The Lab Notebook

I'm in a big building of some kind. I'm high-school-aged, and I'm walking around in the building as part of a group of other high-schoolers [none of whom I recognize individually]. There's a tall table with a bunch of half-sheets of paper on it. They're sign-up sheets where we can sign up for the activities we want to do at an outdoor camp we're going to go to. I and several of my friends sign up for tennis. I think, Since when am I interested in tennis? [I'm not, in real life; I haven't even played it since high-school PE.] I also notice that one of the activities we can sign up for is beer pong. This strikes me as odd, too, since we're high-school students. Then I recall that in a previous dream in this setting [which, once again, I don't recall at all now that I'm awake], I learned that either the drinking age here in this setting is 18, or there isn't one at all, I'm not sure which.

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Side notes:

I managed to have a lucid dream last night, despite having drunk wine several hours before going to bed. I think the fact that the last thing I did before bed was writing and posting a dream journal entry helped a lot. In this dream, I was aware that I was dreaming, but the thought of going off and doing my own thing, rather than going along with the dream plot, didn't even cross my mind. I don't know why not. I also don't remember why or how I became lucid.

I'm at work, viewing the contents of my work e-mail account. I discover, to my surprise and dismay, that earlier, when I logged in to Petpet Park from work using my existing password and my new work e-mail address, the site created a whole new account for me and began sending e-mail alerts related to that account to my work e-mail address. Each of these e-mail alerts is marked with one of Petpet Park's pawprint icons. I'm very worried that my boss will see these e-mails and find out that I've been goofing off and playing games at work.

[Different dream.] I'm having a somewhat heated discussion with my parents about my living arrangements.

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Side notes:

I was already consciously aware that I was anxious about the topic of the second dream, but not the first one. That first dream brought my guilt and fear that my less-than-stellar work habits will be discovered to my conscious attention for the first time. I love it when dreams give me useful insights like that.

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

I'm traveling to Epcot on a highway. The highway is elevated relative to the park, which is long and narrow, and lush and green. There is a giant, inflated jack-o’-lantern in the center of the park. I’m dismayed to realize that the jack-o’-lantern has become the park’s de facto icon; it was never meant to be.

[Different dream.] I'm at a summer camp somewhere. [The day before I had this dream, I'd suddenly, randomly come to the nostalgic realization that it had been a very long time since I'd been to a camp of any kind. Thanks, brain! :-) ] I arrive at a wooden pickup station (sort of like a bus stop) at 8:15 A.M. [I think], in time to get picked up by a horse-drawn, wheeled wagon. I climb up into it and sit down on one of several benches. The wagon takes me and several other campers to an Old Western town where a reenactment activity will take place.

When I get there, I'm really glad I got up in time to catch the wagon, because the town is pretty cool. There are a bunch of animatronic figures that re-enact the shootout at the OK Corral. They have guns that fire styrofoam bullets, which stick to designated, smooth, flat target areas on the other animatronic figures. I move out of the way and take cover while the shootout is going on, not wanting to get hit by the bullets.

When the shootout is over, a large bunch of balloons comes floating toward me. I understand that it’s to transport me back to the point where I entered the town. I take hold of the ribbons on the balloons and allow them to pick me up and float me over some buildings to another part of the town.

I touch down in front of some town official, possibly the mayor or the sheriff. He asks me, “What do you think of the town?”

“I think I’ll stay,” I answer. When I say this, what I mean by it is that I want to get a souvenir picture taken in period costume. There is a kiosk nearby where you can do this. I’m about to do it, but when I look at the signs on the kiosk, I see that the pictures cost $5.00 each. I don’t want to pay $5.00 for a photo, so I change my mind and turn away.

[Dreamskip.] I’m floating with my bunch of balloons again [I think], heading toward a theme park with a roller coaster. I’m thinking about how theme parks are architectural works of art, and should be appreciated as such.

[I waited too long to start writing this, so I don't really remember what happened between the end of that scene and the beginning of the next one, nor do I remember how or why I became lucid.]

I'm in the entrance corridor of a big, fancy office building with a beautifully decorated interior. In front of me is a long wall with a door in it, and a sign next to the door indicating that these are the offices of a financial company. I know that it's a subsidiary of another company, and that it's in charge of the other company's finances.

I think, Okay. I'm going to try to walk through a wall again. I start walking forward, thinking about that goal. I begin to pass through the wall, and the room on the other side becomes visible. I continue moving forward. Even when I've gone far enough that I should be all the way through, I can still see parts of the ornately-decorated wall; they linger in my vision, semi-transparent and seeming to stick with me, like the strands of a spiderweb stick to you when you walk through it. I think, Just keep going forward. They'll go away, and you'll get through. You can do it. I keep moving forward, and the last strands of the afterimage of the wall finally fall away behind me, leaving me standing in the financial offices. There's no tactile sensation this time, though, unlike in my previous lucid dream when I went through the car door; this time, I don't feel anything at all from the wall. I'm happy and proud that I've finally walked through a wall without leaving a hole in it.

I wander through the financial offices a bit. There are employees of the company there, walking around, going about their everyday work. I think, I'm invisible and inaudible to them. Or, if I am visible, I just look like another employee. Somehow, I just know intuitively that one or the other of these things is true.

Eventually, I end up in front of another long wall, this one made of mirrors. [I don't remember now how I got from one scene to the next.] When I find myself in front of this wall of mirrors, I think, Now that I've figured out how to walk through walls, I'd like to try out another dream ability. I wonder if I can create a portal. Remembering what I read in somebody’s DJ here on DreamViews, I use my right index finger to trace a circle on the mirror-wall. [I don't know what exactly made me pick this destination, but] In my thoughts, I pick “heaven” as the destination that I want to be on the other side of the portal. When I'm finished drawing the circle, the area inside it doesn't transform into a portal; instead, it swings inward, like a door on a hinge. I go through the doorway.

