lucid

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #166: The Melatonin Tunnels

I'm walking along an underground tunnel that looks a bit like a subway station. For some reason, melatonin is tightly and suspiciously regulated in this world and I've just gotten the license to take some. I'm vaguely aware that I hope this will make me have a lucid dream.

I'm passing by a bunch of ticket windows where old, serious-looking men stare out at me. I'm nervous that I've done something wrong, but I'm so excited about my melatonin privileges that I don't worry too much about it.

I see Wife up ahead and I wave hugely to her. She looks a little embarrassed by how excited I am. "I took some melatonin!" I shout to her.

"Very good, sweetie," she says in a much quieter voice, cutting her eyes from side to side in embarrassment. I'm very excited about the possibility of a lucid, which makes me realize that I'm having one right now.

I say something to Wife indicating that it worked and she nods, smiling slightly. She leads me down the tunnel through a door into what looks like a cafeteria with folding tables laid out. Wife's extremely purposeful and is taking me through what seems to be a mandatory process, so I go with it. We stop at a table and there's some kind of form we're supposed to fill out. But Wife just briefly lays her hand down on the form, leaving a little Wife hand-print on there and she's apparently all done. I do the same and we move past the table.

We pass through a doorway into a room that looks a little like my new office. Waiting to greet us near a desk is an attractive woman in her late 20s, Asian, with glasses and a vaguely librarian sort of look. She says a few things about melatonin, showing us a piece of metal pipe where melatonin apparently grows naturally and can be harvested from. She's very friendly and cute and I begin vaguely wondering whether she and Wife would be interested in any sexytime.

The line moves on before I can figure this out, though, and we proceed into a tunnel of stone blocks. As we're walking along, the tunnel becomes crowded with a flood of running girls and young women, all chattering excitedly and moving toward a huge wicker basket that's sitting in the center of a nearby room. The girls elbow roughly past me as they move toward whatever's in that basket, and I become incredibly curious about what's in there.

By the time I get to the basket, Wife has disappeared into the crowd. The basket is filled with little handheld video game consoles, so I grab one. I work my way out through the crowd of girls as they continue pulling these little handhelds out of this apparently-bottomless basket, each of them running off excitedly as they grab one.

I stare at my little handheld and it comes on. There's a picture of a cartoonish lizard with its tongue sticking out. The text on the screen keeps shifting, but it seems to be accusing me of breaking some kind of game rule. The word choice is so strange and keeps shifting so much that it's hard to be sure. I assume that the problem is that this handheld is for girls and dudes are not supposed to use it. But too bad, I got one, it's my dream, and I'm playing it.

The screen shifts to the image of a handful of deer playing in a gently-flowing stream. It looks like a beautiful scene and I get the sense that it's taking place somewhere high in the hills. I remember Nyx and Xanous talking about moving into the image of a television so I bring the handheld super close to my face and try to make myself a part of the scene.

No matter what I do, though, I can't seem to get rid of the border that defines the edge of the screen. The image is up close and very vivid but that border starts driving me nuts. I really try this for a while. I feel like I'm close but know that I'm not getting some part of what I ought to be doing and the dream ends before I can figure it out.

Successful teleportation with closed eyes... my first of these! Great new skill to have. (This was the third of three lucid dreams from this morning.)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #165: Travel Buddy

The sister of a good friend has been kidnapped and I’ve gone on a mission to rescue her. (False memory: no waking life friend, no sister) She’s being held in a place that looks like a mental hospital. I’m hazy on how we get to this point, but she’s hurt or disabled, and I wind up carrying her slung over my shoulder, pursued by a handful of guys in suits. The hallway we’re in dead-ends at a locked door, but I crash through it.

Now I'm running along a metal walkway around the outside of the building which ends at a railing. I'm fifty feet up and trapped. There’s another walkway I could jump to but it feels hugely risky to do this while carrying another person. I’m wondering what to do when I realize that the whole thing is a dream.

The whole scene goes quiet -- the pursuers are gone and my companion is now standing on the walkway beside me. I realize that she isn’t my friend’s sister or in fact anyone I know at all. My reaction to this is to think Awesome! and begin randomly making out with her for a moment. After just a bit of this she sort of loses interest and wanders away, quickly disappearing. I gaze down at the street below and as I try to look closely at what’s down there, I unintentionally teleport to street level.

