task of the month

This was the third of five lucid dreams from last night/this morning.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #108: The Torrent

I'm watching one of the Star Wars films with some friends. We're sitting on the floor of some strange classroom and even though I hate to miss any of the movie, I have to pee so badly that I can't wait. I get up and enter some public restroom, approach the urinal, and start going.

While I'm doing this, some guy comes in to use one of the stalls. The bathroom has this horrible design where there's a mirror on the wall which is angled so that I can see straight into the stall. The guy sits down on the toilet and commences his business without bothering to close the door. It's an awful sight. "Shut the door!" I wail. He obediently slams the door shut.

Meanwhile, I keep peeing and peeing. The guy in the stall finally finishes his business, washes his hands, and leaves... yet I'm still going. Something's not right about this, and I realize that this is a dream. I still need to pee just as badly as when I first arrived, and there seems to be no stopping things. I'm vaguely worried that I'm wetting the bed but I figure that whatever is happening to my waking body, the die has been cast. Time to get out and enjoy this LD.

I step away from the urinal, still peeing all over the place, and exit the restroom. I emerge in a huge store that looks like a Walmart. I survey my surroundings, and every time I look in a direction, I start peeing all over the floor that's in my field of view. Most of the DCs in the store ignore this, but a few run away. Fortunately, after a few seconds, the urine seems to just disappear.

There's a huge mirror covering one wall next to a crudely-constructed wooden stage. I check how I look -- exactly like myself, except I'm pissing all over the place. I find the actual sight of myself doing this totally revolting and devote some dream control effort to making it stop. Soon it does, and all is forgiven (or forgotten.)

I hit a quick double-biceps pose in the mirror, and it occurs to me that the Advanced Task of the Month is to get naked in front of a crowd. I leap onto the stage and all of the DCs in the store turn to look at what I'm up to. I grab my shirt by the back of the collar with both hands and rip the shirt off of my body. It looks like I'm just in jeans and socks now. (No idea where my shoes went -- did I go into the men's room in just socks? Gross!) With one quick downward move, I simultaneously pants myself and pull off the socks, now stark naked.

I feel strangely relaxed and confident about all of this and throw in a few little stripper-style dance moves. Scanning the crowd, I notice that every audience member is now female. I'm not sure whether that's strictly a trick of the menthol or just something that somehow makes me feel more comfortable but I take note of it. With the task satisfied, I jump off the stage, imagining myself clothed once again.

I can't remember what else I'd wanted to do so I have a bit of fun wrecking displays in the store -- I force-push some chairs into a shelf of goods, levitate a bunch of stuff in the air, and generally act like a bad kid. As I'm looking around for my next bit of mischief, an attractive, dark-haired woman in her late 20s approaches me. She's wearing a close-fitting, dark blue dress. Menthol? I think.

"Hi," she says. "What were you hoping I was going to say to you?"

The truth: "I was sort of hoping that you were looking for sex." In spite of myself, I feel pretty embarrassed when I say this.

"There's an honest answer! But don't you think that you ought to get to know me first? Here, sit down," she says, gesturing at a long row of wooden chairs. "I'm Gina."

I sit down with her and she pulls out a notebook that looks exactly like my written dream journal. "What's that notebook?" I ask.

"Dream journal!" she answers cheerfully. "You've got to write everything down if you want to remember it."

She looks like she's about to ask me something when a guy sits down in the chair next to her. He's a black guy, about 30, a touch pudgy. Gina leans back to let him speak, looking a little impatient. This new guy speaks to me in a lecturing tone, saying, "Do you think you can just close every door that you open?" I'm confused by what he's saying and as I'm preparing to ask him what he means, I wake up.

Another swing and a miss at meeting Art at the Alamo. But the good news is that I managed to remember (and execute) Basic Task of the Month!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #104: Reservations

I have a false awakening at home and stumble out of bed. I'm disappointed and slightly grouchy that I failed to achieve a lucid dream. Feeling unmotivated, I wander aimlessly through the house, contemplating how late for work I probably am. I think that it's Friday, though, and I'm looking forward to ordering pizza with the guys at the office and shooting the breeze for a while. (Nope, today's Wednesday!)

I wind up in the exercise room but the power rack and dip station are completely missing. It's halfway converted into an office and I see the guts of a half-built computer on the floor. I kneel down to work on it, seeing that the RAM is missing and that the box is full of dust like it's been sitting there for years. I finally grasp how dreamlike this all is and become lucid.

I rub my hands together and assemble my goals. Two come to me fairly quickly: 1) meet NewArtemis at the Alamo 2) go water-skiing. (Oops, Advanced Task of the Month is actually parasailing.) I move into the master bedroom where I see Wife standing nearby as my two young children E and R run around the room. I announce that I'm having a lucid dream, eliciting an "Okay!" from Wife. I phase through the external wall of our house. I'm on the 2nd story, so I drift down to the driveway below, lightly brushing the branches of our oak tree with my fingers as I pass.

It's a bright morning outside and I'm preparing to fly off for the Alamo when I hear the voice of my son E behind me. "Daddy, wait! Daaaaaaddy!" I think that it's probably smartest to ignore him but I can't help looking back. Somehow he's followed me outside and I see him standing about fifteen feet away, looking so small. He looks at me with enormous, pleading eyes and says, "Daddy, can I go with you?"

I start feeling all melty-hearted and I know that resistance is futile. It'd probably be amusing to see E and NewArtemis' DCs interact anyway. "Sure, buddy," I say, scooping him up and placing him on my shoulders. I hop up into the air and we fly together over the neighborhood, heading vaguely northwest. The city's different in this direction, and we pass a park and a block of tall buildings. I decide that the Alamo is in the next block and I tell E this to cement it further in my mind. "Uh-huh!" he enthusiastically agrees.

