lucid

I was talking with NewArtemis yesterday about mantras and lucid dreaming and apparently the conversation stuck... well, for me at least. Popped a B6 and chowed down on some raisins before bed and got this pair of dreams. This is really a micro-lucid followed by a full LD, but they're so related that I'm just journaling them together.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #74: Mantras in the Green Valley

I am in a large, brightly lit room of white marble. There are a lot of strange, rectangular foam blocks lying around. I decide that they represent sleep cycles or maybe chunks of REM. I say out loud, "You will have a lucid dream!" I feel like this mantra is very important. Who am I saying this to?

Now I see NewArtemis perhaps ten feet away, standing there looking sleepily around, apparently not noticing me. She has one or two foam blocks at her feet but I think she needs more. I toss a couple more of these at her and they bounce off of her and land nearby. I'm disappointed that I can't seem to add REM (or whatever) to her sleep. I say again, "You will have a lucid dream!" but it seems to make no impression on her.

I decide that she's already asleep and dreaming. "You're dreaming right now!" I tell her. "Don't you remember your mantra?" I put a hand on her left shoulder and she gives me this bleary-eyed look. I suddenly get it straight that I'm the one who's dreaming. "This is a lucid dream! Okay, now you!" I say, but she stares at me uncomprehendingly. I quickly wake up.

Try to DEILD but accidentally think about work. (Gah, rookie mistake!) Awake for a while. Then back into a non-lucid...

I'm in the back seat of a jeep that's pulled over on the side of the road. The jeep is being driven by my friend TB. Someone I don't know is in the passenger seat and he's pouring his heart out to TB because he had to shoot someone in self-defense. TB tells him not to worry about it and makes some sort of slightly offensive joke about it. The passenger gets even more upset, but TB calms him down.

TB puts the jeep back on the main road and ahead of us is a one-lane bridge with 10-feet concrete walls on either side of it. Looking further out, I see that we are in the most beautiful green valley that I've seen in my entire life. I feel like it's the most brilliant green that I've ever seen in my life and realize that I have to be dreaming.

Now the jeep has become a long van with four or five rows of bench seats. I float out of my seat and swim toward the front of the van. TB is still driving, but the passenger is someone else. I think it's Xanous.

As I pass the third or so row of seats, I see NewArtemis to my left, looking out the window at the green valley. "[NewArtemis]! This is a lucid dream." She looks at me, then looks back out the window, then back at me again. But now she has transformed nto a blonde woman in her mid-40s. I decide that this isn't working, so I swim further up.

I make it to the second row of seats, w/ TB and (presumably) Xanous right in front. I look out the window and see a mountain rising in the distance. Now I realize that we're driving toward Angel Falls for Task of the Year! Things start feeling unstable, and I reach out to grab onto something. I grab onto a nearby female DC (a stranger) to bring myself back into the scene, but things don't stabilize. The skin on the lady's face begins to glow slightly orange, and everything fades out but this glow. Then I'm awake.

This lucid was extremely short (perhaps 20 seconds), a length that I'd normally consider a micro-lucid and not journal here. But it was so vivid and striking that it's really stuck with me. It's one of those dreams where you just remember every detail.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #73: On a Dark Rooftop

I'm pawing at hypnagogic imagery, and I sense that I can reach out with my hand to touch a solid floor. It works, and a dream scene takes shape. It's night and I'm crouched on the rooftop of a one-story house on the crest of a hill. I'm dressed in head-to-toe in black (yes, I admit, like a ninja ) and I feel silent, coordinated, and infinitely agile.

I look all around me. Suburban streets lie in every direction. There's a faint reddish glow on the horizon, and I sense some kind of threat or danger gathering in the distance.

In my head, I clearly hear the voice of an old man: "Even in these dark days, my people yet retain a shadow of their former glory."

His words fill me with an enormous sense of urgency -- I have work to do. A cold wind picks up. I prepare to leap to an adjacent rooftop, but the dream ends.

I work at DEILD for a while, but just can't get back in.

This was an interesting little LD where I pulled off Basic Task of the Month. The woman in the restaurant was a very intriguing dream character. Much sharper than the typical DC. Who was she?

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #72: The Wish

I'm in an elevator talking to some guy from Brazil. I suddenly realize that I'm going somewhere with Wife but she's not in the elevator. The doors are open, so I step outside the elevator, thinking that she must have fallen behind. Instead of Wife, I see my friend SA heading toward the elevator and become lucid when I remember that SA moved to Seattle a few years ago. I also remember the fact that I intended to have a lucid dream.

"Hey!" I say to SA as she hurries by and steps into the elevator. "Oh hey!" she responds, giving me a quick wave just before the elevator doors close.

I'm in a long marble hallway. I rub my hands together and say, "I am having a really stable lucid dream." I feel confident and I remember the Tasks of the Month that I wanted to try. At the end of the hallway is a restaurant and when I enter it, I'm greeted by a tall Indonesian-looking man who's about 20. "Can I help you, sir?" He seems friendly enough, but somehow he strikes me as dull-witted.

I'm about to perform the "wish" Task of the Month ("Tell a dream character that he/she may have 1 wish granted.") But I have this sense that the DC I'm speaking to is just an "extra" in the dream and that I'll get a more meaningful answer from someone else. I tell him to "Take me to the most amazing woman in the restaurant." (This sounds shallow, and in large part it was -- I thought it'd be more fun to grant an attractive woman a wish than some dude. But the important subtext of my request was that I wanted to speak with an interesting, highly intelligent DC.)

