lucid

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #225: Temple of the Dog

It’s the middle of the night and our dog keeps escaping out through the house into the neighborhood. Our house contains a labyrinthine series of tunnels that passes through an old stone church, and I’m convinced that the dog is escaping through some back exit of this church.

I step into the church. It’s mostly dark outside but bright light pours in through a stained glass window to my right. It strikes me as ridiculous to be looking for my dog in an old church that’s somehow bolted onto my house and I become lucid.

I leave the church the way I came in, heading into a dark tunnel. The dream feels wobbly, so rake my hands along the wall to engage my sense of touch. My fingers feel numb and I’m not engaging as much as I’d like. I start scooting sideways down the hall so I can keep my hands locked on and hopefully get this dream to hold together.

The hallway’s starting to get really dark now, though, and I decide to head back for the light. I break off from the wall and rub my hands together as I make my way back into the church. The light’s even brighter now.

I see my dog looking down at me from a previously unseen wooden platform high above. I turn toward the stained glass window, now almost unbearably bright and start moving toward it as the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #224: Speedboat

I’m racing along on a speedboat, seated on a wooden chair that’s lashed to the deck. The wind buffets my hair and face. I’m much younger, a high school student again, and there are about a dozen or so other passengers, mostly other high schoolers. I think we’re on some kind of cool, high-speed fieldtrip.

A girl walks across the deck near the front of the boat and I think that she looks way too young to be the same age as me. It hits me that I must be dreaming!

I spend a couple seconds enjoying the wind, the speed, and the outdoors, but now it’s time to get down to business. I intend to summon Dreamer, so I look to my left to see if I have any DCs to work with. There’s a woman seated to my left, looking away from me out over the water as we race along. She has long, blonde, somewhat sun-damaged hair.

“Hey look, you’re becoming Dreamer,” I say, stroking my fingers through her hair and leaving purple streaks where I touch. After two or three strokes, her hair is completely purple-ified and when she turns to face me, it’s Dreamer! “You’re here!” I say.

She’s wearing a huge smile and vaguely seems to be trying to talk, but seems somehow tired and unable to speak clearly. I wonder if she needs more time, so I turn to the right and think about doing a couple of dream control tasks before doing anything further with her.

Another speedboat approaches from our right. I wave my hand, lifting it into the air, and then throwing it forcefully ahead of our boat. It hits the river ahead of us with a huge spray of water and then (quite improbably) disappears.

I look to the right riverbank and see a large number of pixellated children running along the hilly shoreline, pointing laughing and shouting. They look precisely like characters from an 8-bit video game. I’m trying to show off more telekinesis, so I lift about ten of these kids into the air and then throw them along the shore in the direction the boat’s. Most of them land on their feet and start bouncing along, following the boat, but one or two land oddly and disappear into the ground. I feel bad about this and resummon a couple more to take their place, pretending they’re the same.

Not much later, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #223: Final Heart

I have a false awakening in my childhood bedroom and as I’m contemplating going back to sleep, I realize that no way am I really sleeping in my old room. I become lucid and attempt to get out of bed, which fails. I try rolling out OBE-style and after some clumsy attempts, I’m finally on my feet.

I walk out to the living room, looking at my hands. They’re darker and more grayish than they’d be in waking life, but other than that they look pretty much just as they should. The dream’s feeling a bit dark, so I shout, “Let there be light!” Embarrassingly, nothing much happens, so I just wander around in the den some more, trying not to focus too much on this.

I look to my left to find my doppelganger (a lookalike or double of me) standing at the door I emerged from. He’s dressed like I do to sleep and he’s sort of got bed head. He smirks sleepily at me and I walk toward him, but as soon as we get close to each other, I snap suddenly to his perspective (more or less) and find myself alone again. I drift toward an external wall and phase outside onto the street.

Outside it feels like early morning. In the neighbor’s yard I find a woman in her late 40s standing around as 4 small dogs scamper happily at her feet. She nods a casual greeting. I remember my goal of summoning Dreamer, so I say to the woman, “Ahh, you’re Dreamer.” She seems confused at first, but even as I watch I see her becoming friendlier, younger and more familiar. She’s starting to look like Dreamer, but the transformation’s not complete.

“I will be soon,” she says, smiling. I smile back and we walk through the yard together. I drape an arm over her shoulder as I explain (to her and to myself) the plans for this dream. I lose the dream, though, and wake up.

I sit tight for DEILD and wind up back in the kitchen of my childhood home. A couple of Brazilian men are sitting at the dining room table saying unkind things about my brother-in-law “Muppet”. One sarcastically calls him a “phenomenon.” I feel myself becoming invested in this plotline, but no, let it go, it’s a distraction.