When we hit the next city block, though, I'm disappointed to find no sign of the Alamo. There's a river running east-west with a simple stone bridge crossing it and a walkway on either side. I shout down to the DCs milling around below: "The Alamo's supposed to be right here! Which way is it?"

A blonde lady walking with her daughter points westward toward the bridge. "It's that way, just past the bridge!" I thank her, land, and walk under the bridge with E still on my shoulders. We emerge to see the Alamo up ahead but there's some kind of enormous line out front. I feel the urge to get in line and patiently wait but remind myself that this is my dream and it is therefore okay to be a bit of a jerk. I stride to the front of the line where I find a restaurant host holding a clipboard. It's apparent to me that the Alamo has been converted to some sort of amazingly popular restaurant.

The host asks me whether I have reservations. "Of course," I say. "Check under [CanisLucidus]."

"Ah yes!" he responds. "Party of fifteen. Your table's almost ready."

Fifteen people? "[NewArtemis] is in our group, isn't that right?" But the host wanders off, saying that he'll "be right back."

I decide to give him a moment before prodding the dream plot onward. I remember Task of the Month (speak gibberish to a DC and see how they respond.) A sour-looking girl of about eight with brown hair and freckles is waiting nearby, sitting on a piece of luggage. "Ooooooga booga booga!" I exclaim.

She looks very annoyed. "Can we please just skip the whole 'Mess with DCs' show?" I hear her fine, but her response shocks me into just saying, "What?" She sighs dramatically and repeats herself: "I said can we skip the whole 'Mess with DCs' show? Have you seen how long this line is? I am not in the mood."

Amused, I turn away. Good enough for me. I want to keep things rolling, so I announce to the unseen host, "So my table's ready then, right?"

The host scurries back into view. "Sorry for the wait, sir. Mr. Graham was napping and needed to be woken up. Who schedules a lunch for a nap?" he says with a laugh, even though I haven't the faintest idea what he's talking about or who "Mr. Graham" is. "Right this way," says the host, and I follow, now holding E by the hand. We're moving through a wood-paneled hallway into the restaurant interior when the dream ends.

This WILD was amazing. Very vivid and realistic, rich content, successful summoning, and a Task of the Month success (plus a failure.) Forgive the length of this entry, but the dream was 25-30 minutes, and a lot happened! (Edit: After further review... best LD ever.)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #90: The Night of the Weredog

I experience a sharp transition that feels like a short fall face-first onto a paved surface. My arms are splayed out over my head and I can't move. I can see just a bit and it looks like I'm on a basketball court at night, but I'm afraid to open my eyes more to look around.

I'm totally paralyzed. I'm conscious and aware but for some reason can't move, and I think I'm experiencing something similar to REM atonia. I know it's all in my head, though, so I start peeling my dream-arms out of this fake physical body by rotating them forward into the ground using thought rather than my muscles. It takes a little effort, but eventually I feel this set of "dream-arms" separate out and move independently. Soon the rest of my dream-body follows and I'm able to exit completely and get to my feet.

It is a basketball court -- four of them in fact, all arranged together in one giant rectangle. I'm alone on this court but teenagers are playing small, informal games on the other courts. The courts are surrounded by concrete stands and a metal railing. For fun, I stunt-jump off of the metal railing and land back on the court, then see Wife approaching out of the darkness. She's dressed for bed and looks groggy. "You're still up?" she says. "Shouldn't you get to bed?"

"Shhh, it's okay," I say. "Go back to sleep. I'm having one of my dreams." She nods, yawns, and wanders off into the darkness. False awakening averted.

I roam around the basketball court for a while before regaining focus on my goals for the dream -- summon NewArtemis and have her do the werewolf tranformation for Advanced Task of the Month. I put my right hand out for the handshake summon and look away, pointing my gaze over my left shoulder. I don't feel anything at first, but I'm relaxed about it. I know it'll work if I just give it time. I imagine the sensation of a hand pressing into my palm, and then slowly, vaguely it takes shape. After a few moments, I give the "hand" a squeeze and it squeezes back.

Without looking, I check for a forearm, probing all the way up to the elbow. "[NewArtemis], is that you?"

"Hey! Yeah I'm here!" Cool, I think, but I want to be sure the summon's really solid before I look. I check the DC's arm -- quite thin, but it's there. I reach her shoulder and I'm a little worried when it just feels like bare skin.

"So before I look... uh, what's the story with your clothing situation?"

"It's fine, I'm dressed!" she says. "Come on, quit worrying so much!"

Slowly, I turn to look. I'm shocked to see that I'm shaking hands with a short, middle-aged woman in a blue business suit. There's about a half second of sudden blackness and then a hard scene transition -- now I'm shaking hands with NewArtemis (no longer the businesswoman and back to her usual DC appearance) on some beachside boardwalk at night. Success! "Told you!" she crows. "Let's go!" She sprints past a burly, mustachioed man eating an ice cream cone, heading toward the sand. I follow, flying to keep up.

As she reaches the beach sand, she notices that I'm flying. She looks annoyed. "You know, I can't seem to get my flying to work right now." I notice that I'm unable to fly more than a few feet off of the ground. I try a Hulk jump and can only manage a measly 20 feet or so. Seeing this, she tries a Hulk jump of her own and manages about 50 feet. "Ha!"

There are some dunes along the shore and we practice competitively Hulk jumping up and down the dunes as we continue along the water. After doing this for a bit, we come to a long line of black-robed cultists standing at the top of a dune in a long series of rows, torches in hand. They're droning and chanting, obviously in the middle of performing some dark ritual. There are probably 50 of them in total and I think that this looks like a perfect place to go for the "mythical creature" Task of the Month. "[NewArtemis]! Do your werewolf transformation! These guys are just begging to get eaten by a werewolf."



She looks doubtful. "I'm not so sure," she says. "Isn't this just a bunch of college kids doing a fraternity initiation?"

