task of the month

I go to bed at 10:50, intending to get up with my wife's 6:30 alarm. A few hours later I wake for some reason (no recall) and return to sleep. At 3:10 a kid makes noise and wakes me. I jot down a fragment then return to sleep. At 5:50 a kid wakes me as she uses the bathroom. She's coughing once she returns to bed, so I take her some water. I can't seem to get back to sleep, and I hear my wife's restlessness and know she can't either. At 6:15 she gets up and showers, and I fall asleep while she's in the shower.


Beer in space
I'm on a very traditional star ship (or maybe a space station?), walking through the corridors. It's a very traditional design, with identical gray corridors meeting frequently. I'm totally lost, but that's OK: I'm wandering around the place trying to get a feel for it.

Now I see the officers in the conference room, where everyone is looking out the windows. Captain Picard looks out last and gets a disgusted look on his face when he sees what the rest do: a giant brown beer bottle floating in space, spinning slowly. As the label rotates into view, everyone can see it has a goofy picture of the captain, and the name of the beer and its catch phrase are poking fun at the captain. Everyone immediately knows this was done by Q.


Scanning stations
I'm watching as defense stations around the world are doing some kind of scan. As I'm initially watching, there are 5 stations, but the number keeps growing as the dream continues. At first, I'm watching from inside some kind of control room. I'll see a quick clip from one control room, then I'll see a clip from a different control room in a different station. I can tell I'm seeing different stations because the people in the room change, but the room itself stays exactly the same. I'm surprised they'd use such an obvious trick to try to save on production costs; even the camera angle stays exactly the same! The last room I see is being run by a stocky Russian woman, and everyone is speaking in (what I identify as) Russian (though I can't understand a word of it).

Now I'm looking at a map of the earth that has all the stations marked out on it. I see red arcs appear from every station to every other station, then start to shrink. I assume that whatever is still under the arcs still needs to be scanned, and the places the arcs have shrunk away from are already scanned and determined not to have anything interesting.


At the hotel
I'm in a nicely appointed bathroom. It's long and thin; one wall has a long row of sinks followed by a long row of urinals, while the other wall has only stalls. I'm walking back from the urinals towards the sinks. Initially I think I'm alone, but then I realize there's a woman at one of the sinks closest to me. I'm very surprised to see a woman in here, but I just walk around her and go on my way. She's doing something at her sink (washing her teeth, maybe?), and there's stuff on the floor around her (towels?).

Now I'm in the (impossibly huge) foyer of a hotel, standing in the middle at what I first assume to be a concierge desk. I'm with other people I know, and someone is talking about coffee. I realize that this isn't a concierge desk but is rather a tiny Starbucks. While he's getting his coffee, a woman in my group who's standing near me tells her friend that she's never had Starbucks and wonders what it's like. I tell her that Starbucks coffee is too heavily roasted, almost burnt, for my tastes.

Now I see a couple of people with small plates of food. I look around to see where it may have come from and realize that on the other side of the Starbucks is a small table with lots of fruit on it - I specifically see strawberries and chunks of pineapple. Despite being right next to the Starbucks, I think it's actually provided by the hotel, so it's probably complementary. I think about going and getting some.


Unclear traffic signal + Flying and pumpkin hunt
I'm driving a car of some kind, maybe an SUV (I've never driven an SUV IRL). I'm stopped at the top of a hill, waiting on a ramp to join with a larger road that's down and to my left. Between the large road and my ramp is a HUGE board that reminds me of a scoreboard at an athletic event. Most of the middle of the board is taken up with rows that look like they should be holding team names and scores; around the edge of the board I see more than one set of red/yellow/green traffic lights. Initially, the board is completely blank. Nothing is on the rows, and all the lights are off. Eventually one of the greens on the left-front of the board turns on, but since it's away from me I assume it's for the other road. Other lights start cycling, though none on the right. Up to this point I've been alone at the top of the ramp, but I still start to get concerned that maybe one of those lights was supposed to be for me, and I'd hate to hold up traffic. As I'm thinking about this, I realize that a motorcyclist is going around me, tired of waiting for me to go. I check my mirror and am horrified to see a long line of cars waiting behind me. I decide to ignore whatever the strange sign is trying to tell me and just go.

Now I'm on a three-lane, one-way street. Somehow I'm aware of the driver behind me not liking the left-hand merges he has to do on this road. I think nothing of the strangeness of knowing what another driver is thinking/talking about, but I do try to figure out what he means. If you're switching left, you merge left; if you're switching right, you merge right; so what's the big deal? I can't see how this road changes anything.

I start to get a vague sense of "wrongness" and decide to do a nose-pinch RC. Initially, it only seems to deepen the sense of wrongness; something's not right, but I can't quite put my finger on it. I keep doing it, eventually realizing that, yes, I'm still breathing through my nose (left nostril only), even though it's pinched. I do it a couple more times to confirm that, yes, I'm really dreaming.

Now I'm standing in front of a house on a kind of rock path made of very coarse white gravel and small rocks. The scene is very fuzzy, and I know I need to ground myself in the dream. I start by looking at my hand, but it's badly out of proportion, and I really want something to keep me here and not convince me I shouldn't be here. I kneel down and pick up one of the larger chunks of white rock. As I feel its solidness and hard edges, look at its shape, and study the sparkly flecks in it, the dream becomes crisp. I stand up and recall my goals for this dream: the basic challenge to cut open a pumpkin and see what's inside, and my personal goal of better flight.

Nearby, I see an open door into what looks like a small shed. I look inside to see if there any pumpkins here. As it turns out, there are two: a medium-sized one on a table to my left, and a small one on a counter near the back. I don't like the look of either of them and continue on my way. I remember reading about someone finding a pumpkin patch and decide to check if there's one behind the house, but there isn't. I change my mind about the pumpkins in the shed, figuring that any pumpkin will do, even if it's sickly looking. I return to the shed and take the larger of the pumpkins, but in my hand it changes into a collection of small orangish guards connected by strings. It's useless to me now, so I leave it.

During this first part of the dream, I frequently stopped to re-ground myself. Sometimes I studied my hand (slightly different each time), and sometimes I picked some part of the scenery to look at. From this point onward, I forget all about doing any further groundings.

Somehow I end up back in the house. I'm in what's probably a living room, though since the house is completely empty it's hard to tell. I'm standing on hardwood floors, and in front of me is a wall that's mostly window. Even the doors are mostly glass. I'm getting a bit frustrated with not finding my pumpkin, so I decide to move onto flying. After all, there's no reason I can't fly and look for pumpkins at the same time. I decide to start out by jumping. Last time I tried jumping in a dream, something really strange happened, and I want to see if I can do better. I manage to jump all the way to the (fairly high) ceiling, then gently float down, That was fun, so I do it again. But, jumping isn't flying, and it's time to fly!

Now I'm outside (not sure how I got here), flying about head-level off the ground. I know I'm flying, not just gliding like I have in previous dreams, so I know I can go as high as I want. I head up to about roof height, then come back down to head-height. Now I'm flying along above a field. To my right is a high school athletic field of some kind (baseball, maybe?) with a high chain-link fence around it. I see a few small groups of people talking near the fence. I know some of the people in the groups, and in one group I see Amy. I feel sad, thinking on how we used to be good friends but that she left all her old friends (including me) behind. I decide to give her a scare, so I fly by her and somehow pick her up in my wake so that she's flying behind me. Her additional mass slows us down, but I don't mind too much. We fly down the street into another neighborhood. I see Sarah H. standing by the street, and she sees me and gets an amazed, incredulous look on her face.

Now I'm in another house, in a small hallway. The outside door (some kind of side door) is behind me, and a set of bi-fold doors is in front of me. The doors remind me of the bifold doors in my wife's parents' old house that hid the washer and drier. I decide I'm done trying to "find" a pumpkin, and I'm going to add one into the dream. I know that asking DCs for something tends to work well, so I decide that I'm going to find a DC behind these doors, and that that DC will help me get a pumpkin. I open the doors and walk through to find a mother and daughter working on laundry. The mother looks like an old-fashioned washer woman: she's wearing an off-white blouse with a darker off-white skirt and has her hair pulled back and up in a floral handkerchief. I think the daughter is wearing something similar. I see that the mother has a rather tired, hard-bitten expression on her face, but I go ahead and ask her for a pumpkin. She gives me a look that says "I don't know why you're in my house, and I don't know why I'm talking to you at all" and eventually drawls that there aren't any pumpkins around here. Behind her, I notice a small table designed like a pillar, and I see that it has a small misshapen pumpkin sitting on it.

I consider calling her on her lie but decide not to. I look over to her daughter to see if she'd be any more help, but then poof I wake up.

Still haven't fully typed my entry from the 10th, and I'm kind of tired, so I'll write a quick summary instead.

Basic ii: Two DCs were after me on a lucid chase. After getting rid of them and going in a pretty creepy house, a spontaneous scene change/teleport happened returning me to the house entrance. They caught up with me and I decided to face them, at the same time remembering the bloodsucking task, so I bit one of them on the cheeck and sucked in some blood. He was an unpleasant DC and didn't make for the fulfilling true blood experience I was hoping for.

