Horrifyingly, the performer in the song is me! I’m braying out some horrible-sounding song that’s a cross between “Tribute” and just random squawking.

I desperately stab at the screen to try to make this stop. Now some British synth-pop is playing instead, much better. I note how strange the screen appears, and I remember to look for the dream. I stand up, and find that both Wife and the craft table appear to have vanished. I remember my intention to summon Dreamer and attempt the bonus Task of the Month (to find and play a musical instrument that doesn’t exist in waking life.)

For some reason, I have this very strong belief that the dream is taking place in my childhood home and that it’s completely empty. I affirm that Dreamer is already here in the room with me but I don’t believe it. I walk from room to room, saying things like, “[Dreamer], you’re right around the corner…” but never quite believing it.

I look down at my hands and say, “[Dreamer], you’re walking right beside me.” As I say this, a third arm extends right out of my chest, lining up its palm with my own palms. The upper part of the arm is covered by the sleeve of a purple polo shirt. I wonder whether this is Dreamer’s arm…? The purple sleeve seems really promising, but the arm kinda has a man-hand that looks more like mine. I think about what I can do with this to complete the summon, but can’t quite figure anything out before the arm vanishes.

I proceed into the den, saying out loud again that I’m expecting to find “[Dreamer]” here (using her waking life name.) I say something about her being “purple”, and expect to see her. As I turn my gaze around the room, I spy a purple director’s chair in the corner, but no Dreamer sitting in it.

Again I expect to see “purple” Dreamer, but instead I summon a purple trampoline, leaned up against the wall! And now look, there’s a purple wall hanging over one of the windows. I peer through the window, seeing only darkness beyond. I feel like there’s no certain dreamworld beyond this house right now, and even though I consider the idea of leaving, I feel nervous about trying this.

Maybe I just need to try calling her “Dreamer” instead of using her waking life name. I try this for a while, too, but I’m having a terrible time shaking this idea that the house is empty. I sense that I’ve let myself get stuck and that I should be able to think my way out of this. I call out a few more times, noting that I’ve actually had quite a bit of dream time. I worry that I should have done more with the third arm or that cool-looking purple trampoline. It isn’t long before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #202: Hoodie

I’m crossing a dark street, wearing a hoodie, sneaking around, and trying to keep a low profile. Three tough-looking young thugs seem to notice me and start walking in my direction. I turn away, not sure that I’ve been spotted, and draw my hoodie further over my head. As I’m doing this, I realize that this has to be a dream.

Somehow the hoodie is badly constricting my vision to the point where I’m now just looking out through a tiny little tunnel. I look behind me and only one of the thugs is still there, but now he’s really coming for me. I start walking away, trying to gather my wits well enough to ignore him.

My vision keeps getting smaller and smaller, which annoys me and stresses me out. To my surprise, the thug starts singing, and his voice is deep, rich, and melodious. He repeatedly sings: “This ain’t the way my game goes…”

He’s right up on me now, so I turn toward him and force-push him off. He makes a sound like “Whuf!” and seems to fly backward just as the last of my vision shrinks to the void. I feel myself falling forward to where the street should be, but I go through, and after a moment of strange acceleration downward, I’m awake.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #198: The Egg

I’m standing in a sparse building that looks like a cleared-out convenience store. Wife’s standing about fifteen feet away, singing expressively to the room. I’m behind a high countertop staring with little comprehension at a strange deck of cards, wondering how I’m supposed to play with them. The thought of dreaming crosses my mind and I become lucid.

Slightly taken aback at the plunge into lucidity, I try to remember April’s Task of the Month. The actual task is to look inside an Easter egg, but I remember it as “give an egg to a DC”.

I walk up to Wife, reach behind my back, and say, “Hey, [Wife]! Here’s an egg.” I produce a plain white egg and place it into her left hand, feeling smugly satisfied at this “flawless execution”. Wife stops singing and glares at me, slightly shaking her head. She looks pissed and her expression seems to ask me What the hell are you doing?

Then with one swift motion, she smashes the egg all over her right shoulder. A gush of yolk and snotty-looking egg white flows down her arm. After another couple seconds of staring daggers at me, she turns her attention away, smiles, and returns to singing.

I return to my spot behind the counter, curious again about the playing cards. They’re now face down in three separate piles. I turn a few over, but the symbols are indecipherable to me.

Giving up on this, I wander into an adjacent room. It looks like a small basement with one high window along the wall. There’s also a wide hole near the top of one wall that looks like I could crawl through. I begin hoisting myself up to explore it, but the dream ends.

This LD was the second of two from the morning of 9/17/2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #148: Musical Travels

I have a false awakening early morning on a couch in a room that looks like a basement. Wife's sitting nearby. I'm unhappy to get up but there's something I need to be doing, so I follow her out into the hallway of an office building. Through the windows I see that it's still dark out. Some guy with glasses and a shaved head is dressed for work and waves toward the parking lot at someone I can't see. I wonder how he's in such a good mood so early.

Wife convinces me that there's something I need to look for in the bathroom, so I go to find it. I walk down a long corridor and take a right through a narrow hallway filled with people. As I'm pushing my way through the crowd I sort of knock this one guy to the ground. Rather than apologize, I hurry away, hoping he didn't see me do it. (Not nice at all, I know...)