Just as she says this, one of the "evil acolytes" flips his hood back. He's a friendly-looking blonde guy with a goofy smile. "Hey guys! Sorry if we freaked you out! We're just a bunch of college kids doing a fraternity initiation!" (He uses her precise wording.)

I sigh. We continue for a little while longer, coming to a well-lit swimming pool. "Maybe we should go ahead now and do your werewolf transformation while we're thinking about it," I suggest, and the moment I say this, she changes fast into a big, black dog, bounds ahead of me, and leaps joyfully into the pool! She splashes playfully in the pool for a while, panting and grinning.



But as she kicks up more water, the playful splashing turns into thrashing and now the black dog has turned into my 3-year-old son and he's sinking fast. I'm still aware that it's a dream so even though I badly want to pull him out of the water, I don't feel as freaked out as I would in waking life. I dive into the pool and even underwater I can hear my son calling to me. I can see and breathe without any trouble and I swim to the bottom of the pool, scoop him up, then fly back out of the water, landing poolside to tend to him. He seems unharmed and the moment I set him down, he runs off into a nearby grotto.

I follow my son into the grotto, a low-ceilinged cave with a shallow pool of water, partially bricked walls, and some form of dim light that reflects off the water and plays across the cave ceiling. I find that my son E has changed back into NewArtemis in human form. "Sorry about the pool thing, man," Art says, rolling her eyes. "Hey, do Task of the Month on these DCs!" She gestures at a family of tourists that are exploring the grotto. (The task is to tell a DC they're not real and see their reaction.)

I'm impressed that she reminded me of this. "Good idea! Hey kid," I say, addressing a boy of about 11, "you're not real."

"Nuh-uhh..." the kid counters, looking cross and uncomfortable. Okay, that should be good for a Basic completion, but I'm looking for more.

Now I address a bearded man in his mid-60s, who I assume is the boy's grandfather. "You're not real. This is all happening inside my dream."

"Nonsense," the grandfather says, "you're not real. I'll prove it." He flicks me on the left arm, looking proud of himself. I counterargue by levitating him a couple of feet off of the ground and setting him back down. He blubbers for a moment, then looks off at one of the cave walls, mentally processing this existential crisis. I feel a little bad for him.

"[NewArtemis], you should do this too, get those Basic wings," I say, only partly joking. She doesn't respond, and when I look over, she's changed into a man in his late 20s, short-haired, prematurely balding, and slumped against the wall in fatigue. He mumbles something about how long the dream has been and how tired it's made him. I throw the guy over my shoulder and carry him out of the grotto. When I set him down outside, he's turned back into a tired-looking NewArtemis. "Are you okay?" I ask. She says that she is, but everything has started to feel wobbly and unstable.

Suddenly, the whole scene rocks and something pitches us forward. We both yelp and I fall flat on my face, my hands flailing out in front of me. I'm semi-paralyzed and the scene has gone dark, but I've managed to grab onto NewArtemis' left ankle where it feels like she's wearing some kind of thick winter sock. There's a loud rumbling in the background that sounds like an earthquake. "I can still move!" yells NewArtemis over the noise and she drags me slowly forward across some kind of rough gravel. My face is smashed down into the gravel so I can't respond. She keeps hauling us forward for about 15 more seconds before the scene collapses into...

...a false awakening in some unknown house. Mom is here and I excitedly start telling her about the incredible LD that I just had, going over as many details as I can recall. She tells me to keep my voice down -- my son R is sleeping in the next room over. I apologize, continuing the recollection in a softer tone of voice. After a while, this scene fades, too, and I'm awake.

Finally -- Advanced Task of the Month!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #87: The Diamond

I'm driving somewhere in California, preparing to merge onto the freeway. Some guy in a Hummer blocks me from merging in, though, even steering his behemoth vehicle toward me so that I have to run off the road. I wind up on some semi-abandoned, crumbling old road, following one other car. The road's filled with enormous potholes and huge slabs of the road jut up at crazy angles. The other driver and I steer carefully around these chunks as best we can and I'm very worried that I'll break an axle. I think that this is all cause by California's ever-present budget woes.

The road ends at a marina but the other car has vanished. I get out of the car and sit by a wooden railing, pouting about my problems. As I look down at the water, I see a little girl crash a jet-ski into a dock, fly over the handlebars, perform three perfect back hand-springs, and walk off as if nothing has happened. I'm impressed by her athleticism and very relieved that she wasn't hurt.

There are narrow wooden walkways leading in a couple of different directions, but none of them are wide enough to fit a car. I need to keep driving but I don't want to leave my car here. I think that if this was a dream, I'd just go jack one, Grand Theft Auto-style. This thought makes me critically question reality and I realize that I'm dreaming!

I leap to my feet and take flight, soaring high enough to see the top of a nearby apartment building. There's a huge pool party on the roof of this building, lots of DCs milling around, and I decide to check it out. I discard the "Great Wall of China" Task of the Year for now and decide that I'll do the "make a diamond out of coal" Advanced Task of the Month.

I look for the DC who seems most in charge and central to the storyline of this party scene. A girl that's seated in a beach chair nearby seems to be the focal point of the scene. She's mid-20s, black, very cute, and three or four of her girlfriends stand deferentially around her as they all talk. While it's not an exact match, I notice that she looks a bit like Stacey Dash.



As I walk up to pseudo-Stacey, she and her friends turn to look at me. I say, "I'm going to give you a diamond." One of her buddies, a brunette holding a slender glass of what looks like champagne, laughs at this.

"Are you serious?" asks "Stacey".

"Totally serious," I say. "It's for a task. You just need to hand me that lump of coal that you're carrying around."

"Sure, take it!" she says, handing me a peach-sized lump of coal. Whew, glad that worked, I think to myself. Stacey and her friends watch me, intrigued. I give the coal one quick squeeze, imagining that it immediately feels sharp and hard like a diamond. I open my hand and yes it's a diamond! There are some lumps of dusty black coal-crap on it, but I quickly brush them away, revealing a sparkling, golf ball-sized, round cut diamond.

