non-lucid

Morning of March 10, 2015. Tuesday.



There was not much to this dream. I am apparently aboard a small submarine in a fleet of about six. There is another fleet of an equal number of enemy submarines, which are several times bigger than ours. I am also watching the scene from above at times and as if on a large monitor. At the same time there is also a vague awareness of bilocation in the Cubitis living room (but as an additional implied underwater location yet somewhat ambiguous, likely with the submarines scaled down to model size) with the enemy subs heading south and ours heading north. It is interesting how bilocation factors still commonly use my childhood home where I have not been in real life since 1978.

Two submarines at a time, small and large, face each other (they are about two larger submarines apart in distance) and fire torpedoes. On the monitor, the torpedoes appear as white stars. Each moves toward the other at the same speed and each submarine is destroyed at the same time. Even though this does not seem to make much sense in afterthought, it seems like the perfect strategy. The scene repeats with all of the submarines except for the one I am supposedly on. (Only briefly do I question why none of the submarines attempted to move from the paths of the torpedoes, although there is the idea that the smaller ones only fired a torpedo because the larger ones did, to make sure the enemy was destroyed, but it also seems like each had time to move out of the way.)

Snowboarding down a huge mountain, I find a lot of snowboarder / skier traffic, and can't go where I want to very easily. I bomb it down a hill, and turn to my right to go over a small hill to another part of the mountain, but while avoiding the other people, I lose too much speed. I have to dance side to side and walk the board up the rest of the way. Then it's fairly clear, not many people, and I hit a few jumps sticking out of the deep powder. I slow down in one turn, and find out that the powder is up to my neck! I lean into the mountain, and pick up some more speed to stay on top of the powder, and make some easy turns the rest of the run down the mountain. It's so peaceful and beautiful here.

I'm laying in bed next to my girlfriend, just relaxing in the time before I fall asleep. She's already asleep, so I try not to move much and wake her up. Then her pet lion jumps up in bed with us! It's huge, but not very ferocious. But it does step on my solar plexus with a single paw and it's really heavy. I squirm a little, and it steps somewhere else, then lays down next to me. It's still pretty comfortable here, so I close my eyes and let sleep take its sweet time.

Then as I think I fall asleep, I wake up! No lion.

I would really benefit from more RCs...

First dream

It was cold, December night. I was walking back to home, and saw two hooded shapes. They were stealing from a local shop. I came closer, then the alarm started, and police arrived. They took me to the jail for a year, before even the judgement came.

The next year I was in home, working on my laptop. It was midnight. I was making a level for Half-Life, texturing and compiling it. Suddenly a woman arrived. Tall, slim, brunette. She was my lawyer. She wanted to talk with me, so I went from my room to the living room. I sat on the couch, while she took a seat on the armchair in front of me. I felt really tired. My lawyer told me that the police never had anything to prove my guilt, and that I can make a trial against them.

Precognitive dream recalled?

*Today when I was on a lesson, I had a strange feeling. I made an RC and looked around, watching the rooms layout, everyone present, and what was going on. Somehow, I have realised that I saw this all before. Everything matched with the dream I had over a few months ago!*

*I'm taking medicine so the cough is almost completely gone. Yay~ ^ w ^

-I was watching my younger brother play League Of Legends. I told him I felt bad for how the other team was beating him but also found it funny.

-After that i have a feeling i was playing some type of game with my brother and other people.

I remember being lucid talking to a dream character that was a boy but kept changing into a girl. The character had to change like three times and was wearing a robot suit. I told it to follow me upstairs and that we will go on a flying adventure.
But suddenly i got the urge to pee and went to the bathroom upstairs. My cousins and other came into the bathroom and i told them to leave. But they stayed and started talking about something and laughing. I told them not to laugh too much because they will break the dreamscape.My cousin told me that it doesn't work that way. That it was fine for them all to laugh in a loud excited manner. I kept telling her she was wrong but they just kept laughing so i decided to just let it be. I waited too long sitting on the toilet so the dream shifted after that.

-I appeared in a city and went inside a shop where a girl was gossiping with another girl. I than left the shop to go into another where i wanted to buy a water bottle. To my surprise the shop was a bakery. I asked for some chocolates but a girl told me i could not have them because she was going to send those to her mom. I told her i didn't care and that i could have them. Than her or her friend took the umbrella i was holding and hid it.I couldn't find the umbrella anywhere so i grabbed the guy and the girl and lifted them. Telling them to give it back to me. The store owner told them to be nice and to give the umbrella back. They gave it back to me and just as i was about to get my chocolate something went wrong.