I find myself standing in a vacant lot. From the sidewalk, a very attractive woman with a pixie haircut is calmly watching me. I’m still feeling a little amorous so I hurry quickly over to her. “Hi!” she says. “What did you want to say to me?”

I feel a little sheepish because it feels obvious that she already knows. “I was looking for sex.”

“Okay,” she says. “I could do that if you want. But before you decide what to ask for, you need to know that I can help you do anything you want me to.” She really emphasizes this last part.

Even though she doesn’t say it outright, I get the sense that I get only one chance to make a choice. “Can you help me get to the Great Barrier Reef?” I ask, referring to Task of the Year.

“Yes!” she says. “I can help you with anything! We have to take an airplane to get to Australia.” She hurries down the sidewalk and I follow her. Day quickly turns to night as we approach a squat, black building that looks a bit like a dingy train station.

She explains that, “There’s no direct flight to Australia from this airport so we’ll have to stop at <some name> airport.” The place doesn't really look like an airport, but I believe what she's saying.

“Can’t I just teleport to the other airport?” I ask. (For some reason, teleporting right to the Great Barrier Reef does not occur to me.)

“Go ahead! Try it now, it’ll work!” she says, rather excitedly. I feel incredibly encouraged by this. I close my eyes, imagine the other airport, open them again, and now I’m inside a huge room in a new airport! There’s a big flight departure board covered with lots of illegible information about the flights going through this airport.

She’s standing nearby grinning and she says something congratulatory and mentions that we need to catch our flight. I assume that I can just teleport to the next location, though, and I immediately close my eyes again. I get a sudden little jolt of fear that I’ll mess up somehow. In particular I fear that I'll open my real eyes, so I kind of lose my nerve. The room goes into this half-haze, she disappears, and I feel like I’m losing the dream.

I paw at the scenery nearby and after a bit the scene comes back. Unfortunately my travel buddy seems to be gone for good. I wander around a bit more, walking through a bathroom and mentally writing something on the wall. I find this interesting at first but start feeling a little frustrated when the letters and words won’t stay the same.

I roam the airport a bit longer, but eventually the dream fades.

This is the second of three lucid dreams from this morning.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #164: Mountain Bus Ride

I’m seated on a bus, taking a trip along a beautiful, winding mountain road. There’s a girl of maybe 12 or 13 seated a few rows in front of me and she looks straight back, giving me a look that says, What are you doing here? I realize that I’m dreaming.

I stand up, grabbing the back of one of the seats. I rub my hands over it and the dream responds by becoming more vivid and immersive. I look to my right and see an attractive woman in her late 20s with an out-of-control head of curly, wild red hair seemingly pouring in every direction. Was she in the seat next to me? I don’t remember her. I have the impulse to approach her and make out with her but manage to stay focused.

I walk out into the aisle and grasp the seats with both hands. I join all of the other passengers in looking out the left window, catching a view of a beautiful green valley dotted with trees. The sun is low but hasn’t quite set yet and the lighting looks amazing. I’m so taken with what I see that I decide to just stop and enjoy the view for a while.

After staring out the window for perhaps two minutes or so, I decide to advance along the bus a bit and think about what I want to do. As I move forward, the seats sort of close together, blocking my path. Now the aisle has moved to my left, so I try to move that way to catch it. But once I do, it seems to shift again. I start feeling frustrated by all this and move to crawl over the seats, but the dream ends.

This is the first of three lucid dreams from this morning.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #163: Indoor Swim Lesson

I’m standing in the master bedroom, thinking about lucid dreaming when it occurs to me that I’m having one right now. I hear Wife getting the kids ready for an activity nearby. My first instinct is to go see what they’re up to but instead I decide to work on a task.

I remember the Great Barrier Reef Task of the Year. I walk around the master bedroom a bit, trying to figure out whether there’s anything here I can use as an easy bridge to the Great Barrier Reef.

I wind up standing in front of our closed television cabinet, staring. I have some vague idea of watching a related TV program, but it all sounds too complex. Instead I start trying to swim my hands and imagine that I’m in the water. There’s a confusing moment where my feet float off the ground for a moment but I pretty quickly plunge into the void after that.

I try to keep up the swimming motion but for some reason my right arm is now pinned to my body. I feel very confused about this. I wonder if I’m sleeping on my stomach and becoming aware of my physical body, but quickly try to shift away from this unhelpful line of thinking.

