lucid

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

I'm on a dark ride at Disneyland. When I concentrate on the images that are moving vertically in front of me, I can accept and maintain the optical illusion that traditional animation is taking place right there in the space in front of me on the ride.

Later, I'm in a dream version of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion. This version is two-story and walk-through, with a large, rectangular open space in the center of the house where you can see the walkway that runs in front of the entrances to the second-floor rooms. I think, They've redone this entire place again? It's actually this realization that makes me aware that I'm dreaming. I've dreamed about this attraction many, many times before, and it's different every single time, so if I'm on yet another new version, I must be dreaming. I continue to make my way through the house, being scared [in the good way] by some of the ghosts that jump out at me.

I somehow end up in the landscaped outdoor area around what appears to be a shopping mall. I look at my hands and see that they look normal [I've been doing this a lot in reality lately], but don't lose lucidity. I'm pleased to find that the dream is stable, my dream self feels real and normal, and that I'm not aware of my real body at all. I then remember my current personal dream goal and decide to start trying to walk through a wall. I see the orange-tan-colored outer wall of some restaurant and think, Maybe it'll be easier to go through if I don't know in advance what's supposed to be on the other side. [I don't even know.] I don't end up going through it, though. [If I attempted to, I don't remember it now.]

While walking around the outdoor area, I touch a metal hand rail and find that it feels real. I also try to walk through a low, rectangular concrete wall intended for seating, but it's just as real and solid to me as it would be in reality. [I think I just haven't fully convinced myself that I can walk through things like a ghost yet.]

I continue walking and find a small, amphitheater-like concrete area where there are big concert speakers set up, playing hip-hop or rap music. Facing the speakers is a picnic table with a bunch of teenagers sitting on it, all of whom are really into the music. One girl, however, is sitting on a bench off to the side by herself, reading a book. On the opposite side of the table from the speakers is a grassy lawn. Fifty or so yards away at the other end of the lawn, a live rock band is playing on another stage. I think it's kind of sad that the poorly-designed setup of the area, with the big speakers so nearby, means that no one is paying the band any attention. [What is it with me and rock concerts in my dreams lately? I don't have any plans to go to one in reality.] I think about talking to one of the teenagers there, but [for some unknown reason] decide not to.

The back of my left thigh started to itch, which made me aware of my real body again, which caused the dream to dissolve. I scratched it, now awake and disappointed at the interruption.

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

I'm at my new church. The sanctuary is big and sort of round [more so than it is in reality]. I'm sitting on a pew near the front of the room, from which I can see both the altar and the center of the room. In the center of the room is an elevated circle with six thick, round columns spaced evenly around its outer edge. Beyond the outer edge of the circle, centered in the back of the room just in front of the main doors, is a lectern. I recognize it as our regular lectern, even though it and all the columns are festooned with decorative constructs made out of LEGO toys. A sort of mesh made of bright orange axles and connectors from a LEGO set hangs down a little way over the sides of the top of the lectern. The columns are all similarly decorated. The woman standing at the back of the room places a LEGO construct that she refers to as her “crown of thorns” on top of one of the columns. This causes all the columns to start moving vertically, changing their relative heights. I think about how cool all this is, especially the hydraulic-powered columns.

The sanctuary is filled with people. We're there for the Children's Stations of the Cross [an event that actually is coming up in just a few weeks]. There are lots of kids there, going through the stations in small groups. A group of kids walks by in front of my pew, and I hear one of the girls in it complain that there aren't enough girls in her group. I decide to join the group so that there will be more girls in it. [I was my adult self in this dream, but no one took any particular notice of me.]

I follow the group to the back of the room, out the main doors, and into the narthex. We stop at the location of the plaque designating the first station, which is hanging on the wall between the narthex and the sanctuary, just to the right of the main doors to the sanctuary. Another adult woman is operating this first station. She's ready for us with a toy that someone at the church put together to make Stations of the Cross more interactive and engaging: a pretend PASIV device. Inside the case, I see a piece of equipment from Verizon's network, a white metal rectangular box with the Verizon logo on top. I know that the box contains telephone cables on coils that allow them to be pulled out and then retracted. You can pull out the cables through holes in the side of the box, and that's what the woman does. The plastic jacks on the ends of the cables plug into matching ports on the bracelets that the kids and I are all wearing. The jacks and ports are the same size and shape as the ones used for the LEGO NXT robots and their sensors, I note. [The cables, however, are satiny silver-gray in color, not black like in real life.]

When all of us are plugged in by our bracelets and the device is turned on, the bracelets start pulsating, contracting and expanding in a way meant to simulate the sensation of an increasing heart rate. The experience is intended to help us identify and empathize with someone who is in mortal terror. While doing this, we all lie down on the tile floor and pretend to be asleep, because we know that this is what we're supposed to do when playing with a pretend dream-sharing device. [When I woke up and recalled all this, I thought it was hilarious both that my brain had created this scenario directly inspired by Inception, and that I had never realized that I was dreaming.]

After this, I walk through the parish hall [both the narthex and the parish hall are exactly like the ones at St. Mark's in Upland] and pick up some snacks. There seems to be some kind of meeting going on in one part of the room.

[Next cycle.] I'm walking on a wet, slippery stone-and-concrete courtyard in the middle of some old buildings with lots of dark-brown wood. The ground is wet because it has been raining; it's a gray, overcast day. I recognize this as an unfamiliar place and realize that I'm dreaming. This no longer shocks or startles me. I immediately start touching all the walls and handrails I pass, even crouching down at one point to lick up some of the water in one of the rain puddles. All of these actions evoke the corresponding sensations accurately.

I see a flight of wooden stairs leading up from the ground, attached to the outside of one of the buildings. I think, I wonder if I can turn these into an infinite loop. So I start climbing them, keeping track of how many segments of stairs separated by 90-degree turns I've climbed, counting them aloud. “One... two... three... now, when I get to the end of the next one, I should be back where I started from, right?” I say. When I get to the end of the fourth segment, though, I'm not back where I started from. The stairway just ends in a level, wooden, elevated walkway leading off to the right. “Damn you, astrophysics!” I exclaim aloud, expressing my disappointment that the normal laws of reality have prevailed despite this being a dream. [Why “astrophysics,” I have no idea.] I quickly shrug it off and continue exploring, walking along the walkway.

The walkway leads to the top of some steep, grassy hills. I crouch down near the top of one of them. I'm a little cold, so I try to summon a blanket to wrap around myself by thinking about one. Then I remember, No, just consciously, deliberately concentrating on it like that doesn't work. You have to know and expect that it will be there. I don't proceed to do this, though.

On top of one of the hills [the same one? A different one? I'm not sure], there is a concert stage with an amplifier sitting in the grass in front of it, to stage right. There's supposed to be a concert going on, but it's just beginning the process of being canceled. A rock band is on stage, but they aren't playing; they seem to be telling the audience at the bottom of the hill that there's no show to see, and some of the audience is beginning to wander away. They're canceling the show because the amplifier isn't working. I open up the top of the amplifier and find an AAA battery sitting half out of its battery cradle, which is itself only partially wired up to the rest of the amp. I reconnect all the wires and push the battery back into the cradle, and then the amp works. The band un-cancels the show and starts playing, and the audience stays and watches. I walk down the hill to join the audience. I notice that I'm now wearing the same two layers of coats that I often wear in real life. The dream starts to fade. Then I woke up.