I was told that i was needed in a superhero team to vanquish a monster.(Things turned into a anime after that) I flew over the counter and activated something and transformed. I landed in a arena but quickly became prey for the monster. So my teammates had to help me defeat the monster. After it was over we went back into the bakery (Things turned back to normal)and i smelled soft blankets that were washed and dried. They smelled like fruits.

After that I met with a older lady and we were looking at books. The books were important because they had the ability to summon monsters. I mentioned how there was a musical part at the back of the book. The lady wanted to google the author of the book after i told her that and told me to read it out loud. I told her i could check with my phone but she said no that she would do it. I told her i saw the name Laura D Shemjerd. She said it must be shepherd because shemjerd did not make sense. But that is exactly what i was seeing. i also told her i saw the name Howdy. I recall there was a part where a voice came up and it sounded like it was saying something from toy story but that was before i noticed the musical part on the back.

*I have a feeling there was a old man in my dream but i can't recall when. : /

Nightmare
Non-lucid
9AM-10AM (I think the dream was set in this time, too.)
I'm in my room, on the laptop. It's morning, and I'm alone in the house. I'm enjoying some quiet time when out of the corner of my eye, I see something in the hallway move ever so slightly. It's a shadow, and the thing casting it is in my sister's room.
I suddenly get a feeling of dread. My heart starts to beat faster. I quietly set the laptop down and decide a good place to hide would be beside my dresser, since you can't see that from the doorway. I hide. I hide for a while. But I don't hear anything. After about a full minute, I stand up and make my way to the bed, all without making a sound.
I get in my bed, and start to think that I'm paranoid. I get back on the computer to calm my nerves.
I see something move in the hallway again. I get scared, again. Something brown comes into my view from behind the door. I freeze, and I stop breathing. Everything is silent. Suddenly, a half a face pops out, the other half still hidden. The man now looking at me has light brown hair, and either very round "Harry Potter" glasses, or just big, white eyes. No pupils. I almost gasp when he pokes his head around the door.
Then, I wake up.
It still makes me uneasy to think about this dream.

fair amount of early recall, didn't record, most lost except:

+(f) riding with IrMa, she's driving, I put my hand on her leg, she wants to take the route on the coast that will rejoin the main highway farther to the south; (she enters my house and we kiss?)

(semi-lucid) epic: reveal my ability to fly to colleague MWP, he's critical ("that's illegal!"), I fly away, he follows flying, land at bottom of hill among HUGE university buildings, fight against guy with bow (block with magical transparent shield), drink the girl's beer, car ride: see hot college students partying, discuss education, play a card game while driving uphill

I'm thinking about flying (am flying for a bit?). I see buildings down the hill, one tall one on my left looks a bit pixelated, and I wonder about the brain's ability to fill in large amounts of detail.

I'm conversing with my colleague MWP the subject is people who can fly. He mentions that there are only 3 or 4 people in the world who can do that. The subject drifts, but I bring it back, say "I really want to hear your experience on this subject." I decide to reveal myself, we're in my childhood home bedroom and I step backwards out of the window and hover there in the air, and make a "ta-da!" gesture with my arms. I float back inside the room. MWP is not happy about this, he starts says s.l. nobody should do that, I mention other powers and he says "That's Illegal!". I'm really starting to regret revealing my powers to him, and I swear to myself that I will never, ever reveal them to anybody else ever again. I turn to fly down the hill to the city and call over my shoulder "I need to run some errands" and proceed to glide/fly down the hill. I look over my shoulder at one point and see MWP flying there! Ah ha, so he can fly, too!

I'm approaching the University area and I see really really tall buildings there, I think about how I always lose altitude when I fly and land on the ground among big trees, there's a street ahead and I plan to make my way there.

