task of the year

Having fallen asleep on my front I suddenly hear nosies from the corner of the room. Then a great weight crushes me into the bed. My head is on one side and all I can see is blackness behind me but the rest of the room is visible. The weight eases off and I do a pinch nose RC. Things are still blurry. The darkness behind me has turned into AB, who is lying on my back, but not that heavy. I stand up and she clings on around my shoulders.

Staggering around the room I find a half-filled bathtub of water with severed hands and feet floating in it. Urgh. The bathtub is in front of the window, so I have to climb over it to phase outside. Once outside I start flying. With AB on my back this is slower than normal, so I land and drop her off before starting to run through the street.

I start thinking about LC tasks while running through alleyways of a city. Recalling the dragon TOTY I start to search for a castle and around the next corner is a great castle reaching up into the sky. I fly up over the castle for a better view, and summon a dragon, imagining it breaking free from the dungeons below the castle.

Instead, an enormous winged shadow passes over the ground. People inside the castle look up in fear. The dragon circles around, unleashing flamethrower like breath to incinerate the castle's defenders. I fly down and sit on the dragon's back. It's head is covered in golden scales and the rest of it's body is read. Two large backwards facing horns are on it's head. We circle and unleash more fire before flying across the city.

The motion of flying with wings is jerky and uneven. We head across the city, searching for another castle to destroy. Among the skyscrapers is a small keep with a large stone outer wall - in the middle of the tall modern buildings it looks out of place. The dragon is so large that it simply lands on the castle and the weight smashes it. We fly up and the castle has been reduced to rubble.

I try to fly the dragon over a river that winds through the centre of the city, but the dream loses momentum and stalls.
.

The car park is full. Rows and rows of cars in all directions. I drive around trying to find a space. Finally there is a gap... but a large tour bus starts reversing into it. Then there seems to be a space on the right. I drive into the gap and park.

After getting out of the vehicle and checking it is within the white lines, I notice something odd. Next to one edge of the space is what looks like a headstone. It is old and worn, the name carved on it is illegible. Nearby is a stack of rocks - a cairn perhaps, and now, in all directions, more graves. This is probably not a good place to park. I feel that parking here is disrespectful somehow.

While trying to move the vehicle I end up flying in a huge hall, or maybe I have shrunk. The floor of this place has a large stone slab with the name Bathory on it. Immediately this conjures up thoughts of Elizabeth Bathory - the 16th century serial killer with vampiric-tendancies. Things go a bit abstract here - there is an unseen voice speaking to me, something about the Bathory family or a present day descendant. I recall saying "What's he done this time?" - as if it's someone I know, and they are always getting in trouble? Also, I am roleplaying as my character from a tabletop game.

Eventually all this adds up and makes me become lucid. I float down next to a wall and my fingers slide against it to help ground me. Recalling the sled TOTY I phase through the wall and focus on there being a snowy mountain top outside. A snowstorm is in progress and it is bitterly cold. I summon a sled and jump onto it, standing like it is a skateboard. The sled starts to move down the mountain, quickly gathering tremendous speed. I estimate it is travelling around 80-90mph.

It takes around 20 seconds to reach the bottom of the mountain. I make a powerful gesture with my left hand to shatter the earth and make a crack leading down below the surface. The sled continues sliding into the Earth through black rock cave tunnels. This continues for another 20 seconds or so, still at breakneck speed.

Suddenly the floor disappears sending me tumbling through the air. I land in fast flowing water, dragged along by the strong current towards a narrow crack in the rock. There is not much light, just a gentle luminesence from mould growing on the roof of the underground river.

I take a deep breath in to shrink myself enough to pass through the narrow gap without hitting the rocks. The tunnel abruptly stops and the water level drops, leaving me standing in a dark tunnel. At this point my vision spins around to show a massive boulder rolling down the tunnel, Indiana Jones style. Oh shit. I start running, my perspective external to my body, so that it shows me from the front and the boulder rolling behind, like that Crash Bandicoot level.

The camera pans back to normal perspective and I continue sprinting with the rumbling sound of the boulder and the ground shaking violently. Ahead is a wall with two doors, one smaller and then a double width door. I punch the door handle of the smaller exit down while throwing my shoulder against it, stumbling through into an underground station tunnel. There are enemies here, squatting on the ground. They look like morlocks, from the X-Men comics.

Rather than fight them I continue running and dodge past them - the boulder will crush them, and me if I stop. The tunnel becomes so packed with morlocks that it is difficult to find a path through. No... must... run....

I tumble into a false awakening in which my sister is poking me in the ear. "Stop it, no, don't wake me...."

19-Jan-2017 - ND Office "Self-Management", ND fragm, + WILD Office magic, Elephant war,... + LD Flying car

2AM Wake-up, no recall, "technical" WBTB ;P

ND: Office, I am in a meeting room together with many colleagues. We are commenting about an earlier happening involving D in cubicle next to mine, to which I took part by talking from over the wall (FM). Discussion is quite long and uninteresting, recall is good, but I provide no details. Wake up 4AM

ND: Fragment about me eating lard with other colleagues at canteen (est.~5AM)

Wake up 5:20 AM, attempt WILD, success
WILD: (~30-40 min)
Some visualization, stabilization at my tower interior/exterior.
Proper LD starts at company canteen, I just exited, together with the colleagues I had lunch with yesterday.
At the gate, instead of going through I jump over, walk on the rain cover, jump down. Colleagues reach me.
I decide I will play some more dream magic for them. I take scarf off my neck (strange I have one), launch it in the air, wish it to become a bird, the scarf properly transforms and the bird flies away. I see dream is perfectly stable, environment looks crystal clear, so now it's time for something more impressive.

We move to the main gate, I check my company, everyone is still there. There is also a new, very tall guy wearing a sort of space uniform with a red kinda-NASA-logo and a name "Him", so he's a LC team-mate.
The reception building is ~6m wide low-roof structure. The two reception girls are inside it, normally at their desk. I wish for the entire building to lift up, which happens leaving a nice hole in the ground. The two girls inside it look down from the glass, kinda scared from this.
We pass below the building suspended in the air, then I release it to its normal place.

Next trick, change appearance of the main building (5 stories, ~50m wide, U-shaped). I observe the building, noticing how some details are very life-like. Then I look at the first corner and it gets covered in gray stone bricks, with two short cone-roofed corner towers. It's goo,d so moving my gaze over the main facade, I change appearance of the entire building in a similar fashion. The second corner comes out similar to the first one. Now our modern-looking building looks like a medieval castle. I like it alot.

Then, I wish for the building to disappear. At first attempt it doesn't work: it just slightly fades, then returns fully solid. It takes me a lot of focus, three attempts and imagining the background behind it, to make it fade in front of my eyes - most likely because the building it's such an long-time landmark for me.
After that, I walk with colleagues in the place where the building was standing before. It's paved in gray, and some external staircases remain standing on the ground, hanging from nowhere. Very cool.
Then, we move back to the courtyard between the reception and the building, and I make the building appear again. It returns with its normal appearance.
After this, I feel it's time for something different.

I want to go in space. In a space close to office, I see the same rocket I used last time, but it looks dull to me this time. Nevertheless, I board it, it takes off, reaches space, but dream reverts soon after.
I find myself at home, with entry door half open, my door on handle. It's looking really vivid. I play opening and closing the door couple of times, and feel "strange" about being here.

I teleport back to the beginning of previous dream. This time another team-mate is with me, same space suit, he's not as tall as Him. It's tblanco. Oh well, I say him this was my previous part of the dream, wondering if this is worth any point (good question actually)
Together with tblanco, I fly upwards, over the road, trees, car retailers; the environment looks very life-like, I notice how cohere it is in terms of placement.

After some flying, we reach a dense tree area. Good for TotY, I think.
I look for an elephant nearby, I find it, it's gray/violet, very long curved tusks, really fat, its body almost a ball.
I climb on its back and ride it in the forest.
I find a dirt clearing with low thick bushes on both sides, and people hiding behind them, shooting each other. The list of projectile they use it's quite extensive: arrows, stones, guns and lances. I learn their names (LOL don't ask me where did I take those from, I am clueless), the italian equivalent of "Liquid Assault", wearing blue uniform and "Screaming Magaglis" (not-existing word), with red uniform. I decide I am going to help in battle the guys in blue.

