CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #31: The Edge of Venice

I’m in line at a cafeteria salad bar, waiting behind a middle-aged lady. The salad bar is utilitarian, old, and no-frills, like something you’d find in a high school lunchroom. I suddenly notice that my noise-canceling headphones are draped over the top of the salad bar. “Great!” I think. “I’ve been looking for those.”

The lady in front of me grabs the headphones off of the salad bar. They turn into salad tongs and she begins using them to pile lettuce onto her plate. “Hey!” I complain. “Those are my headphones! You're gonna ruin them!” The lady just looks at me. I get a sense of how ridiculous this is and realize that I’m dreaming.

The lady continues to stare at me and I head for the cafeteria's exit door. It’s a bright, clear day and now that I'm outside, I see that the restaurant sits on the shores of a lake. The lake is dotted with rowboats and stretches away toward a mountain range. I pause to look at the rowboats and see that most of them are manned by little DC families of four, two parents and two kids.

I rise into the air and turn to the left, ready to explore. There's a huge cloud bank that rests against the mountains and extends almost all the way to the ground. The cloud is strange, and I realize that a) it’s pink and b) it appears to be much more solid and substantial than a typical cloud. After looking at it for a moment I realize that it’s actually a gigantic, super-detailed loofah.

I try to circle around the loofah but for some reason turning feels difficult. I sort of feel like I should be turning but nothing’s really happening. I don’t make a big deal out of it and fly around on the left side of the loofah. Up ahead I see a Venice-like city of canals. Gondola operators mill about on the docks as I drift by, relaxing in the sun and managing their boats. One of these DCs looks up at me as I fly overhead, raising one hand to shield his eyes from the sun.

I see buildings and a whole network of canals ahead of me and begin flying toward them, eager to explore this Dream Venice. Unfortuantely, I awaken abruptly. The dream was really vivid at this point so the awakening was an unpleasant surprise.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #30: Fire Escape

I'm leading a group of perhaps a dozen small children down a fire escape. We're on the third floor, there's no railing (!), and the kids are wandering everywhere. I'm holding hands with two of them and trying desperately to corral the others with my feet. My anxiety level is out of sight and I don't know how to get them down safely. To my horror, a pair of the kids wander off of the unrailed fire escape, falling to the ground below. One of the fallen kids seems to hurt his ankle and the other gets a huge gash on his arm. I scoop the rest of the kids up under my arms and run down to the bottom, grateful that they're not more badly hurt.

Later, Wife and I are standing on a viewing platform at the top of a skyscraper. It's night and I'm leaning against the railing, recounting to her what happened, still feeling really rotten. I tell her, "It was like some kind of nightmare..." I get suspicious, perform a nose pinch RC and now I have it all figured out.

I'm overjoyed not only to be lucid but also that nobody actually got hurt and none of that earlier stuff even happened. I float up and then fly off into the night, forgetting entirely to say goodbye to Wife. I fly over the city, circling around another skyscraper before banking left. Ahead of me is an empty bridge that crosses a bay. I fly under it, performing a high-speed barrel roll as I go. It feels amazing, but as I emerge from under the bridge, my vision goes completely dark.

I'm still flying, though. I can feel cool air rushing past my body, so I just go with it, flying blind for a while. I don't want to lose my lucidity so I start belting out songs that talk about flying. I think that I may have mostly performed Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly" but I sometimes suffer from musical confusion in lucid dreams. Whatever song it was, I was really going for it and I became vaguely worried that my sleeping body might be singing too.

I suddenly find myself standing in our master bedroom, no longer in flight. The room's dark and Wife is asleep on her side of the bed, but I'm not fooled. Still dreaming. For some reason, I drag our bookcase out into the middle of the room to see how realistic it feels. (Very.) But then I worry that Wife will get up to go the bathroom and run into it, so I shove it back into place.

I float downstairs and head to the back door. I know that it's deadbolted shut, so I phase through, the glass pane chilling my skin like cool water. I remember that I want to find Purgatory for the Task of the Month. I imagine as Dante described it -- as a terraced mountain located somewhere in the seas of the southern hemisphere. I take flight again and start looking for it. I realize now that I flew north instead of south... oops! Somehow I wind up flying into a huge cavern that takes me downward into a sewer, where I'm soon lost.

Rather than flowing with things, I become alarmed and want to find my way out of this "mess" to get back on track. The ceilings are low so I'm forced to run through the (fortunately quite pristine) sewer water. There's daylight somewhere up ahead and I race through twisting, turning passageways to find it.

I finally spot a hole in the ceiling up ahead with daylight streaming through it (is it daytime now?) Unfortunately, along with the daylight, a steady stream of enormous, squealing rats is pouring in through the hole as well. They come right for me, and I'm not thinking clearly enough to come up with a clever plan. I punch the rats in the head or their potato-like bodies when they draw near, and each time I do the rat flops limply onto its back, not moving.