I'm inside a building and MWP(?) and another guy is there to fight me, the guy has a bow and arrow, I at first approach and engage him hand to hand, I try to wrench the bow from his grasp but stop at some point and step back and prepare to block. I think of summoning a semi-translucent magical shield. The guy gets ready to shoot, I summon the shield as an extension of my extended right hand (my right arm is extended out in front of me to block), and the arrow goes "THUNK" harmlessly into the shield on the other side of my hand. In a blindingly fast movement I pull out the arrow, and toss it back at the shooter, and it punctures his face high on his right cheek near his right eye (I think this was an *awesome* maneuver, it may go down in the record books).

He prepares to shoot again and this time I think of getting fancy/cocky, I summon a small circular shield only about the diameter of a tea saucer, but he doesn't get the chance to shoot again, I'm engaging him at close range with some sort of precision cutting device that cuts through objects as if they were air, no resistance. I wave the thing quickly back and forth all over him and a transparent shield, cutting him to ribbons.

There's some girl (administrator?) who leaves her beer on the table, (we?) go and drink it, we're driving to that place through narrow streets with tall concrete walls on each side, the girl reappears and asks who drank her beer.

In a car I'm in the front passenger's seat, (MWP?) is driving, there's a guy my age in the back seat and another younger male. I'm looking out the window at a scene through a large window on the 2nd/3rd floor of a building across the street, it's night/dark out. Inside there are young men and women, college-aged, all the guys are buff and shirtless and the girls are hot and in bikinis. As we pass driving by I look back at the scene and see a hot girl in a yellow bikini rubbing herself all over a guy. I say "why couldn't *I* have hot girls all over me when I was in college?" I look at the guy behind me and we both answer simultaneously: "because in college I was busy getting *an education*." I then say "yeah, those guys will be pushing mops in the future." The guy behind me says "I was in engineering," I answer "so was I [and think of my specialty but don't say it", he says "I specialized in low-cost DRAM systems" (and the implication is that he's raking in the bucks now).

We're going uphill and playing a card game. The driver picks a card with vague drawings and wording on it, it's a car that let's you change the game from 2 to 4 decks of cards, the guy in the back says "oh don't play that" (he doesn't want a 4-deck game), but the driver does want it and plays it. I say to the guy in the back "you have to accept it" and then I pick up the same guard from the stock, and say "…except if you get that card again" (and can switch the game back to a 2-deck game).

long time awake:
late:

+ sexy time moments with (imaginary?) girl parts, strange simultaneous boy/girl "parts"; at the zoo/park with wife, see JHS GF KS (she's not looking good), walk on path, see animals to right, think about how to survive a godzilla-like attack

I'm lying on my back in a bed in my sister's room in my childhood home.

Spoiler for explicit:

There's a naked girl torso [don't see the head/face, out of view] right in my face, lovely small breasts with dark medium-sized areao/nipples, I play with them with my hands and suck them a bit

, I realize this is all imaginary [but it feels completely realistic], and I wonder if my son walked in on me right now, what would he see? Would he see me moving my hands in the air with nothing actually there?

Spoiler for exclicit, weird:

I'm now up on my knees and there is a girl's back and butt on the bed, also on her knees, head [not visible] facing me. I reach down her back through her butt cheeks and feel for her v-jay opening, find it and extend a finger inside deeply. Then I'm lying on my back on the bed and my (ahem) has transformed into a weird combination of male and female parts: it's an erect cylinder of flesh like a male, but it is a hollow tube like a female, and I'm continuing to press my finger in and out. My wife enters the room to do some exercises, I pull the covers up over me.

My wife says s.l. "my husband is a real man!"

I'm standing with a bunch of people outside a zoo/park. I see my JHS-GF, KS, there: she doesn't look good. Her chin is weak, she has a lot of acne. Her lips are quite red, and her hair is as I remembered it, very blonde. My son S2 is standing in a group there. I walk forwards, I know my wife is with me and I hope she doesn't want to stop for a brick of candy popcorn.

We're walking down a path in the zoo, I look to the left and see a bunch of small animals in a display there: chickens, monkeys. I think "the animals are particularly calm today." At the end of the path there is a very tall hill leading up, sort of a steep sharp-cornered ravine with lots of wet black earth/mud. I think if a giant trex/godzilla thing (hundreds of feet high with huge feet that can crush a person) were to come where would be a good place to avoid it. Standing at the foot of this hill may be good because the monster would think the footing to be unstable and so wouldn't step there.

