lucid

I was having some kind of confusing dream about being at a luxurious opera house with my dad and singing. I was up on the balcony, obscured by an odd, curving screen so that the audience couldn't see me and realize that I was the one singing (in the dream I was already a famous singer, and we wanted them to think the person singing was someone else).

Dad was being irritating and peeking around the screen corner trying to "encourage" me. As he kept doing this, I got more and more annoyed and started to miss whole lines of lyrics, until suddenly I grabbed the flimsy screen and threw it at him, completely giving up on my singing responsibilities. As his insincere smile became replaced by a more genuine mix of anger and his trademark disgust, I climbed onto the balcony railing and prepared to throw myself off it. My reasoning was, somehow, that falling to my death was the only way to cap off the entire experience.

That said, although I made an attempt to tip and fall onto my head, I couldn't overcome my instincts to fall feetfirst. I somehow landed safely on the seats below as though they were a flat surface, and began to walk away from the whole thing, when I was struck by the incredibly obvious thought that "This whole thing is a dream!"

For the first time in months, I was actually, truly lucid.

I quickly remembered what I'd need to do for spellbee's dreaming contest. First, a reality check: Still walking away from the site of my failed suicide, I pinched my nose and breathed regardless, enjoying the sensation, the confirmation that I was really dreaming. Next... stabilization. The dream wasn't really unstable, but I said "Stabilize!" out loud anyway, accompanying the words with a sort of calming gesture.

I found myself looking at a wall, unsure of what unrealistic things I ought to do next but certain that I could do anything. Still, I didn't really have ideas for what to do next.

I was still striding swiftly away from the theater as I remembered my three-step task. First: basic summoning. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a pear, mindful of step two: eat the thing I summoned. I bit into it, somewhat surprised that the summoning had worked so easily. It really did seem to be a pear, and appropriately juicy. After eating it down to the core, I tossed it aside. Step three was to ask advice from dream characters, and there were a few of them passing me in a group. It would've been easy, but... somehow the idea of asking advice from strangers didn't sit well with me. Because that's what I saw them as: strangers, not inventions of my own head. I think I was beginning to lose my lucidity a little here.

The dream began to take back over, but I had enough clarity of mind to attempt one last dreaming competition-related task. I wanted to go big: perhaps mass TK, something I'd done in a dream before. I wanted to pick up a house, but the dream and my lucidity were beginning to become a bit flimsy. Rather than pick up the house, I believe I picked up a toilet inside it and caused it to rattle around within.

After that I lost my lucidity. When I woke up, I almost forgot that I'd even had a lucid dream. Managed to commit 20 minutes to writing all this out and now I'm going Back To Bed.

So after a few days of failing to pay attention to my dream journal due to finals stress + traveling stress + attempting to recover from this stress, I unexpectedly had a lucid nightmare last night. Good times!

Dream
The basic premise was that I was watching a scary R-rated movie. Or maybe I was just hearing about it from friends who actually were into that kinda thing. I knew for sure that this wasn't something I wanted to watch.

The movie's plot went something like: a random doe in the forest was given a choice of two plants by a forest god, one of which would unleash a disease that would kill all but one creature, and the other that would... maybe not do that? Maybe kill everyone and leave not even a single survivor?

The doe, being a doe of average deer intelligence, happened to eat the first one, and thereby unleashed the plague upon herself, her nearby deer husband, and the world!!! Smashcut to the plague infecting college kids.

The plague was pretty much tailored to be horror movie material, killing indiscriminately and in various horrible ways (like one dude's eyes fell out of his face cuz of his eye sockets warping and that was pretty average), and it was basically just a bunch of friends watching each other die. So it was a lot like the typical horror/serial killer story, where characters are killed off one by one and the focus is on whoever is currently dying or whoever is in danger of dying next.

True to the forest god's promise, there was one girl who, though she was infected, wasn't torn apart from the inside by the disease the way the others were. And the dream/movie got increasingly ridiculous with its plot until the last girl was flying a small biplane for some reason under the direction of her professor and with the oversight of one of her few surviving friends, and I have zero idea how this could possibly have helped anything but maybe my brain was just out of ideas at that point.

Next, the dream/movie started over, except now I was very much in it or watching it or basically put in a position where I couldn't avoid it. It felt like I was right in there with everyone else, but there was no danger of me being infected, so it didn't exactly feel like I was part of their world. I was just trying not to watch people die despite it happening right in front of me.

I think what triggered my lucidity was the whole "being in a horrible situation and wanting to escape" thing, because next I knew I was lucid and trying to figure out what I could do about this awful dream. I was already on a rooftop by that point, now recognizing my surroundings as the 1319 area, and everything was creepy and dark and people were still dying below me (sidenote: lately I don't even remember physically flying up to rooftops when I'm lucid? it's like my brain takes that bit for granted and it just kinda gets cut out, which sucks. I used to struggle with flying and not know whether or not I could make it, but lately I don't even remember it...). Trying to fix the darkness, I said something like, "It's bright out! It's daytime!" not expecting this to work. To my surprise, light appeared instantly, followed by a glorious sunrise that bathed the street in orange. Soon it really was daytime. I was quite surprised that this had worked instantly and effortlessly, but though it made things a tiny bit cheerier the horror story was still going on in the streets below.

I think the movie played out the same way as before, and I hadn't become lucid enough to try to find a way to wake up, so pretty much the main cool thing that happened was me magically making daytime happen. Nice!

Today's dreamsign is: wanting to escape the situation being stuck in a time loop.

so this happened out of nowhere, which is cool

Dream
I don't know what inspired it or even what came before. The first thing I remember at this point is thinking that this was probably a dream, and then taking the time to confirm it with a quick nose pinch check.

Then, in the dream, I was close by DC, so I decided to go roam the cool marble buildings in that area. And, on the spot, I came up with a rad new way of flying where... basically, I spoke to the ground, and a column of hot air would rise and lift me, and I would basically become a flying squirrel. I mean, I didn't physically have the flaps between my limbs, but I would fly as if I did. Not sure what inspired THAT ability, but it was actually very effective.

So I used that to infiltrate some marble building. At some point some dude showed up like he was my faithful companion on my journey or somethin', but I kinda had no idea who he was in the dream OR in waking life. At any rate, I just kind of accepted that he was my buddy.

At this point I was close to the roof of this building, still inside it, and I came to a part where wherever I was (maybe in the vents or something?) opened into a back room whose floor was at the building's ground level. Wayyy down there, I could see a security guard getting into a jeep and about to drive off, and I kiiiiind of wanted to fly down there and take the jeep for myself, but I wasn't sure I wouldn't just splat on the floor if I tried jumping or flying down. So I went another way, which took me to a large garage-looking sort of area, with a whole array of jeeps, including a sparkly pink one that I took. I think my companion might've taken another one. There was a sort of driveway leading out, and presumably right off the edge of the building. I decided to go for it, wanting to know how it feels to be in a car plummeting off the edge of a building: would I be able to jump out and fly to safety? Would I be stuck in it, and would it somehow land safely if I was?

But the dream had other ideas, so when I drove up the driveway it merely opened onto a ground-level street made of pale cobblestone. It was a sunny day, the houses around were adorable, it was all very nice. I drove off, sort of no longer lucid, and I'm not sure what happened next.

