memorable

19 Jan

As me and this guy are leaving, he constantly worries about there being sharks in the ocean. I try to calm him down, looking for logical explanation why there may not be as many sharks as he expects. We have to slide down a platform to exit the building, however, it is covered with blood and also quite slippery. I take forever to get down without falling.

We are close to the exit, ocean shore nearby, as I can see that the sharks we were trying to avoid are actually dragons. I quite clearly see a number of dragons in the surrounding wood areas and know we have to stay as far away as possible. We choose a rather painful way to do so, hiding and moving in a part of the shelf which stretches to accommodate us. I inspect the shore for dragons but see special trees (3 of them) instead (with faces and talking, like in lord of the rings). I carefully approach one, expressing my admiration, he speaks and says he likes me too. I ask for guidance for our group and he recommends us to go speak to Captain Morgan, who is a nearby pirate woman . I try to catch her attention and ask her to help us on our mission, though I am not so sure what we were supposed to accomplish.

-1-A sister of mine was driving us west to a grandparent’s house to do some work and play D&D. On the way, I had a decent view of a forested, snow-capped mountain. This was viewed from a low bridge over a large, but calm river.

-2(L)-I entered the dream spawning at my old house at night. I jumped through the ”window” (that didn’t care to exist) and landed on the patio. Next, I performed one half of my routine, solidifying a Layer 3 for the time being. The second half would have really helped keep me lucid for longer. I first decided to teleport across the street.
*Snap*
With a snap of the fingers, I was there. I preferred the other side, however, so I walked back to the side I was on previously. Next, I summoned 2 cars from the right. “Pause,” I said, with my hands in front me. Time then paused. I edited the vehicles’ speed, rewound time, and started it again. Then I summoned the rest of the traffic from both directions. Everyone had bright blue lights all over their vehicles, except for the SUV in front. I walked up to it and said,
“This here’s a truck!”
A DC said,
“No it isn’t.”
I then slapped the SUV with both hands, instantly turning it into a truck. After that, I commanded the truck to move and it did. A couple DCs were like,
“Ah, what the f***?”
All the remaining traffic slowly dispersed. Next, a story arc started.
[Lost Lucidity Here]
The driver of the SUV-turned-truck had a large rock collection. (still near my old house, but it’s daytime now) There was a large box of them. Later, we had moved the box over to a grassy part of my yard. I was eating a green rock, which tasted like bad chocolate. There were 2 Spocks to my left—one in a blue uniform, the other in a white robe. I asked the robed one, “Do you think it’ll become a story arc?” (referring to the lost green rock, but not the one I ate) He said something I don’t remember, but he ended with a nod after I replied.
Lucid Time: ~8 minutes

Jan 18, 2017

Notes: Fell asleep late, after 3am. Most of the night was heavy abstract dreaming. Fell back asleep around 8am! Finally had a good dream, with an ocean, friends, a storm, flooding, false awakening, a tornado, a dragon, and serious dream skills with a magical bow n arrow.

Fragment
In a grassy backyard with friends and family. While climbing on top of a kids playset im also thinking about who I'm going to hire to help me publish my comic. A man magically appears. I don't remember the convo, I just wrote down that he was "sassy"

Fragment 2
Me and sis are in an apt parking lot and I need to drive us somewhere and pick things up from another vehicle. My car was a huge SUV even though I can't drive large cars to save my life. I'm anxious in the drivers seat but I logically conclude this must be my car

Ocean! Tornado! Dragon! My Bow n Arrow
Im visiting my friend Dyson, but at his childhood home. His hometown magically has an ocean. Were swimming in the water with dozens of other tourists. It seemed like I was swimming in that water for a really long time. Suddenly, the waves get stronger and the wind picks up. A storm is coming in.

I tell Dyson we should leave, and also, I needed to get ready soon to go back home. Were instantly back at Dyson's place. Except it feels more like a three story apartment building (where he lives now?). And the city around us definately feels more like a New England place than Bedford. I go to the guest room and change, because its almost time for me to go home.

I get sleepy and take a quick nap. The sounds of a storm wakes me up. Its a very strange feeling to wake up inside a dream. In waking reality, there were storms but they were much earlier in the night and not right now. I sat up on the guest bed trying to make sense of my surroundings. It seemed real and not all at the same time. I go to the window and stare out the storm.

Its flooding fast outside! The streets are like a river now! I can't go home now. I watch huge logs get carried by the flood water. A huge red wood log was also carried by the storm waters. Its massive size being carried by the force of water was terrifying to watch!

I look up at the clouds. Orange, green and pink? These alien colors make me think of one thing - tornado.

I run back to my friends, everyone was watching in the porch. Dyson was his usual casual self and didn't seem scared at all. Me? I was panicking. A huge tornado forms from those swirling colorful clouds. Before I have time to panic the tornado bursts into a dragon!

It was massive! The most massive dragon I've seen in a dream! Maybe something like Shenron, or larger. You could tell the massive dragon was roaring, but it was indistinguishable from the rest of the storms sounds.

"Dragon!?!" I point bewildered at the dragon. Dyson just stands up, still with his laptop in hand. He magically pulls out some video game weapon. "You know what to do" At first I wanted to run away like a sensible person would.

But then my dream ego starts to wake up. I magically manifest a golden bow and arrow. My outfit changed too. I aim my golden bow at the raging storm dragon! I fire and my arrow aims true. The dragon explodes into smaller units of fire, that scattered across the city. I figured it wasn't the end of the dragon.

The storm finally quieted down. Some random boys who were also with us go down to where the flooding was, to make sure no one was caught in it. Dyson goes back online and collects some points. Some real-life quest game. How could this game have known about this dragon? I ask if I could collect points too and Dyson sets up an account for me.

We head out, the dragons not completely gone yet. We still need to deal with its smaller units. Which had manifested as monsters all throughout the city. With my bow and arrow I was unstoppable. My aim never missed my target, I could precisely decide the right or left eye. It felt awesome!

I felt like I was remembering something about my dream self I had forgotten. In fact, this dream in the span of minutes smushed so many strong dream elements for me. An ocean. A storm. A dragon. A false awakening. A window. Trees. Friendship. And magic!

Awesomely fun lucid dream. Felt like about 15 minutes long, no supplements. There would be so many sexual content spoilers so I will just leave the pictures here for now for my own quick reference and if anyone wants all of the sordid details, you can PM me.

Outdoor 2 level shopping scene but way busier:



This is apparently a thing in Southern California. I have seen a picture like this before but have never been to one and in the dream the place was a lot like I imagine they would be (meme not by me)… :

This dream was what I recalled this morning following the intention: My intention for tonight is first and foremost to wake up and remember my dreams. Secondly I feel like I am approaching a cross-roads and I feel uncertain about where to place my efforts, so I would be thrilled with some assistance from my dreams in this respect. But foremost I trust my dreams and want to remember whatever they bring. It feels as if it is relevant somehow and I will use it as an opportunity to practise both descriptive evocative writing as well as Jungian interpretation methods.

I am pondering the idea of going to Mexico, which appears much as you perceive a fantasy or mnemonic ideation in the waking state – the incipient sense of an image, a map perhaps, appearing before my inner eye.

I direct my attention outwards and find myself in the passenger seat in Steen's silver-grey car, although I am inside the car I can clearly see the matte nuance of the silver grey colour on the outside of the car. My dad is in the back seat, and he seems gleeful and excited though he doesn't say or do much during the dream. We are going on a trip, and my dad and Steen are there helping me out, as it is mainly me going on a mission.

It is pouring down outside, it is clouded and grey, which produce a darkish hue. We are at a ticket office, which resembles a mixture between a gas station and a junk food drive in. There are two protruding window tills on our right hand side and above an almost square section of roofing is covering the pavement next to the windows, providing some cover for the rain outside.

We drive slowly towards the first of the two window tills – one for ordering another for picking up the tickets – and as we do I feel something bump into the car towards the back, which also produce a mild audible thump. I look out the window and backwards to see if Steen has accidentally hit one of the massive concrete columns extending from the building. He is really close but I can't see any damage done to the car.