I'm almost to the hole when Erik Estrada himself steps in front of me, telling me to stop. I've unfortunately gotten swept up into caveman mode and I summon a weapon with which to fight Erik Estrada. Fortunately, I look at my right hand and discover that the "weapon" I summoned is just a modest zucchini squash. As the dream fades, I tell Erik Estrada that I am "really sorry about that", but he doesn't seem to hear.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #29: The Lucidity Machine

Wife, dressed in a labcoat, straps me into this huge contraption that we've built called "The Lucidity Machine". She explains that when she turns this on, "you're going to be lucid and the dream will be really pixelly, like an old video game." I tell her that I'm ready. Wife walks over to a huge rocker switch on the wall, flips it, and I'm lucid.

As promised, my view of everything is extremely pixellated, reminiscent of classic Atari games. I'm immediately reminded of Adventure:



I appear to be in a low-resolution version of the same room but Wife is no longer here. I get out of the machine, focusing on sharpening the scene, knowing that it will grow clearer and clearer as I work my way through it. Sure enough, the graphics tighten up with every step that I take and within a few seconds everything's in full clarity.

I walk outside of the building into the sun and my recall gets hazy for a bit here. At some point, I find myself standing in front of a cute bungalo that's surrounded by a broad moat. It has a pleasant garden in front of it and I want to see what's going on in here.

I decide to use a technique that Xanous described in an old DJ entry that I believe he got from Robert Waggoner. Basically, I employ a sort of "targeted flight" where I focus on where I want to go and imagine myself being drawn there rather than on any specific mode of transport, like flight. I focus on a flower in the bungalo's garden and sure enough I'm pulled into a vivid close-up of this bright pink flower.

I hear voices coming from inside the bungalo and my perspective returns to normal. I'm now standing by the front door, safely across the moat. I open the door and walk through a small foyer into a modest bedroom with a window that overlooks the ocean. Two young women in their mid-20s are sitting on a bed taping a video podcast about lucid dreaming. I feel like they must be from DreamViews but they're both strangers to me.

My dream body has sort of faded from my awareness and the two podcasters don't appear to see me, so I just listen. They describe a guy who "built his own lucid dreaming machine" and describe things that I'd done earlier in this dream. I remember them talking about us building the machine in our lab and mentioning something about me hopping on a train (DC nonsense or forgotten scene?)

Suddenly, a group of people in lab counts bursts into the room, completely unnoticed by the podcasters. My friend S from work is part of the group, which is led by an older lady with graying hair. They're an amiable group but they announce that they are here to put a stop to my "abuse" of this "lucidity technology". The gray-haired lady says, "What you did was impressive but now it's gotten out of control." She gestures at the podcasters, and I see that one of them has turned into a 3-foot-tall Asian of indeterminate gender.

Lucidity is probably starting to slip, and I become angry that they want to take this technology away from me. I tell them that they'll never destroy what took years to build. The gray-haired lady says, "You'll find that these things are much easier to destroy than to build." Emotion sweeps me away and I lose my lucidity. I get wrapped up further in this new dream plot but my recall gets very hazy from here.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #28: REBMEVON rejected

I'm watching as Breaking Bad's Walter White (dressed as Heisenberg) plans to set fire to a Jeep full of laughing teenagers. He pours gasoline all over the kids in the car but they don't react, somehow not understanding what's going on. I'm panicked and horrified and feel like I can't let him get away with this. The intense emotion makes me lucid and the scene vanishes.

Now I'm sitting in what looks like a log cabin, staring at a simple television that's no longer switched on. I see daylight through a nearby doorway so I run outside, passing through a short alleyway before I emerge in a grassland with mountains on the distant horizon. It's a beautiful scene and I'm so relieved to be free of the nightmare that I start flying.

I've been in the air for only a couple of seconds when the Task of the Month occurs to me -- I need to write "November" backwards. I've created a mnemonic device that instantly brings the correct word ("REBMEVON") to mind. (My chosen mnemonic device is my friend Von introducing himself to Reba McIntyre.)

I try to produce a pen and paper from behind my back but only manage a pen at first. I try writing on my hand but can only fit "REB". That won't do, so I do another "behind the back" object creation to get a notebook. I try to write the word but end up getting sudden strings of garbage characters like "REBhjklhlhlh". I scratch it out and try again, but only get a similar string of garbage characters as soon as I get past "REB".

I can see the word perfectly in my mind so the garbage character problem starts making me feel agitated and doubtful. It's not long before I wake up.

Interesting little converted nightmare. Producing the .44 out of thin air seems sort of like lucid dreaming techniques bleeding over into my non-lucid dreams, which is interesting.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #27: Paranoia

I'm in a false awakening where I'm a kid living in my old room at my parents' house. I sense some terrifying presence in my room so I jump out of bed, crouching down in fear. I reach under the bed and pull out a long-barreled, Dirty Harry-style .44 Magnum and hold it in front of me, searching wildly for whatever is after me.