I woke up, realized that I'd had a lucid dream, and tried to get myself out of bed to write it down. When that didn't work, I tried to go back over the dream to cement it in my memory, only to find that I was inserting new things into the dream that hadn't actually happened, as if I were still half-dreaming. And then I fell back asleep and had another somewhat lucid dream.

Dream
This one had much the same flavor as the other dream, with some sneaking around on government rooftops, only this time I was trying to assassinate a visiting queen. It wasn't too difficult; I pretty much just had to drop through a skylight, and maybe it had the same "falling assassination" thing that Dishonored has, because just dropping through the skylight seemed to cause her death somehow. So then I would climb back out and try to avoid the inevitable guards freaking out.

At some point, this dream got interrupted by another, where I was at Stone Harbor, on the beach. The waves were (as usual) a bit strong for my tastes, so I was standing back by a ... I don't know what these are called, architecturally, but it was basically a hallway with column-framed openings facing the beach. I was standing against the back wall with my sister, and I must've looked away from the waves for a bit, because when I looked back there was a half-tsunami looming over the people in the water and on the beach. I watched in astonishment and horror as it crashed down, then turned to my sister and said "I would've died if I'd been there!" I think I had the idea that everyone else in the water could handle that sort of thing, but I specifically would've straight-up died due to my pitiful lack of wave-surviving ability. The wave rushed all the way up the beach with such force that it slapped into the back wall, though by that time it was only about ankle height. The next couple waves were like that, too, and at some point I became aware of the fact that there were small children in the water who were probably screwed. At the same time, I had this wondering impression that they could handle being tumbled by a massive wave, thanks to their baby fat, which, in my mind, rendered them virtually invincible.

There was some bit about us leaving Stone Harbor, and dad being there and being annoying, and then the dream switched back to my being a queen-assassinator, which isn't a word but I like it anyway. I was doing more marble rooftop roaming, this time with my brother and a vague sense of lucidity. I decided to give something a try, one of my would-be dream powers: the blink move from Dishonored. Essentially, the idea was that I raise my hand and cause a glowing rune sort of thing to appear on the ground some distance away. Then, when I released it, I would be teleported directly to where the rune was.

It worked incredibly well, so that marks the first time I've successfully teleported in a dream. I lined up a rune behind a patrolling guard, teleported to it, and then tried to take him down... and sort of failed. He kept going, not noticing my presence (somehow), and I teleported behind him again. This time I think it worked. By now we were in a small shed type place on the roof, where the guard had intended to access some sort of guard-only device for whatever reason (I know at SOME point, guards trying to sound the alarm had been some sort of issue, but it's hard to remember).

My brother was now nowhere to be seen, as a second, far more burly security guard rushed in and saw me. Since I'd been spotted, it seemed that my only hope was to fight this guy, who was an odd mixture of muscle, fat, and sheer, intimidating size. He was also wearing a dark blue wife beater, and the impression I got from him was that he was some sort of higher-up unbeholden to the rules or a dress code, a guy with the power to follow his own inclinations, a somewhat loose cannon who was nevertheless respected. I took him on, only to realize very shortly that I was going to lose. Somehow running away didn't occur to me, so I got captured instead.

I was then the subject of some experimentation conducted by Mr Blue Wife Beater, or at least, my character was. At this point the dream got a little confused. There was the sense that I could break out whenever I wanted due to my overwhelming lucid power (which apparently didn't come in handy at all in hand-to-hand combat), but was choosing not to. Makes sense, I'm something of a masochist. At the same time, I was no longer my queen-assassinator character; she was a blue-eyed blonde, beautiful in a sort of anime way. The dream apparently couldn't make up its mind what was happening, because it showed her, third-person, being provoked by Mr Blue Wife Beater and trying to control her anger and fear, and then in a hospital bed, missing an arm and an eye. I think I woke up shortly after.

Dreams falling apart shortly before I wake up is a trend. I wonder if it's falling apart because I'm close to waking up, or if encountering difficulties in story-telling can cause the dream to end?

yoooo I got lucky

Dream
So I dreamed I was a community college student again, and I would take the bus to get there and there was another student on the bus who'd done somethin' to me that I wanted revenge for. And I had this plan like yo, if I could beat this guy up with no consequences... was like I was hoping that soon I would be in a dream where I could beat him up, but then I was like yo lemme check and I did a nose-pinch check and realized I was already dreaming!

So then I stood in the middle of the bus and raised my arms, willing the bus to lift into the air, and it somewhat reluctantly did, so I started talking excitedly to encourage it. That helped a lot, and pretty soon the bus was like, forty feet off the ground. Think my plan was to smash it on the ground, but I'm not sure how I thought that was gonna work out because one, there were a bunch of other people on the bus who had nothing to do with this guy, and two, I was still on the bus. But then I think instead I got sidetracked and forgot all about the dude because the fact that I was lucid in a dream was more interesting than this made-up lil dream character. That said, I don't remember what happened next. Good times tho. Glad I still got my same old lucid powers.

I do not have infinity time so I'll try to make this quick, this dream leading up to the lucid part was plenty long but also wildly uninteresting so I'll skip ahead~

Fragments before this:
Going to some kind of spa where the family hangs out fairly often?
Mom watching American Idol in the 1319 house. On the show, the guy on-stage throws another person at a third person in the audience, scoring a bulls-eye. Afterwards they figure out how he did it as part of his act, and demonstrate by throwing a sort of paralyzed and complaining Russian supermodel the same distance after the show. I'm right there with them as though I went through the TV to get there, but afterwards I return. Then the lucid events occur.

Lucid #11 - Justice
So I dreamed I was living back in the 1319 house, and there was a family down the street, a mother, father, and a boy. Then the boy got in trouble for stealing a ten cent comic book from a store, and his dad shot him in the forehead and killed him. I heard about this and decided to shoot the dad in the head with his own gun, so I went to confront him, taking a ten dollar bill as well. I think I figured the guy's wife might need the money.

I approach the guy on the street in broad daylight with the $10 fluttering outside my pocket in my left hand, and his gun in my right hand (both clearly visible). His wife is standing close by. I demand to know how much the kid stole. The dad sees the $10 I have and mutters something about it having been "zero dollars", which shocks me. I growl something like "You killed your son over nothing" and raise the gun to shoot the guy in the head with it. Pulling the trigger does nothing; I pull back on the top of it to reload, not losing any momentum (the gun feels like a nerf gun with a spring inside). The dad, meanwhile, isn't trying to defend himself or grab for the gun, only backing away. I try again to shoot him but again, nothing happens, and I give up on the murder attempt.

I think we keep talking, or at least communicating our mutual hatred, and then I turn to leave. He grabs my shoulder to spin me back but I just sort of turn my body to slide out of it, and now we're walking side by side, still talking but perhaps not saying anything. I'm not in the least afraid of him.

The guy keeps pace with me as I walk down the street to home, and I'm trying to figure out how to dispense justice on him. I walk inside and leave him and his wife on the front yard. I realize Iron Man's number is in my phone and I decide to call him up and have him deal with it, but I start to get confused as to whether this is real life or a dream. I get the impression that I got the number in a dream, but that now that I'm "awake" it won't work, or it'll be something realistic like a promotion for a movie and he'll just be some guy in a suit that doesn't work. Then the belief that it's a dream seems to win over, and I decide to try calling the number while anticipating that it will work, and the real Iron Man will show up and beat this guy up for me. I try calling the number (listed in my phone as "Iron Man #8"), but it turns out to be a movie promotion thing, and I hang up on an automated message.

