The Lab Notebook

(This one is from last night, bringing my DJ up to date again.)

Awake, Non-lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm in House #4, which is enormous and elaborate and has lots of rooms [far, far more than in real life]. I go into one room that I had been using as an office/storage room, turn on the lights, and wonder why the lights in the ceiling fan don't turn on when I flip the switches, like they always have. [Arrrrrgh! *facepalm* It's been a while. I completely forgot that this was a dream sign until just now, when I was writing about it!] Then I notice that the room has been completely redecorated and filled with all kinds of objects and belongings. Someone has moved into these rooms. That someone has left a note on a rectangular sheet of yellow paper, attached to the wall, and has signed it with her first name, Emily.

While walking through the house, I pass a seating area with couches and a coffee table in an open area of the second floor, on a sort of landing next to the walkway that leads to the other bedrooms.

I'm in a dining area, sitting at a table, eating a meal with my roommate, LB. We talk about how I have this is my last night in the house, and I have to return to my original home.

I go downstairs and walk out of the house, which is now a small cruise ship sitting at a dock. Someone says something like, “If you don't come back, the ship will leave without you.” And I'll be marooned, I think. Well, Long Beach sure is a great place to be marooned in.

I wander off, along the city streets, heading toward the ocean. I find the frontage road that runs along the edge of the beach, and follow it to the next cross-street that leads inland. [The intersection I came to looked a lot like this intersection here, a place I know well from real life, but that intersection is actually in Santa Barbara, not Long Beach. In the dream, this area looked like that intersection, except grayer, more urban, and more built up - more like Long Beach, in other words.]

I turn right and head up that street that leads inland from the ocean. I come to an enchanted-forest-themed park area, where there is a gently-curving path through a forest of tall trees, and little statues and figurines, including one that plays a chipper, pre-recorded message when you touch a marked panel in front of it. The companion I'm with does so, and I turn around and walk back the way I came along the path, annoyed by the recording.

While retracing our steps, my companion and I come to a section of the pathway where there's a little toy train that runs along a ledge, about three feet off the ground, on one side of the footpath. The train consists of a toy engine, a toy caboose, and a whole bunch of random, small objects in between them. Any object placed in the line of objects between the engine and the caboose levitates a few inches above the ledge, and is pulled along as part of the train. The idea is that you're supposed to stand on the objects and ride the train along the ledge. I take my totem out of my pocket and place it on one of the flat objects in the train, and look at it for a moment. However, I then put it back in my pocket, because I don't want my companion to see that I have it. [Again, how did I not realize I was dreaming? Apparently, in my mind, that totem object is associated with the idea “This is a secret - no one else must know you have this” much more strongly than it is with the ideas “This is a symbol of your membership in the lucid dreaming community, a reminder to do reality checks, and a way to do them.” Great. :/ ]

(This is a catch-up post. This dream took place on the night of September 8-9, 2012.)

Awake, Non-lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm in my old hometown, on a major east-west street. I have to transport some large, cooked meat dish from one place to another in the trunk of my car, without letting the juices from it spill all over the trunk, so I have to drive very carefully.

[Later, different dream.] I'm in my apartment in Omaha. My parents are there with me. They've come to visit along with SS [a good friend of my mom's], and we're trying to figure out a more comfortable sleeping situation than cramming both of my parents and SS into my office, which is what we have been doing. We wander into the far side of the apartment, where I don't go very often. We walk through a hallway that goes past an outdoor courtyard, with a brick floor and a stone fireplace, and into the large master suite.

“I don't come in here very often,” I say. The master suite has a large, unused bedroom and its own bathroom, which solves the problem of sharing bathrooms. We can also move someone into that bedroom.

A little later, I walk toward the door of my apartment, from the inside, and find that my parents are decorating it for Christmas by putting lights up all around it and putting a green garland over the top of the door, so it hangs down on the inside and the outside. “Mom!” I say indignantly. “I don't put up fall decorations until the autumnal equinox, and I don't put up Christmas decorations until December 1st!” I start taking the decorations down.

My parents and I are discussing the amount of money we spent on my relocation, and how much I still owe them. They are under the impression that I owe them for the car we rented, but I counter with the argument that no, I don't, because that expense went on my mom's credit card, not mine.

My friend Jim is in my apartment. He looks very young [younger than he is in real life] and is holding a baby girl. I introduce him to my parents: “Mom, this is my friend Jim. Jim, this is my mom,” and the same with my dad. While I'm doing so, Jim disappears, leaving only the baby floating in midair. [I have no idea how I didn't realize I was dreaming. I did take note of how strange it was that Jim looked younger than he normally did, though.]

---------------------------
Side notes:
This is the first time I've dreamed about my new apartment since I moved here, which was 1 month and 9 days ago now. This dream comes as a relief. I was beginning to worry about my mental state. On two previous occasions when I've made a change in my life (when I moved into the rented room and when I got my first smartphone - see my DJ entries from July 24, 2011 and September 4, 2011), only two weeks passed between the date of the change and the date that change was reflected in my dreams. This led me to develop the hypothesis: “Evidently, two weeks is how long it takes for my my unconscious mind to accept something as normal and start incorporating it into my dreams.” This time, it took just over five weeks. Time to adjust my previous hypothesis. Here's the adjusted version: “When my unconscious mind has begun to accept something as normal, it starts incorporating that something into my dreams. The amount of time it takes for that to happen may vary.” On a conscious level, I would agree that it has been much more difficult to adjust to and accept this change than it was to adjust to the other two changes in this data sample. I believe that this accounts for the time discrepancy.

I recognize several of the other themes in this dream as themes that have been on my mind lately while I'm awake. I frequently think about how my apartment seems very large for just me, so in my dream, my apartment actually was as big as it feels, or even bigger. I really am excited about decorating my own apartment for Christmas, so it makes sense that I would dream about that. Yesterday, when I was shopping, I really did purchase a few Christmas decorations, but I didn't put them up. My policy on putting up decorations is exactly as I said in my dream.