On the elephant I circle the bush and charge the red guys from their backs.
The elephant skews some people with its long trunks, I see one getting stomped by its leg.
I see one arrow coming out of its big arse. I tell the elephant I am sorry about that, I should have protected it.
I remove the arrow, then I summon a metal plate armor covering most of its body, it's dark brown / bronze. I am now sitting on a cloth saddle. We charge again, hitting some more people, no red guy is left standing now.
I get off my mount and move on.

A short walk and I reach a grassy area. I want to go to space again. I find a small space fighter, I enter it and reach space again. I find an area with many small planets close together, having different colors, I pass above them with my fighter spaceship.
One planet is brown, small (10m perhaps?), it looks like a krapfen (a fried sweet). I stop by, get off the ship and eat some of it; it's pleasant.

However, I find myself grounded on Earth again. This time I do not bother looking for a spaceship, put my arm out and fly Superman-style, very quick out of Earth. I turn back for a second to see the ground going away at great speed. I reach space again. Flying in space with the freedom of having no ship around me is nice.
I find some more planets. For few of them I see the white orbit.
I see a gray planet/asteroid, smallish, too; I land on it on my feet. It reminds me of the "Little Prince"
I summon a sort of large wooden stick, and push it on the ground below me, in front of my feet; the surface cracks; the stick remains in the ground.
A sort of menu bar with different objects drawn in it appears before me, I select a pruning knife and find it in my hand.
I thrust in in the ground in another point of the planet, cracking the surface.
This time the crack extends, connects with the previous one, and half of the planet detachs and floats in space. I wonder how my half is staying up ?

Now I am kinda tired, return to my body, move to my side and keep sleeping

DILD: (est.6:10 AM ~10min)
I am in my car, alone, aware this is a dream. I'm driving on a large road, with walls on the sides.
I look at the cockpit and it looks ok, only slight difference I detect is in the speedometer: different numbers and lower max speed shown.
I break to limit the speed, but the car reaches a high speed again. I do it again, the car reaches high speed again.
I think I should not worry about speed limits or danger in a dream, push the accelerator.
The car reaches very high speed (~120 km/h), then flies up.
I look at the scenery below me, trees, low houses and roads.

I rotate the car in the air, however fly direction is maintained, so I fly laterally, then backward.
My viewpoint shifts to the back seat for short time, I see the front seatbelt and the car interior, then I return to driving seat.
I fly low, over a road with more vehicles, I look down and see a motorcycle, I let it pass then I descend and land my wheels on the road behind it.

Fuzzy recall after that. I think I get out of the car...

Anyway, I turn focus to my body, wondering if I can attempt an OBE exit.

I only feel a light sizzling in my feet, judge it too weak to attempt exiting, I fall asleep lightly, work alarm rings after few minutes.

15-Jan-2017 - 2xND +2xWILDs - Fly rocket to Mars, build and animate red dust man, fly saucer to Pluto, fight aliens, sink into black hole, meet PvsZ plants, make hotel hall tables and guests fly and disappear

ND#1: (3:10AM) I am playing with my son, I sit, he's laying on my legs, I spank him to make him laugh. Do WBTB

ND#2: (est.5:30AM) Fragment; something to do with military aircrafts, and also money exchange between Russian and Hungarian currency (?).

Wake up 6AM, attempt WILD, success

WILD#1: (6 AM ~1hr)
Poor recall of beginning. I meet a nice blonde girl who is very keen to have fun, who am I to refuse it ?
After that, I am in my tower. On the right wall I notice two paintings I didn't remember. I focus mostly on the one on the left. I memorize its details, very white skin girl, red lips, brown hair, blue dress; looking left, surprised by something not visible in the picture; brown blurry background. Also the right picture is a girl, skinny, I did not capture much detail.

I exit the room, which is now the girl's room at my uncle's house. I cross all the house, go outside, see the house, garden, tank, go out of the gate. I take a cableway up the mountain, then a lift down to the main crater. Lift has glass walls. When it reaches the magma lake, I open the door and walk on the lava, it's very liquid.
After this, I decide it's time to focus on tasks.

I am looking for a spaceship. I find a rocket like THIS , near a platform. I use the walkway to enter it. I take the seat; it's looking upwards, to a black sky spotted with stars. The rocket leaves, I see the movement of the stars around me. After some pretty dull space flight, we land on Mars.
I descend the rocket, and see the red planet around me, lots of dust, rocky mountains few kms away; it's totally deserted.
I take some red dust and create a red-dust-man, complete with red-rock eyes and nose.
Then I use some white light power with both hands on it, it becomes alive.

I ask the red-dust-man, since he knows the place, where can I find anything interesting. It points to a nearby area.
I reach what seems a "cars cemetery", although cars are very new, I notice some big white SUVs, and more.
All of them are parked nose-down in the very short slope of a large depression.

Then I notice a partially buried white disc. I know it's a flying saucer, although it's very small, like 30 cms. The top is made of white metal, bottom is black plastic. The bottom has few mumbered buttons and the instructions to make it normal size. I press the buttons in sequence, the disc pops open, it's now a proper saucer, 15-20m diameter. I use the catwalk to get inside.
The interior has many instruments, monitors, button panels, "flying" touch screens and more.
I notice a twisted violet / black basin, from which I pick am object having same color patterns. It envelops my right arm. I understand it's a kind of armor. Since it looks cool, I put my other arm in it, and I get both my arms and my shoulders covered by it.

A guy comes inside. He's wearing a sort of space uniform, light gray, I notice a small crescent moon drawing on his chest so I now he's a teammate.
I ask him to take care of this room, while I look for the pilot deck. I notice two curved staircase going up, I use one and find it.
The pilot panel has many cluster of buttons and instruments, I click random stuff and we take off.

Another space travel, this time I am heading to Pluto. To quicken things up, I activate hyper-speed. The black starry space becomes blurry for some seconds, then it turns back normal, we arrived at destination. We descend on the planet, it's dark and grey and empty.
Once I take few steps on the gray dust, from the ground emerge 4 or 5 grey Alien-like monsters.
I use the purple alien bracer on the closest one, three tentacles fly straight into its body, which shrink, like sucked by the inside, evidently dead.
I use my left arm on another alien, which dies in the same way, plus tentacles emerge from my shoulders, killing a third one.
The remaining aliens disappear, most likely they dug back into the ground.

I say to myself that this was too easy, and my dream immediately proves me wrong.
An enormous crab-like monster comes out of the dust. I imagine it has been called by the survivors.
The giant alien crab immediately attacks me with its legs, I evade its attacks and jump on one of its leg. I draw my sword and thrust it down deep into the leg, cutting part of it away.
I avoid another attack, jump on another leg, this time I thrust my sword at the junction between the leg and the body, severing the entire leg.
I jump on its body, it's very hard and bumpy. I use pirokinesis with both my hands on its body, which hurts it.
Then I somehow get stuck by my back on the body. I free myself, get up and attack it again.
I can't recall the end of the fight, but I survive, so I must have won

I return inside the flying saucer.
I want to get sucked into a black hole, so I fly in space looking for one. I find it, it's a dark mass of black. I observe it for a bit. I see things getting sucked in and disappear leaving no trace.
Then I decide it's time to receive the same treatment. I lower engine power, and the black hole starts sucking us in.
When I get on its border, everything becomes black (of course!)
I also become bodyless.
In the blackness in front of me, I notice some patterns. Small speckles of light start appearing. I recognize in one of the light patterns a couple of eyes. Then another set of eyes. I think I may be seeing phosphenes for the first time.

Then another dream scene forms around me. I am in a PvsZ garden, with square grass tiles and plants, peashooters, sunflowers, coconuts and more.
I am where the house is, so I see them from the back. I want to look the plants from the front, so I walk among the plants, then turn around.
It's nice, the plants are staring at me. I plant some, like an exploding jalapeno, which leaves a trail of fire, I remove some others.
I also plant a smiling green jalapeno which stays there.