I lean back in and Steen switches on the radio and the GPS system. The audio-scape is flooded with remnants of old mobile conversations, radio clatter and noise. I feel uneasy and a bit confused, as it is supposed to be a GPS system, providing guidance. Steen remains rather calm and composed and simply asks the GPS if it is there, and it dawns on me that it is a voice activated system.

“I am here” a clear loud and direct female voice responds, which is a tremendous reassurance.

Steen proceeds to drive forward and I wonder why I don't have to open the window to get the ticket. “It isn't necessary when you have one of these” he says and points to a rectangular electronic device, with an old school digital display in the bottom right corner of the front window, just in front of me as it would seem. It is essentially a device that registers that he has been here and automatically charges him for the ferry ride, which is what the ticket office is for.

“So we are going to Iceland” he says, and I feel at first excited, but then a bit concerned because we will be sailing and we are supposed to go to either Mexico or the Faeroe Islands as well today and I am afraid we won't have time. I think about this only briefly before relinquishing the thought at aspiration to do all of these things.

We look at a map and a black marker line appears that takes us from the ticket office “to Odden” which on the map is a full scale island, elongated and egg shaped except for a very pointed en on the right hand side. The black line takes us to the top and centre of the island, where the port town is based, from where we will board the ferry to Iceland.

End of dream.

In this interpretation I will start by breaking down the dream into its constituent motifs, and run free associations on them.

There is a preceding map, an idea of a journey – which implies a plan and a set destination it also represents an overview of a trip, which can symbolise knowledge of where I am going in life. This is particularly salient as I am taken somewhere else than what I had “mapped out”, which excites me although the expectation of having to go somewhere specific within a given time frame becomes a source of frustration and tension/restlessness.

The car is a solid and large station car, it is silver grey – the colour symbolising the silver grey snake-like pathway through space I frequently perceive in meditation, cannabis and psychedelic states also symbolising the spiritual cord often reported as seen in OBEs.

The car is a symbol of my body, it is in good shape and the fact that my dad has been relegated to the back seat can be an expression of our recent confrontations and my insights on how he has dominated the development of my low self-esteem though his parenting style. He is now put in the back seat, representing that I still carry him with me and care for his approval and love, yet this aspect is no longer the driving motivating psychic energy for my aspirations for life – such as “save the world and become super famous”, which is simply a conditioned tendency I have developed as I felt under appreciated and unseen as a child.

Steen is an old friend of the family, both my mum and dad – I associate to him that he recently helped me out with cheaply renting his summer house to me following an Ayahuasca journey where I wanted to stop smoking and I didn't feel for returning to my parents' house where I currently live right after. At this time he said to me that he sees how my dad communicates to people and told me that one would get insane living in that environment constantly, which felt extremely pleasant to hear as someone external with knowledge of my dad seemed to understand how hard it can be. Recently my mother expressed – in a sober state – that it can be extremely challenging for her to live in that and that friends of the family finds it a challenge to be around him as well. With Steen in the driver's seat I feel that I have taken a step towards taking control of my life and am grateful for the moral support of individuating myself from my dad, who has – without fault of his own or even consciously – dominated much of my life, through establishing uncertainty both with regards to a fragile self-esteem but also the messianic and grandiose drive to save the world to finally be worthy of his admiration and love. Steen represents a new found aspect of myself that is compassionate and understanding towards why I have turned out as I did as well as the drive to liberate myself from the clutches of my dad.

The rain outside symbolise a torrential state of affairs with regards to my emotions – since my last Ayahuasca journey it is as if a lid has been removed and my libido is now coursing freely upwards, which result in more passionate responses and an easier time setting boundaries. It could also symbolise the fact that I am expending a lot of emotional energy in response to external uncontrollable aspects of the world, which is reminiscent of the saviour complex alluded to earlier.

The ticket office could symbolise a public institution, such as the Health Authorities which I have recently been in contact with, with regards Ayahuasca. I might be approaching, or at least that is how I perceive it, a point where I am close to getting in trouble due to my enquiries, yet no harm is done yet. The whole point of issuing a ticket could represent my thinking on Ayahuasca's precarious legal status and potentially in the future thinking of a license model for practising, where the dream hints at that license is nothing that comes from the outside but an internal license, a calling (electronic ticket system).

The GPS and radio system is particularly interesting to me. The clatter represents conditioned thinking and the attention I pay to outward clues for finding out how to direct my life. However when I look closely the “ancient mother” (female GPS voice) is there and is capable of taking me in the direction I need to go. The trick is to ask and learn to listen for what is coming from within and ignore restrictions I put on myself based on external sources of esteem and approval.

The fact that I am concerned with the duration of the trip represents a problematic aspect of how I relate to life in an impatient way. I am lacking trust in life unfolding as it is supposed to. This is related again to the map I saw in the beginning of the dream, which representative of how I tend to construct expectations of how life SHOULD unfold and I am operating under an assumption that I need to go somewhere specific and I need to go there quickly. In essence this result in an escapist approach to life, where I am not allowing it to unfold on its own terms and cannot fully embrace and meet events in a curious, compassionate and open way.

The end of the dream I see the ocean and the beach sort of imaginatively overlapped onto the map with the black line. I take it to symbolise that I am still in the process of letting go of my tendency to construct expectations and narrow definitions of success, but I will shortly arrive at a position where I let go and let Life overcome me and simply concede to the abrupt changes that are about to happen, with excited anticipation and joy in letting whatever happens happen. The fact that it is a sailing trip could represent a recognition of the potent force of the collective unconscious, and my submitting the stubborn fantasy that I am in control and surrendering to the collective collected wisdom of the evolution of Life itself.

Reconstructing the meaning from associated and elaborated ideas.

So a potential message from the dream could be that I am still constructing expectations of where and how life should take me. This becomes a source of frustration when I run into unexpected opportunities and twists of fate.

My dad has been a source for grandiose and messianic ideation, due to his belittling and command-like style of communication, from where he will never explain why he commands, reminds, reprimands, but simply asserts himself in a supercilious tone of voice. Since we have widely different interests in life and he has proclaimed that he has no interest (or capacity) in trying to understand me I have since very early childhood developed these tendencies as a way to garner his approval, which is already there he has just never shown it in a way I could understand it when younger. The fact that he is relegated to the back seat symbolise that I am relegating the grandiose and very ambitious saviour identities – and associated expectancies – to a position where they are no longer “driving me”.

The downpour contrasted with the comfortable, sturdy and undamaged quality of the silver grey car, can symbolise the progress I am making with meditation, where I have found an easier time dealing with painful emotions, as well as physical symptoms. They aren't allowed to penetrate to my core and when I continue the exercise I will strengthen my capacity to sift out the “radio clatter” (which can also signify the attribution of value to others' judgement of me) and listen to the voice of my heart, represented here by the Anima archetype, my deity in prayer – Mother Gaia.

The ticket office close call could symbolise that I need to tone down my activities with certain authorities to avoid getting in trouble, especially because I already have an inner license to pursue my dreams.

The trip to Iceland represents where I am headed next, which isn't a literal journey, although that might be fun also. In fact it might be very useful as it is Steen guiding me, which could mean a pointer to a place of safe haven, which he provided following my last Ayahuasca journey. However I have also recently considered reading up on mythology to get a better understanding of the empirical data that underpins the theory of the archetypes. This journey serves as a pointer towards examining Nordic mythology and shamanistic/divination cultural history.

In short. With particular reference to the intention here I am being reminded that uncertainty is OK, cause if I try and envision or anticipate a direction I will form an expectation, which will lead to suffering when life takes me elsewhere. As long as I listen to my inner voice the direction is guaranteed, so I should just continue the work of being better at letting go of old ways of thinking and sharpen my attention on what matters instead of the clatter. Then a further dive into the Nordic mythology is in store.

Wild after 5 hours. melatonin before bed, galantamine after waking up.