The doorway is on one of the short sides of a rectangular room. The floor, walls, and ceiling of the room are all the same dark, metallic slate-gray color. At the opposite end of the room is a raised stage, also that same color, and on the stage is a smaller-than-life-size, cartoon lion. He's very definitely alive, though, and I know who he is immediately. I kneel down on the floor where I am and exclaim, “My Lord Aslan!” [Hmm. Well. That's reassuring.]

[I don't really remember how I got to the next scene. I remember attempting to create another portal and finding only darkness on the other side of the circular door because I hadn't been thinking of any particular destination, but I don't remember whether that was before or after the above scene. In any case, here's the next scene that I do remember.]

I'm now outside the building I was in before, walking across a grassy field. I happen to glance down at my feet and notice that I'm barefoot, and that I appear to have an unusually large number of toes, sticking out at odd angles and overlapping each other in unnatural ways, just like my fingers sometimes do when I look at them in dreams. I look down again, and this time I see that I have eight toes in a neat row on my left foot. It makes me smile to discover that toes can exhibit the same odd behavior as fingers in dreams.

I'm very pleased with my achievements so far tonight, but no other ideas for new abilities to try out come to mind, and the sky and the grass are so inviting, so I decide to fly. I kick off the ground with my right foot and take off. I find myself being forced backward by some unseen, unidentified force, just as I have many times before when I've started flying. I move my fists into the position I learned from my dream dad in my previous lucid, with my left fist close to my chest and my right one further away from my body, and move them back and forth relative to each other, trying to use that new technique I'd just learned to gain control over my flying. It works. I stop feeling the unseen force, and begin flying forward.

[That’s the last I remember of my dream.]

I woke up and found myself still in sleep paralysis. I didn’t feel any vibrations this time, though; it just felt like my arms and legs were really heavy, and like I couldn’t move them even if I tried. I waited a few seconds before moving my arms from their position up over my head. I didn’t even remember putting them there before falling asleep. A few minutes later, the feeling goes away.

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Side notes:

I get to check another goal off my list of lucid-dreaming goals! Yay! I really look forward to continuing to improve my intangibility skills. Now that I've more or less gotten the hang of going through things, my new big goal is to get good at defining, creating, and getting into dream environments of my choice.

[This is a catch-up post. I had another good lucid dream on the night of April 27-28, 2011. It took me a long time to get around to finishing the writeup of this, but here it is.]

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

I'm at a meeting of my local community advocacy and action group. It's being held in a big, spacious, public multipurpose meeting room. There are no chairs or tables in the room, just empty floor space. A lot of the people there are wearing our team color, orange. We're electing the new secretary for the group. The election process begins with everyone who wants to run for the position walking out of the crowd and going and standing in a line, facing the rest of the crowd. My friend J. is there, and she starts to go and stand in the line of candidates. I tell her something like, “Oh, don't run for this. You already do so many things.” I'm specifically thinking of choir when I say this. [In real life, J. and I are in choir together, but she's not part of the advocacy group.] I say this to her because I don't want her to get overwhelmed with too many responsibilities.

[Later, different cycle.] I'm walking through House #1. Everything looks gray, dimly-lit and fuzzy. Because of that, I suspect that I might be dreaming, so I do a reality check. [I don't remember what it was; I think it was trying to go through a solid object.] It doesn't work. “Aw, nutbunnies!” I say aloud, disappointed that it isn't a dream.

And yet, a part of my mind is still suspicious. As I continue walking through the house, I decide to try doing the nose-pinch RC. This time, it works. I'm delighted to find that I really am dreaming! Breathing through my pinched-shut nose feels really cool, too. I do it several times, to verify that I'm dreaming and to experience that cool, weird sensation. It's been a while since I've experienced it.

As usual, I'm eager to just explore the world of this dream and see what there is to see, so I leave the house through the front door and go outside into the yard. It's a bright, sunny, breezy day, and now everything is in color, rather than shades of gray. I walk through the front gate and out into the front yard. Standing on the front lawn between the hedge and the liquid-amber tree, I allow myself to be lifted up into the air on the breeze. It's really fun. “Wheeeee!” I say aloud, enjoying the moment with pure, childlike playfulness. The wind blows me into the branches of the liquid-amber tree, which are pointy and scratchy. I return to the ground.

Our brown car is sitting on the north side of the driveway, the side furthest from the front lawn. [I think it might have been the Mazda we had when we lived in House #1, not the Honda we have now.] I decide to continue practicing my intangibility skills by passing through the closed car door to get into the car. As I start to go through the door to the back seat on the passenger side, the door becomes semi-transparent and stretches inward, like a rubber sheet. I get all the way through and feel the door pull away from my body as it snaps back into place. It feels like rubber, too. I'm now sitting in the back seat of the car. “Holy s***, that was awesome!” I exclaim aloud. I'm really proud that I succeeded in going through the car door like that.

I sit in the back seat of the car for a moment, just taking in the realism and detail of its interior and basking in the glow of my achievement. Then, I decide to get out of the car the normal way, by opening the door. By the time I get out, a van has parked on the other half of the driveway, right next to my car, and there are people getting out of it.

I think, Hey, I'm here in the dream version of my old neighborhood. This would be a great chance to go fly up to the top of the baseball backstop in the park. So I start flying toward the park. To get there, I fly above the streets that lead to it. “I’m not exactly going as the crow flies,” I remark to myself. I realize that I'm following the same route to get from my house to the park that one would follow if one were driving between the two points; I'm just following that route out of a habit that was ingrained into my mind in the real world. The thought crosses my mind that I might wake up from this at any moment, but I immediately push the thought away and ignore it, because I want to stay in the dream.

I arrive at the park. “I’ve always wanted to do this!” I exclaim. [Some background for DV readers: As a child, I once came across a book about out-of-body experiences in a bookstore. I didn't buy it, and I was too afraid to try to induce an OBE, but I thought the idea was really cool. I fantasized that if I were ever to have one, the first thing I would do would be to go to the park, fly to the top of the chain-link baseball backstop, and sit on the edge of it. I wanted to do that in this dream because it was something I had wanted to do for many, many years.]