I decide I want to fly, I jump up in the sky, and fly above an autumn landscape, many yellow trees.
Recall stops here, but dream may have continued a bit.
Wake up 7AM

WILD#2: (7 AM ~20 min)
I decide to attempt WILD again, it goes through, I enter a dream almost immediately.
I am in a hotel room, door is open and I see two happy girls with light colored dresses walking from right to left.
I decide to just follow whatever the dream will present me.
I get out of the door, look right, just a short empty corridor, so I follow the girls to my left.
After awakening I notice this hotel looks like a Marriot I've been at in Nov

The girls enter an elevator, doors close before me. I phase through the wall and door into the cabin. We go down.
Elevator doors open into the lobby. There are many people sitting, drinking and talking. I decide to do the same and just have a seat.
I look around me, everything looks very stable. I decide it's time to spice things up a bit, and I make some tables, chairs and people lift and float up in the air. I also decide to make few of them disappear, just for the fun of it.

Poor recall after that.
A fragment of a warmly lit dining room with a Christmas tree, and some big plastic (LEGO-like) french playing cards on the ground.
A fragment of rubbing hands for stabilization in an industrial environment.

Then me kicking something / someone, my WL right leg does the same and I wake up, 7:30AM

Before 4.47am
Plate of stir fry type food that seemed to be mostly peppers. I don't like peppers. Yes I went to bed on an empty stomach, which just makes me dream about food.

5-6am
The dream takes place in a mansion sized building filled with hidden passages. It has the look of an old stately home. We are running away from enemies who are trying to take over the building. The group of us consists of me and co-worker TR, who is dragging along his red haired girlfriend.

Using the secret passages we manage to evade the enemy soldiers for a while, but then run straight into a room where the commander is standing with four of his pals. So much for escaping. I charge at the commander, leaping and punching the side of his head. He is taller than me, but not by much. Must have had knuckle dusters on, because after the punch the side of his face is all cut and bleeding in multiple places.

He roars in rage and I punch him several more times and kick at his legs trying to make him fall down. At this point the dream is feeling like a game rather than reality. I am on the verge of lucidity and wake up.


6.20ish- 7am
Trapped Dolphin
Think this was chained after a normal dream, but can't remember it. Starts with familiar shaking sensations that signal the onset of a dream. I pinch my nose to confirm the dream and stand up out of bed. Everything is very dark. Going to the window I phase outside.

The front gardens are full of bushes and flowers. It is still dark, pre-dawn. Children are hiding in the gardens amongst the greenery. Maybe they are playing a game. I look up to the sky and the sun rises rapidy. A man dressed as Batman exits the neighbours' house and heads off down the road. I wave to him.

My goal tonight was to go to the ocean and find an 18th century frigate (Master and Commander or Hornblower for reference. Yeah I know that's more 1800 ~ Napoleonics, the ships wouldn't have changed that much.)

I fly up into the air and head for the coast, flying at super speed. In RL my house is around 30-40 mins drive from the coast, but my flight is direct and much faster. Ahead is a beech in a cove with black rocks juting out of the sea. It reminds me more of Devon than the local pebble beaches.

The cove is filled with people playing in the surf. As I swoop down, a killer whale leaps out of the surf and then dives back underwater. Deeper than it looks! Then I see a dolphin trapped in a gully between two of the black rocks, it is trying to get back into the water but is stuck. Planting one foot on each of the rocks I lift the dolphin free. It's skin is smooth and wet. Even after being freed it lies on the surface making pained noises. I stroke the dolphin's side and try to reassure it.

The dolphin has reminded me of the DV task of the year, but it seems rude to ask this injured animal to give me a lift to Atlantis. The dream scene fades.

A false awakening has me trying to remove items from my black rucksack. Mum has filled it with fish! Also there is a pack of what looks like salmon bacon! After emptying it out I point out that this is my rucksack for college, not a bag for food shopping. (Slight confusion as to my age at this point.) Then even more items come out of the bag including cufflinks and small items of jewellery. Necklaces, ear rings. We put them into clear jelly moulds to be taken to the charity shop.

7-7.55am
Sex with a Mermaid
There are children outside the window making noise. The bedroom seems to be on the ground floor at the front of the house. I open the curtains and find they have left toys on the window sill. There is a crowd outside the front door. A couple of the parents seem to be discussing childcare arrangements with Mum. I go through to a living room where there are stacks of old videos, including one which is the 24 series feature length special.

These old videos are junk. Get rid of them, I suggest. Dad complains that they haven't watched it, and I tell them not to bother. My sister is also in the room. She backs me up and agrees that this old crap is not worth keeping. Then she tries to retrieve something from a shelf behind the sofa, and ends up straddling an unknown male DC sitting on the sofa.

There is a disconnect, probably a missing scene or two. I am walking through a town. On a brick wall there is a moving advert. It doesn't seem to be a screen, more like an animated painting. It contains a drawing of a car and unreadable text slogans. 'Great, even my dreams have adverts,' I think. Then I realise what that means, and become lucid.

The town is surrounded by mountains and forests. No ocean in sight. However, the sky could be an ocean. I fly straight up at full speed until there are clouds around me. Then I flip the world upside down, so the sky is beneath me and the distant trees and mountains above. Looking down and slowly falling into the sky, the blue expanse now becomes an ocean.

I tread water for a bit, noticing the tug of my wet clothing weighing me down. The sky has turned back from green and grey into a proper blue. It is very peaceful out here, no big waves, but also no land in sight. Recalling the last part of the earlier lucid I call out to summon a dolphin. One swims over to me. It seems cheerful. I ask it to take me to Atlantis then climb onto the dolphin's back. It leaps then dives down into the ocean.

Forgetting myself I take a deep breath and am holding it as we swim down, before realising this is not required. The dolphin swims down to a circle of metal on the sea floor. Then it starts poking at small screws that seem to be in the ocean floor. I help to remove some of the screws.

The room transforms around us. We are no longer underwater and the dolphin has grown legs and arms. There are coins on the floor. The dolphin says something about 'taking what is right.' I pick up a copper penny-like coin. It grabs a fistfull of golden coins and laughs. "The one with the most gold wins!" The dolphin-man declares triumphantly.

Ah whatever. I turn and exit the circular room and enter a domed one. It's old fashioned - like a National Trust property. Elegant wooden furniture, shelves lining the walls filled with large hardback books. There are those chaise-longues type chairs with red velvet. The room is populated with people dressed in 18th century clothing - long coats with embroidered collars and dressed with similar intricant designs sewed on them.

They remind me that to complete the DV Task of the Year I must find the mermaid, also, that the mermaid will want an offering from me. The room has several tables covered in trinkets.

My next course of action is to try flirting with one of the 18th century women, very badly, to find out what to pick as a gift for the mermaid. The flirting is just cringe-worthy terrible. Realising this, I end up shouting "fuck it", vaulting over one of the chairs, standing on a table and grabbing a small blue ivory comb thing before running out of the room.

There are several similar looking rooms. Now where is the mermaid? A young boy walks past. "Hey, kid, where's the mermaid?" He points down a corridor. I run down and go past an open door. Inside are tanks the size of double beds, filled with water. Curled up in the corner of a tank is a mermaid. She has long dark hair and a shimmering blue-green fish tail. I climb into the tank and touch her tail. It feels just like a fish, which is both cool and weird at the same time.

She wakes up and turns to me looking alarmed. I drop the comb and it falls into the tank next to her. She grabs it as it falls, seems happy, and then snuggles up against my chest. Well, hello. Somehow she ends up on top of me, lying on my chest, with my legs wrapped around her tail.

