task of the month

1. M.
I'm riding my bicycle down the road in a crowd of other cyclists. Suddenly I hear someone call my name. I recognise the voice (female, sweet), but I don't quite remember to whom it belongs. I stop riding, turn around and see my old friend M walking towards me smiling. I haven't seen her for a couple of years IWL. She looks happy and beautiful. Her hair is shiny and black and she's wearing a cable-knit sweater the colour of cream. At this point I know I'm dreaming. The surroundings are a little drunken and blurry, so I decide to stabilise the dream. I go in for a hug M ducks out of it with a confused smile. "What are you doing?" she asks. "I'm just trying to stabilise the dream" I tell her, and she allows my second attempt. Her body feels solid and warm, her hair is soft and smells of perfume. The experience is very real and I feel very happy. We then move to a table outside a nearby restaurant. M starts drawing with charcoal on a piece of paper. She's drawing me as I looked when I was a baby. I see that she also has a drawing of my brother J as a baby. The drawings are very good, they look like photograhps. M then attempts a portrait of me then and there, but she can't even draw an oval for the head shape. It looks like a child's drawing. She shrugs and proceeds to show me som of her other drawings. There is one of her old professor, one of some girls from high school and one of a lecture hall from my time at uni. The last one is moving and colored, and I feel myself getting dragged in - the dream slipping out of control. I wake up.

2. Garble, Random Violence, TotM-failX2 and Flying.
I enter the dream already lucid. Its the same cityscape I just left, only more empty and the buildings look more 2D. My friend M is still there, but more as a comforting presence. I leave her still drawing at the table, and go across the street, where I see around 6 DCs benched around a wooden table. I join them with the intention of completing the TotM, which I remember (falsely of course) to be "speak garble to a DC and record their reaction". I start to introduce myself to a DC like this: "Hello, I'm floobbydy quaklik saddadink kong long" or something like that. To my surprise the DC gamely responds in the same fashion. Only he is shouting and gesturing wildly, as if he is doing sign language at the same time. The other DCs start doing the same around me, and I get a little intimidated. So I decide to hit the nearest one hard on the head with my knuckles! This makes him very aggressive, and he graps me.
I decide that now is the time to fullfill the goal I have set for my next LD (levitating) and kick off from the ground. I fly a some 8 metres into the air, but the DC is still clinging to my feet! I'm getting a bit desperate as he starts to climb up my body, but I can't kick him off. I then get the great idea to imagine my body completely covered in olive oil. One of the DC's hands immediately slips off my leg, but the other is grapping my pants. I'm so slippery that my pants fall clean off and disapear together with the DC. As I'm floating pants-less in the air it occurs to me to finish another TotM, namely being naked in front of a crowd of DCs (this is also not a TotM, I think it is an old one). But then I wake up.

3. The Crazy Lady's Ark and the Creepy Horror Show. Oh and another TotM fail.
I enter the dream somewhat lucid. Lucidity fluctuates though, and my dream control is very bad. I am standing in front of a house. The dream scene looks like a high-end american suburban neighborhood with mansion-like houses. On the porch of the house a crazed looking young woman is standing. I glimpse some movement behind her, but it is difficult to see. I study my hands to stabilise, but it only works for a moment. The crazed lady is chasing some teenagers away who apparently wanted to explore "the haunted house". I am suddenly in the house. I see several fiery ghosts surrounding the crazed lady, and I get a flashback to her past, where I see her burning her entire family alive.
(Memory gap)
I am still in the house, but it looks like my old elementary school. The hallway is filled with all kinds of animals. I realise, that the crazed lady is building Noa's Arc Vol. 2. Suddenly the animals start moving towards me, towards the doorway. They seem to be more or less floating as an unstoppable fleet. I almost get eaten by a giant shark. I have to press myself into a corner to avoid getting squashed by the giant polar bear. When all the animals are gone, only the crazed lady and I are left in the hallway. I look out the window and see some pigs and goats and two little white lamb. I ask the lady: "Aren't those animals going too?" She looks at me and gravely says "God doesn't like those kind of animals". I convince her to bring them anyway.
(Memory gap)
I'm outside the house. It's dark and I can't stabilise the dream. I feel close to waking up. I decide to change the dreamscape and try for the TotM challenge of creating my own never-seen-before plant (which is actually the TotM). I start spinning very fast while keeping my eyes open. I imagine a simple white room with a window and a potted plant.
What I get is a vivid, dark and very creepy dreamscape that looks like a part of my parent's farm. This one feels more stable. I'm in front some old buildings which aren't in use anymore. There is a big full moon which casts a creepy light on the roof and the road in front of the buildings, but I am standing in the shadows. Suddenly I feel something disgusting brush by me. I grab it and throw it into the moon-illuminated road. It is a slimy pale human leg somehow attached to half a human brain. The brain has a long slimy flesh cord dangling from it. It is utterly disgusting I walk away from the thing and then I see a grey stallion rearing in front of the full moon (classic!).




But then I encounter two little creepy turkey/chicken. They are small and fat and have the faces of old women. They look evil, so I decide to go around the buildings to look for something for my plant. I find a garden with a lot of strange, bulging and glistening vegetables. They look promising, but when I get closer I see that most are halfway covered in greenish blue mold. I don't want to touch that! But I find a small vegetable that looks like a cross between a tomato and a sharon fruit. I pick it, and then I wake up at a table in another dream. I see a lady who looks like a 80ies aerobics instructor. I tell her "you are a very good dream coach! I just had my third LD in a row!" She is impressed and replies "Wow, that's crazy, have you told the intern yet?" And then I wake up for real.

I'm at work (I work in a kindergarten). The gate between the playground and the road is open, and I can't seem to close it or stop the children from running out and across the road where there parents are congregated (children in danger = dream sign). There is a lot of commotion, apparently two of the children have got a new sibling and the parents have brought them along. I start getting confused, because only one mother that I know of is due to have a new baby. Suddenly one of the newborns comes walking towards me. I get even more confused, as newborns generally don't walk. As the straw to break the camel's back the parents now start dancing down the road - bollywood style! "This is crazy" I think, "I'm definitely dreaming!"
At this point I think I am lucid. The dream is fuzzy and the people look transluctant. I try to stabilize by kneeling down and touching the asphalt. It is warm from the sun and feels real. The dream comes into focus a little more, but is still fuzzy. I try to will the dancing parents away, but am unsuccesful. I turn around, try again, and when I turn back only one parent is left. I decide to be satisfied and start to think of what to do. I remember one member on DV who wrote about the Task of the Year Challenge, specifically Jack and the Beanstalk. I see a fuzzy male DC on the road and decide to transform him into a seed for the beanstalk. I compress him with my hands, and eventually he turns into a little pill-like brown seed. At this point I realise that trying to finish this challenge is overly ambitious. Instead I remember the Easter Egg challenge from TotM, and set out to look for one in the gardens at the side of the road. Frustratingly, every time I near a bush or flower bed they disapear! I see a lot of christmas decorations for some reason. Finally I spot a big cardboard egg, which I open. Inside there is a lot of tiny candy and half of a smaller cardboard egg. I get greedy, and go to look for more eggs! I suddenly lose vision. I know I'm about to wake up, and I do.




I'm not actually sure if this was a lucid dream. It occured very late in the morning, long past the time I usually wake up if I'm working. It kind of had the feel of one of those semi-dreams I sometimes have after waking up if I consciously try to make a fantasy story into a dream (which never succeeds). If it indeed was such a fantasy, it was very vivid and there was vision, which is unusual.