I phase back outside and it’s nighttime now. I want to find Dreamer again and for some reason decide that a playground or dog park is the way to go. I fly up high into the air at high speed, piercing the cloud cover. When I look back down, I expect to see a park but nothing is showing up. I try to pretend that I already see it but when I pierce back through the clouds back to Earth, I’m half a block away from where I started.

There’s a badass three-wheeled police car here that looks a little like The Dark Knight Batmobile. It appears to be stuck because it hit another car and the officer seated inside is berating a teenage girl, blaming her for what happened. I just want the car, though, so I open the top of the car and boot the cop out of the driver’s seat with my left foot and drive off down the street.



I have a fun time driving for a couple of blocks until I come to an intersection where a cement truck is gushing this huge, oozing wave of wet cement everywhere. I avoid it by driving up onto someone’s yard and going around, but all the bumping seems to make the car sort of disappear within a half block or so.

I walk out onto DA street to see this amazing parade of armored elephants going by. There must be dozens of them, marching slowly and regally in single file. There’s something sad about their demeanor and from out of nowhere Wife is standing next to me, saying, “This last march they do is called their ‘Final Heart.’” She’s moved by what she’s seeing and I am too in spite of not really understanding it.



Further down the road I encounter a vertical sandstone wall with small outcroppings that could be used as handholds. When I look across the street to my left, I see my doppelganger already climbing up an identical wall! He looks over at me and grins. I decide that this is a great opportunity to practice my dream climbing, so I make my way up about twenty feet or so. I keep looking over at my double as I go, a little envious of how quickly and confidently he can make the climb. As I’m climbing, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #222: The Australian Odyssey

I’m standing in line with my friends SC and MR along with some other people that I false remember as people from my past. I’m trying to introduce these “old friends” but it’s hopeless because I can’t even remember their names. Very embarrassing, and to my relief the line moves ahead and we walk into a large video arcade.

SC, MR, and I watch this one game for a while that’s a cross between a sandbox-style game, a racing game, and a platformer. I get confused after a while and wander to another part of the arcade, when some creep elbows me aside and then flicks me on the back. The creep stares at me as he walks by with a “what are you gonna do about it?” look. He’s a short little guy with a mustache. “You’re short,” I observe out loud.

This enrages him, and he charges at me, taking an unbelievably slow swing at my head. I push him gently aside and he falls to the floor. “Stop it,” I tell him. “I don’t want to get arrested.” I move away from him down a hallway but he chases me down and tries to hit me again. I scoop up his right ankle and he falls backward to the floor.

I say, “I’m not hurting you because I don’t think you can hurt me.” As I’m walking away I start doing some pondering out loud: “But… what if you try to hit me 5000 more times? Wouldn't all of that practice make you dangerous to me?” Convinced by the dream logic, I pick up a toddler-sized chair and say, “Next time, I’m going to hit you with this chair! In the face!” I shake the chair for emphasis. He ignores my warnings and again comes charging for me. I smash the chair into the center of his forehead and he crumples to the ground.

I walk off down the hall, hoping nobody saw me do that. Something about all this strikes me as completely crazy and I become lucid. I walk down a long hallway lined with school lockers, and at the end I find a dirt ramp leading downward. I follow the tunnel downward into a large temple built with big stone blocks. There are gaps in the stonework near the high ceiling and shafts of sunlight cut across the room from above.

It’s a beautiful place and I begin slowly flying around the room, overcome with joy to be lucid. “Fucking lucidity!” I say, feeling like I might cry with emotion. After flying around for a bit, I walk outside of the temple to find myself in a Venice-like city of canals. A few boats drift gently by.

I look back at the temple and see a large, golden statue of an angel sliding down a ramp from the ceiling to the door right in front of me. From somewhere a voice says, “Although we recognize Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we believe this church is powered by the Holy Spirit.” I get the sense that the voice is trying to explain what they use for electricity. After admiring the statue for a few moments, I step into one of the boats and set off.

It’s not long before I find myself at the edge of the city, heading out to sea. I get the feeling that I’m in Australia and the beauty of the story and the scenery eventually drain away my lucidity. Dreamer starts narrating: “Parts of Australia are dirty, polluted, and not as nice as you might think.” As she says this, I notice oily water lapping against the side of the boat.

I set sail away from the city, staying close to the shoreline, Dreamer narrating here and there. The water is clear and beautiful now. Dreamer says that I’m trying to find my way to the islands of the “Hawthorne Formation” but I don’t know my way there. The sea is calm and I feel peaceful and relaxed. Eventually my boat lands on a sandy beach where Noah Bennet from Heroes is working at a carpentry table. I think he’s my dad and that he’s counting on me making this journey to the Hawthorne Formation to get help for my mom and sister. (100% false memories and characters.)