I start flying through the park toward the baseball backstop. My dad is there, and he stops me and shows me a way to hold my arms that will help me fly better and faster. I do what he shows me: hold my arms out in front of me, elbows bent, fists out, right fist in front of my left one. He tells me that I can fly faster by pushing my right fist further away from me and pulling my left one in closer to my chest, as if I were pulling a rope taut. I try it, and it works. During this training session, I notice that I’m suddenly wearing red boxing gloves.

Using this new method, I continue flying toward my goal. It's a long, long way to the place where I think the baseball field should be, over wild, natural terrain. When I get to where I think it should be, there is no baseball field there, just a broad area filled with rocky hills. I spot the backstop among the hills and land next to it.

“What?” I say aloud, surprised and confused. There is a metal baseball backstop, but it's tiny [maybe two feet tall], overgrown with weeds, and covered with the spiky seed pods from liquid-amber trees. “That’s pretty lame!” I say in disappointment. I turn away and fly back the way I came.

I eventually fly back to what appears to be the counter of a sporting-goods store. I land there and take off the red boxing gloves I'm still wearing, and the bicycle kneepads I have on my feet. I then leave the store by flying through the big, high, square window above its front door. Flying through it creates a sort of flashing, ripple effect in the glass, somewhat similar to what I saw the first time I went through glass, but more visible and flashier. I knew I could fly through glass intangibly because I’d done it before.

I'm now flying outside. There is a concrete parking structure that looks a lot like the one at the local mall right in front of me, and there is another park off to the right. I head toward the park to fly up onto one of the baseball backstops there. As I’m making my way over there, I hear the very faint sound of smooth jazz music. I realize that there’s only one place that music could be coming from: my parents’ clock radio. [I notice that the music is playing at normal speed, too – this demonstrates to me that time does indeed pass at the same speed in my lucid dreams as it does in the real world.] The combination of the music and my knowledge of where it's coming from cause the dream to fade and me to wake up.

[This is a catch-up post. I'm only giving this dream its own separate entry because I have a really long entry to post from the night of April 27-28, and I want that night's dreams to be all in their own entry.]

I'm watching Inception again. [A lot of the events are very different from what was actually in the movie, but I didn't realize this until after I woke up.] Yusuf and Saito are sneaking around in some place that has a lot of dark-brown wooden corridors and doors, shooting at the projections and generally being badass and awesome together, despite the fact that Saito is still dying slowly from that gunshot wound and his shirt is soaked with blood. At one point, he says an awesome one-liner that makes me go, So that's what he says there! I didn't catch that the first time I watched this. [No, I don't remember now what he said, because I'm writing this too long after the fact, but I do remember recalling that it was totally different from anything that was in the actual script.]

I'm going to work at an elementary school [neither of the ones I work at in reality]. I have to go back out to my car to get something. There are other people out in the large, flat parking lot. When I finally head into the building, it's already 3:00, a full hour later than I was supposed to start working. I'm mad at myself because the fact that I got started late means that I can't count that first hour (2:00 – 3:00) toward my total number of AmeriCorps service hours. [LOL! No, no, brain, that was my last teaching job.]

I can hear the faint, muffled sound of repetitious, vaguely pop-sounding music playing from somewhere nearby. I realize that I've woken up in my bed. [Not really.] I'm still tired and decide to stay in bed.

I wake up again in a slightly different room. [Again, not really.] This time, I take my throw pillow and pull it over my head. [Yeah. I fail at catching false awakenings. :/]

Non-lucid dream, [Commentary made while awake]

Night of April 22-23

I have returned to Japan to live there again. I live in an apartment that is in the same city and the same neighborhood as the one I lived in the first time, but it's several times as big, and has a separate kitchen as well as a larger bathroom.

I'm outside of the building, on the north side of it, standing on a large, open, elevated concrete plaza. [It kind of resembled the one that's part of the queue for Space Mountain at Disneyland, now that I think of it, only bigger. It definitely doesn't exist in real life, at least, not there.] I admire the view of the nearby hills and the old houses that are on top of them. [Um, what?] There is a tourist there with me, pointing a camera to the south at the big apartment building behind me. I tell him that he's at one of the three or four most popular places in the city to take pictures. [What. There are an awful lot more than three or four such places in my city, and that certainly isn't one of them.]

I have a conversation with someone in Japanese, and I seem to handle it fairly well. The words come quite easily. [And I don't remember any of them being off or weird, as they sometimes have been in previous dreams.] Nevertheless, I feel concerned about my Japanese language abilities no longer being adequate to deal with the day-to-day tasks of living here, especially not now that I'm fully responsible for dealing with all the transaction details for things like bills and rent. [This is currently of my ongoing background thoughts in real life, too, but one I haven't been able to give much conscious thought to. Obviously.] I take out my foreign resident registration card, look at it, and think, This is the one from last time, so it's expired now, but it'll be good until I can get an updated one. [Um, no. It doesn't work that way. I don't have the one from last time anymore in real life; I handed it in upon leaving Japan to return to the U.S., which is required.]

Night of April 23-24

My mom and I are driving through a wild area in the brown car. We're looking for an outdoor wedding ceremony that someone told us we should attend. We drive along, and I spot the ceremony: it's taking place on the opposite side of the river from where our car is. We drive along the river for a ways, looking for a place where we can cross it and turn around.

[Different scene.] My mom and I are shopping in the shopping center nearest our house [the one we often walk through in reality]. We're in a smallish, narrowish store that sells beauty products. We leave it and walk along the walkway that passes in front of all the shops, heading back home on foot. There is a man there who only has the upper half of one leg left, and who gets around on crutches. There is also a woman in an electric mobility vehicle there. She's wearing a T-shirt [I think; or it might have been a sign] with text on it that says that she's from a very large family, and that her mother started having children when she was only 11 [!!]. I get into a very long, involved conversation with this woman. [I don't remember most of it now, but I do remember that] One of the topics of conversation is how different our points of view and perspectives are because of the different experiences we've had. At one point, I say, “And I don't care about kids, unless they're my students.” She replies, “You see? Different perspectives.” We walk all the way to the end of the shopping center and turn up the road that leads back to my house.