My best guess as to why Jim was there is that I subconsciously feel guilty that it's been five weeks and I still haven't found or joined a new Toastmasters club yet, because I keep putting it off.

(This is a catch-up post. This dream took place on the night of August 22-23, 2012.)

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

My mom and I are watching a play together. The play features a girl and a creepy, life-sized puppet that is designed to be a body double of her. I see that $OfficeBoss is there, watching the play with his family. Then, my mom and I go out to the parking lot and drive away in the same car together, even though we both have cars there. We can only start one of our cars, not the other one, because neither of us has the right key for that one.

I'm in the Phoenix, Arizona metro area on vacation, visiting my good friend, JM. I have my own car [which I never do when I go to visit him, because I always fly there and get rides around town with him and his friends - this should have been my first clue that I was dreaming, but it wasn't], and I'm driving east along the freeway, heading in the direction of JM's house. The scenery around me is incredibly beautiful and lush, with lots of desert plants.

JM and I are hanging out in a bar together, totally chilling out on a sofa. I'm drinking a beer that someone else abandoned on a table. We walk out of the bar, which is located in a shopping mall. As we're on our way out of the mall, we find another friend of ours, ET [a human - yes, those are his initials], in another of the mall's shops. I realize it's him when I hear his voice. A bunch of our friends are with us now. ET hugs everyone in the group (myself, JM, CF, and a couple of others), except for RD. RD doesn't want to be hugged, and uses her fingers to climb up the side of a door to get away from ET. ET tickles her on the small of her back instead.

I'm walking through a beautiful Arizona landscape of desert farms, and at this point, I finally realize that I'm dreaming. I focus on the fact that the guard dogs that many of the farms have cannot really hurt me when I'm in a dream. I run away from one of them by flying straight up, and then start flying over the lovely scenery, admiring it. Looking southwest, I can see downtown Phoenix, which has skyscrapers and a giant stone head with a big, wide-open mouth. Just after I've started flying, my alarm goes off and wakes me up.

[TRIGGER WARNING: This journal entry contains content that recalls the shootings in Aurora, CO. Reader discretion is advised.]

Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm on the second floor of a big office building, and I take the elevator down to the first floor. There are a lot of other people in the elevator with me. I get an odd feeling that something big and important is about to happen in just a few moments.

I exit the elevator and walk out into the ground-floor lobby of the building. It's a large space with lots of glass that lets in sunlight, and there are lots of people walking through the lobby, going in all directions.

Suddenly, a man with some kind of small-to-medium-sized automatic weapon fires a short burst of gunfire into the air, in the middle of the room. Everyone in the lobby panics and tries to take cover, including me. [I know this nightmare was inspired directly by the recent Aurora theater shooting tragedy.] As the gunman continues shooting random people in the room, I hide under a long, low, rectangular wooden table with another young woman, about my own age, with brown hair. She and I whisper to each other about how this isn't very good cover, and how he's going to find us here any moment know. We're right - he does find us there, and threatens us with the firearm. I'm terrified that I'm about to be killed. Fortunately, I realize that I'm dreaming, and that that means I can just fly away. So I do. I fly away from the gunman in a straight line, passing right through the wall of the building without even realizing that I've done so until I'm well outside the building. When I'm some distance away, I look back at the tall office building I just left. I'm far enough away that the gunman is now little more than a dot, still visible through the windows.

[There was more to this dream; I went on to explore the rest of the dream while lucid, but I don't remember any of the specifics.]

****************
Side notes:
*derisive snort* And I call myself an oneironaut! I was having a nightmare, I became lucid, and I just used my dream control abilities to run away from the danger. Next time I go lucid during a nightmare, I will try to remember to stand up to the threat and talk it down.

By the way, I had this dream at a hotel, on Night #1 of my big relocation road trip.

[This is a catchup post. I had this dream on the night of July 18, 2012, but I'm just now getting around to posting it.]

Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm in [or outside - not sure] House #1, and I become aware that I'm dreaming. I think, Hey, cool! This would be a great opportunity to go and achieve that goal! So I take off and start flying, keeping very low to the ground [I don't know why] , following the roads that lead from my house to the nearby park. I make a point of concentrating on the dream world around me, to keep myself in the dream. [I think] There's a moment where I briefly become aware of my body lying in bed, but I forcibly drag my awareness back to the dream and manage to stay in it. [It may have been after this next part, I'm not sure.]

Anyway, I turn up the road that leads to the park, and there it is: the metal, chain-link, curved baseball backstop, the one I've been fantasizing about flying to the top of since I was a little girl. I come to the center of the back of it and start flying up, following its curve, but inexplicably sink back down to the ground. I shrug and decide to just climb the thing instead. It works. I'm up at the top in just a couple of seconds. I stand on top of the baseball backstop, surveying the park and feeling very proud of myself for finally getting to the top of my baseball backstop in a lucid dream.

***********
Side notes:
Every time I have a lucid dream, I always start my day in a great mood, with the attitude that today is going to be a great day. On the day after I woke up from this particular dream, I finally received and accepted the job offer I'd spent years waiting and hoping for. Does it mean anything? I'm not willing to say yes, but it's interesting.

Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm on a street in a bright, sunny city when I realize that I'm dreaming. Pleased and excited to be lucid (as always), I stop and take a look around. I'm at a T-intersection, and on one corner is a big, tall building with businesses on the bottom few floors and apartments on the upper floors. It's white, with a red roof and other colorful accents. I turn to my right and see that its twin is on the other corner of the intersection.

There's probably a mirror in there somewhere that I can go through, I think. I approach the first building and go in the first door I find, a single door that has the name and logo of my real-life credit union on it. I go inside, and it is, indeed, a branch of said credit union. Almost everyone I see inside is a friend from real life, mostly from church, and I say hello to them as they walk past on their way out the door, but they don't seem to take any notice of me.

