lucid

This lucid is from the morning of 3/24/2014. Still going for Task of the Year!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #195: Indoor Gardening

I’m working in a busy office setting with my friend “Leroy”. The very popular manager of the office has just been fired and everyone’s gathered to hear a speech from some stuffed shirt corporate guy explaining why this was done.

“Losing a beloved manager is like losing a friend,” says the generic corporate guy.

Leroy farts loudly. I laugh, then turn to him and say, “I’m not sure how many friends you’ll have if you keep doing that.” He doesn’t seem to realize I’m joking and looks hurt. Now I feel sort of bad. I assume he’s sensitive because we just lost our manager.

As the corporate guy drones on and on, I start feeling very stressed. I realize that I’m late for an orchestra concert I’m supposed to be performing in. I sneak out of the meeting, looking for the auditorium. I walk down a long, carpeted hallway and find the auditorium doors on my left. When I step inside, I see that it looks more like a movie theater. I get a sense of how odd this all is and I’m enormously relieved when I realize that I’m dreaming.

The scene rapidly begins to fade, so I rub my hands together and run back and forth across the front of the theater. It takes a moment, but after maybe 3 or 4 trips from one end of the theater to the other, the visuals all come back.

The theater is large but there are only five seats right next to each other. I recognize one of the theatergoers as my friend “SKR”, but hers is the only familiar face. SKR seems to be looking for something under her seat so I decide not to just focus on tasks rather than trying to communicate.

I start going for Jack and the Beanstalk Task of the Year. I perform a behind-the-back summon of seeds, and my hand comes back with little nuggets attached to long wisps of cotton. I just go ahead like this is good enough and start digging into the floor. The concrete floor scoops easily aside, leaving a nice, shallow hole for the seeds. I stuff them into the dirt, cover it back over, and start looking for my beanstalk to grow.

The shoots start emerging, but when they get to be about 4-5 inches long, they flop over onto their side on the floor. I tug at them a bit but they just feel like limp, frayed green carpet. I give them a tug and try to imagine them shooting skyward, but I’m not able to get tons of energy behind this thought.

Now I see Wife walking in through the doors of the theater. There’s a sensation that’s sort of like waking up and then I find myself in my in-laws’ house. I “realize” that all of what I just experienced took place inside Unreal Engine 4 and I’ve now returned to the real world.

Wife gives me a stern look. “Do you have anything you should be telling me?”

I sheepishly admit that I skipped out on playing in my orchestra concert so that I could have a lucid dream. She gives a serious nod and walks away. I’m glad she’s not too pissed off about this. The dream ends...

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #194: Bold Talk

I have a false awakening where I really need to pee and I head into a darkened restroom with urinals along the wall. It looks like something that you’d find in the lobby of a nice hotel or a fancy restaurant. I remember that I fell asleep at home, so this all seems really odd, but when you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go.

I start using the urinal for a bit when it occurs to me that I might be dreaming. Everything feels oddly realistic, so I stop, suddenly afraid that I’m wetting the bed. There’s a single sink in this restroom with a mirror over it. I walk up to the mirror and see my bleary-eyed self staring back. I bring up my hand for a nose pinch and so does my double. When I breathe right through my pinched fingers, I’m finally sure that this is a dream.

I walk out through the restroom door into a sports stadium that seems to be made up of a bunch of crisscrossed steel girders. On the outside of the stadium I can see huge red letters that are backward (from my perspective) and seem to spell out something like “B E A R S”. I look closer and now the letters are oriented to face me and spell “M E T S”.

Taking a glass door leading outside brings me to a large, covered pavilion filled with DCs standing around chatting and holding fountain drinks. I decide that I want another crack at Task of the Year, so I try to take command: “Listen up everyone!” They all stop what they’re doing and turn to face me. “You will all help me do task of the year.”

I get this sudden feeling of paranoia and add, “And none of you will attack me!” Agh, shut up, man, nobody’s thinking of attacking you! The DCs return to going about their business and walk past me, the pavilion area quickly thinning out until there are just a handful of people in there beside me. I start trying to work a magic lamp summon for the Aladdin Task of the Year but the dream collapses before I have any success.

Yet another near miss on Task of the Year! I really need to work on learning to close these. Lots of fun though!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #193: Magic Carpet School

I’m part of a large parenting group that’s exploring a gloomy cavern illuminated by translucent pools of water. After quietly exploring this place for a while, we all wind up back at one of the mom’s houses. Somebody suggests that we do a group hug, and we all awkwardly move toward the middle of the room.