Awake, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

The moment I see my old college campus start to appear out of the darkness, I realize, Oh, cool, a dream is starting. There are lots of multistory buildings all around me, and it's a beautiful day with a vivid blue sky and puffy white clouds. The dream is fairly vivid [and remains so throughout its entire length]. I observe that the environment around me is consistent with the environment I've observed in previous dreams set on my old college campus. [Although, now that I think about it, I think the dreams I have that are set there feel similar more than they look similar. Being in the environment always feels the same, but I think the layout, the spatial relationships of buildings, is slightly different each time. The style of the buildings is always pretty much the same, though.]

I walk along among the buildings, and eventually [possibly after a dreamskip?] find myself inside somebody’s house. The living room has been filled with chlorinated water and turned into a big, deep indoor pool. The second floor of the house is open to the living room, and has a balcony-like walkway that surrounds the living room on three sides. The water comes almost all the way up to the level of the walkway. When I see the pool, I think, This is a dream. I should be able to breathe underwater. I get into the water and start swimming down into the pool, testing this hypothesis. It proves to be correct. By consciously focusing on the knowledge that I can breathe underwater here, I can breathe underwater. While I'm swimming, I feel the resistance that one normally feels from the water when swimming, but not the wetness; I still feel completely dry. I also notice that breathing feels exactly the same as it normally does when I'm breathing air; those parts of my body don't feel any resistance from the water, whereas my skin and limbs do feel it. [I think this experience further demonstrates the same phenomenon that lies behind the nose-pinch reality check: doing something that would obstruct your ability to breathe in reality will not obstruct it in a dream, because your real body is still breathing normally.]

I resurface, then dive again, this time going all the way to the bottom of the pool. I find a small, square sticker there, part of a board game. I retrieve it and bring it to a dream character who is sitting on the walkway at the side of the pool opposite where I came into the room. He's playing the game that the sticker came from. I hand him the sticker, saying something like, “Here. This is part of your game. I brought this back for you.”

The dream character accepts the sticker and asks me to go over to the far corner of the room (near where I came in) and retrieve another, similar sticker that he dropped. I agree to do so. Before I dive under the water again, I pretend to take a deep breath and hold it, for the sake of appearances. I don't want any of the several dream characters who are around to realize that I have superhuman abilities. I dive toward the bottom corner of the pool at the far end of the room, where two walls come together at an acute angle. I find not only another sticker like the first one, but also a die, a playing card, and other, similar small objects from games. I pick them all up.

I decide to try to get back to the second floor by flying. [Apparently because I want there not to be,] There's no water around me anymore. With a short grunt, I try unsuccessfully to take off. I decide to just climb the nearby stairs to get up to the second-floor walkway.

I walk along the walkway and stop in front of the male dream character playing the game. He asks me, “What was that grunt?”

“I was trying to jump up and fly back to the second floor,” I answer.

“Why?” he asks.

I throw my handful of small game pieces at him. “Because you're a dream character!” I exclaim. [Or it might have been, “Because I'm dreaming!” I don't quite remember. The main point is that I dropped all pretense that I was a regular person with no superhuman abilities at this moment, and admitted to being the dreamer.]

A second later, my conscience kicks in. “Wait. I don't know why I did that,” I say. “That was rude. I'm sorry.”

A woman about my age with short, dark hair joins our conversation at this point. She starts off by addressing me, saying something like, “That's right. You're dreaming.” She, the game-playing DC, and I all proceed to have a long, in-depth conversation on the subject of lucid dreaming. [Unfortunately, I don't remember much of what we said. What I do recall is an overall impression that this woman was an expert on the subject, and that her attitude toward me was that of a supportive older mentor. She seemed interested in my progress and how much I had learned so far.] The dark-haired woman asks me something like, “This is your fortieth or so lucid dream, right?”

“Forty-seventh, or fiftieth, something like that,” I answer.

At another point during the conversation, another guy my age, named Andy, is also there in the room. The dark-haired woman points him out to me as another dreamer. [I had no intention of anything like that happening to me. If it did, it was completely without my desire or consent.]

Andy, the woman, the game-playing DC, and I all walk out of the building onto the coast by my university. We're facing a sea cliff with train tracks running along it. We walk along and come to the grassy, topmost level of an amphitheater, built into the land where it slopes down toward the beach. Below the grassy part are many levels of bleachers made out of a metal mesh.

“I really like floaty things,” I observe, addressing the woman. I point out that there are a lot of colorful helium balloons around, and a lot of the other people who are around are flying small, colorful kites. I have one myself.

The other DCs who are there are passing around a strange contraption. At its center is a device that has a chamber in which marijuana leaves are burning, and a fan. The fan is keeping the semi-transparent plastic garbage bag that surrounds the device inflated. The bag is there to keep the marijuana smoke in, but there is a tear in the plastic near the knot, allowing the smoke to escape at a limited rate so that one might inhale it. One of the other, female DCs in the scene comes over to me and my group and offers us the contraption. The other DCs in my group accept it first and take hits from it, then offer it to me. My immediate reaction to getting the opportunity to try marijuana is, Yay! I can do this without getting in trouble or risking the health of my real body, and if I do it, I can brag about it on the forums! [Meaning DreamViews, of course.]

I accept the blown-up garbage bag and maneuver it so that the tear in the plastic is near my face. This isn't easy to do with the fan device constantly inflating the plastic from the inside and making it move around. When I've gotten the tear as close to my face as I can, I inhale some of the smoke through my nose. It has a plant-like smell. The drug doesn't make me feel any different, nor does it change the environment around me.

My companions and I sit down on the metal mesh bleachers to watch a concert [or something like that]. As I sit down, I try to be careful not to get the string of my kite tangled up with the strings of my companions' kites.