I flail around trying to swim with just my left arm for a bit. It feels awkward but at least I seem to be in some kind of water. My feet brush along the bottom of this “ocean” I’m in and it feels like my bare feet are touching sand. My breathing starts feeling a bit choked (not like drowning, but more like my throat needs to be cleared) and I wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #162: One More Season

I'm lying in bed, waiting to fall asleep. I can hear an episode of Breaking Bad playing somewhere in the room, and after a moment start catching visual flashes of the program itself. Walt and Jesse are driving somewhere, Jesse at the wheel. Hank and Gomez are surveiling them somehow, listening to every word that they say.

Spoiler for Breaking Bad Spoilers:

Spoiler for Seriously:

I realize that it's strange for Hank to now be alive again, although I don't consider it odd for Walt to be back from the dead.

I realize that this might all be a dream. I rub my hands together, and audio from the episode continues while I'm laying in the void. Jesse swerves close to a nearby car and a panicked Walt chastises him for being so careless. Hank signals something to Gomez and one other DEA guy. I start up some repetitive motions, mostly swinging my right arm. I do this for a good while, just trying to prepare myself and enjoy the audio as it continues on without a picture. After I've done this for long enough, I feel ready to take some action.

I will myself to roll out of bed and I stand up as my left leg oozes to the ground. My right leg, unfortunately, remains stuck and I'm unable to walk. I hop forward on my left foot, but my right leg stays clamped to the bed, apparently stretching far enough to allow me to get several feet away from the bed and close to the corner of the room. All the while, I keep hearing audio from the Breaking Bad episode.

Finally I let go of the idea that my leg is stuck to the bed and generally stop thinking about my leg at all. Now I feel free to move.

I look in the corner of the bedroom to see a bicycle leaned against the wall where my work desk would normally be. I approach the bike, thinking it might be fun to ride it around the house, but the dream ends before I can get there.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #161: The Journey Mural

I'm walking around in the kitchen with Wife, carrying a baby girl and lamenting the fact that my previous lucid dream was too short. I look over to see that the microwave timer is counting down from 59. "A short lucid dream is better than nothing, isn't it?" asks Wife.

I figure she's right. I look back at the timer again and notice that it's now counting 2... 1... and then blanks out completely. I realize that everything about this is odd and I become lucid.

The baby girl has vanished and I no longer hear Wife saying anything. I guess they've both left the scene. I move toward the closest exit (the back door) but it looks oppressively dark in that direction. The dream is not feeling stable to me and I don't feel like my cognitive abilities are all there.

I turn back toward the living room, slowly moving past the dining room table, through the living room toward the front door. The darkness presses down on me the entire time, and I feel like I'm slowing down.

I suddenly notice that I'm having trouble breathing. I try again and can't manage more than a few gasps. The whole experience is starting to make me nervous, and I start wondering if I just need to make the dream more vivid to make these problems go away.

A picture on the wall catches my eye. In waking life, it's a stylized world map. But in this dream, it looks more like some kind of abstract mural, similar to the artwork you find in the video game Journey. There are 3 or 4 robed figures at the bottom of what looks like a multi-story building.



As I approach the painting, I see the robed figures stir just a bit as if they're alive. I'm still not breathing, but I hope that if I can somehow just change the scene everything will be okay. I rub my hands together for a moment and then reach for the painting, intending to dive into it. The robed figures stir to greater activity, the painting becoming a larger and larger part of my vision... but the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #160: Siberian Stache

I have a false awakening and get up out of bed. Wife stays snuggled under the covers. It's daylight outside and it feels like we badly overslept. Our female Siberian Husky "K" is sitting by the door, slouched over lazily and panting. Something feels off about this and I realize that I'm dreaming.

Wife gestures at K (the dog) and asks, "What's she doing here?"



Even from several feet away, I notice that K's whiskers look oddly thick and prominent. The effect reminds me of a mustache, so I do this thing with my fingers where I "paint" a mustache in the air. When I'm done, she has a thick, brown handlebar mustache. I laugh a bit at this and K looks back at me, seemingly crestfallen from behind her enormous mustache.

I feel ready to go fly around and for some reason decide I should take the dog with me. As I approach K to pick her up, Wife says, "Wouldn't you rather take [E]?" (Our oldest son.)

"Oh, is he here?" I ask. And of course, there he is, standing close by in our room.

