CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #182: Office Snacks

I walk into a meeting where most of the attendees are cast members of The Office. I realize that this has to be a dream. Jim Halpert is leading the meeting and as I enter, he says, “Glad you could join us.”

The meeting drones on in the background, but my attention focuses on a large box of snack foods. Each kind of snack food is in its own big cereal bag, clipped shut with a clothespin. Interested, I grab one off the top, remove the clothespin, and open it. The bag has to be unrolled several times (enough times to worry me), eventually unfurling to a length of about two feet.

The bag is full of some form of Chex Mix, and I happily start munching away. As I’m eating, Michael Scott takes the floor and says that “And of course, Pam’s default job will be in engineering.” Most of the meeting stays as a drone as I crunch away on the snacks.

My vision fades out after a bit, but I’m able to keep eating, so I just plow right on ahead. Now the Chex mix that I pull out seems to contain peanut butter on the inside! It’s incredibly delicious and I just keep shoveling it down my pie-hole until the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #181: Big Band

As I’m leaving a shopping mall, there’s an announcement that the mall is under lockdown because someone has stolen a baby from a stroller. This all seems too strange to me and I become lucid.

I’m in a large, empty room that looks a bit like a warehouse, a bit like a mall entrance. It’s only half lit but I can make out the ceiling maybe fifty feet above me. I remember that I wanted to make the dream as vivid as possible so I slowly rub my hands together, nothing how real they look and feel. The one difference I notice is that they leave visible streaks across my vision when I move them.

I can’t remember any goals beyond vividness, so I raise my hands to the ceiling and say, “I’ll take whatever you have to give me.” Nothing happens, so I add, “Show me something amazing! Anything!” Again I wait, and I start to feel a twinge of nervousness.

“I think we need more light,” I say, and the light comes up a bit. Now I hear music behind me, like something from a band. I turn and see a large open-air exit from the mall with a big band playing on a set of risers near the exit. I make my way over to the band, only partly able to hear the music. The risers go up about 3 levels and there are maybe 20 or 25 band members there. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to how they’re organized.

The band members are wearing these cool suits with thick, vertical black and white stripes. “Nice suits,” I say. “I’m wearing one too!” And when I hold out my arms, sure enough I’m dressed like I’m part of the band.

On the top level I spot the only female in the group, a woman with dark, curly hair drawn back in a ponytail. I can’t remember what instrument she plays, but she has a cool vibe and smiles at me in acknowledgement. I float up to her level on the riser and we briefly kiss. Afterward I probe at her temples, forehead, and scalp with my fingers as a sort of vividness-enhancing thing. She wrinkles her nose and squeezes her eyes shut when I do this.

Looking out past the risers I see the ocean. I pick her up and carry her with me, floating toward a strange beach where some huge metallic device has somehow permanently trapped a wave just as it crests. A dozen surfers stand happily atop the wave, gliding back and forth while moving neither forward nor back.

As I reach the edge of the water, the woman from the band shifts uncomfortably. “Do you want to go with me or stay here?” I ask. She says that she wants to “stay here”, so I set her down at the shoreline. I float/swim further out into the water, my feet dragging along as I go. Eventually I start swimming, and the visuals fade from the dream. The sensation of swimming continues for a while, though, before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #180: The Dome of Stars

I have a false awakening in my house where I’m trying to do something as quickly as possible. What is it? Oh right -- I’m trying to get out because I’m having a lucid dream.

I move through the rooms as quickly as I can. The layout is similar, but just different enough to throw me off. I wind up in the garage and there’s a new hallway off of the south wall that wasn’t there before. I follow the hallway into what appears to be a bordello. Five or six women who look like Victorian-era prostitutes are standing or sitting near a set of mirrors. One of the seated women is reading a magazine, a couple of them are applying make-up, and some are just standing around not doing much of anything.

I feel like this is one of those LD scenarios where you’re supposed to be thinking sexy thoughts but the women mostly just seem like they’re relaxing on break. I really don’t feel like bothering them. I start asking them something about why they’re running the bordello in my house, but they start moving around and the scene feels a little confusing. I go ahead and phase out through the wall to clear my head.