The main room of the branch is very small and narrow. I walk through it, turn a corner, walk down a very short hallway, turn another corner, and find a room with a rectangular, wall-sized mirror covering a fairly large area of one wall.

I stand facing the mirror. What do I want to be on the other side? I think to myself. One of the places I've lived before. I step forward confidently and easily go right through the mirror. I don't feel anything at all from it this time.

There's nothing but a completely empty, black void on the other side. When I'm all the way through the mirror, I find that while there's no floor, instead of falling down, I'm sinking down very slowly. Suddenly, I feel an overwhelming rush of profound thoughts and knowledge coming at me out of the void, while at the same time, it transforms from completely black and empty to a starfield of white stars. I'm frightened, and feel like all this is too much to handle, so I feel behind me with my hands for the edge of the mirror. [I'm now in a seated position, though I don't specifically remember getting into it.] I find the edge of the mirror and use my arms to pull myself up and out of the mirror, back where things are at least recognizable as normal. [No, I don't remember any of the content of those profound thoughts, just that it was like a tidal wave.]

[Side note: Woohoo! This is the first time I've ever completed the Task of the Month for two consecutive months! ]

Color-coding: Non-lucid, Semi-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]
Bold text indicates a “dream within a dream,” meaning any dream scenes that followed after I dreamed of falling asleep

I wake up in my current bedroom. I can hear the couple who lives downstairs in the master bedroom arguing. The woman says something like, “I have to get up now and get ready for work!” I can't sleep with them arguing, so I decide, “Okay, I guess I'm up for the day now, too.” I get up and start trying to take a shower, but the hot water keeps turning cold because the woman downstairs is taking a shower at the same time. After I'm done, I'm still feeling so sleepy that I decide to go back to bed and try to get some good sleep while I still can. It's still only 4:15 AM, after all. So I get back into bed and go to sleep.

[All of the above paragraph was a completely convincing false awakening that I failed to catch. I've never heard the couple in question argue like that, plus, in the dream, the residents of the master bedroom were the parents of the girl who actually lives there in real life, and I thought nothing of it. :/]

I'm visiting EM and SM's house in Omaha [something I did in real life recently]. It's morning, and we're all getting ready to leave the house for the day. They have a gigantic, elaborate house [way bigger, fancier, and more high-tech than their real house]. While we're in the kitchen, SM says something like, “You haven't had a chance to eat today.” I answer, “I know. That's why I always keep bananas in stock.” I show her that I'm carrying a banana with me, which I intend to eat for breakfast. SM has an eyepatch over her left eye socket, with a cool outer-space vista on it. It's embedded into her skin, and I can see muscles twitching underneath it. It's kind of creepy.

We get outside the front door when I realize that I don't have any shoes on. I say to EM, “Could you unlock the door for me, so I can get back into the house? I'm not wearing shoes, only socks.”

EM takes out a door key and uses it to unlock a lock in a wall, which opens the front door. “The front door” consists of a zig-zagging wall of metal panels that cross a wide, concrete courtyard. The panels that are parallel to the house swing open, toward the house, when the key is turned; they're the doors. I go into the house and run up the stairs to the room where I'm staying, to get my shoes.

When I come back outside, I find SM sitting on something in the middle of the tall, light-green grass on the wide front lawn, waiting for me. She doesn't have her eyepatch anymore; both of her eyes are normal. [This is the case in real life.]

“Wait just a ding-danged minute here...” I say. This discrepancy has caused me to begin to suspect that none of this is real. To test whether I'm dreaming, I turn to face a low rock wall nearby and start walking toward it, willing myself to pass through it intangibly [something I know very well that I can do in dreams]. I find that I can't pass through it; I just bump into it normally. In the moments that follow, I'm very acutely and vividly aware of the world around me, of my own self-consciousness, and of the fact that I'm not sure whether I'm awake or dreaming at this very moment. [I finally started watching the TV series Awake a few nights ago, and this is what the protagonist experiences all the time, a fact which is reiterated at the beginning of episodes 2 and 3. That is so cool, that I got to experience that personally in one of my own dreams! ]

After another moment or two, I do realize that I am dreaming. [I don't remember specifically how or why.] By definition, that means that I am getting some good sleep now, I reflect gratefully. I smile and decide to enjoy myself here while I'm getting that restorative sleep I needed so much.

As usual, all I want to do is explore the dream world, so I start flying up and away from the house. I see SM's car driving away below me, and wave goodbye to her. From up here, I can see the entire city spread out below me, covering the gently rolling hills like a blanket, and it's very beautiful. It's also very windy up there. I think to myself: I've got brains in my head, I've got feet in my shoes, I've got levitation powers in my mind. I can steer myself any direction I choose. [This is a reference to the Dr. Seuss book Oh, the Places You'll Go!, from which one of my contacts in Omaha read a passage to a graduating class while I was there. Hmm. No idea why I thought of them as “levitation powers” instead of “flight powers.”] I try to fly into the wind, which is coming from my left, but can't find the strength to fight against it. I decide to fly with it instead. I think, Why not? When you're going bicycling, you'll probably choose to ride with the wind, if you have a choice.

I end up flying through a neighborhood filled with lots of cute little houses that line narrow, old, little streets that wind around every which way. [Just like in the real Omaha, or, at least, the neighborhood where EM and SM live.] Every front yard has big, tropical-rainforest-looking trees in it that reach across the street, forming the beginnings of a canopy, but not a very thick one. There are exotic, tropical birds in every tree. [Um... not at all like in the real Omaha. ] I fly along, following the streets and admiring the beauty all around me.

[Dreamskip - I don't remember getting from one locale to the other.] I'm still in Omaha, but now I'm in a gigantic, elaborate, multi-story library and bookstore. It has lots of glass walls and ceilings that let in the sunlight, and they're arranged in a square geometric pattern, just like this library. It's filled with lots and lots of shelves of books, and there are plenty of people walking around. I'm still flying to get around, instead of walking. I fly up from one level to another, in search of the section where the most popular books are kept. I want to check one of those books out, but I don't have a library card yet, so I'm limited to buying it. I definitely intend to get a library card when I move there, though. [True in real life, too.]