“Son,” he says, “draw me a map of where you think you are.” I draw a globe on a piece of plywood and sketch out Australia. I think it looks pretty good until I see all of the lines of longitude converging in its center. I realize that I’ve put Australia where Antarctica is supposed to go and feel really embarrassed.

Noah Bennet sighs. “Here’s the Hawthorne Formation,” he says, drawing a series of 4 islands off the southwestern coast of Australia.” He draws an arrow pointing northeast into the middle of these islands.

I thank him and return to the boat. “Good luck, son,” he says, and the dream fades.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #221: The Singing Robot

I’m taking an unusually long time to fall asleep after WBTB and I sense a shift which makes me wonder whether the dream has begun. I will myself to roll out of bed and I find myself floating in the air about 3 feet above and to the left of where I normally sleep.

The sun shouldn’t be up yet but a trickle of daylight’s coming in through the shutters. I roll a couple of times, a little out of control. When I try to fly I wind up just heading straight downward, soon faceplanting in the floor. The scene goes dark and I hold on for DEILD. After a while I give up,I incorrectly thinking I’ve failed and have a false awakening, feeling disappointed that the dream was “so short”.

I log onto DV and see that Dreamer has left a series of comments on one of my DJ entries. Rather than text, these comments are a series of giant images that are larger than my screen, so I have to scroll around to see the entire picture. The first is one of Dreamer standing with one foot on a balcony railing, looking back at the “camera” and grinning. She’s holding her other foot over her head almost straight up in the air like some kind of crazy ballet move.

The next few pictures show different angles of a similar scene from a Japanese manga and I see that she’s just creating some favorite piece of a manga she likes. I think that this looks dangerous but I chuckle at her cleverness.

Soon the dream ends and I hold on for DEILD. I feel another shift and I once again roll out of bed into the air. This time I’m able to fly again but my dream body feels slight and insubstantial. It’s daytime, just as before, and I phase out through the shutters. The dream’s feeling really thin, and I try to rub my hands together but I can’t even manage that simple act. The dream soon falls into the void.

“I’m having a lucid dream,” I say, but my voice comes out very gargled and robotic. I don’t want to lose the dream, so I try singing. It works, but every word comes out in this strange, metallic robot voice:

This is a dreeeeeeam,
This is a dreeeeeeeeeeeam…
<pause> Dream dream dreeeeeeam…

The audio holds together for longer than I expect, but eventually I lose even this and wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #220: Purple Haze

I’m walking through a hallway in an art school, getting ready to attend a class. I recall a previous dream where a lot of money had been stolen from my wallet and I dig for my wallet in a panic. I recall my intent to LD, get suspicious and nose pinch RC my way into lucidity.

I remember my intent to summon Dreamer for the challenge as I walk into one of the classrooms, but as I walk in a cluster of art students engage me in conversation. Before I know it, I’m blabbing about lucid dreaming until I’m only semi-lucid. Something prompts me to take out my iPod and check it. It acts just like waking life, but one of the words on-screen is “Kentucky”. Look away, look back, the letters are now a jumble, and I’m lucid again.

Wary of being distracted again, I duck back out into the hallway, which is now empty. I walk along for a while, thinking about how I’ll do my summon. I want to try rolling with what the dream gives me and using an existing DC. I step into an atrium where I see a handful of DCs walking around. I point at the closest one and say, “You’re Dreamer!” Immediately I notice that her hair is purple and she’s walking toward me. I lean in to make sure and it’s a perfect match!

“Yeah it’s me!” she says, as if nothing could be more obvious.

We hug and I start describing my plans for the dream. I tell her that I’m planning for us to do something together but that I’m having some trouble remembering Task of the Month. “That is Task of the Month!” she says, laughing. (Good call!)

“Oh right,” I say, “that’s Basic. [Note: Wrong, that’s Bonus!] But what’s advanced?”

She furrows her brow and then shrugs. We walk down the hall together and I tell her that I have an idea for something cool to do outside. We talk a bit more but I’m feeling like all this walking is compromising my lucidity, so I say, “Hey, let’s just fly, okay?” I turn my back toward her because for some reason I think she needs to ride around on my back. (How insulting!)

“Okay!” she says, and hops onto my back, “seatbelting” herself on by reaching her right arm over my right shoulder and her left hand under my left arm, then clasping her hands together. I hop up into the air and fortunately the flying feels effortless. We go soaring through the atrium into an area that looks like a shopping mall. There are a number of DCs milling about below and I’m surprised to see that a few of them also have purple hair!

We swoop low past a bench of DCs and a few of them run. I laugh at this, and Dreamer does too (though a little less maniacally than me.) We’re heading toward a low wall and I have a little trouble pulling up, my dream body kind of “oozing” awkwardly over the top. Made it, though! I see a set of doors off in the distance, so I set us down and head for them, determined to get outside. All the while I keep talking about how all of this is a lucid dream.