I'm still half-convinced it's a dream, although the clarity of the dream, and also for some reason the fact that it's broad daylight, seem to be arguing otherwise. I ignore the apparent facts and decide that since it's a dream, I should be able to take justice into my own hands, do it myself... I'm now standing on our porch looking down at him with his wife next to me, and I reach out to psychically choke him. It works; he reaches for his throat with a look of frozen surprise as he starts to make choking noises. I try to lift him into the air, but at first can't figure out how. Then I sort of look away or block out my vision for a moment while I feel myself lifting him into the air, and next thing he's perhaps 20 feet in the air, maybe 25.

I hold him there for a moment and then slam him to his knees on the ground. I lift him up again, and slam him down again, wondering whether if I keep doing this, it'll break his knees or something like that. I apparently can't stomach that and stop choking him, but I DO take off his left hand somehow. He starts screaming. Now random people are walking by, not seeming to care what I'm doing. Three of them go into the apartment in the basement of the 1319 house; one of them makes eye contact with me. He has a sort of determined expression, though currently afraid, and I wonder whether the three of them are buddies of the guy I'm currently torturing, whether they'll be a problem later.

I release the guy, and he starts to stumble away, apparently with working legs but missing his left hand. Then I realize, once he's about two or three houses away, that he's holding a fairly large stick of dynamite. I yell something after him like, "Dynamite? Really? You want to play rough? Alright!" and open my fingers with my hand pointed at his dynamite (even though there's a random stranger walking past the guy at that point). It explodes, a rather small explosion for dynamite that size, engulfing his hand and not much else. When the smoke clears, his hand is gone. He stares down at the stump and frayed sleeve for a moment before starting to scream again.

I walk back inside, and explain to his wife that she can stay here. She seems perfectly happy to hear that. I say that because of the threat her husband poses, she should sleep on the second floor instead of the first floor, on the off chance that he figures out how to set dynamite without any hands. Shortly after that, I wake up.

-

WELL THAT WAS PRETTY VIOLENT.

ugghhhh I finally managed to figure out how to get some sleep... I was somehow becoming convinced that actually getting deep, restful sleep was impossible, or that I needed to do something strange and bizarrely specific like only blanket my midriff and leave my legs/upper torso exposed, or idk it was very strange. Finally I started forcing myself to remember that falling asleep is not some kind of voodoo magic, which was apparently all I needed to get SOME sleep, though probably not enough. I'll sleep more after this.

buuuuuuut I had another lucid dream which is strange. no idea why being sick is making me a natural lucid dreamer for now. tbh i just have no idea what's going on and I wanna stop being sick so I can think clearly again :U

Lucid #10 - Lucid Roaming
so the dream started off with Mom and Ben and I going to some homeschooling thing in some mother's basement. thinking on it now, it was a lot like another dream I've had; sort of nostalgic. first we were walking along this forest road, then we got to the lady's house and headed into the basement, and saw how she had two kitchens (one on the first floor and one in the basement) and some dogs and junk.

We sat down on a couch in the basement, facing the kitchen, and I started wanting to talk and Ben started shushing me. This happened two or three times; I had the feeling I was definitely being the one in the wrong, and Ben was being the responsible one, but it still irked me enough that I got up off the couch and left. Seconds later, it became apparent that this was a dream, and I left the house feeling a sort of joyful mix of apology towards Ben for being so hard to handle, and un-repentance, since having a lucid dream was much more important.

I tried to remember what it was I wanted to do in a dream, and recalled that I wanted to try out a more efficient flying technique than repeated flapping. But I couldn't quite remember what technique I wanted to use instead and lifted into the air IronMan style, not realizing I was using the wrong technique. But it was still a lot of fun.

I started wandering, looking for something interesting, and came across a large house. It had an exposed second floor with baddies in it, and I spent some time trying to summon a gun, but my hand remained empty. Nevertheless, I flew up and attacked the three of em. I ended up pinning down this one punk girl and bein' kind of a creeper. Huh.

Been pretty sick since yesterday. Just the flu but I'm pretty miserable. I couldn't sleep very well for a while last night, but once I'd taken some food and ibuprofen at 3 AM I was able to get about four hours of sleep, maybe? On top of the three I spent tossing and turning in a fever-induced mental fog. Soyeh.

But on the bright side I had a pretty cool dream. Still kinda off-the-wall 'cause of me being sick I think, but it was also in HD! Exciting~

Dream - ¿¿???/ im sick
so let's see here, I'd fallen asleep in relative semi-comfort and it felt like I went right into a dream, which was cool 'cause normally I'm not aware of when a dream starts. It was about this one Indian religious teacher guy who was on a frickin' long giant zip line thing. I'm not sure what they're called but basically it was these wires suspended and (unrealistically) curving in mid-air, and these car things, sort of like ferris wheel cars, were hung on 'em and just drifted down the wires thanks to gravity. I was either in the car with him or maybe I was him? It was sort of hard to tell.

Anyway I was pretty much lucid right then, and thinking (as myself) about how in real life I'd only been on something like this once, and how this had to be a dream. And then I just spent the rest of the ride looking around at everything and saying "Wow" out loud over and over. It was a very bright, sunny day, and we were a ridiculous distance up in the air; the trees below us were like frickin lil bushes. So I was pretty much just takin' in a spectacular amount of sunlit scenery. And I was totally amazed by how detailed and realistic everything was, and happy that I was able to have this experience again~ :3

and yeah then there was other non-lucid stuff about Dad and I goin' to get food after he met me at the zip line landing platform and I totes remember seeing and eating Fruit Loops and I could taste 'em and everything yayyy

uh man it's like 9:42 PM let's see
I wrote some out earlier but then had to restart google chrome gggg but I can still remember some...

Dream - Can't Get Out
So in this one let's seee first of all my bro and I were chilling in this big old movie theater complex, and we befriended this one kid in a wheelchair and borrowed something from him, like maybe a handheld game thing. And then later we realized we needed to give it back to him, but by that time he was chilling by the concession stand next to the stairs, and we were on the second floor directly overhead (also next to the stairs), and for WHATEVER reason we decided to try to lower it through a hole in the floor to him, rather than just going down the stairs. Think there was also an elevator by them stairs. But nah. Too convenient I guess. Too easy.

So we tried to lower it to him using a jumprope but I'm pretty sure that didn't work. Like, maybe there wasn't even a hole in the floor to begin with. Crazy stuff.

Next bit was me alone in the theater complex still, in some back area that was super well decorated. Looked like the living space for some rich retired guy; open spaces, fireplace with a mantel, gold stuff and nice furniture all around, and like, random stuff displayed on stands like it was a museum or art exhibit or somethin'.

I think I was looking for something. The mood was sort of heading towards horror-ish, though I'm not sure how. And then the rich retired guy walked in behind me. He was pretty friendly, really. Quite welcoming. I guess we were sort of buddies or on the same side or whatever.

So then I hopped in an elevator and started heading down to the basement, but had a brief moment of lucidity when I realized that this was a dream and that I really did NOT want to go down to the basement. There was going to be something terrible down there. That's how basements are, in horror games, and this dream had at some point become a nightmare. By now I was huddled in the corner of the elevator, facing the door, fighting my fear.