When I get to that section, I land and start walking. I'm looking for the second book in a series I'm reading. I have to think about it to remember which one it is. It's not the Twilight series; it's the Hunger Games series. [Which I haven't even started reading in real life, but I would like to.] I look through the neat, white, bright shelves and find the book I'm looking for. I pick it up and start walking away with it, reading it. There's a computer kiosk that beeps at me as I walk by. I look on the screen, and it has a written message directed at me, chastising me for cracking the spine on my book. Doing so somehow disrupted the operation of a pacemaker of somebody in the immediate vicinity. [I don't recall seeing that somebody there, though.]

I continue exploring the library, and decide I want to go down one floor, but I don't want to fly because there are lots of people around, and I generally try to avoid using any of my dream powers when there are people around to see me. [Yes, they are just DCs, but I always think like that in my lucid dreams anyway. I don't know why, but I do.] I see a wide, steep, carpet-covered ramp leading down to the level below me, and decide to roll down it.

[Dreamskip. I'm not 100% certain that I was still aware that I was dreaming in this scene, but I may have been.] I'm walking along a city street and see a restaurant that is closed. I'm disappointed to discover this, because it had belonged to my friends. I wander through it, looking at all the debris left in the abandoned building. I walk to a side entrance and go out through the patio, where I see that people have begun seating themselves at the patio tables. I realize that they must have seen me walking around inside the restaurant, assumed it was open, and sat down. I feel bad about it, but I start telling them, “Sorry, it's closed.” They get up and leave.

[Side notes: Heh. I love how my subconscious has turned Omaha into this perfect tropical paradise with an awesome library, a place where everything I saw around me was incredibly cool and gave me nothing but happiness and joy. Omaha really does have a gigantic central library, although it doesn't have that cool architectural design. That part came directly from the library at UC San Diego. I didn't go to school there, but EM did - a fact which I had consciously forgotten about until I told my mom about this dream later in the day. Hmm. Omaha also has a zoo that I didn't actually see, but that everyone tells me is pretty awesome. Okay, subconscious, I get the message: Don't give up on Omaha yet. You may still be able to find happiness there.]

Non-lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

[Fragment:] I'm sorting through laundry, separating out the things that need to be washed. [Heh. Apparently, anything you've been avoiding dealing with in real life can show up in a dream, even if it's something completely mundane. ]

[The following is a different dream. I'm writing this at the end of the day after I woke up from it, rather than in the morning, right after waking up for it, so I've probably forgotten a lot by now. What I'm about to write here is all I remember now. Sorry.]

I'm a member of a group of Chosen Children [from the Digimon anime series; these people are otherwise known as Digidestined in the English dub]. Everyone in the group is around my own age. [Yes, I was the same age in my dream as I am in real life. Yes, I'm way too old to be a Chosen Child by the standards of any of the anime series. Evidently, my subconscious doesn't care about that.] There are at least 20 people in the group. We all go into a fairly small cabin, the kind that would be at a summer camp, in which we all have to find a space to lie down in, because we're all going to enter a dream together [Inception-style. No, I never once realized I was dreaming throughout this entire dream. Yes, I feel silly now.]. I climb into the upper bunk of one of the many bunk beds in the room. Addressing the group at large, I say something like, “Try to make space on the floor for everyone.”

With my right hand, I push up the left sleeve of my shirt to expose the inside of my left elbow. I wait for someone to come around with an IV needle for me. I'm not looking forward to having the needle put in, and want to just get it over with already. [Exactly how I feel about them in real life.]

I'm now in the first dream level, with the same group of people. Once again, we're all lying down, waiting to get IV needles put in. I think, We need to go into the deeper dream levels so that we can get into our stronger Digimon forms. I have the following knowledge about our current situation: We're in the midst of a mission to defeat some enemy, and in order to transform into the strongest Digimon forms we have available to us, we have to be several dream levels deep.

This time, I actually feel the needle being stuck in, but not into my elbow - it gets stuck into the tip of my left thumb. It's still not a pleasant experience, of course. I can feel it in there, and can feel my pulse throbbing in the tip of my thumb.

[Awesome. I love the premise of this dream. I'm slightly tempted to write crossover fanfic based on it, but I don't have time to write fanfic.]

Awake, Lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

After I've woken up in the night and am going back to sleep, I feel that sensation of floating, of being untethered from gravity and from anything else physical. I know that I can enter a dream from here if I let myself float away. I do so, and immediately find myself in a dream. [I have to admit, though, I'm not 100% certain that my consciousness remained continuous from the time I woke up to the time I entered the dream, so I'm only willing to use my WBTB and DILD tags for this entry, not my WILD one.]

I'm in a bright, sunny, pedestrian-oriented shopping area, with a wide, winding sidewalk that leads between a series of large, curving, mostly-white buildings, each of which contains many different shops and restaurants. One of them has a large Cold Stone Creamery sign on the outside. It's very pretty, and looks very real. I'm very pleased to be in a lucid dream again.

At some point while exploring this new dreamscape, I see several friends of mine from earlier periods of my life [high school and/or college - I don't remember this part all that clearly]. Then, I wander through a small exterior door in one of the buildings, which leads into a classroom. In this classroom, the desks are set up in several sets of rows that are set at right angles to each other. The aisle between the rows of desks begins near the door and goes right through where the corners of those right angles would be. All the desks are filled with young adults, like me, but I don't know any of them. I walk down the aisle toward the front of the classroom. There is a male teacher there, leading the class in a discussion about something, but he doesn't complain or try to shut me up when I interrupt him and say to the class:

“Anyone want to help me out with this possession thing?”

