CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #243: Silent Lucidity

I’m hanging out with Dreamer in a carpeted den and we’re talking excitedly about how a group of us (Dreamer, Jenkees, anotherdreamer, and I) made audio recordings that make us sound like complete idiots. (This is a true waking life memory! I recorded myself using a special audio trick that Dreamer found which made me sound like a complete idiot. The others made their recordings overnight and Dreamer skyped me about this during WBTB.)

Nearby there’s a statue of a tall, naked, muscular woman striding forward while extending her arm toward the sky. The woman is wearing a basket across her lower back and there are three towel-like bundles in the basket. Dreamer tells me that these bundles are the “idiot” voice recordings and that they’ll be ready soon. Dreamer and I lay on the carpeted floor maybe ten feet apart, facing each other and propped up on an elbow. We talk for a while about various things, mostly related to dreaming. I consider the idea that I’m dreaming right now and yes, this is a dream!

I tell Dreamer that all of this is a dream and she smiles, calmly agreeing. We talk a little about the voice recordings, and then I tell her that I can’t remember my goals right now, but I’m content to just chat for a while. She asks me why I’m not wearing my SleepPhones to bed and I tell her that those are fleece and it still doesn’t feel cold enough. I tell her, “And you only know about the SleepPhones because this is a dream!” (Meaning that she knows I'm not wearing them.) She laughs.

I remember that I had a goal of facing a fear. Dreamer and I had recently discussed how we’re both very fearful about awkward silences with friends. I allow the conversation to pause. Dreamer seems to understand what I’m doing and her eyes flick once nervously to the left before locking back on to mine for good. I feel a sharp flutter of panic at first and I’m tempted to blah-blah-blah the moment away, but I resist it and maintain our eye contact. My hands knead the carpet to help keep the dream stable. After I’m past the initial fear, my mantra “Look for the dream” returns to me. Dreamer’s mouth turns up in a half smile as my fear gives way to calm.

After a while, I say, “[Jenkees] must be here, right? I really want to meet him!” Dreamer grins at this idea and agrees. We both stand up and I gesture toward the adjacent hallway, saying, “Ah look, [Jenkees] is even here right now!” A rather doughy, pasty guy who looks nothing like Jenkees walks through the door and joins us in the den.

I notice that he’s way too short. “[Jenkees], you’re supposed to be so much taller than this!” The guy smiles sheepishly and starts shrinking even more until he’s only waist height.

Dreamer and I laugh at how badly I’ve botched this summon. “Sorry, [Jenkees],” I say. “I’ll do better with this next time!”

Dreamer and I try to talk a bit more about dream goals, but it isn’t long before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #231: Fedoras and Flatulence

I wake up feeling disappointed that I didn’t manage to have a lucid dream. Well, too late for that -- Wife and the kids are up and getting ready and my folks are here too. I feel grumpy and sorry for myself, but I get started with the day. Lots of mundane stuff happens and eventually we all wind up sitting at a cafeteria table across from a pedestal.

The pedestal fascinates me. It has the vague outline of a statue on it, which will fade from looking fully physical to almost completely invisible. It’s a statue of Artemis, and I know that nobody can see it but me because I’m the only lucid dreamer in this whole place. As I’m staring at this statue, a brown-haired woman in her early 20s sits down in the chair next to me, a little closer than appropriate. She touches me on the shoulder flirtatiously and leans in. “Hi! What are we looking at?”

I feel uneasy about how close she’s getting but also attracted and flattered. I feel like I don’t know how much information I should reveal about being a lucid dreamer, so my answer is guarded: “That’s supposed to be a statue there.”

“Well, what do you see?” she asks.

The truth: “It’s a statue of Artemis. I can see it because I’m a lucid dreamer.”

“That’s amazing!” she says. She makes a few more comments about lucid dreaming and then stands up. Her inner thigh brushes my left hand as she gets up and I again get that mix of attraction and discomfort. She smiles. “You should call me if you ever want to talk to me about it.”

I think that I’d have no way to call her because I don’t have her phone number. I’m about to ask her what it is but stop when I realize how bad that would sound. This all feels strange to me now. I look to my right and my family isn’t here with me. It’s just me. I take the nose pinch reality check and I blow right through, becoming semi-lucid but just not completely convinced. .This feels so real, am I sure? I hit a second nose pinch and now I’m fully lucid.