I started trying to figure out how to wake up. I tried to feel my IWL body, asleep in my bed, but there was absolutely no sign of it. I couldn't perceive it even slightly. It really was just me in the dream, as far as my mind was concerned. I think I abandoned the attempt to feel my body and instead tried to just "wake up", but that didn't work either and soon the lucidity died.

The elevator reached the basement and the doors opened to reveal darkness, and a menacing basement sort of atmosphere; but where I was expecting some monster to appear, the confident retired man walked up, in a white suit that defied the darkness around him. He stepped into the elevator, and we headed back upstairs.

I don't remember what happened next. I think we ended up back in the main part of the theater, and I might have woken up soon after.

Fragment: Me walking along, hugging myself, then realizing that the people around me can see my body language.

Hmm fell back asleep and had a nicer sort of a lucid, although I'm tempted to call it low-level lucidity since I was so immersed in the dream and yet using dream powers... but the exploration of dream powers was super nice so 8>

Lucid #7 - Condensed Milk Run
Finally a dream with a straightforward title. Guess that means it's one of the more rational ones I've had...

... OR IS IT the dream starts out with my mom, dad, sister, sister's boyfriend, and some stranger and I all eating cake in the 1319 backyard together. The cake itself is so big it's essentially the dinner table, and we're all sitting around it at various spots just eating it with forks.

Unfortunately it's not the best cake ever; whoever made it definitely made an excellent attempt, but we still find fault with it. So Dad tells me to go up the street to the CVS and get some condensed milk.

I'm still sort of lucid so I'm happy to oblige so I can have a chance to try out dream powers; I fly overtop our house, land on the sidewalk, and start to make my way up the street.

I start experimenting with a new way to fly: I hop up in the air, and then sort of skim forward somehow. I'm really moving, and the speed feels great, but as I'm going forward I'm also drifting back down to the ground as well, and finally I land. I decide to try again, this time thinking "What if there was less gravity?" ... now my initial leap carries me a fair bit higher, and I can really feel the weightlessness; I start skimming forward, just as fast as before, and make it all the way up the street. I end up passing the CVS and skid to a stop when I land; it takes me probably like 10 feet to come to a complete stop, and it feels great.

(I love this kind of flying. I think it's the same I did in my dream where I was part of the alien-dinosaur resistance hehehe, I forgot to try to revisit it though. Puttin' that on my dream powers list.)

So I enter the CVS and a clerk helps me find the condensed milk; it's in a fridge just standing by itself against the end of an aisle. He's super helpful and takes out the condensed milk to show it to me. There're two types in a bottle with a wrapper: half of it is mixed with lemon juice, the other half is just regular condensed milk.

By this time I've realized I don't have money to pay for it. Dad completely failed to give me any cash. For a moment, part of my mind reminds me that it's a dream, I can do whatever I want, I could take the condensed milk and leave, nobody would be able to stop me—but that train of thought is utterly overruled by a different decision-maker in my brain. I choose instead to use the psychic poke technique, where I stick two fingers into someone's mind and concentrate on what I want them to believe or do.

So I try it on him, trying to give him the idea that he should just give me the condensed milk for free, as a gift. He seems perturbed by this train of thought. It seems he's pretty dedicated to his job, because the idea doesn't stick the first time. Also, there're four or five people who all seem intent on getting help from him, and they're all just sort of standing by in a semi-circle around him. I have to move somebody out of the way to get up front, close by him again, and I try the psychic poke again.

This time he's slightly more convinced, but before giving the milk to me he decides to do something in the back of the store.

I don't think I was lucid by this time. I remember Mom showing up in the store to tell me about a game I was supposed to play with Ben in the back of the store.

I head back there, go through a door and head up some stairs, and suddenly I'm playing a video game. It's like the video game's world was existing in a 3D space, and I just walked into it and was suddenly playing it.

It was some sort of Final Fantasy fighting game. The characters I remembered were Sephiroth (who I played as/was for a short time, and having that frickin' long sword was awesome), and Cloud/Zack. When you chose to play as Cloud, initially Zack would show up lugging a young, comatose Cloud over his shoulder. I was like "I thought I chose Cloud" but yeah Zack was just there to drop him off. And Cloud would get better and stuff. Like, grow up and turn into normal, Advent Children Cloud. Good times.

-

I've gotten into a good habit of thinking about my dream while I'm still waking up, just sort of automatically musing on it and trying to remember it. This time, it took me sort of a while to realize that the dream I was musing on was new, and not just a continuation of the one I'd had a couple hours back. So that was cool.

sleepyyy

This one was lucid but Imma be relatively brief writing it out 'cause first of all it was long as crap and secondly it was sort of
... off.

But y'know I did get SOME things done so let's see here.

Lucid #6 - Various Dream Powers Aw Yee
The whole dream was centered in 1319 but with a great deal of frickin' random, off-the-wall weirdness and so many different things happening so quickly that it was just incredibly difficult to keep track. For example, there was

- a segment about my brother and I back when we were young/living in 1319/being homeschooled
- a segment where a few others and I were fighting something that could totally bean us with these green spiky projectiles that we had to throw back, and our best hope was the white-haired girl with the tweezers who could pick them up before they exploded
- a short bit afterward where I had to fix the swollen lumps that I'd gotten from a couple projectile blows (and it was super icky, don't ask)
- a segment where I and some others encountered a sort of tribe living in a nearby 1319 house
- a segment where we were shipping pizzas "downstream" but there was no stream
- a segment where an anthropomorphic cat was trying to do the right thing but just ended up getting totally screwed over but continued to cling to her hopefulness (had to do with the tribe as well)
- something about me having some nasty, jaded little comrade, and for some reason we were quite close by necessity,

and then I guess I finally got lucid. Not that weird stuff stopped happening, because weird stuff continued to happen almost immediately.

I was standing on the 1319 back porch at night, and there'd been snow recently. It looked pretty great. I once again had the realization that I was dreaming, though there didn't seem to be any conscious rationalization involved. It was like, once even the flicker of "I could be dreaming" appeared in my head, it slid naturally into place because it made perfect sense. Also things were, once again, a bit fuzzy and dark and "dreamish".

So I went down the stairs and crossed the alley to the houses back there so I could fly up onto one. As I did that I had the stupidest spontaneous thought I've probably ever had in my life, which was something like "Demons, help me fly", and I noticed that my flaps (because I always fly by using my arms as wings) were now more powerful. This lasted about three flaps and fifteen feet, and then there was a green flash and I was boosted another five feet, and it felt like I hit my head on something. Strange. I had by this time grown fully uncomfortable with my earlier train of thought, and proceeded to fly the rest of the way "myself". >:U

So then I was on a snow-covered roof just kinda chillin', not sure what to do. Kept heading in that direction with a (maybe false) memory of how the street in that direction would look, and stumbled upon a parade with a literally larger-than-life Beyonce as the main performer AND the person the parade was for. So I guess it was sort of a moving Beyonce concert. There were colorful shops and junk to either side of the street, plenty of neon lights creating a festive air. Woo.