I suddenly have no idea what I'm doing holding this gun and I'm afraid that I'll wind up shooting myself or my parents with it. I duck into the bathroom and close the door behind me, trying to figure out what to do. I try the light switch but it doesn't work. Something reaches out in the darkness and starts wrestling with me for the gun. My fear combined with the craziness of the scene is enough to make me lucid.

I gently pull the .44 back toward me, no longer believing that there's any lurking presence trying to pull it away from me. I try the light switch again but it doesn't do anything. I'm trying to think of some way out of here when the scene suddenly shifts to a cluttered basement. The basement is a roughly ten-foot cube and walls are gray concrete. There are no doors or windows but benches, tables, tools, and other assorted pieces of junk litter the room.

Seeing no way out, I float up and try to phase through the ceiling but the concrete stops me cold. I shut my eyes and imagine the Great Pyramid, but nothing has changed when I open them again. Next, I try some Stephen Laberge-style spinning but I move with an odd slowness when I spin and the scene won't change.

Just then I notice a tiny surveillance camera attached to the ceiling and I feel like the presence that I sensed earlier is watching me through the camera. I float to the camera, determined to phase through it and see who (or what) is watching me. I push myself through the lens but immediately find myself awake in bed.

This was simply the most amazing lucid dream I've ever had. The description is long, but it's as abbreviated as I could get it -- the dream itself felt like it lasted an hour and a half! Absolutely unreal.

Just the thought of having another LD like this might be enough motivation to last me forever. All I can be is grateful.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #26: Transcendental Turkey Shoot

I'm a spectator in an arena where dueling teams of wizards battle it out with fire and ice spells. I'm ranting with another spectator about how terribly they're playing. The spectator says that "it's like they have no awareness!" Hearing about "awareness" instantly makes me lucid (thanks, subconscious!) and I run out of the stands into an outer hallway that's filled with dream characters.

I want to perform the Task of the Month which requires shooting turkeys with 17th century weaponry. I imagine that I have a huge bundle of preloaded flintlock muskets strapped to my back and it isn't long before turkeys start darting around in the crowd in front of me. I reach over my right shoulder, grab a musket, and aim it at a nearby turkey. I carefully aim and fire, the musket thundering and kicking my shoulder. The shot's a clean miss, and the DC's in the scene start running and screaming.

I toss my old musket aside and grab a new one from my "bundle". I keep catching sight of turkeys up ahead and I run after them, firing and missing time after time. I chase them onto the arena floor itself, the magical combat still raging wildly around me. I skate across a field of ice that's melting beneath the heat of a raging volcano, the floor nearly collapsing beneath me. It's vivid and exciting but what really has my attention is getting one of these turkeys.

I take a side door that leads me into a golden elevator. The elevator begins rising the moment that I enter and through its ornate viewing portals I see the shore of an island. I sense that this is an island filled with turkeys and I immediately dive through the portal, plunging headfirst toward the shallow water along the shoreline. I manage to float just in time to avoid a jarring landing and immediately spot a turkey ahead in the distance.

I run for miles, grabbing musket after musket off of my back and tossing them aside each time that I miss or get a "close call" that yields nothing but a puff of feathers. I even manage to cleanly hit 2 or 3 of them, but each time that I draw close I see that they were really just large pigeons. At one point I reach a narrow valley that's painted with brilliant, cartoon-like colors. I laugh, feeling elated and invincible, like I can run here forever.

After some time I chase a turkey deep underground through an old barrow. Dream characters join me and leave at times, all strangers. Eventually I run through a weapons display area that's arranged around a giant upright sarcophagus, but all the weaponry appears to be from the Egyptian Bronze Age, not the 17th century.

In the next room I stumble upon a sad, sullen group of friends and coworkers arranged around a board room table. They're being lorded over by some obnoxious stranger named "Rod" who announces that he's taking over our company and that I should "sit down and shut up". This annoys me, and I slap him so hard that it leaves a handprint on his face. He orders me not to do that, and in response I slap him hard enough to send him sprawling out of his chair. The others around the table applaud, and I jog out of the room, spotting daylight up ahead.

I emerge onto a dirt road and lean against the guardrail for a moment, thinking about how this is the first time that I've ever attacked a DC. I reflect on how thin my justification was and wonder how this relates to dream yoga's description of playing out negative "karmic traces". Unable to really digest the concept of karma in the dream state, I walk further along the road.

At the end of the road stands a Roman arch with golden light spilling out of the arch onto the roadway. The arch is designed roughly like the Arch of Constantine:



When I approach the arch, an enormous flock of brilliantly glowing turkeys goes flying through the arch, passing right overhead! It must be hundreds of them. This kicks up a rush of wind that picks me up off of the road, lays me flat on my back, and carries me gently backward as the stream of turkeys goes flying by above me. It's beautiful and serene and I'm overcome with bliss and elation. I can't stop laughing at how incredible it all is.