I'm in my dining room near the back door. It's dark. I see A behind the bar of the kitchen. And realize she's still at work. I look at her and her face is weird, smeary. Huge clownish red lips. I say out lout. "Your face looks weird. Your face looks weird. your face looks weird" the first two seem ok but the last one is all mumbled and garbled.


New scene. I'm in an apartment, bright and white. There's a porno shoot going on. The man who is running the shoot is making weird demands of the girls and they seem uncomfortable. I ask him to leave and he does. We talk about how old school it was. We are gong to resume shooting after the talent goes tot are a break. There is a beautiful asian woman by the fridge and I ask her if she wants to fool around. She smiles and says "you know it" and goes to the back of the house near a bedroom. There's another woman standing in the kitchen with me and i walk over to her and start groping and kissing her a little. She's resistant so i leave her alone. I make way way to the back of the house and get to the bedroom I see the asian lady sitting on the bed and I ok at her and say "increase lucidity a few times. Same thing happens mouth like marbles. I rub my hands together to stabilize and get too excited. The dream fades into a display of fireworks.


I hold still and try to come back into the dream and catch a couple of brief glimpses but don't make it.


Hanging around in a living room watching a tv parade about the world ending. There are Elmo's an shit riding bicycles and holding signs about the world ending. Very brown room. TV is huge. I'm talking ito the people in the room about how weird it all looks and I'm saying I might be dreaming. I' do the nose pinch a few times and it's stuffy but I can breathe. I tell them the reason I know i am not dreaming is because I can breathe when I hold my nose. Then I'm like. Wait, that's not right. I check again and realize I am dreaming. I tell them, holy shit I am dreaming. They say how do you know? I say watch "I"m gong to jump into the TV."

Then I Jump into the TV like it's a portal. I turn around and see them a nd wave then I go flying. More of a jump at first and I'm floating around a bit and I look at my. Hands and make my fingers long then I make my long fingers sprout fingers.



I land I"m outside ina. Parking lot and an old shit car pulls up with pretty women. They want me to get in the car with them. One of the girls in the back seat is laughing the other is mad. I they tell me only one door works but then that's a joke. I tell them about the film festival and make a joke and one of them laughs I tell them I have a 20% success rate and they all laugh.





I'm hanging with with some giant football;; [layer dudes. They are moving furniture. One makes a comment that a big athelete type could help i with this crazy big couch. I start singing "it ain't me babe, no no no." But then i do help them move the couch outside.

I'm in some kind of apartment, a rather crappy looking one. For some reason, I was getting shot at. It all felt very raw and "realistic" (the bullet impacts into the walls and doors). There were several armed persons, and I was armed myself. I opted to stay in the doorway for cover. I had an ally, a fellow I know from real life called Victor. He's... absolutely not suited for this role. He's peaceful, a scientist and gay. I'm pretty sure he abhors violence. Not this version! Victor, also armed, rushed in and pulled a Leeroy Jenkins on me. He actually killed several perps, with gun and/or bare hands (smashing them into walls!). But this spree didn't last, as he was violently shot dead. It looked awful. I continued the fight, until only a black kid aged 8-10 was left... he was armed too, and kept shooting at me. He left me no choice. I shot him in the head. It was a mess. I had a bit of a mental breakdown, asking the dead kid why he forced me to do this.

A group of people, including me, running. It was night? We run past a trailer/RV. In third person, I saw a man I recognized, perhaps a former colleague, walking through some curtains into his trailer. He engaged several persons in a gunfight. He fought valiantly, but was shot from the side and killed.

War scene. I was in a trench, preparing for an upcoming battle along with the other soldiers. The weapons were guns I recognized from the Vietnam era, an M14 and an AK with collapsible stock. The battle started when we charged the enemy. Now it gets weird. I may have died a few times, but every time the scene "reset" to just before the battle. Like in the movie "Edge of Tomorrow". I remember being crouched in the mud, seeing death and destruction all around me, and feeling... traumatized? In a later attempt, I think I tried to escape the scene. I'd actually memorized where most of the hostiles would be coming from, and what they would try if they spotted me. I entered a small warehouse-like room, and saw two hostiles. They were talking and hadn't spotted me yet. I tossed a grenade. That's the last I remember.

-1-I was in a field with about 20 random teens. The sun was at a 9:00am position. The environment was a grassy field. Trees acted as portions of its border. Beyond them, there were implied buildings. At one point, I accidentally inspired a minor historical event. Also, this scene took place in the recent past.

I felt human, but the dream labeled me as my unicorn OC. (For all intents and purposes, I wasn’t human at all.) I wanted to use magic to take care of an enemy, but there was a serious problem—if I were to use it, there was a high risk of becoming ‘integrated’ with a certain artificial system, trapping me in something or somewhere. For about a full minute, thoughts were going back and forth. If I used magic, the biggest threat would be eliminated. On the other hand (hoof?), I’d be trapped.

Suddenly, a yellow ball with a similar appearance to the sun (but dim enough to look at directly) appeared north relative to the sun, and in a 7:30am position. It turned out that Princess Celestia was behind it (not literally), proven by her studio-quality voice.
Celestia: “Look at me as if I were not a threat.” (‘threat’ referring to the ball’s high brightness)
“Use your powers to defeat the evil in your world!” she continued.

Then, it clicked. I decided to use magic to take out whatever antagonist there was. I forgot what it was.

-2-I was inside my house, watching MacGyver with my family. The episode started with a camera panning to the right over a quiet, lit, residential street. The light was white, as was the supercar parked on the side of the road. Then, I found myself along with everyone else in church, watching MacGyver from the pews. I was reading a newspaper. (what? I never read those)

-3-In my house, the staircase was completely blocked by presents. Nearby, Adolf Hitler was discussing something trivial with a subordinate. There was a horizontal Nazi banner on the wall near the floor.

-4-Four kids were kidnapped and placed in a building. When I found theme, they seemed almost bored with their attitude. They were aged around 5 or 6. I asked a boy where my sister and my mom were taken, and he told me, “The apartment building.” He pointed at it. I then left the kids behind in the room.

Eventually, I and a friend snuck inside that building, and made our way undetected to a room on the ground floor. Here, we knocked out a guard by hitting him with a soft blanket. Later, a female guard spotted us, so we did the same thing to her. We hid both their bodies in the closet. I also looked out the window to find my mum. She noticed me, so I put a finger on my mouth. However, she didn’t give a crap, so she walked up to a window and tried to talk to me, somehow not getting caught. Her voice was inaudible from where I was.

Right then, the now four unconscious guards in the closet woke up at the same time, and they were all wearing tuxedos, except for the woman, who wore a generic black set of clothes. We were kind of screwed, but it wasn’t of much consequence. The ex-guards seemed pretty nonchalant about everything.

Thursday January 12, Non-Lucid: My childhood friend Shannon & I & some other friends of ours were in some sort of picture posing contest. At the end we submitted the photos that we had taken at a checkout counter which was of course odd. There were rows & rows of candy.

Friday January 13, D1: Non-Lucid: I was staying w/ others at what looked kind of like a bed & bread & breakfast but it was actually a huge house w/ many several kitchens, floors, rooms & no sharing of bathrooms. It was very old but not run down. On the contrary that is what made it very beautiful. It had recessed panels in the walls which are something you might see an older library or very old home owned by someone wealthy. There was a creepy man running the "Inn". It felt like there were people in the walls which made me uneasy. It all felt like a very sinister situation which caused me to wake up. I snuggled up to Mike before I went back to sleep because I felt so uneasy.

Friday January 13, D2: In & out of lucidity: I unfortunately chained right back into the dream. This time me & the mans son who was also there found a dead woman in one of the walls in a kitchen. Me & the other guests weren't being allowed to leave now. I was pleading w/ the man's son that we wouldn't tell anyone if he could just help us escape but he was terrified of his father. The son was a grown man in his 20's so it seemed as though this more young man had seen many horrors for quite some time. Me & the other guests had many failed escapes which only made the owner even angrier. I finally just woke up out of fear.