I look up at the ceiling and it's gone -- there's just open sky overhead. I prepare to take flight, but the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #159: Bears

I’m in a restaurant fashioned like a log cabin, talking on the phone with my friend “Dragon”. He’s telling me about the new job that our friend “AJ” just got and he’s chiding me because I know so little about it. We finish talking and I wander outside to find myself on a wooden deck high up in the mountains.

Now I feel like I’m part of a video game and I’d forgotten to do something important. Three pale bald men in dark trench coats (sort of like the guys in Dark City) come floating toward me. I turn to run, but one crashes into me, pushing me off the side of the mountain. I fall, unharmed, to some rocks far below. I want to get the hell away from these guys, so I duck into a little cave and wind up in some kind of white-walled room that looks like a lab. I wonder whether I’m actually playing a video game or just dreaming and realize that yes, I’m dreaming.

There’s a bed in the room that I’m in and a few other people milling around. Their identities don’t seem to be all that stable, but for much of the dream, one of them appears to be Anna Kendrick. I feel like they’re all trapped here, so I say, “This is all a dream. You don’t have to stay here!” I head for the doorway and they all follow.

When I get close to the door I remember my goal of cranking my dream vividness up before anything else. I decide not to let myself get in too much of a hurry. There’s a weird section of carpet by the door so I kneel down to touch it, telling everyone with me to do the same. “This is my lucid dream. None of us have to believe that this is real.” (I’m addressing them, but mostly reminding myself.)

There’s a box of toys on a shelf to my left, and I rummage through it, intending to bring myself even more into the scene. I’m surprised to find a stuffed bear that I gave to Wife when we were teenagers! I pull it out and take it with me, sort of hugging it to me the way a little kid would.

We emerge from the lab into a chamber with hallways in four different directions. I try to remember my goals, but all I can remember is the Great Pyramid. I know there’s another one I’m not remembering but I can’t figure it out. I start to feel pretty stressed about my memory and get worried I’ll wake myself up if I get too wrapped up in this. (I was forgetting Great Barrier Reef!)

I walk down one of the halls until we step out into an amphitheater filled with apparent worshippers. They're performing some kind of sinister chant and at the bottom of the amphitheater, a huge crackling ball of dark purple energy is taking shape. Everyone’s participating in the chanting except me now, including Anna Kendrick and the rest of the companions from the lab.

I become sure that they’re summoning some kind of dark god. I know that I shouldn’t worry about stuff like this, but I just want to get away before this causes me a problem. I turn around and decide to ignore their evil ritual before it becomes a nuisance for me. Slightly annoyed by my own fear, I clutch the stuffed bear to me again, hugging it roughly as I flee up a set of stairs..

There are a couple of guys sitting near the top of the stairs as I emerge into daylight. One of them, a black guy in a checkered shirt, asks me, “What’s with the teddy bear?” I explain that I’m using the bear to help keep myself anchored into this dream. I hand him the bear just as a crush of people come trampling down the stairs like it’s rush hour. Pretty soon I can’t see the guy anymore through the crowd.

Rather than get frustrated trying to recover the bear, I move on. At the top of the steps, I see my son’s green Beanie Baby bear, so I scoop it up and hold it as a replacement. I walk onward, passing by the front entrance of a hotel. A couple of guys come up to me and offer me a $1200 discount on a Hawaiian Airlines flight. I think that this sounds like a great deal but I tell them, “Sorry, I’m having a lucid dream, though. So maybe offer that to someone who can use it.”

I lose the dream, wake up, and hold on for DEILD. The DEILD works and I emerge back into a second-story bedroom. I grab onto the bedding, kneading it with my hands, focusing on making the scene super vivid. It works, and I keep doing this for a while until I realize I’m sort of afraid to let go. Stop being a weenie! I force myself to let go and take a flying leap at the window, intending to phase through.

The phase gets stopped cold, though, and I bounce right off the window. I will the window to come down, which it immediately does… and behind it is another pane of glass! I lower that one as well, seeing a third pane. I’m starting to feel slightly irritated by this, and fortunately when I lower this pane, it’s a clear shot to the outside.

I scramble through the window, catching my reflection on the outside of an office building across the street. Even though I’m crawling through the window, my reflection is walking upright like there’s nothing in the way. My reflection and I both laugh at the error.

