lucid

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #135: Caught in a Net

I'm in my childhood home, discussing a business venture with my friend "Leroy" and another friend "Crispy", someone I lost touch with a few years back. I have a false memory that we've been in business together for a long time and we're discussing the fate of a fourth partner, a guy I knew in high school that we'll call "Lucky Bastard".

Crispy wanders off somewhere and as she leaves, Lucky Bastard joins Leroy and me at a small conference table. Lucky Bastard reveals that his plan for the business is to inject hostile code into the video game Trine and upload it to a file-sharing service. I ask him how this is supposed to make us any money. He has no clue. Leroy and I look at each other. I tell Lucky Bastard that he's fired. He cries a bit and shrinks down, turning into a small gnome-like creature. I find this awkward, so I leave the room and walk down the hallway.

It still looks like my childhood home and I pass by a guest room. There's a queen size bed in there now and I see Crispy lying in it next to a man and a child, neither of whom I know. I worry that Crispy will be upset that I fired Lucky Bastard without including her in the decision but as I consider telling her, I see that she has disappeared. I become lucid.

I wander back into the hall to the living room. It looks the same except for the fact that all of the furniture has been removed. Something makes me worry about the stability of the dream, so I rub my hands together a few times. This helps, and I remember my plan to use my voice for added stability. I do a really loud yell and it comes out really low, roaring, and generally bad-ass. The walls of the house shudder.

Now I'm feeling like a bigshot. I try to yell "Clarity now!" but the words catch in my throat. I try again, and once again there's this awkward catch in my throat when I try. I feel humbled and a little embarrassed. Not wanting to get too caught up in this, I phase through the window out to what should be the front yard. Instead of this, though, I find myself standing by a pool.

A few different people are sitting around the pool in beach chairs. One guy who looks sort of like Jared Leto asks me whether I'm "from DreamViews". I tell him that I am and he says that he is too and that he used to go there a lot back in 2010. I don't really believe him but I decide that it'd be smart to give him some kind of password just for fun. I make something up and say it to him, and he nods, committing it to memory. (Too bad I forgot it immediately afterward. )

I stand at the edge of the pool, preparing to jump into it for Task of the Year Australia. I want to put a bunch of sand and corral into it and make it turn into the Great Barrier Reef like NyxCC suggested. As I do this, a tan guy dressed like a lifeguard stands there watching me. I'm a little uncomfortable that he's staring at me, but I go ahead with jumping into the pool.

I jump in a cannonball style so that my butt will strike the water first. But just as I hit the water, somehow the lifeguard is scooping me out of the pool with a leaf net. He says something about how unsafe what I'm doing is. I'm very annoyed by this and as I stand at the side of the pool contemplating what to do, I wake up.

I hold still for DEILD and after a little bit, a half-dream of an alleyway starts taking shape. I can navigate a bit but I'm not yet part of the scene. I can feel my arm sort of tucked behind the pillow and I try to imagine it waving around in a repetitive motion, hoping that this will draw me in. I try for a while, but after a bit the alley scene collapses.

I go for DEILD again, and get sharp auditory HI of my son "E" going "Yeah!!" followed by Wife saying, "Don't teach him that kind of thing!" It's very realistic and I'm pulled too far out to continue the dream chain.

This was a very vivid, DC-heavy lucid from this morning. I finally remembered to do the "ask a DC about the meaning of life" Basic Task of the Month.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #134: The Dream Fairgrounds

I'm driving on a freeway with Wife and my 4-year-old son "E". Traffic's heavy and I'm in the middle of making a difficult merge but Wife is insisting that I adjust the air conditioning while I'm in the middle of this. I look down, quickly fiddle with a knob, then look back up to find that we're now driving backward down the freeway!

I gibber some kind of complaint about how this is why she shouldn't bother me when I'm driving, and the car turns back in the right direction again. This has to be a dream. Now that I'm lucid, I want to get up in the air and start figuring out how to accomlpish my goals. I feel weird abandoning Wife and E, though. I think about grabbing onto them and kind of phasing through the car with them, but it sounds intimidating. I wonder whether I could just fly the car itself around, and as soon as I think about this, it works -- our SUV is flying high above the freeway!

The city looks vivid and enormously detailed. Most of it is dominated by a huge fairground that stretches off as far as I can see. The fairground is a mixture of tents, stadiums, amusement park rides, golden domes, and even out-of-place landmarks like the Hagia Sophia. Scattered among these are more mundane buildings like banks. One of the rides is a looping starship ride that I remember from my childhood.

Everywhere I look there's something new. I'm overwhelmed and pleased by all of the detail and I laugh at the sheer quantity of images being thrown at me. The car flies quietly over the fairground for a while before I decide that we should land and look around. I look down at one of the rides and my perspective "zooms" down to that level.

The car is gone now and Wife and E are walking beside me. I feel excited as a little kid by this fair, and I'm amused (and dismayed) to see that every adult DC is a bored, miserable-looking parent with their face buried in a smartphone. I work my ass off at lucid dreaming to spend a few minutes a night in a place like this and you DCs couldn't care less!

We walk past the rides and attractions for a while and I see a lot of familiar people from my life, including my little nephew, my sister-in-law Sissy, brother-in-law Muppet, as well as The Schwartz and his wife and kids. Eventually it occurs to me that I need to get moving if I'm going to accomplish one of my goals, and I think of the Australia Task of the Year. I'm just about to jump up to fly off for a new scene, but luckily I remember the "ask a DC about the meaning of life" task.

I walk back over to E and say, "Hey, buddy. What's the meaning of life?"

He lays the side of his head down on a nearby crate and says, "To not die..." I'm not sure that I heard him right so I ask him to repeat that. He says, "Not dying." (He's been having anxiety about death lately, which is probably where this comes from.)

Wife's nearby, so I ask her too. She looks pensive for a moment. "To see the best of living."