I climb up some steps and think "should you run? They say that they sense motion so you shouldn't," but I imagine if standing still they move lower their head and see you with their eyes. Climbing the hill someone has put a giant rusty dumpster in the way blocking the stairs.

+ the young men/women in white lab coats get in my way to apply the tool to the object, one girl pushes up against me and brief <sexy contact> ensues; with S1 and S2 in hallway, discussing the artifact in the room, where's the key? get the key, enter basement, find the "lost" set of keys

There's some object attached to something that needs to be removed with a tool like a large socket wrench. I know how to do it easily and try to step forwards to do it but young people in white lab coats keep getting in my way. There's a young man to the right, and a young woman who gets in front of me and is really working hard and applying a lot of force, I think that's too much work you need to just use the leverage. Another girl gets in front of me and is also using a tremendous amount of effort to the tool, I think I should grab her shoulders and help but I don't. She then sort of moves backwards pushing her body up against me and my back is to the wall.

Spoiler for explicit:

I reach around with both hands and cup her breasts (outside the clothing). She has small but nice breasts. I can feel in each hand's fingers that her nipples are large and erect.

I'm standing in a hallway with S1 and S2. There's a room to the right with some artifact(s) there that I want. S1 and S2 are discussing where the key is. I ask they to get the key repeatedly. S1 says that the woman removed the thing already. I get the key and enter the room.

Then I'm walking down the steps to the basement of my childhood home, my wife is in the large room to the right at the bottom of the stairs. I reach for the keys in my left pocket of the gray soft windbreaker I'm wearing and find another larger bunch of keys, I bring them out and look at them, I "recognize" them [false memory] as the missing set of keys to our cabin, I say so and my wife responds something about the keys.

I remember being in some kind of a train that is also a camp of sorts. Not the recreational kind of camp; there's some work involved, and in the end of the year you get a license that potentially increases your employment chances. I realize I have a really bad t-shirt on me, and I don't have any other ones, so my supervisor sends me and a couple of my friends (who are my former classmates IRL) to some "special place" where I can get a new, rad t-shirt. Now the way to get there is through flying train cars. They kind of fly through each other at progressively increasing speed. Each car's door is labeled with a black number on a white square. What this flight amounts to, is that we catch up with a flying huge anvil-like train car. By the time we catch up with it, it stops by some city.
We enter the huge anvil-car, inside is simply a huge pavilion with a wooden floor, with clothes hanging from the walls. Not far inside there's an elevation, so the most of the pavilion is slightly raised, like a theatre stage. There are also two female traders, of Kyrgyz origin. They're kind of tense. I ask if I can get up on the "stage" so that I can examine the goods. The answer is: "No. We've decided to not let any of the customers up". I'm kind of confused because a friend of mine (a girl now?) sits at the table on the stage, sorting through clothes. I ask for a size 4 t-shirt, and, apparently, there's the only one left, an unevenly checkered red and black t-shirt I don't even like. I'm surprised this huge thing doesn't have any more, but still go with it.
We're out of the anvil-car, it departs. We're basically stuck in this city and it's getting dark. Me and two friends of mine (both male now) walk the streets. I ask one of them about how long until the camp work is over and we can go home, he doesn't reply anything coherent. I think to myself: it's October now and we all enlisted last autumn, so we should be free anytime now. I even consider taking a train home, but then realize I don't have enough money, nor do I want to lose the license I would otherwise get. Now my friend thinks about somewhere we can stay: it's either "3X" or "XXX", both of those places are apparently unofficial bordellos. I'm not really keen on the idea, but he says we can stay there overnight since there's not much choice. We enter a tenement, then my friends enter an apartment. I stand in the doorway: I see a lot of girls in bikinis in there, and I also hear the friend who suggested this place talking to the host of the place. The host seems displeased. I walk out in the street.
It's daylights now. I sit on some rock and check my smartphone. There's a youtube-like thumbnail of a video, 01:24 in duration, with a desert-like view on the preview icon. Below the thumbnail is a picture of rather obscene content. I look away from the screen and see that the street goes further into the horizon, becoming desert. There's a tractor in the desert. "Maybe I should see how dollars are made", I think to myself, but there's now some old lady I know sitting on a rock next to me. We speak about something, then she jokingly mentions "I don't have much time left anyway", to which I reply "do they murder young girls now?". I look on the screen, and it shows an array of numbers, from 32 to 36, apparently this "old lady" is 32 years old.
Next thing, I check the text messages. Other than the few I sent to my friends, telling I'll be outside, I have 3 new ones, received quite long ago. All three are from another former classmate of mine. First one is "Ask your grandma to give you a map of the Russian Federation". Second one is "It's my birthday, come over to the Tyumen region. (Next line is in English; my dream was in Russian, mind you) You will see the Sadden region ^^". Third one is "Why do you ignore me? Are you satisifed with the food from your fridge? (also in English)".