As I’m talking Dreamer starts taking over more and more of the conversation. I keep my left hand on her right shoulder as I walk in order to keep her “stuck” as part of the scene. But after a bit I notice that her accent, perfect at first, sounds all wrong and she’s changed the subject from dreaming to how I really should go back to art school. I nearly lose lucidity, but look over in time to see that Dreamer has been replaced by a young, dark-haired woman who looks Thai. “You never go to your art classes!” she says. “How can you expect to succeed if you don't go to your art classes?”

“You are not Dreamer!” I declare, pointing a dorky finger in the air and running for the exit.

“Wait!” says the woman, and I feel her grab onto my ankle. I ignore the sensation, though, and fly out through the door, phasing outside to a parking lot. There are a number of DCs milling about, mostly women, and all of them have purple hair!

I swoop toward the closest DC, a stout, middle-aged woman with glasses. “You’re Dreamer!” I say, pointing dramatically at her and kind of dropping into a goofy lunge. She says something noncommittal so I follow up with, “Don’t worry, you will be,” which she seems to accept with some surprise.

I tell her that my Task is to eat a huge dessert (somehow I’ve finally remembered) and she tells me that there is a “Chili’s” nearby. I point to a building and leadingly say, “You mean there, right?” She agrees and somehow I wind up inside of this restaurant, the purple-haired woman no longer around.

I’m walking forward in a huge line in order to enter the restaurant, which winds through some kind of indoor forest. I zoom in close to the tree’s detail and see ants crawling along the bark. I study the way that the lighting and shadows play off of the trees in real-time and I brag about all of this detail to the DCs, gushing that “This is all inside my head!” They nod politely and look a little uncomfortable.

We come to a long spiral staircase downward that leads to a cavern floor blanketed in mist. I don’t want to wait so I leap over the side, floating down to the floor and then moving into a dark tunnel. I remember how Dreamer had good luck producing a flame from her finger and how Xanous had focused on the pain of the experience to create fire in his hands. I hold up my thumb and expect this to happen for me as well but there’s nothing.

Now I expect pain and heat. There’s a slight tingling ache, but it’s little more than a nuisance. “The big fire!” I say. Nothing. I exit the tunnel into a large, darkened movie theater. I try to shout “The big fire!” but I get the sensation of my waking life voice croaking out the words and I’m startled awake.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #219: The Conga Convention

I’ve arrived for work at some kind of computer lab where we build or test hardware. Dreamer works here, too, and when I walk into the back room I find her interviewing a candidate, a young woman in her early to mid-20s. Dreamer’s in the middle of having the candidate assemble the scattered parts of a computer, so I decide not to bother them.

I return to the front room to find the door blocked with tables and computer parts. I figure that Dreamer moved all this stuff to make room for the interview but I’m confused as to how it all got here. The idea of lucid dreaming crosses my mind, so I try the nose pinch and I’m lucid. My breathing is clumsy and difficult, though, and I lose stability, falling into the void.

I rub my hands together and talk out loud to myself about lucid dreaming until a new scene forms where I’m walking through a large, nearly empty room with a few tables against the wall. I think this may be the office again and that Dreamer will be here, but there’s only one unfamiliar, dark-haired woman in her early 30s sitting at the table writing on a clipboard.

I walk through a door into a large, brightly lit convention hall, filled with DCs seated at round tables, most of them sitting in front of plates of nondescript convention food. I remember that I need to summon Dreamer for the challenge so I say, “That’s Dreamer right over there,” and turn my gaze to the right while doing this sweeping gesture with my hand. When I turn I see a tiny child (about a foot tall!) with purple hair standing between two of the tables. This mini-Dreamer giggles, hops up in the air, and scampers away. When she’s run about 20 feet, she disappears in a purple flash. Several of the DCs look at me in confusion.

This was not what I had in mind, so I circle the room for a while, rubbing my hands together and thinking about how I want to do this. Okay, new plan. I do a vague, sweeping gesture at several tables and say, “Ah, Dreamer, you’re sitting over here.” A very tall woman is hunched over at one of the nearby tables and I see that purple hair cascades all around her head, hiding her face. She’s covered in layers and layers of shawls, rags, and wraps to the point where she just looks like a big pile of rags and hair.

The enormous woman begins to stir, slowly unfolding herself to full height. When she finally draws herself up to full height, it’s Dreamer, but a seven-foot-tall (2.1336 meters ) version of herself draped in colorful, purple-hued cloth. She smiles and then walks past me before I can say anything else, vanishing behind me.

I’m getting agitated about these summons, so I decide to go for Task of the Month instead. All I can remember is the “get naked” task, so off comes the shirt. Next I whip my pants down, but they get stuck around my shins like I’ve gotten sweaty or something. I get a little annoyed by this and simply will myself to be de-pantsed. Should have thought of that first!