Satisfied, I turn my attention back to my other goals. There's not much left of this dream, though, and before I can do much else it ends.

This is the second dream from a pair of lucids that I had last night.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #133: The Royal Australian Navy

I'm outside helping my friend "The Schwartz" throw a bunch of random junk into a dumpster by an apartment complex. We heave a big box of rusted old crap into the dumpster "Are you sure they'll take all of this stuff?" I ask.

"Sure," he says. "This dumpster's always moving around to different places in the city. That must mean they come to take the garbage out of it." I nod, accepting this. But when I look into the dumpster, I see a shipping pallet that I'm planning to bust into pieces next week (in waking life.) I can't understand how it would have gotten mixed in with The Schwartz's stuff. I nose pinch reality check and become lucid.

"This is a dream," I tell him. The Schwartz frowns thoughtfully and nods his head. For some reason, I decide to give him a password as if this were some kind of shared dreaming experiment. "I'm going to give you a password."

"A password?"

"Yeah." I consider explaining but decide not to. I no longer even know why I'm doing this. "The password is butterfly." He nods again, not particularly interested.

Okay, time to get out there and do something with this. I look up at the sky and see a huge, awkward bird flying by that looks like a pelican. I try to fly but for some reason I don't budge.

I notice that the pelican flew right by a cluster of very weird objects floating in the sky -- the cab of an 18-wheeler, a barrel, and other random objects like that. I focus on the objects, expecting myself to rise, and this time it's no problem. In a few seconds, I'm about a hundred feet in the air.

As I look out over the landscape, I expect for there to be an ocean nearby. It works better than expected -- there's a huge, sparkling sea laid out in front of me! It's packed with military vessels, probably about two dozen destroyers.

Each of the destroyers has an emblem of the American flag on its hull. I think that this flag should be Australian for Australia's Task of the Year. The flag changes as soon as I think this, switching to what I believe at the time is the Australian flag. (But is actually the UK flag, oops. )

I'm amused that the flags changed to be "just so", and I'm laughing as I fly past the ships to the open sea. I want to start the Great Barrier Reef task, so I plunge straight into the water at high speed. For some reason, though, my vision goes black when I hit the water. I can still feel myself swimming, though, so I keep paddling "underwater" in a pseudo-breast stroke. I probe at my body while continuing to swim, but eventually the feeling of water subsides. After a while, the dream ends entirely.

The power was out at our house for the afternoon and overnight, so I had no excuse not to go to bed on time. Discipline at last! This is the first of a pair of lucids from last night.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #132: The Raccoon

I'm sitting at our breakfast table with Wife, my two kids "E" and "R", my mom, and my dad. R's in his booster seat and positioned close to the back door (which is made of glass.) A huge raccoon walks up to the back door, gets onto his hind legs and starts pawing at the glass. "I think he likes [R]!" remarks Dad.

I wonder whether I should be concerned that we have 3-foot raccoons wandering through our back yard. After pondering this for a moment, I decide that this is a little strange and use the nose pinch reality check, breathing clearly and immediately becoming lucid.

Immediately I want to head outside, so I phase through the glass into the yard. Everything looks more or less like waking life. My goal is to get to the Great Barrier Reef for Task of the Year and I think about using the pool as a transition point. The plan: fall backward into the water, imagine that I'm actually in the ocean, then turn around. Hopefully then I actually am in the ocean.

I walk up to the edge of the pool, turn around so that my back is to the pool, and fall backward into the water. I go under briefly but quickly surface. I imagine that I'm on the edge of a huge ocean, but when I turn around, I still just see the other side of the pool. I swim around for a while, wondering what to try next. I'm getting ready to try to imagine an ocean behind me again but before I can, I wind up in the void.

From the void, I probe at my dream body but after only a couple of seconds I experience a shuddering sensation and hear a crackle like electricity. It reminds me of a violent WILD transition. Almost immediately a new scene forms -- a tan, smoothly curved, dumbbell-shaped object spinning by itself in the void. I want to reach out to it but I don't seem to have a dream body. I can shift my perspective, though, and I "move" closer to the tan dumbbell. It seems to be lit by some unseen light source behind me. I spend a few more seconds here before the dream ends.

This was the second of two lucid dreams from last night. I'm excited about this new Great Barrier Reef teleport, even if it is very glitch at this point!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #131: Oceanfront Property

I'm walking through a university when I encounter the same male twins from my previous dream. They're dressed just as before and again they stare wordlessly at me. I remember this from the previous dream and become lucid.

"Who are you?" I ask them.

The twin in glasses only says, "Be careful out there," and together they walk off down the path behind me.

I immediately remember my intention to explore the Great Barrier Reef and leap up into the air to fly. I soar over a few buildings toward a shipping yard filled with shipping crates and huge cranes. I know that I have to be close to the ocean. Somehow the dream loses cohesiveness for a moment and I'm thrown into the void.

Rubbing my hands together, I think of what my fastest way to the Great Barrier Reef will be. After giving my dream body a quick probe, I pinch my nose shut and flop backwards like I'm plunging into water. This works incredibly, and almost immediately I'm swimming through clear blue water again, similar to the prior dream. But as I look around, I see that I'm swimming through an underwater version of my bedroom!

I swim out into the hallway, so surprised to be swimming through my house that I have no idea what to do. I keep colliding with random objects like boxes as I swim and I'm generally nervous about my navigation, so I decide to return to the master bedroom to phase through the window. Hopefully that'll be something like the open sea. I swim back to the window but when I get to the shutters I just bounce off of them. I'm having trouble believing that I can do it or imagining what it will feel like. I make another attempt at it, bounce off again, and worry that I'm going nowhere and that I'll just wake up. Inevitably, this leads me to a false awakening in a darkened version of our bedroom.

Wife has a little "dream checklist" that she's trying to go over with me. "Did you get to the Great Barrier Reef?" she asks, poised to check something off.