I remembered one of my dream power intentions, walked up behind a dude in the parade, stuck two fingers into his mind and convinced him I was an opponent. At this point either a second version of him jumped out from in front of him or from inside him or maybe it was just some dude who'd been directly in front of him and looked a lot like him who'd accidentally got my transmission. Either way he whirled to face me and pulled out a black handgun, and I had a good time wrestling it from him before (I think) shooting him with it and then immediately losing track of it. Nobody around us paid the slightest attention.

Beyonce had by this time managed to climb up onto the glass display of a nearby open-air sort of shop selling baked goods (with, I noted, a fairly liberal amount of dead bugs around them, as though the shop had had to fix an infestation), and I had decided to try my two-finger mind-control technique again (or idk it needs a FAR better name). I walked up to a dude who was sort of off to the side staring longingly at her from a distance, stuck two fingers in his mind, and told him he was in love with her. He immediately moved forward, climbed up onto the display case, and started making out with her. She was cool with it. It was like it was all part of the show.

Not sure what happened then. I DO recall at one point thinking that my lucid dreams last pretty long (a guy in the Skype Dream Views chat was hearing about another lucid I'd had and said 10 minutes was a pretty good length for a lucid and some part of my brain was like "OH YEAH WELL I'll show you grrrr" or whatever), or that I stay lucid pretty long. I even looked over at my bedside clock for confirmation (in the dream) and saw that it was 5:something AM, which apparently meant that an hour had passed since I'd become lucid, which I'm pretty sure meant that I definitively have no ability to track time in a dream. Bummer.

Then there was a bit where I crawled through a bunch of objects. I wanted to get back to the 1319 house and apparently the best way to do that was by going through a junk-filled tunnel that would open out back onto the alley. It being filled with junk, though, I decided to try phasing through it.

At this point, as though to distance myself from the discomfort of crawling along blind through a bunch of objects (I was ghosting through 'em but still) with the uncomfortable though that a random can might get lodged in my kidney, I switched to a sort of third person perspective. It was almost like the sequence wasn't really happening because I seemed to just be sort of imagining and narrating it. But it was, because next thing I'd phased through basically half a house and was back on the outside, in the alley. Neato.

Think I lost some lucidity; then there was more stuff about my small, unwholesome companion, and then some stuff about super cute kids, and then I woke up. Like seriously I can't be bothered to try to write this all out, especially since my mindset during the whole dream was sort of off and strange and not all there. So oh well. 8>

woke up naturally after this dream and spent some time just lying in bed half-awake before remembering that oh snap I was lucid in this one whaaaat

Lucid #5 Aw Yee
So it started out with me just doing my usual dream thing of picking out various items from a large department store, except this time I tried to leave without paying with everything in my shopping cart, and managed to walk outside (nighttime) before a friendly employee had to lay down the law for me. She said that if I were going to do that, there was a certain price limit I'd need to adhere to, so I had to put back some things and then I could take the rest and pay it back later. I realized that I didn't actually need a bunch of Christmas decorations (mostly it was a lot of that fake green tree stuff you can put everywhere, and a wreath) and decided that those would be the thing to put back.

As I was carrying an armful of fake green tree stuff back through the store, I passed the stuffed animal section, where a kid and his dad were having some sort of strange, stuffed-animal-related argument. I recognized that my dad and I had, in fact, had that same argument before (false memory) and was quite tempted to say as much to the kid on my second pass, now unburdened of weird fake green tree stuff. But I ultimately decided not to. Oh well.

I went back outside, where the employee was waiting with a receipt for the rest of my things. Taking and looking over the receipt, I was quite disappointed to realize that yes, I would still have to eventually pay for all this. Just not at that exact moment.

The next thing I remember is spontaneously becoming lucid simply because it felt like a dream. No reality check, no examining of my surroundings, not even an "aha" moment of "maybe this is actually a dream". My mindset simply swapped right on over to "lucid", so quickly and completely that all I remember is picking out "shooting a concussive blast from my palm" as my dream task of the moment and hopping right to it.

So then I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to shoot a concussive blast from my palm, which was... hard to figure out...? (I'm currently tempted to say "difficult" or "impossible" but that's a bad idea.) The second floor of the department store had a wall of windows which I stood in front of, right arm out, palm forward, left arm gripping and stabilizing my right, and then there was a whole lot of "how do" (meanwhile, a store employee looked on in alarm). I imagined the blast shooting out. I tried to summon the energy from within my arm. I imagined that perhaps my right upper arm might glow, and it may have. I thought about the way I was positioning my arms, and how it felt. (One thing I DIDN'T try was a voice command.) I'm pretty sure I never actually succeeded, though one window did end up broken somehow, and I have a vague-yet-pleasant memory of flying through it to the rooftop of another building in the night. Yay <3 (sorry, store employee)

I also remember trying to stabilize the dream by rubbing my hands together. Like the realization that I was lucid, it felt spontaneous and seemed to come from nowhere. Normally my dream ideas are linked back to the DreamViews forums somehow, like "oh right, I should rub my hands together to stabilize *mental image of the dream views home page*," or something like that. But this time, again, the idea seemed to have no real source of generation. I just tried rubbing my hands together and paying attention to how it felt.

Then I made the mistake of putting my rubbing hands up by my ear to listen to the sound of it, which felt so distinctly real that I started to think I was in bed, starting to move around and wake myself up. At that point I lost my conscious lucidity, though I think my state still qualified as low-level-lucidity. FAIL STABILIZATION. NICE TRY DAWG.

Oh and since it feeling real made me LESS lucid, my guess is that this sort of lucidity was the spontaneous kind that comes from the dream feeling like a dream. Things can be fuzzier in dreams, darker, and the whole dream can have a strong "dreamy" feel that can be picked up on. Which is what happened in this case, and I assume what happens to Tman and Flotsam.

ANYWAY. The last part of the dream was about some physical fight I had with my sister's boyfriend in order to protect my mom. Mom was, I believe, starting to get up there in years (and now had her own little granny apartment), and my sister's boyfriend N had decided to arm himself with sharp implements and barricade himself in the 1319 front office. I'm not sure how that counted as a threat to my mom. I think I saw him as a threat, and since he wasn't a threat to me (it being a dream, still), it translated into him being a threat to my mom, so I couldn't simply leave him alone. I sought him out, armed with sharp implements of my own, though I'm not sure which ones. I know for sure he had a box cutter, I suppose because memories involving pain are easier to remember. (THAT'S CALLED FORESHADOWING)

hhhehehehe so anyway I'm getting sweaty palms remembering this but let's see here.* There was some sort of room divider a short space away from the door, which forced me to go right. He was trying to take advantage of this somehow, I think by blocking my way into the open area of the room, and it became a struggle. This mainly consisted of me trying to stab/slice him, and him trying to stab/slice me (which was of much greater concern to me), and I ended up mostly on the defensive. There were a great deal of "too-close-for-comfort" moments. The only thing preventing the box cutter from box cutting me was my continuous and determined preventive efforts, so it was a largely bloodless struggle at first.

Then my determination finally failed, for a moment. We were locked up, both my implements blocked and me managing to block one of his, but the box cutter was free and I couldn't rally the mental strength to stop it from cutting into my left hand. I was simply mentally exhausted by all my previous efforts and how useless it felt. The pain was quite strong and highly unpleasant and all sorts of other descriptive adjectives, but I think on the whole it was a sort of relief to get it over with after a great deal of worry and anticipation. Which says a lot about my mindset in the dream at that point. Like it was a scripted event. Weird.