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

I'm descending slowly through the levels of a house. When I realize what's happening to me and that this is a dream, I decide to stop in the third level down and explore it. I will myself to stop moving downward and to be standing on the floor, and achieve both of those desires. I begin walking through the rooms, concentrating both on the action of walking and on the scenery around me, knowing that my concentrated attention will keep the dream stable. There are some steps down into a large living room. I think, This reminds me of some of my friends' houses. Well, of course it does. That's where my mind must have picked up the images that this dream is made up of.

I turn around to take in more of the room. While I'm doing so, I think, I need a mirror. When I look back at a particular section of wall a second time, a large, tall, rectangular, frameless, wall-mounted mirror has appeared there. [Cool! I guess I'm getting better at controlling the features of the dream environment.] I come up to the mirror and stick my hand into it. My hand goes right into the mirror and is obscured by silver mist, but I feel nothing at all. I still don't particularly want to try to go anywhere else that way, though, so I don't. However, on the floor to my left, I see a large, freestanding flatscreen TV [the same size and model we have in my real house], and decide to try to go through that. As I crouch down in front of it, I think briefly of a couple of specific places from my past that I would like to find on the other side of the screen. I then start going through it. I feel the screen snap when I start pushing through it, and feel the edges of its two halves dragging against my body as I climb into the TV. There's nothing inside but darkness. I ended up just waking up. [I failed to choose a single destination and truly believe that it would be there on the other side of the screen.]

I went back to sleep and had another dream. I'm in a room with a bunch of computers, and someone is directing me to complete a series of questionnaires on one computer, which is on the aisle that goes down the center of the room, between the rows of tables. One of the questionnaires involves looking at frames from an animated TV show and identifying what show they're from. I recognize them as being from the Garfield and Friends TV show.

From there, the dream shifts, putting me in that episode of that TV show. I'm standing right behind the protagonist, watching him/her [not sure] have a conversation with another character just outside the gate to a town. The setting appears to be a medieval fantasy story. I recognize that I'm dreaming. The conversation is finished, and the second character admits the protagonist and me through the gate. As I pass the gatekeeper character, I say to him, “It's good to see you again.” I start walking along through the open space in the center of the town, again concentrating on walking and on the scenery around me. As I walk, I cover my mouth with both hands and whisper into them, “I was actually talking to the town.” I can actually feel the warmth and moisture of my breath on my hands, which impress me with their realism.

I pass by a shop building with off-white walls and a window, and go, “Oh, yeah.” I remember that I still want to try to walk through a wall. I turn to my right, walk right up to that wall and keep on walking. I can only get a little way into it. It feels like walking into a flexible, but thick, strong, and semi-solid piece of rubber. [That's the last I remember.]

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

Night of February 28 - March 1

Some restaurant is having some kind of promotion where you can enter a code into an ATM and get money out. I walk out of the restaurant and across a parking lot to get to the ATM. I'm dressed in my pajamas, robe, and slippers, and am glad I'm wearing my rubber-soled slippers, because the parking lot is wet because it has just rained. I get to the ATM, enter my code, and receive a $5 bill, then a $1 bill, then a bonus $5 bill. There's also some loose change in a change dispenser on the [extremely strange-looking] ATM, and I start taking some of it for myself, but it occurs to me that I shouldn't take all of it, because that would be greedy.

Night of March 1 - 2

I'm playing PackRat and find several sets of 10 tickets by flipping over cards.

My mom is driving on a main road through an unfamiliar town, and I'm in the back seat. She's trying to find her way to someplace, but she's obviously lost. We turn left onto a residential street. Finally, I ask her for the TomTom, and she hands it to me. It's getting dark out, and I can't see the device's screen very well, so I reach up to the ceiling of the car to turn on the overhead lights. They turn on for a second, then fade away. Pressing them again does nothing. [I laughed out loud when I recalled this upon waking up and realized what I'd done. Once again, dream sign fail!] I complain to my mom that I keep pressing the wrong buttons when trying to enter the address of the place we're going to, because it's getting dark, the TomTom doesn't emit enough of its own light, and now our dome lights don't work. After a few minutes, though, when it's gotten fully dark outside, the buttons light up in bright red and white, so that I can see each letter and number clearly. [The TomTom doesn't do that in real life; my cell phone does.]

I walk into the bedroom I stayed in when I was living in Kentucky. [It didn't look much like that bedroom actually looked, but the bed was the same, I think.] I remark to whoever else is in the room with me, “I haven't been here in a while. It's the same. This is a good thing.” When I say that, I'm remembering dreaming about this place before [although I don't remember doing so now]. I get into the bed, and the two cats who live in the house jump up onto it and start walking all over me. I just lie there, quietly appreciating my mind's ability to generate the totally realistic but imaginary sensations of cats walking on me and the tips of their tails tickling my face. [No, I don't own any cats in real life, but there really were two cats in the house in Kentucky.] Even though I know that this is just a dream, I never make the logical leap from that fact to “I can go off and do whatever I want!” and never become fully lucid. [I'm still counting this as a lucid dream, though.]

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

[I had several different dreams last night, two of which were lucid.]

[Dream #1] I'm playing Neopets. [In this particular dream,] Neopia is a fully-realized, three-dimensional world, but it's still a computer game that I'm playing using a mouse. The art looks just like it does on the real site. The game is played from a first-person perspective, and there are lots of rooms and areas to explore [just like the plot adventures on the real Neopets Web site]. One such area is filled with Neopets who are dressed in vaguely Arabian-looking clothes; they all have their noses covered with veils, which strikes me as somewhat ridiculous, since they all have such different shapes and sizes of noses. This scene makes me think, So Neopia does have something resembling an Islamic culture. I click my way into a hidden area and receive a special reward for finding it.

[Dream #2] I walk into my family's house, which is big and spacious and has two stories [and looks nothing at all like any of our real ones. House #2, our only two-story house, was nowhere near that big and was laid out very differently]. Suddenly, there are several men in the house with me. They're there to challenge me to a martial-arts tournament. I had known in advance that this challenge was coming. In the course of my conversation with them [which I don't really remember now], one of them eventually says that there is no challenge. Having become semi-lucid at some point during the conversation, I say boldly and firmly, “I have better things to do.” I begin making my way out of the house.

Then, I hear my mom yelling from behind me that the house is on fire and I should get out. I do so, thinking, I know I should just get out without stopping to try and rescue other people. I go out the front door and walk down a front walk that leads to a fairly high, steep flight of concrete stairs, which leads down a steep embankment, at the bottom of which are the public sidewalk and the street. I jump off the top step to get down to the front sidewalk more quickly. I fall in a long, slow arc, taking several seconds to get down, and land softly and gently on my feet. I had kind of known I was going to fall that way; I always do in dreams.

By this point, I'm definitely lucid. From the street, I take off and fly up over the neighborhood. Once again, it takes me two tries to take off. After the first time, I realize, I messed up – I wasn't concentrating right. I try again, kicking off with my right ankle and thinking about becoming airborne, as I always do, and this time it works. Flight feels like it always does, too.

I fly up and observe the neighborhood from above. I can see a little bit of the fire coming from the house I just left. After a minute or two, I land back on the street and see a little model of a single-story house standing on a table. I examine the model, concentrating on it, and succeed in making tiles blow off the roof with my mind. This action is directly inspired by the scene in Inception where they're at the cafe and the dream starts collapsing when Ariadne first realizes that they're dreaming. While I'm making the model blow itself to pieces, I think about how, when the characters from the movie are dreaming, they might use Michael Caine's name [*see Side Notes at end] in exclamations of surprise/anger/frustration, etc., as if he were their deity, because he was the inventor of the dream-sharing technology. I immediately dismiss this as a silly idea, though. I keep up what I'm doing, and eventually blow away all the broken-up pieces of the roof, exposing the interior of the model. It has separate rooms inside. There's a small, light brown, flea-like insect inside, with a sort of sail on its back. I know that the insect is my dad. [I don't even know.] I let it crawl onto my finger, rescuing it from the destruction of the model and setting it down gently outside the model.

