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    CanisLucidus

    The Diamond

    by , 04-22-2013 at 03:23 PM (872 Views)
    Finally -- Advanced Task of the Month!

    Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

    Lucid #87: The Diamond

    I'm driving somewhere in California, preparing to merge onto the freeway. Some guy in a Hummer blocks me from merging in, though, even steering his behemoth vehicle toward me so that I have to run off the road. I wind up on some semi-abandoned, crumbling old road, following one other car. The road's filled with enormous potholes and huge slabs of the road jut up at crazy angles. The other driver and I steer carefully around these chunks as best we can and I'm very worried that I'll break an axle. I think that this is all cause by California's ever-present budget woes.

    The road ends at a marina but the other car has vanished. I get out of the car and sit by a wooden railing, pouting about my problems. As I look down at the water, I see a little girl crash a jet-ski into a dock, fly over the handlebars, perform three perfect back hand-springs, and walk off as if nothing has happened. I'm impressed by her athleticism and very relieved that she wasn't hurt.

    There are narrow wooden walkways leading in a couple of different directions, but none of them are wide enough to fit a car. I need to keep driving but I don't want to leave my car here. I think that if this was a dream, I'd just go jack one, Grand Theft Auto-style. This thought makes me critically question reality and
    I realize that I'm dreaming!

    I leap to my feet and take flight, soaring high enough to see the top of a nearby apartment building. There's a huge pool party on the roof of this building, lots of DCs milling around, and I decide to check it out. I discard the "Great Wall of China" Task of the Year for now and decide that I'll do the "make a diamond out of coal" Advanced Task of the Month.

    I look for the DC who seems most in charge and central to the storyline of this party scene. A girl that's seated in a beach chair nearby seems to be the focal point of the scene. She's mid-20s, black, very cute, and three or four of her girlfriends stand deferentially around her as they all talk. While it's not an exact match, I notice that she looks a bit like Stacey Dash.



    As I walk up to pseudo-Stacey, she and her friends turn to look at me. I say, "I'm going to give you a diamond." One of her buddies, a brunette holding a slender glass of what looks like champagne, laughs at this.

    "Are you serious?" asks "Stacey".

    "Totally serious," I say. "It's for a task. You just need to hand me that lump of coal that you're carrying around."

    "Sure, take it!" she says, handing me a peach-sized lump of coal. Whew, glad that worked, I think to myself. Stacey and her friends watch me, intrigued. I give the coal one quick squeeze, imagining that it immediately feels sharp and hard like a diamond. I open my hand and yes it's a diamond! There are some lumps of dusty black coal-crap on it, but I quickly brush them away, revealing a sparkling, golf ball-sized, round cut diamond.

    Her friends murmur appreciatively and I hand Stacey the diamond. "Aww, it's so nice!" she says, smiling appreciatively. She holds it up to the sunlight to admire it then stands up and approaches me. "Hey, will you help me out with a question that I had?" she asks.

    "Sure. What's up?" I'm very intrigued about what her question is.

    "What's the difference between..." she begins, pointing toward herself and circling her finger as if to indicate "me" or "all of me". Her voice trails off and I quickly wind up in the void. The excitement of TotM and the anticipation of the question get me too wound up, though, and
    I wake up before I can use the void to travel anywhere.

    I buckle down for DEILD but I feel like I'm not going to fall back asleep. I try to really let go, and after waiting for a bit, I slip back into a non-lucid dream: "Stacey" is in a dark, wood-panelled office, seated across from a severe-looking woman in her 50s. Stacey is visibly upset and says, "You have no right hire someone else to ghost write my story! How can you do this to me?"

    The lady, who I think is her publicist, is unsympathetic. "Not everything is about you."
    I wake up.
    NewArtemis, Xanous, NyxCC and 1 others like this.

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    Comments

    1. Iokheira's Avatar
      Awesome! Congratulations I'm pretty amused at the first part of the dream. It wasn't the little reckless athletic girl or the beyond horrible road, it was wondering the legality of stealing a car

      She asked a good question! I always wonder where exactly DCs come from. Are they representations of pieces of me? Random neurons firing? I wish I knew.
      CanisLucidus and NyxCC like this.
    2. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      Thanks, Art! Ha ha, yeah, that process of dealing with the "steal a car" impulse ultimately got me lucid. It's interesting because in real life, the "steal a car" impulse would have been drowned by my prefrontal cortex long before I ever became consciously aware of it. In the dream it seemed like kind of a good idea but oh yeah, oops, that's not very nice and I'm not allowed to do it. Luckily, that led to the critical questioning that precedes 90%+ of my DILDs.

