The Lab Notebook

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.