Now I’m out on the street. Across the street I see a man standing under the branches of an oak. He looks Hawaiian, heavy-set with a salt-and-pepper hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. I remember the Task of the Month, and approach him asking, “What’s your New Year’s Resolution?”

He’s incredibly eager to answer, and a smile spreads across his face. “To make the most of things, <something something>, and…” He grabs one of my hands in both of his and finished triumphantly: “To cook with more cinnamon!”

His enthusiasm is contagious and I joyously shout, “Thank you for that great answer!” I pause for a moment. “But could you repeat that part in the middle?” He doesn’t seem interested in doing this, though, and wanders away.

Task done, now I just feel like exploring. I fly up past the top of the tree, reminding myself that “The world is yours…” I move up past the treetops and look out at the stars. It’s a beautiful night and I take a moment to enjoy the unfamiliar constellations. I notice one set of stars is exactly the same as a set in a different part of the sky. I laugh at my brain taking this “shortcut”. But then I wonder… did it only do this because I expect it to?

I fly up higher and higher until I can see that the sky is curving above me. In fact, there is no limitless sky but rather just a huge dome that I can reach the top of if I just fly high enough.

And I do! When I reach the very top of the dome, I see a small, glowing control panel! There’s a single flashing green button sitting there at the top of this dome of stars. But as I reach for it, I start losing altitude. I tell myself that “this is all mine” but I can’t shake the notion that I’m just not going to be able to reach that button to find out what it does. I reach up and up, trying to reach it, but the dream fades.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #179: The One Where I Fight Samuel L. Jackson

I have a false awakening but I notice that I’m alone (Wife is missing) and the bed has been turned 90 degrees. Right away I realize that this is a dream.

Something grabs me by the leg, pulls me out of the bed, and drags me to the floor. I look up and Samuel L. Jackson is standing over me! He says something along the lines of “You’re not going anywhere,” and starts to stomp down at me. I think that I should do some tricky/clever dream control thing but I feel too much like I’m in a fight to get it together.

We struggle for a moment until I manage to get my arm wrapped around his ankle, push my foot into his crotch, and then push up, lifting him off of his feet. He falls onto his back and we wrestle around kind of grabbing at each other’s feet to gain control. His head looks close enough to reach so I lash out, kicking him straight in the face. He flops back and stops moving.

I sit up and as I approach Samuel L. Jackson, he changes into a smallish, delicate-looking woman in her mid-20s. She looks Mediterranean and overall completely different from Samuel L. Jackson. “Help me, I’m pretty hurt...” she says, sitting up just a little bit. I feel bad for her, so I pick her up and carry her with me. I notice that she’s very cute but the fact that 15 seconds ago she was Samuel L. Jackson makes me quite uninterested.

We phase through the wall of the house out into the night. I want it to be morning, so I do a hulk-jump or two, expecting the time of day to shift. It does, and before long it’s early morning. We’re on a sidewalk outside of a cafe with a canvas awning.

I walk inside the cafe to find Wife sitting at a table with two strangers, one a heavy, hipster-looking guy and the other a pretty woman in her early 30s with short, brown hair. “I’m having a lucid dream,” I tell them, mostly to explain the fact that I’ve just carried a woman into the cafe with me.

“Ah,” says Wife, giving me a “Oh, another one of those” kind of look. I join them at the table along with the woman formerly known as Samuel L. Jackson, who now seems relatively unhurt and integrates herself naturally into the conversation. The hipster and the brown-haired woman are authors and they’re talking with Wife about their new book. The conversation is strange and it’s hard to understand details.

I’m also distracted by the food. There are little plates of small chocolate bars that I keep sampling. They taste delicious but they fade too quickly, almost as if they were so light and insubstantial that you only get a moment to taste them. At one point, Wife remarks, “He even thinks this is dream food.”

“I admit it, I do!” I say. Everyone chuckles like I’m an amusing eccentric.

Somehow the scene changes to a featureless room with three books lying on the floor. The two writers and the woman who once was Samuel L. Jackson walk out through the door, chatting about something.