.../I'm in sort of a campsite, where a friend of mine has built a little stage for an outdoor gig. I see him playing with his band. I find his facial expressions are very similar to another friend of mine who has some sort of mental problems. Later in the same dream I'm flirting with my sister in law when I remember we've already had something in this dream world. It gives me more confidence with the flirting. We are immerse into some activity, but cannot clearly remember what was it about. There are more people here, but I cannot remember who they were. I'm staring at something. She's laying on the floor upside down, and I lay my head on her butt. Somehow I start walking on an open field, and find some candies spread on the floor. I see one has a peculiar shape. I pick it up to see through its partially transparent wrapper, it has the shape of a pumpkin. I remember there's something about it and pick it up while trying to remember what was it. I remember it was a task of the Month! I notice finally it's a dream, because of I was regularly RC'ing during my WL every time I saw a pumpkin because of there's a lot of them here and there, specially in the supermarkets this month. Now I remember, it's not about something with the shape of a pumpkin. I must find one. I turn to see on the grass, there's a small one almost in front of me. I pick it up and draw a cut with my finger on its top as I planned to do because of I used to open portals that way. It's not difficult to get the pumpkin top cut. I lift the small lid to see inside. It looks like the interior of an orange. Actually the skin of the pumpkin turns flexible and I manage to get a big orange out of the pumpkin turning it upside down. The big orange falls on my hand and it has the same cut on the top. What a big imagination! I was hoping to find something more "expectacular". I think I can do it better. I turn to see somewhere else, and find a bigger pumpkin to my side. I pick it up and make the same cut drawing with my finger, wondering why some people need knifes to do this task. I lift its lid to see once again/...

* Dream fades to black. I'm still trying to remember what was there the second time I did it. I think perhaps it was something similar because of I stopped paying attention.

#370 - DILD - 5:53AM

I am in some church that looks a lot like the last one my father preached at in Texas. I am standing in the back leaning on the back rest of a pew while someone drones on up front. I come to awareness as I am staring off into space being introspective. I decide this is probably a dream and wonder into a back room.

I remember the costume task for the task of the month and look for my manatee outfit. There is a white toy chest behind a stack of chairs. There seems to be a bunch of stuffed animals and puppets in there. This is perfect for what I need. I reach in and pull out a grey hoodie with a plush manatee head for the hood. I decided before hand that I didn't want a complicated costume but this unexpected item is genius. I find a full length door mirror so that I would have a visual ground as I slip the costume over my head. My reflection doesn't cooperate and is making funny faces at me. It's not even doing the same movements I am. I decide this DC is annoying and move to another mirror. My reflection is still making faces but at least it's cooperating. I carefully slip the hoodie on while I keep a visual on the mirror. Once I have it one with the hood up, I turn around and imagine being in the water.

The hallway behind me quickly fills with water to the roof and I start swimming. Air bubbles swirl around me as I level out and make swimming motions. The dream fades here a bit but I focus on memories of snorkeling and quickly find myself in something similar to King's Bay. I even act the part and pretend that I have fins for elbows as I 'walk' the bottom among the vegetation. after a few seconds, my vision fades to black again but I decide that I have done the task so I let myself wake up.

I go ahead and nose plug but blow through. I set up and find myself outside next to my wife. I have the Manatee hoodie in my hands. I say to my wife, "Look, it's a Manatee hoodie! I just made it up on the fly but you would really love to have this. I wonder if it exists." My wife doesn't say anything but just smiles. I decide that I should do a web search when I wake up. This thought sends me into another FA.

I nose plug and am upset that I can't wake up. I am really worried that I will forget doing the task. I try really hard to wake up but just have some SP feelings instead. I quickly recall the costume dream and feel I have a good memory of it so I go ahead and allow myself to have some more lucid dream time. I sit up and feel slightly bored not knowing what to do next. I see my wife lying next to me and get some ideas. I'll skip the details, but I enjoy some rough anal sex with her stopping just before I reach completion not wanting to have a wet dream.

I have another FA and I nose plug. What the hell? I see my wife fully clothed looking into the mirror on the closet door. I am not at satisfied from before so I enjoy some oral sex. I feel that I am being ridiculously rough with her but decide that it's ok in a dream. I have an intensely satisfying release at the end and feel that I have now had a wet dream. Annoyed, I decide should wake up and change.

I have another FA and nose plug. I shout out, "Goddammit mother fucker!" my voice is vivid and loud. I spend a few seconds trying really hard to wake up, but I just can't. I decide to let go the worry of forgetting the dream and needing to change and decide to be thankful for such a strong LD. I open my dream eyes to look around and instead of a ceiling, I see a vivid, clear deep space view of a bright blue planet nestled next to a golden nebula. I am in awe of this sight and spend a few seconds taking it all in. I want to fly to the planet and explore so I reach my arms up to it as I lay in bed. I try to fly up to it but can't seem to move or float up. I don't want to try to stand up or do much of anything because I don't want to ruin such a beautiful sight. Fixated on the view, I relax hoping to float up but I have another FA.

This time I can hear the box fan humming and I try to move to get up. The effort jerks my physical body and I wake up for real.

10:25AM - Non Lucid - CanisLucidus At The Event

My wife and I are with CanisLucidus and his wife in a limo. CL is talking to his wife about getting tickets to some Glenn Beck event. His wife told him not to worry about it because she order early and got an awesome deal on some first class seating and there were going to meet Glenn Beck. I am a little disappointed that we didn't think of this. We had to order cheap tickets last minute.

We separate and I am with my wife in a crowded street like it's New Year's Eve in Times Square. There seems to be a million people here. I am talking to my wife about random stuff and I tell here that all it will take is just one person to turn into a zombie and then everyone will quickly be infected and wiped out. I somehow know this is really about to happen so I keep a watchful eye on the people around me. My wife seems to think I am nuts but I am ready to fight the zombie hoard.

Now I am watching CL with his wife like it's a movie. CL is narrating and I feel like I am reading one of his DJ entries. I see everything as from CL's point of view. He is next to his wife. She is in a fancy evening gown and CL is wearing a gray suit. They are high up in some balcony like in an Opera House. There is some conversation. I say to myself that I like how this is playing out like a movie with a plot. It's also skipping back and forth between characters like a movie. Seeing from CL's eyes, I look down at the jewel encrusted wine glass in his hand as he takes a sip. It looks like a moscato or some other white wine. There is some fine cursive lettering etched on the base of the glass. Now I am not looking from CL's eyes, but like I am there. I take the glass from CL and look closer. It is part of CL's DJ entry. It's hard to read and I don't remember it all but it says something about how he likes how he knows were are the DC's are in this part of the dream. This is just before 'it' all happens. He uses actual names rather than DV nicknames, but he tells where He and his wife are, where my wife and I are, as well as Dreamer and OpheliaBlue. There is something about how he's disappointed that I had to join the crowd down below but I had volunteered to help out with the event. I thought this was totally wrong and I begin to wonder what's going on. I try to read more of the small print to get some understanding but can't seem to see what the words are anymore. I am suddenly woken up by my wife getting out of bed.

#369 - DILD? - 4:38AM

I scored two LD's last night and I'm super excited because it has been awhile since I have had this kind of high level lucid. I really didn't employ any sort of technique this time other than being super motivated and highly worried that I was going to have another G fail as I enjoyed a 45min WBTB. I suppose I did a sort of MILD tech; while doing some basic body awareness, I imagined being lucid and feeling the walls with my hands. But really, I suspect my paranoia of screwing this up was what brought my awareness up while dreaming. I guess I need to worry more!

In this first one, I don't recall how I became lucid and I was probably only semi or low level lucid to start.

I am in some elven chamber with Royal High Elves like in something from The Lord Of The Rings or Elder Scrolls. I am given a strange looking mace or blunt weapon made of a bright magical metal, but that is only the covering for a short sword. I draw it out at the handle letting the blunt part fall off and hold a bright glowing sword. I know that I have been sent into the darkness to defeat an enemy. I turn and see some sort of open portal that takes up an entire wall. There is a darkened and distorted courtyard full of humanoid creatures hiding from the light. I don't really want to rush out there and be overwhelmed so I decide that I'll try to coax them out one by one. I notice some grapes growing up the interior walls and wonder why they are there. I dismiss it as one of those funny dream things and decide to enjoy it. I pluck a handful and munch on a grape or two; the taste is as expected. As I do this, a few creatures rush in past me, but I let the elves worry about that and focus my attention outside. One of the creatures has a bow and arrow and starts shooting at me. I take cover close to the wall and throw some grapes out. I tell the bowman to come out and almost call it like a dog. I sort of hope it will try to eat the grapes but it doesn't seem interested. The more I study the creature hiding under a structure, the more it looks like a Jawa. For some reason this helps and I am less afraid. Maybe I just need to know what I am facing. After a few seconds, I realize it's not going to come out so I rush out to attack in spite my previous apprehension. I forget that I have a magical sword, but I am carrying a dagger in my right hand. It is enough. I stab the Jawa in the chest and look up in time to see movement to my right. I turn the dagger and strike out sinking the blade deep into another's face. More twisted and evil looking Jawas are coming and now I remember the magical sword. I blind summon and lift the glowing blade into the air. The dark creatures shrink back as my field of vision is engulfed by a white light. The dream fades from there and I wake up.