The problem is that none of the DCs are taking notice that I’m in my birthday suit! I throw in a few booty-shaking dance moves, hoping for more of a reaction, and now the DCs start picking up on it. They start getting up from their tables, strip off their clothes (only down to underwear, interestingly) and start dancing as well. A big conga line starts forming to my left and after a moment the whole underwear-clad room is conga-ing around the entire place.

While all of this is going on, I just watch for a while. As I'm doing this, I experiment with looking away from dream characters and looking back to see how they change. They seem to mostly stay the same except some of the DCs seem to undergo slight changes in make-up or facial appearance. As I’m toying with this persistence trick, an attractive blonde woman in her late 20s drapes her arms around my neck and kisses me.

Spoiler for Awkwardness:

She tells me that she wants sex, and what do you know? Apparently I do too. But when she removes her undies, her entire body is made of some kind of smooth, rubberized plastic like a life-sized Barbie doll. She positions herself seductively, but the doll effect is so unbelievably off-putting that I decide to just wander to some other part of the room and pretend all of this never happened.

The conga line dies down and I seem to be dressed again. The DCs are all dressed and seem to be heading for the exit of the convention hall, and after a bit of wandering I decide to give the Dreamer summon another good shot. As I’m heading toward a double door, I pick one of the women at random and say, “Okay, there’s Dreamer…” One quick morph later and now I’ve finally got a proper, purple-haired, normal-heighted Dreamer walking toward me.

I give Dreamer a hug and start walking with her toward the exit, explaining out loud my plans for the dream. She nods and “uh-huh”s along but before we get to any of this, the dream fades out into a false awakening in an outdoor courtyard with a garden. There’s a woman in her late 40s with curly hair standing nearby and I tell her about the dream that I just had.

“I just had a lucid dream myself,” she responds. “I’m glad that one ended. It was getting strange. I think that REM cycle was all played out, so I’m up for the morning.”

“I’m going for more,” I tell her. “If you just wait long enough, there’s always another REM cycle.” She nods, pondering this. I wander the garden for a bit until the dream fades for good.

Not my best dream control, but hopefully I can learn from this!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #218: Empty-Handed

I hear my oldest son E calling for me. It feels like it’s very early morning and the sun’s still not up yet. I walk through the dark hallway into his room to find him sitting up in his bed. “Daddy! I’m up!” he announces and hops off of the bed. “I’m going to go tell Mommy.”

I follow him back down the hall, feeling disappointed that the morning’s starting so early and that I missed my chance to have a lucid. As E starts climbing up into bed to shake Wife awake, I’m hit with a huge wave of regret to have missed out on having a lucid dream. I decide to make one last desperate move and try to phase through the wall, phasing right through and falling into the void.

I’m floating through the darkness now so I just relax, rubbing my hands together and repeatedly muttering to myself that “I’m having a lucid dream...” It takes an uncomfortably long time, but after maybe 30 seconds of this, a bright new scene forms around me.

It’s mid-morning and I’m outside, standing by the exterior of what looks like a movie theater. I look up at the bright sky and notice that the clouds are moving across each other in all kinds of odd, crisscrossing directions. “I like that!” I shout, pointing up to the clouds. “Very nice!” I experimentally drag my right foot along the pavement and it feels like I’m wearing running shoes.

The dream is feeling really stable to me now so I decide that it’s time to summon Dreamer and earn some challenge points. I reach my right hand behind my back and say, “[Dreamer], grab onto my hand!” Nothing at first… then a slight prodding feeling on my hand!

I turn around to find a brown-haired woman in her late 30s, hunched over and poking at my hand with her index finger. (I decide that this is definitely not Dreamer.) She’s up really close, staring at my hand like it’s the strangest thing she’s ever seen. I feel frustrated and annoyed that she’s messing with me while I try to summon. “Cut it out!” I say, and she hurries away.

Something bad has happened to my confidence at this point, though, and I feel this combined surge of self-doubt, disappointment, and anger, and in a few seconds I wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #217: Jazz Hands

I’m standing at the foot of the stairs, droning on and on to Wife about lucid dreaming. “Remember!” I tell her. “You have to let me summon you.”

“Okay, fine, fine!” she says, seemingly in a hurry and darts away into the kitchen. I’m confused for a moment -- wasn’t I intending to summon Dreamer for the challenge? I realize that I’m dreaming and head for the front door, phasing out onto the front walk.

It’s a clear morning outside and I walk out to the sidewalk and then start running to the east, ready to attempt the summon. I reach my right hand out, slightly behind me and out of sight and say, “[Dreamer], I know you’re here!” I feel a hand and then two sharp tugs and when I look to my right, Dreamer is running/floating along beside me. She beams and starts floating while doing a silly “jazz hands” move with her right hand.