I examine the second book. It’s by the writers we ate with and it’s about how early civilizations made fantastic technological leaps forward by using ideas that came to them in lucid dreams. I’m excited by the whole premise of the book. I really believe that it must be true. (I'm also partly offended that they acted so skeptical that I was having a lucid dream.)

“I really want to read this book,” I tell Wife, and she agrees that it sounds right up my alley. Now that we’re alone, I enjoy a little time making out with Wife until the dream ends.

This dream is from the morning of 1/1/2014.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #178: Syrian Reading

I'm walking through a bookstore when I become lucid. I stand there for a moment, letting DCs pass on both sides of me. A short woman with dark, curly hair approaches me. She's oddly dressed, with huge glasses and a flowy, ankle-length skirt. She seems overjoyed to see me, and we make out for a moment.

There’s a sudden transition and now we’re walking together through the bookstore. She tells me that she’s from Syria and that I have to come back with her to Syria and do something there to help her. This is interesting enough, so I follow along as she leads me down an aisle.

As we walk along, I see a series of books scattered around on the floor. They’re all historical fiction novels with a mustachioed Tom Selleck dressed in World War II garb and standing in various dramatic poses. Each one's different and they're all kind of cool. I think about picking one up but let it go so I can stick with the dream plot she's leading me toward.

We make a right turn and she says that “This is the travel section.” She walks a few more feet, pulls a book from the shelf, and hands it to me. It’s another book about war, something about the history of warfare in the west, and it’s by a man named something like “Bernard Franks”.

I think that this can’t be the right book, but she assures me that this “This is the one we need.” I’m confused by this but before I can think too much, she grabs my hand and starts running back down the aisle. We don’t really get anywhere before the dream ends.

This dream is from the morning of 1/1/2014.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #177: The Rivals

I'm sitting at a table with Wife looking through some photos when I somehow become lucid. She steps away from the table and leaps onto a nearby bed, posing and smiling seductively. I feel super amorous and move eagerly toward her. But to the side of me, I notice four other guys moving toward her, all of them looking just as eager as me. Wife looks playfully at each of us as if she's choosing.

I'm so angered by this turn of events that I punch the closest rival in the face. He crumples to the floor, his face immediately becoming a bruised mess. He shrinks into a little troll monster with a pinched, sour expression and then just sits there, not moving. Now the other men have all vanished and I leap triumphantly onto the bed and sexytime commences.

We get about fifteen seconds of fun before Wife does this strange transformation into a half-sized Wife replica doll. Total mood killer. I pick up the doll and it's light as a feather. I feel sad and guilty, wondering if my attack on the DC caused this. I walk out the door carrying the doll and it transforms into a slightly wilted bouquet of flowers before disappearing entirely.

Now I'm in some sort of indoor carnival. I walk past a vendor with curly, slightly 80s-looking hair and a mustache. I slow down and note how vivid everything is. I remember that it's been a few weeks since my last lucid and I reflect on what a shock it is to experience the realness of lucid dreaming after some time off.

I approach a circle of benches and there's Wife, sitting by herself on the right side of one. I approach her calmly, hoping I can keep her DC more stable this time. She looks up at me and we smile at one another as the dream ends.

This dream is from the morning of 12/15/2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #176: Chariots in the Sky

I have a false awakening in a fancy hotel room. My kids E and R are running around as I sleepily come to my senses. Wife gets out of bed first and I think that I should get up to help her with the kiddos. But I somehow “jump” to being on my feet and I realize that this is the start of a lucid dream.

I head for the window, phase out, and find myself clinging to a steeply slanted rooftop under a dark, cloudy sky. Everywhere I look are other rooftops just like this one, very steep and dotted with lit windows. The texture on the roof shifts oddly, jumping from one repeated pattern to another.

I leap to another roof. There’s nothing but dark void below. Each building is about 50 feet apart and floats freely through the sky. I make a couple of more leaps, and as I look around I note that there are flying chariots with large passenger cars flying through the sky. These flying chariots feel like my ticket to a less hostile scene, so I leap onto one.

As I crash onto the floor of the passenger car, the DCs on board look at me with surprise and shuffle away before returning to normal. Most of them are dressed in a mix of medieval and classical Greek garb.