Saturday January 14, Non-Lucid: I was in a minimum security prison but not sure why. I was in a class w/ Dana Carvey the actor/comedian. I was drawing a plan to escape but I'm not much of an artist. He said he'd give it some thought. Another day we came into another classroom much like the first & I sat in the chair that the "Top Dog" of the prison usually sat at. She was angry when she came in but finally let me sit there because I needed to sit there to see out the windows & out of door while I was sketching more ideas for an escape. Later she was very impressed by a fuse system I had developed to help us escape. My wbtb went off but I couldn't fall back asleep because I had to get up & check out the weather again. We have been doing this sense yesterday due to the ice storm warnings.

Sunday January 15, Non-Lucid: My childhood friend Bobby & I were at a water park. I really wanted to stay asleep because I haven't seen him in a crazy amount of yrs. But of course I did anyway. The dream was pleasant & just a typical dream of having fun at a water park.

Monday January 16, Non-lucid: This dream is funny but graphic so I need it to have a spoiler for ADULT CONTENT>

Spoiler for ADULT CONTENT:

I was in a motel room w/ my younger sister Dena. We were getting ready to go to sleep. This is the second dream I've had about a week apart that I was just dropped into a dream scene. Apparently we were staying there because a man was stalking me or something. We had just got off the phone w/ a detective. The only light in the room was just small bits under the door to the room itself. I couldn't see my sister but I could feel her sitting next to me in the bed but I was scooted forward when I sat up unlike her who was sat up against the headboard. And here's where shit gets fucking weird. I feel a strange feeling in my vagina & instinctively put my hand down there. It was all very life like as though I had all my senses. A 9 volt battery came out of me! As a second one was coming out I yelled at my sister to call the detective back & to get here quick. She was really annoyed at her attitude but I didn't tell her what was happening. I think she was reading via a book light but I never saw her. I laid back on my back & pulled out 2 more 9 volt batteries out. Right then I heard a man in our room & I told my sister a man was in here w/ us. I couldn't decide which thing freaked me out more so I ran into the bathroom & checked to see if my vagina was okay. All out of batteries! Apparently I take 4 9 volt batteries, ROTFLMAO! I opened the door of the bathroom trying to get back to my sister but it didn't open up into the motel room but a busy hallway that looked like a busy courthouse. A woman passing me said "There's no cops here" & just walked on. I woke up IRL & ran to the bathroom & checked my vagina for batteries! It was such a realistic dream. This was definitely one of the weirdest dream ever!


Sorry for the delay in posting. We've been under a severe ice storm warning from Thursday-Sunday. There is a whole preparation list of shit to do when this occurs. My generator has paid for itself the year we had no electricity for a week & other catastrophe's we have endured.

I haven't put any focus on WILDs in quite some time but was motivated to mix attempts back in the last 2 nights, but only after doing my MILD to increase chances of my fairly trusty DILDs if the WILD fails. At BTB I do location-aha-MILD first, followed by face to face, clear view release and some REM eye movement simulation (4 eye sweeps behind closed eyelids). The face to face and REM simulation are found to be the most efficient method of losing the feel of my waking body. I get a good number of color and pattern HH's, followed by some that resemble objects and people, followed by dreamlets. At those first two stages I was able to use a technique of "reaching" for additional senses related to the items more than just the visual: primarily tactile and temperature, but sometimes sounds and smells that match with the visual. I didn't remember to try taste. For the third stage where I was getting dreamlets I found that I had to become more passive it seemed because I was finding my senses return to my waking body or perhaps within an FA. I didn't test it, assuming FA's and decided I did need to be more passive during these dreamlets, perhaps wrongly. I know passive is generally recommended but since I have a fair bit of experience with WILDs I feel more inclined toward the active side of the scale. Anyway, I end up in an FA and then an actual waking or FA where I go for a WILD.

I am naked in bed with my wife and for some reason my mother in law is there and I seem to be semi-lucid at this stage but as more people arrive I seem to drop below semi-lucid and get caught up in the dream. I see this commercial anti-bacterial spray I have looked for in the past and ask the guy where he got it without a good answer. I either wake or have another FA in my normal bed/scenario and go for a DEILD but feels more like a WILD with HH's and back to reaching for additional senses tied to the HH visuals. After some fading in and out of HHs I get a more steady one that looks most like a cave opening at first and imagine some cooler air emanating from it. It develops into a a vague looking canyon and then to a canyon formation like you might see in Arches National Park with a double arch entrance to a canyon opening where both "arches" were relatively flat on their top sides but the bottom "arch" had an arch shape to it whereas the top "arch" was also relatively flat across the bottom as well. This was all in a brightly lit daylight scene once the arches formed. This morphed from more of a natural formation to something purposely built like you might see in a sci-fi set on a canyon-like planet. I want to go there but it seems my dream body is still forming so I use intent with my eyes to start moving in that direction and I reach for the sensation of the wind on my face and body and it feels like a slightly cool breeze and I am now flying in my dream body. As I get to the canyon "entrance" I land due to the low clearance and find my self alternating between walking and crawling in a very cool scene that seems a lot like a dry cave but tons of light coming in on the far side that I want to get to and also light coming from the side I came in on. It was a very cool place to explore, but I love caves and canyons. It also reminded me of some of my favorite lucid dreams like the wall and childhood "treasures" found on the beach of the grassy sea (posted in my DJ on DV somewhere a good ways back). As I get to the end of the low clearance I fly up and out to the next bend in the canyon and think of one of the TOTM's and decide that an alien spaceship will be the right around the bend but nothing is there. I then decide it will be at the top of this canyon wall to my left and I fly up to the top of it and there it is a huge mega spaceship with an outer shell that is made up of many circular metal panels with lattice work in between, perhaps 100 circular panels on the side of the ship that I can see. I fly into the lattice work and I feel myself being pulled further into the craft with a fade to darkness at first but soon after a bright long and fairly wide hall appears that looks like a mall with humans walking around and a food place to my right. Perhaps the scenario is that the dream aliens created an environment where I would feel comfortable but I proceeded to treat it just like any dream scene. I tried to slow down one lady passing by, but she seemed in a hurry and I look ahead down the hallway/walkway of the "mall" and see a tall beautiful lady that looks slightly not of this world with her unusually big and stunningly attractive eyes.
(eyes were wider and bigger but this is close)
After the experience with the previous lady I made sure I would be able to stop her in her tracks by creating the back story of: "Finally we are reunited! It has been so long!" grasping both of her hands face to face and giving her a big wet kiss. I feel myself getting rather excited but I remember to calm down. I think of another TOTM, the pencil one and tell her I have something to show her and reach in my back pocket but coming up empty handed. I then ask her if she has a pencil and she pulls one out of her purse and I try to float it in the air in front of me and it disappears. I then walk over to the food place and ask the guy behind the counter for a pencil and he gives me one. I see an order stub on the counter and float the pencil with the tip touching the paper and tell it to draw something and it starts doodling. It looks like nothing more than a toddler's drawing but as I look closer, it looks like it morphs into words on the order stub. I wake and quickly use the bathroom in order to get back to dreaming, this time RCing to make sure I'm actually awake. I jot down a few keywords from the dream and a few quick drawings of the canyon arches and the alien craft lattice work and go back to bed, forgetting to write down the words that I remembered.

After playing with HH's for a while and deciding to doze off, I get a dream where the wife asks me where one of the bills is and if it has been paid. I said that I think I filed it already but I can check on the computer if I paid it. At the computer, the keyboard is missing and I ask my wife if she's seen it but then I find the keyboard unplugged and sitting on top of the computer desktop tower. I feel someone tugging on me in darkness and I realize I must have fallen asleep, maybe in front of the computer. Either way I treat the tugging as HHs not waking life and a scene forms where I am at an office elevator and a woman is asking me for directions. Already aware that I am dreaming I decide to see where the elevator takes me just like in last night's lucid, with a little excited anticipation. I don't remember anything but going up in the elevator before waking up needing to pee again and I decide to get up for the day.