[Or some similar words to that effect.] By this point, I've remembered one of the current Tasks of the Month and decided that with all these DCs around, it should be easy to give it a try. [I'm not surprised that I asked if one of my DCs would willingly act as the possessee. Possessing someone by force or surprise doesn't appeal to me at all; I already knew that about myself.]

A woman in the front row, on my left (the teacher's right), raises her hand and stands up. She's maybe an inch taller than I am, but stockier, and has dark red hair and green eyes. Both of us are wearing jeans. She follows me to the back of the classroom.

“I want my gold star, dammit!” I say, just before I go to work on possessing her. [I was talking about the gold wings I was going to earn here on DreamViews (or rather, the silver wings - in the excitement of the moment, I completely forgot that we had switched the basic and advanced tasks early in the month), but my exclamation came out as the commonplace expression meaning a reward or recognition for an achievement. My subconscious betrays my true colors: I really want recognition for my lucid dreaming achievements. Wow, I'm shallow. :blush: ]

My method of possessing people is as follows: I stand directly behind the red-haired woman, and we clasp hands with our fingers interlaced. Then, I press the trunk of my body into her back, with our shoulders aligned, and push myself forward until our bodies merge. It's a somewhat slow process at first, since the substance of her body offers some resistance to mine, but it works. [I already know how to become intangible to walk through things in dreams; why didn't I think to make use of that ability and adapt it to this purpose? I don't know.] In a few moments, I'm standing in her body and controlling it from the inside. It has an awkward, heavy feeling to it, but it's really cool. When I've made it all the way forward, I notice that I've done an incomplete job; I can still feel our hands clasped together, and my feet are sticking out above hers, because she was taller than me to begin with. “We're supposed to merge them together,” I say. I straighten out my fingers and merge them with hers, and push down with my feet so they're merged properly. Then, I walk forward, one step at a time. It feels heavy and awkward, like I'm wearing several layers of really heavy clothes. I walk out through the door of the classroom into the sunlit walkway. Then, I collapse onto the ground and try to extricate myself from my DC. I only succeed in discarding the pair of jeans the DC was wearing, leaving them lying on the ground.

I get up, go back into the classroom, and try again to release my DC from possession. This time, it works. The DC steps forward and away from me, and calmly walks back to her seat. The other DCs in the class seem to approve of the successful possession. [If my DC now wasn't wearing pants, none of the characters in the dream seemed to take any notice, including the red-haired DC herself. I think she just had a long, dress-like blouse on.]

I want to practice this newfound skill again, so I look around the classroom. In an aisle seat on my right (the teacher's left), a man with black hair in a ponytail is sitting. That'll be different, I think. [Being in a man's body will be different, I mean.] I look at him, and he gets up and allows me to take possession of him in the same way. This time, it's a little bit easier and goes a little faster. Unfortunately, I woke up shortly after this point.

Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

[Note: This was my first time taking melatonin. I took a 3mg pill before I went to bed. I'm on a trip, and my hosts offered it to me to help me get over jet lag. I also tried to concentrate on lucid dreaming more than I had been lately, as I was falling asleep. One or both of those things worked.]

I'm walking along the right-hand side of a broad, wide street, passing several marching bands as they march past in the opposite direction, one after another.

I'm in a classroom at a school that looks a lot like my old elementary school. There are a lot of other people my age there. A bunch of us start sitting down in a semicircle with our musical instruments; we're about to play an impromptu band concert. TM [a real-life friend and roommate who I only met within the last six months] is one of the people participating in the concert, but it's obvious that she doesn't know how to line up for one correctly. I yell at her: “[TM]! You have to sit so that you're spaced evenly! That's the done thing in music!”

The band starts playing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The memory of how to play it comes flooding back into my mind from high school. [This is a real memory. It was one of the songs I had to memorize how to play for football games.] I'm surprised and pleased to find that I can still play it. As we're playing, though, the other members of the band lose interest, stop playing, and wander out of the room, leaving me playing my clarinet all alone.

When I get to a stopping place, I stop playing and leave the room in the company of a female teacher. We walk around the western edge of campus and come to the entrance of another classroom, where we stop and talk to a male teacher. Somewhere around this point, I realize that I'm dreaming. [I don't remember the specific moment it happened, but I know I've had at least one other dream featuring this version of my old elementary-school campus before.]

In the conversation with the male teacher, I ask him how old I am right now: “Am I eleven, the age I was when I started playing the clarinet; fourteen, the age I was when I graduated from junior high school; eighteen, the age I was when I graduated from high school; or twenty-six, the age I am right now in the real world?” I mention the real world specifically to see whether he'll pick up on the implication that the world we're in right now isn't real, and how he'll react.

“There is no real world involved in this discussion!” the male teacher exclaims.

I decide not to pursue that topic any further, because it's obvious that I'm not going to be able to convince him that this is a dream.

[This is a catch-up entry. This dream is from the night of February 11-12, 2012.]

[I'm writing this down so long after the fact that I'm not 100% sure that I have the date right. It's within 1 day of the actual date, though. This is the only dream I remember having while on my first-ever cruise. I thought it was pretty cool, funny, and interesting.]

I'm at my old high school, with my mom. [I went to the high school where my mom was a teacher, by the way.] The fire alarm goes off, emitting a continuous stream of high-pitched tones. We try to turn it off ourselves, but we can't. We go to the school administrative office and ask the principal to turn it off, because it's driving us crazy. He tells us that he can't turn it off, either.

I wake up, and can still hear the high-pitched tones. I realize the following, in this order: That's not a fire alarm. That's the ventilation system whistling. Hey, that was a real sound that was occurring in the real world, and it came through into my dream! Awesome! Also, the speed and durations of the tones was exactly the same when I heard it in the dream as it is now, further demonstrating that time passes at the same rate in dreams as it does in reality.