I’m willing the chariot to encounter something handy for me as it flies through the sky, particularly something I could use for Task of the Year. I’m mainly looking for the Great Pyramid or the Colosseum. We fly past lots of cool-looking buildings (including the Temple of Zeus and a series of huge medieval castles) but they’re not quite the ones I’m looking for. I’m contemplating just jumping for one and exploring when we pull up close to an arena that looks like a shorter version of the Colosseum!

I glide off of the chariot toward the Colosseum when I see an attractive but angry-looking woman in her early 30s dragging a red-haired teenager off of the chariot by his collar. She’s dressed in what looks like a Roman toga and she’s giving the kid an earful: “Do you know how shameful it is to have a knight running around in an enemy chariot?”

I don’t know what she’s talking about, because the kid looks way too young and (frankly) wimpy to be a “knight” of any kind. It also seems like she’s a little young to be his mom. The kid’s cowering and whimpering as she drags him along. I turn back toward the Colosseum and move only a bit further before the end of the dream.

This is a dream from the morning of 12/15/2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #175: The War of Red and Blue

I’m in a building that looks like my new office, sitting next to my friend “Leroy”. He complains that his chair is uncomfortable and moves to a row of tables that’s just behind us. While Leroy goes on and on about how much more comfortable this part of the office is, I notice that Dwight Schrute from The Office is sitting here as well. I know that this is wrong and become lucid.

I walk over to the window and phase out to the street. The roadway looks similar to the one that the android and I saw in the previous dream, but now everything is vivid and quite detailed. It’s night and in the distance I see what looks like a spacecraft. Soon I see more and more ships flying through the sky. Before long they’re shooting at one another!

I take to the sky to get a better view and see that the sky is filled with blue and red ships firing at one another. Each building in the city is also apparently affiliated with either blue or red. You can tell because each window, rather than being simply transparent, glows brightly in either a blue or red.

I fly for a while and at one point a trio of red ships spot me and train their fire on me (just as I worry this will happen.) Fortunately, I shrug it off, feeling nothing more than a slight impact.

Flying higher, I soar over the top of the conflict. It’s just war as far as I can see, blue vs. red. Ships explode and buildings crumble, but from this high up I feel distanced from the whole thing. In spite of all the carnage below, the feeling is almost serene. I fly like this for a while, just observing until the dream ends.

This one is from the morning of 12/15/2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #174: Android

I’m sitting on the floor of an apartment talking to a guy who I think is Oneironaut Zero. I don’t really know OZ, so I think this is a little unusual, but I’m happy to be talking about lucid dreaming.

As we’re chatting, Wife walks into the room with a young woman in her early 20s, blonde, petite and with a slightly vacant look in her eye. Wife explains that this is a new model of android that they’re selling now very inexpensively and can act almost like a real person.

We greet the android and she responds with a shy wave and a slightly stilted “Hi.” With that, she crouches down on the floor and starts tracing her finger through the carpet. Wife leaves the room and, as I try to say something to the android, Wife yells from down the hall, “The kids are trying to sleep! Keep it down!” I feel annoyed that I can’t talk but she’s allowed to yell.

“Did you just roll your eyes at me?” says Wife from down the hall and storms back into the room, looking irritated. I know that I didn’t and as I wonder why she thinks so, I soon realize that I’m dreaming. I get to my feet and the scene shifts. Wife disappears, Oneironaut Zero disappears, and the android’s hair goes from blonde to brown and her skin becomes paler.

I grab the android’s hand and charge for the apartment window, phasing straight through into what looks like an unfinished street scene. The street seems to draw itself in chunks as we run along. I see a few buildings against the blank sky but they seem to raise up lazily just as I look in their direction.

We run along like this for a while before the dream seems to stop rebuilding and finally sags into the void. The android is still here and seems determined to stay in the scene. She says something like, “I want to go too” and starts grabbing onto my arms and head. At one point it feels like she’s trying to stand on my head.

Eventually the android settles down a bit, shifts herself next to me, and we make out for a little bit. After about 15-20 seconds, though, she becomes non-responsive and just sort of stops moving. This takes the fun out of it, so I start thinking about where to take the dream next, but it soon ends.