I decide to fly as well and wind up soaring into the air. Dreamer seems to be sticking at a lower altitude, though, and now dangles calmly from my right hand. I can see trees going by far below her feet.

I haul her up and she wraps her arms around my shoulders while still dangling underneath. She seems very relaxed about the whole thing but I start having trouble controlling my altitude and feel like I’m going to nosedive back into the earth. The scene collapses into the void but I still feel like we're flying. The fear of crashing is still there, though, and after a few more seconds I’m awake.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #216: Through the Roof

It’s some time after 4 AM and I’m wandering around downstairs, badly wanting to get some sleep to have a lucid dream. Somehow, Wife’s still awake watching something on her computer and I’m worrying that she really needs to get to sleep. “Well, I’m heading up,” I hint.

“Good night,” she says, still staring at the computer.

I head upstairs into the master bedroom. It’s dark, but there’s enough light that I can clearly see Wife curled up in bed. Wife downstairs and Wife upstairs? Dream! Since I’m in the bedroom, I get the sense that I’m supposed to start the lucid in the OBE style and “roll out of my body”. But I’m standing. How would I even do that?

Instead I decide to just float up through the ceiling, phasing out of the house and into the void. I thrash about a bit in the darkness and do a half-assed summon. Something that feels like a dry erase marker pops into my left hand, so I jam the end into my mouth and start chewing on it. With my right hand I make awkward swimming motions and imagine that I’m making forward progress.

After a bit of swimming, the void lifts and now I’m standing in my bathroom, all of the lights blazing. The bathroom looks mostly like it does in waking life apart from the fact that the mirrors are a little fogged up and have these odd creases in them. I can see my double in the mirror, making chewing motions with his mouth but he has no dry erase marker in his mouth. I grin and my double grins back, his mouth still shaped like he’s got the dry erase in it.

I dash around the room for a bit, keeping my eye on the mirror and my double does the same. I remember my intent to summon Dreamer. I reach behind me and try the summon, remembering my tip to Xanous to “try to just feel the person’s hand as if it’s already there”. To my complete embarrassment, this doesn’t work at all.

I try again and it’s not working. I become paranoid and wonder if it’s because I’m trying to summon in front of mirrors. I realize this is stupid but decide to try getting out of the room to see if that helps. As I’m walking to my left, I get this sense that I’m stumbling forward and the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #215: Hubris

I’m in the office with my friend Z, talking to him about lucid dreaming. I’m in my rolling chair pulled up next to his desk, my foot rudely up on the wall like I was raised in a barn.

I’m telling a story about a guy who was trying to do shared dreaming. I tell Z, “And what he didn’t even realize is that she was in a completely different time zone!” I say this like it’s some kind of punchline and wait for him to laugh. He doesn’t react and I think, Wait, that’s not funny. Not even a little bit. I check my state and realize that I’m dreaming.

Z has vanished, so I get up out of the chair, thinking over my goals. Okay, take things slow at the beginning, then summon Dreamer. I hit the nose pinch reality check and breathe right through. I keep the nose pinch clamped on and enjoy the feeling of breathing in and out through pinched fingers.

I wander slowly around the office, which has grown to about three times its normal size. There are cardboard boxes of paper scattered here and there, something I’ve never seen in the actual office. I walk over to the kitchen, look out at the fridge and spot an extra water cooler that wasn’t there before.

When I return to the office there are more and more boxes of paper. When I notice this, they seem to multiply every direction that I look. An older guy, a well-dressed, gray-haired man in his early 50s, walks through the door and nods a greeting at me before wandering off.

Suddenly I become obsessed with keeping the dream stable and start congratulating myself on what a bang-up job I’m doing of keeping all of this held together. I start thinking of my sleeping body back in bed and wonder what position I’m sleeping in. How cool it is that I’m here and “it’s” over there! I wonder if I’m sleeping on my side right now. Am I breathing in and out at the same rate as I am in the dream?

This stream of boastful thoughts continues for a while until my self-congratulation peters out into... an awakening in my bed.

Finally got one for the challenge! Now we've got a competition...

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #214: The Challenge

I have a false awakening in the early morning, worried that I’ve run out of time to have another lucid. I get up, pee, and return to bed. To my dismay Wife has already removed the sheets from the bed. The clock says “5:50” and I complain to her that this is way too early to be up. “This is so unlike you!” I whine. She’s too busy to pay much attention.

I walk over to the gym and lay down on the floor, tossing and turning for a while. I have another false awakening in a field near a tent where a movie is being filmed. I walk around and explore for a while, feeling oddly comfortable and in charge, like this is my place even if it’s not familiar to me. I enter a nearby building where I’m required to remove my shoes, then move further on to find my friends PM and RP standing under an open rooftop. I try in vain to point out how much the clouds look like the ones we’ve worked on in our game project, but they’re too busy to pay attention.