"No," I say, disappointed.

She frowns. "Did you ask about the meaning of life?" she inquires hopefully. It goes on like this for a while, but I don't remember what else happens afterward.

This was the first of two lucid dreams from last night, and my first serious Great Barrier Reef attempt.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #130: The Turtle

I'm swimming in a shallow cove with my 4-year-old son "E". I tell him that he's helping me practice for a planned dream about the Great Barrier Reef and he seems excited to help. We come across a cave just under the waterline, swim into it, and emerge in a cavern where all these other kids are hanging around. I wonder whether all these kids are helping their moms and dads prepare for a Great Barrier Reef dream. This feels strange to me and I become lucid.

There's either a scene change or a memory gap at this point, because my next memory is of walking by myself through the grounds of a university. I pass two men who stare silently at me as I walk by. They're both in their late 20s and look almost like identical twins, except that one is dressed in a suit while the other wears glasses and a flannel shirt. I think that there's something I need to ask them, but I can't remember what it is. (I think I'd meant to ask them the meaning of life for Task of the Month.)

Nearby is a plaza with a tall stone column at each of its four corners. Perhaps a dozen DCs are walking around this plaza, looking happy but aimless. I exchange a glance with one tough-looking DC as I walk across the plaza, and something about him just rubs me the wrong way. I take a half-hearted swing at him, as if I'm trying to slap him upside the head. He ducks out of the way, and immediately I wonder why I would do something like that.

The DC moves aggressively toward me and I move to dissolve this problem that I've caused. I hold up my right hand to the DC and walk casually away, saying, "It's cool." The tension abates and he walks away. Whew.

I remember my intention to get to the Great Barrier Reef. I hulk-jump high above the Earth, knowing that I'll see water nearby. Sure enough, there's a sparkling blue ocean to my right. As I descend, I notice a cute DC standing in the water, waving at me as she watches me come back down to Earth. As I near the water, I realize that she's Wife!

Before I can say anything, I plunge into the water. This is one of only a handful of times that I've been underwater in an LD, and I'm pleased to see that I can breathe normally. I try my voice, and it's perfectly clear: "[Wife]! Can you hear me?" There's no reply and I don't see any sign of her. Okay, focus. I need to ride a sea turtle, find a great white shark, and bite it. Without dying. The task feels really intimidating to me but I start searching.

I swim in random directions for a while until I finally catch sight of a turtle. The turtle has no interest in my company, though, and speeds away from me underwater. I don't have any plan as to how I'm going to catch him, so I just try to swim faster. He kites me along like this for quite a while until I have a false awakening in some kind of hospital.

Wife and I are here trying to improve our dreaming abilities. I'm astounded but pleased that she's interested in dream work now. She tells me that she's trying to hit her REM cycles by setting alarms that correspond with the take-off times for airplanes. Skyler White (from Breaking Bad) walks into our room and starts speaking to Wife in a husky, almost male voice. She's apparently a researcher at this hospital. This all seems strange to me and I briefly become lucid before the dream ends.

An insane chain of eight DILDs, DEILDs and false awakenings from this morning. Completely crazy! I apologize for the length, but it was a ton of dreaming. I gave the dreams headings to hopefully make the breaks clear. What a ride!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #129: Map of the World

Choline
I'm standing in the kitchen with Wife as she holds our two-year-old son "R" in her arms. She asks me when I was planning to take my choline bitartrate. When I tell her that I've already taken it, R starts to wail pathetically.

"How could you take your choline without letting him watch?" she says, annoyed at my apparent thoughtlessness. "You know that he loves that!"

I'm stammering out some excuse when it occurs to me that this has to be a dream. My vision goes a bit crazy and I go more or less blind. I fumble my way around the kitchen, feeling my way from the countertop to the breakfast table and sit down heavily in a chair.

"Are you okay?" asks Wife. I really think that I'm dreaming but I feel uneasy enough that I nose pinch and blow through. Suddenly, my vision is dominated by a huge still-frame close-up of my own unshaven face shouting something. Other than that, I'm still blind. "Are you okay?" she asks, more insistently this time.

Highlander
I have a false awakening back in bed, still suspicious that I'm dreaming. Wife snuggles closer to me and I hit the nose pinch, blowing right through again.

Wife rolls on top of me and sits up. I feel excited about where things seem to be going but rather than doing anything amorous she starts saying strange stuff about the Highlander series of movies: "Did you know that Michael let us borrow Highlander I through XV? I didn't even know there were fifteen. He and [female name] love those movies."

The Full Xanous
Another false awakening back in bed, and I roll out immediately. My vision is very blurry and the whole dream scene feels wobbly to me. I think that I need to get myself anchored in and I remember my intention to try the technique of "making out with the dream scene", suggested (jokingly) by DarkMatters and put into practice by Xanous. I'd promised to try to test this so I could talk about it on a future podcast.

I move around to Wife's side of the bed. I briefly that I can test this method by just making out with Wife instead, but I realize that I'm just telling myself that as an excuse to get frisky with her. Instead I attack the corner of the mattress, totally making out with it. The sheets feel like t-shirt material against my tongue. After a moment, all sensation disappears, and I'm awake, my mouth kind of moving around. (In waking life, I believe. Pretty embarrassing. )

22:48
I DEILD into a bedroom scene and roll out. The computer monitor on the nearby desk is on, which it rarely is. The computer is showing the old Windows XP "Bliss" background with the grassy hill. The computer's clock reads "22:48".

I want to get out of the house, so I try to dive through the window. It feels oddly gummy, though, and I wind up with my torso stuck through the window. On the other side I just see blackness. I decide to back out, imagine a new scene, and try again. I'm about to make another run at it when I sort of fall back into...