The wind sets me down some distance from the arch and my friend A is standing nearby, smiling at my reaction. He asks how much longer I think this LD can last. I say that I don't know but that it feels like it's been an hour and a half. I tell him that I took some B6 and wonder whether that will change the dream's length. Gently, I wake up, still blown away by what I just experienced.

This LD started off with some incredible promise. But for reasons that still aren't clear, I wasted the majority of it yammering about lucid dreaming. A strange and extremely embarrassing mistake, but live and (hopefully) learn!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #25: A Little Less Conversation, a Little More Action

My very close friend F is a famous rap star and I'm his manager. I'm driving him to the marina in a black Escalade, arguing with him not to buy a helicopter for "one million dollars". He's adamant that he needs this helicopter and he brushes off all of my objections about his spending vs. his record sales. As I park the Escalade, I suddenly remember that F is an IT consultant with two kids, not a rapper -- now I'm lucid.

We get out of the Escalade and I see that we're parked near an absolutely pimptastic white yacht. The day is bright and clear and the sun is high over a calm ocean. And in spite of my earlier helicopter-related harangues, there's also a nearby helipad with a helicopter waiting on it. F and I have been friends since we were kids, so I'm psyched to be hanging with him in an LD. And with all of these cool toys just lying around!

I follow F as he heads toward the yacht. I stop him on the gangway, saying, "Hey man, I'm having a lucid dream." He nods and says, "Cool." But F and I have never discussed lucid dreaming IWL. For some reason, I'm overcome with the desire to explain it to him right now. I ask him whether he knows what LD is and he tells me not to worry about it.

But for some reason, I cannot let it go. I go into the whole thing, talking about the sleeping brain, how consciousness is activated, the role of serotonin, all kinds of stuff. At one point I even start rambling about acetylcholinesterase and its role both in dreaming and nerve gas. I'm feeling terribly pleased with myself for recalling all of this information while having an LD and I've lost all regard for my "audience" or my own experience.

Suddenly, a shudder seems to run through the whole dream world. The gangway starts to shake and the sky flashes black for a moment. F grabs the handrails and shouts some kind of profanity. The dream ends immediately afterward. I try to DEILD back in but I come up dry. Curses!

This was good fun, in spite of failing at nearly everything I tried, becoming obsessed with a hopeless task, and losing my pants.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #24: Pants Gone with the Wind

Wife has sent me to a restaurant to find out whether they recycle "#19 plastic". I'm just about to ask the cashier this inane recycling question when I see that a nearby table has our diaper bag and Wife's wallet sitting unguarded on top of it. I hurry over to pick all this stuff up and see Wife herself standing a few feet away. I recognize all of this for the weird nonsense that it is and tell Wife that I'm having a lucid dream. "Okay," she says, and wanders off.

I turn back toward the cashier to find that she and the register are gone, replaced by a bunch of school lunch tables jammed together in a tight rectangle. I skirt around these and head to the back of the cafeteria. High up, a bit outside of my reach is a large window showing an overcast day outside. I float up in order to phase through it like I did last dream but this time my hands just bounce off of it. I float back down to the ground and look for a door, not wanting get hung up on this.

There's a pair of doors equipped with crash bars to my left. I shove my way through and emerge outside under a cloudy, gray sky. To the right, I see a huge gathering of runners and spectators for some sort of foot race. I'm intrigued and I jog toward it, deciding that I want to compete.

I become very aware of my clothing as I run and I notice that I'm wearing shorts without a belt. The shorts are too big for me and they keep trying to slide down off of my hips. I hike them up once and then do my best to ignore them. I'm surprised to find that I'm also wearing some kind of baseball cap. I remove it and see that it's black with a Papa John's style logo that instead reads "Papa Go's". (I know something's wrong with this name but can't figure out what.)

The race starts when I'm about 30 feet away, runners ranging from hardcore 30-year-olds to 4-year-old kids setting off on the race. They stream through a huge pizza-decorated starting banner that reads "The Papa Go's Race". Since I want to win and also wow the crowd I take to the air, flying about 20 feet up. But the moment that I catch up with the other runners, a sharp gust of wind kicks up against me, stopping me dead.

I'm determined to participate in this race so I stubbornly imagine a fresh wind blowing from the opposite direction. This gives me a huge, exhilarating kick forward. But before long, the current of wind that's against me shoves back even harder and I'm stuck again. I force my own wind to blow even harder but the opposing wind rises to a shrieking gale.

I feel stubborn and unbeatable, though, and I keep pouring on more power. But the howling wind rips my pants away and I suddenly feel much, much less "unstoppable" with no pants. Tears stream from the corners of my eyes and cold wind blasts down my throat. Trees are swaying crazily below me and DCs are running in panic. It dawns on me that I've started something I can't finish. Moments later, I'm awake.