"Right this way," he says, without missing a beat. I follow him to a table with a window overlooking the city. The woman seated at the table is a short, very attractive Asian woman who looks like she's about 25. She's seated at the table with four men in suits, also Asian, who looks more like bodyguards than boyfriends. Even though she's easily the smallest person at the table, her presence is by far the most commanding. As I approach, the men inch subtly but protectively toward her.

The woman casually waves her left hand and says, "It's fine." The men settle back into their seats, the aggressive tension subsiding. She looks at me, cocks her head to the left and simply says, "Hello."

Through the window behind them, I see a downtown skyline backlit by the sunset. I somehow feel like this is her city. I'm not intimidated by her, but I am impressed by her. I may be the king in this world, but she's somebody important too. A crime boss? The city's mayor?

"I can grant you one wish," I say. "You tell me what you want and I'll do it."

Without hesitating, she says, "Can you grant me a kiss from any DC that I want?" (Yes, she said "DC"!)

"Definitely. I can do that."

"Okay," she says. "I want a kiss from Brad Pitt." She says it like a challenge.

The straightforwardness of the request amuses me. I nod, extending my hand to the right to try the "handshake" summoning trick that I used to summon Xanous a few dreams back. I imagine that Brad Pitt is standing just a bit off to the side and is now reaching forward to shake my hand. There's just a slight pause and then something slithers into my hand that feels like a cold, wriggling fish. It feels disgusting and I hope that Brad Pitt just has a really weak handshake.

I turn to look at what I've got and see that I've somehow latched onto the elbow of a woman that was walking by. I let go of her elbow and she walks away, seemingly oblivious to what just happened. I wonder why her elbow was so gross.

When I look back at the table, I see a couple of black spots forming in my vision. I laugh off my failure, saying, "Don't worry, I've still got this!"

The black spots are growing now, partially obscuring my view of the attractive young Brad Pitt fan / mayoress.. "Careful," she says. I think that I ought to be prepping for DEILD but I also feel like I'm close to success and want to try to sneak this one in. As the black spots grow, I have this overwhelming sensation that the reason the room is darkening is that my eyes are closed. The urge to open my eyes gets the best of me and my real eyes open.

I entered this menthol lucid via an in-dream WILD but never picked up on the fact that I had entered from a dream. I also got completely fooled by a false awakening, not waking up for real until long after the dream had ended. Because of that, a lot of the LD is pretty scrambled, including a couple possible Task of the Month attempts. Still, this one's filled with amusing little tidbits.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #71: Fooled

I am wandering in my house during the day, thinking about lucid dreaming. I decide to visit DreamViews (on my Kindle?), starting with the Task of the Month thread.

I see a post from PennyRoyal and suddenly remember that I'm supposed to be making him a fake ID. I remember that he badly needs this ID and I'm way, wa behind on producing it. (Needless to say, this is not true!) Being on DV and getting reminded of this task I'm putting off makes me feel like a slacker and a procrastinator, so I close the site.

I sit on the floor of the living room and pick up a strange comic book with moving pictures. The hero, a billionaire similar to Bruce Wayne, does a parkour safety vault over a railing onto the front porch of his mansion. I watch the move replay over and over, thinking about how I should find a spot to learn the safety vault near the house or the office.

Eventually I decide that maybe I should just practice this vault myself in a lucid dream. I lay down on the floor of the den to attempt a WILD and instantly emerge standing in the living room of my house! I gloat to myself about what a stud I've become at WILD. I rub my hands together and walk into the kitchen.

There's a man standing in the kitchen and after conversing with him, I learn that he needs a sword. I conjure one into my right hand. The sword is awesome and looks just like the one He-Man uses. I give the sword to the DC, but he looks disappointed. He complains that "it's not a magic sword." This annoys me, so I tell him that if he wanted a magic sword then he should have asked for a magic sword. He hurls himself on the ground and throws a massive tantrum, bawling, rolling around, and kicking his feet like a toddler. (This may have been me granting a DC a wish, but I do not remember properly asking the question, so I will not count this as a Task of the Month completion.)



Annoyed, I walk away from the DC. I look for the note that I left myself for TotM. I don't know whether I find it, but the dream destabilizes somewhere inside the house and I have a false awakening that puts me back lying on the floor of my den. I think about writing the dream down, but I'm distracted when I look over at our couch and have sexy thoughts about doing stuff with Wife on it. I'm surprised by how vivid my imagination is right now. I vaguely remember consuming menthol, but when? (I had peppermint tea at WBTB.) Is menthol why I'm thinking about happy happy fun time?

Then I have another memory of recently eating popcorn. (Also true, right before bed.) I realize that I have one of those annoying little popcorn hulls stuck between my two front teeth. I absentmindedly conjure a box cutter into my right hand and use it to pick the hull out of my teeth.

I finally remember to write the lucid dream down. I open up some sort of notebook to write the dream down but it's just filled with Wikipedia pages. These Wikipedia pages contain hyperlinks that respond to my touch, so I surf around for a while reading about stuff. I think about how much you can learn these days without even talking to anybody. I wonder how we introverts used to learn before the internet. Oh yeah, I think, there were always books. I happily surf Wikipedia for a while, and I remember nothing after that.