This Dream had multiple parts to it. In the first part, I was playing quake on multiplayer and then died. In the second part, I was in my front yard, looking at how there were two moons. One was about the size of a small dog in the sky, and the other one appeared normal. I looked at my hand and noticed that my middle and index fingers were one centimeter each, and that I had about seven fingers. I then gained lucidity (or at least partial lucidity) and one of my mom's friends came out and started singing a song. I threw a purple plastic cube at him and attempted to not say "that is what your music felt like". The next part was referencing another dream I had where I was on death row for something and then got my head amputated with an axe. In the background, there was a TV that was showing an old black and white film with some kind of Ogre or something on it. There was blood everywhere. When the person cut my head off, the audio of the TV stopped and everything went black. In this part of the dream, I was reincarnated as a female and was telling my friends about my past life. There was this one guy outside the window of the house that was asking me out to dinner. The strange part was that he was in his mid-30's and could have possibly been my friend's dad in real life.
Later, I saw a person who appeared to be 14 years old telling me about something. Soon, we became friends. I then woke up.

This is a basic sketch of the room where I was executed.

-Fragment: Something called a “Stugelblitz Tower”. (funny how this is 2 letters away from Kugelblitz, which is a black hole formed from light. Also, Stugelblitz is apparently German for "Lightning flash" according to google.)

-I was in/watching a movie where Vin Diesel was the antagonist in a futuristic sci-fi. He was armed with a normal shotgun, bossing around the crew of a small ship. He forced them to travel to Mercury. The camera was positioned above and well behind the planet, with the close, orange sun in the background. Mercury was covered in cracks filled with lava. As the spacecraft descended toward the previously installed platform, temperatures heated to 36,000°F outside. This was due to high-speed entry of Mercury’s new, thin but dense atmosphere. The average temperature was 3,000°F.

Finally, the ship landed on the platform. The floor was a metal grid, and there were hexagonal tubes filled with a specially heated liquid, used for mining. Vin Diesel yelled at the crew to get out of the ship. Luckily, they were already wearing Quantum Heat Suits. They could withstand very high, even star-level temperatures. However, they required energy to run, so such high-level heat shields could only protect the user for so long. The higher the temperature, the less time the user had before vaporization.

After the crew left the ship, Diesel followed, shotgun in hand. He was fine, even without any sort of protection from the extreme heat. Next, he forced a male crewmember to grab a rope and repel down the central heat chamber to retrieve something. Suddenly, after the sound was muffled from entering the chamber, the time left on his suit dropped from 6 hours to 15 minutes, indicating a very high temperature.

[Switch to first-person] I was now the guy. I noticed that some skin was showing on my wrist, so I covered that up to prevent inefficiency. Aside from being in danger, I felt warm and cozy. Also, only the surface of the liquid was opaque—the rest was transparent. The walls of the chamber were a metal grid surrounded by superheated material.

[Switch back to third-person] Eventually, the guy returned to the surface with the thing from the bottom. Diesel grabbed it, while the crewmember struggled for his life to get out of the chamber and into the ship. He failed to even climb out of the chamber, because Diesel shot and killed him. The only female member successfully returned to the ship. The entire platform was about to be destroyed, so they had to get off the planet immediately. The other member outside didn’t make it. The ship took off, leaving me in first-person, and in my old house. This concluded the dream.

-Fragment: I was inside a green building, looking at a sign hanging from the ceiling that said, “Loth and Luna Forever”. It referred to some kind of bonding. I wondered, “Who is Loth?” Suddenly, a grayish-blue alicorn with a green mane appeared. He/She (couldn’t tell, probly female) looked quite derpy in the eyes.
[New Scene]
Fragment: I was on an NCIS ‘adventure,’ trying to find the cause of death of a guy in 1980. I don’t remember much except for a golf course(I thought that a thrown golf ball might have hit the guy), and a baseball-sized, metal sphere.

(L)-I spawned in a bathroom unknown to me, and I forgot to perform my routine, so I grew a simple tail with a middle finger at the end of it.
Lucid Time: 2-3 minutes

14-Jan-2017 - 4xNDs +2xWILDs - Three transforms, fly car, telekinesis house, gift LEGO, more...

ND#1: (est.2AM) I am placing plants from PvsZ, and carpets as well

ND#2: (3:10AM) I am with my wife abroad, it seems Korea. We are in a small hotel room, there is more people with us (colleagues?) We discuss something with those people, then they go away; when me and my wife remain alone, we love.
We go to the airport, there is a dark central corridor, light turn on when we approach; I look for the sensors, and don't see them. Near walls there are many metal frames depicting rockets and spaceships, with relevant space mission names. My wife comments about huge fuel consumption.
We stop by a gate, there is noone else around.

Wake up 3:30, do WBTB and write above dreams

WBTB/WILD#1: (3:30AM) Failed - I do not succeed in directly entering a dream, but manage to get lucid afterwards

LD#1: (OBE-like, 4-6 AM) I am standing in my bedroom, wife is sleeping. I don't want to wake her up, I pick my phone from the high drawer and go to dining room. It's dark and even if I wish more light, everything stays dark. I turn on the phone and do something with it, can't recall what

ND#3: (4-6 AM) I am driving my car, I have passengers, most likely my parents, surely my uncle R
I recognize the road, before a uphill I strongly accelerate and feel the pressure against my chest. After the uphill, I turn right

LD#2: (4-6 AM) I am in a city, a dark road. On a wall, suddenly a light appears. I notice a woman wearing just bottom underwear, entering a secret door rotating. I run towards it, and manage to get in through the breach before it closes.
I find a square room, strongly lit, many work benches at the center, seems like a laboratory. The woman is working at one of the benches. I approach her naked body, and molest here. She does not oppose resistance, so you can imagine the rest. Details snipped. Lucidity fades afterwards

Wake up 6AM, do another WILD

WILD#2: (6:30 AM) I put more effort and focus in this one, I successfully enter a dream
Since it's a very long LD, I've split into sections

Part I - Lucio Dalla - Caruso
I am in a hotel hall, I recognize it's the beginning of Lucio Dalla / Caruso song video (his most famous song perhaps; listen it, it's a wonderful song ) I have watched couple of weeks ago.

As in the videoclip beginning, "Bad boys" is playing, LD enters from the right and approaches the hotel reception desk.
Unlike in the videoclip, though, I get close too, and turn off the radio playing the song.
LD gets room key (a classic metal key), for room number 410, I ask him if I can accompany him in his room to talk (important precisation, as he had made outing as gay). He unlocks the door, I open the door and let him pass, I enter the room.

I sit in a chair. We talk about himself, I compliment him for his great music, he goes to the bathroom, from the door I see him washing his hands while we talk. In the meantime I pick up two cherries from a bowl on a nearby small round table. I tell him I am sorry he's dead, he looks sad too.
Then I ask him if he can sing "Caruso", he does, and I undergo an incredibly strong emotion I cannot describe in words, I shiver violently and for long time while I listen him sing. Interestingly, as much as I like the song, it has never provoked anything remotely like that IWL, but I know it's going to be very different from now on...
To thank and greet him I kiss him on both cheeks, I am sensibly taller then him

Part II - Transform into a squirrel
I approach the window, the sun is setting in the bay. There is a tree near the window. I jump and grab the trunk with both my arms, and legs too. Then I climb on a branch. I attempt squirrel trasformation. My viewpoint slowly descends closer to the branch, then I feel my legs get bigger. It has worked. I start running and jumping on branches, even belonging to different trees.

I find a hole in a tree, I enter it, there are many walnuts inside, it's a true squirrel lair. Inside the hole, I think that it would be funny embracing my own big, soft tail, I do it, it feels good ! Then I pick a walnut and I ponder that I am clueless on how a squirrel would open it.
I use my big middle tooth on the central fissure, and I manage to open it. I eat the nut inside, chomping it happily (no taste, though)

Then I think about the "phase through object" task, I pretend knowing there is a branch on the other side of the trunk, then walk through the trunk. As a small squirrel, it takes some time in the blackness to exit on the other side. When exiting, something strange / new happens. I feel like my eyes get "stuck" in the trunk for a split second and get farther away from me than normal, then come back normally with the rest of my body.