I notice that Andy Bernard from The Office is part of the group. He looks sweaty and awkward and I think, “Hey that guy who plays Andy Bernard sure looks sweaty and awkward in person.” I do a quick mental check to see whether this is a dream and decide that yes, it definitely is.

I walk out of this living room into an elementary school classroom that’s in the middle of some kind of lesson. I pass through without interacting with any of the dream characters, wanting to get outside for a Task of the Year attempt. (The Aladdin’s lamp task with a magic carpet and three wishes.)

Leaving this classroom takes me to a second classroom and I start worrying that I’ll spend this whole lucid wandering through an endless series of grade school classes. I head for a wall, announcing that “This is a phase outside,” before plunging right through. I wind up in the void, but my hands and forearms are still brightly illuminated and clearly visible.

I rub my hands together and slowly the void becomes filled with a swirling field of stars. This fades into a scene from the Matrix that has the Youtube logo and controls underneath it, and I see that I am watching a video whose length is “0:98”. I briefly wonder if I went to bed wearing VR goggles or something and that the images are penetrating my eyelids. Scenes from The Matrix flash by and the image slowly rotates.

Now there’s a crackling sound and my vision fills with a series of strange characters that I can’t identify. I feel a sharp tug backward and I wait for the new scene to form. My vision reforms into… another elementary school classroom, this one a little bigger with an adjacent windowed playroom. I head immediately for the exit and I’m pleased to find myself in an entrance area. I bolt through a set of glass doors and now I’m outside.

Immediately I start attempting the lamp summon by “finding” it behind my back, but my hand just keeps coming back empty. After three failures, I’m really frustrated by this. On the last attempt my hand comes back with some little piece of dirty, wooden-looking junk about the size of a sugar cube. This time I pretend that this is the lamp but it’s just way too small. “Bigger… bigger…” and do a little magician-esque gesture. It plumps up nicely into a real magic lamp! It’s way too light to be realistic, but who cares, next step!

I rub the lamp, wishing for the magic carpet. I decide to be really specific, saying, “A magic carpet. Make it rolled up.” A simple little rolled-up rug appears on the ground. I immediately think, Why’d you ask for it rolled up? That’s just a pain in the ass. I expect the magic carpet to unroll and it does, so I quickly sit down. As I do, it lifts me up into the air and starts flying leisurely forward.

For my second wish, I quickly say “Delicious cookie!” and a tiny little sliver of cookie appears in my hand, like someone had already eaten most of it. I find this awfully stingy for a magic lamp but I stuff it in my mouth. It’s chocolate chip, not bad at all.

I think about how close I am to completing the task and the excitement gets the best of me. I get one last look at the roof of a one-story building as I float over it before the dream ends.

Interestingly, this was my second lucid in a row that hit very close to the onset of sleep. I woke up to write this down around 1:15 or so in the morning after being late to bed. I'm not sure what to make of it, but it's definitely encouraging me to continue my pre-bed MILD work!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #192: The Shadow of the Pagoda

I’m sitting at a table with some random people, working on something with pen and paper. My mind’s wandering and as I recall my intent to have a lucid dream, I almost immediately pass into one.

From here, I fall quickly into the void. I rub my hands together, expecting a new scene. Before long I emerge into a false awakening in early morning, sort of seated at the edge of my bed. Some kind of suction is drawing me away from the bed and toward our closet. This worries me for some reason and I ask Wife to “Pull me back in…” in this thin, weak voice.

She kneels on the bed and strains forward to reach for me, whimpering and fretting like she wants to help but doesn’t know how. I recognize that I’m starting to get caught up in this sense of powerlessness, and I let go, falling into the void again.

I make my way forward and emerge in a fancy-looking house, facing a set of glass doors that open to a veranda. For reasons I can’t recall, I decided to head deeper into the house and wandered through a series of rooms. The house is attractive but large and confusing and I start regretting my decision to stay inside.

I wind up in a bedroom with a simple but comfortable-looking bed that has a large stuffed teddy bear laying on top of it. Wife is standing off to the side near one corner and I remember to ask her for her middle name (for Task of the Month.)

When I ask for her middle name, she responds, “Ba ba!”

“Your middle name is ‘Ba ba’?”