Her friends murmur appreciatively and I hand Stacey the diamond. "Aww, it's so nice!" she says, smiling appreciatively. She holds it up to the sunlight to admire it then stands up and approaches me. "Hey, will you help me out with a question that I had?" she asks.

"Sure. What's up?" I'm very intrigued about what her question is.

"What's the difference between..." she begins, pointing toward herself and circling her finger as if to indicate "me" or "all of me". Her voice trails off and I quickly wind up in the void. The excitement of TotM and the anticipation of the question get me too wound up, though, and I wake up before I can use the void to travel anywhere.

I buckle down for DEILD but I feel like I'm not going to fall back asleep. I try to really let go, and after waiting for a bit, I slip back into a non-lucid dream: "Stacey" is in a dark, wood-panelled office, seated across from a severe-looking woman in her 50s. Stacey is visibly upset and says, "You have no right hire someone else to ghost write my story! How can you do this to me?"

The lady, who I think is her publicist, is unsympathetic. "Not everything is about you." I wake up.

This was a a very vivid, pleasant lucid dream. My Task of the Month attempt didn't succeed, but it was a beautiful experience nonetheless. Also, this is the third time that my dad's DC has hinted to me that I'm dreaming and finally I listened!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #86: Rock Candy

I'm standing at the door of a lakehouse with Dad, recounting an extraordinarily vivid dream from earlier in the night. I lean against the doorframe, looking out over the water. "I can't believe how much of this stuff you remember," he says. "And then that whole 'vivid dreaming' thing you do."

"Yeah," I respond. "It's actually called 'lucid dreaming'." It hits me that this is all a dream. I step outside to a wooden walkway, leap over the railing and take flight over the lake. "I'm dreaming right now!" I shout over my shoulder.

"That's amazing," I hear him say as I cruise away over the lake. I pass through a cypress canopy and get high enough to survey the lake. The lake stretches as far as I can see, its surface criss-crossed by dirt paths that are decorated with beautiful marble archways.

I land on one of these paths and walk along for a while, enjoying the serenity of the moment. I pass a bulbous, bright blue flower that's the size of a basketball. Its petals ripple gently in the sun and give off a glow that looks like a bloom effect you'd find in a video game. Just before I come to a marble archway, I find a pile of rocks and think of the Task of the Month (find a piece of coal and change it into a diamond.)

I dig through the rock pile, hunting for coal. The closest thing that I can find is a black, rectangular hunk of glassy, volcanic-looking rock. It looks too crystalline so I get the bright idea of crushing it into coal by popping it in my mouth and chewing it up. I bite a hunk of the rock off and begin to chew. The taste is amazing! It's like a homemade raisin bar with just a hint of chocolate. I'm immediately reminded of the goodies Mom would bake when I was a kid.

I wander the paths for a long while, contentedly passing under the shadows of archways, walking by strange, brightly glowing plants, and happily biting off pieces of this delicious black rock. I feel immensely pleased with what I've created for myself and unmotivated to change anything.

Eventually my path takes me to an ancient-looking stone wall. Oddly, there is a working escalator alongside the wall, and I board it, curious where it leads. As I ride up, I pass many people that I know, most memorably my friend DX (who I recently saw for the first time in over a year.) His short hair has been replaced by an enormous ball afro. We swap greetings, but the escalator quickly moves us past one another.

At the top of the escalator, I remember Task of the Month and spit out a bit of the black rock to see if it's coal-like enough to work. Unfortunately, it's more like slightly sticky, finely-chewed glass. I look back at the escalator and see Fedora, a guy that I used to know in college but was never friends with. I say, "Fedora, go ahead and give me that piece of coal you have." It works! Fedora hands me a perfect lump of coal and I get to work on squeezing it. It's becoming smaller and smaller, and I feel like a tiny diamond is beginning to form. Fedora demands that I give him the diamond when I'm finished since it's "his". I'm about to tell him that this is fine when the dream gets really unstable.

I prepare to DEILD, and it goes black. I'm very aware of my body now, almost awake. I release all awareness of my body and try to let the dream take me under. Apparently I let my self-awareness go too, because I'm shortly back in the dream, but no longer lucid.

I'm standing about twenty feet from the escalator talking with my friend The Schwartz and another person that I can no longer recall. "So what went wrong?" asks The Schwartz. I walk them through the last portion of the dream in detail. As I'm describing what happened, I see an attractive stranger in her early 20s eyeing me. She smiles and waves me over. Excited, I begin walking toward her but suddenly feel super guilty. I remember that I'm married and feel like a dirtbag. Then I remember that I'm dreaming and feel awesome again. The stranger smiles and turns away, an older guy (her boyfriend?) draping his arm over her shoulder and walking away with her. I start thinking about Task of the Month again, but the dream fades...

I took a pass at Advanced Task of the Month (turn a lump of coal into a diamond) but was running into all kinds of cognitive and dream control problems. My brain seemed to be a little zonked. This was my first lucid where I'd taken Valerian Root for sleep, so it's something to consider. Still, a nice long dream, even just counting the lucid part! If I'd managed to get lucid earlier I might have even had more time (and avoided that chaotic freeway scene.)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #84: Vehicle Fire

Everything in the house is breaking at once. The plumbing is leaking all over the place, the dogs have destroyed a bunch of stuff, and I hear some kind of weird crunching noise from outside. To top it off, we're late picking up the kids from something.

I head outside to find my brother-in-law Muppet swinging around like a monkey on one of the external brick columns that supports our house. Each time he swings around, a couple of bricks fall off of the house and land nearby. Plus, the pillar is actually moving a little bit each time he goes around it. "What the hell are you doing?" I say to him. "You're gonna break our house!" I perform some half-assed reality check and it succeeds.