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm walking around on the ground floor of a large, three-story shopping mall. The interior is a very bright, airy space, with white walls and a glass ceiling through which the sun shines. While I'm walking along, the realization suddenly hits me: This is a dream! I'm so shocked that the scene around me immediately starts to become less clear, filling up with gray pixels that multiply quickly [they look a lot like static on an analog TV], just like it always does when my dreams start to destabilize. Oh, dammit! I think. I immediately drop to my hands and knees on the tile floor, focusing on touching the floor and on staying focused on the scene around me, and thinking reassuring thoughts to myself: It's okay. It's okay. In 30 seconds or so, the scene is clear and stable again. I get up and start walking again, exploring the place I'm in.

As I look around me, I look up at the ceiling, three stories above me, to see winter greenery with ornaments on it and big, shiny bells in red, gold, and green lined up in a recessed space just below the edge of the ceiling. “They haven't even taken down all their Christmas decorations yet,” I remark. I find that I've come upon the entrance to a vacant department store, currently being used as a storage space for the Christmas decorations that have been taken down. Among other things, there is a large, haphazard pile of blue and white styrofoam wreaths. There's no gate or other barrier to entry across the entrance to the store, so I spontaneously decide to jump into the pile of wreaths as if they were dry leaves. It's fun! Some of them break, and I just say, “It's my dream world, and I'll destroy the wreaths if I want to.”

When I get up, I wonder what's on the floor above me, and I decide to explore it. I look to the side and see that there's a side entrance to the department store, and there's a flight of stairs outside that entrance, which I can see through the window. I could take them, but it would be quicker, easier, and cooler to just levitate myself through the ceiling above me, so I decide to do that. I close my eyes and, with an act of will, start rising upward.

[Note: I don't really remember where in the sequence the following two paragraphs went, but I'm sure I was lucid, so I put them here.]

Now I'm in a big, industrial-looking building complex with multiple floors, walkways, and sets of stairs running through the vast interior space. It's dark inside; all the walls and floors are black or dark gray, and there aren't very many lights. This area is [somehow] part of the Star Wars galaxy. As I wander around here, I can hear a dialogue between a post-redemption Darth Vader [he's still speaking in the James Earl Jones voice, though] and some other random character. The other character addresses Vader as “Rash,” apparently using it as a first name. Vader, offended by this, replies: “Rash?! I may have acted rashly, but my name is Anakin.” I smile.

[Somewhere in here,] I meet and interact with another young woman about my age. She leads me on a walk through the area, talking to me. Our walk ends at a spot overlooking a view of a natural, green valley. Then, she says something like, “Instead of waiting around for them to break your heart, like I did, go out and grab hold of what you want.” I wonder if this is my best self giving me advice.

When I open my eyes again after a scene transition [which I'm pretty sure I remember being the levitation one mentioned above, but again, I don't remember in what order the above two scenes happened], I'm standing on the second floor of a building, overlooking a very beautiful view. There is a clear, sparkling swimming pool in front of me, but it's big enough to be a small lake and wraps around three sides of a tall, stucco community clubhouse building with a red tile roof. The pool is in a park, surrounded by green grass and trees. Off to the left is a street, on the other side of which are houses that match the style of the clubhouse. The scene is so beautiful that I exclaim, “Man, I wish I could take pictures!” ...So I could post them on DreamViews to show everyone! is the thought behind that remark.

I decide to go swimming. The tower I'm in has exterior stairs on the side facing the pool. I start going down the stairs. As I do, I pass a window and look at my reflection in it. I'm pleased to see that I'm already wearing a swimsuit, a fact which I attribute to my decision to go swimming. My face looks completely normal. I try smiling, but my reflection stays the same for a moment, then returns a crooked smile, using only one side of its mouth. 'Cause it's a dream mirror, not a real one, I think. It doesn't work like a real one would.

I walk to the side of the pool and jump right into the deep water [something I don't usually do in real life, because I suck at swimming]. It feels wet. I swim around on the surface of the water much more easily than in real life, enjoying the experience. Several times, I lower my head so that my nose is under the water and enjoy the fact that I can still breathe normally. I want to swim completely underwater and open my eyes, but I don't, because I have the very realistic sensation of having water in my right eye, forcing me to keep it closed.

Other people are swimming in the pool. We hang out and talk a little. After a while, I get out and keep exploring the park I'm in.

In another area of the park, there are a series of big pieces of plastic playground equipment, white with pastel accents, with a miniature golf course built around and through them. I start climbing the largest one, using the metal handles and small platforms built into the structure to climb. This climbing route goes up toward the main body of the play structure in an arc, and each foothold is only supported by a single column or bar, so it looks like there's mostly open space below you, and you can see exactly how far you are off the ground. I'm not afraid at all, though, because I know it's a dream and I can't get hurt.

Just as I reach the main body of the play structure, the memory of the current Task of the Month suddenly hits me: set off fireworks in a crowded place and record how the people there reacted. I recall how other DV members have done it. I slide down the slide that's in front of me, determined to complete the task.

Not far from the play equipment, some people are beginning to gather at some tables for a picnic. I start trying to obtain a firecracker [because that's what several other DV members used]. I reach behind my back and try to make one appear there, but it doesn't work. I try looking around corners in the scene and expecting one to be there, but that doesn't work either. I really suck at summoning things, I think. Then I think of another approach: find an existing object and transform it.

On the ground, under a tree a few yards from the picnic area, I find the pointy half of a broken-in-half yellow pencil. I pick it up and sandwich it between my two cupped hands, focusing my will on it and willing it to turn into a firecracker. When I open my hands, it has swollen up and gotten round and puffy in the middle.

All the picnic tables are now full of people, and I see that some of them have their marching band instruments with them, which makes me realize that they're a marching band. I see at least one trombone in the group. I stand a couple of yards back from one of the tables and throw my pencil at the group of people. It hits the center of the table and explodes with a loud crack. No one takes any particular notice [at least, not that I can recall]. When I retrieve the pencil, the lead has shot out of the tip and gone limp, like a piece of spaghetti. I decide to continue in my search for a firecracker.