When I drop down to the street below, I feel the sun bright to my left side, which I believe is west. I feel slightly nervous about heading into such bright light, so I turn eastward. I know that the Pyramid is somewhere ahead of me. There’s a slight wobble in the dreamworld, but it stabilizes as I walk on. I take to the sky, and with one final wobble, the dream collapses for good.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #158: Thankful

Wife and I are starting a company that will manufacture a brand new type of video game console. I'm standing in the middle of a park with her while we pitch the idea to about a half dozen investors while they ask us questions about it. Wife's doing all the talking and I'm impressed with how well she's presenting the idea.

The console is apparently based entirely around a light gun. (Think Duck Hunt from the old Nintendo Entertainment System days.) We present several potential light gun designs, all of which have very kiddie designs. One even has a little plastic teddy bear sitting on top.

Wife is going over the details of how we stack up against our competitors when I see my friend "CV" about fifty feet away, looking around. I believe she's come to support us so I walk up to greet her. There's a glass tip jar nearby which supporters of our project can shove money into.

CV puts two dollars in the jar and I thank her. "I think this project is going to be a huge success," she says, explaining why she contributed money.

I respond, "It's only money, right?"

For some reason she finds this hilarious. "My husband doesn't see money that way! But he'll spend money on... <can't recall this part>" I thank her again and walk back toward where Wife is giving her presentation, but now she and the investors have vanished. I feel terrible, thinking that I've been gone so long Wife had to finish everything up without me and it looks like I rudely walked out on the meeting. Fortunately, I realize that it's all a dream.

I begin walking along a path in the park and take a moment to look over my left shoulder. A beautiful sunset is taking shape over the trees and the rooftops near the park. That means I'm walking north.

Far ahead of me on the path I see two ladies in their late 60s. They look almost exactly alike, with wild hair and somewhat thick glasses. Their appearance reminds me a bit of Professor Trelawney from Harry Potter. I remember the Task of the Month about asking a DC what they're thankful for. I become distressed for a moment that these DCs are too far away and I'll have trouble reaching them. I focus my vision on the two DCs and then imagine myself "zooming in" toward where they are. Immediately I'm standing right in front of them.

"Hi! What are you thankful for?" I say, my words a bit of a nervous, hurried jumble.

One lady immediately answers, "Youthful <something>."

"Youthful what?" I ask. "Can you say it again?"

"Youthful reef," she says firmly.

Huh? "What is 'youthful reef'?"

"It's an activity," she answers. Oh wait, is she talking about Task of the Year Australia? Should I be doing that one next? I thank her and keep walking along the path. The dream feels like it has thinned out, though, and I am soon in the void.

I rub my hands together and keep moving forward, trying to stay relaxed. After perhaps 20 seconds I get the sensation of my feet walking through desert sand. It feels like a scene might be taking shape, but a sudden gust of wind catches me hard on the left side. I feel like I'm losing my balance and become fearful. I mentally decide that I don't feel any wind at all and it quickly dies down.

Unfortunately, at the same time I also lose connection with the ground and now it feels like my feet are no longer walking but flailing at empty air. I keep trying for a while but eventually lose connection with the dream and wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #157: True Faith

I'm standing outside on a stone path at the top of a hill. There's an elegant white gazebo nearby and a few people milling about. I think to question my reality and I know that I'm dreaming.

I remember that I wanted to try remaining completely calm and collected in my next LD. I sit down on the floor and rest my hands in my lap like I'm going to meditate. I try to relax my mind and just believe that I have all the time in the world.

As I'm sitting, I look around me, taking in the sun and sky, the calmness of the day, the DCs passing nearby... everything about the scene. I announce that "This is my lucid dream." One of the nearby DCs, a young woman, hears me and stops, seemingly curious. She takes a couple of steps toward me and stands there, listening to hear what I might say next.

I get to my feet and start talking about lucid dreaming to the broader crowd. I really go after it, announcing things like "All of this is my lucid dream" and "Whatever I believe will come true". I start getting whipped into a bit of a frenzy, throwing in several f-words, and saying things like "Say it with me now!!"

There's a good-sized crowd of DCs right in there, maybe 20 people or so, all cheering along with me. When I shout something like "I can do anything!" they all shout in agreement. (Couldn't we all use this kind of validation in waking life?)