"So, uh, how do you make more mermaids?" The question I'd been dying to ask...
"We have a sort of opening." She says.
"Oh really. Well, uh, so can I put my erm, you know, in your... 'opening.'" (Well I'm on top form tonight... just so damn smooth, eh? Ha.)
"You already did."
"Wait, I thought I had trousers on!"
...Well, not anymore, apparently. She starts grinding up against me and I can feel the usual sensations down there now, although my legs are either side of her body/tail. Not gonna lie, it feels a bit weird, but we have sex until the dream fades.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11-Jan-2017 - ND#1: Hawks vs Antelopes, The worrisome hotel + WILD: Lilliput Theater, Plane flight + ND#2: Car slides on ice

ND#1: I am travelling with my colleague L, through an area with red/brownish dirt hills; he tells me some hawks and antelopes have been fighting here (!!!) Some hawks have taken antelopes away, some antelopes have ground hawks (!!!) At one time I get off the car and pick the body of a hawk; it breaks down in my hands (!!!)
I wonder if this makes any sense or it could be a dream. I look at the digital clock in my car, and it consistently reads the same time 21:12, then 21:13 after many checks. The rest of the cockpit also looks good. I find it strange that it should be dark but it's fully day, but I attribute that to not adjusting the clock properly after last reset. Near miss, but I am more aware the rest of the dream, very good recall

I reach an hotel; I look for restrooms, find them in a floor below ground level after many poorly lit corridors with several turns.
First restrooms I find are not good enough, I find a second one. They look dark, but when I approach the orinal, I also notice two steel carts with corpses on them (!!!) I read these are the "Halls of the Dead". I do my business very quickly and go away, the place looks unsettling

I find an elevator, I ask to a woman passing there if this will take me to the lobby, she says "Of course !", showing a convincing body language that says "Why do you even ask ? It's totally obvious"
I reach a salon which looks like a lobby and bar, there are many round tables, many women sitting there, some wear old-fashioned clothes (19th century maybe)
I notice a girl very shabby looking, brown skin, sitting in such a way that some parts that should be hidden are visible instead (!!!)
None of them seem caring I am there or having an intention to interact.
I make another tour of the salon then go away. I wake up, it's 4:30 AM

WBTB/WILD#1: (4:30AM, est. ~30min over 1 hr of time)
I start from previous dream. I find two more corpses in a dark corridor; For a moment I think about investigating, but immediately abandon the idea
At the end of a corridor I reach a theater with many chairs. I proceed beyond the curtains
I lay on the floor and imagine myself tied up by ropes, which happens. Around me appear many small men, mostly wearing gnome-like hats
<JUMP>
I have troubles reaching outside, I always find another wall or floor. When I succeed, I fly up on the landscape, until I find a small airport.
I land, there is a small old plane, with only a central propeller. I sit inside, clicl buttons in the cockpit, then draw the cloche towards me and take off. I fly above the scenery, which unfortunately is not very interesting, trees and hills.

When I try some tight air tricks I cannot pull them off. However, large maneuvers work fine
After some time I see another small airport below me. I make an appropriate wide maneuver to line up with the runway.
When I get very close I remember the final part of the task was not actually landing but opening a time breach
I act very quickly. The time breach opens in front of me, consisting of a "hole" in the reality, covered by a cloth with many stamped analog clocks of varying size. Oh well !
I fly inside the hole with the plane
I immediately find myself grounded, in a field with many plants from PvsZ, mostly green peashooters, tall about same as me.

From there I walk away and visit more places, houses and shops, trying to find a Christmas tree and some forgotten presents for TotM
Last house I visit, owned by a bearded guy, has a Xmas tree, but no presents

More short fragments, forgotten

ND#2: Recalled while driving, by a strong sense of deja-vu

I am driving my car, A and G are passengers. We've just got out of a place we've been for a whole day (FDM)
The road is covered with ice, and when I carelessly drive at normal speed, the car slides forward
My passengers don't seem too worried.
I break and the car keeps sliding, then reducing gear and accelerating I recover the car
I make a U-turn and drive in the opposite direction, finding the place where I had slid earlier
I say after such long time inside I thought the ice had melted

8-Jan-2017 - ND - Forgotten

9-Jan-2017 - No recall

__________________________


10-Jan-2017 - ND#1: Medical visit daughter + ND#2: Forgotten + WILD#1: Spaghetti + WILD#2: Sled

ND#1: We are at a heart doctor, visiting our daughter (really happened this days); she's laying in an awkward position (!)
ND#2: Forgotten

WILD#1: (6:20AM, est. ~5min)
Despite the incoming alarm, I attempt WILD and I am successful although it's very short

A bowl of spaghetti / noodles inside. I duplicate it
I see a cloth bag with some writings outside, it contains food condiments, some mozzarella to be put in the past

WILD#2: (6:30AM, est. ~10min)
I stop the alarm and sleep 10 min more

I teleport myself on top of a snowy mountain. There are some people with skiing suits, I ask one of them if I can borrow his bobsled, he's ok.
It's very similar to the one I had when I was young, red with dark metal brakes and yellow handles, it has some colorful stickers to the sides
I look it inside and at the bottom; the dream is very stable
I place the bob on the snow, sit inside and descend

I go quite fast, I have little time to look at the scenery, I arrive at a flat clearing very quickly
I forgot to open the passage at the bottom (TotY)

From that point, I descend again; this time, before reaching the bottom, I wish creating a black crack in the terrain before me.
I fall inside the crack on my bob. Few seconds of blackness, then I reach a brown rocky area, lighted by lava below. I land on the bob at a dirt clearing surrounded by low brown rocks and lava outside.

I would explore but need to get up

Before 7.20
While lying down I feel shaking sensations. The room is dark and blurry. I wait for a bit before pinching my nose to RC. The first thing I remember is the door task - so I walk over to my bedroom door and say "hi, what's your name?"
At first, the door is not very chatty, so I stroke it (uh, that sounds wrong somehow!), feeling the grain of the wood against my fingers. It doesn't seem to be varnished.

Repeating my question, this time the door answers, telling me it's name is "Fingers of Doom." What a strange name! It says some other stuff that I have forgotten now. There is a poster pinned to the door that is torn and ripped, barely holding on. I try to pin the pieces back into place before realising the pins might be hurting the door, but it says it doesn't mind.

After phasing out of the window, I end up in the village where I grew up. There is an orchard and a large open hillside. I summon an alien invasion by reaching up to the skies. As in my previous attempt, troop transports and smaller fighter saucer type craft land on the grass. This time alien troops exit the ships. They look like robots wearing ragged clothing and remind me somewhat of the phalanx from the comic I was reading last night.

Too late I realise that people were working in the orchard. The troops round up and capture the humans, my parents among them. I fly quickly over to the robot pointing a gun at my mum. The robot's ragged clothing makes him look kinda like a pirate.
"You better let her go, or else." I warn the pirate-robot. It decides to do what I say, and holsters it's gun before walking away.

The other prisoners are being escorted away. I grant Mum super-powers of flight and telekinesis so we can rescue Dad. Mum says it is fine and flies off. She doesn't need my help. I see her fighting the robots from the air and the prisoners cheering her on. Nice one, Mum.

I head into what looks like the alien's command tent. It is full of more robots and rows of tiny flashing lights on machines. I start smashing it up with my fists and during the chaos and smoke, run back outside. I pick the closest saucer and run up the small gangplank to get inside. It is smooth metal this time, almost featureless. There is a viewing screen type window in the ceiling. Taking control of the ship with pure willpower, I get it to take off and fly upwards into the sky.

To power the ship and my journey into space, I start singing Prodigy: Outer Space. "Gonna send him out of space... find another race... I'll take your brain to another dimension, play close attention!" Although, when the song came out I never knew the lyrics and so sung my own slightly misheard ones: "I'm descending outer space... Find another place."

The ship flies up through the clouds and out into space. The dark blackness is filled with stars and a purple swirling nebula. Within the nebula are tiny planets. I head into the nebula until the planets grow larger. Targeting a yellow and white looking planet, I pilot the ship towards it still purely using willpower.

It descends into the atmosphere and lands calmly in the centre of a yellow desert - scrub land. I jump out and see an insectoid thing the size of a dog with an oversized insect head. It crawls like a baby, except really fast, towards me. I back away as it charges me yelling "I come in peace!"

Turning, I find myself in a white structure. The room is filled with... hot tubs. There are skeletons sitting in them. Er. Okay. "Hey, what's up? I come in peace and whatever..."

The skeletons survey me with their empty eye sockets. They shiver and then jump out of the hot tubs holding brightly coloured plastic knives. Definitely not metal. Don't know of any lime-green or sky blue metal like that. They surround me, holding out the small knives. During the stand off, many of them shiver. The hot tubs must keep them warm.