I wish that I'd asked this character what he represented rather than falling back so readily to fight or flight! My emotional control wasn't great in this LD but at least I guided myself toward a Task of the Year goal.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #70: The Celebrity

I WILD into a wooded campground. There's a crowd of excited DCs nearby, all waiting to meet this one guy who seems to be some kind of celebrity. The "celebrity" is an uncharismatic, mid-40s, somewhat ugly guy with a dark mustache. In spite of this, all of the women in the crowd are swooning and the men are excitedly pushing past one another for a chance to shake his hand.

In between handshakes, the celebrity keeps doing these loud, visibly moist sneezes directly into his hand... just before using it to shake the hand of the next starstruck DC. I find the whole scene repulsive, so I decide to hurry past.

As I pass by the crowd, the celebrity turns to me and offers me a handshake. I think that I'm supposed to be honored, but I have no interest in touching his sneeze-hand. I politely pat his shoulder and turn to leave, refusing the handshake.

There's a murmur of surprise from the crowd, but I try to ignore them, thinking instead of the tasks that I have in mind. The celebrity charges toward me and thrusts his hand in my face, insistent that I pay my respects. No, thanks. I turn away again, but when I do, the celebrity disrespectfully slaps me on the butt! I'm unbelievably offended at being treated this way in my own dream. My first thought is to turn around and just wreck this dude.

I decide that escape's the better move, though, so I Hulk-jump away. Somehow the celebrity grabs onto my leg as I go, though, and ends up flying with me. We land in another part of the campground and again he wordlessly extends his sneeze-hand toward me for a handshake. I try another jump, but he keeps hanging on.

I'm really angry that he's interfering with my LD and I think of the Colosseum Task of the Year ('Have a "fight to the death" with a DC in the Colosseum.') Yes, I think that I've found just the DC for killing. "I'm taking you to the Colosseum," I tell him, and grab him by the throat. His expression never changes, but his neck, arms and torso start rapidly expanding as if he were packing on slabs of muscle right before my eyes. Within a few seconds, he's transformed into a hulking, dangerous-looking gladiator.

Still holding him by the throat, I jump again. The celebrity looks like he weighs about 260 now, but fortunately I can move him easily when I jump. I have a gladius in my hand, but I hold back on using it until the time is right. My enemy is wearing some kind of armor now, and he's no longer looking for a handshake. I give my gladius some practice swings and mutter some threats that I can no longer remember. The celebrity doesn't respond.

Now we crash down on a floor of sand. I think that this is it! I can see a low stone wall all around us but above that it's just darkness where the crowd should be. I will the scene to come into focus, but the darkness just descends heavier and heavier until the dream ends...

Lost Lucid Dreams and Fragments
I also had a number of longer lucid dreams last night that were mostly wiped from my memory! My guess is that these were very low-level lucids where I lost lucidity. I'm a bit distressed to know that I am capable of losing LDs like that. I'm pondering what I should do to address this.

Lost Lucid #1 - I'm flying high over a huge canyon near sundown, aware that I'm dreaming and holding a pile of dog poo in my bare hands. I am in a hurry to get somewhere.
Lost Lucid #2 - An old man is in my kitchen showing me how to make gold out of simple household ingredients (including mud.) I know that I'm dreaming, but I watch in fascination.

Also, one lucid fragment:

Lucid Fragment #1 - I'm looking at a DJ entry on DreamViews. It has a single comment with a very long first paragraph. I become lucid when I see that the comment is from "BadArtemis" rather than "NewArtemis". Quickly wake up.

This is the second DV member lucid I've had in a row! For some reason, my subC is teeing these up for me right now, which is cool. Hope it keeps up.

I noticed that I was fairly stupid throughout this dream, including the lucid portion. I took a pretty high dose of melatonin at bedtime, so I wonder whether that was related. Good vividness though!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #69: The Scorpion

I'm walking through the desert, heading down the slope of a tall sand dune. The sun is high and bright. I feel relaxed almost to the point of sleepiness.

Suddenly, I feel a sharp, painful stab in my foot! I decide that I must have been bitten by a scorpion. I try to remember if you're supposed to die when that happens, but I think maybe it just hurts like hell. When I look down to find the "scorpion", all I see is an unhooked safety pin lying in the sand. The safety pin dances a bit and says, "It's me! Paigeyemps!"

"Yeah right," I tell the safety pin.

"Seriously, it's me!" The safety pin wiggles a bit. "I got shrunk down and I'm too small to go anywhere. So I found this safety pin and I stab people with it when they come by so that they'll help me. I'm really thirsty."

I find this totally convincing and I feel bad for doubting her. "Of course I'll help you! Let me get you some water!" I look around and see that about 100 feet away is the "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign. Oops. I feel silly wandering around in the desert when I'm this close to the Vegas strip.



I walk toward the Las Vegas strip and somehow I find an empty cup and a big bottle of water. I fill up the cup and bring it back to Paigeyemps and her safety pin, feeling like quite the hero. The little safety pin waves around a bit and she says, "That cup is filled with bacteria! I can't drink that!" I'm sort of embarrassed that the cup is so dirty and I wonder how she's able to see bacteria so well. I figure it's because she's so little, but something seems funny about the whole situation. All of this "heavy duty thinking" seems to get my brain into a higher gear and I become lucid.

