The Fourth Factor

As usual, I find myself lucid in a dream without being able to remember how it happened. I am on a stage, a raised platform at one end of a tall, rectangular room with no windows and a door at the far end—picture a racquetball court and you’ll have a pretty good idea of the layout and size. The area where I am is lit while the area where the audience is sitting is darker, with some light shining in from the doorway.

I’m singing up here and simultaneously trying my hardest to get my bouzouki to show up so I can accompany myself on it. I look around the stage area periodically, whenever I get the chance, but it just doesn’t seem to be turning up. I notice a couple guys in the audience heading for the door. Annoyed, I will them back to their seats, but they seem to sense what I’m doing and bolt. Oh, well.

In the meantime, though, my efforts to materialize myself some accompaniment seem to have paid off. There is now an array of stringed and fretted instruments in the center of the stage, a dozen or so, leaning against stands or lying on chairs. Many of them are exotic instruments I don’t recognize, and unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a bouzouki among them. I settle for the closest match— some kind of lute, judging by the angled neck and larger body. Maybe I can intend it to have a string configuration I can work with. I pick it up and sit down in the chair it was on to play. I was singing “Greensleeves” before, and so I start again from the beginning, this time accompanying myself.

Alas, my love, you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously…

This is more like it. It seems to work best if I don’t focus too much on what I’m doing with my hands and let it take care of itself, like a spot of localized non-lucidity.

Partway through the song, though, I find myself in another room—there seems to be a small memory gap, but I’m guessing this was a false awakening I managed to identify as another dream straightaway. This room is very similar to the one I was just in—it could be the same one if not for the lack of a raised stage area and the fact that there is now a door where the opening was. It’s a metal door painted bright green.

The room is empty apart from a mat on the floor which is furnished like a bed. Looking at it stirs faint memories of sleepovers with friends—nice memories, ones I haven’t thought about in a long time. Much of the wooden floor is covered by a rug patterned with dragons—the Asian sort—in red, blue and green. As I look at it, they move and shift in mesmerizing ways, and the perspective flattens a little as the rug occupies my field of vision. I think to myself: I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming. I don’t want to get so absorbed in it that I lose awareness.

I look away to consider the door and what might be beyond it. Thoughts come to me—memories, almost, if I took them more seriously—of rooms and people beyond. But that’s a rather serious-looking door.

I wake up.

(11.7.18)

Last night, I once again found myself lucid, once again without being entirely sure how it happened. It felt like the dream was close to an hour long, although it was technically two dreams since there was a brief awakening and reentry in the middle. Because it was so long and I spent the whole thing just exploring the house I found myself in and messing around, it wouldn’t make for very interesting reading, and so I’ll just include a few highlights of it.

-Finding a series of books entitled “More Than 21 Cats” on a bookshelf.

-Devoting more attention than usual to maintaining awareness and focus. My lucid dreams almost always end with no warning whatsoever, and while I used to consider this something I couldn’t do much about, I’ve been wondering lately whether preventative stabilization might help. This intention seems to have carried over, and as the dream was longer than any I’ve had for a while, I’d call it a success.

-Receiving a few gifts for no apparent reason from people who were around. I spent a good chunk of the dream opening them, resisting the urge to go off and do other things since it seemed like that would have been ungrateful, even if it was a dream.

-Moving a wardrobe with my mind. I extended my hand, interfacing with it on a mental level—if that makes sense—and then pulled. And then I pushed it back.

-Having the dream briefly interrupted by a message displayed over the scene as if it were a screen. It was a rather ominous message, but it seemed to have no immediate effect other than turning everything in the house green and shifting some of the furniture into new styles and/or positions. This may have been a direct result of moving the wardrobe as it happened shortly afterwards, and the last time I tried to control things in a lucid dream was also closely followed by something weird and threatening happening.

-Two more visits to my M--- basement, the first before the green shift, the second afterwards to see if anything had changed. It had: the second version had a closed door where the tunnel often is in dream versions of it, as well a sort of workshop behind the same wall, visible through a couple small windows.

-Lots of cats around, but probably less than 21.