I roll over to find my DJ, but something feels off and very dreamlike. I do a nose plug and blow cleanly through. I am a little shocked and do this a few more times. I am actually a little disappointed and worried that I will forget my dream but I get up anyway. My lucidity is now at a high level but the dream is dark. I wonder into the living room and peer into the darkness trying not to give this hang-up too much power. I decide to call out and interact with the environment, "Helloooo?" Nothing responds as I feel my way to the kid's room and open the door. I can now see a little bit and I hear the toilet flush in the bathroom. "Hello? Who's there?" I am back to coaxing creatures out of the darkness and wonder why there seems to be a connection to the previous dream. The door slowly opens and my two cats run out. I chuckle to myself and pick up Sputnik, my one-eyed, black cat. I walk to the front door talking to her in a high-pitched teasing way, "Let's go outside. Do you wanna go out? You little black asshole." I talk like this to my animals all the time in waking life.

Once outside, I immediately recall the pumpkin task for the task of the month. I must have dropped my cat or it vanished because I have no other memory of her from here. I use a strong sense of expectation as I walk around to the side of the house. Just as I thought, there is a nice looking pumpkin in the driveway resting up against the house. It looks pretty solid and I briefly wonder how I am going to cut it open. I recall OpheliaBlue's dream and remember hers was sort or soft so I decide that's how mine will be. I reach down and rip the top off; it feels really pliable and half rotten. When I take a look inside, I see many smaller pumpkins among the typical stringy pumpkin guts. No seeds; just miniature pumpkins. I feel a little disappointed that I didn't find something cooler but this is kind of neat. I get the idea to open the biggest mini pumpkin, but the inside of that one was just solid pumpkin mush. I begin squishing and playing in the mess like a kid in the mud. Not far into this, I wake up and do a nose plug to be sure.

I later recall a non lucid about going to the grocery store down the street. There had been an explosion with the propane tanks and part of the building was blown out. I was still able to go inside and do my shopping.

I WILDed into my dorm room, as I almost always do. The dream seemed very unstable from the get-go, so I decided to wait it out before I tried anything major. I first walked around a bit, touching everything, reminding myself that it was a dream. I then got the weird idea to walk up the wall. Yeah, it was weird, but I figured, why not? I walked up to the door, put my foot on it, and then pulled my other foot up. I was now standing on the door, and my body was now parallel to the floor.


This cat's reaction is also similar to my own.

Well this is unique. I walked around beside the door to open it, and then fell through the hole/doorway. I landed on the wall in the hall, but then walked back down onto the floor, since I was beginning to get dizzy.

I flew to the end of the hall, opened the door, and made my way down the stairs to the outside. I walked over to a tree by the road and looked up at the many oranges on it. I reached up, pulled one down, and proceeded to stare at it for a while. It suddenly reminded me that I wanted to do the Task of the Month. I looked around for a pumpkin, and found a big display of hay bales and pumpkins for some fall festival (how incredibly convenient). I grabbed one from the ground, but it felt really mushy. Well, I can just peel this one apart, I guess. I pulled apart the pumpkin, only to find that the inside was much like the inside of an orange.


Wut.

So there I was, holding basically a giant orange. I was curious, so I took a large bite of it, and sure enough, it tasted just like an orange. It tasted decent, but I quickly grew tired of it. I tried to remember whether the task was to open a pumpkin, or to smash a pumpkin. Eh, wouldn't hurt just to be safe. I picked up another pumpkin, which felt much more like a normal pumpkin should. I took it over to the sidewalk and


Sorry, couldn't resist.

It burst open, and about 50 small coins, mostly dimes and pennies, spilled out onto the ground. Hmm, not too bad, I guess. But I enjoyed smashing these pumpkins, so I picked up another one. I could feel and hear something rattling inside, so I wasn't surprised when I threw it on the ground and more coins came out. I repeated this cycle several times. I felt like Link smashing pots or something.


Thankfully, no awkward dress/skirt thing in my dream.

When I finally grew tired of this, I began to walk off and try to think of another TOTM, but I quickly woke up.

I forget what exactly the first part of the dream was about, it had to do with a trip on a bus, but I had a false awakening and I remember feeling really disoriented and I looked at my hands, and I had only three fingers on my right hand and I moved it around and saw it changing and I went lucid. Suddenly I was standing upright thinking about how I read in the maintaining lucidity section that I needed to spin around to hold on to it, but it didn't really seem to work. I felt like I was losing control of the dream and I realized that I probably had just enough time to quickly attempt the task of the month, so I looked around for a pumpkin and sure enough I suddenly found myself in my kitchen with a pumpkin in front of me that was already cut open.

I got excited because I was REALLY hoping I would be able to do the task of the month but I wasn't sure if I would be able to go lucid the way I usually do until this weekend, which is waking up and then sleeping in. I opened up the pumpkin and looked inside, and inside I saw cotton lining the pumpkin with tiny black dots, like black seeds in the cotton. I remember being really disappointed that the pumpkin was empty and that was when I lost lucidity.

In the next part of the dream, I remember being on the yard at my middle school and really not much else.

This has been happening to me alot recently, where I don't recall how I got lucid. I remember going through some WILD transitions (vibrations), but I don't recall it kicking over. So I probably went into a nonlucid and got lucid later, or semi lucid, just don't remember.

What I do remember (besides inhaling nachos, fajitas, fried lobster medallions, and margaritas last night), is that I thought "What was one of the TOTMs? Oh yeah, look inside a pumpkin!" I was already wandering around outside, so I thought to myself how I was able to summon things better with this new trick: instead of begging or hoping or wishing for a pumpkin to appear, I just said to myself, "I'm going to go check out that pumpkin that's behind that rock". Sure enough, there was a pumpkin. But it was cubic, and it rotted away when I touched it. (Funny, at Trios Grill where I had dinner last night, they had a few pumpkins and gords outside in the front, and I remember thinking one was rotten at first because it was one of those super bumpy ones.) "Ok, I'll try the one behind that other rock." It was a normal, large round pumpkin, which felt a little soft but not rotten. It was soft enough that I was able to pry off the top. It was filled with normal pumpkin guts and seeds. I was a little crestfallen, and I recall wishing there had been more to it.

Then suddenly, under the pumpkin guts in the center, a chunk of guts started vibrating, and making a rattlesnake tail noise. I pushed the guts to one side, and there was a bug there. Then I said in a Gollum voice "Oh! A BEASTY!!!" (I swear I'll record that, just how I said it in the dream lol.) It was a bug thata looked just like the one OmKAR linked to in irc the other day. It looked like a cricket with a super long butt thorn, and it crawled in this guy's ear. They had to use tweezers to pull it out of the guy's ear, and when they did, the critter tried to hold on to the guy's earlobe because ti didn't want to leave it's home. Anyway, then in the dream, I felt something buzzing and tickling in my left ear. I knew right away what it was. I reached up and could immediately feel a butt thorn. I pulled it out and flicked it away no problem. But then there was another, and another and another. 4 or 5 I don't remember. But it was enough for me to call a time out, because I knew exactly where that was gonna take me. To 50 continuous ear bugs and a one way ticket to Wake-up-ville. You guys know what I'm talking about. So I just just thought "Meh, it only tickles a little bit, I'll just ignore it." Which worked beautifully.

I decided to go flying. The pumpkins I found were near a lake, so I flew over the water, a few meter above it, trying to think of another task. Funny thing is, conquering water is on the list, and I'm flying over water, and it doesn't hit me lol. Which is just as well because humongous, mammoth sized dino-fish could be seen just beneath the surface. And when I say dinofish, I don't mean plesiosaur or some ancient shark.. I mean a giant T-Rex. With fins. Think of a T-Rex mermaid. And it could leap out the water like a killer shark. It couldn't get quite as high as me, but high enough where I could smack it in it's head and knock it back down in the water. Halp Yeah, even if I'd thought of the task, I wouldn't have put one pinky toe in THAT water.



I'm still lucid, and this thing jumping at me a few times made me think I want to wake up. But I also kinda don't. I looked up and saw a pretty, partially cloudy sky and thought of just flying higher. But that's another one of my dream phobias: flying up high, and fast and falling, or ending up in creepy outerspace or something. So there I was, trapped between 2 dream phobias. Then I woke up. This advanced task is gonna be tricky...

Then I had a fantastic nonlucid about a sexy teacher that I'll post later.

00:00 Thursday 2014-10-09

02:00 bedtime. EGADS MY BEDTIME IS BROKEN but I had to get some work investigations done.