Amazon
A false awakening where I'm lounging on a window seat in a sunlit room. A group of three women are standing nearby, laughing and chatting over stories about their kids. I nose pinch reality check (blowing through) and get up from the couch. As I stand up to my full height, I notice that one of the women is really tall (probably about six feet even) and very fit. As I walk nearby, she turns to look at me -- long brown hair, probably mid-30s, and very good-looking.

She starts walking toward me and it occurs to me that if I don't get away, the dream's probably ending in this room. As she joins me by the window, my quick internal deliberation ends in a verdict of "worth it". After about 20 seconds of making out, I wake up.

The King of the Colosseum
I quickly DEILD into a scene where I'm standing in my bedroom. It's very dark, so I let the void overtake me and start rubbing my hands together. I get onto my hands and knees and feel the floor, imagining sand between my fingers, thinking that the Colosseum is all around me. After a while, I can see the sand, and then the stone walls of a huge chamber. It's not the Colosseum I see, though, but more like a huge throne room with no ceiling. It's close, but just not quite right.

At the other end of the room, a cartoon king sits on his throne. He's a slimy-looking Jafar lookalike dressed in flowing red robes, and I think that he'll make the perfect opponent for Europe Task of the Year (the Colosseum battle.) As soon as I decide this, he lunges from his throne and charges toward me, a scimitar in his hand.

As he closes the distance, I decide to summon NewArtemis to help with the fight. "Jafar" is moving too fast, though, and he's practically on top of me before I can even start the summoning. Not even close, I'm on my own. I try to swing a sword at him, but in spite of my expectations, my hand is empty. My movement seems to surprise him, though, and as he stands there unsure of how to react, I grab his hair with my left hand and strike him hard on the side of the neck with the edge of my right hand.

His head pops cleanly off in my left hand. There's no gore involved, and the injury doesn't seem to slow him down much. The head spouts a series of angry curses at me before suddenly changing into the head of penguin. This shocks me into...

Map of the World
Another false awakening in my bedroom. I decide to get out of the house the direct way this time, running out of the master bedroom, vaulting over the baby gates as I move down the stairs (both gates higher than in waking life), and phasing through the back door into the yard. It's early morning now, and the pool has overflowed into the now-swampy back yard. Random objects like boxes and beach balls float in its waters. Floodlights are strung up in the trees all around me, shining brightly down on the yard.

I marvel at these changes before hopping over the fence. Rather than the neighbor's yard, I find myself in a construction site near a pile of steel girders. I try to fly, but I can't seem to get off of the ground. I walk for a while, moving past a cage composed of chainlink fencing where they're holding some kind of Little League practice. As I pass by, the kids and parents keep trying to talk to me about baseball, but I ignore them, trying to stay focused on the Colosseum.

As I walk further on, I somehow end up on a ledge on the side of a building, high above the city, with nowhere to go. I try to fly again, and this time it's easy. I shoot upward to an incredible height, moving all the way past the clouds, higher and higher until I can see the world laid out under me like a map. Some of the continents are even labeled in flowing calligraphy. I pick a spot below me, deciding it's the Colosseum, and fly downward. I'm shocked, though, when I land after flying only a few feet downward. Now I'm standing on an enormous stone floating through space. The "world" has disappeared entirely, and I'm walking on a painted mural of the Earth.

With nowhere to go, I suddenly remember the success that bemistaken just had with closing her eyes and mentally teleporting. I close my eyes, imagining the Colosseum. Without meaning to, I think of the possibility that I'll wake up when I open my eyes. I'm really worried about this, and I start hurrying. This flows into...

Commercial Break
A false awakening in what looks like an office kitchen. It's the early morning and Wife is here with me eating a bowl of cereal and watching a small, staticky television set. On it, two Russian men are arguing about photo editing software.

"Sorry if I woke you," she says. "I knew you'd want to see this!"

"I wish you'd let me sleep," I whine. "I was having a lucid dream."

"Oh really?" she says. "It sounded like something erotic was happening."

I think of saying something like "I only made out a little with a six-foot-tall woman" but this doesn't seem like much of a defense. So I just say, "Well, that's embarrassing."

"Ew," she says, wrinkling her nose and going back to her television program. I finally nose pinch, realizing that the teleport didn't wake me up at all! All of this was expectation. I get excited thinking about this, and the dream falls apart, finally ending this crazy chain of dreams...

Very well-meaning but flawed attempt at the North America Task of the Year. (The King Kong one!)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #128: Donkey Kong Junior

I falsely believe that I have a young niece named Emily that's arriving by plane. I'm waiting with Dad in the airport for her and all of the passengers have gotten out with no sign of Emily at all. I'm becoming fretful. Dad isn't very worried and is loudly telling me stories about how thoroughly the new cereal he is eating "cleaned out his colon". I'm very embarrassed by how loudly he's talking and decide I'd rather go look for Emily.

It's like the old days when you could meet someone at the gate, and I'm allowed to stroll right through the jetway and onto the plane. I walk up and down the rows of seats, but there's no sign of her. But when I double back I find her waiting by a bend in the jetway. She's about 11 or 12, short, blonde, a little pale. I realize that I have never seen her before in my life and become lucid.

There's one of those little doors that leads out to the runway, and I walk through it and start flying toward a city that I see on the horizon. Night either falls quickly or I suffer some kind of memory gap here, because I land at a parking lot in a cluster of buildings. There's some sort of party going on with loud music bleeding out into the parking lot. There are a lot of people milling around in the parking lot itself, and some of them start following me.

I spot my friend "RF" as part of the nearby group and I tell him to "check this out" as I approach one of the parked cars. I decide that the car is as light as an inflatable balloon, lift it, and turn it over on its side.