"What did you do just now?" asks Muppet.

"That was a reality check," I explain. "Everything is such a mess that I hoped I was just dreaming."

"Ah," he says, not especially interested. He points at our roof. Three objects that look like wooden shipping pallets are sticking out of it. "Hey, what are those?" asks Muppet. I grimace, thinking that they must have fallen out of a plane or something and wound up embedded in our roof. Muppet gets distracted, makes some remark about the flowers on the banana plants in our back yard, and then hops away over the top of our house. (Yes, over the top of our two-story house.)

Wife and I get in the car to go pick up the kids. We drive around the city for a long time but every road seems to be closed. Finally we take a tollway but traffic suddenly gets really heavy. I lightly bump some car as I'm driving around but nobody makes a big deal about it. Looking up ahead, we see the reason for the delay: ahead of us a disabled car is engulfed in flames. Black smoke billows up to the sky.



"We've gotta get off this road," I tell Wife, and steer the car toward a left exit. Just as I do that, though, a fire engine comes racing toward me, going the wrong way up the exit. I throw the car in reverse to try to get out of the way. I have to bump a lot of cars to clear a path, but I figure that's okay.

Finally, our car gets totally stuck, so I hop out and start pushing it sideways, kind of lifting it each time. I realize that I'm way too strong and become lucid. Wife has vanished, which is probably for the best -- the scene has grown totally chaotic, with cars driving around everywhere bumping into each other and the siren from the fire truck wailing in my ear. I pick up the car over my head and throw it across the road. In mid-air it changes from an SUV into a yellow Volkswagen Beetle. Then it becomes just the front half of a VW Beetle.

The license plate looks like a bar of soap with words carved into it in cartoony handwriting. I get closer so that I can study it. There are four words, but I only remember "ship" and "check".

Now I remember Task of the Month -- turn a lump of coal into a diamond. Unfortunately, I start trying to conjure a diamond at first. I'm very aware of my hands for some reason, and even when I put them behind my back I can't seem to make myself buy into the conjuration. I bring my hands back to the front of my body and see that now I'm wearing these black, rather lady-like leather driving gloves. Annoyed, I take them off and pitch them away. I try the conjuration again -- again, more lady-gloves. Then I remember that I wasn't even supposed to be conjuring a diamond in the first place but a lump of coal. I start working on that, wind up with lady-gloves again, and start getting frustrated. A car clips me as it goes by, I start getting agitated, and darkness comes over me, pitching me into the void.

I feel relaxed, and start probing at my dream body. It's only a few seconds before I find myself standing in my own bedroom, walking toward the door. I say something encouraging to myself like, "Hell yeah, sexy new dream body!" For a moment I contemplate turning around to see whether Wife is in bed and might be down for doing something sexy but I get scared that approaching the bed I'm actually occupying IWL would be destabilizing.

I head to the top of the stairs. The baby gate's blocking me but I just power through it and it sort of snaps open. I get nearly to the bottom of the stairs when everything stretches way, way out and takes on that stereotypical "endless hallway" look. I keep moving but no matter how far I go everything seems to stay in the same place. Then the entire room suddenly rotates 90 degrees, floor becoming wall, and I slide down the rest of the way to the first floor.

Our coat closet has been replaced with what looks like a giant iPhone. The screen is displaying a game with a 5x5 array of tiles. When you touch various tiles, you receive prizes in the form of troops for Clash of Clans. I earn 4 Minions and a Hog Rider just pushing tiles at random, but now I'm interested in learning what the rules of the game are. I'm trying to figure this out when the dream ends.

I pulled off Basic Task of the Month in this one and got part of the way through Advanced. Considering that I came into this dream in a bit of an unfocused mood, I'm calling this a success!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #83: Expensive Snacks

I WILD into a scene where I'm standing in the driveway of our house. There's a dark blue jeeped parked here. I notice that the jeep's license plate is made out of paper and as I lean down to investigate it, Wife comes up from behind me and says, "You're going to pick up the kids, right?"

I say something along the lines of, "Huh?" I turn to face her but she's already walking away. She waves over her shoulder, calling, "Thanksloveyoubye!!" before vanishing back into the house.

I turn my attention back to that weird "license plate". It's filled with extremely small print that mostly seems to be related to lucid dreaming. I try to memorize a little of it but I can tell that the text is changing. I give up on this hopeless task and climb into the jeep.

Two child seats are jammed into the back, totally askew and clearly not properly installed. For a moment I worry about picking up the kids in seats that are this unsafe but I quickly remember that I have no intention of actually going to get the kids. I'm interested in the car, though, so I climb into the driver's seat.

Without me having to do anything, the car starts driving itself backwards through my neighborhood. I have no idea why it's in reverse, but the car's going at a fine pace and making great turns, so I just go with it. I decide to chill a bit and just let the car drive me around. I think of how comfortable my seat is and it automatically reclines for me.

I happen to glance over at the passenger seat and notice that one of Wife's rings is laying on the cushion. I try to remember whether she lost this ring IWL. No, it's not missing. But the Task of the Month occurs to me and I decide to give the ring a taste. I jam it into my mouth and start sucking on it. The taste is slightly oily at first, but I'm not getting a lot of flavor. I start to suck a bit harder and I feel the top of the ring begin to melt! My mouth is filled with the taste of vegetable oil.

I spit the ring out and see that about a third of it is completely melted. The damage bothers me so I grip it in my hand for a moment to repair it. It comes out whole again and I toss it back onto the seat.

I want to go for the Advanced Task now (transform a lump of coal into a diamond), so I conjure a lump of coal by "finding" it behind my back. As I bring it forward to look at it, though, I feel the scene darkening and losing focus. The change is sudden, so I'm left with no time to complete the diamond transformation. I get ready to DEILD but when the scene collapses I'm left totally awake.