This dream is from the morning of 12/15/2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #173: Luxor

I’m in a hotel room bedroom talking with Wife. She has the lights off like we’re getting ready for bed but there's an errand to take care of. We need an access card for the pool and she’s sending me out to get it.

When I get to the main room of the suite, rather than our kids I encounter a guy that looks like Henry Rollins. I think he’s some kind of celebrity, although I’m not sure who I really think this is. We talk for a little bit and he tells some kinda funny but off-color joke. He motions toward our room and says, “Sorry, forgot about the wife.”

I decide that I’d better not leave Wife alone with a stranger in our hotel room so I decide not to leave. As I’m thinking through this, I become lucid and walk back into the bedroom. I crawl into bed next to Wife, planning on performing a WILD. Wait, no, I’m already having a lucid dream. I get out of bed, walk to the end of the room and phase out through the window into the void.

I rub my hands together as I fall through the void. The descent slows until I can no longer feel it and I give myself a bit of a pep talk about how “all of this is mine”, hoping to be ready for some dream control when I emerge from the void. I’m thinking of Task of the Year, and imagine that I’ll see the Great Pyramid when I emerge.

After a bit, the void gives way to a dusky desert scene. And about 70 or so feet away is the base of an Egyptian pyramid! There are a lot of smaller pyramids around the in the area as well, most of them only ten feet high or so. Everything’s covered in billboard and neon signs that say things like “Clearance!” and “For Sale!”

I make my way toward the main pyramid when I encounter an attractive brunette in her late 20s. “Can we help you?” she asks. Just as she says this, she’s joined by an identical twin. The idea of an attempt at sexytime sounds appealing, but no, the Pyramid is right here. Stay focused.

Confused about what the Pyramid task is (repair/reanimate the Sphinx and ride her to the top), I respond, “Can you show me the way inside the Pyramid?" Then I add: "By the way, you two are really cute.” (I think I was trying to impress them/myself for staying on track or something, I don’t know. )

They pose and raise their arms over their head in a “We know!” kind of gesture. One of them (the first one I met) says, “Sure, I’ll show you.” She heads off around the side of the Pyramid and I follow. As we’re walking she narrates like a tour guide, gesturing at some wares as we pass by some stalls in a market area. “Here’s where they sell Khuddush and vials.” (I’m spelling “Khuddush” the way it sounded to me, but it’s a guess since I don’t know this word.)

“What’s Khuddush?” I ask.

“You don’t know? This is supposed to be your dream. If I know something that you don’t, does that mean…?” Her voice trails off. I have kind of a “whoa” moment. (I looked up “Khuddush” and couldn’t find anything. The closest match was the kiddush, a Jewish Sabbath ritual. Kiddush - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

I follow her into a high stone chamber where a few other DCs are wandering around. We walk toward a staircase leading down and the dream falls into the void. I can’t rescue it, but before I emerge, I hear an unfamiliar female voice say, “Don’t get too attached.” The dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #172: Bedroom Mirror

I either DILD or WILD into a scene where I'm walking with my oldest son E across a parking lot. There are only a few cars here but there are a huge number of DCs wandering around. It looks like the parking lot is immediately adjacent to an Olympic pool that's surrounded by a high chainlink fence, so I decide to head that way.

As we're walking along, I spy my friend F. He and E haven't gotten to see each other in person for a while, so I think it'd be fun to have their DCs interact. "Hey F!" I say. "We're heading for the pool. Walk with us."

"Sure thing, man!" he says and immediately bolts off ahead of me, hopping around like a kid. Each of his "hops" have him bounding around about 6 feet up in the air. Meanwhile E stays obediently close by, and I find the role reversal amusing.

Walking all the way to the pool takes a distressingly long time and I start feeling like I'm overcommiting to this one scenario. I see it through, though, and when we get to the pool, E and F start running around. There are a lot of people here and the two of them are quickly lost in the crowd. I think I could find them again if I put my mind to it, but I decide to just flow into a different set of goals. I notice a football stadium a ways off past the pool, so I fly over to that to investigate, thinking I can make the switch of stadium to Colosseum for Task of the Year.