There is a blue reusable shopping bag from Wal-Mart lying just to my left on the metal bleachers. It comes to life and starts wrapping its handles around my left arm and constricting its handles tightly, much like Devil's Snare from the Harry Potter universe. I'm not sure if this occurrence is a weed-induced hallucination or just ordinary dream weirdness. I look up and to my right at the dark-haired woman, who is sitting next to me. She looks back at me with an expression that communicates, “Yeah, this is what I was expecting would happen; how are you going to deal with it?”

I'm a little frightened by the shopping bag attacking me, but I'm still secure in the knowledge that this is a dream, so I'll be safe and sound when I wake up. I close my eyes and think to myself, Take me home. [By which I mean, “Take me back to the real world.”]

I then woke up for real, just as I had desired to do. I was amazed to discover that a full 6 ½ hours had passed since I'd gone to sleep. When I recalled my reaction to the opportunity to smoke marijuana, I laughed derisively at myself and thought, Oh, boy. I need to sort out my priorities.

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Side notes:
It's certainly fitting that I dreamed about smoking marijuana on the morning of 4/20. I first learned about 4/20 from peers in college, but on a conscious level, I had completely forgotten about it until I found the “Happy 4/20!” thread on DreamViews this morning. My subconscious sure remembered, though. :-)

I've never tried marijuana in real life, so I can't compare the reality to the dream. That might also be why it didn't really make me feel any different: my brain doesn't really know what it's supposed to feel like to be under its influence. I have drunk alcohol in real life, but I haven't done so in a dream yet. If I ever do, I expect it will probably feel just like it does in reality.

I noticed something today: When I write dream journal entries, I write like a scientist. I write down what I've observed and compare my new observations to previous ones. Sometimes I draw conclusions from all these observations. Often, I perform experiments within the dream and report on their results.

Non-lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

WARNING: This entry contains potentially triggering adult content. Reader discretion is advised.

Night of April 9-10

I'm walking through an outdoor shopping center somewhere. I'm wearing my white lab coat from work. [It's a costume, not a uniform. I teach in an after-school science enrichment program.] For some reason [that I can't remember now], somebody [possibly one of the handlers of the below-mentioned mascots] signs the end of my right sleeve with a green pen. I'm slightly concerned that my lab coat isn't perfectly white anymore.

A local baseball team mascot walks out of a dentist's office. He has a huge smile made of brilliantly white foam teeth. Seeing him again makes me smile and feel nostalgic, because I haven't seen him in such a long time. The mascot also has a Distaff Counterpart in a much less elaborate, striped, bodysock-like dinosaur costume. There are little kids coming up to and greeting both of them.

Night of April 13-14

I'm watching Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. There's a scene in which Juliet's father, upon finding out what's going on with her and Romeo, rapes her. You can't really see anything, though, since they're both covered by a sheet. The theme song from the movie plays.

Night of April 14-15

I'm at a big party at a house. It's sunset, or just after. The hosts of the party call all the guests to come outside onto the front lawn and sit in several shallow arcs, facing the hosts. I sit down in one of the arcs with a bunch of other party guests, all of whom are actors from various Star Trek TV series, and all of whom are in costume as their characters. The hosts get us started playing a game: We each have to think of the funniest, cleverest Star-Trek-themed pickup line we can, and then we have to take turns sharing them, going in order along the arcs. As my turn is approaching and others are sharing their pickup lines, I struggle to think of something really clever, but I can't. When my turn comes, I say, “Of all the souls I've encountered in my travels, yours is the most... hot.” It's definitely not as clever as most of the other pickup lines that people came up with. [None of which I can remember now, of course.]

Night of April 15-16

I'm trying to fit two pieces of rod or pipe together and lock them in place using an interlocking mechanism that is built onto the pipes. They're very dirty and rusty. I discover that I've accidentally broken off one of the parts that are supposed to interlock, so it won't work right.

[This is a catchup post. This dream is from the night of April 8-9, 2011.]

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

I'm in my current bedroom. I have my mom's purse, and I'm on my way to take it out to the living room and put it on the cedar chest, where it goes. I think I must have just woken up normally, so as I walk to the living room, I'm thinking something like, If this is the real world, then that's fine. But if this is a dream...

By the time I get out into the living room, I've figured out that it is a dream. No specific trigger or dream sign tells me this; I just recognize the feel of the world around me, and what it feels like to be in a dream. I set my mom's purse down on the floor next to the cedar chest and turn to walk out the front door. As I move my hand away from the purse after letting go, I can see that no part of the purse or its strap is touching my hand, and yet I feel resistance on my hand, as if the strap were caught on my wrist. I realize, I can't just carelessly set it down and walk away, like in the real world. I have to think that I'm setting it down. My mind is controlling everything, and I didn't think about wanting to put it down, so it feels like I still have it. So I consciously think about letting go of the purse, and the feeling of the strap goes away.

I turn my attention to the front door. The main door is open, but the screen door is closed. It's a beautiful, sunny day outside. "This screen door..." I say to myself. I decide to take this opportunity to work on my goal of becoming intangible and walking through things. I concentrate on the ideas that door is not solid when I will it not to be, because this is a dream, and I am able to pass through it, and start walking through it. It works! I get part of the way through it, but I'm so pleased to find that it's working that it takes some of my concentration away from those ideas, which immediately causes the door to become solid again. I end up with the door stuck around the middle of my body. The door is now parallel to the ground, and my body is sticking through the hole I've created in the middle of the door. I can feel the ends of the metal wires poking me in the stomach and back. I feel very silly.

I give up on that for now and decide to just go flying again, since I know I'm good at that and it's fun. I turn back toward the interior of the house, take a step inside, and kick off the floor with my ankles, like always. I launch myself toward the ceiling and find I can easily stay up there, flying just under it in a lazy arc. I laugh out loud, feeling contented, pleased with myself, and so happy to be back in another lucid dream.

[Dreamskip.] My mom and I are riding on a train through our old town. The train runs along Church Street, which is lined with very large, elaborate church buildings in a variety of different architectural styles. [In real life, that street only has one, fairly small church building on it.] Some of the churches are still open, but others are empty and closed, and still others are now being used for other purposes. One of them is now a Ralphs grocery store. My mom says something about how our church is still open, even though several of these are closed.