This scene is immediately followed by an animated sequence of two foxes romping around in a grassy field and falling in love. I know that this means that both of my parents are still alive and got out of the burning house all right.

[Dream #3] I'm outside, in the daytime, on a series of tiled walkways, terraces, and stairways, elevated and built into the side of a hill. Some boy is following me around, singing a creepy version of some children's song at me, changing the words all around to suggest that he would like to do something sexual with me. At the end of the second or third repetition of the short song, I stop, sing the end of the verse for him, then smack him in the face. Then, a passing man helps me throw the offending boy over a wall and down a long flight of stairs. I see him get up after he reaches the bottom, and am glad to see that he can still get up and that nothing's broken.

The scene shifts slightly, and now I'm on the surface-level streets, walking around a city that I remember visiting in a dream before. [Except now I don't – false memory, apparently.] The city is bright and clean and filled with big trees. There is a train station across the street from where I'm walking. On my side of the street, there is an enlarged replica of one of the stores on Main St. at Disneyland. Upon seeing the prominent train station, I remark that my dream city doesn't necessarily have to be in the States; it could just as easily be in the UK. [This, despite the fact that said train station had a sign on the outside that very clearly read “Amtrak.”]

I walk in the main entrance to the store that replicates the one from Disneyland, and find myself in a shop that is part of a mall. I walk through that first shop and into a second one that resembles a Hot Topic (all the walls are painted black), only it's girlier (there are a lot more dresses). This store also has living mannequins that look exactly like the ones they have at Old Navy. One of these mannequins tells me that she wants to try on the dress I'm wearing, which I had gotten from that store earlier. It's a strapless, knee-length black sundress with little pink polka dots, pink lace decorating the top of the bodice, and a pink tulle underskirt part that makes the skirt puff out. There are lots of similar dresses on the racks in the store. [For some strange reason,] I'm wearing mine over the T-shirt and shorts I was already wearing. I'm really enjoying just walking around, exploring this dream. I exclaim aloud, “My mind is so awesome!”

I walk out of that store and around a corner, through one of the hallways that form the connecting core of the mall. I find myself wishing I could change out of the shorts I'm wearing under my dress, and just wear the dress. I go into another store, this one a Sephora. While I was in there, the dream ended.

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Side notes:

*Michael Caine's character's name is Stephen Miles (per the shooting script); that's what the other characters would say if they were to do that. I forgot that while dreaming, though.

Last night, when doing mental affirmations while falling asleep, I focused more on recalling the memory of what it feels like to be in a lucid dream, recalling past lucid dreams, and visualizing and imagining what it would have been like if I had become lucid in one of my memorable non-lucids. It worked really well.

As I was taught when I first tried to ski, people who are right-handed are generally right-footed as well, and are instinctively inclined to lead with their right foot and do most of their controlling of their movement with their right foot when skiing or snowboarding. I'm very pleased and not at all surprised to discover that this principle applies to my flying in dreams as well. I'm right-handed (and right-footed) in real life, and from the beginning, I've always instinctively used my right foot and ankle to kick off from the ground and launch myself into a takeoff.

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

[This post contains dreams from last night and from Sunday night.]

Night of February 13-14

I'm out and about somewhere in town [Pat and Oscar's? It kind of looked like it]. Along the way, I sing a song: “I Run For Life” by Melissa Etheridge. [In the dream, I sang the lyrics correctly but in the wrong order, moving the first two lines of the last verse to the beginning of the first verse, and yet, I didn't take note of this as being strange.]

I'm at my kitchen table, eating breakfast. My mom is standing in the kitchen. We're carrying on a perfectly normal conversation about whether or not we're going out for coffee this morning. At first it seems like we are, but then my mom suggests that we could have premade bottled coffee here at home instead, so we do. It's cinnamon-flavored, and she prepares it by putting creamer into it.

When I woke up for real, I was slightly surprised to discover that the above paragraph had just been a dream, and that I hadn't actually gotten up yet.

Night of February 15-16

[Dream #1] I'm in a somewhat dark, upstairs room somewhere, with either my mom or my sister. [I can't remember now; the dream quality was low, but I did know that I was dreaming.] We've found a baby doll with long, red hair that sings Christmas carols. I sing along with whatever song it's playing as I walk across the room.

[Dream #2] I'm driving in my car on a freeway where everyone is driving much faster than I usually like to drive. Feeling like I have no choice, I match their pace. I want to get off the freeway soon, and as soon as I see an opening, I take advantage of it and move over into the lanes to my right, so that I can get to the offramp.

[Dreamskip.] I've now gotten off the freeway and parked in a parking structure. Somewhere around here, I realize that I'm dreaming. I walk over to the elevator to take it down to the ground floor. Two other girls are also approaching it, and they get into the elevator with me. One of them starts talking with me, and I introduce myself by name and shake hands with her.

When we're in the elevator, I get a good look at her. She has long, black hair, worn in two braids, and is pretty. I recognize her as my friend Tashi from my freshman year of college. “Tashi?” I say.

“No,” she says, shaking her head.

“Don't you remember me from college?”

“No. I know you, though.”

“So you do remember me, but not from the same place that I remember you from.”

She indicates that this is correct. I notice that the two girls are duplicates of each other. Then I woke up.

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

[I had four different dreams last night.]

[Dream #1] I'm at the apartment building where I lived in Japan. There are several different landlords who own parts of the building, which is reflected in the fact that different parts of the facade have different designs. [Of course, this was not the case in real life.] Inside the building, though, instead of many small apartments, there is one big, open space crisscrossed by wooden support beams. A few other people my own age are in the building. Several of the wooden beams are arranged in a tall pyramid shape, supporting a large heating/air conditioning unit at the apex of the pyramid. This pyramid collapses and the unit crashes to the floor. At first, I think it's killed the young man who appeared to be standing directly under it, but then I see that he's okay, just scratched up a bit.

One of the other people in this large, open space is President Obama. I follow him up into an enclosed hallway and eavesdrop on a phone conversation he's having with his wife. From the conversation, I gather that he's going to pay for repairs to the damaged support structure and HVAC unit.

[Dream #2] I'm riding on Ellen's Energy Adventure in Epcot. The ride vehicles move up to get to the room with the screens for the film portion of the attraction; I can feel the vehicle moving upward. We get to that room, and the film begins. The film starts out on only one screen, then widens to fill the wraparound screens on either side of it as well, but there are no curtains that pull back to reveal the additional screens. [There were curtains when I went on this ride in reality back in 2000, but according to an article I just read recently, they're not working anymore.] The film contains lots of exciting action sequences, punctuated and made more immersive and realistic by air jets built into the backs of the seats. The seats also have lap bars; I can feel mine. At some point during the film, it dawns on me that I'm dreaming. When the film ends, I exit the ride along with everyone else. As I walk along my row of seats, I say to the guy walking in front of me, “Hey! You're a dream character!” Again, I don't get his attention at all. I continue walking through the passageways that lead out of the building. They're very dark; I make sure to pay close attention to the people and the edges of walls that I can see by the few dim lights, because I know that if I don't, the dream will fade. As I walk, I sing a song aloud, which was my lucid goal for the night. [I don't recall now which song it was, but I have the vague impression that it was a current country song, one I know well, sung by a male singer.] It doesn't even occur to me to do anything other than go along with the dream scenario; this is a ride at Epcot, so of course I'm going to go along with it and enjoy the experience.

