lucid

I don't remember much of last night. Again, I was distracted and not focused on dreaming lucidly, although I did ponder it as I fell asleep.

I had one of my out of body experience type things. Sometimes, while asleep, even though I am not dreaming I will instinctively "sit up" out of my body and begin an OBE.

I was not able to easily fully free myself from my body, this time - for whatever reason. But I WAS able to see - in the past, I've always been blind - although I wasn't able to fully open my eyes. I was quite aware that this was a form of dream, although I was unable to control its course. I stumbled around my dream-room, half-blind and unable to control my limbs very well at all or free myself from my blanket, which I felt like I was entangled in.

I realized that this wasn't working well and lay back down, attempting to visualize and possibly break out of the OBE into a regular lucid dream. I also attempted to do a scene change to sky, which didn't work. Unfortunately, I lost lucidity.

I know that this wasn't a misadventure with sleep paralysis because I've gotten very good at differentiating. When I woke up, my bed and bedroom were unmussed despite the fact that in my OBE/dream, I had completely wrecked my bedroom and knocked/thrown stuff everywhere. Unless I then cleaned them up in my sleep... lol.

I was woken up by my smoke alarm chirping. I had to get up and change the battery. While I did so, I tried to ponder the dreams I had, but I couldn't recall any of them. It was frustrating. My dream recall seriously hinges on how stressed and distracted I am.

Notes
Semi-lucid/gaining lucidity
Lucid

I recall several dreams from last night.

#1 - I had a dream, but don't remember what it was. I wake up.

I attempt WILD but cannot tolerate lying on my back; roll over on my side, and fall asleep. While I fall asleep, I still focus on my intent to go lucid: "The next thing I experience is a dream; I am aware; I am in complete control."

#2 - I am in a small taco restaurant. It's a hole-in-the-wall restaurant; the walls are avocado green, and the paint is chipping. There is some sort of unnamed danger or dangerous situation. I am looking for M__ , but I can't find him, and I'm getting nervous and anxious. I am calling out, "M__? M__? Where are you?"

I have been dreaming for roughly 30 in-dream seconds when something filters into my brain. "I need to be aware. I need to be aware. I need to be lucid," I think. As this happens, my awareness increases. I begin to realize on a basic, non-lucid level that I am dreaming. That awareness increases and leads to a further desire to become lucid, until the dream scene loses its fogginess and I am fully lucid.

I know that I am dreaming. The anxiety of the dream that led to my lucidity has not faded, however - I'm still anxious and scared, even though I know that this is a dream and I am theoretically fully in control of the environment. I don't like the taco place at all and, although I know that I should explore my current environment to reinforce my lucidity, I am anxious to get out of there.

I remember Advanced Lucid Task I, which is "Find a treasure map and follow it to treasure". I decide that it is far better to pursue that than hang out in the creepy taco place. I attempt to do a scene change by closing and covering my eyes and focusing on an outdoor scene, but fail. When I open my dream eyes, I also open my real eyes.


I wake up. I immediately do a reality check; nope, I'm actually awake. I attempt to WILD but I feel overheated and I can't get comfortable, I'm way too hot. I get up and turn down the thermostat. I lie back down.

#3 - I am riding a bus alongside a canal. The road is actually level with the water, and the concrete sides of the canal rise above us. I'm riding it with a friend but I don't remember who. It's a coach bus, rather than a city bus. It connects with a ferry and a cruise line called "Olympia". I can only get to where I want to go to on the cruise line, but I'm worried that I don't have enough money. Right now, the emotional tone of the dream is fairly neutral.

The bus reaches its destination, and we get off the bus. I read a sign that indicates where the ship we're looking for docks. It docks in a ruined old building; upon inspecting a city map (note: appearance of a map possibly has something to do with my earlier focus on a treasure map) and based on my knowledge of the area, I realize that it is an old orphanage that was destroyed by a fire.

I take several photos of the orphanage with my camera. When I look at them again while I am showing them to my companion, there are ghosts in them; I am immediately extremely afraid, and the tone of the dream changes to one of great anxiety and fear.

I wake up. I'm not as hot any more, and much more comfortable.

#4 - I have a small blond boy with me. He needs to go to the bathroom. There is a van that is supposed to be a bathroom. The child climbs inside and begins to enthusiastically pee everywhere, like a fire hose. The whole thing is presented with the buzz and excitement of a 90s television commercial that is aimed at kids. The kid finishes peeing and climbs out of the van... he is soaked in urine. The woman who is in charge of him (I have switched to 3rd person) complains that he smells awfully ripe, and doesn't want to put him in their car; the man he was with doesn't seem to think it's a big deal.

#5 - I am running a chatroom. An idiot comes into my room and is being very annoying. I ban him from the room, but am unable to block his messages. He is spamming me with messages, and it's becoming increasingly irritating. I look for a support button for the website I'm running the room for, so I can ask how to ban him from sending me messages.