Anyway after that I pulled myself together and "defeated" him somehow, though not by severely injuring or killing him. I'm not sure what happened. But next thing we were simply talking, both still armed, and mom was in the room with us, almost as a sort of referee to keep us from fighting again, with her presence. At some point he admitted that his plan, had he been unable to find something sharp, had been to use an ultrafine point red sharpie and scribble madly on my skin, to try to give the impression (in the heat of the moment) that I was bleeding. Not the worst plan ever, I suppose. I said something like "Psychological warfare?" in response to this, and he was like yeah.

There was something else about a Metro train, potentially because those are rad. I don't remember anything else about it, though.

*not that this is a particularly "bad" or traumatizing memory. just quite intense I suppose. I don't know, I wouldn't call it bad.

back to sleeeeep~

LUCID SUCCESSSSSS just in time for the end of the competition (#17)
Imma try extra hard to get the dream timing figured out AHH I feel like my recall is so bad now, I keep losing important pieces of the dreams and the timing gets so confused whyyyyy
To be fair I've never tried to recall dreams every morning. So that might be why. But this is a LUCID DREAM. WHY WOULD I FORGET THE DETAILS OF SOMETHING LIKE THAT ...
is my recall getting worse or am I just gradually becoming more demanding...
you know what, looking back I'm pretty sure it's that I'm being more demanding. I want to have PERFECT RECALL and when I don't I act like that's some huge problem. And my poor brain's just trying its best every time, probably, and I'm just running it into the ground because nothing's ever good enough. so I think I'll just accept what happens and not worry too much about somehow forcing my brain to have non-stop perfect recall.
step one for having a less stressful liiiiiiife~
plus I just feel like crap, maybe I'm getting sick or something. Huh.

*some caffeine later*

expect some tense changes at random 'cause it took me forever to write this...

Dream 1 - At the Beach (Lucid #3)
Alright, I remember for sure this is the first dream I had.

So I think the family's driving to this beach and we pull up, in the dream I was like "aha, this is [Spring Whatever Beach Name from IWL]!" like we'd been here before and it was familiar, but now I'm realizing it was just some place my brain made up. Weird.

Whatever let's call it Spring Beach, we hop out and it's this sweet, Stone Harbory sort of place, with white sand and hotels by the shore. Very nice.

We head into the hotel and get situated. We're all in some room that reminds me of a college dorm or something, and I'm off near the back, closer to the window while the rest of the family's having a grand old time taking pictures. Of each other. In a way that wasn't weird at all. *blacks out memories* Then Ben wandered over to me asking why I was chilling over there and I was like, eh. Just 'cause.

Next, mom and dad had wandered off, and Jess and Ben and I were kinda meandering the hotel because that's the best thing to do when you're at a hotel with your siblings, and then it just starts storming like crazy. I look out this large window to the right, and see the white beach with the waves crashing and all that good stuff, and lighting going from the sky to the sea, looks pretty amazing. And then, probably because I'm anticipating when the lightning stops, it just kind of keeps going, just lightning pretty much all the time. Scary. I start thinking about how close the hotel is to the ocean, and how oceanside storms are crazy or whatever.

Then I look left and there's FLOODWATER WASHING UP AGAINST THE WINDOW. AND RISING. I'm like WHAT. I think this is about when I did a reality check and became lucid, but since I can't truly remember I ain't countin' the reality check. I just know I became lucid at some point.

Uhhh I don't knowwww why there's a hole in my memory at this point, but I believe I wandered outside and I remember quite clearly attempting to summon matches (like I'd been planning since I picked my three-step tasks for Scionox's: pass hand through object, because I'd never done it before, pull matches out of my pocket, and then make a fire and control it). I reached into my pocket (which was very small and tight because jeans) and dug around for a sec, experiencing a brief moment of doubt before discovering a box of matches and pulling them out.

I opened them and took a match out, and was considering striking it ... but I was standing in grass in front of a forest, and some old forest guardian was freaking out because he thought I was going to burn the place down, so I just dropped it on the ground instead.

HMMM I think I woke up. I also know for a fact that I flew around at times, but the memories are hard to fit anywhere.

Oh well I suppose I'll give up on this one.

Dream 2 - FA (Lucid #4)
So I'm lying in bed face-down thinking that I'm going to fall asleep soon, when I feel this crazy wave of vibrations go through my body. It basically felt like, uh, vibrating. I was going to get all fancy and describe it but I can't totally sum it up. Felt familiar though, for some reason. I experience a bit of fear that this might be another SP episode and for a moment it almost seems that way, but then I realize I can move? Or something? GAHHH MEMORYYYYY

Anyway I didn't really get what was going on, was lying still again, then felt a second wave of those crazy vibrations and had the idea that this was my dream body. Did a reality check, success, sat up in bed and looked out the window. Crazy. The blinds were raised or gone and looking outside I see my front yard, except it's not my front yard because it's far more fancy. It looks amazing, actually. Much better than my REAL front yard...

I want to get outside, so I start tracing a hole in the glass. Once I complete a circuit, the enclosed glass just falls out and basically vanishes. I do this a few times, then stop and try to fit through and fail, so I keep doin' it. Eventually I manage to fit through and drop to the ground.

There's a road leading away from my house, which quickly becomes a city street that branches left and right (visual aid: T). I proceed and go right, then left into a sort of alley that opens up into a nice behind-a-restaurant eating area. There are two black cows chillin', and I decide to try to use my arm cannon on them, but it fails. Maybe I just can't make up my mind what exactly is supposed to happen? Then some dude runs up behind me panicking because I look like I'm about to blast his cows. Apparently he came all the way from the countryside chasing these dumb cows.

Think I had another FA, but this time when I did the nose pinch check, my IWL nose kinda sniffled and I realized I was close to waking up. I focused on immersing myself in the dream until I felt that I was fairly distant from my IWL body (sniffling stopped), and then proceededdd...

It was raining and I was thinking about how I'd already done match summoning, and now I had to do elemental manipulation. I decided to try to control the rain, and reached out towards a car going down the street to my right, trying to imagine the rain somehow converging to stop it. Not much happened.

Next I decided to try simply moving cars around (the idea being that it was metal manipulation somehow), but that failed as well. Then I saw a giant firetruck and stepped out in front of it, holding out my hand and imagining it coming to a stop, which it did—but I figured it was because the drivers hadn't wanted to run me over. The firetruck was so large that I only came up to its grill; the window the drivers were looking out of was well over my head.

I reached out, put my fingers under the grill somewhere, and started lifting, still thinking about metal manipulation, and the firetruck suddenly became as light as anything, and the whole thing lifted off the ground. I tried to throw it, but it being so light it sort of drifted backward through the air unsatisfactorily, instead of crashing to the ground with an earth-shattering rumble. I'm not sure it ever really hit the ground, but it did arc somewhat.

I was going for some kind of elemental manipulation but yes, under the stress of the moment I performed mass-TK instead.

And then there was one last bit where I was at some kind of theater and tried to clear a space on the wall for a portal, moving bulletins and junk out of the way only to find more under them. Finally I'd cleared a semi-workable space and drew a tall rectangle on the wall, four sides with four colors, and then tried to imagine Stone Harbor on the other side. It didn't quiiite work...