I move further through the building, moving through a confusing maze riddled with dead ends until I emerge in a retro arcade. I stop at a machine that’s a multicade which features Street Fighter II and a library of 8-bit Nintendo games. I’m considering firing up Double Dragon when I realize that this has to be a dream.

I move outward from the arcade back to the main entrance. I’m still shoeless, so I produce some running shoes and walk off into the night. I’m on a concrete driveway and hordes of DCs on bicycles go whizzing by, not a trace of lights or reflectors on their bikes and bodies. They’re super hard to see, getting too close, and making me nervous, so I step off into the grass and move over to a sidewalk.

Now I remember my challenge goal of trying to summon Dreamer. I reach my hand behind my back, expect her to grab it, and immediately feel someone grab on. I turn around and she’s right there, purple hair and all! When I see her I exclaim, “Well that worked!” She seems to find this hilarious, squeezing her eyes shut and doubling over with laughter. I try to say something else but the dream destabilizes into a false awakening at my parents’ house.

My mom asks me if I need to go to work and I tell her no, just let me sleep as long as possible. She asks me to help clean their now-green pool (false memory, they have no pool) but I tell her that I’ll do it after I get some sleep. I crash back down on the bed, transitioning into…

...a false awakening on a bare mattress in a dark, candle-lit room. I get up and see that there are 4 or 5 similar mattresses here, too. There’s an Asian woman in her early 50s laying on one bed, tossing and turning restlessly. Some unseen male narrator tells me that, “She wants to dream but in here, she can’t. In this place, nobody can.” I’m disturbed by this, and I move toward the wall, hopeful that I’m dreaming right now. I phase right through, and the wall crumbles in cubes around me -- lucid again!

I float about twenty feet down to a poolside area with ankle deep water next to wall covered by a large mirror. The dream threatens to fade but I rub my hands together and splash around in the water. I again remember my summoning goal and reach my hand behind my back, summoning Dreamer for a second time. For some reason, I point to the mirror to help “prove” to her that she’s been summoned and say, “Look! It worked again!”

Dreamer seems fascinated by this, reaching out to the mirror and then waving her hands back and forth. “Look at this,” she says, bending forward at the waist a couple of times as her reflection copies her actions. I wonder whether this counts as two points in the challenge or just one.

We walk back inside and it’s another creepy room with those anti-dreaming mattresses. Dreamer stiffens her fingers like a spear and drives them into one of the mattresses and digs around like she’s looking for something but doesn’t seem to find it. I ask her what she’s looking for but she doesn’t say. I sweep my eyes around the room but when I look back to where I expect to find Dreamer, instead there’s a brown-haired girl of about 8. I kneel down and ask, “Are you Dreamer?” She gives me a you can’t be serious look and then walks out of the room.

There’s a mirror on the wall here and I get the idea to try summoning NewArtemis into the dream now. I keep watching myself in the mirror as I try to perform this summon, but it keeps failing. I realize I'm making this harder for myself but I can’t seem to help it. I want to see what she looks like when she actually materializes. I give three separate efforts to summon NewArtemis, but they all fail. I feel like something is wrong with me or with this room. Now I try to summon Dreamer. Another failure.

I feel like my mojo is fading out in the room, so I run for the wall and throw myself through it. There’s a glass shattering effect and now I’m falling through the darkness, air rushing past me. I fall like this for a few seconds until I wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #213: Following the Herd

I’m walking across a field at night toward some distant farmhouse. I think that I should be home trying to lucid dream and realize that I already am.

I fly a few feet into the air and rub my hands together. I’m surprised to find that my left hand feels like it’s some kind of stiff, hooked claw. I look down at it and I can make out a smooth, curved shape, but it’s too dark to make out more detail. I worry that the scene is fading so I zoom toward the farmhouse.

I phase or jump-cut through the wall into the farmhouse interior, which looks more like the inside of a cafeteria. There’s a long line of DCs eagerly waiting for something that they’re handing out from behind a counter at the other end of the room. The line is roped off and a somewhat androgynous teenage girl with dark hair and glasses is directing people into the line.

I start to ask her what everyone is waiting in line for but I overhear someone talk about needing to pay for the item. I instinctively reach for my wallet and realize that not only is it missing, but so are pants of any kind. Shocked at my pantlessness, I lapse into non-lucidity.

I’m wearing a dark blue t-shirt that I try to pull down to cover myself. I hate being pantless but I really don’t want to get out of line. Then I worry about how I’m going to get money. Then my shirt disappears too. I helplessly contemplate how screwed I am until the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #212: The Guadalupe Airport

I’m in a cafe talking to an art student in his early 20s as he walks out the door. I’m complimenting him on some piece of digital art that I saw in his online portfolio when I realize that I can’t remember his name. I ask and he says, “It’s Bradley,” as we shake hands. I think that this is a student in my 3-year-old son’s class, somehow all grown up.