This failed "Task of the Month" attempt ended up being a great time. I'm so happy to be getting more flight time after all of the trouble that I had with this initially. I was sure that I was doing to meet a Dreamviews member in this one but it just didn't quite happen!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #23: Halloween in the Sky Fortress

I'm walking through the mall with my friend T. We encounter a scrawny old man that I recognize (wrongly) as a professor at the university that T and I attended together. The "professor" excitedly describes his latest invention -- a self-propelled wheelchair that is guided and powered by your mind. With that, one of these wheelchairs pops out of an unseen hole in the floor, scoops T up, and starts racing around with him.

T shouts in protest, insisting that his legs work fine. I decide that this is completely insane and I become lucid. I ignore T and the professor, and they lapse into silence. I can see daylight coming in from around a corner so I start moving toward the exit, making my way through a food court that's packed with dream characters. Sprinting toddlers and their harried parents crisscross my path but always move aside in time for me to pass. I'm tempted to check out the food but my desire to get outside is stronger.

When I reach the automatic glass doors they don't open. For some reason, this doesn't worry me and I press my left hand straight through the glass. (I think that I owe this to reading about all of melanieb's phasing yesterday.) I phase the rest of my body through as well, feeling a slight chill as I pass through.

When I get outside, it's parking lot as far as the eye can see. The day is mild and breezy and all I can think of is what a perfect day it is for flying. I float up nicely but get hung up in the mall's entrance overhang. There are a few moments of grinding where for some reason I have trouble turning my perspective. Fortunately I manage to force myself sideways just far enough that I break free and shoot up into the sky.

Straight ahead there are hills shrouded in fog. I'm eager to avoid turning so I fly toward the fog, imagining that in these hills is the neighborhood where all of the Dreamviews folks are. (I want to perform the "trick or treat" Task of the Month.) As I near the fog, the wind increases to a howl, pushing upward and against me. Rather than force forward progress, I imagine that I am going the wrong way and that this wind is trying to guide me to the real Dreamviews neighborhood.

I turn with the wind and it carries me upward the way that a thermal column lifts a condor. This feels amazing! I'm being carried toward some kind of sky fortress. The "sky fortress" is an enormous collection of buildings connected by a tangle of walkways and I know that this must be where the Dreamviews neighborhood is. Dream characters move unafraid along the narrow, unrailed walkways and I see guards armed with rifles patrolling some of the paths and rooftops.

I arrive at a row of townhouses. Above the front door of each townhouse floats bubble letters that spell out the owner's name. The row stretches as far as I can see in either direction and most of the names are unfamiliar to me. I do see "Xanous" above one of the doors and I fly toward it, imagining that there's a huge DV party going on in there.

The door has a television screen in front of it that seems to show what's going on inside the house. I'm astonished that the screen displays a prairie dog splashing around in a big bathtub. "Xanous?" I ask. The prairie dog stares at me, a bit shocked. He barks, "Phil doesn't just open the door for anyone who knocks!" I can feel myself growing confused but don't know how to regain my composure. "Are you some kind of bodyguard? Are there Dreamviews people in there?" But the dream is beginning to unravel and soon I'm awake.

I had this short lucid dream during a very brief mid-morning nap. Lucid napping is a first for me. I didn't perform at my best in-dream and I allow the dream to end much too soon. Also, I get beat up by a little kid. But hey, lucid is lucid! Always learning.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #22: Unwelcome Houseguests

I'm holding hands with my two toddler-age sons, preparing to go outside for a walk. Before we reach the front door of th house, twin boys with curly blonde hair open the door and scurry inside. They look to be about eight years old and are complete strangers to me. This feels strange, and soon I'm lucid.

I decide that I don't want these weird kids running around in my house so I start ushering them out the door. They seem to cheerfully accept getting kicked out so my thoughts turn to lucid goals. I remember that I wanted to do the Task of the Month and replace my head with a pumpkin. But what was the other one? Ah yes, get a vampire, werewolf, or zombie to bite me. Now I remember.

Just as I'm thinking this (and probably because I'm thinking this), the twin on my left suddenly lunges at me and bites me hard on the left pec, right by my armpit. He snarls like a dog, whipping his head back and forth. I'm taken completely by surprise, both by the suddenness of the attack and by how much it actually hurts. I try to shout some kind of command at him but all that comes out is this pathetic yowl.

I blank out for a fraction of a second and my perspective switches to the top of the stairs, looking down at the scene of the attack. I have no dream body and everyone (me, my kids, the twins) is now gone from the scene. My view is turned on its side, as if I were lying down. I try to move, try to RC, but with no body there's not much that I can do.