The dream shifts. I am now recording clips of myself pushing and riding a medical cart up and down a beach, so that I can edit it into one video and put it up on the website.

#6 - I am an old man. I am dressed in a rough gray scarf, a worn gray suit, and a brown jacket. My skin is old and dry and wrinkled by age. I am now not the old man, I am watching the old man. He is walking down a city street. It is more like an urban slum, like the areas of large cities that are forgotten and neglected.

He -- I mean, I, now -- watches a train go by. He/I meets up with a companion, a bigger guy with a shaved head. We want to go into a building, which is an orphanage, but the building is right along the train tracks and you have to walk across the tracks to reach the door. We have to time things carefully; the woman in the building opens the door, we wait for the first train to pass, and then leap before the next comes. The woman is wearing a plum-colored, old-fashioned traditional British maid's outfit, with frills along the apron. She has brown hair and looks like she is in her late teens or early 20s.

We go through the door. The orphanage is now a restaurant. There are corrugated metal stairs leading upstairs, where the food is served. We are on kind of a foyer. The restaurant has 3 floors, we are on the middle. The door behind us has turned into one of those metal gates that shopkeepers raise and lower to open or close their stores at night. We are level with the street; the street is now paved with bricks, and the train track is gone. Each of the levels of the restaurant is level with the street. I feel the floor moving beneath me; the restaurant is actually a truck.

I wake up. Attempt WILD, fail. My heater is distracting me. I think I will have to turn it off at night.

#7 - I fall asleep. I am in a small town in an area with a temperate climate, although I can't say specifically where. It is summer. There are several wooden buildings, many of them shops. I am now playing a video game. I go into a shop and meet a character and befriend him. He is a large bald man who looks like a biker. I go into another shop, a leather-working shop, and there is a cutscene. A man comes in with a gun and threatens to shoot the shopkeeper. The biker I befriended shows up with perfect timing, and disarms him. I understand that if I had not befriended the first character, the cutscene would have ended more tragically. I exit the shop.

Ninjas bound through the trees on the outskirts of town. I realize that I am in no shape to combat ninjas without armor. I re-enter the leatherworker's shop and ask about armor. He tells me to give him a pattern for what I want, within an inch of my measurements, and he will produce it for me. I have an idea of what I want, but I need to find a photo and draw a pattern. I go back outside.

The ninjas are dancing around in the trees. There is a female ninja with long hair and a long, pale blue scarf. She is wearing some kind of dark purple 70s pantsuit/leotard. She slices off the ear of another female ninja with short, blonde hair. She springs off of tree branches, and it looks like ballet. I think to myself (semi-lucidly) that that is ridiculous and could never happen in real life because those branches would not support her weight and nobody can jump like that.


I wake up.

I dreamed several dreams, and woke between each.

*side notes
*gaining lucidity
*lucid

#1 - I was having difficulty doing something. That's all I remember. Dream fragment.

Woke. Did Reality Check. Attempted WILD; failed, fell asleep.

#2 - I am in a house. I'm looking for a bathroom. There's no bathroom, because I didn't have enough in-game gold to buy an expansion. I discover that some of the red and white scented candles I've been buying were made by my cousin. He's been lying about having a regular desk job.

Woke, used bathroom. Reality Check. Attempted WILD; failed, fell asleep.

#3 - A wife and husband are fighting over their finances. The husband is unemployed or doesn't make much money, and the wife is burnt out and tired of working overtime to completely support them. The wife decides to make adult videos, and her best friend offers to help her. Her husband finds out and is extremely upset.

Woke. Rolled over and fell asleep.
#4:
I dream that I am riding a bus through a sweeping countryside. It appears that I am somewhere in New Zealand. The landscape is mountainous and verdant. It has just rained, the sky is full of gorgeous, radiant clouds, and it's is very beautiful (note: sweeping landscapes after a storm are actually one of my dreamsigns)

It begins to storm violently, and I'm up in the mountains. I am both riding and driving the bus. It's storming like crazy, and the mountain road is winding and dangerous. I'm high up in the mountains now, going over a narrow bridge. The choppy water has risen to the very bottom of the bridge, and it churns dangerously. The bus hydroplanes, loses control, veers off the bridge. The bus is now an old cadillac. The bus now disappears from around me as I enter the water. Frigid water envelopes me as I sink, and places immense pressure on my body; I debate fighting it, or merely letting myself sink. I allow myself to be pulled under and away with the current.

I wake up on a bus. I don't wake up on a bus; I am driving a car. I'm going to pick up a friend's dad. My friend is a chubby blond teenager wearing a Hulk Hogan shirt. We pick up his dad at a fast food restaurant that looks like McDonald's. He jokes about us being a software development team. He is actually a developer, himself. He looks really tired, and I ask him if he's been pulling long hours. He says, "Yes, and driving is a challenge. I'm practically cross-eyed." He decides to check his voicemail and starts swearing; apparently, his boss/team lead is asking for a whole bunch of ridiculous stuff that he can't possibly do on such a short deadline.