I end up walking through the halls of a dusty building that resembles my section of the university library where I used to work. I continue trying to summon a firecracker or firework by expecting one to be there when I look around a corner or into a room, but it still doesn't work. In one storage room full of random stuff, I hear a hissing sound that I think is the sound of a firework fuse burning at first, but then I realize it's the sound of the small air blower on a strange, old machine that is running in the middle of the floor. I continue searching this room for a firework, but I woke up in the middle of my search.

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm visiting Las Vegas. Downtown Las Vegas is made up of multiple levels of shops, restaurants, and casinos, most of them themed to a particular pop-culture franchise, all stacked on top of each other and connected by multiple layers of walkways and stairs, creating a gigantic, multilevel man-made environment. I'm walking through this environment with my mom. I walk away from her briefly to do something on my own [I don't remember what], and I'm worried for a moment that I won't be able to find my way back to where she's sitting. But I come back down the stairs and there she is, sitting on a bench next to a curved railing at the edge of an elevated walkway, waiting for me to come back. When I approach, she gets up, and we continue walking.

Then, my mom and I are joined by my sister and a couple of our girlfriends. [They weren't anyone I know in real life, but in the dream, they were our friends.] While we're walking around, my mom says something to the effect of, “I thought all you girls were supposed to go see a shrink!” We just kind of laugh and say, “Yeah, we were.” [I think] We're still planning on going to see one later.

My family and I are getting ready to leave somewhere on an airplane. I observe how airplanes operate, by catching drafts of air, and think about how fragile and uncertain this process is. Then I think that it's best not to think about this process too much, since I'm going to have to travel on one very shortly. Then, we're flying on the airplane. It flies past some elevated highways that appear familiar to me.

[Different dream, probably in a different cycle.] I'm sitting in a typical high school football stadium, watching the pre-game activities. There is a marching band on the field. One member of the marching band has a large trombone whose bell is filled with clarinets. When he blows into the trombone, the clarinets spray out all over the place.

I find myself hunting through the bleachers for my clarinet reeds, which have been thrown all over the place. I pick them up, looking at the numbers printed on the back of each one, looking for the 2 ½ reed. One of them says “5 ½,” another “3 ½.” Eventually, I find the 2 ½ one.

The football players are on the field, warming up for the game. One of them throws a practice pass to another, but with a basketball, not a football. I look away from the field, and look down at the program on my lap. It's made of sheets of paper folded in half crosswise, and has lots of text on it. I read it for a few moments, and then something [I don't remember what] makes me stop and think, Either [something that I can't remember now], or this is a dream program. I reach up and pinch my nose shut, and feel that wonderful, paradoxical sensation of being able to breathe through it while doing so. Yes, I'm dreaming. I pinch my nose and breathe through it for a few moments more, to verify and to enjoy the sensation. While doing this, I gaze at the program, not reading it, just looking at it and appreciating the experience of knowing that this thing I'm looking at, as real as it looks, is just a dream image being generated by my mind.

When I look up at the field again, I'm surprised to find that the scene has grown mostly dark, as if somebody turned off most of the lights. I know that's because I haven't been paying any attention to the football field for the last couple of minutes, and therefore, it's started to fade away. I'm disappointed, and wish and hope that it will get brighter again, but it doesn't. Then the dream ended.

After I had woken up, I remembered that I could have verbally commanded the dream to become clear and bright again, and mentally kicked myself for forgetting about that trick.

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from the nights of December 24-27, 2011. Adult content warning for the one from December 25-26.]

Night of December 24-25

I'm at church, with my choir, accompanying our performance of “What Child is This?” on my clarinet. My clarinet keeps misfiring; some of the notes here and there refuse to play. I'm embarrassed. [This was definitely an anxiety dream. Exactly that actually happened during our choir rehearsal on Thursday, December 22, and I was afraid it was going to happen during the performance, which was the morning after I had this dream, on Christmas Day. Thankfully, it didn't happen; my clarinet worked fine.]

Night of December 25-26

I'm at this place that's kind of like a spa. It's a place for people to rest, relax, and renew. I'm in an outdoor area of this place, and it's a beautiful, warm, sunny day. I'm lying around on the ground, wearing only panties, along with several other women who are doing exactly the same. Other people are walking around the grounds, and the thought crosses my mind: Maybe I should go and put on some slightly more modest panties.

All of a sudden, I'm being molested by a group of two or three men. I manage to fight them off and struggle out of their grasp. All the while, I'm shouting at them, forcefully telling them to stop, and that I don't like or appreciate what they're doing. I end my tirade by telling another man, who's just sitting on the ground watching the proceedings, that he's a despicable jerk, too [or something to that effect; I don't remember my exact words here]. I tell him this because I know that he's being paid to be there as a witness to the scene that just unfolded. I also know that the molesters were also hired to do what they did. The men who hired them are also in the scene, standing around, watching it all happen. I know exactly what they're doing: They're lawyers, and they have a racket going on where they hire people to rape beautiful girls in establishments like the one I'm at, and then get the girls to sue those establishments for a lot of money, of which they get a percentage because they act as the girls' representation.

Night of December 26-27

I'm at work, but I'm participating in a dramatization of the work we do at my workplace for TV. The part of my boss [who I've mentioned in this DJ before] is being played by Tim Allen. I reflect that this was a strange casting choice, since he doesn't look at all like my boss, nor does he act much like him.

I'm watching a movie about a big, tall castle, a white one that looks like it came straight out of a fairy tale. I'm immersed in the movie, and I'm flying in circles around the top of the castle's high, central tower. There is a song playing on the movie soundtrack that I find kind of annoying, so I want to change the channel on the movie. Awww, man, the remote's all the way down there, I think to myself when I look down at the ground and see the TV remote control lying there. Then I think, Maybe I can get it by telekinesis. Wait a second. If I'm thinking about getting the remote by telekinesis, and flying around, I must be dreaming.