I imagine that I'm lying here because I passed out and I'm just waking up. This seems to work! I have hands and a body again and I slowly get to me feet. Just then, I hear the sound of my alarm clock and voluntarily wake up. But when I wake up, it's only been 15 minutes since I laid down! The alarm wasn't anywhere close to going off and I fooled myself into waking up for no reason.

This was easily my wildest, trippiest lucid dream of all time. A big first from this one was meeting my doppelganger. Confusion, chaos and questions of identity reigned in this LD and what little control I had amounted to very little in the end. Very different from my usual LD fare but fun nonetheless.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #21: Technicolor Thomas Jefferson

It's nighttime and I'm standing in the shadow of a deserted overpass, talking on a cellphone. I'm some sort of drug dealer or smuggler, talking to one of my scumbag smuggling associates about when and where our next deal will go down. The conversation ends, and I start walking back across a parking lot to my car, a silver Mercedes Benz.

As I'm walking, I get that familiar feeling of recognition and think, "This isn't me. I'm not a criminal. Am I just dreaming this?" I become lucid and look for the nearest piece of usable scenery. Before I can get anywhere, though, darkness begins pressing down on me and I feel the dream fading. I look at my hands but they're vague and insubstantial, with wispy ribbons of skin hanging off of them.

My vision goes completely black but I keep repeating, "I'm still dreaming" and refuse to wake up. Jumbles of random letters fall slowly from the top to the bottom of my field of vision. I reach for the letters, trying to feel them, turn them into some kind of new dream scene. Even though I can't see my hands, I finally manage to grab a letter and squeeze it. It feels like a squishy piece of felt. The letter suddenly squirts out of my hands and floats away. I flail for a new letter.

Now I'm back in bed and my hands are thrashing in front of me. Out loud, I'm saying "I'm still dreaming", although I no longer believe it. Wife rolls over and says, "What are you doing?" I look over at the alarm clock and see that the numbers are flashing at random. Still dreaming, indeed. "It's okay," I tell her. "Go back to sleep." I get out of bed and walk toward the bathroom, planning to go for the "pumpkinhead" Task of the Month using the bathroom mirror.

Before I make it to the bathroom, the image of a huge, hissing black cat is stamped across my vision. Behind this cat I still see my first-person perspective but much of it is now obscured. Then another stamped image over that, this time of a woodworking bench covered with tools. Then an old woman pushing a cart. Then another, and another, and another each new image papering over the last.

Finally, things settle onto an image of Thomas Jefferson reading in a comfortable-looking chair. He's super-saturated with color, just like the boldest Technicolor films. Think Wizard of Oz but with the saturation even more intense. I remind myself, "I'm dreaming" and a banner reading "I'M DREAMING!!!" appears over Thomas Jefferson's head. He glances up from his book, sees the banner, then stares straight at me in surprise.

Suddenly, I'm in the passenger seat of a car, heading west on a road near my office. It feels strange, so I try to remember how I got there. I remember Technicolor Thomas Jefferson and I'm immediately lucid again. I look over at the driver of the car and I realize that the driver is me. Only it's not really me but a Dream Character version of myself. I can hear my double's thoughts but I can't influence him and I see that I'm a disembodied observer with no dream body of my own.

I hear my double think, "I've got to go back to where it started. Back to where I became lucid. I have to make it happen again." My double pulls into a parking garage and we're soon wandering the halls of an office building. My double visits each office that he finds, and in every one we see friends and old coworkers. Finally, my doppelganger steps into an office shared by two female twins (IWL friends of mine) and a woman who calls herself Susan.

The twins greet my double and welcome him to their office but Susan isn't buying it. She shakes her head and says, "That isn't your friend. I don't know what that is, but your friend is there." Susan points, not at my double but at me, the spot from which I am observing with no dream body. The twins turn to look, not comprehending and I wake up.

I finally made it into space! Even though I had no idea how to handle myself once I got there, the fact that I flew up there was a huge milestone. Before this, stable flight had been a bit elusive for me. Big step forward!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #20: The Unprepared Astronaut

I'm a graduating senior in college, following around a guy who seems to think we're close friends. I feel pretty guilty because I have no memory of him at all. I'm accompanying him so he can say his post-college goodbyes to his girlfriend. We meet her outside of a dormitory, and I recognize her as a girl that I know from high school. I recognize how weird this is and quickly find myself lucid.

Both of the dream characters freeze in place, looking into one another's eyes. I decide to leave the love birds alone while I take another pass at Task of the Month. (In this case, I'm going to be trying to remove my head and replace it with a pumpkin.) I try to will a mirror onto the outer dormitory wall but nothing appears.

I remember how much more dream control success I have when I'm detailed and thorough. I try again, this time imagining an ornate mirror that's been worn by time, the paint on its frame beginning to chip and flake off. This time I get my mirror!