There's a bottleneck along the exit route that slows down the flow of foot traffic. This makes me go, “Huh? What's going on?” Then I see what's causing the bottleneck: Suspended by individual cords from a track on the ceiling are multiple pairs of 3D glasses with polarized lenses, with no earpieces, so you have to hold them up to your eyes. Each cord is attached to a little wheel inside the track, so you can move the 3D glasses back and forth along the track. This passageway is filled with painted, Star-Wars-themed scenery, and when you look through the glasses, the scenery looks 3D. I take a pair of glasses and walk with them the rest of the way out of the building. I say aloud, “Oh my God! Rope-Trak!” [While in the dream, I remembered a dream I had when I was a kid that featured a very similar system, only with harnesses attached to the ends of the cords instead of the 3D glasses. In that dream, the purpose of the system was to make sure everyone at a museum followed the same path through the exhibits. I named this system “Rope-Trak” after the fact, when I was awake and used the dream as inspiration for a school project.] I'm surprised and pleased to see this concept reappear in another dream.

I reach the outside of the building. This outdoor space looks very much like I remember it, and I can see everything clearly in the natural light. However, the sky is overcast and cloudy, and it's either raining or just about to; a hurricane is coming in. The dream ended here.

[Dream #3] I'm at my high school, just outside the gymnasium, looking south. Apparently, just being there is enough to make me realize I'm dreaming. It's nighttime, and the quad is filled with students. I decide to fly; it takes me two tries to take off. My first try turns into a big, parabolic jump. The second time, I succeed in getting airborne. To help launch myself forward, I kick off the wall of the gym with my foot, as one might kick off the wall of a pool while swimming. Among the crowd, I see the B. brothers again as I pass overhead. I think, They didn't go to my high school. I fly higher and see that the school is surrounded on two sides by ocean, which makes me go, “Huh?”

[Dream #4] I'm riding in the back seat of the brown car down a street in my old city. It's nighttime. I know where I am because I recognize the trees and landscaping on either side of the car. Looking out my window, I see a white car flying along, above and to the left of our car. This clues me in that I'm still dreaming. I wonder if I can make this car fly. Almost as soon as I've decided to try to do so, I find myself sitting in the driver's seat, alone in the car. I immediately realize that I'm now alone and driving the car, rather than riding in the back seat while someone else drove, because I had wanted/expected to be the driver. My dream control is improving. Cool.

The car is still going down the street at the same speed it was before. I make the same effort of will I used in my previous dream to fly on my own, only this time, I try to focus my will on the car rather than on my own body. As before, I concentrate on the thought of the object of focus rising up, on how that should feel. It takes noticeably more effort, but it works. I get the car into the air. However, I find that it's now traveling backward, and I can't get it to go forward. Looking out the front windshield and over the landscape, I notice that the moon is low on the horizon ahead of me and to the left, looks normal, and is full. Then the dream faded and I woke up.

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

The first thing I remember is thinking, I should really do an RC. [I have no idea why I thought that, but I did.] I do, and discover that I can breathe through my nose while holding it shut. Strangely, though, I find I can't do anything more than that, besides lie there. I can't even see anything around me. I try to get up, but I can't. I think, "I have no mouth, and I must scream," but I don't really mean it; I'm not afraid or even really concerned, just slightly puzzled, and I'm just observing that my situation is comparable to the one for which the short story is named.

[Later, I had a really, really cool non-lucid.] My mom, P., and I get into the open, upholstered back seat of a tiny little wooden propeller plane, big enough for the three of us and a pilot, who sits in a seat in front of ours. The plane takes off from the airport in the city of Louisville, which I know [in the dream] is the greenest city in America. [It looks nothing like the real Louisville.] We fly over the city in our plane, admiring the view. There is a big building with cascades of water gushing through big, rectangular openings on one side. I think, I hope that's a power plant. It obviously is, powering the entire city. The city is very beautiful from the air. It is on a very flat, sandy plain, next to the ocean. [Wait, what?! Real!Louisville is landlocked! It's by a river, but it's not the same thing.]

The little plane flies low over the ocean, so that we can dip our rubber-thong-sandal-clad feet in the water as we fly along. Then, suddenly, I find myself in the ocean water, holding on to a dark purple foam mat that floats in the water. I'm wearing my favorite swimsuit [that I have in real life]. I see the plane, floating with most of the plane below the surface of the water, the pilot still in his seat. I hang on tightly to the foam mat to keep myself afloat, knowing that I can't swim. [Strange; I could swim back on February 2.] There are other swimmers in the water besides me and my family. A young man grabs hold of my mat and flips it up and pushes it over onto me, trying to use it to playfully push me under the water. I pretend to go along with it, but manage to keep my head above water. [Now that I think of it, I was much more buoyant in the water in this dream than I am in reality, and could keep an arbitrary amount of my body above water, just like in my dream on February 2; I just wasn't aware that I could do that this time.]

My family and I get back onto the plane, which is getting ready to take off from the water. I have a conversation with the pilot about how there have to be at least two feet of distance between the surface of the water and the wings of the plane in order for it to take off. It takes off with the help of a wave that gives it a push from behind, then climbs back into the sky. The pilot says something about how he's heading back to the airport, since it's so close by that there will be practically no weather at all there. The plane returns to the airport and lands there.

[Later in the night, after a very brief WBTB.] I'm talking about being a lucid dreamer [whether to myself or to someone else, I'm not sure]. I ramble on about the mental discipline I have to have for a bit, not really paying attention to what I'm saying. Suddenly, I realize that for the last several sentences, I haven't been talking about lucid dreaming at all; I've been talking about being kind and behaving well toward other people. At some point, without realizing it, I shifted from talking about being a lucid dreamer to talking about being a Christian. I say to myself, “That's a good sign. It means my subconscious has its priorities in order.”

I'm in House #1, and am now definitely lucid. Everything around me is vague and blurry. I try to focus my attention on some of the scenery to make it clearer, and it works a little bit, but the house looks as if I'm looking at it through dark, spot-and-fingerprint-covered sunglasses. I'm walking back and forth in the master bedroom, which is much more spacious than it was in the real House #1. I remember that my dreaming goal for tonight was to practice delivering my 30-second commercial, so I start practicing.

"Hello, my name is (Emiko)," I say. "I'm a computer technician... networking technician... I'm a computer technician who specializes in networking."

I go on to say the same thing I've been saying almost every time I've practiced this, about saving money for my previous employer. I can't think of anything new and creative to add to my 30-second commercial. I'm rather surprised. I had expected the words and thoughts to flow more easily here, but it's actually a little bit harder to deliver a good 30-second commercial in a lucid dream than it is in reality. [So much for using all of your brain's potential while you're dreaming. Not for that purpose, anyway. I suppose my brain was also busy generating the scenery around me. Or maybe I just need to gain more dreaming experience. I don't know.]

There's another reason why I'm having difficulty practicing my 30-second commercial: I'm distracted by my stuffy nose, which is now running. I wipe it with a black paper napkin with white polka dots on it, remarking, “I didn't think dream bodies could get sick like this!” As I continue pacing the master bedroom, I think, I could try walking through that wall there if I wanted to, but I decide not to, because I have something more important to work on while I'm here.

I step forward far enough to see around the corner into the bathroom, to the left. I see the DC version of my mom there. She's wearing a light yellow T-shirt and is crouched down, apparently looking for something under the sink. I say, “Oh. Hi, Mom. I have this cold right now. I don't know why I'm telling you this. Just to let you know.”