Even though I'm lucid, I still feel very, very stupid. I think that maybe Paigeyemps could use a bigger signaling object than that tiny safety pin, so I conjure a knife into my right hand. It occurs to me that it would probably be bad to have her out here in the desert knifing everybody that comes close. I toss the knife over my shoulder.

"Hey," I tell her, "I'm actually lucid now! Let me just shrink down to your size and see if I can help." (I wonder why I didn't try to make her bigger instead. ) She says something along the lines of "cool" and I focus my vision on the safety pin, willing myself to shrink down.

The shrinking effect feels sort of like zooming on Google Maps. I focus on the spot where the safety pin is and will myself to move closer and closer to it. There's a momentary visual streaking effect and then everything looks bigger. After a few iterations of this, the grains of sand look more like huge rocks and for some reason they're glowing. From up close, they look beautiful.

"I think it's working!" Paige shouts. "You look much smaller!" At this point, I see a tiny humanoid-looking figure hopping around among the grains of sand! Encouraged, I do a few more cycles. On my last zoom, though, I zoom in on the wrong spot and find her completely out of view.

I call out to see if I can still find her but there's no response. I figure that I'm totally lost. I don't know how to proceed so I try hopping around like a sand flea for a little while. I get tons of height when I flea-hop like this and sand-boulders fly everywhere when I land. This is great! I do that a few more times until the dream ends.

I doubled up the menthol at WBTB and I think it definitely had a strong effect on the early dream content. Also, it was cool to finally bring a DV member into a lucid dream! Reading DV during WBTB was a huge help, I think.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #68: Losing My Grip

I'm in a long bedroom, and immediately I realize that this is a dream. Wife is reclining on the bed in her winter pajamas, reading her Kindle. On the opposite side of the room is a large window with its curtains open. Sunlight pours into the room.

"Hey," I tell Wife, "I'm having a lucid dream!"

She looks up. "Good! Have fun." She returns to her reading. I know that I'd planned to go to Angel Falls for Task of the Year, but my head is buzzing with sexy thoughts. I look out the window for a moment. The sun's too bright to see outside and the window is consumed by a warm, yellow glow.

When I turn my gaze back to Wife she has changed. The Kindle has vanished and she's gone from lounging in flannel pajama pants to laying over the bed in a negligee and booty shorts. My urges are going crazy. I decide that I'm not getting any of my goals done this dream. "What did you just do?" she says, looking amused.

"It's the menthol," I tell her. "I had 6 bags of peppermint tea. I think it's making me frisky." She raises her eyebrows and tilts her head forward, looking skeptical. "It sounds like an excuse," I admit. "I make too much out of these drugs. Kind of like how I think galantamine gives me magical powers." For some reason, I turn and force-push a clock off of a nearby dresser and shout "Galantamine!!" (So embarrassing. What a dream-dork. )

I join Wife on the bed and start to kiss her. The sensation is incredibly vivid and I start getting caught up in these really strong fantasies about what's going to happen. (These were crazy, cosmic fantasies that involved space, time, and dreams-within-dreams. Sadly, most of the details got scrambled up.) The fantasizing quickly runs away with me, and I'm close to losing lucidity. Before we can start doing anything, I hear the sound of little feet on the floor near our bed and a little voice say, "I see Mommy!" I freak when I realize that our two boys are here and lose lucidity. The sexytime mood leaves the room as quickly as it arrived. Wife is now back in her flannel pajamas and it looks like nothing was ever happening. I'm relieved that she's so good at acting normal.

We go downstairs with the kids and start going through a semi-normal morning routine. After a very long time spent doing mundane morning stuff, the boys are helping me bake bread in the bread machine. As I'm taking the bread out out, R (my 1.5 year old) climbs up on the counter. Before I can stop him, he burns himself on the bread, bonks his head on the bread machine, and tumbles all the way to the kitchen floor. This scares me but the accident is so comically absurd that I regain lucidity.

The boys run off and I see that Wife's looking at me. I tell her, "Don't worry, that whole thing with the fall was just part of this dream." She says okay and joins the boys in the den.

I notice that the living room is filled with a strange darkness. I catch figures moving in the darkness but I can't make out who or what they are. They don't seem hostile, and I somehow decide that they're DV members and that I want to pull one of them into the scene. NewArtemis, Alyzarin, Xanous, and OpheliaBlue are in there. I catch little flashes where I sort of "see" their faces without seeing them. (It's a little hard to explain.) I choose to bring Xanous in. (Even though the sexytime mood from earlier is long gone, I feel like it's a really bad idea to bring a female DV buddy into a menthol dream.)

I turn my head away from the darkness and extend my hand for a handshake. I expect Xanous to walk into the kitchen and shake my hand. After only a second or two, I'm gripped by a firm handshake... I turn to look, and hell yeah it's Xanous! He's in a gray t-shirt with some logo and he's laughing about something. Before I can say anything, he rapidly shrinks down until he's about a foot tall, but somehow I'm still shaking his hand.