And then I woke up.

Black: Non-dream
Blue: Non-lucid
Red: Lucid

Dream 1 - Virtual world MMORPG
I'm in a virtual reality MMORPG (think SAO or .Hack//) and another player takes me under his wing, guiding me and teaching me about the game (at first it doesn't feel like a game, and becomes more game-like as the dream progresses). We travel down a dirt road, the scenery is somewhat chaotic, like we're in hell or something... The sky seems red, the clouds are more like smoke, it seems like it was hot too. We come across our destination, a demon gate, my mentor leaps down and I follow without hesitating (it resembled a hole in the ground with a bright flaming portal a couple metres down). We get teleported to a new room, as we fall there is another portal beneath us and we air-jump to the side to avoid falling into it, it appears that this portal takes you to the next level of the game which I'm not strong enough for. Landing on the ground in this new room next to the portal, I notice the floor is made of sand, the room itself is square and a bit small, the walls don't really exist and there is darkness beyond (like the edge of a map in a video game). There is danger in this room though, tall sand people form from and spew sand at me, then collapse back down. If they spawn beneath you and you don't move, you die, and if they hit you then you die, so the whole time being in this room I'm just jumping and dodging. While doing this, the mentor tells me that he made a miscalculation and lost a great deal of his money by accident and that to make up for it we should try reach the next level, but it's about 9:35pm and my gf and daughter just got home so I want to spend time with them. At this point I'm circuiting the room in a sprint and the sand spews are piling up a dune of sand making it easier to get out or something, the mentor compliments me on this strategy.

Dream 2 - A big shark made me lucid
I'm standing at the edge of a deck, I seem to own a beach house that's right next to the water. I notice some beautiful starfish, sea urchins, seaweed, etc, and think to tell my daughter about them... Like posing a question to make her think about life or something lame like that . Suddenly I realize I have to be careful, then look to my right and spot a HUGE shark fin slicing the surface of the water. It must have been 1 metre high and a grey-white colour... I jump backwards and it comes close enough to touch the edge of the deck which should be impossible (since the water by the deck is only foot deep and is rocky as hell). Knowing that it was impossible I think to check if it's a dream, I get my hands in front of me and just look at them for a bit... My eyes start focusing and I see the imagery of my hands jitter a bit, I feel something in my mind changing as I become lucid, like a veil being lifted. I stand up and look for the shark, thinking to myself "whoa this is cool, I'll shoot a kamehameha at the shark!". I hold my hands in position (a bit different to the way it's actually done)... "Kaaaa... Meeee... Haaaa... Meeee... HA!" a subtle 'whoosh' 'brrrgh' 'splash' happens as an invisble orb shoots from my hand, flys through the air and smacks the water. Underwhelming, but it's progress. Moving on I decide to run around the corner of my house (internally I was thinking about doing a TOTM but couldn't be bothered in the end), there's water here and some waves (a bit inconsistent, like the waves were coming from the wrong direction) there was another shark that looked a bit handicapped. The water was still way too shallow for any of this, but there was also some people playing in the water. I feel like I'm not moving fast enough, the idea to fly crosses my mind, the last time I tried I had failed miserably, but this time was different . Leaping into the air I suddenly feel lighter, then WHOOSH! I shoot off into the sky and fly through the clouds. The feeling is euphoric and I quickly calm myself so as not to end the dream. I notice that the clouds are dark with a red hue, crackling red lightning from some spots. Not wanting to deal with this shiz, I wave my hands, signaling the dismissal of the clouds. They part and dissipate, and as I continue flying I see a floating cloud castle. It had brilliant hues to it, it seemed majestic and beautiful, a large cloud man floated out of a nearby window, he beckoned me towards him, it was none other than Zeus! I feel the weight of my body change, becoming heavier... Suddenly it's a bit harder to control my flying, and the next thing I know, I'm awake and I was having such a good dream >_<

Note: Only used SSILD, no longer sick and had an awesome sleep the night before.