Enough of this low recall, vague dream crap: I set strong bedtime intention despite late hour to remember dreams, have vivid dreams, wake up after dreams, and be lucid in dreams. Some awesome early vivid non-lucids, a hard-fought back to sleep victory, more vivid non-lucids, and got a TOTM DILD!

~ 08:00

I rolled over, realized I was awake, started thinking about recall but MAN my bladder is full and I'm lying right on top of it, I have to get up immediately to relieve it, trying to do recall while doing so before losing it. Got some more recall after lying back down to bed.

+(f) I'm Spock on Star Trek speaking with my clones, tearfully explaining that I'll sacrifice myself so that they may continue on (much more but forgot)

+ lying on the ground in a house, cutie (LW) walks by, I hope she'll get with me, she stops and sits down beside me, but someone else is there and nothing happens

+ we're trying to get the passenger jet airplane out of the building: there's no way it will fit through the door, but it morphs itself and collapses its wings as it moves through the doorway in order to fit, that's a pretty cool I think

+ I'm preparing for battle: I throw knives but mostly full sized swords at the wood wall, almost all of them stick in point first perfectly, I think about how many rotations they'll go through mid-air.

+ summary: flooded kitchen from bathroom above, run upstairs to investigate, Will Smith is naked in the bed, black girl "verifies his ID" by (kissing him?) a tiny Will Smith head in a pot chastises him and does a short rap rhythm.

I'm back in the kitchen (again?), this time I feel peeling wet plaster falling down on to me from the ceiling. I think I was in the kitchen before and felt drops of water, but now the ceiling is in really bad shape. I run out into the corridor and call to my friends that we must run upstairs to find the leak. Run upstairs, walking down a hallway with white walls, low lighting, I enter a bedroom to the right there is a little closet area and the path into the room sneaks around a corner, I think the guy who used to be in this room has moved out, leaving back in to the corridor I think I'd like to have this room because of the privacy, you can't see into the room directly from the corridor.

Back in the room again I notice someone lying in the bed: a black man, naked, I'm looking out the window it's fairly dark in the room and outside, I see we're on the 2nd or 3rd floor. The building across the way I see has a long pink thick/wide sturdy strap attached to the window also on the 2nd or 3rd floor, I think strangers use this to climb up into the rooms and squat there at night time. I see the same pink straps on this room's windows, the guy in bed must be also a squatter.

The guy in bed is Will Smith. He's now standing up next to me, facing a girl. There's a black girl there who will verify his ID, she (kisses him?) and is processing the information. While we're waiting for the result I notice that just beyond here is a bucket with several little tiny beings in it including a 1/4-sized Will Smith head, they are all performing the Men In Black post office beatbox:



At the end the girl approves Will Smith's ID, he was just standing there the whole time silent. His little mini-head in the bucket then tells him "Would it have KILLED you to start a CONVAAAHHSAASHUUUN!!??" (with the girl).

Long back to bed. Street noise, snoring wife, moving wife, I down count backwards doing relaxing breaths over and over again, sometimes from 20, sometimes from 10, freqently lose count, have lots of drowsiness to sink into, but my mind keeps staying active. Think about that slogan I saw on FB last night: "Attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure." Decide that I'm on a wonderful back-to-sleep adventure that will be rewarded with awesome dreams. It is hard work to fall asleep under these conditions but I will do it, I will keep relaxing until eventually fall asleep. Dreamlets form but fade when I "look at" them, a number of them. Stop trying to look! Remain passive, notice without engaging, do NOT TRY to sleep, you can't force a dream, just keep relaxing.... And I WIN! Eventually sleep, have some vivid dreams, and get lucid and do TOTM.

11:00

+ summnary: trying to figure out what's going on with the shelves in this refrigerator, notice a strange tube, get lucid, do pumpkin TOTM (open a pumpkin and describe the contents).

I'm standing with my face in an open refrigerator. The top shelf is not arranged properly, it's falling off/hanging on only one side (in waking during the day I adjusted the shelve on a kitchen rack of shelves that was mis-aligned and falling off, it's right next to the refrigerator), I try to adjust it to hang it properly and horizontally, but in doing so I think maybe someone put it like this so that the tall milk bottles would be able to stand up straight on the shelve below? I close the door and the fridge is like in two sections, the top not aligned with the bottom. I see on the wall/top section hinge a small tube emerging, and a draft of cold air (and some water dripping?) is blowing out of the tube. Why is that, is it a pressure release? The cold air is coming out, will the fridge lose its cold because of this?

I'm now standing outside in daytime on a fairly steep sloping path between (widely spaced) houses but still thinking about that odd tube descending out of the refrigerator I was just observing, I've never seen anything like it before. Wait, odd thing I've never seen before? DREAM! Nose pinch confirms. I walk up the hill towards the street, immediately think of TOTM/pumpkin task [I love when goal memory comes easily]. I turn to the left at the sidewalk and go up onto the porch of a house, thinking "It is Halloween, there will be a pumpkin here." Sure enough I find a pale white/green typical jack-o-lanter-sized gourde on the porch. I reach down and imagine that it's top is already cut. I pinch the dry stem at the top with the fingers of my left hand, noticing the sensation of touching it is entirely waking-like. It lifts off easily. Oops! Below it there is another pumpkin top, this one traditional orange. Is this going to be a trick dream pumpkin trolling me with endless series of tops? No, I lift the orange one away and see the interior: no pumpkin goop, it's packed with colorful transparent packages of goodies (cookies?) I'm closely looking to be able to describe very clearly the contents, the package on top is drawn with an illustration that I think looks a lot like Charles Shultz style (peanuts), then the dream fades (either wake up or non-lucid transition, I had 2 more quite vivid non-lucid dreams after that).

+ invited to a friend's place for an event, it's awkward because I don't know anyone there, he's not there apparently, I'm walking from the living room through the kitchen area to the dining room, in the dining room the table is full of platters of cookies (I eat some?), move back to the living room, (on the way I glance into the kitchen, there's nobody there, where's my friend anyway?), some middle-aged guys (white hair and white beards some of them) are sitting on the living room floor drinking beer, some in the middle of the room facing the wall where some other people are sitting (on a couch?). I step into the middle of the living room there's a previously-played monopoly board next to them on the floor, I see it is covered with paper play money, cards, and game pieces, like the game was finished and just left there.

I'm sitting in a room down a hallway from the friend's apartment (above), a guy comes in and I said I was previously in the other apartment. I'm showing him a game I'm playing on a PC, I see the game on the screen then I'm inside the game, trying to equip weapon/armor from the confusing pop-up controls, there's a fight? Swinging a weapon? I'm back outside and choose "enter this place" (there's a choice of about 3 places to enter: left, middle right) to explore instead of going back to the fight, it's like a kitchen with hundreds of "inspect this" signs on objects everywhere.

+ In sons's room, (the cat?) spills a bottle on his important schoolwork on the floor. I'm looking at the bottle and it's empty, but as I watch I see liquid starts welling out from somewhere under my sons papers, I keep looking and see another bottle lying on its side that has some liquid in it, I tell him to pick his work up before it's ruined.

Ritual: Second try with the vibrating timer, successful but strange experience. This time it seemed to work not so much from going off (in fact I doubt it ever did), but because my anticipation of the trigger kept my mind alert during the process of falling asleep—to the point where I thought I was still awake long after I had evidently slipped into dream.

It's becoming apparent that anticipation can serve the same function as motivation. Actually my motivation was relatively low, for the same reason as last time: it is the busiest part of my work week and I realized that I wasn't sure I wanted to have to spend a long time writing up my dream report if successful. I went to bed a little after 12:30am, and woke up naturally around 5:40. (I checked the clock but can't recall the precise time, I think it was somewhere between 5:37 and 5:43.) I decided it was too late to do full WBTB and recognized my lack of motivation, so I just shoved the MotivAider in my pillow and went back to bed with no further technique, letting things take their own course.

Although normally I would fall back asleep in seconds or minutes at most after such a brief WBTB, I noticed that now I was oddly wakeful... it seemed like just waiting for the device to go off, even though it was set so that it wouldn't trigger initially until 45 minutes had passed, was keeping me awake. After a few minutes trying to get comfortable I grabbed the sleep mask from my bedside table because I knew the sun would come up soon. I then spent a very long time trying to get back to sleep... or so I thought. In retrospect it is apparent that for much of this period I was experiencing that obscure counterpart of a false awakening, a "false falling asleep" (FFA).

FFA: I think I must have actually fallen asleep very quickly, since a lot of the things I experienced while I thought I was trying to fall asleep turn out to be have been things I dreamed. For instance, at one point I was convinced that I was lying in bed with my body rotated in the opposite direction, my head facing the foot of the bed, but then I fixed this without really moving my limbs... a maneuver that would have been impossible to do physically.