My vision goes black but I still have a hold on the handshake. I ask Xanous what he thinks I should do but he just says something unintelligible in a weird robot voice. The handshake slips away and I fall back to the gladius trick. This doesn't do anything, and I alternate between swinging a sword and slapping myself in the face. It doesn't seem to get me anywhere.

After a bit, I wake up, staring straight at a wall. Wait, Wife should be where the wall is. Still dreaming. I try to move but I'm totally frozen. I start contemplating an OBE exit before I wake up for real.

My attachment and affection for familiar DCs came back to bite me in this one. They are so lifelike that in the moment they feel every bit as real as the actual person. I love my DCs but I may need to learn to get better about leaving them behind in certain situations.

And I finally had the phase through a solid wall that I've been looking for! That's progress!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #67: All That You Can't Leave Behind

I'm sitting on a carpeted floor talking to my friend BS about strength training, in particular his recent deadlifting injury. At some point, he offers me responsibility or a promotion of some kind, saying that I will be level "17+". It occurs to me that I almost always communicate with him online rather than in person and I become lucid.

I see that I'm sitting on the floor of my master bedroom and BS has vanished. I know that I'm dreaming but the scene's almost distressingly vivid, sort of like a very realistic FA. Our laundry basket is in the middle of the floor but otherwise the room is impeccably organized. Yeah, definitely a dream.

It looks like it's early morning and Wife isn't in the bed. I want out of the house to work on some tasks so I decide to phase right outside Alyzarin-style. I walk up to a wall that leads outside, imagining that it's not really there. But when I try to walk through it, it stops me. This time I imagine the house having that entire section of wall missing, but my phase attempt is still a failure.

I take a few steps back and make one final run-up, focusing my mind on the fact that none of this exists... and pop right through the wall to the outside! My left shoulder slightly clips the window on the way through and a few stray fragments of glass fall with me to the driveway below. It may not have been the prettiest thing, but I'm happy to have finally phased through a solid wall again!

I'd been looking at pictures of Angel Falls during my WBTB and it's fresh in my mind. I Hulk-jump hundreds of feet into the air, willing myself to land at Angel Falls. Instead I come crashing back to Earth on a broad downtown plaza next to a long row of elegant, sculptured water fountains. The plaza is busy this morning and working men and women walk purposefully past, seemingly oblivious to my landing.

My 3-year-old son E is standing here watching the fountains. A few kids are playing in the fountains and I get the sense that he wants to join them. "Hey buddy!" I say. "I'm dreaming all of this."

He pops his thumb into his mouth. I think that he's getting way too old to still be doing that. "That's a lucid dream!" he declares, and smiles slyly.

I bend down and give him a hug. "That's right. We'll talk about this tomorrow. For now I'm going to take you with me." (I haven't thought through how dangerous it probably is to jump off of Angel Falls with a toddler.) I hoist him up to my shoulders the same way that I do every evening during part of our after-dinner walks. But somehow the lift feels awkward, strange, and too heavy. He slips out of my arms and crashes down to the plaza, landing hard on his forehead.

He wails in pain and I hurriedly bend down to scoop him up. I'm terribly upset, bordering on losing lucidity. I check his face and I'm relieved to see that he's unmarked. I hug him tight to me as he squalls in my ear. I'm too emotional to hold the dream together and I wake up.

This was a fun but weird DILD that hit right at the end of a very long NLD. The sudden introduction of this "Dream Coordinator" character was interesting. I enjoy it when my subconscious plays back at me like that.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #66: The Dream Coordinator

I'm on an epic quest, roaming on foot across the United States with several odd characters: a man in his 50s dragging around an 8-foot potted plant, an 11-year-old anorexic boy, and a pretty, short-haired woman in her mid-40s named "Mrs. Rearden". I've been journeying with Mrs. Rearden the longest and I trust her completely.

It's a foggy morning, and we're all sitting for a moment on a long couch outside of a gas station. I notice that gas is "$1200 / 1000 gallons". I think, "$1200?? God, that's expensive." But I take a moment to do the math and realize that this gas is actually super cheap. "Ah... tricky, tricky!" I think.

I see one of those gas station signs with the changeable letters. It reads, "DUDE THIS SUCKS", which I find surprising. I look closer and see that it has changed to "YES WE'RE OPEN!" Just below the sign I see a row of frightening stone gargoyles perched along one of the gas station walls. Finally I've been bombarded with enough clues and now I know that this is a dream.

The other DCs stare silently ahead, so I ignore them and take a look around. It's still foggy, but I realize that I'm not outside at all but rather in what looks like an enormous airplane hangar. There are windows high up in the corner and I float toward one, planning to phase outside. As I reach the window, though, my vision goes black.

I feel myself floating back down, so once again I imagine that I have a gladius in my hand and start swinging it around everywhere. I land back on the ground, but everything stays black. I can still feel the weight of the gladius and my moving arm, though, so I feel fairly relaxed. I start probing at my dream body and discover that I seem to be wearing nothing but my boxer shorts. Suddenly worried, I check to make sure that my wiener is still there. Yes, all is well.

I've been in the dark longer than I'd like so I call out for help. "Somebody come help me! Mrs. Rearden, I need you to help me!" There's no response. I poke and slap at my face, hoping something will happen. Finally, I decide that maybe something will happen if I take off my boxer shorts. As soon as I attempt this, I hear Mrs. Rearden shout, "Don't do that! Stop it! Here, I'll help you." She grabs my left hand, gives it a hard yank, and pulls me into a new dream scene just outside of a door.