I look into the mirror but it's dirty and cloudy-looking. The reflection looks like a shirtless me but it's very hard to make out any detail. I wipe at the mirror but it just doesn't make any difference. Rather than get hung up here and waste a lucid dream doing glass-cleaning, I decide to spend my time trying out other things.

I leave the grounds of the dormitory and head out onto a quiet, empty street. The morning feels chilly and the city is covered with a blanket of fog. I wonder what this fog looks like from above, so I decide to try flying above it. This time, I focus on the little details. The chill of humid air against my fingertips. The breeze flowing past my hair and tickling my scalp. Concentrating on these sensations leaves me no time for doubt and I smoothly rise up into the fog.

The fog swallows me whole as I rise. I wonder how long it will take me to pierce it. I feel myself going faster and faster and soon I'm rocketing up through the atmosphere. The fog never seems to end and I feel like I must be high above the Earth.

Suddenly I break through into blackness. I stop rising, my momentum suddenly gone. I'm in the blackness of space and the fog is now a floor below me. I realize that it isn't just the city that was covered in fog -- it's the entire planet. I am able to breathe but I somehow can't keep myself from doing so in these desperate, shallow gasps.

My flight abilities have stopped working and my arms and legs flail helplessly. I will myself a pair of rocket shoes but I get confused trying to work the lever that turns them on. I start losing my cool and my breathing becomes even gaspier until I wake up.

This was a Task of the Month attempt and my first lucid in several days. This was a fun dream and it was exciting to be back in the saddle.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #19: The (Headless) Man in the Mirror

I'm in an office kitchen and I happen to run into L, an old friend from high school that I barely ever see. I ask how married life has been and whether anything exciting is going on with her. She reveals that she's expecting and is "3 weeks along". I remark that I couldn't tell (duh) but she doesn't respond.

Assuming she didn't hear me, I repeat what I just said, only to realize that she has vanished. A young woman taps me on the shoulder and says, "Are you okay? You look like you're talking to someone but there's nobody there." Immediately lucid, I nod to her. "Thanks. Everything's fine. I'm dreaming." She seems to accept this, walking away. My mind is immediately on the Task of the Month and I walk through the nearest doorway.

I wind up in a large classroom that looks like it might be for first- or second-graders. Daylight streams in from a large window on the far side of the room. I'm the only person in the room and there's a pumpkin in the middle of every short little table. Yes, conditions are perfect for removing my own head.

I walk around the room, thinking of mirrors, expecting to see one around every corner. Finally one of those odd, distorting fish-eye mirrors appears but I figure it'll be fine. I check my reflection and I'm wearing extremely thick black glasses and a purple tank top. My hair looks all 90s and hair-sprayed. I decide not to get too attached to this new look as I shall be ridding myself of this head shortly.

I begin to think about how all my life I have had the head of a Lego man, attached to my neck by nothing but a short knob. I place both hands under my jaw. Even though I can feel my hands on my face, my reflection's hands are a few inches away. I go ahead anyway, smoothly pushing up, and my head pops right off, just like a Lego piece. There's no blood and no pain. All of this feels perfectly natural.

I need to find a pumpkin now so I unceremoniously chuck my head onto the floor. It makes a sound like a softball as it lands. I grab a nearby pumpkin and see that it's already carved like a jack-o-lantern. I wonder whether this is a violation of the rules that I'm supposed to carve it. I decide that once I put it on I'll add features. (Maybe a mustache?) I return to the mirror to complete the procedure but find that my original head has grown back. I feel a flash of surprise and the mirror disappears.

I start looking around the class for more mirrors. One pops up but vanishes as soon as I try to look into it. I grumble about this and my voice suddenly sounds like the growl of an old man. I find a third mirror. When I look into it, Walter White from "Breaking Bad" is staring back at me. He (is this me or someone else??) is wearing the trademark Heisenberg pork pie hat and dark glasses. The dream fades and I'm awake.

This was my first encounter with a hostile, physically violent DC. Great learning experience, I think. I also wound up giving an LD mini-seminar in dream, which was interesting to say the least!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #18: DC Wants a Piece of Me

I hurry into a grocery store to pick up some items, passing my friend R on the way in. (The only IWL friend I have that regularly LDs.) I say hey and we catch up about the time he's been spending in Seoul, South Korea. I'm in a hurry so I tell him I have to run.

As he's leaving, I call back to him and ask, "R, what city are we in right now?" He thinks for a moment and then says that he doesn't know. How can we both not know? Something's off. "Buddy, aren't you supposed to be in Seoul? I've never been to Seoul." We agree that it's strange neither of us know where we are and I realize that I'm dreaming. "I figured out what's going on, R. I'm dreaming. Well, one of us is, I guess. Probably me." He congratulates me and agrees that it's "probably" me having the LD and not him. I clap him on the shoulder and head into the store.