I land in a broad, grassy field near the stadium. The crowd's even thicker here but one extremely attractive woman catches my eye as she walks past. She's Asian, about 30, and strangely dressed, wearing a long, purple, velvety coat that reaches down to her knees. For a moment I return to my Colosseum idea but just can't get the DC off of my mind, so I decide to spend some time with her instead.

When I turn back she's still, looking at me with a bit of confusion. I explain what I have in mind and she nods slowly, her eyes narrowing in concentration as if it's really hard to make sense of what I'm saying. But eventually she gets the picture and approaches me. We make out for a second and then we fly off together to get away from the crowd.

Somehow we wind up in a huge, elegant, marbled bedroom and very vivid sexytime begins. After about a minute or so of great fun, I notice that there’s a large, angled mirror on part of the wall, and I check whether I can see us in it. In the mirror I see another couple doing the same thing we’re doing, but they’re completely different people (an Asian male and a totally different Asian female.) The woman from the mirror and I stare at each other in shock and amusement for a moment.

I notice another mirror on a different part of the wall and when I check it I see an entirely new scene -- it’s the same couple from the other mirror, now grown old and sitting together on a bench, their hands clasped together. The old couple shares a laugh and look into each other’s eyes as the dream ends.

Major rise in confidence during this dream! Got an animal transformation, Advanced TotM, and was getting there on a Task of the Year, too. Thanks to NewArtemis for the dream control suggestions!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #171: I Am the Wolf

I have a false awakening that places me in my bed at home next to Wife. All of the lights are on and she's fiddling around with some papers in bed, something to do with my new business. "Oh good, you're awake," she says. I grumble about how unhappy I am that this is the case.

"Sorry," she responds, "but we really need to work on this." I whine that it should be able to wait until the morning and that I was trying to have a lucid dream. She turns back to the papers, not bothering me any further. I'm a little worried that I was rude and have maybe pissed her off, but I decide to just take my chance while I can. I roll onto my side and begin my mantra of "The world is yours". I'm shocked to find that almost immediately I start a WILD transition. (Obviously just an in-dream WILD, but I didn't realize it at the time.)

In the transition state, my dream hands are grasping at something rough that's rolling by beneath me. I grasp at it and start clawing my way along. A gravel surface comes into view. It seems like I'm floating while climbing a ladder made out of gravel that's been crudely mortared together. After a bit, the scene solidifies and the gravel becomes a path. There's one more odd little jump as gravity takes hold and now I'm walking along the path in a full-formed scene.

It's dawn and I'm on a path that cuts through a park, not far from a street. Most of the DCs are dressed like it's chilly but it feels mild to me. I remember my intention to be extra confident in this dream and I start shouting my intentions at the passerby. "I can do anything I want! This is all mine!" I shout, interspersing lots of profanity and generally sounding like a total nutjob.

I remember Task of the Month to turn into a white wolf, hide in the snow, and hunt down a meal. I still feel all crazy from my mantra and the insane confidence I had at the start of this dream. I shout in a booming voice that's not my own that "I AM THE WOLF!" Immediately my hands curl into white paws. I practice running a bit on all fours and it's not bad! I kind of get the sense that I'm sort of bent over like a loping hunchback / werewolf thing but hey, close enough!

I go on a brief, profanity-laced tirade about how there's a bunch of snow to my right, and yep there it is. I hop my little wolf-feet into it and crouch down, looking to my left for some prey. Immediately I spy two potential targets: the closest is a large skunk and the other is an orange, semi-spherical alien thing with tentacles. The skunk's closer and the alien makes me a bit nervous, so I pounce on the skunk.

My teeth rip into him and I tear a big chunk away. Fortunately none of this is bloody but the skunk stares at me in shock. The skunk meat tastes atrocious. It's like chewing on a fart. I can't remember whether I'm supposed to eat the whole animal so I take another bite. This time it's more gummy and tasteless at first but after a bit of chewing, nope, this bite's all farty-tasting too. I hope this is good enough because I've had enough of being a carnivore.

I allow myself to change back into a human and walk further into the park. I come to three identical stone buildings with opaque green windows, standing side by side. I think of the Colosseum Task of the Year and shout that the building which leads to the Colosseum needs to light up. No immediate result, so another attempt, more yelly and with more profanity does the trick and the middle building's door lights up.