RF looks stunned and asks me how I did that. I tell him that you just pretend something is the way that you want and you usually find that it is. I become sort of boastful and start showing off. "Look at this car. If I decide that it tastes like cake, it will." I take a huge bite out of one of the tires and it's pretty good! Tastes like a fairly decent birthday cake. Several other people in the crowd join in, taking bites out of the car here and there. I spot my high school friend "Alf" in the crowd, and he makes some remark about how cool this is. Pretty soon, a huge crowd of DCs has surrounded the car and started to devour it. It's cool to watch them consume the car but also vaguely disturbing. Reminds me a bit of a Walking Dead zombie feed.

RF and I walk away from the car along the sidewalk, reaching a building with the mural of a skyscraper painted on it. I suddenly remember the North America "Empire State Building" Task of the Year. The mural doesn't look quite like the Empire State Building, but I decide that I'm going to start climbing it and then turn it into the Empire State Building as I go. I tell RF this is for "Task of the Year" and he says "Go for it." I latch myself to the mural like Spider-Man and start climbing up the wall. It feels really forced at first, but the more I get into it, the more it feels like I'm scaling the side of a tall building.

And now here I am, clinging to the side of the Empire State Building, the wind pulling at my clothes and body. I'm trying to remember what the Task of the Year even involves. (I'm supposed to transform into King Kong, climb to the top, and fight with the military.) I feel a little frustrated with my memory, so I decide that I want to get inside and think about what I'm supposed to be doing. I either enter an open window or phase through a closed one, winding up in a small, quiet marble elevator lobby.

There's an elevator waiting here, and I step inside. It only goes up to "9", and I wince that this is not nearly high enough for the Empire State Building. I press "9", assuming that there will be a new bank of elevators I can take at that point which will bring me all the way up. The elevator begins its ascent and I pace nervously, worrying that I'm buying too much into the mechanics of the dream. I can't remember whether I'm supposed to be ascending normally, climbing the building, or what, so I just go with it.

The elevator doors open on "9" and I step out into a lobby that looks much like the previous one. There's a bulky, square-jawed maintenance man in overalls here. "Hey!" he shouts. "You're not supposed to be here!" With that, he winds up like a baseball pitcher and throws a large crescent wrench right at my head. It clonks straight into my forehead and drops into my right hand. My forehead tingles a bit, but there's no serious pain.

Somehow I now have a wrench in both hands. I feel angry with the guy for attacking me. "You're an asshole!" I inform him and throw both wrenches at his stomach. They bounce off of his torso and he doubles over, glaring at me but not seriously hurt. I feel a little bad and have no interest in going to war with this guy, so I dash into another elevator, stab at a button without looking, "knowing" that it leads to the viewing platform.

Again I wait, and soon the elevator opens up to an open-air room that looks a bit like a bell tower. There's a guy in a lab coat here explaining some scientific breakthrough about lycanthropy and animal transformations in general. I run past him along a plank to a balcony. Now I want to transform into King Kong. I look to my left and there's another skyscraper, even taller than the "Empire State Building" that I'm standing on. On top of this other building stands the cheesiest-looking Godzilla-style lizard monster I've ever seen, and I can't help but chuckle. Looks like all the movie monsters are out and about today.



I start hopping about like a gorilla and imagine myself transforming into King Kong. In my craziness, I manage to leap off of the building. Rather than a fall, there's an odd transition and now I'm just running along a tree-lined street below, roaring like a gorilla and pounding my chest. The chest-pounding feels a little phony but the gorilla roars are amazing. My hands and arms look big and gorilla-like, but I'm not nearly large or hairy enough to be King Kong. I feel more like a big, strong, long-armed dude with a gorilla roar.

Some DCs rush up to attack me, but they're all just regular men in casual street clothes. I shove them away, remembering that I need to get attacked somehow and win, but I'm very confused as to the details. I take a few swats at these DCs and amusingly, they go flying off whenever I hit them. I know that something's off with all of this, though, and that I need to be a lot bigger, I need to be up on top of the building, and I think I need to fight something tougher. The details are really hazy, though, so I just lumber around for a while longer amusing myself until the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #127: Hagia Sophia

I'm touring a new school for my son "E" that's exclusively available to children who lucid dream. E is in his "level 2" class, and his teacher, a short, friendly, gray-haired lady is showing me around the room. It's a large classroom with basic carpeting and lots of little beds and sleeping nooks everywhere. All of the kids are running around, and I remark that if I had the opportunity to just sleep all the time for school, I'd definitely do it. It occurs to me that I might be dreaming right now... and it turns out that I am.

"I'm having a lucid dream right now," I tell the lady, and head for the exit door without waiting for a reply. I phase through the glass to find myself standing by a harbor in the early morning. There are two amphibious helicopters floating idly in the water, pontoons on their skids. I wonder whether this kind of helicopter really exists.

I remember that I want to find the Colosseum, so I start flying to get high above the water. I emerge from a light covering of fog that I hadn't even noticed, finding myself in a landscape of gently rolling hills that are covered with tightly packed buildings. I tell myself that the Colosseum is one of these buildings and that all I have to do is find it. I see a building that catches my eye, but instead of the Colosseum, it's Hagia Sophia.



"I know the Colosseum is here," I say, expecting it to glow (a trick I've used in the past.) "Show me where it is." A small site off to the side of Hagia Sophia starts to glow. It looks too small, but I fly toward it anyway. A sudden gust of wind starts pushing me in the opposite direction and turning me away from the glowing site. I decide that this wind is trying to carry me to the Colosseum so I won't get lost. It turns me all the way around so that I'm looking out over the endless ocean. I'm worried for a second that it's going to leave me facing out to sea, but it dutifully turns me around and starts moving me back toward Hagia Sophia and the glowing spot nearby.

The wind carries me all the way to the spot, and it's nothing more than a tiny plaza with a small raised platform of stone. I land, and when I examine the platform I find a small button with what looks like a glowing, golden bear's paw on it. Okay, hopefully this button will take me there. I press the button, and my vision is covered by a pop-up message like something from a video game.