And uhh one last fragment where I was by my window again, but this time there was some ... video-game, anime sort of girl sitting to my left, wearing odd clothes (black but with bright colorful highlights as well), never seen her before. I demonstrated my ability to drop out pieces of the windowpane by drawing two parallel lines at the same time, horizontally right across the window, at which point a wide, flat rectangle dropped out.

I'm callin' that two dreams 'cause who knows. Could've been more, maybe less, so I'm working with the middle. HMMM.

Hehe I woke up like "aw I didn't dream anything" and then it all came back to me in a flash yo. Hmm I liked this oonee...
Let's see, I want another color for low-level lucidity, 'cause I do neato things when I'm like that and I wanna encourage it. Uhhmm.
Testing.

The Dream In Question (Lucid #2)
Yo okay this is gonna be loooooong. Also I know I'm forgetting some details but the durned things won't line up so screwit.

Basically I dreamed humanity was in some vast war with these frickin' space dinosaurs. The space dinosaurs also had those tan, humanoid Star Wars droids on their side, which they'd built and programmed. I was the son of the general who led the entire human resistance (though I think at the start of the dream I either was, or wanted to be, just another regular soldier). We were positioned behind two massive walls, with a fairly large gap between, occupied by shells of former buildings on either side of a vast street, very post-apocalyptic; the dinos would pour over the first wall and we'd light 'em up as best we could to prevent them from reaching the second wall. Directly behind that wall was the general's (and my) house, which also functioned as a sort of meeting place for the media and government. My dad kept them all close as a necessary part of the war effort. He had all his bases covered, it seemed.

So that day there were two waves of dinosaur attacks I think. Oh also I could fly, despite not being particularly lucid. I guess I was sort of lucid but not enough to plan anything or go for dream goals; just enough to try to manipulate the dream a bit and perform unrealistic shenanigans such as flight. Good times. (Flying wasn't a normal thing in the dream either, it was just how I chose to get around.)

So the first attack I remember flyin' my way towards the middle of the map, and oh man it was great flying. I remember drifting down like it was slow motion, skidding a few feet along the ground despite my light landing, and the physics just felt really really GOOD. I don't even know what the deal was but it was amazing. I'm gonna figure out how to fly like that it felt fantastic.

Then I presumably did some dinosaur fighting, though I can't recall the details, which is a real bummer. I DO remember the way the dinosaurs would approach: the frickin' pterodactyls gliding in ranks overhead, the brachiosauri looming in the distance with smaller dinos in the lead. Fairly picturesque, I just wish the quality had been a bit better. But a striking image all the same.

Hmmm we held off that attack fairly well. The next one though, I started behind the wall again, but this time I couldn't find a weapon. I made my way to the building on the far side of the first wall. There were media peeps in there I think, despite it being a shell, walls and windows blasted out; I guess that was where they shot footage from. Also had weapons right under 'em on a lower floor. I tried to get a sniper rifle from there (I remember another soldier making off with one) but I couldn't seem to get one. I thought it might've been because I was the general's son.

Notwithstanding this problem I headed out into the battle and probably accomplished just absolutely nothing at all. Absolute zip. Then the general noticed I was there (close by the first wall) and pointed out a droid that was about to cross the finish line tower-defense-style. I tried to sprint after the thing so I could take it out, I was gonna snap its skinny neck with one hand (dream powerrrzzzz) but I couldn't even catch up to the dang thing before it blooped through the finish line. Then the general pointed out ANOTHER one, a bit closer but still just a bit too far away (how had these singles droids gotten through everything?). I sprinted after it, and this time looked away from it so I could sort of catch up to it, like sneak up on it more quickly than I could if I were staring at it the whole time (dreeeaaam poweerrrzzz), but I still couldn't catch up. The general was equal parts angry and disappointed, but I was pretty mad at him myself. I told him if he'd let me have a gun, I would've been able to stop them easily. He didn't deny it, so mystery solved.

Then it was nighttime and we'd all retired to the house behind the wall. The general was keeping tabs on the media and strengthening his ties to the government, making sure he had their support and all that. Meanwhile I was wandering around, went into a bathroom and stumbled upon a girl taking a bubble bath. I didn't leave right away, 'cause I was looking for somethin' (and you'll never know what it was), and meanwhile she gave some speech about how our sense of privacy was, in these times, only an illusion. Something to do with the changes the general had put in place. I could sort of see her point but I didn't feel like dwelling on it too long.

I wandered into another bathroom, which looked like the one from my IWL house (2nd floor), except right by the lightswitch was a little screen, maybe 6 inches across, that was blaring some sort of propaganda. Not exactly the untruthful kind, though. It was showing footage of three unarmed soldiers being ripped apart, screaming, by a couple of the droids (who seemed to be having a good time). Lotta blood and guts. The lesson was "these dinosaur guys sure are the worst." I watched it rather morosely, though for me the main connection was "hm, that doesn't seem far removed from how humans used to treat each other back in the earlier wars." I was kinda cynical about that stuff. Part of it was probably just good ol' teenage rebellion against my parent (pretty sure I only had the one).

And speaking of that guy, he started makin' really awful coughing sounds and presumably dying right then and there. While a few people attended to him, I wandered outside (he was in good hands and I was a terrible person). Now I was in the front yard of the house I currently live in IWL, at night.

Just then my IWL parents pulled up in the street, lookin' a bit wild-eyed for some reason. By this time I had somehow grasped it was a dream (no reality check though) and had decided to forge my own path. Also said somethin' like "I'm dreaming" just to confirm.

I took off flying up to the roofs across the street (in the background my parents took off again) and explored a bit. Then I sensed that the house below me belonged to some meditation specialist, and I decided to try to dig my way through the roof to get inside. At my touch, the roof split into 2x1 giant foam lego blocks, which divided into even smaller blocks upon further handling. These shenanigans may have distracted me from my goal a little, as I found myself digging through several layers with no sign of getting through her presumably-3-foot-thick ceiling. I'm pretty sure I woke up soon after.

Not the most lucid I've ever been (it didn't occur to me to perform powers from the competition) but it still feels pretty good, yo. Hasn't even been two weeks since I started this journal and I'm well on my way, hohohoho *evil laughter*.

WELL WELL WELL.

Lucid Dream #1
Note: I've had lucid dreams before, but only a few. I'm starting at 1 anyway.

It started off with a false awakening, which are rare for me.

I wake up in the 1319 house (J room) and start getting ready for my morning (not even remotely realistic for a false awakening). The first thing I do is take a bath in the 2nd floor bathroom, and it's sort of strange and scary; the water is oddly dark and near both edges lengthways (how 2 describe ??) I can feel an uneven edge in the floor, some sort of precipice, little rough bits that threaten to cut me. I can't see anything, though. I'm also wondering whether a bath is really how I start my mornings, wouldn't a shower be faster? Don't I usually shower? Or I suppose it's usually a bath. My mentality seems to be present-day, despite the surroundings.