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #72: The Wish

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Definitely. I can do that."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #62: Winged Cupid Painted Blind

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

Had a nice sense of freedom in this one, which left me feeling liberated enough to do Basic Task of the Month. This one was light and fun the entire way through, and even my flight malfunctions didn't get me too upset.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #55: Number Games and Ninja

Wife and I are seated on the floor with a dozen or so small children. The kids are probably 5 or 6 years old, but for some reason we're all taking a Japanese class together. We're working on a craft project while some unseen teacher barks simple instructions which Wife and all of the little kids easily follow. Not me, though. I'm fumbling around trying to glue something onto a paper plate and looking like quite the idiot.

The kids titter at my ineptitude. Wife shoots me a look of disbelief. The unseen teacher bellows more instructions and again I'm the only one who's not getting it. It's all really embarrassing and I think, "Well, I'd better hope this is all a dream. Because otherwise, this is humiliating." I use the nose pinch RC and become lucid.

Wife seems to have vanished, so I walk out of the room while the class continues to work. I seem to be in some kind of apartment, and I turn down a short hallway into a semi-dark, rather sparse bedroom. My friend "Leroy" is wandering around in here and I say, "Hey, [Leroy]! It's another lucid dream!" He ignores me, though, and seems to be looking for something.

A large window overlooks a nighttime city scene. It looks like we're about 10 stories up. I phase through the glass and step out onto a ledge, preparing to fly. I leap away from the building, ready to take to the sky... and give a little yelp as I plummet to the street below. I land pretty softly, narrowly missing a parked car. I relax my mind for a moment and then take to the air again.

I'm flying over a huge, grassy field that I think is supposed to be this city's equivalent of Central Park. The grass is short and extremely well-manicured. Golf course grass. Even though it's night, the park itself is strangely well-lit, and a few DCs are wandering through it. I see a couple of fancy archways and a miniature replica of the Arc de Triomphe.

Most interestingly of all, I see a ninja crouched behind a boulder, hiding in the shadows. Perhaps another forty feet away, there's an Imperial Stormtrooper and a man dressed like a World War I-era pilot searching carefully around the park, presumably looking for the ninja.

I remember the Task of the Month -- have a DC guess a number between 1 and 100. I swoop down to where the ninja is hiding and say, "Hey! I'm thinking of a number from 1 to 100. Guess what it is." The ninja seems horrified to see me. He presses his palms to the sides of his head, in disbelief that I would so bumblingly blow his cover. He points excitedly behind me at the Stormtrooper and the pilot. Guess they really are looking for him. "Oh, I see!" I tell him. "Sorry about that. Let me ask them instead."

I'm worried that the Stormtrooper will sound too garbled, so I address the World War I-era pilot. "Hey! I'm thinking of a number from 1 to 100. What is it?"

He thinks for a moment. "22?"

It occurs to me that I didn't actually think of a number from 1 to 100. I feel like a bit of a dummy. Okay, 38. 38 38 38. "Hey, man, sorry about that. I forgot to think of a number before I asked. Will you guess again?"

He pauses. Then a slightly sheepish guess of "Uh... 23?"

"No, but that's okay. Thanks!" The pilot and the Stormtrooper move toward the boulder, but I see that the ninja is long gone. The Stormtrooper growls something angry and garbled and I think how glad I am that I didn't try to play the guessing game with him.

I wander the park a bit more. The sun has apparently started to rise because it looks like early morning now. The number of DCs has picked up. I know that there's something I should be doing in New York, but I can't remember the task. (Task I was trying to think of: Transform into King Kong, climb the Empire State Building, and battle the military.) I think it's Task of the Year, but I incorrectly believe that there's something I should be doing in Central Park. I turn a corner past a food vendor, and rub my hands together. It doesn't feel as real as I'd expect. Things feel like they're slipping and I wake up.

This was the Aurora Borealis Task of the Month, and led to a really outstanding dream with some personal firsts. Some big ones for me were changing day to night and performing the task while the DC of a loved one (my son) accompanied me.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #36: Aurora Borealis

Wife and I are sitting at our breakfast table chatting with RI, a high school friend that I haven't seen in a long time. I look at the clock, realizing that it's 1:10 and I'm ten minutes late for a #DVA chat session. Wife and I go upstairs without IR, leaving her just sitting at the table. (Rude, I know.) I'm about to join the #DVA chat when Wife says, "Shouldn't you show her out of the house?"

I leave, and become lucid halfway down the stairs. The downstairs is different from my real house now. The floor has become shag carpet rather than hardwood and the ceiling is barely six feet tall, my head reaching right to the top of it. IR is still at the breakfast table but she just smiles and waves me on. My three-year-old son E is waiting for me at the back door, and I scoop him up in my arms, knowing that he would love to see the aurora borealis.

I step outside and find that my back yard is either gone or has swollen to gigantic proportions. There's a huge barbecue going on to my left. Vividness is top-notch -- I literally cannot detect any difference in visual quality between what I'm seeing now and what I see in waking life. I walk on, passing a set of grills where a man in a red football jersey numbered "52" is turning over some burgers. His shirt is emblazoned with the words "UNCLE BO". I stare at the guy for a moment, a bit stunned by how real he looks.

I perch my son on my shoulders and start running past the barbecue into a city. A long line of DCs is waiting in line for a movie or a show. I notice that C, someone that I haven't seen since high school is manning the ticket line. He smirks at me and shrugs his shoulders when I recognize him.

I walk to the base of a skyscraper and look into the sunny sky. I need darkness for this Task of the Month so I tell my son, "It's getting dark now." The sun fades out of view and the color of the sky deepens to twilight. As soon as night falls, I see the autora borealis above me!



I start to rise off of the ground but my son is squirming on my shoulders, saying, "Don't want to go! Don't want to go!" He starts crawling around on my head, even giving me a little foot to the face. I shift him so that his arms are around my neck and he seems to settle down. I fly straight up, staying close to the skyscraper to keep my bearings.