I move through a series of three automatic glass doors where a steady stream of children is walking in the opposite direction. I say that the kids need to get out of the way and DC parents appear from out of nowhere to pull them to the side as I pass. I emerge in a restaurant area filled with DCs enjoying a meal. An Indian man in his early 40s is playing on a slot machine against the left wall and he turns to look at me with an expression of surprise.

I push through the back door out into the early morning next to a crumbling sports arena. It's huge and looks a lot like the Colosseum apart from some weird details like the rebar that's sticking out of the top of it. I fly up toward the top and as a gust of wind carries me sideways away from where I want to be, I shout and mutter that "this is my world", and things get back on track.

I come over the top of the stadium to see that inside it looks like a grassy version of the Circus Maximus! There's even a little chariot racing by itself around the track. I know I can make this work, so I fly down toward the field, shouting that down there will be someone for me to fight. Before I'm even halfway down, though, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #170: Spellcasting 101

I'm standing in what looks like a hotel room with a spellcaster, a brown-haired girl in her late teens or early twenties. She's holding her palms out in front of her, and a miniature tornado whirls and dances in each of her hands. Each cyclone is about a foot high and spins rapidly but quietly, the tip of the funnel stuck to the same spot on her palms. This trick is new to her and she darts her eyes at me as if to say, "Did I get it right?" I nod approvingly.

For some reason, a flame catches around the upper rim of each tornado and she starts to lose her calm. "Why's it doing that?" The flame begins to spread down the funnel and she starts to panic. I become lucid as the fire spreads down the tornado and wraps ribbons of flame around her arms. I can see that the flames are just wrapping around her, though, and she's not actually catching on fire. It looks like some kind of fire spell is building up that she doesn't understand how to operate or control.

There's a door just behind me that looks like it leads down to a basement. I usher her toward the basement, saying, "Let's go downstairs to practice that. It'll be safer there." She's starting to panic but she starts moving toward the basement as the dream ends.

I hold on for DEILD, imagining myself running down a dark flight of stairs. It takes a moment for the imagery to coalesce again, and when I emerge back in a dream, I'm alone in a different hotel room, running around the room. I'm sort of prancing around on the carpet using just the balls of my feet. It's very dainty-looking and super un-macho but the sensation on my feet's very vivid and is helping me keep fears of an unstable dream at bay. (I know to ignore these, but there they were anyway!)

I run around the room like this for a bit more and then switch to rubbing my hands together. I continue this pretty much throughout the rest of the dream.

I walk out through the hotel room door into a darkly-carpeted hallway and walk for a long way. On my right I see a door that looks just like the one that led to the basement in the previous dream, so I follow it, expecting to find the young spellcaster again. I tromp down a flight of wooden stairs into a well-lit anteroom where an Hispanic woman in her late 30s is sitting behind an old-style cash register. She gives me a friendly smile and I remember the Task of the month to ask a DC for a gift.

"Hey!" I say. "Go ahead and give me my gift now." She nods, reaches under her desk, and pulls out a greeting card in an envelope. I will the greeting card to be open and the envelope just sort of vanishes. The cover of the card is some kind of abstract painting and the inside just has some simple handwriting in pen that read: "THANK YOU FOR THE CARD!" I'm trying to process what this means when the dream ends.

A timely rescue from the "void"/re-stabilization thanks to NewArtemis!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #169: Second Rescue

I’m an astronaut being prepped for a solo spaceflight mission. On this mission, I’ll be studying how various things smell when one is travelling through space. This all feels incredibly important and the pressure of the job is starting to stress me out.

I do a simulated flight in some kind of simulator that is really just a cheesy little room with stars painted on it. Something about this freaks me out, and I leave the sim, hurrying down a hall and thinking I’m just not cut out for this job. Somewhere along the way it occurs to me that fortunately this is all a dream.

I end up in a two-story library, wood-panelled, and filled with quietly studying DCs. I’m walking along a broad balcony that encircles a lower part of the library that’s filled with bookstacks. Somehow the dream starts to feel like it’s destabilizing, and I grab onto the corner of a nearby table. The dream loses most of its color and the frame rate drops. I just see a slow series of static images, each one moving horizontally and unsteadily across my field of view for a second or so before the next grayish image pops up.