The message contains two lines of text and I feel really intimidated at the thought of having to remember it. I try to lock the words in place but I feel like every word I'm not looking at is trying to change. Keeping them all steady feels like playing Whac-A-Mole and it's dawning on me that I should stop obsessing about this. As best I can remember the message says: "Use 4 parts of Vendarite to increase strength"

I'm not sure what this means, but I figure that in a lucid dream I can be as strong as I want to be (and have as much "Vendarite" as I like, for that matter), and will the message to close. I feel like something is happening to the plaza and that it's shifting in some way, but the dream soon ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #126: Mad Dog

I'm sitting in my childhood bedroom on my old bed. I look out the window and some thug-looking guy in a tank top is standing outside by a parked car, loafing around with a somewhat overweight girlfriend. As I'm trying to figure out what's going on, I unintentionally make eye contact with the guy and he starts mad dogging me. I quickly look away but out of my peripheral vision, I see him walking aggressively toward my room. Great, what's he want?

The guy reaches behind his back and draws a revolver from the waistband of his pants. I dive out of the room into the hallway as a gunshot blows through my window. I'm surprised by how soft the sound is. I think that it's so quiet that nobody might hear it. Will anyone even hear it and call the police? I duck into the bathroom, waiting there for a bit before baaaarely peeking my head around the corner to look out through the office window down the hall. But the guy is there, too, and fires immediately.

I scramble to the back of the house into my parents' bedroom, but I see the guy circling around to the back yard. I can't believe how hard he is to shake, and I realize that this is all a dream.

Relaxed now, I head back to the front of the house, walking through the hallways, through the den to the front door. I phase through the front door out into the street to find the car (and my assailant) gone. I'm trying to remember my goals but absolutely nothing is coming to me. I don't remember the Colosseum, I don't remember my intention to summon NewArtemis, nothing. I think that I'm supposed to be working on Advanced Task of the Month and that it has something to do with California. (Totally wrong.)

I decide to explore, hoping it'll come to me. I fly up into the air for a while, soaring over my old neighborhood. I fly over a creek at one point, but I don't get to explore very long before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #125: He Had It Coming

I'm working with Wife, Mom, and Dad on a project where we're trying to restore a 30-foot replica of the Great Pyramid. The pyramid's sitting right on the edge of a neighborhood street where a house would normally be. We work on the interior for a while but it feels stuffy in there, so Wife and I go outside to do some work on the exterior.

It's nice outside, so Wife and I stand there for a bit enjoying the sun and the cool breeze. We're standing on something that looks like a driveway and about fifteen feet to our left is an elegant wooden side table with Wife's purse sitting on it. As we're standing there, a pair of tall, brutish-looking teenage boys approaches us. One starts rifling through Wife's purse and the other surrounds us from the other side. I'm angry and fearful, running through our "fight or flight" options when I realize that it's all a dream.

The guy who had been looking through Wife's purse is gone now. But when I turn back, the other kid has Wife by the forearm and she's cowering in pain. I'm overcome with a killing rage, the kind of anger you (hopefully) only feel in dreams. I'm aware that the thug is just a DC, but I want to stop him and I want to hurt him.

I hurry toward him, shouting a bunch of angry threats (including lots of profanity), and kick him squarely in the balls. The strike is perfect -- bone of the lower shin right into the "target".

As I deliver the kick, I'm amazed to see that I'm wearing white high-top sneakers like I did back in middle school. The combination of noticing this weird detail and the satisfaction of hitting the hated DC softens my anger a little.

Rather than double over, the DC stands rigidly straight, his feet lifting a few inches off of the ground and coming back down. His body is completely stiff and his face is frozen statue-like in agony. I get a hold of my temper enough to realize that if I keep fighting with him I might turn him into a real opponent. I really just want him gone from my dream scene. I force-push him high into the air and his paralyzed body flies toward a distant set of hills, quickly fading from sight.

When I look back at Wife, she's standing nearby, unhurt but nervously looking around. The place feels unsafe and I want to leave. There's no way that I can leave her behind after what happened, though, so I scoop her up in my arms. "We're going to the Colosseum," I tell her, and try to start flying. I can get about 3 feet off of the ground but after that I feel like I can't move both of us. Even though she's pretty tiny IWL, her weight feels "real" while my dream body feels almost totally weightless. It seems to be getting in the way of flying.

"Am I too heavy?" she asks. I show remarkably good dream judgment by ignoring this question. I try flying a few more times, each time with the same result. I know that I should come up with some creative solution to this but it's not coming to me. I think about throwing her over my shoulder or imagining her floating like a balloon but before I can do any of this, the dream ends.

It's been a while since I had a WILD and this one had by far the most violent transition I've experienced yet. Kinda cool!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #124: The Rodeo

I've been awake a while post-WBTB and I feel anxious "Am I ever gonna sleep?" thoughts creeping in. I roll to my side, relax my mind, and try to focus on hypnagogia while counting backward in a style like "100... I'm dreaming... 99... I'm dreaming..." Around the low 90s, I feel something like a thump in my head and then a loud crackle of electricity, followed by the sensation of shaking. My WILD transitions are usually very low-profile, so this surprises me. The whole thing is jolting but more exciting than unpleasant. I try to stay relaxed, prepared for the possibility of more weirdness.

Now everything is dark and I hear voices whispering in my ear. It's a bit creepy, but I know that this is normal and that I'm probably beginning to dream. I imagine myself oozing out of bed OBE-style. My body stretches like a piece of rubber, my feet meet the floor, and I'm standing in my bedroom. I'm wearing my orange-tinted safety glasses instead of my sleep mask, so it's really, really obvious that this is a dream.

Everything is dark, jumpy, and unstable. My body is moving too quickly and I keep crashing into things. I look at myself in the mirror and I can make out the shape of a man but visual quality is so low that I can't see much beyond that. I drift into the master bathroom and run straight into the counter. Then I float back to the master bedroom, going too far and wind up standing right over Wife. I reach down and touch her hip and shoulder and try to get myself anchored, but when she stirs I feel bad thinking about her DC waking up to see a creepy ghost looming over her.