"Hey, why don't you get back in the tubs and I'll try and sort something out to make it warmer?"
The skeletons seem to like this idea and put the knives away. I start to summon fire in my hands, and then try to think of how to raise the temperature of the whole room. The dream fades.

6-Jan-2017 - ND#2: CD duplicate for dad - WILD: Gangster, Massage, Draw a dove, Engine-less Ferrari - ND#3: V.completes puzzles

ND#1: Forgotten

ND#2: My dad listens to a CD very often, he fears he could ruin it. I tell him they are very resistant, they can last decades if well kept, but suggest him to make a duplicate and listen to the duplicate, we can do it on tape or, better, on another CD. He is not very convinced.
Note: Upon reflection, the scene could have taken place at my Grandma's house, now sold (!!!), but I am not totally sure

WBTB/WILD: (7AM, est. ~20-30min)
I do many things while waiting for the dream to stabilize, can't recall most of them because I slept alot after the LD

I am in a city with low buildings and no people around, on a large road, it's fairly dark. I look for a place to get a massage for TotM, in the far corner of this road I see a lighted sign, I walk towards it. Once I get closer, I see the sign has many chinese ideograms, and on the right the italian words for massage. I enter, find a small lobby with seatings and a reception. Behind the desk, a nice girl, to which I ask for a massage, but with strict conditions: it has to be an Asian girl, with beautiful face and a nice body, she has to practice the massage naked. She says no problem, they can provide
I enter a small room, quickly remove all my clothes, lay prone, but my mind cannot easily reconcile it with my real body sleeping supine, so I lay supine in the dream, too
The girl comes in, thy have really respected my wish, she's very beautiful, looking from Thailand with bronzed skin
She massages my legs and I feel the touch on my real legs, it's nice. When she moves to my arms, I don't feel it
After some massage, we take the chance of both being naked to, well, you can probably guess it
<JUMP>
I just exited the building, recall another TotM, stop a passer-by DC, ask him a pencil to draw something. He gives me a yellow pencil, I take a small notebook and draw a dove, with nice shading, its wings spread. After that, I kinda pick it up from the paper, it flies away.
<JUMP>
I am in a city, it's full day, I am dressed like a 30's gangster. I need an information, no one of the people around me knows, I think about asking to the shopkeeper on the opposite side of the street
I launch a grenade inside one of the windows, the shop explodes, I wait a bit, the shopkeeper comes out crawling on the floor
I ask him the question, he answers. I think about TotY, which I need to do again
I turning right into an alley, there is a 30's car, I open the hood and see it has a big engine. I lift it, it's heavy. However, on second thought, I don't like this particular car
<JUMP>
I am in a parking lot. I wander around until I find an intersting car. It's an old Ferrari from the 90's, like the famous Testarossa) , again I open hood, remove its engine, this time I remember to remove wheels, too. I start from front left, I pull it towards me, removing it, the car front hits the ground. Then I remove all the other wheels, and each time the car hits the ground convincingly, until it lays flat on the road

Then I enter it, sit at driving seat, turn the key, the car starts moving very slowly, like a crawl. I wish it to gain speed, and it happens
I am now driving the car fairly fast in San Francisco streets, uphill, then I take a slow and cauotious right turn, then the road goes downhill, the car takes speed, until I find another right turn, I slow the car down, turn right, but the left side bumps the building

ND#3: I am in the dining room, the Xmas tree is misplaced (!), there is my mother-in-law, looking at V, my daughter, playing
She has completed some puzzles, which are laying on the floor close to the Xmas tree. I notice that two of the puzzles show the same image, in yellow and light blue colors, but have different sizes
I move to the kitchen to discuss with my wife how good she is at completing puzzles (my daughter actually likes doing it)

Before 5.15
The dream is of a game world in tiny 8-bit style. The monsters are tiny and pixellated. It is not always clear exactly what they are due to the bad quality graphics! While exploring a set of underground tunnels in the game, I find a wall made of glass. It has green dotted lines in irregular patterns drawn on it. Using some kind of sticky hands (D&D spider climb??) spell, I climb the wall like an insect.

The glass wall reveals secret chambers filled with monsters and loot. I phase through the glass (hadn't become lucid, just somehow gained that ability) and start attacking the monsters. After fighting for a while more monsters appear. I am playing a wizard character and cast spells to keep them back. A door appears but it is locked. More monsters appear, filling up the room, getting tougher to kill as they keep spawning.

My character dies and the game resets right back to the beginning. I am irritated. Where were the save points? It is a difficult game as there is no indication of where to go or what to do.

Giving up on the game I find myself outside where there are three row boats waiting on a river. Three floating platforms are infront of the boats. I stand on a platform, but then other people join me and the platform sinks under our combined weight. I climb onto the boat. There is someone already in the central boat who speaks in Italian and then German.

An ex-work-colleage joins me in the boat: KF. She is holding a bunch of flowers and dips them in the water. They shrivel up and die. From the boat we somehow end up inside a building where a group of other co-workers are sitting around a table eating chocolate cake. CW demolishes a large slice, stuffing it in his face getting it all over the place. I take a chocolate chip biscuit and take a bite of it.

Then I try to leave the house, finding a mudstained floor that leads into a garden. Steps made from ivy and plants have covered the exit. I climb them, ending up around the height of a normal house. Then after shimmying along one of the steps I manage to drop down into a shaded part of the garden. At this point, I become lucid.

The garden has a couple of bicycles lying in the grass. I think about stealing one of them while climbing a slope that leads out to a street. There are three cars parked in the road. I remember the TOTY and walk over. Pulling up the bonnet (hood) I sweep the engine compartment. It has a bunch of small junk items inside but no engine. Good. Then I walk around the car and rip off all the wheels, leaving it resting on the axles.

Now prepared, the car has also become a convertible. So I lean into the car and try to start it. At first it will not work, but a few more attempts and it roars into life. Hopping into the driving seat, I drive the car down the road. The axles are grinding into the tarmac. Sounds terrible!

At the side of the road I spot a group of bikers and a really gorgeous Ducati - unusually in a burnt orange colour like a Lamborghini Aventador. I try to get through the group and attempt to steal the bike, but the rider block me from getting near it. I give up and walk further down the street past some nice cars but nothing compared to that Ducati motorbike.

While walking into a building I remember the massage task. There is a family sitting here - mother, father, child. I ask for a massage. The man walks behind me and starts rubbing my shoulders. It is not very strong but it is noticable. The man then asks something about the child, indicating that it is mine. That's not my kid?? I wake up.

Ritual: WTB 2am, woke up after a couple hours and strapped on the Motivaider, timed for 30m intervals. I woke up again after what I thought must be at least an hour and hadn't felt any vibrations. I decided that my awareness was not sufficient tonight to continue, removed the device, and went back to sleep. But apparently this process created an anchor for the idea of lucidity, because in my next sleep interval I became aware of lying in that intermediate state between sleeping and waking and went through the motions of getting up into a WILD. However, in retrospect it is clear that I was already dreaming at the start of this experience, so it was not a genuine WILD but a dreamed WILD (hence DWILD). It was 5:45am when I woke from the dream.

DWILD, "Another rainbow": I am lying on the flat surface of a wooden table as though it were a bed in a large, strange room with a distant, domed ceiling. I feel groggily half-asleep, but notice the distinctive sensations in my body that make me wonder if I'm close to the dream state. I start playing with it as I would when inducing a WILD, attempting to roll and rotate my body while avoiding real physical movement. When I find myself face down and succeed in getting up on my hands and knees, I'm sure that I'm sufficiently integrated with my dream body to get off the table and explore the dream—and given that in retrospect I know was dreaming all along, it is apparent that the sense of difficulty that I experience as I carefully maneuver myself into a standing position, similar to what I experience in real WILDs, must be wholly a mental fabrication.

My awareness is still low and initially lacking in agency, so I go along with the dream narrative for a while. The space in which I find myself is strange and hard to describe. There's a kind of reflective dome above me that rotates and shifts to reflect different parts of an upper floor or balcony. The dome moves until it is showing a distorted reflection of what looks like an early twentieth-century radio, one of the elegant ones in a large wooden cabinet. I am aware that seated up by the radio there is an older man who owns this place, and I am his guest. After this is a scene in which someone tells my brother that if he wants to get along with this man then he should take up shortwave radio as a hobby.