I'm feeling an overwhelming sense of excitement as I fly toward the aurora. I'm so pumped that I shout a continuous battle cry as I rise. In response, the dream starts blasting a full symphonic orchestra soundtrack to my ascent. Looking back this seems totally cheesy, but I can't even care! It was amazing. The music was fantastic... I wish so badly that I could have somehow recorded it.

I fly over the Aurora and see that inside it conceals a vast mother ship, almost like a space carrier that stretches for miles. As far as I can see down the length of the ship, smaller yellow spaceships are taking off from the carrier to destinations unknown. As each leaves the mother ship, it emits this purple flash of energy that joins the rest of the Aurora. It's the energy "exhaust" of each of these smaller spaceships that creates the aurora.

All along, the soundtrack (and, amazingly, my battle cry) keeps going. I realize that I can do just as these ships are doing and I start pouring that purple energy outward from my palms, and it bleeds into the rest of the Aurora. More and more energy pours from my hands as the dream begins to fade. Soon all I can see are my hands, and after that I wake up.

I made it snow in this LD, but much earlier in the dream than I'd intended! I'd like to try this one again.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #35: The Blizzard

My friend J is showing off the contents of a huge wall safe to me and a couple of other people. The safe is about 5 feet tall and features not only a combination lock but also the dual-key system you usually find in safe deposit boxes. Each shelf is stacked with interesting little boxes. There's something dreamlike about all of this to me and I become lucid.

I ask J, "Have you got anything really cool in there?" He motions for me to move closer. "Oh yeah. Check this out." He hands me a small piece of paper with cursive printing on it. The top of it reads: "Receipt for Money Laundering". This amuses me, but I decide not to get too stuck trying to read the rest of it. The Task of the Month (making it snow) is on my mind now and I head for some automatic doors.

Fortunately, the automatic doors work perfectly well this time (unlike a few dreams back), and I walk through a two sets of them, repeating over and over to myself, "I'm having a lucid dream and I'm going to make it snow."

The next room is a post office filled with dream characters waiting in line. Hell if I'm going to spend a lucid dream hanging around in the post office, so I start running. Still repeating my mantra, I go through another automatic door into a quiet, windowed reception area.

Through the window I see that it's night outside and a fierce blizzard is swirling outside. There's a road outside and the headlights of passing cars illuminate twisting snow eddies. An 18-wheeler roars by and blows its horn for no apparent reason. The snowfall is so thick that the truck disappears quickly after passing.

I try to head for the building's exit, but it's extremely hard to move. Even though I can't feel the cold winds outside, somehow they're affecting things inside the reception area. I lean into "wind" that I can't even feel, trying to push forward outside into the actual blizzard. It occurs to me that I'm trying to get better at flowing with adversity in lucid dreams, especially adversity in the form of wind. My brute force progress is slow, but I make it close to the exit. Before I make it out, though, I wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #32: Rollercoasters and REBMEVON

I'm in a bar confronting an 8-foot tall blonde man about why his biker gang threw rocks at me me in front of my parents' house. It's all too weird and soon I'm lucid. The dream feels really stable so I let him finish what he's saying before heading out the door. When I leave the bar, I discover that it's part of a closed-roof shopping center. I try to fly up to the 3rd story but end up floating horizontally across the floor. This time I try leaping off the floor instead. I overdo it, though, and blast all the way through the ceiling.

It's nighttime as I break through, and I fly high into the air, probably 1500-2000 feet up. The city is almost completely dark below me. I shout a grandiose, rather dorky "Let there be light!" and a wave of illumination bleeds over the city from bottom to top. I'm up very high so I see a lot of buildings passing by under me but I don't know what any of them are. For some reason, I think that I need to go back to my old school, so I say, "Show me the university." A group of buildings below starts to glow and I point myself toward it.

I swoop down toward the university buildings but rather than land, I transition immediately into a false awakening inside one of the dormitories. I'm in a small, virtually empty bedroom that I don't recognize. Vividness is very high now.

I step into the hallway and there's a girl sitting at a desk studying, her back to a screened window. She doesn't notice me, and I think about phasing through the window and escaping back out into the night. I try the phase and instead of feeling like I'm passing through liquid glass, my hand feels like it's ripping through a screen door. Shreddings of the screen are in my hand and the girl turns to look at me, saying, "What the hell are you doing?" I do the nose pinch reality check, a bit worried that I'm no longer dreaming.



She's making me feel embarrassed and self-conscious so I step into the next room to get away from her. This room's a study hall that has a narrow desk with hotel stationery and a white pen on it. The hotel stationery has indentations on it like somebody has written on it before. I can't see what the person wrote, but the indentations look similar to my own handwriting! The effect is so realistic that I nose pinch and finger-through-palm RC one after the other. I remember the Task of the Month (write "November" spelled backwards), so I sit down at the desk, grab the pen, and start writing. With vividness so high, my confidence is really solid. I immediately write down "REBMEVON" all the way through and the letters come out correctly (unlike last time.)

Satisfied, I get up from the desk and follow an exit sign through a double door. I stumble into a shabby bedroom where a mother, father, and school-age daughter are sleeping on scattered mattresses. The father wakes up and looks at me, bleary-eyed and displeased. "How'd you get in here?" I want to explain about the exit sign but instead decide to just get out of there. Another exit sign points me toward an external door, and I gladly slip out.

It's daytime now and I step out into a huge carnival that's been set up in a mall parking lot. The rides are elaborate, though, and more like what you'd see in an amusement park: things like rollercoasters and swing carousels. Lines of people are waiting for rides and it's inconvenient to get around on foot. I try to fly over these lines but I go too low and have to step on some heads as I pass. Some of the DCs shout or curse at me as I go.