10/4/2014 I am on a road on a seat cushion and trying to get away from a snake. I get up and I happen to have an oven mitt but he keeps lunging at me. I am scared and say to myself, "It's only a dream" and my eyes instantly pop open and I'm awake.

Can I call this non-lucid and then lucid for a fragment of a second? LOL.

10/31/2014 I get a heart ring custom made and when I pick it up, the heart is perpendicular to the ring and I think, "Dingbat, I didn't think I had to specify that part!"

I was outside in a war zone talking to a woman who appeared to be the commander. We help guard and protect the land and the starving kids here. The sky was very clouded and dark grey. I thought to myself that it will probably rain soon. The commander was showing me different parts of the land that have been blasted by nuclear weapons. As we kept walking by a few kids playing with rocks.

We both see my brother at a white car park on the side of the road. Suddenly after, we hear a kid falling down on the road. He look very hungry and had no more energy to continue walking on his own. I told the commander I got this. As I begin to go to the boy's direction, I stop. I didn't knew why, I just had a strong urge that I would get shot if I help him. My attention focus on another car near by. I had a strong hunch that someone in that car had a gun.

I then become lucid and recalled that I've dreamt this dream before. Only then I was non-lucid. The commander yells at me, saying why have I stop? I tell her there's nothing I can do. My head begins to feel faint and I could hear myself hyperventilating. My brother told me to calm down. But there was only one thought that was getting through to me. That there was not a thing I could do. I woke up soon after. Lucidity Time: 8 seconds

I had this dream in the middle of the night, no supps. Some of the details have went away but it was an interesting one none the less. I was in some house, I don’t think it was mine. I remember being stressed that it was really late and I had to be somewhere the next morning and I hadn’t been to sleep. Whatever house I was in I was with a DC, not sure who it was now, the house had a huge window out to the country side. The sun started to come up and I was even more stressed since I hadn’t been to sleep. I then started to look at the sunrise and I was in awe how awesome it was. It was really amazing how the light crept over the countryside and the different colors emerged. It was just green fields and green trees as far as the eye could see. I was so moved by this in the dream I thought it might be too amazing and this might be a dream. I did a quick RC and continued looking at the sunrise, I thought something was off with the RC and did it again focusing more on it and became lucid. I instantly thought of the mirror task and I don’t remember how I got to where I was at the mirror at. I want to say I went to a bathroom but not sure. At the mirror I pressed my head to it, it was hard as it should be in WL but I remembered what CanisLucidus said to just keep pushing. I kept pushing my head and I began to feel my head bend into the mirror. I tried to think of different places I wanted to end up, cool places that I can’t recall right now, but remember picturing them in my mind. As I was looking around me while going through the mirror the place I was began to warp a bit and change. I kept pushing and finally felt it give and I was on the other side. I don’t know if I slightly woke or was in the void at this point but it was pitch black, I just waited and finally a scene formed around me. It started in 1st or 3rd and moved to 3rd or 1st person, I can’t remember which. There was a huge spiral staircase but the stairs were very short and it was hard to traverse. The stairs went around a tower that was very high. Only darkness was around the tower and nothing else. I don’t know if the person traversing the stairs was me or another but I remember the eyes were strange, like they/I only had pupils with no iris. Very strange but a cool experience.

Ritual: WTB 12:30am, woke 7:30 with first DILD. No techniques, hadn't really intended to get lucid, but I was wearing a Jawbone fitness tracker on my wrist to bed for the first time. It's a bit tight and I think the unfamiliar sensation served as an anchor for consciousness.

DILD (eventually), "Hong Kong Apartment": I am in Hong Kong with my husband, staying in the apartment of someone unknown to me. I'm curious who this guy is and why we're at his place, so I'm attentive to my surroundings. It is a one-bedroom apartment and the layout feels familiar; I figure it must be a common floorplan here. The first thing I remember is being in a small room of unclear function, a study maybe, and looking at a plaque on the wall. It depicts a Chinese character, the archaic version of that character, and the pinyin transliteration: sōng, corresponding to the English word "page"—not the leaf of a book but the job title. From this I suppose that the young man who lives here must be serving as a page in the Hong Kong government, in the same way that there are pages in the US Congress.