I get up from the table and move into an adjacent room, remembering my intent to summon Dreamer. My go-to method has been transforming an existing DC into her, so I look around at the few dream characters wandering this scene and confidently grab the nearest one. It’s a short, pudgy Asian male, overall a really abysmal candidate for this transform into Dreamer. I want to be confident though so I go right ahead with trying to transform this dude.

I press my hands along his scalp, spreading Dreamer’s purple hair color along his scalp. He’s smiling and kind of chuckling at this, seeming to find it funny. The purple is coming out but whatever paint is coming out of my hands feels really clump and uneven. The guy’s scalp is kind of sweaty, too, and the purple paint even starts running down his face. His hair isn’t even half purpled before I get frustrated after a long time trying. Okay, maybe he looks too different, try changing the face. I start mashing on his face with my hands, trying to change his look into Dreamer. He seems to be getting kind of pissed at me for this and the whole thing just becomes awkward.

Okay, move on. I leave and walk into another room with a strange, gently wavy floor. I try the behind-the-back summon, narrating that “I feel Dreamer’s hand over here,” but I feel this doubt like I’m not doing things properly. I call out “[Dreamer]!” (using her real name) and vaguely hear a response, and I decide that she must be up ahead in some nearby room. I decide to use my old trick of demanding that the dream show me the way, and now when I call for Dreamer, a doorway glows with bright yellow light.

I continue moving through another series of 3-4 doors this way, demanding to be shown the way and the dream complying. I wind up in a large, cavernous room filled with DCs. There is a group of nuns near one side of the room that are dressed in unusual red habits. A large number of adults wander the room (more women than men) and close to the center of the room there’s a shallow pit where a large group of children are playing together. I ask the dream to show me where Dreamer is, but the glow effect always seems to be slightly out of view, frustrating me. I demand out loud that “Everybody point to where [Dreamer] is in this room.”

Every character in the scene turns toward a young, blond girl that’s playing in the pit. She’s about 6, her hair much shorter and lighter than I would have imagined, but I feel like this is her. I walk up to the child, who looks up at me with a goofy, slightly crooked-toothed smile. I place my hands on the sides of her head and say, “This is you, you’re [Dreamer].” As I say this, she grows to full height and now she looks completely like herself, apart from the fact that she has the little girl’s short, blond hair.

“Thank you for finding me!” she says. Dreamer puts her arms around my neck and we briefly hug. Almost immediately, all of the DCs in the room move toward, all of them smiling at her, greeting her, and wanting to interact with her. Some of them congratulate her. I stand by a few feet to the side, interested and amused. As each of the DCs greet her in turn, at one point a man comes up with a tiny fedora and placed it onto her head as if he’s crowning her.

The happy throng of DCs congregate around Dreamer as they all walk toward one of the room’s exits. I feel sad to see her leave the dream scene so early but all of this feels very natural to me, so I don’t resist it.

Once I find myself alone, I walk through another exit into an office scene with lots of people working at desks. It looks like we’re high up in a skyscraper. I make some mischief in here with telekinesis, throwing a plastic sign, tossing a desk, picking up one poor guy who’s just trying to get his work done. The office workers start seeming uncomfortable with my presence, so I look for an exit.

Off to the side is a platform with a waiting helicopter, so I climb aboard. Another DC tries to get on with us, and there’s a brief argument about who should get to come aboard. The pilot says (referring to me) “He can do whatever he wants,” and we take off. We fly over the city for a good while and I spy a few buildings that look reminiscent from spots in Breaking Bad. Eventually the helicopter hovers over a forest clearing near a building and I jump out. The helicopter flies off and I’m alone again.

I remember that I have a lucid dare from Dreamer that requires me to perform a Super Advanced Fart (one which is “very long, loud, and powerful”). At first I feel like this will be impossible. My body isn’t giving me “the signal” that anything can be conjured up. I know that this is a dream, though, so I convince myself that a bubble of pressure is forming in my stomach. Once that’s there, a good push sends me into a full eruption. The emerging fart is ultra loud and super powerful, lifting me gently into the air. It feels like there’s a hand or a platform under my butt lifting me upward. I wobble around unsteadily in the air, leaning left and right and bobbing a bit. It feels like I have a jet pack on.

I’d hoped to have enough propulsion to reach lower earth orbit, but I never get more than 15-20 feet off the ground. As the “event” ends, I settle back down to the ground. Dare achieved!