She laughs. “Oh, sorry! I actually meant ‘Ba ba ba ba’.” I’m amused but I consider asking her a third time. The teddy bear catches my eye for a moment and when I turn back Wife has vanished. I think about asking the teddy bear for its middle name but decide instead that it’s time to move on.

I leave and walk through a dining hall where my son “E” joins me and starts to follow. I say something to him that I can no longer recall and we walk through more confusing rooms. At one point I’m in a dimly-lit kitchen and notice that my vision has gone blurry. I stare at my hands to draw out the detail and it works pretty well, though not as completely as I might have hoped.

I walk through another dining hall with E and as we’re exiting, the door shuts automatically behind me, cutting me off from him. I see him through the door as it closes and I feel a moment of concern that I’ve left him behind. No, let it go. I continue to a series of glass-panelled doors at the rear of the room and phase through, with some minor difficulty.

I emerge from the phase in a shady courtyard. Towering above me is an immense pagoda, stretching far away into the sky. Even in a dream I’m amazed by how tall and broad it is, far out of scale with everything else surrounding it. It’s at least 500 feet tall and dominates the landscape.



Two women walk by at the other end of the courtyard, casually chatting. They look like they’re from the 1900s, each wearing a large hat and carrying a parasol. I contemplate taking off for some flying and exploration, but the dream ends.

One notable thing about this dream was that I had it very close to the beginning of my sleep. Burke's MIT article gave me the idea to do a really determined MILD before bed and it certainly paid off here!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #191: Enjoy the Silence

I’m sitting in an airport terminal, waiting for a flight. A few seats over I spot Kurt Klimanski, a guy who did some lucid dreaming youtube videos several years ago. I think hey, great opportunity to talk about lucid dreaming with someone while I pass the time.

As I’m getting out of my seat to approach him, I notice the dreamlike way that I glide out of my chair and question whether I’m having a lucid dream right now. Hey, turns out that I am!

I move toward him but the chairs are all in my way. Mildly annoyed, I float past the chairs and land next to him. “Hey, the guy from the video, right?” I say. Kurt Klimanski looks up. “I’m actually having a lucid dream right now.”

“Oh, okay… cool, man,” he responds, bobbing his head up and down.

He starts talking about something LD-related but I feel myself slipping into the void. I grab for his hand but miss and wind up scrabbling at the carpet. He’s still talking, seemingly oblivious to how hard I’m trying to hang onto the scene. This goes on for a bit but eventually I fall into the void.

I’m relaxed here, though, and adopt a swimming motion to move silently through the darkness. I get the sense of motion and catch imagery that looks like I’m swimming past a series of huge, slowly turning pages in a book.

Then I’m pulled into a false awakening. It’s super realistic, but I have a strong sense that I’m still dreaming. I open my eyes and even feel the sensation of them opening, but I still know it’s all an illusion. I should still have my sleep mask on but I have relatively clear vision of the darkened room around me. Wife sleeps silently beside me.

I look up at the ceiling and see two large, projected circles filled with stars there. The two star circles slowly rotate in opposite directions. The effect is hypnotic and beautiful.

I watch for a good while, surprised that I’m able to maintain this much stillness without the dream falling apart. I almost feel like I’m getting away with something by just sitting here watching. I feel like my dreaming brain still believes that it has me fooled. I lay there for a while enjoying the experience until the dream ends. This time my eyes open to the pitch blackness of my sleep mask.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #190: Menthol and Marriage, Part Three

I have another false awakening in bed, but I quickly realize that it's a dream. I hop up immediately and phase out through the wall onto our street. The scene is dark, and after I’ve taken a few steps along the street, it collapses into the void.

I rub my hands together and keep walking forward. No scene takes shape, so I start thinking of directing where I want to go. For some reason I remember my personal goal of traveling to the Taj Mahal. I imagine that it’s in front of me, but can’t quite seem to get anything to take shape.

Suddenly, there’s a hard transition and a feeling of backward acceleration like I’ve been yanked back hard by a long cord. I think “Hell yeah” and get excited about where this will take me. But I’m super disappointed to find myself back in bed in a false awakening.

The room looks just like waking life, so I assume that the dream blew up on me. It feels very “obvious” that this is a real waking, but I try a nose pinch reality check “just in case”. I’m shocked and pleased when I inhale a rush of air past my pinched nostrils.