My husband is talking to me, and I'm vaguely following his words but not entirely sure what he's going on about. I'm still trying to figure out why we're here: does my husband know the guy who owns this place, or is this some kind of Airbnb arrangement? Meanwhile I'm trying to wrap an enormous porkchop—the size of a prime rib steak—that I have for some reason. It is fully grilled but no one has eaten it yet, and I'm not hungry now so I want to put it away. It had been wrapped in butcher's paper but I'm having trouble re-wrapping it, and this distracts my attention for some time as I end up having to use a piece of foil to supplement the paper where it is torn. As I finally wrap the porkchop successfully and go to put it in the fridge, I see that there is fresh lettuce in the fridge, and I've also noticed dirty plates on the counter. I had assumed the apartment's owner was letting us stay because he was away somewhere, but these details make me think he must be currently living here and could walk in at any moment.

I know my husband needs to leave for some meeting or event, and our conversation is delaying his departure, so finally I say in exasperation, "Get out of here already!" Right after he goes out the door, I worry that he might have misunderstood my tone of voice and thought I was angry, so I opened the door and called after his retreating form, "I didn't mean to speak harshly." Meanwhile a girl with short, curly blonde hair is walking from right to left in front of the apartment, and I think she might be someone he had just been referring to—at the time I even recalled her name, something with the initials "J.S."—so I gaze at her curiously. She looks back at me with the self-conscious but indifferent air of someone wondering why a stranger is staring at them. It seems like it would be awkward to start a conversation so I go back inside.

Alone in the apartment, I look around at the decor. There are a lot of hand-carved wooden animal figures, and they remind me of a set that I bought in a museum shortly before Christmas, but couldn't figure out who to give them to. They seem to match this guy's tastes... maybe I should give them to him, in thanks for the loan of his apartment. It seems like a nice gesture so I plan on it. In the center of the main room, which has an open floor plan connected with the kitchenette, is a wide square column that is hollow inside to serve as storage space. I note with interest that there are a number of oversized books here. One of them is at least four feet tall, and the title on the spine reads Disney as Orientalism, accompanied by some Disney-style graphics. I make a mental note that later I'll want to pull that one out and flip through it. It's so big it won't fit on a table—I'll have to do this on the floor! It is the largest of the books in this closet, but none of them are small. Several others are about three feet tall with matching red covers, and I see that one of them is about Shanghai. Books of this size must have cost a fortune... this guy must be doing well here. I wonder if it would be rude to read his books without asking permission first, but figure there's no harm in it.

I wonder how I'll explain my presence if this guy shows up while I'm here by myself, since I'm still not clear on who he exactly is or why I'm at his apartment. In fact, this question starts to bother me, because it seems like I should have a better explanation. Of course, it's always possible that I'm dreaming, but... I want to discount this at first, since it seems to contradict what I'm experiencing from this environment. It is so detailed, lifelike, and stable, it really doesn't feel like a dream. But I make myself take the time to think this over more carefully: if I am actually dreaming, that would explain a lot, like why I had a porkchop, something I almost never eat, and the difficulty I had wrapping it. It would explain why I am in Hong Kong with no idea why I am here, and why I find myself in the apartment of a guy I don't even know. I don't use any techniques to RC, I just think it over and gradually recognize the illusory nature of my surroundings: indeed I am dreaming!

So now what? Normally I would apply myself to some task or other, but I had specifically made a point not to do so this time, if I got lucid, because I'm facing too much work today to spend hours writing up my report. So my plan was not to do anything specific, but simply to contemplate and enjoy the dream environment. (For some reason I had the idea that this would save me time writing things up later, although that is proving not to be the case!) I walk toward the back wall of the apartment, which is completely transparent, and look outside. It is still night, but there is a well-lit open-air bar just below, with a stream running behind it. There are a surprising number of people down there, and all seem to be relaxed and enjoying themselves, like guests at a resort. I sit down to watch the scene, while thinking back over what I've just experienced. I'm still impressed by how detailed and stable this dream was. For instance, that Chinese character on the wall—it was so clearly articulated, even though I don't think it was one I've ever seen before, and I strongly doubt it's even a real one. I wished I had looked at it more carefully, and focus on reviving the mental image. I think can remember the top elements of the modern version of the character, but I'm vague about what composed the bottom, which was complex, and I had not studied it closely at the time. The archaic version was simpler, and I can remember it much more distinctly. Concentrating on this inadvertently wakes me up.