The train comes to a stop. I say, “Isn't this our stop?” [I think I was still aware that I was dreaming throughout all this, but it completely didn't occur to me to do anything other than follow along with the dream plot.] We get off the train and walk through the high-ceilinged train station until we get to the entrance of a bird exhibit. The exhibit consists of a series of crooked, jointed tubes through which visitors have to climb upwards. There are chains hanging down from the ceiling of the tube near the entrance. There are windows in the tubes so that you can see out into the birds' habitat.

I start climbing up into the tubes. There is a guy climbing in front of me. There are lots of small handles attached to the walls in convenient locations for climbers to grab on to. As I climb, I notice that one of my hands [my right, I think] is partially numb. My ring and pinky fingers, especially, feel like they've fallen asleep. This makes it more difficult to get a solid grip on the handles with that hand, so I have to rely more on my left hand and arm.

[Dreamskip.] I'm now in this shop/museum exhibit place. I see a procession of people leave the room through one exit, including Willy Wonka as portrayed by Gene Wilder. I turn back to the interior of the shop, and see that my mom is at the checkout counter, buying something. There are several other people gathered around it. I ask an employee standing in the middle of the shop for directions to the exit. She makes a sarcastic reference to flying to get there. I reply, “Besides that.” She gives me directions to another exit. I follow her directions into another room of the shop. [At some point during this sequence, I don't remember when,] I see a page with lines from a musical written on it.

[Dreamskip.] I'm flying through an area where there are a whole bunch of big rectangular swimming pools, each with giant humanoid robots designed to look like sports players standing at either end of the pool.

[Dreamskip.] I'm flying up into space, flying backward and watching the view of the Earth below me. I go up high enough that I can see the entire round Earth at once. Then I decide to start going back down again. As I do so, I pass through a field of light-brown, rocky asteroids that surround the Earth. I see the ground getting closer and closer as I descend. I'm heading toward the center of North America.

I end up someplace in Kansas. I find myself in a large room with a bunch of other young women, all of whom are wearing old-fashioned green-and-white dresses with aprons. I tie a green cloth around my waist in an attempt to blend in with the crowd. A white pattern appears on the cloth as I watch.

The group of young women walks out of the room, and I go with them. The room proves to be underground; we exit it and go outside by walking up a sloping tunnel into the sunlight. When we get outside, I see that we're in a very well-done historical theme park with a richly detailed environment. I decide to start flying again, and I fly over the theme park, admiring the view of it from up high.

[Fragment – not sure where in the sequence this was, but I remember dreaming it.] I'm in the ocean, with waves moving around me. The waves are washing me up on to a shore. I think, Oh, crap. Is this the shore of my own subconscious? [I don't remember what came next, though.]

[The next thing I remember,] I find myself back at the area with the pools and the giant robots, still flying. I fly up in front of a robot who looks like a giant football player. He throws a football to me, and I try to catch it, but miss. He says something like, “That would have been complete for 10 yards!” I answer in a smart-alecky tone, “Yeah, it would have been complete... if my feet were on the ground!”

[Dreamskip.] I'm now in an airplane hangar, still flying. The hangar has very large windows that can't be opened. I decide to try to fly through them. I succeed.

“Holy s***! I did it!” I exclaim aloud. I've finally successfully gone through a solid object without leaving a hole in it! I'm very excited and pleased.

I fly around a bit more outside. I see that the hangar is one of many like it, all painted tan on the outside and all built in a big, dusty lot.

I woke up to discover that I'd fallen asleep with my forearms still resting against my ribcage, thus cutting off most of the circulation to my right hand and forearm. I realized that in the dream, when I had been climbing and noticed that one of my hands felt partially numb, it must have been because of the sense data coming through from my real body.

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Side notes:

Wow! This was a really long, elaborate lucid. The dreams that I remember probably lasted a total of between 15 and 30 minutes. I accomplished this via two means:
- setting a WBTB alarm for about 6 hours after I'd gone to bed and staying up for about 5 minutes, reading entries in my paper DJ
- MILDing for longer and with more tenacity than I have been lately, using phrases that included "I will have a lucid dream tonight," "When I'm dreaming, I realize that I'm dreaming," and "I bring awareness and clarity into my dreams."

When I woke up and was recalling my dreams, I made a connection that I hadn't made while I was dreaming: I've passed partway into mirrors in dreams on two separate occasions before. I always know that they're going to be intangible to me, and they always are. Mental techniques and expectations similar to the ones that have allowed me to pass through mirrors should also allow me to pass through other solid things, like walls. In fact, going through the screen door worked similarly: I knew that it would be intangible to me, at least when I first set out to go through it. In the future, I just need to sustain that thought/belief/knowledge for long enough to get all the way through the object.

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

I'm at the park in the neighborhood where Houses #1 and #2 are. I'm in a building in the park that houses a snack bar. There are various types of junk food available for sale, and there's a young man staffing the snack bar. I talk to him, saying something like, “It's nice to see this snack bar open! I've lived here since I was one and a half, and this is the first time I've ever seen this place staffed.”

I go into a back room of the same building. There are a whole bunch of little kids there, and I'm supposed to give them a speech, explaining about some kind of event that's going on. I climb up on top of the bed, stand on it, and speak very haltingly. I'm sleepy, so I go to sleep in one of the beds that's in that back room.

I'm in an underground garage, where racing cars are getting ready for a race. Each one starts out from a different parking space in the garage and drives up one of several ramps to get out onto the outdoor, ground-level race track. I stand close to one of the pillars, afraid that one of the cars will run me over if I get in the way. There are some other people standing around in the garage, and I try to ask them how to get out. I try to shout to make myself heard over the noise of the car engines, but they drown out my voice.

After all the cars are gone, the people answer my question. They give me directions up and out of the underground garage and into a garden. They tell me to climb on top of this boxy wooden frame thing and balance there, while holding a potted plant with bright red flowers on top of a long stem. I do so. The people and I start singing a little song, the last line of which is, “I'll spontaneously combust!” I know that this is what will happen when I reach the end of the song, but I'm not afraid, because I know that that's how I'm going to get out of this place and back to the real world.