I keep a grip on her hand and we walk through the door. We're on the second story walkway of a mall. Mrs. Rearden looks frightened. She mutters, "This is not where the Coordinator wants us to be."

I'm stunned by this. "Who? The Coordinator?"

"Yes," she says. "The Dream Coordinator. This was not what he had planned." She is really upset and keeps looking nervously around the scene

I tug at her hand and move with her further along the walkway. As we approach an elevator, I say, "There is no Dream Coordinator. This is my dream and we don't answer to anybody. But you don't have to come with me any further. I think I'm okay on my own now."

She responds that she wants to help, but as she's speaking, I become disconnected from my dream body. My perspective sinks down to the busy food court on the mall's first floor. I feel like an insubstantial apparition and I'm desperate to regain physical form. I try the gladius trick but it feels all wrong.

There's a guy with a shaved head nearby, black, in his 30s, wandering happily around the food court. I move toward him, hoping that if I make physical contact it'll bring me back into the dream. He sees me floating toward him, though, and takes off at a dead run, screaming in terror. I don't blame him -- if a ghost in nothing but boxer shorts came after me, I'd run like hell, too. With nowhere else to go, I run out of steam and the dream ends.

This was really a lucid fragment followed by a short DILD. Ah, there was so much unrealized potential in this dream! Way too short for all its promise. Some phasing progress though!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #65: A Short Soliloquy

I'm standing in a rain forest clearing, standing in a shallow pool of clear water with my 3-year-old son E. I realize that this must be a dream. I immediately think of jumping from Angel Falls for Task of the Year.

E seems to read my mind because he panics and starts scampering around, squeaking, "Don't want to go! No! No! Don't want to! Don't want to go!" I try to get him to calm down but I quickly wake up.

I lay there and try to DEILD, but nothing comes. I flip to my back and start some fast SSILD cycles. I am halfway through the second cycle when I lose consciousness.

It's nighttime and I'm standing in E's darkened room, reflecting on the nature of life, illusion, and reality. I think, "Everything is just an illusion." I quickly realize how right I am.

I look around and see that E's bed and E himself are both gone. I hold up my hands, looking first at the palms. I bend my fingers into claws, noting how realistic my hands look. At some point, I stopped getting so many distortions and extra fingers, it seems. "My hands are an illusion," I whisper to noone in particular.

There's very faint moonlight trickling in through the plantation shutters of E's window. I say, "This wall is an illusion, too." I remember Alyzarin talking about how easy phasing became once she internalized that every wall was nothing but a picture that only she could make real. What could be simpler or more obviously true than that?

I imagine where I'll be when I step through that wall. I move toward the wall, thinking of the Colosseum. But then I have a vision of the top of Angel Falls. It's far more vivid, so I go with that.

As I pass into the wall, it feels like nothing more than mist. My vision cuts to milky gray and I vividly hear splashing water and the shouts and greetings of friends. People are already here waiting for me, but who? Is it people from waking life? DV members preparing to do Task of the Year? Suddenly I wake up. I try to go back to sleep but it's too late in the morning to transition back in.

This was a short but pleasant lucid after drinking a 3-bag brew of peppermint tea during my WBTB. I woke up for the WBTB on the late side (4:45 or so), so I didn't stay awake for very long. Probably because of this, my waking life memories were a little tough to access.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #64: The Menthol Arcade

I'm in a dark arcade playing Street Fighter II with my friend SC. We're talking smack and he says, "I bet you can't win a sumo wrestling match." I say something really brilliant like, "Bring it!" and the game starts.

I'm on the righthand side and both of us are playing as E. Honda. I look down at the game's controls and I'm disappointed to see that it has no joystick and each side has only 3 buttons instead of the usual 6. The weirdness of this sticks in my mind and after thinking it over, I realize that I'm dreaming.

The game starts and neither of us moves at first. I jam on the buttons a bit and my player starts E. Honda's signature "Hundred Hand Slap". I will him to start drifting to the left and he slides along for a few seconds.



Before I can land a shot, the screen goes black. I look over to my left and SC has vanished. I'm completely alone and all of the machines are off now. I turn away and start to explore the rest of the arcade.

The arcade's divided into two sides, and the side that I'm on is arranged around an enormous air hockey table that's at least 4-5 times larger than a normal one. I wonder what someone would do if the puck got stuck in the middle of that huge thing. On the opposite side of the room I see an emergency exit. I think about exploring the other side of the arcade but it occurs to me that I probably have goals I want to work on, and outside seems like a better bet.

I keep verbally reminding myself that this is a dream until I reach the exit. I push on the crash bar, the door swings open, and I'm staring out into a milky gray void. I'm nervous about walking out there but I feel like there's no going back now.

There's a bit of a drop as I step into the void, but my feet land on something solid a couple of feet down. I feel like I'm wearing my work shoes. The scene goes totally dark, but I'm ready to DEILD. I start swinging my arm around, imagining that I have a gladius. Nothing happens for a few seconds, but I still feel relaxed. I start swinging harder, throwing in a few man-grunts for emphasis.