      Yeah, the question really had me intrigued. I'm still not sure whether she was going to gesture toward me next or toward her friends. As in, "What's the difference between you and me?" or "What's the difference between me and these other, 'lesser' DCs that you didn't bother talking to?" I have occasionally run into these smart DCs and they really interest me. I don't know what they are but to me it almost is like the difference between (as you say) "random neurons firing" and "representations of me". Or...? Who knows!

      I'm adding a "smart dc" tag for these situations. Hopefully I'll encounter more of these characters in the future!
      NewArtemis likes this.
    3. Xanous's Avatar
      My DCs are almost always really dumb and say a bunch of nonsense in my lucids. I may have to set a goal of finding a smart DC.
      CanisLucidus likes this.
    4. PennyRoyal's Avatar
      Aw yea, that that diamond finally!

      Glad to see you finally get this after being robbed a few times

      Now I want to watch Clueless...
      CanisLucidus likes this.
    5. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      @Xanous - Definitely, go for it! I am sure they're out there in your dreamworld as well. One thing that may influence what happens here is expectation. Arguably one of the most intelligent DCs that I encountered was a lady that I've called "The Mayoress". To find her, I asked another (less smart) DC to find me a smart, impressive woman to talk to. (This was the grant a wish task of the month so I wanted to interact with someone interesting.)

      Maybe an approach like that could work for you? I have good luck telling DCs to bring me things. I do it just the way you suggested a long way back where you speak to them as if you assume that they are ready and willing to help you and will know exactly what you're talking about. It really seems to work.
      Xanous likes this.
      Updated 04-22-2013 at 07:44 PM by CanisLucidus
    6. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      Quote Originally Posted by PennyRoyal
      Aw yea, that that diamond finally!

      Glad to see you finally get this after being robbed a few times
      Ha ha, thanks man! I appreciate the support because yes, I was robbed before! Having those close calls under my belt helped here, I think, because it made me sure that I could do the transformation so long as I managed not to wake up.

      Quote Originally Posted by PennyRoyal
      Now I want to watch Clueless...
      It's been a while since I watched it but I remember the movie being surprisingly good. And apparently Ms. Dash made an even bigger impression on me than I'd thought!
    7. NyxCC's Avatar
      Congrats CL! A really good job!

      There is something very philosophical about the "me", "all of me" question. Perhaps next time you could ask some smart-looking, cooperative DCs to explain. Will be interesting what they say.
      CanisLucidus likes this.
    8. RavenOfShadow's Avatar
      Congratulations! I can't even imagine controlling an LD this well... I'm so jealous! Just took a look at the task of the year as well, and it looks so awesome! Evidently it was mainly your idea so great job with that too

      Keep up the good work!

      ~Raven
      CanisLucidus likes this.
    9. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      Thanks NyxCC, I appreciate it!

      I agree... even though I have some idea of where the question might have been going, there are lots of questions about in my mind about precisely what the DC was going to say. I've found that these "smart" DCs make a lot of interesting, more subtle points than the usual DCs do.

      I love that LDs are so full of little unexpected curve balls like this. And I agree... this gives me yet another interesting DC and interesting question that I want to know more about. My lucid to-do list grows longer every week. I feel like I could become lucid in every dream and never get everything done that I'd like to try. Ah well... wouldn't have it any other way.
      NyxCC likes this.
    10. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      @RavenOfShadow - Hey, many thanks for the compliment on dream control. This was my third try with the diamond transformation, so I'm sad to say that they don't all go this well.

      And I appreciate the kind words on the Task of the Year as well! I did create the basic framework this year, but OpheliaBlue made tons of great improvements. Now if I could only manage to actually achieve one of those tasks...
    11. NyxCC's Avatar
      Yeah, could totally relate to the long to-do lists. I started keeping separate files with short term, mid-term and long term goals. I then just print the basic stuff I really want to do first, otherwise I have a really hard time remembering anything. But still the night is ours, I am so looking forward to doing some tasks!
      CanisLucidus likes this.
      Updated 04-22-2013 at 09:43 PM by NyxCC
    12. CanisLucidus's Avatar
      I completely agree on just having a couple of serious, immediate goals in mind. Some people might be better with waking life memory than I am, but I can keep about 2 ideas in my mind for what I want to do in an LD. Beyond that and it becomes kind of a jumble.

      I peeked at my list of mid-term/long-term goals. Looks like I have 128 ideas of things that I want to do. This is not even including any Task of the Year or Task of the Month stuff. So if I pulled off one per LD, I could get it all done in 128 more lucid dreams. Which is more lucid dreams than I've had my entire LD "career".

      But still the night is ours, I am so looking forward to doing some tasks!
      Damn straight! Well said.