She says something along the lines of, “Well, don't get it on me.” I turn away, looking back into the master bedroom, and discover that I can now see everything with perfect clarity. “Oh, now I can see!” I exclaim, slightly annoyed. I walk toward the other end of the room, aiming to explore beyond another doorway into another part of the house. [Stupidly,] I close my eyes, and then open my real eyes. I'm disappointed in myself when I realize that I've lost the dream by doing something that I know better than to do.

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

I'm at a set of buildings that look kind of like an old-fashioned elementary school. I'm there to sign up for offline 'HITs' [Human Intelligence Tasks, small jobs for which I will get paid]. There are various organizations offering HITs to people, such as the Registrar of Voters. To work on each organization's HITs, you have to go to that organization's counter to sign up for them. When I get to one of the counters, I discover that signing up requires you to show an ID card, and I don't have mine with me. I have to go back to my car to get my purse and driver's license. Before I leave the counter, though, I notice a sheet of paper lying on it with P.'s name written on top. That means she's signing up for one of that organization's HITs, too.

When my next dream begins, a boy from my high school class appears. As soon as I see this happen, I lock on to him as the focus of my attention, knowing that the appearance of an image out of darkness like that must mean that a dream is beginning. Then other classmates of ours begin to appear around him, followed by the environment we're all in. We're in what appears to be a restaurant seating area, sitting around long, high tables on chairs designed to match their height. This area is covered and enclosed on three sides, and it's on our high school campus. Every single student sitting in the area is someone I recognize from high school. A female teacher I had and another, male staff member are also in the crowd there, walking around between the tables.

I get up from my seat and walk out of the seating area, heading out into the main part of the campus. Beautiful morning sunlight illuminates the campus. I take two steps, then take off from the ground and start flying around, staying at about the height of the roof lines of the single-story buildings. Typically for me, flying is the first thing I think of to do when I find myself lucid dreaming. Flying is fun, as always, and feels good. I have good flying control this time, but not perfect control. I don't feel like I'm being pulled or pushed in any direction, but at one point, I start losing altitude, and reach out to touch the top edge of a concrete-block wall with my fingers as I pass by it. It feels exactly like it would in reality, but I get the strange sense that it takes a split second for my brain to generate the simulated sensation, creating a tiny delay between touching the wall and receiving the sensory input. I recover and continue flying along.

As I pass the edge of one building's roof, I notice a crawlspace that you can't see from the ground. It's formed by the flat, real roof and the pointy, upper edges of the building's decorative facades, which extend above the real roof and slant toward each other, creating an empty space shaped like a long, triangular prism. I try to make a 90-degree left turn and enter this space, but I find I can't; I just start sinking down again. I shrug off this failure, recover, and continue flying across the campus. I reach an area where the long walls of two buildings run parallel to each other, and have crenellated ramparts [those square things on the top of the walls of a castle] at the top. As I'm flying along in between these two walls, the dream ends and I wake up.

I make a post at the beginning of a thread on a message board that turns out to be ridiculously, insanely popular, so that my computer is flooded with e-mail notifications from people posting to the thread at a rate of about one or two per second. [This dream may or may not have been at the beginning of the previous sleep cycle, I don't remember.]

I'm in a building that consists of a bunch of interconnected rooms that are filled with a colorful, random assortment of furniture and stuff. It kind of looks like a cross between someone's house and an antique store. [I just visited a bunch of antique stores on Friday, February 4.] I know I'm dreaming without any particular clue. I walk through the series of rooms, admiring the details of the dream environment, observing it with close attention. [That has been my lucid-dreaming goal for the last couple of days.] I think, I have to stay here as long as I can.

I reach a point when the sequence of rooms ends in a short T-intersection of passageways. I come up to the place where the long passageway I had been walking through ends. There is a piece of light-blue yarn hanging down in front of a low wall that stands in front of the back wall of the room. I touch the piece of yarn, running my fingers down it; it feels real. Then, I realize that the low wall it's hanging in front of is a mirror. It's a very speckly, dim mirror, and I can't see my reflection in it very clearly, but I can tell it's a mirror. I think, Hey, in a dream, you can walk through these and get to somewhere else. I straighten up and step forward with the intention of walking through the mirror.

First my arms, and then my head and part of my upper body go through the surface of the mirror. It is the coolest feeling. Like when I walked through the wall, I feel a slight resistance at first and then it yields to me, but this time, instead of feeling like something thin and hard breaking, it feels like going through a thick, liquid membrane. The membrane stays where it is as I go through it; I can feel it on my skin. There's nothing beyond the surface of the mirror but blackness, though. I realize that I didn't really think about what I expected to be on the other side before I started going through the mirror. Not wanting to go into the unknown, I pull back, out of the mirror.

I notice another, smaller mirror to my right. Just to continue experimenting with this newly-discovered ability, I start putting my fingers through the surface. Once again, they go right in. I don't really want to try to get anywhere else anymore, though, so I pull them back out. They come away with a silver coating of liquid mercury on them. I shake my hand to get the stuff off my fingers, but I'm aware that liquid mercury can't really hurt me in a dream.

In the small room off to the right, there is a slightly fat, female DC. I know her from somewhere, and know that her name is Melody. [Which is strange, because I've known several people named Melody and this DC didn't look like any of them.] We talk briefly [I don't remember about what], and then I turn away to explore the other side of the T-intersection, the small room off to the left of the big mirror. As I'm going into that room, I go, “Oh, yeah.” I remember the basic Task of the Month. I turn back around and say, “Melody. Melody!” She starts approaching me, and I approach her. When I get close enough, I put my arms behind her head and shoulders and lean in to kiss her. She realizes what I'm trying to do and pulls away with a look of revulsion. I say, “Just on the cheek. Please?” She stops pulling away and just stands there and lets me kiss her. I give her a kiss on the closest, most convenient spot I can reach, which is on the forehead, just above her right eye. Then I let her go, and she leaves. I look back at the big mirror and consider trying to get to Neopia by going through it, but I decide not to because I don't trust my dream control abilities that far. I've never done that before, and I'm afraid of it going wrong.

False awakening in my current, real room. I hear a sound that I recognize as the sound of fish splashing in a fishtank. I also hear P. moving around in her bed, which is on the other side of the room, parallel to mine. I don't open my eyes to look, but I do say aloud, “No! P. can't be here, and neither can her fish!”

“Yes, I can!” says P.

“When did you get home?” I ask her.

“Yesterday.”

“Oh.”

When I woke up for real, I found this FA rather amusing. Also, I was surprised that I'd had a dream that consisted entirely of sounds, with no visuals at all.

[This is a catch-up post. This dream is from the night of January 4-5, 2011.]

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

I'm flying around a large, elaborate, indoor shopping mall that has an upstairs and a downstairs level. [I don't remember how I became lucid, but I did.] Like real malls I've been to with upstairs and downstairs levels, there are lots of open spaces connecting the two. I fly down through one of them to get into the lower level and explore it. Some of the people who are in the mall see me flying, and I talk to some of them.

The lower level is completely enclosed with no windows. It's all painted off-white and appears to be mostly offices, rather than shops. When I get into this enclosed area, I start walking. I encounter a female DC and we start talking. At one point, I actually tell her, “You're a dream character!” She either ignores this or doesn't hear me, I don't know which.

While exploring the corridors and passageways of this enclosed lower level, I find a door that is an entrance to the Arlington Theater. [Although I identified it as such, it didn't quite look like that in the dream. It looked like a big theater for live performances, but without the decorative, themed walls, and even bigger and wider than the real one.] When I enter the theater, I exclaim, “I was looking for this place!” Then it occurs to me, Couldn't you have used an ability to get here faster, rather than just searching for it? I go to take an empty seat next to some of my high school friends. The performance we're watching is a live-action version of Jaws. At the end, I walk up to the very front of the theater and take a picture of the audience.