I get up into the air and start circling around the swing carousel, flying alongside the riders. Most of the DCs ignore me but one lady keeps pointing and repeatedly saying, "Holy crap!" After making a couple of cycles, I decide that I want to go for the other advanced Task of the Month, bringing a soul back from Purgatory. I've envisioned it as being placed in the oceans of the southern hemisphere, where Dante put it. I use the sun to get my bearings and then fly south, heading over a Macy's. A blonde kid with dreadlocks looks up at me as I fly overhead and the dream ends soon afterward.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #28: REBMEVON rejected

I'm watching as Breaking Bad's Walter White (dressed as Heisenberg) plans to set fire to a Jeep full of laughing teenagers. He pours gasoline all over the kids in the car but they don't react, somehow not understanding what's going on. I'm panicked and horrified and feel like I can't let him get away with this. The intense emotion makes me lucid and the scene vanishes.

Now I'm sitting in what looks like a log cabin, staring at a simple television that's no longer switched on. I see daylight through a nearby doorway so I run outside, passing through a short alleyway before I emerge in a grassland with mountains on the distant horizon. It's a beautiful scene and I'm so relieved to be free of the nightmare that I start flying.

I've been in the air for only a couple of seconds when the Task of the Month occurs to me -- I need to write "November" backwards. I've created a mnemonic device that instantly brings the correct word ("REBMEVON") to mind. (My chosen mnemonic device is my friend Von introducing himself to Reba McIntyre.)

I try to produce a pen and paper from behind my back but only manage a pen at first. I try writing on my hand but can only fit "REB". That won't do, so I do another "behind the back" object creation to get a notebook. I try to write the word but end up getting sudden strings of garbage characters like "REBhjklhlhlh". I scratch it out and try again, but only get a similar string of garbage characters as soon as I get past "REB".

I can see the word perfectly in my mind so the garbage character problem starts making me feel agitated and doubtful. It's not long before I wake up.

This was simply the most amazing lucid dream I've ever had. The description is long, but it's as abbreviated as I could get it -- the dream itself felt like it lasted an hour and a half! Absolutely unreal.

Just the thought of having another LD like this might be enough motivation to last me forever. All I can be is grateful.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #26: Transcendental Turkey Shoot

I'm a spectator in an arena where dueling teams of wizards battle it out with fire and ice spells. I'm ranting with another spectator about how terribly they're playing. The spectator says that "it's like they have no awareness!" Hearing about "awareness" instantly makes me lucid (thanks, subconscious!) and I run out of the stands into an outer hallway that's filled with dream characters.

I want to perform the Task of the Month which requires shooting turkeys with 17th century weaponry. I imagine that I have a huge bundle of preloaded flintlock muskets strapped to my back and it isn't long before turkeys start darting around in the crowd in front of me. I reach over my right shoulder, grab a musket, and aim it at a nearby turkey. I carefully aim and fire, the musket thundering and kicking my shoulder. The shot's a clean miss, and the DC's in the scene start running and screaming.

I toss my old musket aside and grab a new one from my "bundle". I keep catching sight of turkeys up ahead and I run after them, firing and missing time after time. I chase them onto the arena floor itself, the magical combat still raging wildly around me. I skate across a field of ice that's melting beneath the heat of a raging volcano, the floor nearly collapsing beneath me. It's vivid and exciting but what really has my attention is getting one of these turkeys.

I take a side door that leads me into a golden elevator. The elevator begins rising the moment that I enter and through its ornate viewing portals I see the shore of an island. I sense that this is an island filled with turkeys and I immediately dive through the portal, plunging headfirst toward the shallow water along the shoreline. I manage to float just in time to avoid a jarring landing and immediately spot a turkey ahead in the distance.

I run for miles, grabbing musket after musket off of my back and tossing them aside each time that I miss or get a "close call" that yields nothing but a puff of feathers. I even manage to cleanly hit 2 or 3 of them, but each time that I draw close I see that they were really just large pigeons. At one point I reach a narrow valley that's painted with brilliant, cartoon-like colors. I laugh, feeling elated and invincible, like I can run here forever.

After some time I chase a turkey deep underground through an old barrow. Dream characters join me and leave at times, all strangers. Eventually I run through a weapons display area that's arranged around a giant upright sarcophagus, but all the weaponry appears to be from the Egyptian Bronze Age, not the 17th century.

In the next room I stumble upon a sad, sullen group of friends and coworkers arranged around a board room table. They're being lorded over by some obnoxious stranger named "Rod" who announces that he's taking over our company and that I should "sit down and shut up". This annoys me, and I slap him so hard that it leaves a handprint on his face. He orders me not to do that, and in response I slap him hard enough to send him sprawling out of his chair. The others around the table applaud, and I jog out of the room, spotting daylight up ahead.

I emerge onto a dirt road and lean against the guardrail for a moment, thinking about how this is the first time that I've ever attacked a DC. I reflect on how thin my justification was and wonder how this relates to dream yoga's description of playing out negative "karmic traces". Unable to really digest the concept of karma in the dream state, I walk further along the road.

At the end of the road stands a Roman arch with golden light spilling out of the arch onto the roadway. The arch is designed roughly like the Arch of Constantine:



When I approach the arch, an enormous flock of brilliantly glowing turkeys goes flying through the arch, passing right overhead! It must be hundreds of them. This kicks up a rush of wind that picks me up off of the road, lays me flat on my back, and carries me gently backward as the stream of turkeys goes flying by above me. It's beautiful and serene and I'm overcome with bliss and elation. I can't stop laughing at how incredible it all is.

The wind sets me down some distance from the arch and my friend A is standing nearby, smiling at my reaction. He asks how much longer I think this LD can last. I say that I don't know but that it feels like it's been an hour and a half. I tell him that I took some B6 and wonder whether that will change the dream's length. Gently, I wake up, still blown away by what I just experienced.