Eventually I decided that I ought to have a back-up EILD method so I tried to program my sleeping mask. I reached up and pried apart the velcro near the top to flick the "on" switch, remembering to hold it down four seconds to enter "nap mode." I couldn't tell if I saw the indicator lights or not... I thought I did, but the impression was vague. Did I have the brightness set too low? Oh well, I don't remember how to change it. I'll just turn it off and turn it back on again to be sure. Hmm, same thing, the lights are vague... I'm not sure if I'm really seeing them or just imagining it. And then I realize... hang on... I'm not even wearing the Remee, this is just an ordinary cloth sleep mask! So I tried to correct the situation by putting my Remee on under the regular mask... and I really thought I had done this until, while writing this report, I began to have doubts and went to check. Sure enough, the Remee hasn't been touched all night! At least I can verify that I was wearing the ordinary mask, since that one has been moved and is now lying on my bedstand where I must have left it after waking up.

At another point in the FFA I even felt the MotivAider finally go off. The vibrations felt lengthened and distorted again. I ignored them since I thought I was still awake, and hoped I would be asleep by the time it went off next. In retrospect I realize I must have dreamed even this, because the MotivAider could not have gone off until 45 minutes had passed (even on random mode it initially counts down the full maximum set interval), and I got up to start writing this report at 6:14am, less than 45 minutes after going back to bed around 5:40... so it is very unlikely that it actually went off in that whole period!

I was getting annoyed with how long it was taking (or so I thought) to fall asleep, and eventually in my impatience I decided to just start "practicing" WILD separations in my imagination. I tried to envision an almost physical pull on my dream body that would tug it up from the lying position into a standing one, and after each repetition of this I imagined myself landing with both feet on the bed with the flourish of a gymnast who has just finished an acrobatic move. It felt at first like I was only visualizing this rather than experiencing it: as though I were just going through the motions, practicing for when I got closer to falling asleep... but before long the sense of immersion set in, and I realized that I was already in a light WILD state. I was surprised that I had been able to move so easily from full wakefulness to full REM, still unaware that I had evidently already been dreaming for quite some time already!

WILD: Since I was under the impression that I had only just transitioned into a dream state, my initial goal was just to improve immersion and stabilization, so without trying to do any tasks at first I simply wandered through the house. I soon half-woke and had to separate again. I used the same visualization as before "pulling myself up" from lying down to standing up, but it went more smoothly and easily this time. Once again I landed like a gymnast, but this time rather than landing on the bed I vaulted right out of it and onto the bedroom floor.

By this time I felt immersed enough to start working on tasks. One of the TOTMs is to dress in a costume, and I had decided in advance that I wanted to dress like a witch, so I went to the "costume closet" where I keep my clothes that are too dressy or impractical for everyday use. At first I was surprised to see (so I thought) nothing but the clothes that are there in waking life. I must have been a bit confused, because although in WL the closet contains plenty of gothy-looking wraps and dresses entirely suitable for a witch costume, the only thing I thought to grab at the time was a small halter top of some colorful iridescent material. I didn't put it on yet, since my priority was to find a mask.

The closet actually contains a box of masks on the upper shelf, but in the dream I "remembered" that I had a brown paper bag of them on the floor, so I went through it until I found a witch mask... or was it? Looking at it again, I thought it actually looked more like a Darth Vader mask that someone had clumsily tried to convert into a witch face with dabs of green paint. But then I "remembered" using it as a witch mask before, so I figured it would be adequate.

Next I needed the pointy hat. I must have one around here somewhere... I dug through the closet, but couldn't find one of the right shape. Nevermind, I can make one! I pulled out a fedora made of black leather, and started trying to pull the top to make it longer and more pointy. At first the material was resistant but I put some focus into the act and soon was able to mold the hat into a proper Halloween-style witch hat, and put it on my head. The fact that it was made of black leather made me feel extra stylish. I paused at the door of the room and wondered if I needed to change my clothes as well, but when I looked down I saw that I was wearing a long black dress that already looked witchy enough, so I never had to put on that stupid halter top!

After walking back out to the kitchen, I remembered to check my reflection in the mirror (in a spot where there is no mirror in WL). It wasn't bad! I looked like that classic witch from the Wizard of Oz: green face, hooked nose, tall hat. The mask was looking much less Vader-like now, and at this point I noticed that there was even an inscription on it (entirely legible in the mirror rather than inverted by the reflection) that gave the title "Witch," and was signed either "Robert" or "Richard." I assumed the name must be that of the local artist who made the mask, and was reassured by the title that it had been intended as a witch mask after all.

When people were contributing suggestions for the October TOTMs, I had really liked the one about flying on a broomstick to a witches' gathering, so this was something I had planned to do once I got in costume. But now I wasn't sure. Maybe it would be fun to work on my lucid dare instead, and go startle some elves with my witch costume! I felt indecisive. And in either case I'll have to leave the house, so which door should I use? I've let myself get into the bad habit of being paranoid that leaving the house might destabilize the dream, so I wondered if leaving by a door I don't often use would help bypass this impression. I know that this worry is a wholly self-imposed obstacle—and moreover that it is not supported by the evidence—yet I also know that even letting myself worry about destabilization can have a destabilizing effect!

While I'm standing there trying to make up my mind, I notice that the scenery outside the kitchen door has already begun to change. Replacing the back patio is now a beautiful summer forest, with green leaves, mossy trunks and a clear limpid pool of water on the ground, like a natural spring. The water is only a few inches deep and appears completely transparent and pure. The scene is so lovely that I immediately let go of my pointless worries and go outside to enjoy it, kneeling in the water and running my hands through it, lifting it in my palms and letting it splash back into the pool. I find myself wondering if these surroundings will transform my costume from that of an ugly old green witch into a young beautiful forest witch. And what do we mean by "witch," anyway? I start pondering the question: aren't those two archetypes (ugly old witch and young beautiful witch) from the same tradition? Don't they both imply a woman with an unusually strong connection to the natural world?

I still haven't decided if I want to look for a witch gathering or an elven gathering in this forest, as I think both could conceivably be taking place here. Would the elves resent my presence if I'm still a Halloween-style witch? But if this pool has transformed me into a beautiful forest witch, maybe I would blend right in. (I regret now that it never occurred to me to check my reflection again in the pool! Though I still had the impression that I was wearing the same black dress.)

Once again the dream distracted me from my thoughts, this time by the sound of a voice singing. It was an attractive male voice, a low tenor, drifting from somewhere up above. The pool where I knelt was at the foot of a rocky ledge, at least ten feet high, and it seemed like the main part of the forest was up there. I flew up (I can't recall if I used a broomstick or just levitated as usual) to see if I could locate the singer. I followed the voice and soon found myself in a green mossy glade. I could not see anyone but I could hear the voice distinctly, so I took note of the words:

On the new sensation lying within,
One can ride a stream of water, straight and thin.

There was another half line of verse after this but on waking it faded before I could record it. I think it had something to do with the feeling or awareness produced by the "new sensation" mentioned in the first line. I woke up before I could listen to any more of the song or continue to look for the singer.

Note: It was still very early after I finished writing all my notes, so I went back to bed. I had some NLDs and at one point as I was starting to wake up from one I found myself thinking about the song again. At this time I got the impression that the missing line might have been: And so a new feeling is won. Of course there's no way to confirm if that's what it was originally, but it's the best I've got to go on!

07.10.2014

Carving pumpkins, playing made up instruments, fighting a dragon, visiting the zoo and finding Dreamer after several secret theaters (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

This is probably one of the longest lucids in my life (well, I cannot remember when I was a children, but as a grown up probably it is, plus I made so many challenges tonight that I can feel them vanishing from my memories, so I got into my PC, giving up my last hour to sleep to write this whole thing down. I have been through a minor dry spell of lucids and good recall as I had some very busy days. Yesyterday, Monday the 6th of October 2014 I had the day starting pretty bad, but it had a great ending and I felt today was gonna be a good day, so I wanted to start the day awesomely with a nice lucid. I woke up at 5am and I had memories of a dream (now, with this mega-dream is totally forgotten) and I felt too tired to write it down. I went to the bathroom and then it was very hard for me to fall back asleep (this is not normal, I usually fall asleep fast.) I layed on my back to meditate (since I could not sleep) and I ended up falling asleep. I believe this lucid might have lasted about 1h 30 minutes, as I woke up from it at 7am.

I do not even recall very well the non lucid part with this dream. I have vague memories of being with a friend, who was male and I believe we either were going to meditate or we were going to look for our wives. It was afternoon and it was sunny. We were in a park somewhere and we were about to go to an apartment and have a couple drinks, I believe until our wives met with us. As we were talking, I told him that I felt weird like if I was in a dream, like I did not feel awake. He started to laugh and I rose my hands.

I had six fingers on each hand and no thumbs. Where the thumb was supposed to be I had a very long finger (over than one feet long) and told him, "See! I am dreaming!" I right away started to fly away from him. The dream quality was very high and I realized I was in the suburbs of some town. It was day and the air felt very clean. There was not a single cloud on the sky and I felt happy to have broken the dry spell I had. I immediately recalled I needed to get the ToTM done and so I would collect my wings, and then, I planned to get as many dares as I could also, I wanted to break my record.