Interlude: After writing the above account and going back to bed at 8:45am, I certainly didn't intend to get lucid again, given that I've already spent a lot of time writing when I should be working, but I never want to rule it out. I ended up having several FAs, the later ones bringing on a very long bout of lucidity, in which I just wandered around exploring rather than working on specific tasks. There would still be a lot to write up but given time constraints I'll have to keep it brief. Woke for the day at 10:15.

FA: I was in the bathroom thinking that I should make a more consistent effort to recognize those little discrepancies that might make me notice I'm dreaming, like I did in the last dream, without realizing that I was actually dreaming at that very moment.

FA/DILD, "Trail of Smoke": I hovered for a long time on the border between sleep and waking and enjoyed observing its ambiguities. For instance, there was a point where I was convinced I was immersed in dream visuals but hearing everything perfectly accurately from waking life (I was probably wrong about this). I caught at least one FA and was pleased after my failure to catch the last one. Then a long dream followed where I was basically lucid the whole time, but also knew I wouldn't have time to write it up in much detail, so only certain episodes that were especially interesting stand out clearly in my memory. I really can't take the time to include them all here, but the last scene was worth mentioning:

I am wandering through a dream environment typical for me, a labyrinthine enclosed public space, and having just seen someone smoking on a magazine cover, I now find myself smoking a cigarette. The smoke doesn't dissipate completely but lingers faintly in the air along the path I have walked, like that memorable scene from Donnie Darko (2001). It looks like I could potentially trace back the smoke and rediscover all the places I have visited in the course of this long dream. This makes me wonder: how big is the dream world? And the answer seems obvious: there are no boundaries, it is as big as mind itself. Standing in that world even as I recognize its boundlessness, I feel a sense of awe.

I gaze at the glimmering smoke trails and murmur, "All the places I've been are like a trail of smoke that follows me."

Me and several other students were on a race track preparing for a long, competitive race. It was about a whole classroom of students scattered around the starting line. The race track wasn't your typical dirt themed one, but it was one covered with air compressed pillows. It went all the way to the finish line. It was indoors and outdoors. The race was just about to begin.

The race started right as soon as the first person started running. The whole set of students began hopping from one section of pillows to another. Most of them were left off in the middle, with only a few of them up front. I was stuck behind the middle ones. I wasn't how the game worked at first, so I observed some of the other races before I decided to actually give it a try. It turned out, everybody was hopping to get ahead of the game. After noticing this, I started to take my way past the middle races.

Eventually, after making it through the indoor part of the race, we reached the outside world. I continued hopping as best as I could to try and win. At this point, I was just about getting on the line with the really good hoppers. I also observed the environment surrounding me. We were all what now seems to be a huge racing stadium, though most of it being taken up by empty fields of grass and small buildings. There were also no barricades on the sides of the pillows, meaning there was no protection if any of us fell by accident.

After a while of hopping, I notice this girl hopping up next to me, seemingly trying to catch a glimpse of who I was. I spent little bit attention to this person until I took a quick stare at them and noticed who they were. It was Quynh, the same girl who went to piano class with me in high school and the same girl I thought a lot for three years. She was still wearing that same green sweater she'd almost always wear to school. Quynh and me were the only racers closer to the finish line.

Quynh wanted to win just as much as me. For a moment, I even noticed her trying to push me off the track because of her facial expressions she had while staring back at me. I did not intend to lose. If she pushed me, I thought, I'd have to counter it and make her fall off the pillows instead. Fortunately, she never did. Instead, the two of us were in first place, desperately trying to jump over a large gap from one large set of pillows to another.

When we finally reached the finale of the race track, both of us took a long hop over a bottom layer of grass floor. As me and Quynh were both making the jump, my only thoughts were, "I have to win!" We both landed on the set of pillows, seemingly at the same time. We both stopped ourselves from hitting the wall in front of us and took a moment to notice each other. I stared at Quynh and she was staring at me. What seemed to be an outrageously, long conflict between us, one that lasted for so long, it finally felt like we were on agreeing terms to give each other one more chance at friendship.