I may have spent a brief amount of time getting ready in my (J) room post-bath, but the next thing I remember is sitting next to Ben (he's wearing a grey t-shirt) in the living room, on the blue couch. There are some hints towards present-day reality, such as the fancy computers he and I are using, BLEHEHH. I'll write this part later it's too frickin' sad. (My brother was home over spring break and yesterday he headed back on a train so yeah he's one of my favorite people ever)

*SIIIGH* so at first I'm just brushing skin foundation over someone else's artwork in a big notebook, I'm not sure why. They used some sort of wet clay marker or something, so the skin foundation sticks to the art but not the paper. I'm havin' a good time just brushin' it everywhere even though on some level idk if I'm just hurting their art. The feeling was pretty cool though, very realistic. Nice detail.

Then I'm showing Ben some kinda audiovisual webcomic, or more that I'm just letting it play on my computer and he looks over sometimes. I don't remember the storyline very well, although I do remember it was kinda urban and at one point four guys were in a car, and the driver guy suddenly passed out or something, maybe he pulled over first, they were kinda just waiting for him to wake up. One of 'em gets out and takes a phone call from their boss, tells him the situation, gets his orders, and then leans down, sticks his gun in the car, and shoots the driver. The perspective was from outside the car so you couldn't see anything violent.

Lastly... ;-; I said something to Ben like "did you miss your train?" in a sort of awkward teasing voice, and he looked at me like I was crazy and said no, he didn't. I said "So you're in [college] right now?", and he said yes. This all came as sort of a shock. I considered the implications of this, that I must have been talking to him over Steam while interacting with a hologram, except that explanation wasn't a way to cling to reality; it was more that, because this was a dream, that sort of thing was possible. I did the nose-plug reality check, found I could breathe, and fully realized I was dreaming. (sry for tense change)

I get up from the couch and say "I'm dreaming" out loud just to confirm it. Everything feels very real. I walk towards the front door; I'm standing in the living room doorway when I hear Ben on the couch behind me. I look back half-expecting him to have changed somehow (something I'm worried about in dreams, you'll see later with the lifeguards), but instead he's completely gone. Dad's grey blanket is piled up where I'd just been sitting.

I focus on trying to get outside. My first thought is to phase through the glass; it seems like glass would be the easiest thing to phase through, but I find myself pressing my hands up against it instead. I'm sort of frustrated by this. I try for a bit longer, and then I decide to simply break the glass.

I slam it with my fist and manage to break it somewhat. The door is actually split into two sections of glass, top and bottom, separated by a wooden bar piece. I figure I'll have to break both, though the logic isn't all there, and continue punching the glass and broken edges (sustaining no pain or damage). At some point, because it's not really working either, I stand back, hold out my right arm, sort of brace it by putting my left hand on top, and try to summon some sort of concussive blast to shatter all the glass, thinking of Mega Man or perhaps Kadaj with his materia. Nothing happens. Then I try breaking the lower section of the glass with my eyes closed so it'll be easier to crawl through (logic ??). (My eyes-closed view was sort of interesting, because it was all dark except for a mental picture of the broken edges of the glass around the hole.) Finally I just stand up and try the (old, loose) doorknob like a normal person, and it comes off in my hand. Underneath is another one, slightly larger but also very old and sort of ugly. I try that one and finally manage to get out the door, opening the next door after it easily.

Now I'm outside in the 1319 area, in the daylight, taking in how real everything feels. I start flying up to the roof, thinking about the dreamviews competition (#17), and have no problems getting to the roofs of the townhomes. There are some smaller townhomes on top, minis. One of them has sort of a colorful beach house design, with a sign out front explaining that it was designed by a 6-year-old and is up for auction. There's an open house going on inside.

I get the idea to summon Ben back, and start calling his name, then turning around expecting him to be behind me. That doesn't work, so I head into the 6-year-old-designer house, still calling him. He's sitting on the stairs inside (green shirt now), which are so small no one else can get by, and I hear people on the second floor. I come sit by him, a bit lower on the stairs.

There's a sort of odd brown mug with a cover/lid of some sort on a convenient wooden platform (there's a better word) in front of us. I decide to try passing my hand through it. I hold my hand out palm down, fingers together, and try moving it horizontally through the mug. At first it doesn't quite work, and then I find my fingers passing through it rather slowly. It seems to be solid all the way through, not really a mug. The sensation of moving my fingers through it is like passing them through slime of some sort. One successful pass later, neither the mug nor my fingers are changed in any way. I try it again, a couple times, and while I'm trying the last time I say "it's like air!" out loud, in the hopes that it'll be a more "professional" sort of "passing through", more like a ghost. It doesn't work, though. At least I'm optimistic.

I go outside next, and, still on the rooftops, head up the street towards the mall. (I think, for the sake of convenience, I'll designate the direction I'm currently heading "North". The houses I'm walking on face West.) I see some sort of Stone Harbor-esque structures in the distance (Northeast) and go towards them; there seems to be an ocean or perhaps a bay on the East side up ahead. There's also a weird metal structure that I'm interested in flying to the top of, for no particular reason.

Now I'm walking North-ish down the street in the Stone Harbor area, no longer on rooftops. I start thinking about whether I can turn this into some kind of chase dream (or more specifically, "being chased"). As I'm thinking this, I notice five-ish lifeguard guys behind me, reminiscent of some sort of gang. I wonder if they're going to chase me, and decide to keep a low profile for a moment. I go around a corner and then busy myself admiring the detail of the dream, peering very closely at the white-washed wall, which has some ugly yellow spotted stains on it, while they walk by to my right. Then I investigate another wall (slate gray?) so my back is to them.

At some point as they walk by, I think about the way that things can change easily in dreams. It tends to surprise me how stable dreams are, given that when I try to imagine things IWL, I can't get anything right visually and it can't seem to hold steady. At this point, thanks to my thought process, one of the lifeguards abruptly doesn't have a head; only a sewn-up and scarred neck stump (thx Outlast). He keeps walking just fine, and I think his head may have returned after a moment. idk if that counts as a dream power so much as a mistake.

Next I fly around a bit more, maybe up to the metal structure, and then land next to a tide pool with minnows inside. On closer inspection, however, I realize they're actually small piranhas (some are still actively switching to being a mini piranha). I say something surprised out loud about piranhas. Then I hear a sound nearby, and look down to see a small frog/toad-looking thing sort of snuggled among the wet stones. I wonder if my dream wanted me to throw him to the piranhas, but decline to and move on. I think I probably woke up shortly after, without my alarm going off.

Re: the WILD attempt.
I woke up after 6 hours, tried to remember dreams but only got fragments, decided to write them down anyway, briefly reviewed BillyBob's WILD tutorial, set my alarm to wake me up in an hour and a half, and then laid down, on my back, to sleep. Then, for a while, I could feel myself slipping closer to sleep by degrees. I was trying to monitor how exactly it felt: the heaviness in my chest, the deepening layers of almost-sleep, my mentality. I could feel it when I slipped down another layer, and realized this was the closest to sleep I'd ever been while WILDing. However, at some point I rolled over onto my side; it's more comfortable. I should probably just start out there.

Eventually I started getting the hallucinations, and this time I tried to simply observe them, smothering my impulse to tense up. I was surprised to realize that I'd felt this sort of thing as I was falling asleep before, where I would hear-without-hearing someone's voice or some noise close by my ear, although the visual hallucinations were less familiar. First they were quick, flashing images, and then, a bit later, some static and fuzz. I kept trying to focus on clapping my hands in the front office of the 1319 house, and when I fell asleep I woke up in the 1319 house. I wasn't lucid, though. Could still use improvement.