Bradley leaves and I just stand there, confused about how this much time has passed. After a brief mental struggle, I realize that these facts just don’t fit together and I become lucid.

I spend a few moments looking around at the DCs in the cafe but they all seem fairly generic. I don’t have goals in mind and I’m anxious that I’ll waste the experience, so I head through the first door that I see, winding up in a bathroom. Somebody flushes from one of the stalls. I am not spending a lucid dream listening to people flush toilets, I think, and head back out through the bathroom, back through the cafe, and out into a mall.

I’m feeling less passive now and I try hard to remember what my goals were. Somehow I dredge up that a Task of the Month is to keep repeating whatever a DC says to you. I approach a balding, blonde-haired guy with glasses in his early 40s. He’s wearing a t-shirt that says something about the Windows registry and he’s looking at me like he wants to tell me something.

“Talk to me!” I say.

He happily launches into an explanation of something about computers, but he’s speaking too rapidly for me to follow. I eventually start catching him mid-sentence. “If you have a memory block that…” and I babble back “If you have a memory block that!”

He scowls at the interruption. “You know what? I don’t think you’re actually into this!” And with that, he turns and walks away, looking offended.

I continue on, drifting through the crowd. I spot one guy that’s unusually tall and for some reason get the nasty impulse to mess with him. I kick him in the right shin and he falls forward, stopping just short of hitting the ground. Then he rises back up, looking angry and annoyed. “Sorry, that was stupid,” I say, scurrying away from him. He floats after me for a moment but I make an effort to think about other things as I evade him, flying down an escalator to the first floor.

I move through a relatively empty hallway, worrying for a moment about whether I’ll be able to remember what’s happened in the dream and take a moment to reflect on how cool this is.

Now I’m back in the main thoroughfare with the crowd. I spot two attractive women nearby, both Indian, one in her mid-twenties, the other in her mid-forties. I fly past them and they say something about going to Las Vegas. I want to impress them for some reason so I boast that I’m having a lucid dream and could travel to Las Vegas instantly. They laugh nervously and sort of edge away.

I say something like, “Here, I’ll show you!” and start flying away, slightly out of control. There’s an open chunk in the ceiling and I pass through it, turning and flailing a bit. Somehow I find myself flying along an airport runway at night. I hear “¡Happy Birthday Guadalupe!” by The Killers playing over what sounds like a clock radio and I worry that a morning alarm is going off. I fly up to a tall column of carved stone in the middle of the runway and reach out to touch it as the dream ends.

This lucid is from the morning of 5/19/2014. (I think so at least. I'm embarrassed to say that my records got spotty right here.)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #211: The Bag Lady

I’m high up on a hotel walkway that encircles an atrium. The room’s huge and bustles with people. I see a group of familiar people from my life seated in plush, comfy-looking chairs and realize that I’m dreaming.

I walk up to “Cyclone”, a friend from high school that I occasionally catch up with. I try to explain to him that I’m having a lucid dream. He’s trying to respond but I’m confused and unable to understand what he’s trying to say. As I grow frustrated by this, the dream fades into a false awakening.

I get up from what I believe is a hotel room and walk out to the street. I’m someplace that looks like New York City and it’s early morning. I walk out onto a brick-lined path toward another building. Maybe 30 feet away, there’s a bad lady standing near a little planter that looks like it contains a vegetable garden.

She seems to notice me and comes staggering over. I hope she won’t approach and try to scurry cowardly away. As I do this, she lets out a blood-curdling scream and starts flying after me. I feel a combination of embarrassment at my wimpy reaction and outright fear that I’m about to get mauled on the street. Her hand grabs my shoulder and I think that come on, this has got to be a dream. What a relief that it is in fact a dream!

The bag lady screams in my face and grabs at my chest and shoulders with clawlike fingers. I’m not feeling very calm at this point, but I try to calm her down by saying “Shhhhh…” and raising my hands in as nonconfrontational a gesture as I can manage.

She seems to settle down and I notice she looks a fairly normal person now. She’s in her late 30s, wearing a hood and shawl. Kind of cute-ish, even. Her teeth are still bared but now she just looks like she’s upset rather than truly demonic. For some reason I start kissing her, and she seems to calm down completely.

I hear another scream from nearby and I see a second dangerous-looking bag lady quickly approaching. Time to go. I make for the building entrance, a simple looking glass door into what looks like a darkened school hallway.

As I make my way down the hallway, nobody follow. That’s a relieft. I emerge from the hallway into what looks like ground floor fo the hotel atrium I’d been in before. I wonder if I can make my way back up, but the dream ends before I can find out.