Looking down, I notice a cartoonish-looking wolf on the ground, I chew the branch which falls on the wolf's head
It gets upset, and it becomes a normal, dangerous-looking wolf; it howls, and suddenly a pack of wolfs is beyond my tree. Now I am scared (I chose not to use any dream power to get out of this). I run and jump on branches until I get to a tree close to a small, low house with a low, fenced perimeter wall. The wolves are close, but running fast I descend the tree, climb up the wall and run through the small space between wall and metal fence. I am now safe in the garden of this house.

Part III - Materialize car, fly it. Floating island. Unwrap a Xmas present and gift to my son. Telekinesis whole house
I become human again. Wolves are not there anymore. I exit the garden through the gate. I am in a classic American residential zone with low houses well apart from each other, wide road. No one is around.
I decide to attempt "Advanced summoning": I go for a car. I look to the road close to the pedestrian walkway and wish to make a car appear at that spot. It materializes in front of my eyes almost all together; some smaller parts (e.g. headlights) appear a second later.
When the car is complete, I look at it. It looks like a Corolla-ish, it's dark grey. I don't like the color, and recolor it in red instead. It comes out a bordeaux red, which I don't like either. I wish it a bright red. Now I like it. I open driver door, sit inside and drive it.

I accelerate the car alot on the empty road, until it eventually takes off. I am flying a car on this urban landscape, slowly gaining altitude.
I see something floating in front of me. It's a small rocky island. From the distance I can only see something white to the left and a tree on the right. When I get there, I have some troubles landing / parking the car. When I can finally get off the car, I look around.
There is a small house, just a white cube basically, a tree and very little else.

I open the door and enter the building. There is a Christmas tree with several presents under it. Yay ! This wasn't expected !
I pick a 30cm gift, it's wrapped in red paper with golden ribbon and go outside. I slowly and purposedly open it, as I want to enjoy the surprise of what I fill find inside. I remove the ribbon, open and finally tear the paper. It's a mid-size LEGO set ! It has a small yellow excavator and two minifigures. I notice how the model looks small compared to box size. I wish to gift it to R, my son.
I summon him in front of me, and he appears. I kiss him and give him the box, which makes him happy. Then I tell him to go, as I have to venture further. He fades out.

I go again to the town below (how ? flying ? can't recall) and decide that I can attempt the "Big telekinesis" on a house. I point one to my right, perfectly similar to the others I saw before. It is also fenced and has some children playground, for sure a swing. I also look for an empty spot to land it on the other side of the road. (Interesting: I feel my eyebulbs move side to side as I do this)
Then I focus on my target house. I raise both my hands in front of me. As I move them up, the house with surrounding wall and all the dirt below rises up. I notice the dirt is wet below, and look at the hole I created in the ground. I take note to explore it later.
I raise the package like 10 meters above the ground and move it across the street in an arc.
Then I kinda drop it on the empty spot. The big dirt mound below the house does not allow it to lay flat, it is pending to my right. I try to adjust it but I am not successful. Then I go to the big hole in the wet ground. I explore it but I find nothing.

At this point I ponder whether to keep the dream alive or just go to sleep.
The dream environment is totally stable so I decide to go on.

Part IV - Transform into a fish
I walk around, looking for a river. I find a small torrent, with super transparent water and a rocky bottom.
I stand with my feet in it. I find my feet are naked, they feel cool.
I attempt transforming into a small fish. Similarly to what happened with the squirrel, my viewpoint descends until it's just above the water level.
I also experience something hard to describe, a sort of dizziness, as my head changes position in relation to my body.
Then I am underwater. I see the water surface above me, just below me rocks and floating algaes.

I swim forwards swaying the lower part of my body left and right. I try looking at my pectoral fin, but find it's too short for that.
I swim for some time, hoping to reach the sea, but the river is too long. So I decide to use a sort of super-speed to quickly reach the sea.
The scenery moves very fast around me, then I reach river's estuary. I follow a random branch then a small drop, then I am in the sea.
Below me, dark, bottomless water, to my back a flat rock wall going down.

I decide attempting to escape a big fish in this form, so I think it's safer staying close to the rock wall.
From the dark water in front of me, a pointy nose appears, approaching at high speed; it's a shark.
Its first assault ends up as a hit on the rock wall. Then I swim upwards, he attacks again, and I manage to fly fast enough to escape its bite.
At its third assault I see its hige open mouth in front of me, and I cannot escape. However, its open mouth hits the rock wall, and it cannot close it on me. Ouch ! That was close !

I decide I had enough. I look for a gap in the rock wall, find it and swim it inside quickly. It's totally dark inside but I can swim anyhow. The channel makes a sharp upward turn, I follow it until I see light above me. I emerge in a small pool on the ground. I jump out and become human again.

I think I am missing only the last transformation and pulling the sword out of the stone to complete my personal goal.
I open a "zip" portal to my tower, it comes out purple inside. I enter it and find myself inside the tower.

Part V - Transform into bird, pull sword out of the stone
I approach the window, and easily transform into a small bird (transformed into eagles and dragons in the past)
I fly up lighty, see a tree, land on a branch with my small legs, then hop on my legs towards a nest on that branch. I sit inside, there are some eggs.
Then I fly up again. It's a relaxing flight. I am looking for the city where the sword is

I end up flying above a big city, with yellow lights.
There is a small garden with the anvil and the sword in it, I land there and return human again.
I look around and it's looking a bit too cartoonish for my taste.
I wish more realistic buildings around me, a high fence around the garden, everything appears; two guards appear, in medieval dressing with halberds.

I say aloud that I want to extract the sword from the stone, one of the guards laugh, but some people crowd around the garden.
I go in, then use both my hands and some force to pull the sword out of the stone.
I raise the sword above my head and say "I am your king now, people !"
Then I look at the sword. It looks beautiful, with a broad blade and a golden curved hilt.
I say I will now use this sword in my next dreams. I sheathe it on my back.

Then I take some time to return to my body, wait for some dizziness to pass, then wake up and move to my side.

ND#4: Some discussion with my sister V

ND#5: Forgotten

Wake up at 8

I had a lucid dream this night! I did the SSILD method, and after a while fell asleep with a couple of sycles again. Than when I fell asleep, I apleared in the same room again where I'm sleeping, but than with a different layout, and bigger than our house normally is.

The dream wasn't super vivid at the beginning, and I could wake up pretty fast if am not careful in the dream. I did a nose RC to be sure it is a dream, and it was! I was really happy but tried to stabalize the dream to shout "stabalize!" but it didn't work very well... So I tried to spin, and that worked a little better. It was like I really was awake. Now, it was night, and I wanted to make it day. My mom woke up in my dream, and suddenly my father was there too. I said to them that I was dreaming, and I can control this if I believe in it. So I shouted, "light!!!!!" "make it day!!" at first it didn't work. So I tried the switches from my bedroom to turn the lights on, but that didn't work either. So I tried to believe more in my control, and shouted again to make it day, and that worked finally. It became a sunny day

I did a RC again, to prove that it really is a dream...becaus it's so hard to get a ld, and now I am here, just standing in a dream! I tried to keep myself aware that am dreaming, so that I don't forget it. My dream was not stable at some time, so thought of some stabalize methods I read at dreamviews. Someone said to crawl. So I tried that, but it became even more blurry. Almost waking up like. I didn't want that. So shouted, "stabalize!" again, and spinned. It was luckily more vivid. I opened my bedroom door, and saw that the wooden floor whom is normally darkbrown, turned in lightbrown. The corridor became much bigger... Our house has became bigger. It was really cool I tried to change my appearance, but that didn't work lol. So I decided to try it again later. I suddenly walked into a hairdresser, and decided to cute my hair a little there. After that, there were some weird men. Me and my sister read some weird documents, and it was probably forbidden to read them, because it where secrets. My sister continued to read them, while I already saw some shady people walking towards us. I tried to get my sister to flee with me, but she continued to read them, and it was already too late to run. They already stood before us. They took the documents from my sister's hands, and took them with them. They looked at me a bit scaryxD but I decided to leave that, and walked away with my sister.
At the end of the dream, I wanted to try flying, because I am really difficult with it. I never manage to fly. Even though other people could. So in the living room, I practiced flying. My sister sat, and watched me. I jumped and it didn't work so well. (is it really, because I find it hard to believe? But if I can turn night into day, tan I can also fly. So I believed in it as much as I could, like I did with my other things, and jumped in the air. I could fly a little, but floated pretty fast to the ground. Maybe I have to think of happiness, and a lot of believe, and than I can fly? Peter Pan said so in the movie... So I thought of a lot of things that makes me happy, and believed in it. It worked! I could fly, but....I soon woke up after I managed to fly, and it was already morning at that.