I stretch out my hand toward the remote control and concentrate on it, trying to use the force of my will to pull it into my hand. It doesn't work. Then, my mind calls up the primary example in my schema for what pulling an object into your hand with your mind looks like: the wampa cave scene from The Empire Strikes Back [starting at 2:20]. I think, It's kind of like the object is attached to a bungee cord that snaps it back into your hand. I try again, keeping that analogy in mind and focusing on it. This time, it works. The remote control flies up into my hand, just as if it were attached to a bungee cord.

At this point, I abruptly realize that during the time I've been concentrating on drawing the remote control into my hand, I haven't been concentrating on flying, so I've been gradually descending without noticing it. I'm now only a yard or two above the ground. I quickly correct for this and start climbing again. As I do so, I think, “And hurry! We're losing altitude fast!” And yes, “altitude” is the correct term in this instance, because this is a planet I'm flying over, not a moon. Even if it is just a dream planet. [This is a reference to the original version of the “Star Tours” ride from the Disney theme parks.] The remote control has transformed into a deodorant stick, which I use on myself. [? I don't even know.]

I woke up very pleased with myself, knowing that I could finally cross “Move an object with my mind” off my master list of lucid goals!

Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

[Last night, I had a long, vivid, elaborate lucid dream that felt like it lasted between 10 and 20 minutes. This journal entry only reflects the most significant and memorable moments of that dream, which are all I remember now. There were other stretches of experience connecting the moments below that aren’t written down in detail, because I don’t remember them that well. They mostly consisted of me flying around and observing the scenery.]

I’m at my university, at some sort of outdoor expo, standing in a booth made up of some folding tables and an EZ-UP shade structure. It’s a sunny day. I’m supposed to be there to represent one of the organizations I’m in, and I’m supposed to be wearing that organization’s T-shirt, but I can’t find it. The only T-shirt I can find in our booth is one I got from [a client company that my company has done work for in real life]. The logo on the front of the T-shirt I have is the same shape as the logo of the organization I’m representing (an oval), and the overall T-shirt design is very similar, but the letters in the oval are different, and the T-shirt I actually have says “[the client company's name]” across the back. I change into this T-shirt anyway. I do it while standing behind the open back of some hatchback vehicle, hoping that nobody will see me, because [for some inexplicable reason], I’m not wearing a bra.

When I find myself looking at a very vivid, colorful cityscape from the viewpoint of flying over it, it only takes me a moment to realize that I’m dreaming. I slow myself down, controlling the speed of my flight, just observing the landscape around me.

I’m standing on the ground in that city. I look across the street and see the gates of ‘the Asian Disneyland.’ There are solid-colored, blue and pink, cartoony humanoid figures walking around on the other side of the metal gates. [They look just like the figures in this cartoon (WARNING: Ads on that page are likely NSFW).] I think, Heck yes, then fly over and enter the “Asian Disneyland.”

When I get inside, I am on the second story of what looks like an indoor mall, looking down onto the floor of the first story. When I see what’s down there, I realize, Of course, that’s what would be in the Asian Disneyland: casino table games. The entire first floor is full of them. I have absolutely no interest in this at all [true in real life, too], so I turn right around and go back out the entrance to the mall. [I am very, very sorry for the stereotype evident in the content of this dream.]

Once outside again, I go, “Oh, yeah!” when I recall the current Task of the Month: fly up into the sky and find out where all the snow comes from. I start flying up into the sky. There is a puffy cloud there, and I fly toward it, aiming to get on top of it. As I approach it, it turns from white to dark gray. Lightning flashes across it, and it reaches out to threaten me with a pseudopod made of dark-gray cloud. I think, Uh-oh. This dream is going to turn into a nightmare if I don’t take control of it. Just by thinking about it, I make the pseudopod stop threatening me and retreat back into the cloud, the lightning stop, and the cloud turn white again. The threat nullified, I continue flying toward the cloud. It turns dark gray again only a moment later, but I realize that that’s because I know that precipitation only falls from heavy, dark-gray clouds. [When I first read the Task of the Month for this month, my first reaction was, “I’m probably not going to find anything but clouds up there; I’m a little too rational-minded for that.” This dream experience proves that I was right.]

[Sure enough,] When I get on top of the cloud, there is nothing there – just cloud. I sit down cross-legged on top of the cloud and decide to fly around on it, using it as a mode of transportation, just like Goku does in “Dragonball Z.” While flying on the cloud, I find myself flying down a corridor that turns lots of corners at crazy angles, lined with doors on either side. [I don’t know what it was, but] Something about this situation makes me go, “Of course,” and then start singing: “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,” etc. I continue singing as I fly through the corridor.

As I fly around some more, I think excitedly and proudly about how I’ll get to have my username in orange on DreamViews tomorrow or the next day. [Although now I don’t think I really deserve it, since I fulfilled the letter of the challenge but not its spirit. I really didn’t find out anything; all I found when I flew into the sky was the source of snow that I already expected to be to be there, namely, a cloud. I am so boring!]

I need to get out of a building very quickly. [It may or may not have been the mall-like building mentioned earlier. I think it was a different one, though.] The building has a glass wall right next to the entrance. I decide to go out through the glass wall. I run toward it. A second before I reach it, I focus my mind on activating my intangibility, an ability I have used in several dreams before. It works perfectly; I run right through the glass wall without breaking it, just like a ghost.

I’m in a circular meeting room with several levels of steps leading down to a central circle of floor. There are no chairs. There are a lot of people standing around in the room. I know that they’re all just DCs. They have gathered here to conduct a sort of tribunal to determine whether or not I am a goddess. Some of them have found out about the superhuman abilities I exhibit when I’m in the dream world, and have concluded that I am one, but others disagree. I think, I’m not a goddess. I’m just a human who knows how to lucid dream. I don’t say anything during the meeting, though. [I don’t know why not.]

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Side notes:
Wow. I really feel like I took a step forward in my dream control skills last night.