Then a bunch of us are seated at a long table for a dinner party. [Source: Order of the Phoenix was on TV last night, and it has a number of scenes with people seated at long tables.] Plates are served and they all contain huge sandwiches. The older man that I saw in the balcony earlier is picking disinterestedly at his sandwich and asks where the other food is, the stuff that had been simmering in the crockpot. My brother, who had put together the food, says that it will be coming up as the next course. I'm seated directly across from the older man, who I think of as our "host," and can tell from his expression he doesn't want to eat the sandwich. I decide to be helpful and comment loudly: "That's a huge sandwich! I couldn't eat all that even for one meal." Although this is true, my intention in speaking was to save face for the other man by legitimizing the option of leaving the sandwich uneaten while waiting for the next course.

After the sandwich course, we take a break from the meal and everyone who was at the table, about a dozen people in all, are standing in another room. The host is there, and a bunch of vague random people I don't recognize, as well as DC versions of my brother, mom, and dad. For some reason, maybe because of the lull in the narrative, I finally remember my intended task, the leprechaun TOTY, as well as how I had planned to accomplish it. My chief difficulty in previous attempts had been that once I managed to create the necessary rainbow, I got thwarted in my attempts to seek the end of it. As I had earlier been pondering this difficulty, a straightforward solution, perfectly obvious in retrospect, finally occurred to me: why not create the rainbow such that it ends right in front of where I'm standing?

"Okay everyone, we're going to play a game, kind of like a party game." I smile at the host and add, "It'll give you time to digest before the next course." I reach out and pat his belly, an oddly familiar gesture given that the DC did not scan as anyone I know in WL. [Possible source: yesterday I was doing research related to Budai, the so-called "Laughing Buddha," and rubbing his belly is a recognized ritual gesture. But the DC did not in any other respect remind me of Budai.] I complete my announcement by telling the group: "We're going to make a rainbow!"

The room we are in is walled entirely with glass on two sides, like a skyscraper, and I recognize that this clear view of the sky will be helpful for the task. I'm slightly more concerned about the fact that we're three or four storeys up, which means that if the rainbow ends here and I start digging through the floor, I won't actually be digging in solid ground. I remind myself that it is silly to maintain these kind waking life assumptions in the dream state. It can be solid ground if it wants to be, or maybe I can find the leprechaun in the room below us. Dream is nothing but malleable, so I really don't need to be this finicky.

I continue with my instructions to the group: "What we need to do is hold hands and create the end of the rainbow right here." I gesture to indicate the patch of floor in middle of our circle of people. "Then we'll go through, fight the leprechaun, and take his gold." I look around to gauge the response and decide the DCs need a little more incentive. "We can split the money," I add, and am pleased to see that this perks up their interest.

We join hands around a large circle. I feel that my shirt cuffs are too long and and getting in the way, so I have to break off and fold them up in order to get proper skin contact with the people around me. Once again I wonder if I'm being too finicky. Probably. Even the hand-holding seems like overkill, but I thought it might help us join our focus on the same goal.

My assumption had been that the assistance of the DCs would help my own confidence and focus on the task. This idea was probably based on my last rainbow-making dream, when I really did feel like I benefited from the help volunteered by the little girl. But this group of DCs is not helping at all. Like typical adults in a social setting, they are only marginally interested in my unusual party game. While I'm trying to concentrate on making a rainbow, the others are getting distracted and starting to chit-chat among themselves. This is distracting me in turn.

"Quiet!" I rebuke them sharply. "No talking, please. I need you to concentrate. Focus your intention." I figure they could use a reminder of the goal of our task: "We're going to create a rainbow"

Periodically I've been glancing out the windows to see if a rainbow is visible in the sky yet. This time I notice that the weather has changed. The sky is grey and a steady rain is now pouring down. Rain, well, that's halfway to a rainbow, isn't it? I let myself be encouraged that the environment is showing some response.

I continue attempting to focus, and the DCs continue to stand around without helping much. They're quieter after my reprimand but still distracted, and I have the impression that they don't seem to know how to focus their intentions properly. This is exasperating. What good are dream characters who don't even know how to interact with a dream? My mom starts speaking and I almost raise my hand to swat at her, irritated by yet another interruption, until I realize that what she's saying might actually be helpful. She is commenting on the light, how it needs to filter through the water particles a certain way to create a rainbow.

I had never intended to create a rainbow with meteorological accuracy, but hey, since it's already raining outside, we might as well give it a shot. If we can just get the right sort of light, it might encourage our expectations in a way that will make this easier. You know how when it rains and then you see the light break through the clouds, and you wonder if you will see a rainbow? That's the expeirence I was now trying to recreate. I look out the window and sure enough, in one direction bright sunlight is now alternating with the dark clouds. Very well, the rainbow can come from that direction.

Once again I concentrate, reminding myself that rainbows consist of light broken into the spectrum of colors. I think I almost see them in front of me, faint and translucent, but I can't tell if I'm only imagining them until the DCs all break out into "oohs" and "ahs," and saying things like "amazing!" I smile triumphantly, amused that everyone is acting so impressed after their earlier disengagement.

(While it seems odd to make the above distinction between something that "happens" in a dream and something I'm "only imagining," given the many times I have attempted to complete some task by imagining the outcome and it has not tangibly manifested in the dream, some such distinction seems warranted, if much less clear and stark than the difference between imagining and experiencing in waking life.)

It is a bit odd to try to look at a rainbow head on, from immediate proximity, but I do see a faint shimmering band extending from the lit quarter of the clouds to the floor right in front of my feet. I remind everyone that creating the rainbow was only the first step. "Now we have to dig through the floor." I start scrabbling at the smooth wooden boards, trying to imagine that the floor is soft and that my hands can scoop it up like clay. I feel everyone watching (no one else is trying to help) and their expressions are dubious. If merely creating a rainbow surprised them, imagine the skepticism they must feel watching me try to break through solid floor with my hands! I wonder if I can better align the expectations of the onlookers if I use some sort of tool to dig with, but I can't think of what might be handy.

This time it is my dad who speaks up with some advice: "The location of the floor isn't localized on the floor." I don't understand what he's trying to tell me, and I don't have long to think about it because I feel myself waking. I lose the dream and lay still for a few minutes, feeling to see if I can DEILD, but no, my body is fully awake now.

Ritual: I often wake up briefly during the night, but at one point last night I noticed that my husband was awake too, so we ended up having a conversation, probably around 3 or 4am. After that it was hard to get back to sleep, and I tossed and turned for a while. Eventually I realized that I was tossing and turning with the distinctive sensations that suggested I might already be asleep. I played with it a bit, rolling until I was sure that I was not moving in a physical way, and when I felt certain that I was in the dream state, I "got up."

WILD, "Julbock": I realized that it was my first WILD since moving to my new house, but as is typical, I failed to recognize the ways that the dream environment was different from WL. In fact, it bore very little resemblance to the place I currently live.

I remembered my intention to work on the last two TOTYs I haven't completed, but after my difficulties making rainbows the other day, the idea felt stressful. Maybe I could just relax and explore the dream world? But I knew that abandoning my intentions was a recipe for losing lucidity fast. I decided on a sort of compromise: I would work on the Basilisk—why do I keep thinking of it as Basilisk? This is a mistake I keep making in waking life, not in dream—I would work on the Chimera task, but rather than go through the motions and try to force things to happen, I would let my subconscious take care of it.

I was actually surprised how well this worked. Normally, if I needed a goat (as the task specifies) I would deliberately try to summon one, but this time I just held the idea casually in the back of my mind as I walked through the my darkened apartment. Moments later, what should catch my eye, but a stuffed toy goat! It actually resembled an object that I possess in waking life, a little Beanie Baby goat that I have for many years brought out around Christmas time and designated the "Julbock." I have not yet brought it out this year, but it crossed my mind to do so a few times recently.



"Would a stuffed goat work?" I wondered as I picked up the small toy. I tried to remember the wording of the task. Surely it just specified "goat," not "live goat" or "real goat," as if those terms could even be meaningful in dream, so I figured that this goat would be adequate for my purposes, and carried it with me.