Then, I feel a need to start floating upward, just like a helium balloon, so I allow myself to. The ceiling of the theater is made up of several layers of pieces of canvas stretched out with ropes. I make my way between the pieces of canvas, sometimes detaching a corner and folding it back, until I float out of the building and into the sky.

The next thing I remember is being on a street corner. My dad and sister bicycle past me and tell me to stop at the corner before crossing the street, to be safe. I say yes, I will. I walk along the road I'm on. I think vaguely of trying to do something else cool, like run really fast, but I don't do it. I look at a photo [presumably the one I took of the audience in the theater; I'm working off brief handwritten notes here] in what I at first think is reality before I figure out that it must still be in my head, because I know that I was dreaming when I took that picture.

While still outside on the street [I think; not sure of the specifics of the transition here], I suddenly find that I'm lying down, and my entire body is vibrating. When I look up and to my left, I see a sleep paralysis monitor. It's measuring how much I'm vibrating. It looks like an oscilloscope, kind of like this one, only in the dream, the screen is all black and there's only one bright-green line across it, that grows thicker and takes up more of the screen as the SP intensifies. Below that line is a numeric readout, also bright-green, that jumps from 40% to 88% as I watch. Below the numbers, I see the words “You did it!” appear on the screen.

So this is what sleep paralysis feels like, I think. I know what it is, but I'm still just a little freaked out by the all-over, shaking, vibrating sensation. I realized that I had to be waking up and thought, No! I don't want to wake up yet! Go back! I tried to DEILD, but I couldn't think of a scene to visualize, nor could I calm myself down enough to visualize one. Eventually, the feeling went away, and I was awake and back to normal. [First time I've ever woken up into SP. Very interesting.]

When I went back to sleep after that, I had another non-lucid dream. This time, I'm in my church. The room seems to be the same size and shape as it is in reality, but lots of things about it are different. The piano is front and center [rather than off to the side], and I'm sitting a few feet behind the piano bench, with my chair up against the windows that form the front wall of the room. I'm watching Wendi play the piano. We talk to each other about something. We're attending Betty's memorial service [which was held the Saturday after I had this dream, and I knew that both Wendi and I were planning to attend].

Later, when we're at the burial service, I look down into the box that forms the underground enclosure for the coffin, and I can see furniture inside it.

After the service, I leave the church building. Outside it is a big, complex interchange of road overpasses and underpasses that spans across a straight main road. Airplanes are using this main road as a makeshift runway. I walk across one of the overpasses with my family to get to the overpass on the other side.

----------------
Side notes:
This was the second night that I wrote down a goal before going to bed. This time, I wrote: “Goal: become lucid, look around at scene, make sure it's stable, then see what other verbal commands I can use.” This time, I accomplished the first two, but forgot about the second two. So far, based on two nights of experience, my working hypothesis is that writing down my goals is definitely helping me to achieve them, but that in the future, my goals should only consist of one or two actions at most, not three or four, because I don't seem to be remembering more than two.

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

I'm taking a shower at my current house, getting my hair wet [I actually had short hair in a dream for once! I think that may be a first], when I notice that the shower curtain has these white mold florets (they look kind of like broccoli florets, except with an open space in the middle) growing out of it, in addition to the flat, green mold that was already there. I say, “Pretty!” when I see the white ones.

I woke up and remembered my dream. I thought briefly of going to check the actual shower curtain to see if it was moldy, but then said to myself, “That would require getting up, now wouldn't it?” I didn't want to get up yet.

I'm in my old neighborhood, the one where Houses #1 and #2 are located. I'm on a short, connecting street that slopes slightly downhill [it does that in real life as well as in the dream]. I'm hopping up and down on one foot. I observe that this action feels the same and produces the same results as it would in reality. [Though, in retrospect, I was hopping at least two feet off the ground and falling back down really slowly, or at least I perceived the falling as happening really slowly.] All at once, when I realize what I'm doing and how strange this situation is, I realize that I'm dreaming, and I say, “Oh, g**d*****.”

I decide to walk around and explore. All the streets are laid out just as they are in reality. I walk up the short, connecting street I was on, turn right, and follow the curve of one of the big, main streets until I get to the corner where another main street branches off from it. From there, I look off into the distance to the southeast, and see a panorama of lots and lots of houses reaching far into the distance on a gentle downhill slope. I also see random images on the horizon, such as a guy who might have been a hockey player. “Wow, you can see really far here!” I remark. The sky is blue-gray and filled with gray storm clouds.

I rub my hands together to keep this dream going. It feels normal to me [at the time; I realize now that it felt different from what it feels like in reality], but when I look at them, they look multiplied, like I'm looking at them from several angles at the same time. I say softly to myself, “Increase clarity,” but it doesn't seem to do anything.

A bunch of cars have stopped on the sides of the main street I'm on, to the north of me, and a bunch of people are getting out of them. I know not to trust them, so I turn and start walking away from them. Then the dream faded and I woke up.

------------------------
Side notes:
It's been an interesting week. A lot has been going on in real life (don't worry, it's good stuff), and I've learned that I have many other things to do with my time that are more important than keeping up this journal. I'll still post when I have something new to post, just not as frequently as I did in the fall.

Awake, Non-lucid, Lucid, Dream within a dream, [Commentary made while awake]

[This is a catch-up post. These dreams are from December 24-27, 2010.]

Night of December 23-24

I'm playing Neopets, and I somehow obtain an item that makes a particular level of a particular Flash game easier.

I'm with P. in a hotel/bookstore. It's 12:30 A.M., according to an analog clock. [That's what my handwritten notes say, anyway.]

I'm at my high school, once again visiting the second row of portables located a little distance to the west of the main campus. [These portables don't exist in real life, but did appear in a previous dream, namely, the last dream in this DJ entry.] I'm walking around with no shoes on. As I climb up the steps into one of those distant portables, I wonder whether I'm going to get in trouble for that.

Night of December 24-25

[I only have a very vague memory of this dream, especially now that I'm reconstructing it from handwritten notes this long after the fact (1/15/11). I've reconstructed it from my handwritten notes as best I can.]

I'm at dream!Disneyland, watching a video in a theater. I also have a lucid dream within a normal one. When I first realize that I'm dreaming, I try to fly, but I can't. There are three DCs there, one of whom introduces himself to me and to the other two, and says something about how he isn't sure if we've met in reality or not. [Hmmmm... very interesting.] I actually tell the three of them that I'm dreaming. I get a second shot at completing a mission, and this time, I succeed. The mission involves saving the son of some teacher from someone. To complete it, I have to go into a room full of computer workstations and press a red, rectangular button that I find on someone's workstation. I couldn't find it the first time. At the end, when everything around me is blowing up [I think], I'm lying face down, going, “Please be a dream... please be a dream...” because I'm convinced that it's reality.

I wake up out of my lucid, back into the regular, non-lucid dream I'd been having before.

Night of December 26-27

I'm riding along on my bicycle. A mechanical arm attached to an overhead conveyor belt grabs my bike and pulls it into this big, elaborate, two-story construct that's a combination of a maze, a play structure, and an amusement-park ride, with me still on the bike. I think, I thought things like this only existed in dreams! I didn't think anyone had actually built one as a ride! [LOL, more dream sign fail...] I'm excited to be going into it, though, because I know it's an amusement-park ride/activity and it'll be fun. The conveyor belt goes up at an angle, taking me up to the second floor. When I get there, I get off my bike and go inside a room. Other people are there, including some real-life friends [I think; I don't really remember who now]. We're all role-playing that we're scientists in a laboratory [I think], because that's part of the ride.