Some sort of wind sweeps up from below and picks me up off of my feet. The wind starts to swirl and soon turns into a cyclone. I can feel myself spinning and spinning, and I think that this is great -- LaBerge suggests spinning as a way to change scenes. I'm confident it will work, and sure enough I see a colorful, spinning scene start to emerge.

The wind dies down, the spinning slows, and I'm gently set down on a vast, jeweled mosaic that stretches in every direction as far as I can see. There's a slightly reddish glow on the horizon and what looks like a set of distant mountains. I'm awestruck by what I see, but it's just a few seconds before the dream ends.

This was a nice, very vivid LD where I was reunited with a long-gone childhood pet. It was more difficult than usual to connect to my tasks and goals. In fact, I could remember very little from waking life. I'm wondering whether this is because it was galantamine night, which required me to use an extremely short WBTB.

And my ever-reliable nose pinch RC let me down!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #63: After the Storm

I'm walking with my 3-year-old E in the back yard of what I think is our family home. The yard is vast, wild, and overgrown. As we walk, a Golden Retriever comes up to us and starts sniffing my hand. He looks almost exactly like the dog that I had when I was a kid, but I dismiss this as coincidence.

I wonder how this dog got into our yard. E, the dog, and I walk to to edge of the property and I see that the entire fence is destroyed. Nothing but a couple of snapped fenceposts remain. Looking further out, I see that our next door neighbor's house has been utterly destroyed. I think that this must be a dream. I perform the nose pinch reality check and can't breathe. I try it again and still can't breathe. "Oh shit," I think. "This is really happening."

The three of us walk further through town. Everywhere we look, houses are toppled and people sift dispiritedly through the rubble. I tell my son, "E, I think there's been a big tornado. Daddy's going to figure this out."

We walk across an empty four-lane road. Some of the shops on this road are open, which strikes me as odd. I RC again, pushing my finger into my palm. My left hand stretches like stiff taffy and I know that this is a dream.

I look down at the Golden Retriever and realize that he really is the same dog that I had when I was a boy! He's been gone almost fifteen years but now he's somehow standing right in front of me. I scratch him behind the ears. He just looks off into the distance with that big, goofy doggy grin. Even though I know that this is all a dream, it feels like a reunion.

E pets the Golden and starts fiddling with his ears. The dog pants and stares contentedly up at the sky. I decide that now is the right time for me to break off on my own.

I walk further along the road. I know that I had lots of plans for this lucid dream but I can't remember any of them. As I'm pondering this, a steady flow of traffic starts on the road and in a few seconds, cars are whizzing by in both directions. I remember a conversation with Xanous and Alyzarin about how they like to play in traffic during lucid dreams.

I start walking across the road. I'm halfway across when I suddenly realize that the cars are driving on the left side of the road (like in Great Britain or New Zealand.) The next thing I know, a small, strange, open-topped car is barreling toward me. Suddenly I'm scared that this car is going to flatten me and I try to force-push it to the side. The little car swerves to the left and its brakes squeal. I float up into the air, drifting slightly away.

The car has stopped and its driver, a woman of about 30, is leaned forward toward the steering wheel. Her eyes are squeezed shut as if she's in pain. I run or fly to the side of her little open-topped car, freaked that I've hurt her somehow when I did that force-push. "Are you okay? Are you okay?"

She doesn't respond, but she's clutching at her stomach. There's something horribly wrong with her. Her stomach is badly distended, stretching all the way down so that it rests on the floorboard of her car. I pick up her enormous, stretched stomach off of the floor and start feeding it back into her body. It takes some effort, but in the end it spools smoothly back into her torso as if nothing had ever happened.

She looks at me and smiles. I notice for the first time that she's incredibly attractive and I kiss her. (Guess I got over the stomach thing!) I pull away before I get myself totally distracted and she drives off, waving as she goes.

Again I try to remember my goals and again they won't come. I finish crossing the road and leap about twelve feet into the air, perching on a crumbling arbor by the side of the road. I look out over the ruined city and see that the destruction stretches for miles. I can't even seem to find my house anymore. Is the destruction getting worse? What's happening to this place?

I consider where to explore next but the dream soon ends.

This was a fun Valentine Task of the Month-themed LD. I managed to pull off the basic TotM ("Find a flower and give it to the next DC you see") and gave a valiant effort at the Advanced ("Find Cupid, and bribe him to shoot your favorite celebrity or DV member.")

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #62: Winged Cupid Painted Blind

I'm talking dreams with my friend AL as we walk behind a row of townhouse garages. I tell him, "You know, I had a dream a few nights ago that Wife and I went out on a double date with you and ML." I feel something strange when I say that, then realize that it's all a dream. "And I'm having a dream right now... gotta go, man!"

I'm disoriented and can't remember what I'm supposed to be doing. I assume I'm supposed to be flying somewhere. Without waiting for AL's response, I turn my face toward the gray, cloudy sky. "Up, up and awaaaay!!" I wail. Absolutely nothing happens.

Then I remember the Task of the Month. I look down at a nearby patch of grass and see a bunch of small, yellow, weedy-looking flowers. I pull a handful of them up and turn to AL, who is now sitting on the ground, piddling with the grass. "Here you go, dude!" I announce, stuffing the flowers into his hand. He just stares at them.