I’ve still got some dream left, so I decide to find Dreamer again. I ask the dream to show me where she is, and a door glows on a nearby building. I head for the door but before I reach it, I have a false awakening at the foot of a bed. Wife is lying on the bed, completely unclothed, writing on a notepad. I feel extreme sexual attraction and I curl up next to her. The moment that I kiss her neck, though, her clothes reappear. Then she shows me that she’s making a list of personality quirks that makes her good at Jeopardy questions. I’m still trying to figure out how to turn things frisky when my dad walks by on the way to the kitchen. The mood is officially ruined, so I get up for the day before waking up for real.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #222: The Australian Odyssey

I’m standing in line with my friends SC and MR along with some other people that I false remember as people from my past. I’m trying to introduce these “old friends” but it’s hopeless because I can’t even remember their names. Very embarrassing, and to my relief the line moves ahead and we walk into a large video arcade.

SC, MR, and I watch this one game for a while that’s a cross between a sandbox-style game, a racing game, and a platformer. I get confused after a while and wander to another part of the arcade, when some creep elbows me aside and then flicks me on the back. The creep stares at me as he walks by with a “what are you gonna do about it?” look. He’s a short little guy with a mustache. “You’re short,” I observe out loud.

This enrages him, and he charges at me, taking an unbelievably slow swing at my head. I push him gently aside and he falls to the floor. “Stop it,” I tell him. “I don’t want to get arrested.” I move away from him down a hallway but he chases me down and tries to hit me again. I scoop up his right ankle and he falls backward to the floor.

I say, “I’m not hurting you because I don’t think you can hurt me.” As I’m walking away I start doing some pondering out loud: “But… what if you try to hit me 5000 more times? Wouldn't all of that practice make you dangerous to me?” Convinced by the dream logic, I pick up a toddler-sized chair and say, “Next time, I’m going to hit you with this chair! In the face!” I shake the chair for emphasis. He ignores my warnings and again comes charging for me. I smash the chair into the center of his forehead and he crumples to the ground.

I walk off down the hall, hoping nobody saw me do that. Something about all this strikes me as completely crazy and I become lucid. I walk down a long hallway lined with school lockers, and at the end I find a dirt ramp leading downward. I follow the tunnel downward into a large temple built with big stone blocks. There are gaps in the stonework near the high ceiling and shafts of sunlight cut across the room from above.

It’s a beautiful place and I begin slowly flying around the room, overcome with joy to be lucid. “Fucking lucidity!” I say, feeling like I might cry with emotion. After flying around for a bit, I walk outside of the temple to find myself in a Venice-like city of canals. A few boats drift gently by.

I look back at the temple and see a large, golden statue of an angel sliding down a ramp from the ceiling to the door right in front of me. From somewhere a voice says, “Although we recognize Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we believe this church is powered by the Holy Spirit.” I get the sense that the voice is trying to explain what they use for electricity. After admiring the statue for a few moments, I step into one of the boats and set off.

It’s not long before I find myself at the edge of the city, heading out to sea. I get the feeling that I’m in Australia and the beauty of the story and the scenery eventually drain away my lucidity. Dreamer starts narrating: “Parts of Australia are dirty, polluted, and not as nice as you might think.” As she says this, I notice oily water lapping against the side of the boat.

I set sail away from the city, staying close to the shoreline, Dreamer narrating here and there. The water is clear and beautiful now. Dreamer says that I’m trying to find my way to the islands of the “Hawthorne Formation” but I don’t know my way there. The sea is calm and I feel peaceful and relaxed. Eventually my boat lands on a sandy beach where Noah Bennet from Heroes is working at a carpentry table. I think he’s my dad and that he’s counting on me making this journey to the Hawthorne Formation to get help for my mom and sister. (100% false memories and characters.)

“Son,” he says, “draw me a map of where you think you are.” I draw a globe on a piece of plywood and sketch out Australia. I think it looks pretty good until I see all of the lines of longitude converging in its center. I realize that I’ve put Australia where Antarctica is supposed to go and feel really embarrassed.

Noah Bennet sighs. “Here’s the Hawthorne Formation,” he says, drawing a series of 4 islands off the southwestern coast of Australia.” He draws an arrow pointing northeast into the middle of these islands.

I thank him and return to the boat. “Good luck, son,” he says, and the dream fades.