The next thing I remember is realizing that being put in [artificial] danger is also part of the ride. I run toward the double doors through which I came into the room and open them by punching them. They swing outward, and I see that I've opened them just in the nick of time – just after the doors open, I see a locking bolt on one of the doors shoot out automatically. If I hadn't opened the doors when I did, we would have been locked inside.

[I don't remember the transition to the next scene.] I'm in a large bike repair shop. My red bike [the one I have in real life right now] has been taken here, and I want it back. The female DC who runs the bike repair shop gives it back to me, along with a brand-new pair of long black-and-gray bicycle shorts, which are lying in a particular spot on the floor, waiting for me.

[Fragment] Something about a [different] female DC who is infected with some kind of microbes that, when active, cause her body to become excessively warm.

Non-lucid, 'Video-game-controller mode' [see side notes], Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

My dad and I are on a bicycle ride together. I've just checked out a thick paperback book from the library, and it's in the rack on the back of my bicycle.

I'm outside a movie theater in Florida, with my mom. Directly across from the entrance to the theater is a small kiosk where you can get drinks in plastic cups. She and I get some drinks from it for the whole family.

False awakening in my current real room. I hear the sounds of people shouting something about a surfer dude, and decide to follow the shouting out to the creek, but decide not to wake my parents. As I'm walking out of the house, I see that there's a bunch of writing in thick, black letters on the back wall of the dining room, as well as several papers with more writing on them taped to that wall.

I'm entering an upstairs apartment. My uncle is there.

I'm walking past a junior high school. I see a large group of kids in PE uniforms setting off on a run around the perimeter of the school.

I continue walking, and my route takes me along the street in my old neighborhood that goes around the edge of the park. I'm going in the direction of House #2. I turn around and see a tiny, cartoon kid with a BB gun standing behind me on the sidewalk. I'm a little worried that he's going to shoot me with the BB gun, but in the end, I ignore him and continue walking.

I reach House #2. In the garage, floating vertically in midair, is a menu of choices, like on a DVD. They say something like 'imaginary ideal' and 'reality' [I think; I don't really remember.] I select the former first, and find myself standing in my bedroom at House #2. The room is arranged the way it was in reality, but everything in it is completely white. [I really wouldn't call that design choice 'ideal.' However, when I lived there in reality, almost everything in that room really was white, and I was pretty happy living there.] I return to the menu, and this time, I select 'reality.' After making this selection, I find myself back in the same bedroom. It's still arranged the way it was in reality, only now the bed has a green bedspread with flowers, kind of like the one I have right now in reality [which I bought when we moved to House #3], except that the pattern is bigger and bolder.

I look out the window of my room and see a wide view of rolling grassland, with a lot of people walking around all over the place. There's only sunlight shining on one small, roughly circular section of the scene, though; the rest is in shadow. I speak aloud to the scene, saying something to the effect of, “It should be sunny all over the whole scene!” The sunlight spreads to cover the whole scene.

The scene shifts without my noticing it. The window of my room is now a doorway that opens onto a scene of an arctic landscape, with a wide, shallow pool of water in it. [An aside: After all those times I complained last month about the lack of snow in my dreamworld, I finally had a dream with snow in it, and not only did I completely fail to remember that I was supposed to make a snowball and hit somebody with it, but that Task of the Month is over now, anyway! Argh.] I walk out into the scene. From the far side of the pool, I step into the water, trying to walk on it, but I quickly give up the attempt because I get scared away by an orca and a walrus approaching me through the water. I walk back out. I then get the impression that they weren't really threatening me, after all. I go back toward the house. My mom is standing outside the doorway, and I tell her she can watch me do this if she wants to. I start walking back toward the pool of water again, concentrating on continuing to walk forward, straight into the pool, while believing that the surface of it will be just as solid to me as the ground is. It doesn't work; I end up standing ankle-deep in the shallow water again. [That's all I remember.]

-------------------
Side notes:
I'm really not sure for how much of the above sequence of events I was actually asleep and dreaming, and for how much of it I was awake and actively using my regular old imagination. I felt like I was doing the latter for at least part of it, hence the green text, which I always use to indicate a sort of half-awake, half-dream state where I know that I'm using my imagination like a video-game controller to control what happens. The division between green and purple text (indicating a lucid dream) is mostly an arbitrary guess. Then again, I was definitely aware that I was dreaming by the end, so it's entirely possible that I really was dreaming the entire time, and that's what dream control feels like. If so, that's really cool! I really advanced a lot in the area of dream control last night. I will have to experiment with this further.

I'm mildly annoyed, but not at all surprised, to discover that verbal commands work really well to control my dreams. As much as I love Inception and would love to be able to alter the dreamscape just by thinking about what I want to happen, that idea is relatively new to me. I've been a Star Trek fan for years, so it's not surprising that the older and better-entrenched idea that one can change one's surrounding environment by giving verbal commands, like they do when using the holodeck on Star Trek: TNG and later series, would take precedence over the newer idea that one can change one's surrounding environment just by thinking about it. Now that I know what works for me, though, I guess I'll go along with it.

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

[This is a catch-up post. This dream is from the night of December 21-22, 2010.]

I'm at a ticket booth in a train station, trying to buy a round-trip train ticket from home to L.A., where I plan to spend the day. The train ticket costs $35 and change; when I receive my ticket, it's a plastic card with my picture on it.

I'm at a desk at a music studio, explaining that I'm there because I want to record a demo. The lady at the desk doesn't want to accept a demo from me, until I mention that it's for a contest. She takes out the CD she has of demos for the contest, puts it in her computer to see how much space is left, and sees that there's enough space on it for one more song: six minutes. She tells me I'm lucky, because I'll be the last person to enter a song in the contest.

I'm standing outside some building [the music studio? I'm not sure; I get the impression this may have been a different scene], near the side door, waiting to get in to do something. I realize I'm dreaming and turn away from the door, looking at the other buildings on the street around it. Again, the scene looks just as sharp and vivid as reality. I hesitate for a moment, deciding whether to go along with the dream plot or go off and do my own thing. I choose the latter and take off, flying away. All it takes is an act of thought and willpower and a very slight push off the ground with my legs and feet. I have no problem taking off, but I immediately find myself being pushed backward again, unable to fly forward. Then I realize that it's only the wind pushing me in a particular direction, and if I let it carry me instead of trying to fight it, I'll have an easier time of flying. So I let the wind push me along, and it is, indeed, much easier.

I'm flying over a town. I remark aloud, “And, of course, it's another beautiful, perfect, sunny day here in the dreamverse!” I'm complaining again about the lack of snow.

While flying, I happen to pass over the backyard of a gray building that might be an older apartment building, and I spot two duplicates of myself there. I land in the backyard to get a closer look, but I don't want them to see me, so I try to will myself to be invisible to them. I can't tell whether or not it works.

I wake up in my bed. I'm a little disappointed to be waking up so soon from a lucid dream. I can clearly see a single eyelash moving back and forth in front of one of my eyes as I open and close them. I'm lying on my right side. Looking across the room from this position, I can see my closet. I think, I can't see the closet when I'm lying on my right side in bed in the room I have now. This is my room in House #1. I'm still dreaming! This is just a false awakening!