This dream still has some gas in the tank but I have no plan. After a moment I remember the "Cupid" advanced TotM, where I'm supposed to summon either a DV member or celebrity. Even though I'm hoping this task will stay G-rated, I play it safe. I remember that Kate Beckinsale is on my "freebie list" ("A list of 5 celebrities who, should the opportunity arise, one is allowed to sleep with without it being considered as cheating by your significant other.") Also known as "list of absolutely futile spouse-approved celebrity crushes".

"Okay," I say, "Kate Beckinsale will be..." I whirl around. "...right behind me!" I'm staring at nothing but a chain-link fence.

I relax and do it right this time. I think about how she is already standing there and I'll just need to turn around in order to find her.

I whirl around again and this time find myself staring at an invisible woman dressed in a business suit. She has no hands, feet, or head. I watch for a moment and see that the suit is vaguely moving. The suit's right arm reaches across its chest, as if its wearer was scratching her shoulder.

"That's not right," I say, and walk up to her. I place my right hand where her face should be and am surprised to feel nothing at all! I pantomime the motion of molding clay and after a couple seconds of work, her face fills in from top to bottom like liquid being poured into a glass. This is really close to the final result:



Her eyes narrow shrewdly, like she's wondering how exactly I plan to pull off this next part. (I'm wondering the same thing.) I need to add Cupid to this whole scene. I don't want to turn around and potentially go through the hassle of re-summoning my celebrity, but I'm not sure how else to get Cupid into the scene. I think about putting my hand behind me and having him land on it, but then I'm a bit grossed out by the idea of Cupid sitting in my hand naked.

Kate Beckinsale cocks an eyebrow as I stand there struggling with this question. In a few more seconds, the dream solves the problem for me by ending.

Another fun effort at Task of the Year. I just need to wind up in the right stadium next time. Again, with the gladius-waving DEILD tech that Xanous and I worked out. What a breakthrough that's been!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #61: It Has to Be the Colosseum!

I'm standing in front of a hotel, holding my 3-year-old son E. A van pulls up nearby and a gang of suspicious-looking men pours out. It looks to me like they're planning a robbery and I wonder what to do.

E points at the men and bleats, "Want to know what they are doing!" The men turn toward us, eyes narrowed. I feel like they're thinking, "Witnesses." I'm scared. I feel like they'll see us as loose ends to tie off, and I hustle back into the hotel lobby with E in my arms.

As I'm casting about for some place to hide, I realize that it's all a dream. I head toward a huge window at the back of the lobby, planning to phase out of the lobby and get into the air for a task. Everything has started to feel unstable and low-fidelity. The sunlight pouring in through the lobby window has started to look like one big blur. E no longer feels heavy and squirmy like a toddler. It feels more like I'm holding a backpack.

I relax and prepare myself for DEILD, and the dream soon goes black. Like I've done so often recently, I imagine that I'm holding a gladius in my right hand and start madly swinging it around. It takes a few tries to convince myself, but the feeling soon takes hold.

In a few more seconds, I hear a roaring crowd of spectators all around me. I know that I'm already out in the middle of the arena. Some people in the crowd seem to be counting -- don't know what to make of that.

All at once, the whole scene falls into place visually. I'm in a completely cel-shaded, cartoony world, and standing in the middle of an enormous football stadium, right on the 50-yard line. An Asian lady in a business suit walks hurriedly toward me saying, "Great, you're here. Let's get going."

My new handler looks in every way like a cartoon character, as does the crowd, the field, the stadium, and everyone in it. Some sort of production crew is wandering around on the field setting up camera and lighting equipment. This is so close to being what I need, but for Task of the Year, I need to be in the Colosseum.

I plead with her that, "It has to be the Colosseum!" but she doesn't seem to hear me. I repeat myself, "I know you're trying, but this isn't quite right. It has to be the Colosseum! Nothing else will work!"

Nobody hears me, though. Everyone seems to be too busy getting this cel-shaded sporting event ready and can't pay me any mind. I'm thinking about how I can change things in my favor, but I'm not far into this when I wake up.

This was a fairly short little lucid, but I did get some phasing in and felt really happy throughout. And I guess I really like galantamine. LOL.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #60: It's Just a Phase

I'm walking around in my childhood bedroom, practicing lucid dreaming skills. Somehow, though, I'm not actually lucid. (This was a strange feeling.) I'm trying to fly around the room but keep bouncing off of the walls and ceilings. I try shouting "L-dopa!!" like in my previous lucid dream, but even this doesn't do much.

After a while, I feel discouraged. I'm standing by the window wondering what to do when I realize that I wasn't really lucid yet, and everything that had gone before was just me robotically acting out some sort of pseudo-lucid script.

I'm suddenly on the bed again, and everything now feels really vivid. It feels like an OBE except that I'm getting up out of my childhood bed, not the one my physical body's actually occupying. I move to the window again and look out into the street.

The mini-blinds are partially closed but I decide to phase through both them and the glass, get outside, and go play. I push myself through the window, right hand first and pop out in the front yard. It's pretty dark out but when I look at my hands, they're clear and detailed. (Undistorted, too, just like the previous lucid dream.)

I start running, overcome with joy. As I race down the empty street, I gush without a hint of irony: "Galantamine, how I love you!" (That is so freakin embarrassing to type now! ) Darkness descends before I get very far, I don't properly prep for DEILD, and the dream ends.