I recalled the first one opening a pumpkin and finding what was inside (which ended up being one of the tasks) so I saw a big house with a massive backyard (it was about 30 yards wide) and a lot of pumpkins (also pretty big.) So I floated and landed in the garden. I glided towards the pumpkins and pulled a carving knife out from my pocket (lucky me!)







The pumpkin looked better than this, pretty much perfect and it was standing. As I approached it and carved the top of it, it was loaded with sour strips, different sour candy, some chewing gum and I believe I saw a mithrill vest from the lord of the rings. Even though I saw that, I felt that opening the pumpkin was good enough and wanted to get done other tasks (I did not remember that trying on a costume was another ToTM.) I heard some voices approaching at me and I figured I could do another ToTM, which it was doing trick or treat to the people living in that house (which ended up not being one of the ToTM.) So, I glided silently behind one old woman that was looking where the noise came from and I roared like a vampire. I believe I might had even vamp teeth as she freaked out for a few seconds, but then I announced "Trick or treat!" as I landed again on the ground. The lady started to laugh and to look at me with a smile and she started walking to her house. I followed her, now walking, to collect my treat. There was also an old man at the house asking what was going on.

As she collected the treats (some similar candies as I found inside the pumpkin earlier) I was able to spot a goblet sitting on an altar with two candles:







I figured it would have blood and I would accomplish one of the Advanced tasks of the month (which ended up being another basic task.) I found funny that my dream put that inside this house and if I would not be lucid, I would find these old couple to be very weird, lol. So I just entered the house, and I believe that this old couple was outside, they were okay with me entering the house. I approached at the Goblet and looked inside. Yep, it was blood indeed and I found also some blood over the altar. I just took a sip and it tasted pretty much like blood taste. I did not feel any effects and I was glad about it, but since it was another ToTM I went ahead and celebrated I succeeded at it.

From here, I recalled that I needed to confront my greatest fear through summoning a boggart. I did not feel like doing this, for some reason I felt this could threaten my dream and provide premature awakening, so I passed on this. Since I felt I did accomplish already one advanced task, I was happy (lucky me I completed the bonus, or I would be wearing only one pair of wings...) and I focused on the last ToTM. I recalled it was a bonus tasks to play a made up instrument that does not exist in waking life. I saw laying on the ground like a large semi-transparent stick, made out of plastic. I grabbed it and pretended it was a flute, but the noise it made it was like when you try to blow air through a stick! I figured that was way too lame for a bonus task and I could do better, so I went ahead to the old man and asking him, "Can you please show me an instrument that does not exist in waking life, please?" He smiled and said, sure thing!

He walked me towards the front deck of the house where he had a small portable kitchen. He turned on the fire and placed a brass bowl on the fire, filling it up with water. From here, he got some of these lab tubs and placed them inside the bowl.







All the tubes were standing (despite they were placed in a bowl) and the tubes had different heights. Suddenly, after a small while, vapor started to come out from the tubes, but some tubes would release a denser vapor than others and all these had different tones of white and gray. The old man told me to start blowing through one of the handles on the brass bowl. I figured I would not burn myself. As I started blowing, I could hear some music, but it was a mix of the noises that a boat makes (just not as loud) plus the noise from a harmonica and then I believe from a bag pipe. It was some instrument alright, weird indeed but I was able to pull it off!!

I still had a huge quality of the dream, so I wanted to get some dares also and hit the jackpot. First of all, I wanted to get an easy one done, since I did it on the past, so I went ahead and laid down in bed to WILD within a lucid dream in order to accomplish (Induce a dream within a dream, Inception style (Maxis) ) As I laid down, I felt the dream fading fast, but I focused in just going into a deeper layer of a lucid dream, which I successfully did. I heard some nature sounds but I had no vision, so I demanded for vision. After a while, it came back successfully completing one dare. With this dare done, I recalled that I wanted to look for the blue room that I visited back in 2011 with Dreamer. (Revisit the blue room where you first met me in your dream (early 2011.) Get me to show you how I draw portals with my finger, then jump through with me and see where it takes us! (Dreamer) ) So I started to look for a way to do this, I noticed I was with my wife and she was acting like hypnotized, she was pretty much motionless and not talking. So I told her to wake up and give me some conversation. We were now in downtown, probably appeared there after from inducing a dream within a dream, so I started to look for a portal or maybe attempt to make one and see where it took me. I heard people crying and screaming and I saw a huge red dragon:







I also recalled that I had to defeat a dragon for one of the anyone lucid dares (which ended up not being one neither) so I glided to the dragon and landed in front of me. He appeared to call down for some reason. I had no clue how was I going to defeat the dragon, so I hopped I had kinetic powers in my dream. I just pointed at him with the palm of my hands and he crashed in another building, roaring in pain and falling to the ground. From there, I believe it either vanished or turned into ashes... some dragon that was... what a disappointment!

I told my wife that the dragon was lame and that I wanted to visit the zoo (Visit a zoo and describe the kinds of animals you come across. (That should be easy but I'm hoping you stumble across interesting or new species ~ NyxCC) I started to walk around downtown and got inside a shopping mall, as for some reason, I felt that I could find a zoo in there. The shopping mall was deserted and there were no people around. I saw a small white building that had a big panel on the top of it that was decorated like if it was a rainforest and I hopped for it to be a zoo. Tough luck, it was not. It was a pet food store that had the appearance of a zoo in order to attract customers. So big bum!

I floated high as I figured I could see the zoo from the high and just fly to it. I found no zoo and I realize this whole downtown was just an island. I also saw that the waves were extremely strong, hitting the beaches entirely and creating small Tsunamis. I felt that something was very wrong with this island and felt I was loosing control of my dream. I saw the waves getting bigger until a massive wave covered my head to the point of seeing the light of the sun to vanish. A few seconds later, I saw all darkness and I could hear some noises of people, but did not see a thing. I also felt my body in bed and I knew I was on the verge of waking up. I started to focus on the dream itself and focus on the sound that people was making in order to anchor back in the dream. I then tried very hard to open my eyes, monitoring if the sounds vanished or got louder (waking vs going deeper in the dream) and I started to see day light, so I was happy as I was still dreaming.

I was standing in the middle of the road and right behind me, there was a white bus, which was parked. I had a good feeling and I walked behind the bus to find this:



I was like, "Awesomeness." That tile wave ported me there. I entered the zoo and recalled I would have no problems at all since it was free (it is the Chicago one that is free, I mixed both) I saw some people monitoring the entrance and we needed to walk through a small machine with a ton of LED lights and a small monochrome screen. I could see a lot of data being stored in there, including my weight and psychic gifts. I figured that since it was free, we were going to get spammed big time on our e-mails at a later time.

The zoo here was indoors and I found mainly lizards. But these lizards looked weird, as they were purple and they had several legs. I also noticed some hens walking around where other people was and I could spot feathers and poop on the floor. There were a lot of people selling stuff and trying to get my attention, but I just keep focusing on the zoo to finish my task properly. I also saw a sheep, but instead of its white fuzzy appearance, it had the skin of an elephant. What a twisted blend my mind was making. I felt that was good enough of a zoo visit (I am not a huge fan of zoos in waking life, but this dream was fun and worth it, thanks for the dare!) so I really wanted to get to meet dreamer and that would accomplish all my current personal dares also.

I wanted to teleport but I was not successful, so I figured I would look for some aid to be able to do this. I started to look for the color blue, and to find a blue room. I found a somewhat blue room so I entered it hopping it would be the room. But it was not, it was a movie theater. They were showing a movie, I believe it was the Fantastic Four, but I did not get distracted. I heard a noise coming from one of the walls. On the walls, I could see different pictures, all art and I found a huge Mona Lisa:







But it was a bit distorted and the vividness of the paint was way more vivid than the real thing. I recalled this was another dare (Jump inside a picture of your choice, what happens? (Hukif) ) So I got excited as I was accomplishing another dare more. I just jump into it and hopped to find the blue world behind this paint. But instead, I have found another theater. I saw a small board that said, "A Secret Theater." I found that mysterious and funny. There were some people watching a different movie. I believe it was either a classic black and white movie or a documentary. But I did not want to focus on that so I kept exploring this room.

On the same corner where the Mona Lisa was on the previous room I saw a small hole on the wall and like someone crossing it. You had to crawl to go through. I started to get more excited and I crossed this hole. I saw some stairs, but these were broken and it was impossible to cross, but since I was dreaming, I just glided through the stairs and walked through a door to reach... yes, you guessed, another theater... and another board that said, "An even more secret theater." There were also people inside, but the people here looked in pretty bad shape, like if they were sitting there for hours or even days, as they were dirty also. I was already getting tired of this theaters, but once again, I saw an even more tiny hole on the whole, and I somehow shrunk myself to go throught it.