Indeed, right before I reach the last syllable of the last word, I suddenly can't see anything, and I feel a sensation come over my entire body. It doesn't feel like being burned with fire, though; it's the pins-and-needles feeling of random feedback from nerve endings. I find that I've woken up.

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

I wake up in my current room, go out to the kitchen, and start attempting to make coffee. The coffeemaker is big and complicated, with lots of buttons, and I can't figure out how to use it properly. While it's percolating, I decide to take the carafe out [I don't remember why], and press the Stop button, but it doesn't stop completely. Six thin jets of coffee continue to come out of it, streaming down onto the heating element and boiling and sizzling away. I look in the cupboard for breakfast, and find lots of mini-donuts and other packaged foods there. All the time I'm getting breakfast, my mind is on the fact that I have to get out of the house in time for my 8:00 A.M. meeting. [I actually had such a meeting coming up in the morning in real life, and it was on my mind as I went to bed, so, not surprisingly, I dreamed about it.]

I have another false awakening in which I check the time on my cell phone and see that it's only 6:17 A.M. Good; there's still plenty of time to get to the meeting.

I woke up, for real this time, at the end of a sleep cycle, and said sarcastically, “Well, that was wonderful.” I didn't bother to get up to check the time on my phone.

I'm on my college campus, walking around outside the dorm buildings, which are big and L-shaped and multistory. I'm trying to get to my room, which is room number 16999-A (that is, bedroom A in suite number 16999). I stop and talk to a resident assistant (RA), who asks me where I'm going. I tell him [her? not sure], and he [she?] consults a list and says that someone else is already in that bedroom. I know I'm supposed to be in that room, and I say so, showing the RA the key I have to that suite. He [she?] permits me to continue on and go to the room.

I continue walking, outside, among the dorm buildings. I pass another RA at the entrance to a new part of the complex of buildings, and speak to her as well. She tells me that there's a game of Sardines going on in that part of the complex, and offers me a raffle ticket, which shows that I'm participating in the game. I accept it and continue walking. I find the entrance to suite 16999, which is at the corner of the long, narrow building, on one of the longer sides. I stick my head in the door, but don't go in. [So I never did find out whether or not anyone else was in my bedroom.] All throughout this part of my dream, my mind is still focused on the fact that I have to make it to an 8:00 A.M. meeting.

I continue exploring around the sunny side of the building. There are basketball and handball courts there; it looks a lot like the playground of an elementary school. The sunlight is very bright and cheerful. On the other side of the courts from the building, there is a chain-link fence on the border of the playground. On the other side of the fence is a river.

Not far from the playground is a covered pavilion housing the queue for a tram that offers tours of the campus. It's the same kind of tram used at the parking lot at Disneyland. The tram passes through, setting out on its tour. A group of five students with ski masks on, their heads wrapped in white cloth, and dark sunglasses are walking alongside the tram. They're tour guides, and this is their on-campus job. They're holding a series of signs that say something like, “Be sure to pay your tram driver.” I wave at them as they pass, and they wave back. As the tram pulls out of the pavilion and drives away, a group of five or six people runs out of the queuing area, trying to catch up with the tram. They wanted to get on it for the tour, but they got there too late.

[Dreamskip.] I'm walking across a parking lot. I recognize that I'm dreaming, and that I've had this dream before. [Now that I'm awake, though, I don't remember having had it before.] I begin to concentrate on my feet, watching them move as I walk. I'm wearing dark red-brown, slip-on, closed-toed shoes with big bows on the toes that are made of the same shiny, leather-like material as the rest of the shoes. As I approach my car, I attempt to ensure that my computer backpack will be in the trunk when I get there by expecting it to be there this time. It doesn't work. Other stuff is in there, but no computer backpack.

Some guy starts talking to me as I look into my trunk. My boss is there, too. The other guy gives me a long, ornate, old-fashioned, brass key with a long, thin black string tied to the loop on one end. When he gives it to me, he says something like, “These instructions are very important. You must never let this item leave your possession.”

“Because it represents my soul?” I ask.

“It represents a lot of things,” he answers. I infer that my soul is one of those things.

[I don't remember the rest of the instructions, but they probably included the following information, because I do remember knowing it:] I understand that this key is a skeleton key. It's not just an ordinary skeleton key, either; it is magical and can unlock any door in the dream world.

That guy, my boss, and I go exploring somewhere else together. I use my key to unlock a door at one point. At another point, I ask that guy, “Do you have a name?”

“Karim, or...” he begins.

“Karim,” I say. “Okay.” To me, the way he said “or...” after his name implies that he has many names, and I'm welcome to use any of them, but I just go with the first one he says.

Karim, my boss, and I are climbing a ladder up through a narrow shaft. I look up and am intimidated by how long the shaft is, but I can see the top of the ladder, far away. [That's the last thing I remember from this dream.]

When my alarm finally went off, I was relieved that I was back in reality, and that there was still plenty of time to get to the meeting.

------------------------
Side notes:

I don't remember having the high level of conscious self-awareness in this dream that I've had in past lucid dreams, but if I started trying to use dream powers, I must have known that I was dreaming. Also, when I was receiving the instructions about the key, I was definitely aware that the context to which those instructions applied was my dreams, which I was in.

Have I met my dream guide? I can't say for sure. I feel uneasy about it. What I can say is that I hope Karim and the key show up in future dreams.

Non-lucid, Possibly lucid?, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm at the mall in my town, standing at the outside edge of the big parking lot on the north side of it. The parking lot is empty because it's been blocked off, and the route for the annual Race for the Cure, which runs around the edges of it, has been marked off. There are lots of people walking and running around the track. This is a practice run for the actual event. I remark to myself that I need to train for this event, because it is a race, and that I'm glad to see that they've repainted some of the lines on the parking lot while they've had it blocked off, because the lines really needed repainting.