Since the task required the chimera to act violently against DCs, I didn't want to create it in my own apartment, what with the dream version of my husband asleep in the other room, so I left and went out into the hall. (It is worth specifying at this point that I don't live in an apartment, and have not for many years, nor have I ever lived in any apartment that resembled the one in this dream, which is what I mean when I say that this dream environment was very different from WL.)

Across the hallway was an open door leading into another bedroom, apparently empty. Should I summon the chimera there? But I didn't know whose bedroom it was, so I decided to keep moving. To my right was a solid wall, the end of the hallway, so I turned left and walked down the corridor. The hallway was narrow to start with, and the walking space was further restricted by the many chests of drawers that were pushed up against the wall on the left hand side.

I sidled along with barely room enough to pass through the corridor for about twenty feet, until I emerged into a slightly wider but still relatively cramped lobby area. To my left, a chest-high counter bordered a desk and work area where two women were seated, clearly employees of this apartment complex. Attached to the wall behind them was a row of large gingerbread men, a festive decoration for the holiday season—but also just what I had been looking for. I was impressed how well my subconscious was pulling through for me. You see, in my earlier WL attempts to plan how how I might complete the chimera task without harming any human-like DCs, the inspiration occurred to me: have it fight gingerbread men! I wouldn't feel the least bit bad about crushing some animated DC cookies, since I happily bite the heads off gingerbread men in WL. And now, even without any elaborate summoning rituals or focused intent, my subconscious had handily provided me with everything I needed to complete the task: I had my goat, and I had some gingerbread men that could serve as victims. All I needed now was to transform the goat into a proper chimera and cause some cookie mayhem.

"Could I borrow those gingerbread men?" I asked the women politely.

"Sure," one of them replied nonchalantly.

"Okay," I said, preparing myself for the complicated part. "I'm going to try to keep this under control. Hopefully no one will get hurt."

Though I intended my words as a subtle warning, it was apparently so vague that the women took no notice whatsoever. One of them asked the other, "Could you get me a Coke?"

"Sure," the other replied.

"Half," added the woman who had made the request. This puzzled me. I had assumed that the request was for a can of Coke from a vending machine. How would one bring back half? But I didn't put too much thought into it, because I was preparing to transform the stuffed goat into a chimera... everthing was in place...

...And I woke up, once again, just before I could get to the heart of the task. When I was at my best, early this year before my long recent dry spell, I could often keep from fully waking and DEILD-chain my lucids in order to finish complex tasks like this, but now I seem to be out of practice.

Ritual: I'm coming out of my longest dry spell yet, but it was clearly a problem of motivation. Even when I had the superficial motivation to LD (I always do), the deeper motivation that makes it actually work was thwarted. In time I came to recognize the reason for this. At the end of last semester I started talking to a colleague that I knew was very interested in dreams. Even though their interest had been shaped by Freudian principles, I ventured to reveal my interest in (and practice of) lucid dreaming in the hope that we might have an interesting dialogue across perspectives. Well, the colleague promptly stopped talking to me, and I was so annoyed and embarrassed that it took a terrible toll on my dreaming. Not just lucidity—even the quality of my NLDs and my ability to remember them faded drastically. And even after I finally diagnosed what was causing the problem, I couldn't seem to dismantle the emotional block. I would just get irritated whenever I thought about it. I think this combined with the natural cyclic tendencies of my dream practice—I have too many interests and hobbies so all of them seem to wax and wane at various points to make room for one another—but hopefully my dreaming is now on the verge of a comeback. I can't think of a better New Year's resolution.

I went to bed early last night (11pm) hoping that would help to get lucid, and for good measure spent some time browsing DV. I woke up a few times during the night and it seemed like it was going to be a bust, since I barely had any dream impressions. But the last dream I had before waking (at around 7:45am) was lucid and controlled and clear, if not ultimately successful in completing my intended task.

DILD, "Making Rainbows": I was in a warehouse-like space with tall shelves crammed with every imaginable object, though everything looked old and used. I was having a conversation with someone about the place, though I don't feel like there was anyone walking with me; I think I was speaking aloud, but the other person was answering in my mind. I was observing that many of my own dreams (the comparison suggests that I did not yet recognize this as my own dream) included environments just like this, crammed full of objects, often taking the form of stores, libraries, archives. I proposed the hypothesis that these kind of object-archives were a metaphor for the mind, for the way it stores impressions or information. I wondered if I could put that idea to the test. (This idea suggests that I did recognize that I was in a mentally-constructed environment. What did I think it was, if not my own dream? Maybe the dream of the person I was talking to.)

This next section is ambiguous in that I can't be sure if I had the name and was looking for the object or holding the object and was looking for its name or shelf location, but it was definitely a matching exercise between object and name. The object was a tool of some kind, flat strips of somewhat oxidized metal bent into a particular configuration with a short chain attaching some sort of polygonal fastener. It vaguely resembled one of those old metal spring traps, but not exactly, and its function was unclear. I had never seen or heard of such a thing, but I learned that it was called a "streng." I either got the name at the outset from the voice I was talking to and then found the object, or (and I think this is more likely since I have memories of holding the object as I walked), picked up a random object and then had to find out its name by looking for its shelf. But this is a false dichotomy... dreams don't always divide so neatly between what, in waking light, seem like the logical possibilities.

At any rate, I was putting the idea of this warehouse as a kind of memory archive to the test by trying to match an object with its name. The mental effort took, I reasoned, as long as it actually took me in the dream to find the shelf. Given that it sometimes takes me a day or more to recover some sought-after piece of information from memory, this doesn't seem too far-fetched. I'm sure my archives are, like my physicial spaces tend to become, terribly cluttered with extraneous matter, making it hard to find anything. I actually commented at one point, looking at all the crap on the shelves, "I can't stand to throw anything away." But the details that make this whole exercise less plausible as a valid hypothesis of mental functioning was the object itself: neither the name "streng" nor the metal object it described corresponded with anything in waking life. The whole process seems at best to have been metaphorical.

After this improvised task was complete, I wondered what to do next and remembered, sinced I'd just browsed DV before bed, that I still had a couple unfinished TOTY. At this point it occurred to me that if I'm now taking conscious control of my intentions and the dream environment, I must be lucid, but it didn't feel like there had been any qualitative change in my mental state. Rather, the difference between being non-lucid and lucid seemed in this case to come down primarily to whether I was acting spontaneously within the structure of the dream (as in my former task) or whether I was accessing memories and intentions that I had earlier established with waking consciousness.

I wondered if I should try basilisk or leprechaun, and decided on the latter. Its no wonder that I'm stuck on these last two. I think I have a mental block against leprechauns because my mental imagery is composed primarily of cheesy cereal commercials; maybe that's why I have yet to actually meet one. Meanwhile I keep avoiding basilisk because it explicitly instructs killing DCs, which I am reluctant to do. I have no problem killing NPCs in RPGs and computer games, or experimenting with different ethical alignments in those environments, but dream feels different, like the stakes are higher. I'm not sure why. At any rate, given the options, I went with leprechaun again.

Would it be possible to create a rainbow indoors? I thought it over and figured that in dream, that should be entirely reasonable. And even though the shelves in this warehouse were only a bit over head-high, the ceiling itself was vastly higher overhead: the space was huge. So I started trying to conjure a rainbow. At first nothing happened. I put my hands together in front of me, touching at the sides with the palms up, and tried to use this as a focus to create a rainbow directly from my hands, arcing upward. I managed a weak one a few times, but they quickly fizzled out.

A young girl, maybe eight years old with blonde hair, noticed what I was doing and approached with an offer to help. "Sure," I said. I don't remember exactly what form her help took, she might have just added her concentration to my own, but with it my rainbows were getting better. I managed to make one finally that had bright colors, though there were only four of them and they were oddly separated into tube-like strips resembling neon lights, and shining with the same fluorescent intensity. Good enough for the task? I gazed at it critically, annoyed that there were only four colors. In response, the second tube from the left split down the middle and became two different colors. Good enough, I figured, and started looking for the end of the rainbow. But then that one flickered out, too.