Immediately I start floating upward toward the ceiling, OBE-style. The room seems brightly lit now. I marvel at how convincing this feels, and as I roll over in the air, I see Wife laying in bed right where she’d normally be. She looks really hot to me so I float down to the bed beside her, feeling very amorous. I say something super cheese like “Hey girl, you know what I want.” Even in-dream it dawns on me that I sound like a doofus and I chuckle a little bit.

Fortunately she’s not repelled by all of this and we get to enjoy a little bit of sexytime before the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #189: Nice Throw

I have a false awakening in bed, but there’s something very static about the background and my hands look hyper-realistic. I know that it’s a dream. As I think this, a small statuette appears floating in front of me. I turn it with my hands and it floats serenely in space, unaffected by gravity.

I get out of bed and the scene starts to get dark. There’s a window on the wall to my right that’s usually not there and I decide this’ll be my way out of the house. I pick up a padded foot stool (that looks just like one from my parents’ house) and chuck it at the window. My throw is utterly puny, though, and the stool falls to the floor. The lame attempt kind of embarrasses me.

Instead of fooling with this any further, I phase out of the window into the side yard between our house and the neighbor’s. Everything looks realistic but way too dark. I run out into the street and decide to fly.

I remember the pointing technique I had used in the previous lucid and I employ it again here, pointing into the air and expecting to fly that way. Again it works great and I take to the air. I enjoy some flight for a while but it begins to feel like the dream is fading even more. I rub my hands and things snap back into focus.

I look out to my left and see a fairly vivid industrial cityscape. Bright fire is pouring out of the top of one of the buildings, which looks like some kind of processing facility. I fly toward it to investigate but the dream ends before I make it there.

Very close call on Task of the Year! I'll definitely have to go for this one again.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #188: CL and the Beanstalk

I WILD into a scene filled with fleeting hypnagogic imagery which quickly fades into the void. I start waving my dream-hands in a repetitive motion, waiting for a scene to form. Nothing happens right away, though, so I start licking my fingers for a while to see if that works.

Nothing’s shaping up yet, though, so I try seeing how far I can stick my tongue out. I can feel it extending outward from my mouth seemingly on and on, and after a few moments I can vaguely see it extending away from my face into the distance. Curious how large I can make it, I will the tongue to expand and it balloons out in a huge, rectangular shape as large as a room. After a couple of seconds, I can see that yes, it actually is a room…

Now I’m standing high up in an office building, looking out over a city skyline through enormous windows. It’s late afternoon. I enjoy the sight of the skyline for a moment, rubbing my hands together.

As I’m doing this, a helicopter rises into view from below my line of sight, turns itself directly toward me, and opens fire with dual-mounted miniguns.



The office windows shatter and I feel myself being pelted with glass and bullets. There’s no pain, but each impact feels like a definitive hit. I know that it’s a dream but I can’t stop myself from shying from the window, crouching down, and nearly cowering. I hold my hand out toward the helicopter then swipe it quickly to the right, flinging it away from the building and out of sight.

The wrecked office is filled with random debris now, and I make my way past it to stand at the edge of the now-empty window. I recall Task of the Year (find and plant some magic beans, climb the beanstalk, and defeat the giant at the top.) My immediate goal is to get back to ground level, so I instinctively point to a lower rooftop perhaps 7 or 8 stories down and will myself to float to it. It works and I’m pulled smoothly down.

Now I’m really enthused about this pointing thing, so I point at the street below, once again pulling myself down. I’m filled with confidence after this, so I just start knocking out Task of the Year steps as quickly as I can.

I need bare earth, so I scoop the roadway aside, leaving a bowl-shaped hollow for my seed. I close and then open my hand, expecting the seed to be there. It is! (Looks like a pine nut.) I stuff the seed in the hole, cover it over with dirt and pat it down. A stalk immediately starts growing out of the ground and I jump onto it as it goes by. The stalk’s growing fast and since I hitched a ride so early, the plant’s doing the climbing for me.

I streak past the nearby buildings and head into the clouds. Immediately a shirtless, ape-like giant with a long beard comes loping toward me, about 100 feet away. I’m preparing to do something violent and decisive to make absolutely certain that I nail Task of the Year, but excitement gets the best of me. The scene collapses into a false awakening back in my bedroom.

I need to use the bathroom, so I get out of bed, head in there, and start peeing. My aim is terrible and I keep hitting the seat, the floor, the tank, everything but what I’m aiming at. This really frustrates me and I assume that I must be super tired.