From there, I start flying around the west side of the mall. [I think I remember realizing at some point during this sequence that if I was flying, I had to be dreaming. I'm not totally sure, though.] As I go from the north to the west side of it, the terrain changes from flat parking lot to natural land that rises and falls slightly. I'm holding onto a small, rectangular, round-cornered, solid plastic board, slightly larger than a sheet of paper. It catches the wind, and I fly by using it like a sail to pull me along, holding it perpendicular to the ground, with both hands, with my arms straight out in front of me. It's a lot of fun to fly this way. The wind carries me up and over each little rise in the land; every time I go over one, I have to pull my legs up to make sure my feet clear the top of the rise. They do, every time. This entire scene is very clear and vivid; I can feel the air moving around me, the pull of the wind on my arms, and the motions I make, and can see the land and the trees around me clearly.

Someone else passes me on my left, flying past in the opposite direction. As she does so, she holds up a bunch of white pieces of paper, fanned out, with big, black letters printed on them. They spell out “SLOWPOKE!” I don't take any offense at this, because that's fair; this method of flying is indeed slower than my normal self-powered, superhero-style flight.

[Different dream scene.] I'm at a place that seems to be a restaurant, but has a dark ride in the back, meeting a man named Harley Davidson, for whom the company was named.

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

[Dream #1] I'm at the offices of a certain company. [The layout is slightly different than it is in real life.] I'm wearing jeans and a white T-shirt with some logo on it. As far as I know, I'm there to volunteer for the day, to test-drive the job I'm being considered for. [Specifically, the one I'm being considered for in real life.] From the part of the office where all the workstations are, I go out to the front reception desk for something. The person at the desk asks me to stop and let her take my picture for my ID badge. I'm surprised. If I'm getting my picture taken for my permanent ID badge, that must mean that they're actually giving me the job! I hadn't realized that today was officially my first day on the job! I had thought I was just there to volunteer and see what it was like. I'm so happy and honored that I actually got the job!

I speak to the lady at the front desk, expressing some of that excitement and those thoughts, and adding something along the lines of, “If I had known today was my first day and I was getting my picture taken, I would have dressed up more!” She tells me that since I'm not wearing any makeup or anything, I should go back to my workstation and look through my paperwork from the interview and application process, to see if there's still a good, professional-looking photo of me in there. I go back to my workstation and do so. There is, indeed, a good photo of me among many other pieces of paper in a manila folder. I bring the picture back to the front desk and give it to the lady there. “I have a nice smile in this picture,” I say when I give it to her. She accepts it, and we shake hands. I start to say something like, “You have no idea how much this means to me! This is only my second full-time job ever...” I kind of stop after that, because I've just realized that mentioning how inexperienced I am probably isn't the smartest thing to do at my new job.

I go down some stairs, which lead down and out of the building in a spiral. The outdoor part of the stairway is carved out of stone. On my way down, I pass my friends Linda N. and Janet [they're both friends of mine from real life]. I smile at them and say hello.

When I woke up and discovered that my first day on the job had just been a dream, I was genuinely surprised, then immediately became genuinely angry and disappointed. [It makes sense both that I would feel that way and that I would dream about getting that job; I've been waiting all week to hear whether I got the job, so it's been on my mind a lot and I really, really want it to happen. Also, I'd like to note that this dream was actually much longer and much more detailed, elaborate, and vivid than described above. I didn't get a chance to write about it until just before bed the following night, though, so I no longer recall all the details.]

[Dream #2] I'm out on a road trip with my family. At a store where we stop along the way, I buy a small children's book that is [somehow] about the song “Friday,” on impulse. We're on our way to stay at the home of some friends. When I get there, I sit on the floor in the living room and read the book. [I could read perfectly normally in the dream, as always, but I don't remember now what it said.] While I'm there, three teenage boys come into the room.

The house we're staying in is huge, and has lots of people living in it. I watch some younger kids get up to the second floor by climbing some stepladder steps that jut out from the wall in one corner of the living room and lead to an opening between the first and second floors. To get to the bottom step, they have to stand on the couch.

I wander into [what is most likely] the dining room, passing the woman whose house it is along the way. On the back wall of this room is a normal staircase leading to the second floor. The woman asks me if I want an entire room, or just a place to sleep. I answer, “I just need a place to sleep.” The woman tells me to go upstairs, and I do so. The staircase ends in a bedroom with a kid-sized bed; this will be my place to sleep. I'll have to sleep with my feet and probably half my lower legs hanging off the end of the bed, but I just accept this. Beyond this bedroom are other bedrooms and bathrooms, and even a third floor to the house, really just a loft bedroom situated in the highest gable of the house.

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

I'm in dream!Las Vegas. At some point [I don't remember when or how], I realize that I'm dreaming. From the top of one of the lower, more square buildings, I admire the view of the city around me, with its many tall, themed buildings. “Beautiful day for it,” I remark. It is indeed: sunny and clear with a few puffy clouds.

Looking down and to my right, I can see a big, broad swimming pool. I say, “There's a pool, if you're into going swimming.” I'm not that much into it, myself. [True in real life, too.] Nonetheless, I find myself swimming in the pool at some point, once again naked. [I don't know why dream!me likes skinny-dipping so much. I've only ever done it in reality when I was totally alone in our backyard spa.]

Later, it occurs to me, “Just let yourself drift... drift...” I start floating upwards off the ground, very slowly, not really flying, just sort of drifting away. [Clearly, the subconscious influence of the wording of the “Hypnosis for Sleep” audio recordings was at work here.]

I eventually end up in a grassy field where hundreds of golf balls are flying at me in a thick, fast, continuous onslaught. I firmly determine in my mind, “This is a dream. I'm going to let those golf balls go through me, instead of hitting me.” It works. I feel one of them bounce off my shoulder, but it doesn't hit nearly as hard as it would have in real life. I don't feel any of the others touch me at all, so they must be going through me. [Awesome! I finally convinced myself that I can become intangible to objects in the dream world! I'm one big step closer to walking through a wall without leaving a hole in it now!]