It was a fun experience, and I hope to do more in my dreams!!!❤❤❤❤❤
I defenitely try SSILD again.

Ritual: After a year or so of initial successes with galantamine, back in 2010–11, it had stopped working very well for me to the point where I hardly ever use it anymore. But last night after going to bed late (around 3am) and waking up just before dawn, I still felt heavy enough with sleep that I thought I might give it a shot. (Galantamine is a stimulant, so the main risk is not being able to get back to sleep.) I took one of the red pills from a bottle of "Dream Leaf," which I had nearly given up on since it had never worked for me before, possibly because I only tried it long after I had gotten "over" galantamine. I know the red pills contain galantamine from the distinctive effects, but I must say that it greatly bothers me that this supplement neglects to identify the presence of galantamine on the label, or even on their website, much less clarify the actual dosage. In fact, I would go so far as to call this obfuscation shamefully irresponsible and borderline criminal. Galantamine is a powerful substance that should never be given to people without their knowledge. So for ethical reasons I dislike this particular supplement and definitely would not recommend it, but galantamine is galantamine, and on this occasion it actually worked. Woke and wrote at 9, so I'm a bit underslept with a slight galantamine hangover, but it's been so long since I've had this sensation that I'm almost enjoying it.

I've always found galantamine dreams a bit superficial, but that's not always a bad thing. My recent attempts to force dream events to unfold in a detailed and realistic way, in the name of quality, often prove counter-productive. Sometimes a little "cowboying" is necessary to get the job done, especially in the inherent instability of the dream environment. So tonight's dreams were ultimately successful, but not exactly Masterpiece Theatre.

WILD, "Fading Gift": I was lying on my back in bed, and recognized I was in dream even as I started making elaborate sweeping gestures with my hands, but continued gesturing for a while to increase my sense of motor control. At one point I closed my eyes and scratched my scalp, and I was amazed that the sensations felt exactly like like waking life. "I am the dreamer," I murmured a few times, as if to fix the idea in mind.

I recalled how often I make unnecessary difficulties for myself at this transitional stage and told myself that if I was already dreaming, I didn't need a ton of preamble before getting out of bed—I should just get up. So I did, and it was fine. I've really been wanting to do the "finding a leftover present" TOTM, so I started looking around the room. (As has become typical lately, the room did not resemble my bedroom in WL.) I looked under the dresser, on the table... nothing so far. I felt a slight contradiction in my mental outlook: on the one hand, the best way to find the present would be to expect or even to will it to be there, but on the other hand, since it was a present I wanted to be surprised rather than force the issue. So I allowed myself only a vague expectation and kept looking. I found a wooden cabinet much like the one in my office and when I opened the door there were a few presents on the middle shelf. The first two I noticed, very small objects, I rejected as not quite right. Although they were loosely covered in wrapping, it wasn't taped down, so it looked like they had already been opened and then put back.

I kept looking and on the left side of the shelf was the perfect gift: a wide cylinder about six inches high wrapped in red and white paper with a red ribbon rising vertically on four sides to form a neat bow at the top. The paper looked familiar at first so I studied it for a moment, but it was not any pattern I've seen before. It consisted of thin white lines on a red background, but they were awkwardly curving and abstract, like an elaborate doodle.

Just as I started to open the present, I felt the dream begin to fade. I moved quickly, trying to open the box in the little time I had left. When the top came off, I plunged in my hand and felt... tissue paper. I was almost awake now, and as I reached past the tissue paper I felt like I crossed that indiscernable border between dreaming and waking consciousness. Or maybe it is not so indiscernible: what had just disappeared was my sense of touch, without which the dream had lost its tangibility. Vision lingered a little longer, and I saw my hand pull out a thick gold chain the length of a necklace, sparsely ornamented with tiny flowers that were each composed of four thin petals of white enamel. I was dissatisfied, however, not only with the gift itself (I don't care much for jewelry and this was definitely not my style), but with the fact that the dream was fading so fast that I couldn't determine to what extent dream imagination or waking imagination (not that I clearly understand the difference!) had determined the nature of the gift.

I went back to sleep, resolving to try to get lucid again and complete the task in a more satisfactory way.

DILD, "Elephant Ride": I was lying in bed but felt uncomfortable, realized I was still wearing day clothes, including a bra. Ugh, had I passed out last night? As I removed it, I noticed it was a lacy underwire thing that didn't even look familiar. I wanted to get back to sleep but the television was on loudly, so I tried to find the remote to turn it off. There were four or five remotes on top of the dresser, and I pressed the power button on all of them but nothing worked. On a couple, the image would cut out as though it were turning off but then come right back, and other remotes had no effect at all. Fine, I'll pull the damn plug, I thought grumpily, but the TV was mounted on the wall and on closer inspection it seems the wiring was concealed behind the wall. I settled for muting the volume (at least that worked) and turning the screen to the side, which accomplished little but expressed my annoyance with the device. [Possible source: I just got back from visiting my mom, where the TV was on loudly in the mornings, making it hard to read or work.]

I headed back toward the bed, but suddenly realized I must be dreaming. That would explain the difficulty I just had with the televisions, at least! And with the realization came the memory of my earlier lucid episode and my dissatisfaction with the TOTM I had attempted. I was pleased with the chance to try again.

Looking around, I soon spotted a wrapped gift on the bedside table. It was a small square box, around two inches wide and one inch high, made of that shiny gold cardboard that is common in gift boxes, and wrapped with a red ribbon. I started to untie the ribbon and realized that I was wearing gloves. At first I thought it an oddity, but quickly understood that it was just the dream's way of representing the slight awkwardness I felt in my fingers as I tried to complete this fine motor activity. I considered pulling off the gloves but recognized that it would just be a pointless waste of time, and decided instead to ignore them. At least they were thin gloves, and didn't impede me that much in my attempt to open the box. By the time it was open, they were gone.

This time I was very pleased with what I found in the box. It looked like a single confection of some sort. "Perfect, I love food!" I thought to myself happily. I pulled it out and looked it over. It was not very distinguished in shape, light brown in color and vaguely round, but a bit lumpy. There was a darker spot in the center like a piece of chocolate. [Possible source: I've been eating my mother's Christmas cookies, which have a spot of apricot jam covered with chocolate in the center. They have a much firmer texture overall than this one did, though.] The surface was dry but felt a bit pliant between my fingers, a sort of rubbery texture.

I bit into the confection and found the mouthfeel similar to what the outer texture had led me to anticipate. There was just the hint of a thin crust, and then the inside was soft but chewy. It reminded me of mochi but was firmer and easier to chew. At this point I was analyzing it with the idea of possibly attempting to recreate it in waking life. I knew that it would have to be based on glutinous rice flour. However, the overall taste was lightly chocolatey and fruity. I looked where I had bitten and distinctly saw raisins, both black and gold. There were also pieces of another fruit that was harder to identify. It had faint striations that reminded me of the fresh jackfruit I had eaten last night in WL (so that was probably the source), but this had the texture of a dried fruit. Can jackfruit be dried and baked into cookies? I couldn't say. If not, I thought that dried apricot might work just as well. The taste could have been either; it was hard to tell with all the other flavors going on. I finished the confection and found it very satisfying. If I ever do manage to recreate something like this, I'll have to post the recipe here!