"Do you know what's behind me? The fucking Colosseum, that's what's behind me!" I look behind me and the geometry becomes weird for a moment and I have to make a strange 270-degree turn rather than a 180. As I do, it looks like the outside of a huge stone structure like the Colosseum. I'm filled with excitement and I hear DCs babbling encouragement to me.

For some reason things destabilize, though, and the dream ends without any opportunity to pick up from the void.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #156: Split

I'm somewhere hazy, talking with IR, a friend from high school. She tells me that she feels like her physical fitness is stagnating and that she's getting old. I'm preparing to disagree when I suddenly become confused and worry that this will be misunderstood and taken as a flirtation. My brain feels stuck in slow motion, and when I wonder why, I realize that I'm dreaming.

IR is gone, and now I'm walking through a darkened hallway. I step through a door into an office with two desks in it. To my left is a window offering a nighttime view of the city. A woman, professional-looking and in her late 30s, walks toward me from the opposite end of the office.

As I prepare to tell her that this is all a dream, the scene "rewinds" a few seconds, and now I'm walking through the door again, and just as before, the woman is at the opposite end of the room. I walk toward her as before, and again the scene resets, placing me back at the door.

Confusion is starting to get the best of me, so from the door I blurt to her (and to me) "I'm having a lucid dream!" She approaches and we exchange a few sentences related to a project that I'm working on, but I can't remember what was said. (I didn't write this dream down until several hours later.)

The scene starts hazing out as she's talking to me, so I move toward her and start kissing her. This seems to keep things on an even keel for a bit, but as things take a shift toward sexytime, it quits working and I wind up in the void.

I rub my hands together for a while, holding things together. My brain feels very foggy and I'm aware that I'm having real trouble thinking clearly in this dream. I just keep rubbing my hands together, hoping that the answer will come to me, but eventually I find myself aware of my physical body.

The amazing part is that when I concentrate, I realize that I can still feel the experience of my dream hands rubbing together. I start getting mixed up about which set of hands is real and which is fake. Sensing the opportunity to "roll out" of the situation and have an OBE-style lucid dream, I try to imagine myself pulling away from my body. It feels like it's working, but the dream takes one last lurch toward instability and collapses.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #155: The Other Half

I'm walking alone on a boardwalk at night, the ocean on my right side. Up ahead I see two men talking on the boardwalk. But there's a smaller figure dragging itself along the boardwalk toward the two men. I look closer and I'm shocked to see that the figure is a woman whose body ends at the waist. She's slowly pulling herself along the floor using only her arms. I'm very upset by this, and the surprise and emotion makes me question reality. I become lucid.

The woman is only about 15 feet away from the two men but they're either oblivious or they don't care. I run up to the woman and crouch down beside her. She glances up at me for a moment and I lock eyes with her. Her face is nondescript, but I focus on it as I imagine that outside of my field of view she has feet, knees, and legs. I visualize and "hear" them scrambling and scraping along the boardwalk as she crawls forward.

When I look down at the rest of her again, her body has gained a set of hips and legs. She gets to her feet as if nothing has happened and walks off down the boardwalk, passing silently by the two men still conversing up ahead. There's no acknowledgement that anything has changed or that I had anything to do with it. In fact, she seems completely unaware of me. This suits me just fine.

A sense of peace settles over me and I look out over the ocean as the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #154: The Truck

A WILD attempt drops me non-lucid into the living room of a house. My dad and a few other people are standing nearby and I wonder why we're all here and how I arrived at this place. I can't figure it out and I remember that I was just trying to enter a dream.

I'm overcome with this feeling like it's been forever since I had a lucid and that I have to accomplish a goal. I decide that I want to teleport to the Colosseum and I remember the teleportation tech Nyx and I had both dabbled in: cover your eyes and imagine yourself in a new scene.

I try it now, covering my eyes, imagining the Colosseum and then taking my hand away. This makes all of the DCs disappear, but I'm still in the same living room. I try again, covering my eyes and spinning this time. It's still the living room, but it looks more drab. I hear the vague noise of a crowd, but it fades away. I feel like I'm not really believing it and I try to remember how to do this better.

This time I completely close my eyes, spin, and imagine a new dream scene. The scene goes dark and as I'm thinking about opening my eyes I suddenly get really nervous that this will wake me up. Instead, I just treat the darkness like the void, rub my hands together and start walking forward again. After a short time, I emerge outside at night, walking through suburban streets.