Just then I notice a strange, robotic laundry machine sloshing water onto the floor. Its label indicates that it’s some kind of diaper-washing contraption. Our kids barely use any diapers these days so I wonder why we have it and why it’s here flooding our bathroom.

My 2-year-old son R walks into the room, followed soon after by a sleepy-looking Wife. Her hair is standing up in all kinds of crazy directions, including one nearly two-foot spike that’s going straight up. “Your hair is pretty awesome right now,” I tell her. She giggles and checks herself out in the mirror. We have a good laugh about this until the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #187: The Hybrid

I have a false awakening in a strange bedroom that I think is some kind of condominium. Wife is here along with my two young kids E and R. I wonder whether I can go back to sleep and try to have a lucid dream but then realize that I’m having one right now.

I charge toward the window but feel someone short grab onto my arm. “Who is that?” I ask, looking down to find my 2-year-old son R clutching me. “It’s [R], Daddy. I want to go with you. Daddy, let me go with you!” For a moment I consider it, but once I think about my Task of the Year goal (turning into a fish-man and acting out The Little Mermaid), I decide no way. I’m way too nervous about bringing one of my kids’ DCs into the ocean.

R’s grip slips off of me as I phase through the window. I feel a little guilty for a moment, but I remind myself that this isn’t really him. I’m wound up in my backyard during what looks like mid-morning. I jump up into the air, imagining that there will be an ocean where my eastern neighbor’s yard ought to be. But when I get up there, it still looks like waking life.

I have some momentary flight trouble, but I psych myself up with a few phrases until things are going the way I want them to. I fly west for a bit, slowly turning southward and expecting to see water until… I see the ocean just ahead of me!

I pop up into the air and then plunge straight downward into the water, happily swimming about beneath the waves. The water’s darker than I’d like, but I try not to get too nervous or worked about this. I imagine my lower body turning into that of a fish, swim around that way for a bit, then look down to check my handiwork. It’s close, but not quite right… each leg is still there but all scaly like a fish’s body with a fin on the end.

I look away again, swim around a bit more, trying to make it all feel natural. I check again and it’s looking better, just about right, but now I’m feeling paranoid about my breathing. I feel like I can’t breathe underwater and need to surface. Panicked that something is wrong with my breathing in waking life, I push for the surface and fall into the void. I keep doing repetitive swimming motions, though, trying to hold onto the dream. After a while of this, I wonder if I’m making swimming motions in bed. This finally transitions me into...

… a false awakening where I’m lying in a large bed next to Wife. The room’s not my own, though. I recognize this as the condominium from the beginning of the dream, and realize that I’m still dreaming. I roll over to Wife’s side of the bed and start getting frisky. She murmurs sleepily but when I tell her that “this is all a dream”, she becomes more engaged. We make out for a little bit, but the dream hits the void.

After a moment, though, there’s a transition into an office environment. Wife’s still here with me so we continue making out.

Spoiler for Sexytime:

I notice one of the office workers, an attractive Hispanic woman in her late 20s, holding a stack of papers and talking to another employee. I tell the woman that she wants to join us and she responds, "Okay, good idea," and begins to undress while still sort of continuing to work. I guess my attention wanders, though, because after a moment she walks off to do some work thing, still partially undressed.

After that Wife and I enjoy some sexytime before…

… the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #186: Michael Scott Vs. the Zombies

The cast of The Office is sitting around in a big room that looks like a warehouse with a random bathroom stall stuck in the middle of it. Michael Scott is attempting to give a rousing speech to cheer everyone up but instead just makes everyone feel really uncomfortable.

“Cheer up, gang,” says Michael, flashing a toothy grin. Everyone slinks down in their seats. Stanley looks back disdainfully. “Everyone, you are about to experience one of the best things about my youth… the 1980s.”

The scene changes into a video game where I’m now playing as Michael Scott from a first-person perspective. I see some cash lying on the seat of a toilet. As I gingerly try to pick up the money, I realize that I can’t take it because my cash is already “full” in this game.

There’s an abrupt shift into the front of a restaurant. An unseen female voice narrates: “In this scenario, Michael must act violent and unstable so he can gather information about <something something>...” I see a zombie shuffling around at the base of a short set of nearby stairs. I vault over the rail and kick him in the face mid-leap. This is great fun. I remember my intent to have a lucid dream, so I decide that I can’t get too into this video game or I might forget. And it finally hits me that I’m dreaming right now.