Once inside the bathroom, I forget what I was looking for, so I wander out another door back into the hallway. There's a folksy country duet playing over unseen speakers, an older man and woman singing sweetly about the life and love they've shared. I think how cool it would be if dreams could produce music like this... and a wave of suspicion makes me hit the nose pinch RC and I'm lucid.

I continue down the hallway to a fat guy standing behind a small desk that's stacked with literature. One of his hands is resting on the papers and I grab onto it, trying to bring extra vividness into the scene. He looks horrified by this and when I think about it a bit more, I don't feel too great about it myself, either. "Sorry about that," I say, continuing down the hall. I think about what I intended to do with this dream and remember the Task of the Month about going into the girls' locker room.

I follow several twists and turns in the hallway, each one leaving the hallways narrower than the last, all the while expecting that the next turn will lead me to the girls' locker room. Finally, I step through a door at the end of the hallway into a room that looks like some kind of really nicely-furnished barracks or dormitory. A double stairway encircles an elegant fountain and leads up to a room that stretches far into the distance, either wall lined with beds. There's a huge number of DCs here, all female, many of them in the beds and some just walking around.

I try to verbally insist that this is a women's locker room rather than a big dormitory, but somehow I get the idea to sing my intent. As I do this, the whole thing turns into this huge musical number that both me and the women in the dormitory are singing at the same time. It was sort of 80s-sounding, but an original song. If I had to pick a song, it was probably closest to Bonnie Tyler's "I Need a Hero". The whole thing was pretty awesome.

Most of the DCs are dancing while all of this is going on, with a few of them even doing these fancy handsprings over the beds. I can't remember many of the lines, but one of them was definitely something like

"It's the girls' locker room,
Where the lockers have bras and socks and stuff!"

I know that this isn't the locker room and as cool as this musical performance is, I still want to try to pull off a task. There's a cinderblock wall behind me, and I phase through it, winding up in the void. I rub my hands together then try to feel my way forward. There's someone else here with me in this void, a female presence. Rather than speaking, she begins to softly sing. Her voice is beautiful and echoes everywhere around me. She says something like, "I can only take this journey with you if you <something something...??>" (What was it? Wish I could remember this!)

In a moment I feel my body settling onto some soft dirt. I'm laying on my back and the singer, a woman in her mid-to-late twenties is also lying in the dirt a few feet away. Her ethnicity is difficult to guess but I feel like she might be some combination of Asian and Hispanic. We're in some kind of construction site near an unfinished building. To her right, maybe twenty feet away is a chain-link fence. Past that I see a spotlight glaring at us and lighting the area where we've landed. She starts to get to her feet and as I follow her lead, the dream ends.

Hit my longest lucid yet this morning! It felt like it might have gone 20 minutes. Very exciting! Go go Intro Class!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #10: The Horschwager Olympics (Early this morning)

I'm at home in the master bedroom and something tips me off that I'm having a dream. Fortunately, it's daytime but I still feel compelled to leave the house as quickly as I can. (I've been getting stuck in the first scene very often lately.) After having trouble getting out of my upstairs window last time, I decide to dash downstairs and try the front door.

The second floor is a perfect reconstruction of my house, seemingly down to the smallest details. I even have to fiddle with the baby gate to get downstairs. The ground floor, though, has changed into a hot, stifling gaggle of steam tunnels with no obvious exits.

I notice a mirror on the wall and check my reflection. I look like myself but with a pudgier face and feathered, rather flamboyant 90s-looking hair. (Still dashing, of course!)

I return to looking for an exit and spy an old-school cast iron stove against the wall. I see that it has a vent/chimney sticking out of the top that I imagine must lead to the outside. It's only a few inches in diameter but I decide that I can squeeze myself up it and make my escape via reverse Santa Claus.

I crawl through the oven and start willing my way up the vent. It's ultra-confining and hot to the point where I feel some mild pain on my skin during the trek upward. What a way to travel! Why didn't I take the mirror? I operate with a noticeably reduced IQ in my LDs, I'm afraid!

I finally emerge in daylight on a coastal city on a bright, clear morning. It's like a cross between San Francisco and Nice, France. Wife jogs past me and I jog after her through a bustle of dream characters.

As we run along, Wife hands me her iPod and tells me to listen. It's playing some catchy pop number with a female vocalist. It's not my style but it's got this great hook that I can't resist humming along to. As I hum, Wife and all of the other dream characters that we pass start singing as well. The sort of thing that only happens on cheesy television programs and my lucid dreams, I think.

Eventually, the road breaks away from the coast and Wife stops to rest. I decide to go off on my own and try to compete in the Olympics (recent goal.) I walk through the door of a nearby building, expecting to find the Olympics.

A greeter DC guides me into an enormous room that's a combination locker room and ice skating rink. I'm somewhat perturbed to find myself in the Winter Olympics but figure that I can change this later. I grab a duffel bag out of one of the lockers and carry it with me. A harried-looking receptionist and "E" (IWL friend) direct me to go to the second floor via elevator. I ask them what city this Olympics is taking place in. They respond that it is in "Horschwager" this year.

The elevators look dilapidated and out of service. (Doors hanging off loosely, bare shafts visible, etc.) I decide to take the stairs. The stairs, however, are a confusing maze of narrow bridges and snaking archways with sheer drop-offs all around. I wander this maze for a good while, reminding myself that "I'm in a lucid dream, about to compete in the Olympics" but the clock eventually runs out just as I reach a strange, glass-enclosed room. I wake up.