I felt that I had now completed the TOTM satisfactorily, so what next? I looked around the room, and wondered if I should just leave through the door and go exploring. But somehow that is never very satisfying; I usually get better results when I am pursuing a specific idea of some sort, even when the results are not what I expected. The dream felt reasonably stable, so I wondered if I might attempt one of the TOTYs. I recalled the "riding" theme, but unfortunately, I hadn't looked at the list lately and couldn't remember the specifics very well. There was a window here... maybe I could summon a bird and ride it through the night sky? That sounded fun, but I didn't think it was on the list. The only one I could clearly remember was the elephant ride, because my studies have given me such a distinct impression of how elephants were used in battle in pre-modern Siam. I had always planned to try that one, but how do I get from my dream bedroom to pre-modern Siam?

I tried to remember the transportation spell from Harry Potter, but the command wasn't coming to me. All I could recall was "flue" something, and anyway there were no fireplaces in this bedroom (unlike my WL bedroom, which does have one!) I decided my best bet was probably the window. I knew you needed to mount an elephant from someplace high, so if I could summon one over, I could probably just descend from the window directly to its back. Then once I was on the elephant, it would be easier to get to Siam. On the way to the window, I felt impelled to opened the middle drawer of the dresser as I walked past. It was nearly empty, with just a few stray pieces of clothing... but in the far right corner was the gleam of gold. It was a pile of chocolate coins! You know the ones, disks of chocolate wrapped in gold foil stamped like currency. These were a few different sizes. I realized these might come in handy if I ended up having to buy the elephant, so I grabbed a handful and put them in my pocket.

I opened the window and felt the cool night air. The window was on the second storey, as I had anticipated, but looking out, I actually recognized that this looked nothing like my house. To the left, I could see a garage door extending perpendicularly to the wall my window was in. The house appeared to be painted beige. Across the driveway, which ran next to this wall to meet the garage, there was a wide grassy yard bordered by trees. I looked up at the night sky above the trees to see if there were any familiar constellations, and immediate recognized Orion. Of course... it seems anywhere I go, I see Orion, even in a dream. He was at an angle, almost on his side, just over the treetops... but not exactly the same in WL. At first I counted four stars in his belt, instead of the usual three. The more I looked at it, the more stars accumulated, but only in certain areas, so pretty soon Orion appeared to be wearing not only a belt, but also a brassiere, which amused me, and a crown. The crown had spikes pointing upward, like the common representation of crowns in modern iconography, but matching spikes adorned the brassiere and belt. At this point the whole shape of the constellation was getting a bit thin and stretched, and while I'm sure these transformations could go on indefinitely, right now I needed an elephant.

I knew my husband was in the next room, probably working, and even though I suspected this was dream logic, I hesitated to shout lest I annoy him. (Though I suppose it is still reasonable not to want to annoy the dream husband.) So I tried to summon the elephant quietly. Nothing happened. After trying for a bit without results, I decided to take a more dramatic approach. I stepped through the window and jumped, setting my intention for there to be an elephant down there, so I could land on its back.

There wasn't. But the results were promising nonetheless... from unconstructed dream space, I managed to conjure something plausibly like the interior of a palace in Siam. It was a bit of a hack job, without much detail, and I confess the throne was far too low (must not have been the formal audience hall), but it was sufficient for my purposes. There were various ministers standing around (another embarrassingly inaccurate detail; no courtiers would stand in the presence of the king in early nineteenth-century Siam! Good gracious!) and the king was on the throne, but a bit vague. My initial impression was that he resembled the recently deceased Rama IX, but that troubled me because I was going for an earlier era. I tried to make him look more like Rama III, but it wasn't working very well, so in the end I just didn't look too closely. At any rate, the king was vague enough that he didn't quibble when I handed over my handful of chocolate coins and requested an elephant. I didn't feel like getting into complex negotiations; I just allowed myself assume the success of the transaction and walked away.

As I exited the interior of the palace and momentarily noticed the bright sunlight reflecting off the whitewashed arch of the doorway, I felt a flash of familiarity. Of course, I thought to myself, This must be the Grand Palace, I've been here a few times. I let my memory conjure something akin to the elephant-mounting station I remembered observing there, and walked over to it. There was no elephant there presently, so I waited for someone to bring it around... and started getting impatient. No one seemed to be doing much, or paying attention to my repeated request. They must not understand English, I considered. I'll have to try it in Thai.

"Chang!" I shouted, the Thai word for elephant. "Ma nee!" I realized how rude I must sound: while "ma nee" would probably be correctly understood as "come here," or, given the contextual clues, "bring it here" as I had intended, it was a terribly rough and simple way of speaking. It was the sort of thing you might say to call a dog. I hadn't even appended a perfunctory "kha" at the end. But then I started wondering what level of politeness would be proper in this situation. I was in the palace, which made things more difficult, because royal Thai is another ballgame altogether. But what was my own social standing here? In speaking roughly I was assuming a great deal of authority... maybe that was not so bad in this situation. Fortunately, I saw my elephant being brought around before I was able to go too deep down the rabbit hole of Thai honorifics.

It was a disappointing elephant, by any standards... not only small but kind of flabby and soft, a cartoonish cross between a real baby elephant and Dumbo. Moreover it was completely unadorned, with no harness or howdah. I momentarily wondered if the lack was due to an inadequate mental impression of what a howdah should look like? But no, I could picture it clearly enough in my imagination... it just wasn't on the elephant. I guess that's what I get for being rude to the staff. To add insult to injury, they didn't even properly lead the elephant to the mounting station—though it was probably too small to get on from there anyway—they just dumped it on the stairs, where it crumpled over weakly. On the bright side, this made it easy to clamber up on its neck, so I did so and prepared to forge on.

I knew I had to enter a battle, so we promptly exited the city. I had thought to do this properly on a magnificent war elephant with a howdah and a driver and four soldiers to guard the legs—I've seen plenty of paintings and movies of proper war elephants in action—but instead I was alone, bareback with no weapon, on the most pathetic elephant I've ever seen. But at least in dream there was no risk of actually falling in battle, so I figured I could make do.

We had barely gone past the city walls when I saw the invaders approaching from the jungle. That wasn't much of a stretch; it seemed like Ayutthaya was always under attack. (I had originally envisioned myself in Bangkok, but had already slipped back to an earlier era more appropriate for elephant combat). The invaders were on horseback, I noticed, and I was relieved to see that they were only coming in ones and twos, given that I was going to have to take them on alone. They had long black hair and Asian features, and naturally I assumed that they were Burmese... until I got close enough to swing at one and saw the pointed ears. Elves?! Last night I was playing Witcher II and Pillars of Eternity, and the portrait of Aloth in the latter game closely resembled these invaders, but I wasn't sure why they were showing up here. Also, I'm fond of elves and felt loathe to fight them. Fortunately, our combat was more play-acting than anything. I had a good mental image of the kind of long-handled glaive I should be wielding, but though I swung it toward the elves and they gamely mimed being struck, the weapon did not visibly appear in my hands—and I was thankful that it drew no blood.

So I marched forward on my pathetic elephant, going through the motions of bashing the elves (elves?!) with my invisible glaive, while they went through the motions of being knocked aside, until the jungle started to coalesce into a new kind of space, a kind of wide passage under an increasingly low ceiling. The texture of the ceiling interested me, and from my position atop the elephant I could reach up and just touch it. It was covered with a kind of thick cloth, like a yellowish patterned felt, and I reached into the seams between two pieces and felt something hard and smooth. I pulled it out and found an object streaked with yellow and brown that resembled a wild bird's egg, but it was too hard and irregular, so I thought it must be a stone. I slipped it into my pocket. The felt overhead was gaping at the seams so I grabbed it and tore it off, revealing a kind of wide hatch with a knob for a handle. I wondered what it might be concealing so I pulled it open... and found the dream space deconstructing, muffling me in a soft blankety texture. Instinctively I tried to protect myself by putting the stone I had just found in my mouth, but I was still being enveloped in the stuff. I tried to pull at it with my hands, and as my fingers sank into it I was struck by the familiarity of the texture, like coarse sheep's wool—not the clean feel of a fleece, but the dirty, oily texture it has when it is still on the sheep. That was the last thing I felt before waking.