The whole scene feels only half-painted. Okay, let's just get out of here. I run for the window. The shutters are closed, but I dive through, phasing into the void and then immediately rubbing my hands together to keep things stable. I kneel down and touch the floor, which feels like it's covered with dirty industrial carpet. I try to shift this toward being the sand of the Colosseum's floor, and as I keep touching it, it starts to feel more and more like a really dirty carpet. Hoping this is close enough, I start to imagine the arena all around me.

Now I can see my hands brushing over patterned, dimly illuminated carpet. The lighting is poor, and without thinking I look up to see that I'm inside a dark, empty stadium. I can't tell where the light's coming from but just at the edge of the light, I can vaguely make out empty stands. I remember podcasting about low light and I try to use my own advice of imagining how bright it is, but can't find any light source. I look hopelessly up at the ceiling, feeling embarrassed that I can't even make my own suggestion work.

Okay, next idea, also from the podcast: quit worrying about it. I jump up and start flying around the stadium, looking for people in the stands. There -- a group of 3 or 4 about halfway up. I keep circling, spotting more and more people. And as I look for them, the light in the scene grows to accomodate my expectations. After doing this for a while, there's a healthy crowd gathered in the stands and the scene is well-lit. Happy with this change, I land to find workers scurrying back and forth on the stadium floor preparing it for some kind of event. Everyone's in Western wear, and when I check, the crowd is too! It looks like they're putting on a rodeo in this stadium.

An announcer, a man in his late 40s with a bushy mustache and a cowboy hat, is under the spotlight and speaking into a microphone to warm up the crowd. I forget what he says, but they think he's great, and they cheer wildly at his words. I approach him and he holds the microphone up to me. "Uh," I say. "I want to turn this into the Colosseum."

He replies into the microphone, warmly but firmly: "No can do, boss." The crowd applauds. I think about forcing the change anyway, but I feel overwhelmed by the scope of the task. I just can't seem to build up the confidence that I need. I wander out through an exit hall, leaving the rodeo behind me.

I'm outside now and it's night. I walk through a narrow street, emerging near a restaurant patio. I'm close to the ocean. I see the water and I can hear the sound of the surf. Nearby a woman talking on her cellphone glances up at me, gives me a nod of acknowledgement, and walks away, still talking. I walk along the oceanside road for a little while, coming to a shopping center. A dark-haired woman in her late 20s approaches me. "Hi!" she says. I notice that she has a somewhat upturned nose. I also notice that I'm finding her very cute.

"I'm looking for the Colosseum," I tell her. "Can you show me where it is?"

"Oh, I'm really sorry! I have no idea where that is."

I feel discouraged and stuck. I tell her about my Colosseum goal and she nods along with my explanation. I no longer know what my plans are for this dream. Somehow I wind up telling her that I want to kiss her, she says go ahead, and so I do. As I'm kissing her (eyes open, dream stabilization style), I see three younger girls ranging from maybe 8-14 or so watching us with expressions ranging from horror to mild amusement. I notice that these three have her same upturned nose. Are they her little sisters? Her kids? Feeling embarrassed and a little confused, I pull away. "Bye!" she says brightly, and the four of them wander off together.

I continue through the shopping center, coming to a slightly darker hallway with shops on each side and a planter with a large palm tree in the middle of it. I hear Indian music coming from somewhere down the hallway, and as I walk toward the music, the dream ends.

The second of two lucids from playing Myst at WBTB.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #123: Walking Backwards

I'm walking by a pool with Dad toward a pile of towels on a beach chair. He asks me how to get really lean for the summer. I'm going through some long-winded explanation and he keeps asking the same really basic questions, apparently understanding almost nothing I'm saying. I wonder why he's so slow to grasp what I'm saying but then realize that I'm dreaming.

Dad has vanished and I'm standing alone by the empty pool. It's long and skinny, like a stretched out Olympic pool. I fly over it toward a doorway on the opposite side. I walk through the doorway into a busy two-story mall. I decide to allow myself a couple of minutes to walk around and take in the sights.

I pass a few stores, turn a corner, and suddenly feel a jolt of fear that the dream won't be stable. I start narrating out loud: "I'm having a really stable lucid dream." I rub my hands together, continuing to narrate out loud to the DCs passing nearby. "And now I am rubbing my hands together. You cannot forget to do that shit!" I yell.

I remember wanting to get to the Colosseum and expect to see an Exit sign. There it is, on my left, near a bank of doors. I walk toward the doors when I spot my friend "Chia" approaching me with a sort of vacuous grin on her face. "Hi!" I say. She repeats it back: "Hi!", still grinning, but her face is sort of morphing into a stranger's face. It's not stable.

I tell Chia that I'm going to the Colosseum and that I'll talk to her later. She nods, and rather than turning away, she walks backwards, not looking where she's going. She's walking near a support column that for some reason is covered with awful stuff like barbed wire and Orcs Must Die-style wall blades. "Watch where you're going!" I say, really feeling distressed. But she just smiles blissfully, circling around the column and out of sight.

Okay, back to the task at hand -- Colosseum. I head for the exit doors, shoving the door open with the crash bar, expecting to wind up in one of the tunnels under the Colosseum. The next hall is a tunnel but it still looks like part of the mall. As I'm deciding what to do next, I'm thrown into the void.

In the darkness of the void, I clearly sense my dream body. But when I try to rub my hands together, I can't make it happen. Awareness of my physical body starts to creep back in. I keep trying to move my dream hands but I'm not getting any response. After attempting this for a while, I finally wake up.

I tryied playing some Myst during my WBTB and it seems like it had a serious influence on my dream content and possibly my lucidity.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #122: Myst

I'm walking through an underground chamber with smooth stone walls and a very high ceiling. I hop up onto a ledge and start walking along it when it occurs to me that I'm probably dreaming.