I imagine that the Colosseum is behind me and turn around, but I've half-assed it -- instead of the Colosseum I'm looking at a grassy vacant lot surrounded by a low chain-link fence. I jog forward now, taking three or four turns over the course of perhaps two minutes of dream time. I expect the Colosseum to be around each corner, but I'm not feeling confident enough to make it happen.

From out of nowhere a rusty red pick-up truck comes barreling toward me, lights off and speeding. I step lightly over the truck, one foot on the hood, next step on the roof, then gliding over as it roars past underneath me. I feel happy and excited about how I handled things with the truck and my confidence starts coming back a bit.

This makes me consider whether travelling on foot is such a good idea. I remember talking with Ophelia in the podcast about how flying is the better way to go for transportation and I'm considering doing that when a pick-up truck pulls alongside me, rusty red just like the last one. For some reason I think that this is a different truck.

The truck's being driven by an attractive red-haired woman in her early 40s and a younger woman (blonde, mid-20s) is sitting in the passenger seat. The younger woman beckons me toward the truck. I climb into the cab of the truck and immediately she kisses me. She pulls away after a moment and turns her head so that I'm seeing her from the side. I'm surprised to see that her appearance has completely changed -- now she's Asian and completely bald! She turns her face back toward me and now she's Wife with fairly short hair (like she wore it several years ago.)

Both Wife and the red-haired DC move toward me and sexytime commences. This part's way too graphic for the public DJ, but this (fun) portion of the dream lasts about four minutes. I lose stability once in the middle of the scene but manage to regain it. There's a final loss of stability that puts me into the void.

I rub my hands together and walk forward, emerging into a new scene where I'm walking into an apartment. A woman greets me at the door. She's unfamiliar to me (about 5'2", late 20s, Hispanic, very good-looking.) "Don't you remember me?" she asks, giving me a friendly hug. "It's [name I can't remember that starts with 'L']! We were like best friends back in high school." I completely buy into this false memory, losing lucidity and start catching up with L and asking her how she's doing. She's hosting some kind of a party with a few of her other friends there. I go on about family life for a while, briefly wondering why Wife isn't here with me. Eventually L wanders off to do something in the kitchen and I notice one of L's female friends giving me a semi-hostile look. I worry about this for a while until the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #153: Foiled Creativity

I'm riding with my family in a car and we pull up near a curb in a shady-looking part of town. When the car stops, my two young children "E" and "R" leap out of the car and bound away toward a group of maybe half a dozen grimy-looking people that are huddled near a wall. I run after the boys and when I catch up to them, I see that the grimy-looking people are muttering angrily and trying to hide some kind of drugs they're using.

I hustle the kids away back to the car and Wife gets out to join us. "We can't just let the boys go running off over here!" I tell her. "Those people over there are using drugs." I look into the car and see Jesse Pinkman (from Breaking Bad) sitting in the front passenger seat. "Pinkman!" I say. "What's that they're using? Is that meth?" He slinks down in his seat and doesn't respond.

Wife and the boys move off together into a nearby building. When I follow, I catch sight of them taking a right into a bathroom, but when I enter they're nowhere to be found. I consider that I might be dreaming, nose pinch, and become lucid.

The scene gets shaky and I move into the void. I rub my hands together, keep walking forward, and mutter reminders to myself that I'm having a lucid dream. After perhaps 20 seconds of this, I get a vague image of a dark-haired woman in her late 30s trying to speak to me. I kiss her, partly to draw myself into the scene and partly because it seems like a fun thing to do. After a few moments of this, she pulls away sort of gestures at the room. I see that I've stepped into a big living room with a high ceiling and hardwood floors.

There's a couch nearby with a gold-stringed violin lying on it. I look at it closely and run my fingers over the strings, trying to make the scene as vivid as possible. Vividness goes up sharply and the strings jangle pleasantly beneath my fingers. I try playing a few open-string notes pizzicato and the dark-haired woman silently observes, looking a little amused. The music sounds nice, but after a few attempts the notes grow soft, almost too soft to hear. I look down at the golden strings and see that they've all broken and hang limply downward. They still look beautiful, though.

To my left there's a projector showing a huge image of a computer desktop. My friend "Conan" is standing nearby, working on a computer, and characters fill the screen as he types. I think that this will be a good opportunity to engage my creativity. "Hey [Conan]! Let's work together to make some kind of game on this computer."