Everything feels horribly unstable and I’m sure it’s all about to end. I decide to just go for my old trick of directly appealing for help and call for NewArtemis. I hold out my right hand and call her as “NewArtemis” a couple of times before remembering to just use her real name.

It doesn’t seem to be working for a moment, but after I’ve waited a bit, it finally works! A hand grabs my right shoulder and another grabs my right hand. “I have to come a long way to get here! I was on my way the whole time but you have to give me a second.” She’s speaking very rapidly. “You’ll be fine, there’s nothing wrong with this dream, here, let me fix this…”

She grips my shoulder and just sort of shakes the hell out of me. It’s surprisingly strong and bone-rattling, but it seems to nicely stabilize the scene. I tell her something along the lines of, “You’re as strong as a chimp.” She laughs and makes some kind of response that I can’t remember.

We move along the balcony where a cop has posted himself. He looks over and makes a remark about how I’m supposed to be “doing my job” preparing for my trip into space. He’s very unfriendly, speaking and acting as if he wants to arrest me. “Let’s go down this way,” I say to NewArtemis, and we float down to the first floor. The other DCs view this with suspicion, and I try to keep myself from getting panicky and feeling persecuted.

We exit through an adjacent room, wood-panelled and very elegant. As we’re exiting, a hulking, ogre-like guy comes through the door toward us. I have a false memory that he and I are friends. “Hey man, there’s a cop behind me. Take care of him, will you?” He smirks and nods.

“You know that guy?” asks Art, referring to the ogre.

“Yeah, that’s a buddy of mine,” I say, totally buying into the false memory. We go through the door into a darkened restaurant. Through a glass window on our left we see a brightly-lit daycare center. A little girl looks out at us and waves. We wave back as we walk toward the back of the restaurant.

We approach a booth where a man is inspecting an old record album. The cover is this incredibly vivid picture of a blonde woman in her late 30s apparently named “Ezzilon”. I’m amazed by how vivid the picture on the album is. I’m thinking that we’ll phase outside through the window when I notice that Art’s reflection has changed and she now looks like a mix between herself and “Ezzilon”. It’s a surprising effect and as I’m turning to check for myself, the dream ends.

Well, a close-ish call with getting to the Pyramid and some fun play with a few new techniques. Still have a lot of refining to do!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #168: Pyramid Artwork

I have a false awakening where I wake up excited about some video game idea. I’m desperate to write it down. I grab my dream journal, deciding that’s the best place I’ve got to write the idea down. This makes me think of dreaming, though, and I become lucid.

I walk toward the window, glancing over at the bed as I go. I see Wife sleeping peacefully on my side of the bed, and my sleeping body is nowhere in sight. I’m amused by the unusual layout and note that this is definitely not an OBE. I think about saying something to Wife as I pass but decide to just leave her alone.

I phase out through the external wall, winding up in the void. I imagine the scene as it should be, though, and after a few seconds it works itself into a convincing replica of my street at night. This gives me a nice confidence boost, so I imagine that the Great Pyramid is behind me. I turn around to find that it hasn’t worked, though, and it’s just more houses as far as I can see.

I’m feeling aggressive, though, so I use my fingers to draw a triangle in the distance. The triangle isn’t perfect, but it comes out in a shimmering neon green. With some focus, I’m able to slowly change the green outline into the distant Great Pyramid!

Seeing the Pyramid gives me a target to be excited about so I immediately attempt a zoom teleport. Something goes wrong, though, and the Pyramid actually gets further away rather than closer to me. This frustrates me and I start making a half-hearted attempt to fly there instead.

The scene resets somehow and I’m in a huge aircraft hangar. Okay, starting over. Again I go for the “draw a triangle” trick and I get a decent-looking triangle. I try to change it into the Pyramid but it stays stubbornly neon and triangular.

Several other attempts follow, including erasing and redrawing the triangle, chopping the top of it off and reforming it into a trapezoid, and drawing several copies at once. I can never quite make any of this work before the dream ends.