A huge, balding zombie comes shambling toward me and I punch him in the face. I leave the room and move into another hallway, relaxing my mind until the zombies stop coming toward me and instead just pass harmlessly by without paying me much attention.

I reach a bend in the hall, rub my hands together, and move toward a large, open area. Just then, a female zombie puts a hand on my shoulder and groans. I’m relaxed about this and say, “You,” (I point at her), “are a dream character!” She smiles, her face changing until she looks like my high school English teacher. Then she walks away.

The room I’ve entered is a huge atrium with a glass roof, 5 or 6 stories high. Two young women, maybe college age, are seated at a table handing out some kind of literature. I’m mildly curious what they have to say but I see a nighttime street scene just through the door. I’m having huge trouble remembering my goals so I think it’d be better to get outside.

I get outside, start to fly, and then abruptly have a false awakening back in bed. I’m staring at the alarm clock. Oddly, rather than showing the time, it’s counting down from 9. I have no idea what this means. I hear Wife whimpering in her sleep next to me. She says, “If people look into my brain, they’ll steal my ideasssssss…”

The alarm clock hits 1, goes dark for a moment, and then starts at 9 again. I realize that I’m still dreaming, but it’s just a moment before I wake up for real.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #185: Kaleidoscope

It’s morning time and I’m preparing to give my 2-year-old son “R” a shower. This strikes me as strange because R usually takes baths and Wife’s the one who usually bathes him. I dimly recall my intent to have a lucid dream and after thinking for a moment, accept that I’m having one right now.

The layout of the room’s exactly like waking life (so far as I can tell) and there’s a window high on the wall near the shower. I hop up to it, plant my hands on the sill, and phase my head and shoulders through to the outside. It’s morning, just after dawn, and the sky glows reddish-orange.

As I’m preparing to fly off, R says, “Daddy, I want to go with you but I don’t know how to do that.” (I take this to mean that he doesn’t know how to phase.)

“That’s okay, buddy,” I respond. “This is a dream.”

For some reason I have a surge of anxiety that the dream won’t stay stable and of course my vision gets a little crazy. I leap the rest of the way through the glass and fly for just a moment before I freeze in mid-air. Seconds later, my vision goes black and I’m in the void.

I rub my hands together for a moment and then decide to change scenes by plummeting downward to the ground that I imagine is still outside. I go rocketing downward but as I hit what would be the ground, there’s a “whomp!” sound and a puff of air as I pass right through. I continue accelerating faster and faster until I crash into…

...my bed. I’m lying on my stomach, my head turned to the left. My eyes are closed and it completely feels like I’m awake, but I’m suspicious, so I try to see through my eyelids. This works and after a few seconds I’m looking out at my bedroom. The center portion of my vision swirls and blends together like a kaleidoscope. I wonder if the effect will change if I open my eyes, but I decide not to mess with anything just now.

I will myself to roll out of my body and transition into an OBE, but I can’t seem to make it happen. The kaleidoscope vision effect continues for a while until the dream eventually fades out.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #184: Be Still My Beating Heart

I’m walking through a parking lot into a mall, recalling an earlier dream where Dad had brawled with some pellet gun-wielding high school kid in a parking lot just like this one. As I enter the mall, I recall my intent to have a lucid dream, and one begins.

I walk past a set of red metallic benches, taking in the detail and comparing it to waking life. I marvel at how completely realistic it looks. As I continue down the walkway, I turn toward a woman walking with her two young daughters and half-shout, “Can you believe this is all a dream?” They smile politely and scurry away.

I take a brief detour through a clothing store, walk past a few more places, and then exit onto some kind of outdoor boardwalk area. There’s a tattoo parlor to my left with a wood-carved sign overhead which depicts two attractive, dark-haired, pale-skinned women with intricate sleeve tattoos. The place is called “Nutjob”. I think how cool it’d be to get tatted up in a dream and start to head inside. It looks a bit more like a boutique when I get closer and I suddenly get this irrational fear that things will turn sexy in this place and that I’d better avoid it.

I head back through a door into the mall and encounter a grinning, friendly-looking British woman in her late 20s. I remember Task of the Month and ask her, “Who is my true love?” She says some stream of hilarious nonsense about waffles, and we both start laughing. I think she is super cool. “I’m not going to be able to remember that. Can you answer again?”

She laughs even harder and then starts singing “Polly Wolly Doodle” in a British Donald Duck voice. (The kids have an Easter toy that does this, but not with a British accent.) I can’t stop laughing and I try not to think about whether you can laugh yourself awake from a lucid dream.