He goes into a long speech about how he got screwed over in his most recent business dealings. Now he never enters into any business arrangement unless everthing is in writing. "No, you don't get it," I tell him. "This is all a dream. Let's just make a game or something." But he's steadfast, telling me again how "careful" he has to be. I'm disappointed, but I let it go.

Now I think about the Colosseum. I announce to the room that I'm going to the Colosseum and I see that the dark-haired woman is observing from a few feet away, saying something encouraging. There's another woman watching from a different part of the room, mid-20s, light brown hair. I think she's someone familiar but I'm not sure of her identity.

I'm determined to change this room into the Colosseum. Oddly, I notice that there's some kind of turban on my head and a something like a long, red satin blanket spills out from the turban over the right side of my head. I find this all super weird but I use it to block out my vision of the rest of the room so that I can change it. I turn slowly around, trying to switch the room into the Colosseum but I can't stop seeing that hardwood flooring. I'm feeling a little stuck so I head outside through a door in the wall, emerging in a grassy field. The elegant house I just walked out of now looks like a temporary building. As I'm deciding what to do next, the dream ends.

Got a Task of the Month on this one and tried to use it (unsuccessfully) for Task of the Year. Didn't manage to get them both but I'm glad I gave it a try though!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #152: The Witch

I'm riding in a car (driven by my friend "Leroy"), along with two other unknown passengers who are in the back seat. We're all out together on a road trip, heading down a clear highway during what looks like mid-morning. The road is steeply banked like a race track and we pass by a speed limit sign that reads "50".

Up ahead there's a section of the road that's pitted with giant potholes. In front of us, a pick-up truck is working its way gingerly around a huge pothole that's torn up most of our side of the highway. "Be careful here," I say, pointing ahead at the pothole. But as I say this, I realize that I'm sitting on the left side of the car, Leroy on the right. Yet he's got the steering wheel over on his side, as if we're driving around in the United Kingdom or New Zealand or someplace. I realize that I'm dreaming, even wondering whether it happened this way because I've been playing Dead Island lately.

I decide that if this is a dream, phasing out through the car should be no problem. I look down at my lap and focus on moving my body left through the door and out onto the road. It takes a couple of seconds, but once the phase takes hold, I feel myself lurch to the left and I move through the door as if it wasn't there. My vision quickly dims and I find myself in a semi-void. I reach out for the road surface and grasp onto it. While I still can't see anything I feel like I'm physically still out on the roadway.

I crawl forward for a bit until I feel confident enough with where I am. My vision is still very dark, but I decide not to worry about it until the next scene unfolds. I get to my feet and start walking forward, rubbing my hands together the whole way. I narrate to myself the fact that "I'm having a lucid dream" and keep moving forward until things clear up.

The dimness lifts and I find myself in something that looks sort of like a college gymnasium. A lady in her mid-50s with a long gray ponytail is chatting with another woman that's sitting at a desk behind a window. I remember the task to have a witch cast a spell on you and I decide that this lady will be my witch.

I interrupt them by announcing to the woman that "Okay, you can do that teleportation spell to the Colosseum on me now." She doesn't answer at first, seeming to want to finish up what she's saying.

Once she gets the last of what she wanted to say out, she turns to me and matter-of-factly says, "Okay, teleportation spell... where was that to?"

"The Colosseum," I repeat. As soon as I say that, the "witch" shoves me in the chest and I go tumbling through the air down the hallway, right toward a wall. I think that I sure hope I phase through that and sure enough, I pass right through the wall, kind of floating on my back. My vision rather crudely recenters itself and now I'm standing in a tall hallway with cinderblock walls. I can hear the noise of the crowd... this has to be the Colosseum! The cinderblock walls aren't historical but I think that I can make it work.

I move to the end of the hallway, turn, and find myself in another hallway, this one with a much higher ceiling. I jump/fly up to find that the wall doesn't stretch all the way to the ceiling and I perch on top of the wall to survey the area. Below me I see a twisted, mazelike series of halls where male DCs that look like athletes or possibly gladiators are wandering around. Just past this maze stands a tall gate that I think must be the entrance to the Colosseum.

As I'm planning to fly over the maze to the gate, I briefly wonder whether this dream will remain stable long enough for me to complete Europe Task of the Year item. In response to this thought, the dream almost immediately collapses and I'm awake.