I got into a futuristic room, said room had like futuristic tubes that were elevators. I wondered what was going on and that I really wanted to find dreamer. I also found another board here that said, "Magic proof elevators." I was a bit worried that my dream control would not work here for some reason and I figured I could not go further. But a voice said, "You are in the elevator and you will be trapped here." I tried to break free without being successful and the voice announced me that I was going to be tossed in the huge can pools and I had to stay there. I saw four cans on the ground, but these cans were each like a 20 story building, they were massive as I could see hundreds of people swimming on each of them.

Also, the entire room was blue, including the cans and there were blue crystals on the walls and there was a blue mist around. I was tossed in a can with only four-five people. I tried to fly away to look for dreamer but I was not able to do so. I felt bummed as I figured that on the can right in front of us, I would find her because it was loaded with people. While I was looking around, I heard a sweet voice saying, "Percy?" As I looked back, I realized it was Dreamer however, she did not look at all like she is on waking life, she had brown here, blue eyes and two pony tails. She also had very cheeky chicks and was smiling. She wore a brown and green swimsuit. She had a lot of curves and she approached at me. Dreamer told me, "I am glad you finally came." She looked into my eyes and hugged me, giving me a sweet kiss. I felt happy I finally accomplished this one, but my subconscious ended the task for me because Dreamer said, let's open a portal now. I figured it would not work as we were in a magic-proof place (my lucidity was fading fast) Dreamer rose her hand and a small vortex appeared on the edge of the can we were swimming at:







She grabbed my hand and said, "Lets go together through it." As we traveled through it, I reached the crystal cave where I first met with her and she gave me another hug and said she was very happy. I started to look around the cave but suddenly, it became very bright until I woke up.

I woke up from a dream, looked around and saw that it was dark. I noticed two cats sitting close to me on my bed.
"I need a cup of dolphin blood," I said.
"Stick out your finger and a dolphin will appear," one of the cats replied.
"I know that," I thought. I stuck out my finger behind my back. I felt the dolphins beak and turned around. It was right in my face. "I need a cup of dolphin blood," I said.
"Okay! Follow me!" the dolphin said in an upbeat, squeaky voice. It went into one of the other bedrooms and came out a couple of seconds later holding a big 24 ounce glass of dolphin blood which the dolphin gave me. It looked convincing enough, a little bit frothy and viscous and I could see blood sticking on the empty part of the glass. I quickly took a couple of big gulps. I was disappointed to find it didn't taste anything but I did get a strange sensation that I was starting to transform into a dolphin like I had hoped. I woke up, probably from my excitement.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #243: Silent Lucidity

I’m hanging out with Dreamer in a carpeted den and we’re talking excitedly about how a group of us (Dreamer, Jenkees, anotherdreamer, and I) made audio recordings that make us sound like complete idiots. (This is a true waking life memory! I recorded myself using a special audio trick that Dreamer found which made me sound like a complete idiot. The others made their recordings overnight and Dreamer skyped me about this during WBTB.)

Nearby there’s a statue of a tall, naked, muscular woman striding forward while extending her arm toward the sky. The woman is wearing a basket across her lower back and there are three towel-like bundles in the basket. Dreamer tells me that these bundles are the “idiot” voice recordings and that they’ll be ready soon. Dreamer and I lay on the carpeted floor maybe ten feet apart, facing each other and propped up on an elbow. We talk for a while about various things, mostly related to dreaming. I consider the idea that I’m dreaming right now and yes, this is a dream!

I tell Dreamer that all of this is a dream and she smiles, calmly agreeing. We talk a little about the voice recordings, and then I tell her that I can’t remember my goals right now, but I’m content to just chat for a while. She asks me why I’m not wearing my SleepPhones to bed and I tell her that those are fleece and it still doesn’t feel cold enough. I tell her, “And you only know about the SleepPhones because this is a dream!” (Meaning that she knows I'm not wearing them.) She laughs.

I remember that I had a goal of facing a fear. Dreamer and I had recently discussed how we’re both very fearful about awkward silences with friends. I allow the conversation to pause. Dreamer seems to understand what I’m doing and her eyes flick once nervously to the left before locking back on to mine for good. I feel a sharp flutter of panic at first and I’m tempted to blah-blah-blah the moment away, but I resist it and maintain our eye contact. My hands knead the carpet to help keep the dream stable. After I’m past the initial fear, my mantra “Look for the dream” returns to me. Dreamer’s mouth turns up in a half smile as my fear gives way to calm.

After a while, I say, “[Jenkees] must be here, right? I really want to meet him!” Dreamer grins at this idea and agrees. We both stand up and I gesture toward the adjacent hallway, saying, “Ah look, [Jenkees] is even here right now!” A rather doughy, pasty guy who looks nothing like Jenkees walks through the door and joins us in the den.

I notice that he’s way too short. “[Jenkees], you’re supposed to be so much taller than this!” The guy smiles sheepishly and starts shrinking even more until he’s only waist height.

Dreamer and I laugh at how badly I’ve botched this summon. “Sorry, [Jenkees],” I say. “I’ll do better with this next time!”

Dreamer and I try to talk a bit more about dream goals, but it isn’t long before the dream ends.

Ritual: WTB 1am, woke 4:45am. Read, drank spice lassi, 7 minutes SSILD meditation, WBTB 6am. Relaxation, counting, mantra, took probably 30–45 minutes to fall fully asleep. Woke 7:30am with dreams.

Alchemy: 400mg L-Theanine, 400mg Alpha-GPC 50%, 750mg Aniracetam, taken at end of WBTB.

Notes: Two days ago I was buying ice cream in RL, and it occurred to me that I should use this as a motivator. "You can't eat any of this ice cream until you have a lucid dream!" I told myself sternly. Then last night I was thinking of eating something else for dessert, and I decided to be even more strict: "In fact, no dessert for you at all until you get lucid!" Given everything else that went into my attempt, including excitement about the brand new TOTMs, I can't estimate to what extent this reward-based strategy was a factor in the successful outcome, but it's worth experimenting with some more. Either I'll have more LDs or I'll eat fewer sweets, so it's a win-win either way!

I've been working on my mantra, and I'm currently going with variants of "Do we perceive the dream?" When going to sleep while counting I was thinking this on the off-counts, and as the hypnagogic state started to set in, at one point I noticed myself thinking: "Do we believe the skies?" ("Skies" as in the sporting equipment, so the rhyme was preserved.) This was so absurd I had to rouse myself and write it on my notepad!

By the time I started dreaming, it seemed as though there was a degree of dream-awareness from the start of the sequence, but I don't think it blossomed into full lucidity (with agency) until I remembered my tasks. There was no specific "moment of realization," and yet overall the dream felt much more like a DILD than a WILD, so I'm calling it a DILD.

DILD: I was standing in a narrow lane, enclosed on both sides by walls and buildings, in a residential area. A woman came out from a nearby house and walked past me, carrying a cat. Two other cats were running after her anxiously, so although their size suggested that they were almost fully grown, I intuited that the they must be the kittens of the cat she was carrying. The cat in her arms had wonderful markings, almost like tiger stripes. One of the ones that followed had a similar coat, a cross between tiger stripes and a Bengal's spots. A few minutes later a third cat came along, also striped.

I was so taken with looking at the cats that I didn't want to get too far behind, so I followed them and called the young boys that were with me to keep up. One of them was pushing an empty wheelbarrow but soon left off and went to chase after his friend, who had now gone ahead of me. I picked up the wheelbarrow and pushed it along for awhile, but it was of very primitive construction, all wood, even the wheel was just a disk of solid wood, so it was cumbersome. I wondered why I even needed it. I had noticed that one of the other boys who had gone ahead was giving his friend a ride in another wheelbarrow, and figured if I kept pushing mine, one of the boys would likewise ask me if they could ride in it, which would make it even more cumbersome. So I put it down and continued along the path.

There was a barn to the left, with an open door, and I decided to turn aside and explore it. This meant there would be no way of catching up with the others, but I didn't feel much urgency to do that anymore. The barn was full of old objects, and seemed to be used as storage of some kind. I remembered the TOTM and reasoned that in a rustic place like this it should be easy to find a pumpkin, so I started looking around for one. I climbed a ladder to a ledge which was serving as a shelf for additional objects, and was pleased to find that one of them was a large pumpkin. Everything else was covered with dust, which made me wonder how long the pumpkin had been sitting here. It was probably this concern that made me notice that the pumpkin was looking a bit sagging and rotten, but I recalled that the TOTM instructions didn't specify anything about the condition of the pumpkin, so I figured that it would still work!

Before I could reach for it, I noticed that it wasn't the only pumpkin: now I saw that there were three more on the shelf within arm's reach, all of them of slightly different hues and shapes. I was glad there was an alternative to reaching into the rotten pumpkin, so I grabbed the one whose appearance I found the most interesting: it was small, squat, and had a faintly bluish tinge. I figured I would start with this one, and if I didn't like the results, I had three more to work with.