I wake up on a bus. I have stretched out across the seats, and a little girl is commenting to her mother that I'm taking up too much space. I try to pull myself up into a fetal position to free up more seats. My friend and his dad are also on the bus. The landscape is the one as described before; the sweeping New Zealand landscape.

I wake up and feel a bit irritated that my prior attempts at WILD have failed. I see light seeping in through my bedroom window and am a bit upset that it appears to be so close to morning. I'm also irritated that I didn't pick up on my most obvious dream sign.

I fail to do a Reality Check. In retrospect, my bedroom window was INCORRECT. The curtain wasn't there. I shrug it off, telling myself that it's just another chance to try to WILD again. I settle down in bed (note: I am fairly certain this was a FA and I am actually trying to WILD from my FA, which is kind of hilarious because it actually works)


#5 (?) -
I begin to see something forming in front of me, very blurry - it is a field of large, smooth pebbles. I decide that it looks somewhat like a beach, or is close enough to make into one. I try to make it solidify, but it fights me. I try to imagine it as part of a landscape, but it remains a flat plane - almost like a pattern. It is supposed to be the ground, I understand, but it takes up my entire field of vision.

I can feel it there - the dream is blurry, but it's forming. I don't want to lose it or lose consciousness, so I start actively trying to make it stabilize. I focus on the pebbles; they sharpen a bit, and then go all fuzzy again. I run my hands through the pebbles, then dive to the ground and shove my face into the pebbles. They're still fuzzy and immaterial, although I feel the ghosts of sensations from them. I enthusiastically rub my face back and forth in the pebbles. I feel like they're fading away and get upset, so in a moment of desperation, I lick the pebbles. They don't become any more material; they taste like grit and sawdust. I roll around on the ground like an idiot, grabbing handfuls of the ground and rubbing it into my face. I feel and smell dead leaves. Suddenly, there are dead leaves mixed into the pebbles.

I look up. There's more landscape forming! I see fuzzy green. I feel like this is like the edge of a lake or swimming hole. I stumble to my feet and pick leaves out of my hair.

The world suddenly solidifies, as my lucids often do - everything goes from a blurry mess to absolute perfect clarity. I am now on the edge of a small lake or swimming hole, on an artificial beach. I'm at a cook out!

There are tons of people milling around. The dad from my prior dream is grilling food, and there are a bunch of fat guys in tank tops drinking beer out of a cooler. There is a little girl in a purple swim suit playing with the sand. She has a toy shovel and those little plastic sand castle molds, and she's making a castle. She has white-blonde hair that curls in little ringlets around her ears, and blue eyes. She looks like she's maybe 3 or 4, and she's adorable. There is also a black and white Border Collie lying on a red and white checkered blanket next to a guy in a t-shirt and his kids. The dog is panting, because it's hot outside.

The swimming hole has a tall, metal slide where you can slide into the water. The sky above, unlike 99% of my lucids, is vivid blue and brilliantly clear - this is a hot summer day, probably July or even August.

I clap my hands together and yell out loud "YES! Finally!" I immediately run up to the dog and pet her. Her fur is thick and somewhat coarse. I scratch between her ears. She's very friendly, and enjoys the attention. As I scratch her behind the ears, I recall my lucid task.

"I need to destroy something right away!" I tell the dog. I had decided on Simple Task I, which was to destroy an object by any means.

I look around. One of the first things I see is the little girl's sand castle mold, but even thought she's a dream character I feel kind of bad about that. I see a plastic drinking cup with Vash the Stampede on the side of it (I haven't watched anime since the 90s, I don't know where that came from) but decide it's too solid/not interesting. There's an array of picnic stuff - plates, cookware, food, etc. I settle on the one thing that I feel is out of place: an empty carton of half & half.

I point at it and try to make it explode. Nothing happens. I get angry and pick it up and throw it, yelling, "This is MY dream!" It still does not explode. I chase after it, scoop it up, and tear it into several pieces. I begin to throw the pieces at the two fat guys who are sitting in plastic lawn chairs and drinking beer. They think this is hilarious.

I hear the little girl calling to me from behind me. She is running toward me, waving a huge syringe. One of those big, scary-looking ones they use to inject things into your rump. It's almost as big as she is (and for some reason, empty). I laugh and launch myself into the air, hovering above her. She runs around below me, waving the syringe. I rise higher into the air, using swimming motions, and taunt her. She begins to climb the ladder to the slide, which has now somehow gotten higher and scarier-looking and is turning into a bridge.

The dream fades, and I wake up. It is 3 a.m., which means that it couldn't have possibly been light outside last time I woke up.