So I walk out into the living room of House #1. I look around to see if there's anyone else around, but there isn't; I'm all alone in the house. Since there's no one around to see me do it, I decide to try to walk through a wall. The wall I choose this time is the one directly to the right of the front door (as I'm facing the front door from inside the house). This wall separates the living room from the kitchen. [This is exactly how that house is laid out in reality, too.] I say to myself, “I'm going to walk through this wall,” and start walking through it. It's not completely solid to me, but I do feel a slight resistance at first. I continue pressing forward, and feel something hard, but thin (like a very thin sheet of balsa wood) break under the pressure my body is exerting. I continue walking, and end up on the other side of the wall, standing in the kitchen. Looking back, I see that on this side, the section of wall I've just walked through is blank except for a couple of metal panels with doors in them, like the kind that cover circuit-breaker boxes. [In the real-life House #1, there are kitchen counters and cabinets attached to that section of wall. Go figure.] Said metal panels are on a flap of drywall that is now sticking out from the wall at an angle, like a door. My passage through the wall has left a big, rough-edged rectangular hole in the drywall, the same height as I am. I can see the inside of the wall, and how thick it is, because the hole goes all the way through. This wasn't what I had been expecting to happen, but nonetheless, I say aloud, “Hell yeah! I did it! I just walked through a wall!” I'm pretty proud of myself. [Actually, that does make sense. I've had enough experience helping to build houses and doing home improvement projects in real life that I have a very detailed and complete schema for what the inside of a wall is like. I'm not surprised that when I said, “I want to walk through a wall!”, my mind answered, “okay, but you know that means breaking a hole in the drywall.” Interestingly, though, there were no studs to be seen in the dream.]

After that, I go out onto the street that House #1 is on. I climb up on top of a car that is parked on the street in front of my house, just because I can do so with almost no effort (unlike in reality,) but I don't start flying again. I just climb down the other side and walk along the streets of my neighborhood, which are also laid out just like they are in reality. The dream starts to fade, but I focus my vision and attention on the environment around me, and successfully bring it back into focus. Then, off in the distance, I see several tall, scary-looking metal structures rising up above the houses. They're as tall and narrow as construction cranes, but they aren't construction cranes. I'm frightened, so I run off and hide in a nearby public restroom.

[At this point, the dream transitioned from a lucid dream to a long, elaborate non-lucid dream that I don't remember much of now, so I'll summarize:] I'm watching a sci-fi story unfold from third-person perspective, like watching a movie. In it, people are punished for using long words. My dad is one of the people being punished.

When I woke up, I discovered that I actually had managed to fall asleep while lying on my right side in reality, corresponding to my position in my false awakening. I also realized: It's my dream. I don't have to be scared of anything I see in a dream - I can make it go away, by ignoring it, if nothing else. I can also transition to new scenes at will, and could find some snow that way. I just need to learn that these things are true.

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Side notes:

I had this dream the night after I had had a small, private celebration of lucid dreaming, as I'd announced in this thread. I was so proud of myself that I'd not only had a lucid dream that night, but had accomplished one of my lucid goals in it!

[Fragment] I'm in a grocery store, sitting at a disused checkout stand. The store has recently been rearranged so that the checkout stands that are actually being used are on the opposite side of the building, but the old ones were left in place.

I'm parking my Saturn [the car I had in Florida] in the parking lot of an Albertsons grocery store [none that I've ever been to in real life]. I notice that the temperature gauge on the car is maxed out [as it usually was in reality]. I think about how I have to make this car last all year because, in my situation, there's no other method of getting to work that will do. [In this dream,] I'm back in Florida for a second year.

When I went back to bed after having taken some handwritten notes on the above dream, I noticed that my body already felt heavy. I decided to roll with it and try to WILD. I had attempted to do so a few days before during an afternoon nap, and had gotten as far as one of my arms starting to go numb before my mom interrupted me with a question. This time, I succeeded, and to my surprise, it wasn't nearly as scary as I had thought it would be. My hypnagogic hallucinations consisted of a buzzing sound in my head that seemed to go on for a few minutes. Then it stopped, and a few seconds later, I find myself lying in my bed, looking around at my current bedroom. I immediately recognize the false awakening for what it is, since I had been expecting to be dreaming. I did it! I think excitedly.

None of the lights appear to be on, and yet I can see everything clearly. In other words, the room looks very much the way it does when early-morning sunlight is coming in through the window, and yet I'm aware that it's nighttime. I get out of bed and start walking out of the room. Just before I walk out the door, I do the nose-pinch RC just to verify what I already know, and for the cool experience. I can still breathe, which I still think is the neatest sensation.

I go out the door and walk down the hallway. This looks exactly like my real house. There's no one else around. As I pass by the door to P.'s room, I notice light coming from underneath it, but this is normal in our house, so I don't investigate. I go to the front door and open it. It's exactly like the real one, too; I even have to unlock the deadbolt on the screen door before I can open it and go outside.

I walk along the front walk. I notice that I'm wearing one of my summer nightshirts, the one with the teacups printed on it and the pocket in the front. It occurs to me that I could have stopped and gotten dressed if I had thought of it, but I didn't, and it doesn't matter anyway because this is a dream, so it's only natural for me to be wearing sleepwear. I'm not cold at all, though. [The strange part, which, of course, I didn't realize was strange until I'd woken up, was that I wasn't wearing that nightshirt in reality; I was wearing my new purple pajamas. It does get cold at night in the winter here, so I always wear pajamas in winter.]

The scenery outside my house looks just like reality, too. When I get to the driveway, I take off and fly in the way that I've learned to do it, by pushing gently off the ground with my legs and feet while thinking about initiating the act of flying. [The mental process involved is very similar to the mental process involved in starting my bicycle moving with that first push on the pedals, now that I think of it.] It works, but once again, once I get airborne, I immediately start getting pulled backward. I try to relax and let myself be pulled along, as before, but it seems I'm not being taken anywhere in particular. Then I hear a male voice that seems to come from the air around me, and yet sounds like it's coming through a radio speaker. It says something along the lines of, “If you always expect life to go the way you want it to go...” but doesn't finish the thought. I finish the thought with, “...you won't be able to control it?” [Hmm. Very interesting.] [Because, once again, I've forgotten to concentrate and pay attention to the scenery,] the dream fades and I wake up.

[This next dream is from my next sleep cycle on this same night. I'm adding this section on 1/15/11. I didn't have time to write all this out on the day I had the dream, but I did today.]

I'm watching a series of commercials and reading some poster-sized ads for kids' day camp programs at a chain of big, fancy hotels. There are two such programs: one is called “adventure camp” and features soccer, while the other is called “non-adventure camp” and features poetry and other non-athletic, creative activities.

Then, I'm at one of the big, fancy hotels, sitting on the floor in the lobby, leaning up against a wall. I use my laptop to log in to a game website, not Neopets but similar to it, that I've been to before. I wonder, Do I remember my password for this site? The login screen plays music. A lady comes by and asks me to go outside, where the music won't disrupt the quiet of the lobby, so I do. I go out to a wooden patio with several metal table-and-chair sets on it. There are people sitting at the tables and studying, though, so I press the Mute button on my laptop. I ask one of the girls on the patio if the chairs at her table are taken. She offers me a seat, and I take it. Another girl sees my laptop screen, and we have the following conversation:

Girl: Is yours a dragon?
Me: (after figuring out that she's talking about my pet on the site I'm logging on to) Yes, it's a silver dragon.
Girl: They know about it.
Me: Who?
Girl: Your 'rents.

I haven't told my parents about this site. They know about my Neopets account, but not my account on this site. I wonder about the girl, Are you my dream guide? but don't ask her. [Yes, I managed to think that without realizing that I was dreaming. I don't even know.]

Me: We don't get along very well right now. This is part of the reason.

I log in to my account anyway. The screen shows animation of the digital creatures on the site fighting each other by shooting beams of various things out of their mouths, like some Pokémon and Digimon do.