Title taken from my favorite song, On the Wing by Owl City.
So I have an insane amount of crap to get done in the next two weeks. But I had to stop by and write this dream down, because it was awesome. This was essentially my first successful WILD. I only slept 5 hours last night (usually sleep 6.5-7.5), so I laid down for a nap when I had a spare moment - around 1:30 PM my time. I only had 25 minutes or so to sleep. My body has been really tense lately, so I focused on relaxing my muscles completely as I laid there. As I did, I noticed my body going relatively quickly into sleep paralysis. I let myself descend into the dream that followed. It was hazy and not super vivid, but it was definitely a dream and I was definitely lucid! I found myself falling until I was on a roller coaster with a very good friend of mine. It was a sunny day as well. This roller coaster was cool because I had some degree of control over where it went and what it did. We went through all sorts of environments. As we rode, there were these giant dinosaurs and snakes leaping up trying to eat us. One smaller theropod did successfully bite my arm, but since I had control, it had no effect on me and I really didn't feel any pain. They were all just part of the ride, in essence! For one portion, we reached an apex and then went backwards (sort of like Expedition Everest in Disney World, only steeper). I think music was playing, but I can't remember clearly. We even passed by a giant image of my friend in the air, and a factory filled with inventions! Unfortunately, I think I involuntarily moved or something, and woke up after that. D: However, I was able to get myself back into sleep paralysis for a few more minutes, and kept my eyes open this time. I stared at the light right above me (in the real world) and saw what looked like a squirrel sticking out of it, as though it were popping out of a hole on the ceiling. It looked around the room curiously. Reminding myself that it was just a hypnogogic hallucination, I attempted to change it with a limited degree of success. It turned into a few other mammals, then a man's face with a beard, then a lady. After that I woke myself up fully because my alarm was about to go off, and my roommate came in right then too. Freaking awesome! I need to try this WILD thing more often.
So I remembered two of my dreams last night. The first was non-lucid, unfortunately. The second was lucid! DANCING BANANA! First Dream: I had come back from some sort of shopping mall, and I had gotten some T-shirts. My parents had bought me some, and I had bought some myself. The coolest one was this one of a glow-in-the-dark abominable snowman. I know my parents think I'm too old for those, but I don't care. And I didn't care in the dream, either. ^^ Surprisingly enough, my parents actually thought it was cool too in the dream. That should've been a recognizable dreamsign, because they weren't acting normally, but I didn't get lucid. We were going to go to another really cool shopping mall - apparently, in this dream world my family and I are quite the shop till you drop people O_O - and I wanted to wear my new T-shirt. You have to understand that even IRL I am obsessed with T-shirts. I have at least fifty of them, no joke. Anyway, I wanted to wear the T-shirt because 1) it was new, and 2) it was glow in the dark, and we would be driving to this mall at night. So I wanted to see it glow. I was going to be late (as usual) so I grabbed my backpack on the way out the door. This backpack was supposed to have all my new T-shirts in it. I got in the car and looked through my backpack. It was this really cool, high-tech outdoors backpack that looked almost like a Camelbak. But I couldn't find the dang shirt. I searched a million times through all the pockets and found a ton of shirts, but not the one I was looking for. I asked my parents for help but they couldn't help me. It drove me insane. And I was as disappointed as heck. I wonder what this means. Trying to find something that you want really, really badly, and then not finding it....this could relate to my real life. Dream 2: LUCID! Well, not at first. I was at a park for my brother's cross country meet. The park was beautiful. It was covered in lush grass with some dirt trails, a few fallen branches littering the ground. There were beautiful white and gray tree trunks everywhere - they looked almost like aspen trunks, but without all those creepy knot things, and they were normal sized, not skinny like aspens. There was also a river. A group of us were standing, waiting for the runners to come by. We were all wearing sweatshirts and such because it was cold and foggy. Then we (somehow) found out that the river was going to flood, and we would have to get ourselves and our stuff out of there before it happened. In a large quantity of my dreams, I am able to fly. This was the case here as well. It's so vivid that when I was younger, I actually got confused and thought I could fly in real life too (thankfully, that didn't end up in injury!). I decided that I could both save myself and help save our gear by flying into the air, so I kicked off and flew my usual way - as though I was treading water with my feet, but in the air. I climbed a few feet into the air. I was next to my aunt, a few people I didn't know, and a tree trunk. That was right around where I realized that I can only fly in dreams; thus, I must be dreaming. Calmly but excitedly I continued to fly. I hovered in front of my aunt, who was wearing her ragnar relay sweatshirt, and told her, "Hey, do you know that this is a dream right now?" or something along those lines. I had read that dream characters are supposed to deny that, but I didn't think this would be the case with her, and I was right. She simply said something like, "Oh no, I didn't know that. Thanks for telling me," but didn't seem all that surprised. It was surprisingly hard to talk - I don't always talk in dreams, and it was hard to make my voice work for some reason. I think when I finally did force myself to talk, I actually made a sound out loud (sleep-talked). Unfortunately, shortly after that, I woke up. My next goal will be to try and stay asleep, because as of late I've been waking up shortly after attaining lucidity.