I start thinking about what the other tasks were and she wanders off as I do so. I remember something about your heart, and then spy Wife walking in the mall about twenty feet in front of me. Still in an incredibly good mood, I run up to her, get her attention, and after she says, “Hey!” I make out with her for a little bit. This is fun, but okay, back to tasks! I’m supposed to pull my still-beating heart from my chest and give it to a loved one.

“Here, watch this!” Wife keeps looking at the nearby stores instead of me. “You really need to watch. I’m only going to do this once.” She looks back and I reach my hand inside my body. I feel something about the size of a softball pulsing very softly. The movement is a bit too weak for a heart muscle, but whatever. I pull it from my chest and when I present it to her… my hand is empty!

“What are you trying to do?” asks Wife. I explain the task and she furrows her brow. “You really don't need to do that for me,” she says before wandering away into a nearby store.

I wander through the mall some more, baffled by how long and stable this LD is. I pass through a busy arcade area where I see a mom busily taking care of 10-12 girls shouting demands during a birthday party. There’s cake being passed around which I sort of want to try but I feel like I am at enough kid birthday parties in waking life.

As I’m heading back into the hallway, an attractive Asian woman with waist-length hair passes by. We look at one another and the guy she’s with, some generic dude in his late 40s with thinning hair, seems to jealously take notice. He kind of freaks out, storming around and I say, “You want to go to the parking lot.” He obediently leaves. But when I turn back to the woman, blood’s pouring out of her nose like he just hit her. I’m confused because I didn’t notice him do this. I worry that my confusion means the dream is ending.

I pass my hand in front of her face and she’s healed. When I glance over my shoulder, the guy is back, glaring at us. “You’re not coming back here again,” I say, and again he leaves. I say something to the woman about how this is a dream and she agrees. The dream is definitely fading now but we still manage a bit of sexytime before the dream ends.

This was one of those rare lucids that I had without employing WBTB. Some pre-bed MILD work did the trick! (Edit: Almost forgot -- thanks to Art for psyching me up to have an LD yesterday! Totally helped.)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #183: The Inventor

I’m sitting on a park bench, working on plans for an invention. It’s some kind of very high-end computer device and I’m drawing up some tweaks for making it much less expensive and bringing it to the mass market. I’m writing all of these plans with pencil on a rectangular, shiny piece of green plastic.

A woman wearing workout tights jogs by. She looks great and I blatantly stare at her. I become dimly aware that I shouldn’t be staring at people and start to wonder what’s making me act this way. It dawns on me that I’m dreaming.

I get up from the bench and look out over the park that I’m in. It’s grassy, dotted with trees, and maybe 200 feet further on is a brick building that looks like a schoolhouse. There’s a low stone wall behind me. To my left there’s a street with a few cars driving down it.

I’m convinced that it’s a dream but everything is so vivid that I feel a little worried. One of my contacts feels like it’s drifting in my eye and my vision shifts just as if this had actually happened. Now I try drawing on the green plastic with my pencil and I’m able to scratch out persistent lines that look completely convincing.

I wonder whether I’ve finally confused waking life for the dream world. I feel some paranoia settle over me, but I dissipate it by drifting back and forth over the grass without taking a step. Okay, yes, definitely dreaming. I cap it off with a nose pinch reality check and I feel settled again.

Now I see Wife and my oldest son E approaching me from the direction of the schoolhouse. They look completely realistic and again I fight the unsettling sense that I’ve confused reality for a dream. I hit another nose pinch to settle myself down. How can everything look so real?

A huge, lean brown dog approaches us. His head is as high as my chest. It’s the first surreal thing I’ve seen in the dream so far. Wife is focused on rummaging through E’s schoolbag and doesn’t acknowledge that the dog is here.

The dog starts to growl and bark at us, approaching uncomfortably close. Wife and E don’t react. “You see that dog, right?” I ask them.

“Sure,” says wife nonchalantly. I don’t want the dog bothering my family’s DCs so I offer him my left forearm. He bites down on my arm and whips his head back and forth. I’m sure there’ll be no pain, though, and of course there isn’t.

After a moment of this, the dog lets go, sits down, and starts panting. He seems friendly now and I'm almost glad he's there. It helps make me sure that this is all a dream. Wife finishes up with E and we walk together past the low stone wall as the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #182: Office Snacks

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

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

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

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #181: Big Band

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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