The environment looks very sharp and my awareness feels high. I take the time to assess the visual quality of the scene -- it's completely lifelike. I walk on the ledge, which wraps around the entire room before leading me out through an exit door.

I'm in a narrower hallway now. There's a low tunnel on my right and I decide that it will lead me to the Colosseum for Task of the Year. As I'm watching it, though, I feel like the ceiling of the tunnel has gotten lower. Before I can dismiss this idea, it totally takes over and the tunnel's floor and ceiling close together, sealing it off completely.

I move on, passing through another broad, high chamber like the first one. This leads into a rougher-looking tunnel that cuts back and forth several times at 45-degree angles, very different from the clean, precise right angles of the earlier rooms.

The tunnel opens up at the end and I can see what looks like the inside of a baseball stadium. It's not exactly the Colosseum, but I feel like I can make it work. I manage to get just into the stadium area but the dream ends.

These were the most realistic non-SSILD false awakenings I think that I've ever had. Made for a fun series!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #121: Barefoot

I'm dimly aware that I'm dreaming in some scene that I can't remember, and as I become lucid, I'm thrown straight into the void. I hang on for dear life and start rubbing my hands together like crazy. It feels solid and realistic and pretty soon I feel comfortable that I'm anchored pretty well into the dream.

Right away I remember that I want to get to the Colosseum. Like the previous dream, I want to build the Colosseum scene from the void. This time I choose to do so by constructing the Colosseum's inner stone wall. I reach my left hand out and yes, it feels like it's dragging along stone. I walk along this wall, dragging my fingers upward until they reach a... ceiling? No, that's wrong. I deny the ceiling's existence and after a bit my fingers keep climbing until they reach the wall's top.

Now I'm feeling the top and side of the wall with both hands. It feels very realistic now, and the scene comes sharply into focus. I see that I'm rubbing some isolated piece of stone that's standing in a modern-looking, well-lit library. It's very cleanly decorated and only sparsely populated with bookshelves, and two spiral staircases lead up to a second floor. I see a couple of friends standing around. Near a table is "AJ", and standing across from her is "LS". Neither notice me. Further away I spot an extremely attractive female stranger (Asian, mid-20s, long hair). I suppress a strong impulse to approach her for "that thing" and instead turn toward the glass door, phasing through to the outside.

Outside is a plaza with a broad set of bricked steps leading down to a grassy area. At the top of the stairs to my right, two teenage girls are seated at a white metal table having a meal (lunch?) "Which way to the Colosseum?" I ask them, and one girl points immediately across the plaza, swallowing like she has a mouthful of food she wants to down before speaking. "Thanks!" I say, and start flying in that direction. I get high enough to spot a distant tower and a tree-lined street nearby, but the sound of a wet sneeze over the baby monitor sends me into the black. I keep my eyes closed, trying to DEILD, but I hear Wife groan unhappily, and now I don't think I can get back to sleep.

I open my eyes and find myself lying in bed in our darkened bedroom. (False awakening.) I get out of bed and reach over to grab my journal, expecting my Kindle Fire to be on top, but it's missing. Where the hell did it go? I step into the master bathroom, close the door so I don't disturb Wife, and try to flip the light switch on. Instead the fan comes on. I try the other switch. Fan again. Come on, what the hell? I'm going to forget everything. Both switches at once, and still no light, just the fan. I hit the nose pinch and blow through. Amazing.

I go back to the bedroom and it's brighter now. Wife's missing, and the shutters are open. I leap up, phase through the window, and perch on a dream balcony that's outside. The balcony overlooks a courtyard far below, very much unlike the geography of our real house. I fly out over the courtyard, soon coming to a forest of extremely tall trees. The trees are like pines that stretch far into the sky, coming close to touching the cloud cover. I think that if I can just get over these trees, I'll be able to look down at a huge chunk of the landscape, spot the Colosseum, and fly there for Europe Task of the Year.

I fly higher and higher, trying to crest just over the treetops. I get close to the top but keep feeling resistance. I know that it's mental, so I keep shrugging it off, insisting to myself that I am flying higher each time. I approach a cloud and do this flailing little grasp for it. For some reason, I briefly see stars and get the sensation of my heartrate increasing. This takes me straight into...

A false awakening in our bedroom. I look at the clock and see that the screen's completely dark. I nose pinch and blow through. I approach the window, phase through, and hop out onto a ledge. I'm over another courtyard (this one with a pool), and about 3 stories up, suddenly feeling very nervous about attempting flight. I just became lucid. Am I sure? I hit a secondary nose pinch and make sure that this feels vaguely like "dream gravity". I think about the phase and the multiple nose pinches, and decide that I should be okay.

I'm still nervous, though, and when I jump, I float to the ground rather than fly. The landing's soft, and I'm sure that I'm dreaming, but I decide not to push it with the flying just now. I walk around the pool, scanning the crowd for a while, seeing many familiar faces -- my friend "The Dragon" and his wife, my father-in-law, and a couple of other friends that I can no longer recall. I walk past the shallow end of the pool, past where some kids are playing some game with a ball. At the edge of the courtyard is an ivy-covered archway that I'm planning on walking through, maybe turning it into a gateway to the Colosseum.

I remember to try to summon NewArtemis. As I pass by the stairway out of the pool, without stopping, I extend my hand toward the pool, and say, "[NewArtemis], are you ready to go?" It works! Art emerges from the water, walks up the stairs, and hops out of the pool.

Her voice is faint, but as she walks along she says, "Don't want to wear shoes. Don't like to wear shoes."

I don't know what to make of this, so I just go back to my stuff: "The Colosseum's right through here. You ready?"

"Yeah!" Her voice is still faint, but much more enthusiastic. As we approach the doorway, the dream ends.