Every time a rainbow failed, I regrouped and tried to improve my concentration. The four-color failure made me realize I needed to focus on what the colors of a rainbow actually were, so I started chanting them as I concentrated: "Red orange yellow blue indigo and violet...." I had a hard time keeping them in the right order, and after I woke up I realized that I had completely left out "green," an interesting difficulty given that while awake, I can easily and accurately recite the colors of the rainbow without a second thought.

The little girl continued in her role as my assistant, and now that I was working on the getting the colors straight we managed to produce a bright, very proper-looking rainbow. Best of all, it touched the floor right in front of us, so all we had to do was dig, presumably, to find the leprechaun and his gold. But no sooner had we rushed up to the spot than the rainbow disappeared again. This was getting annoying.

Just then I became aware of a commotion in the building. We were now standing outside one wide entrance to the warehouse, which opened onto what looked like an atrium of a shopping mall, still an enclosed space but walled with plate glass windows. People were rushing over to the windows in excitement, and through the windows I could see the people outside down below (we were around four storeys up) moving in the same direction.

The view through the glass looked out over an urban street and the row of buildings on the far side, beyond which the city ended at steep brown hills of nearly barren rock and earth. Everyone inside with us was pointing and staring at the hills, or hurrying outside to get closer to them, and the moment I looked out the window I could see why. An extraordinary rainbow had spontaneously appeared outside, and its end was clearly visible where it touched the side of one of the hills. The rainbow actually resembled the four-colour neon one that we had created earlier, but this one was exceedingly large and bright.

The hills were probably at least a mile away and too steep to climb by foot, so I knew I would have to fly. I started pushing out the large square glass panes in the wall above me, wondering if this was the most efficient way to leave the building, or if I should just walk the thirty yards or so to the exit everyone else was taking. (The exit occupied the space to our right that had formerly led into the warehouse, which was no longer visible.) The exit led onto a sort of sky bridge that crossed the road, so it would also be a fine place to take off from. I chastised myself for wasting mental energy deciding between trivialities and decided to just continue with the window.

After pushing out four panes to make a larger square, I grabbed the girl's hand and asked, "Have you ever flown before?" She shook her head. "Well, hold on tight." I levitated both of us up and through the space I had made. I did not feel physically obstructed by the metal frame that criss-crossed between the four panes of glass I had removed, though I felt a bit annoyed by the way I had so blithely floated through it. It felt careless. I mean, why bother taking out the glass at all if I was just going to pass ghost-like through the frame? I realized that again, I was letting myself getting bogged down with unnecessary and unhelpful mental baggage, but I've never felt comfortable "cheating," even in dream.

We flew high over the street and buildings bordering the city, and I realized how startling the experience of flight must be to someone who was unaccustomed to it. Indeed, the girl felt very tense at my side, and murmured plaintively, "I want to sit down." I felt it would be cruel to ignore her terror, so as soon as we cleared the city, I aimed for a flat outcropping of rock at the base of the hills. We came down fast and landed hard, much harder than I had ever landed when flying on my own, so I attributed it to her fear weakening my own buoyancy. As soon as we landed, I asked her, "Are you alright continuing?" She shook her head and I prepared to take off on my own, but even as my feet left the ground I felt myself waking up and was unable to forestall it.

3-Dec-2016 - 1ND + Long WILD Space station, Fairies' secret, Mad Scientist fight

ND: I am looking at some ugly video on the PC, my wife comes in, I try to close it, it doesn't work well (!!).
She speaks to me, I am not focused on her so get up, turn off the monitor and walk away.
There is also a bad sound, like a buzzing, coming out of speakers. We move to another room (!! doesn't look like our house), then she explains me something about a special offer, she's got a very colorful depliant in her hands.


WILD
6:15AM, ~45 min
Visualization includes discussion with some colleagues, then i invite V to join me. I reach the orbital space station of a previous dream, walk through the small warehouse, we reach the canteen. We look for a free table and sit down. I summon lasagne for her, a chicken leg for me.

Dream looks stable. I look for the ring of mushrooms. First I am in a tropical jungle, no mushrooms, but I find a small ruined temple. I open some hidden doors but it's all empty, pillaged since long time. I think about the J1kM task of pressure plates, but don't feel like doing it now, so I move on.
I reach the office again, and look in a nearby area with some high canes, no mushrooms.
I go to my tower, walk in the direction of some trees, and I feel this time I'm going to find them.
After some walking, I pull out of my jacket the magic book of yesterday dream, it's incredibly vivid and stable. I find a spell to find the mushroom ring, and when I look up, there is a circle of mushrooms of various colors among some oak-ish trees.

The next page contains a spell to summon the fairies: I take some grass and crumble it over the mushrooms. Then I take a blue bird feather and drop it at the center of the circle. The fairies appear, floating above the mushrooms. Their skins are different colors, pink, brown, white; their wings too, one has orange wings, another violet, red, pink; the wings are slightly transparent. I decide it's worth to call my daughter to show her the faries, I turn to my back she's there, I take her hand, she comes closer, and hugs a fairy.

Then I gently ask the fairies to uncover me one of their secrets. They tell me a secret is they live there. I ask for a more interesting secret, something that can help me in my dreams perhaps. They tell they can summon various woods animals, I tell if they can reveal me how to summon a wolf, that would be great. They tell me the spell words "Lupalbis Arenario" (?!?) I ask if I need any special item, answer no, but I can only summon it in the wilds. Hm, fair(y) enough
The fairy in my daughter's arms has become an Ikea fairy plush she owns. I wave the fairies goodbye, before I go they give me a crown of leaves and daisies. I take my daughter's hand and we move on.
I summon my tower, drop the crown and the plush there. I notice the room looks messy, need to do some tidy up, but not now...

I go to a city, thinking that after this peaceful encounter, I don't feel like fighting (DHL).
However, while walking, I notice a small personal "hover-plane" in the air. It drops a bomb on a street, which explodes; people scream and run.
Then it drops some small, ugly, colored gummy monsters; one grabs my face, blinding me, I remove it and crush it down. Others run through the city, I shoot some fireballs and kill some.
I understand it has to be the mad scientist. I shoot some arrows, but fail to hit him because of distance. I tell the spell and summon the wolf: it's dark grey and massive.
Another bomb hits a tall building close to me, which starts collapsing towards me. I move under it, and sustain it with my body, then raise it back at its place.
I am now angry at the scientist. I mount the wolf and chase the flying ship, shooting arrows and fireballs. I don't know why I decide not to fly up.
The wolf jumps on a tall building, and keeps jumping on roofs. The scientist drops more bombs on the city.
One of my shots hits the scientist saucer, which smokes and falls down in the street below.

The wolf jumps down the building and we reach the crash site. I see the mad scientist, of course he's wearing a white coat.
Somehow he summons a giant robot behind him, as tall as buildings around. I tell the wolf to protect some nearby children, he runs to them and accompanies the kids far away, I see sight of it.
I score some hit to the robot, to no effect though. The scientist enters a building to my left, through the door. The robot shuts the entrance closed with its massive arm. I try melting it with my fire hands, it may work but feels too slow. I switch to stronger dream powers.
I shoot out a fire/wind tornado from my hands, pushing the robot's arm out of the way, and enter the building.

Inside the small lobby, I use X-ray sight to locate the scientist, it's on the stairway, up two floors. I fly up, crushing the floors, hugging and blocking him. It seems at this stage I gave up using only DHL selected dream powers.
The scientist uses some strange power which makes himself very heavy and frees himself by dropping down. I fall down too and grab him again. Then I use a fire rope to tie him. I dare him to free himself now, if he can. The fire rope looks truly amazing !

I hand the package to some cops, they take him inside a police car. This reminds me of the "lift car" task
I try lifting the one holding the scientist, but the dream looks confusing at this point.
I try again with a different car, a dar red sedan. I pick the car from left rear wheel, I lift it, but the wheel folds under the car. I grab it from the front hood, lift it, then move my hands on the bottom, and walk a bit with the car suspended above my head.

Now I am kinda tired, I return control to my body, wake up, check clock, ~7AM, return to sleep.

More dreaming activity later, but nothing really noteworthy.