Part of me wanted to just punch my fist into the pumpkin, which would have been faster but less elegant, so I forced myself to take my time and cut it open properly. I produced a knife from somewhere, without really thinking about it, and began sawing a circle around the stem, just as if I were going to begin carving a jack-o-lantern. When I completed the circle I lifted up the top section, revealing the interior of the pumpkin, and reached inside. The pumpkin was small enough that my hand barely fit, and I was groping around in the stringy goop and slimy seeds trying to find something else in there, hoping to encounter something interesting and unanticipated. All I felt were the pumpkin's ordinary innards, though.

Initially I had left my anticipations open-ended, but now that the dream was coming up empty-handed I tried to seed them with some expectations. Although it was a small pumpkin, there would be plenty of room for a ring. Might there be a ring inside? I squished all the pumpkin innards around in my hand to make sure I wasn't missing anything, but there was nothing there, nothing that wouldn't ordinarily be found in a pumpkin. The only distinguishing feature was that the stringy goop and slimy seeds, despite their very naturalistic texture, had the same bluish tinge as the pumpkin's skin. (I think this might have been day-residue, as last night I had been reading an Amazon review of a set of mala beads beads made in China that complained how the wood had soon developed a weird bluish cast.)

At that point I decided to give up on the little blue pumpkin and get started on the other three, but inconveniently I woke up. I considered getting up and writing my report, but felt that I was still in a state where it would be possible to DEILD, so I fixed the previous events in mind and let myself drift back into dream.

DEILD: This time I found myself in a place I recognized: it was the house of my maternal grandmother that I often visited as a young kid. It is a place that often shows up in my dreams. On this occasion, the theme of "blue" seemed to carry over from the last dream, as I noticed that the house now had a beautiful deep blue carpet that looked brand new. "Nice new carpet!" I said loudly, in case anyone was home. My grandmother is long dead but in waking life my uncle lives there now. In the dream, however, the house seemed quiet and empty, and no one responded to my complement.

I felt very lucid and clear, more so than in the beginning of the last dream, and remembered my standing intention to reflect on my bodily awareness. Sure enough, I could feel the characteristic tingles in my abdomen and especially in my legs that I associate with dreaming. (My hypothesis is that this "tingling" is a product of REM atonia.) I also associate this sensation with the ability to fly in dreams, so I experimentally levitated a bit, and then tried to implant the mental suggestion to be more aware of this body state while dreaming, with the aim of getting lucid more often.

Returning my attention to the environment, I wondered what task I could try next. I had been interested in the other basic task, drinking blood, but I didn't want to have to go all vampire on anyone who I might happen to encounter in this house, given that this was a place where my own relatives lived. "Perhaps if I look in the refrigerator, there'll be a cup of blood in there," I figured. It seemed a reasonable speculation, but after opening the fridge (which at the time I didn't notice was on the opposite side of the room than it is in RL), I didn't see any likely candidates. What would a cup of blood even look like? And would it still count for the task if it came from the fridge? The instructions didn't specify a source. But the idea of drinking a cup of refrigerated blood was not appealing to me, so I thought I should save this task for a more suitable occasion. I much preferred the idea of drinking it vampire-style, especially if I could get the bonus by drinking it from a supernatural creature.

Closing the fridge, I wondered what other tasks might be suitable for this environment. I remembered my lucid dare, and that struck me as a perfect idea: when I was little I always used to walk and play in the forest behind this house, so it was the perfect "enchanted" forest in which to go looking for elves. I continued walking through the house and went out the back door.

The world that greeted me once I stepped outside was startling in its freshness. The colors were deep and rich and luminous, more so than I usually see in dreams, and I was struck by the beauty of my surroundings. There were some distinct differences from RL: in the far distance I could residential areas covered in mist, as though I were looking at a town from the summit of a tall hill. The forest I hoped to find was present, but quite a bit further away than I would have expected. And walking across the grass of the wide lawn that lay before the forest was... a minotaur? I looked again. No, not quite a minotaur... it had the same general lineaments, but the head was that of a horse rather than a bull. Nevertheless, the creature was clearly supernatural, and it reminded me of the blood task again. I didn't want to miss this opportunity, since it was walking right toward me, so I approached the creature.

I didn't want to just grab the monster and start biting him, since he would surely conclude that I was attacking him and fight back, which could be counter-productive. So I went up to him and asked politely, "Sir, would you mind if I drank some of your blood? I only need a cup." He was at least seven feet tall and surely had plenty of blood to spare, so I didn't see any reason he should refuse. To my consternation, he seemed unsettled by my request and tried to demur. But I didn't want to pass up this opportunity, and figured that I had already met the demands of good sportsmanship by clarifying my intentions, so I grabbed his left arm (I was facing him, so it was the arm to my right), extended my fangs, bit him right in the crook of his elbow, and began to drink. Although he was tense and rigid, he didn't fight back, and I concluded that he must be experiencing that peculiar pleasure that the prey of vampires are often said to feel while being fed upon.

I paused to look up, gauging the creature's reaction, and was surprised to see that his appearance had changed. His head was thrown back, his eyes closed, but it was the head of an ordinary man now, no longer that of a horse. The task was to drink from a supernatural creature and see how it changed me, but it turned out he was the one that was transforming! I returned to drinking his blood before he could recover his wits and fight me off. However, the blood wasn't coming very quickly. Either I had picked a bad spot where the blood couldn't flow freely or he was still resisting me in some way, perhaps stifling its flow through the tension in his arm, which was still very stiff. I woke up before I had finished drinking, and promptly concluded that I didn't think I hadn't drunk a whole cup's worth, if we're measuring technically by eight ounces. However, it turns out that it is hard to estimate the quantity of blood you're drinking when you're getting it right from someone's arm!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #242: The Return of the Rabbit

I’m riding in the back of a Suburban with several of my business partners. “PM” is the man behind the wheel and we’re driving slowly around a dirt loop, listening to the soundtrack from the video game that we’re working on. The music for our battle scene concludes and breaks into a slower section.

There’s a new part, a soft solo of a guitar-like stringed instrument that I’ve never heard before. It's beautiful! PM turns back to say, “I thought this part sounded fucking badass.” I enthusiastically agree that the new music sounds “all badass”. PM’s driving very erratically but not very concerned about it. I become semi-lucid, noting that this is probably a dream. I start laughing when he plows right over a stop sign and now I’m sure that this is a dream. PM is laughing too, and stops the car.

We all get out and there are several of the guys here, PM, “Leroy”, and probably “Z” as well as maybe more. I put my hand on PM’s upper back/shoulder and kind of massage it, wanting to stay really connected to the dream. “Hey man,” I say, “this is a lucid dream. This is the first time that you've been in one of these with me. I’m really happy you’re here!” I feel very happy to have these guys here with me and I enjoy the swell of positive emotions. I tell PM that I’ll do my best to remember the new parts of the song and that I wonder whether he’ll remember them too.

We walk down a dirt path through some trees and night falls quickly. We’re moving through an industrial area by the water and I think that I’d like to summon Dreamer. I look down to see that there are 4 shadows in the group. Must be me, PM, Leroy, and Z? I hold out my left hand, imagining that Dreamer will take hold of it. I feel something vaguely like a hand, then look down again to see a fifth shadow (in a dress!) holding onto my hand.

I look over and Dreamer is standing next to me! Her hair is blond rather than purple now and very short, the bangs bluntly chopped almost in the form of a bowl cut. She’s just wearing a shirt and some kind of pants, though, not a dress. We smile at each other. “Hey guys, this is…” and then attempt to introduce Dreamer several times. I’m mortified that twice in a row I completely goof her waking life name before finally getting it right. I feel awful about this, very embarrassed.

The guys continue ahead and Dreamer and I walk just behind, coming to an abandoned wharf. I recall that we had recent, very specific plans for this dream (to try to heal one another’s sniffles, ha ha…) I ask her whether she remembers and she replies, but I have a hard time understanding her. I move really close to Dreamer’s face, trying to understand her or read her lips or anything, but it’s not working. For a moment I wonder whether there was a kissing task, but no, that wasn’t it, maybe that was someone else’s lucid dare. (Correct, actually -- this was a dare that Dreamer completed a while back!) I quit focusing on her lips and on this mumbling problem, assuming that her speech will sort itself out if I just quit worrying about it.

As we walk further along the water, we talk about how nice it is to just stroll through the dreamworld. I tell her that I’m glad that we’re getting to hang out in such a stable dream and how relaxing this is. I feel peaceful and happy, which reminds me of the patronus task. I tell Dreamer that I want to try the patronus and she moves close to wrap me up in a hug. I extend my right arm and she places her left hand under my wrist, almost to support it. I tell her that I feel super happy in this dream and that I think the patronus is going to be easy! She enthusiastically agrees.



Immediately, pulses of blue energy pour out of my fingers and float to the ground in a big ball. And now scampering along the ground near our feet is my bunny patronus. “Oh, he is cute!” says Dreamer. As he hops around, the bunny turns from a blue, glowy patronus into a real bunny. He hops further along the wharf. Dreamer grabs my hand and pulls me along to follow him. We follow him for a while through an old, crumbling breezeway until the dream ends.