I walk through a set of automatic doors and casually explore the store, taking my time marveling at the items on the shelves, the level of detail, and the sheer number of dream characters buying food for the week. I spend several minutes just enjoying the people and texture in the place. One DC, a bulky man in a football jersey and baseball cap, gives me a slightly unfriendly look, but I ignore him.

A more serious confrontation is next. I'm approaching the frozen foods section when a fat, enormously tall man locks eyes with me. His many chins quake with rage and his fists are balled up for a fight. The huge man strides toward me, flaring out his arms like an obese grizzly bear. I hear him grinding his teeth. The sound is awful, like ice cubes being crushed against one another.

My own temper starts to smolder but I catch myself and say, "Wait. You're not upset with me. You're angry about something else. What can I do to help you?" He stops and drops his arms to his side, mouth hanging open in surprise. Sheepishly, he says, "Drumstick." I point to one of the cases in the freezer aisle and it begins to give off a warm glow. "The ice cream's in there," I tell him. "I made this place. That means it's my fault it didn't have what you needed. I'm sorry for your trouble." He smiles broadly and waves, turning toward the ice cream.

I walk further down the freezer aisle, studying the ice cream and shelves full of frozen dinners. (My subconscious seems to mostly produce lasagna and meatloaf.) At the end of the aisle, I come to a door that leads into a hotel banquet hall with a view high above the city. (What city? Still don't know.)

I'm barging in on some sort of convention and the well-dressed DCs act shocked to see me. They protest at first but I inform them that all of this is my lucid dream, so they'll just have to be patient until I'm through. They become very interested, peppering me with questions. A small crowd of well-dressed young professionals gathers around me, asking me why I keep rubbing my hands together and prodding at my arms. I explain a bunch of LD concepts to them, starting with stabilization, going through how I enter an LD, etc. None of it feels like a waste of time. If these DCs represent some part of myself, what could be better than reviewing the basics?

I tell them that I have to find the Cretaceous sea. I hold my hands out and will the Cretaceous sea to illuminate. A chunk of the horizon starts giving off a warm glow (just like the ice cream!) I try to push through the window, which fails, and then try to punch it. It acts like plexiglas, wobbling and vibrating but refusing to break. I finally grab a chair and knock out a smaller panel.

I squeeze myself through to the outside of the building. The wind is fierce, tugging at my clothes, and the ground looks far, far away. I cling to the building, suddenly more afraid than I was prepared to be. I start to calm myself but it's too late -- I'm awake.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #17: Doorway Troubles

We're throwing some kind of huge party at our house. Our den has expanded to an impossible size and is filled with rows of picnic tables, with friends and family all around. I feel the mingled excitement and vague anxiety that I always feel hosting any sort of event. It's fun visiting with the guests, several of whom I haven't seen in quite some time.

"S", a friend of mine, grabs me in order to inform me than an "associate" of his has inexpensive cruise tickets that he would like to sell me. S's associate is a rough-looking character with a plug earring installed in each of his wobbling earlobes. He carelessly dumps his wallet out on the table, telling me that the tickets are "in there somewhere". I find his driver's license, which is covered with uncomfortably personal information, such as the fact that he is an "Atheist" who has a "Vasectomy".

I find a strange little zip-lock bag filled with strips of paper that have different people's signatures on them. It feels creepy to me and I wonder why he would have such a thing. I joke nervously, "A little weird, but at least it's not a bag full of women's hair or something."

When I look up to gauge his reaction, the scene has shifted. I'm now surrounded by a handful of well-dressed police detectives. They chuckle at my comment and I realize that I'm also a detective and we're working together to solve a crime. Fortunately, I still have strong recall of the previous dream scene, note the strangeness of the transition and I become totally lucid. I stop in the middle of a sentence I can no longer remember and say, "And now I am lucid." I nod politely at my new colleagues and get up to leave.

The detectives step aside for me and I see that I'm on the ground floor of a glass office building. Through the glass I see a street scene, cars and pedestrians passing by outside of the building. I walk past a busy cubicle farm, taking in my surroundings and ambling slowly toward the exit.

Clarity is high and I feel super-aware, like the master of my domain. I feel so confident that I have no urge to stabilize. Out loud I say, "This is my lucid dream. It will go at my pace and nobody will control it but me." I feel calm and unstoppable as I walk toward the exit. A woman enters from the street and I nod a greeting. She smiles back and I note that although she is a stranger to me, she looks every bit as real as a person I might encounter during a day at the office.

After the woman passes, I step calmly through the exit. There's a flash of light as direct sunlight hits my eyes and suddenly I'm awake. The calmness is still there at first but it evaporates quickly. My pulse is high (although not as high as my prior LD waking) and I wonder whether that just started. It's inconceivable to me that I felt as calm as I did if my sleeping body had such a high heart rate.

The lucid portion probably went just over a minute. I'd have of course preferred a longer lucid, but every lucid dream (especially a high-clarity one like this) feels like a real victory!