All DJ Entries

I was too tired yesterday to practice the incubation techniques. So I didn't get a forest. Maybe tomorrow.

Pete is Gone
My girlfriend has come home with a puppy. It's an aussie, the breed we've been considering for a while.
We are in the living room by the couch playing with it.
There is a particular puppy I've been watching online, Pete.
Pete is black and white, with heterochromia. One eye is husky-blue and the other is dark green.
I'd decided that this was the puppy I wanted (but couldn't get for logistical reasons).
The puppy here is not Pete. This puppy has white and grey colors and black eyes.
I'm happy to have a puppy finally, but I'm a bit sad that it isn't Pete.

+ [long, vivid] I'm in my (rooms, apartment/hotel rom?) and I notice some water on the floor. At first I think that it was from son S2 who is sloppy and just didn't dry off properly after leaving the shower. Then I think this might be a water leak from the apartment above us. I look up at the ceiling and I definitely see some dark/wet spots. As I'm looking, a large quantity of water falls through the ceiling down onto my floor. I think there must be a leak in the upstairs apartment, maybe the people have gone, I have to go up there to investigate. I leave my room and try to orient myself, I see the position of my room relative to the elevators, and keep this in mind as I go to the next floor up, and try to figure out which rooms are the ones that are above my rooms. (I think the room is "# 31"). It doesn't look like a residence door, more like a service door.

Man speaking English teaching a foreign language to one student in a classroom setting. He's standing at a board. I'm amazed that I hear someone speaking English. (He has a large-ish afro?)

Back in room, getting ready to eat a piece of meat that is (redacted). I think about slicing it and taking a bite. There is a woman there with me. I leave the apartment and observe again the leaking out in the hallway, there are drainage grates outside the front doors of the neighboring rooms and water is rushing down the grates.

I go in to a neighboring apartment which is it turns out a doctor's office. They're also experiencing the leaks from the upper floor, (I tell them I think it's coming from the pool complex, either the pools themselves or the tubes deep inside where the water flows around).

I'm walking around the 5th floor trying to determine the layout of the building, the building is multi-part, and here the different major parts are visible. There is a large, fancy pool complex here. I go to the staff members, who are Korean, I think I remember them from (company). I'm trying to get their attention. I do, and tell them about the leak, and they promptly call to all the people in the pool to get out. There were people playing there. (Something about hot dogs?)

Walking around outside a fence on the pool level I hear my son S1 there talking with his friends, the sons of wife E's old friends whom he (S1) grew up with. I anticipate arriving there and seeing them. I arrive and see a group of old friend's of wife E's are there, the parents of S1's friends, they haven't seen me in a long time, they're not noticing me, I approach and am trying to get their attention, as I start to climb over the fence they notice me. I think they'll notice how slim I've become, since I've lost so much weight since the last time we met. One of them, AnAru does see me and I think is complimenting me on being so slim now. I see that the people who were playing in the pool are leaving, and I feel bad about making the complaint about the that caused the staff to kick them out of the pool.

Going to try something new this week. I will try to incubate the forest scene I was targeting for my lucids during the competition. This should help me be lucid - my number one dream sign is grass apparently.

But being lucid isn't the goal here. I want to experiment and see if I can influence dream content from waking life practice alone, and if so, to what degree. I'm going to try and apply techniques from a 2012 post from Evolventity, Frobthebuilder, Oreoboy1996, and NightSpy2 (https://www.dreamviews.com/general-d...-tutorial.html).

In a nutshell, the task is to set the intention, visualize the scene using meditation, and use mantras/art/writing to support the incubation. I plan to achieve that by performing a visualization exercise (meditation) about 15m per day in the sauna post-workout. That way it fits into my existing routine. I will also be writing down incubation entries as if they are actually dream recall.

Goal: Dream about a deep forest setting.

Working the Earth
I'm on a grassy hillside area, tilling some dirt. It's a sunny Summer day.
The tilling tool is small. Like a kid's sand rake. I am on my knees near the ground.
I work at a monastery of some kind.
I'm with a girl that I like, but it is a forbidden romance-type situation. Will-they-won't-they scenario.
We are working together on the soil.
The temple is down the way, to the left of our viewpoint.
We're talking about our friend (waking life BP).
There is some project involving computers that we are part of with him.
DJ is also involved.

Fragment
I'm up extra early for work today.
I reflect how nice it is to experience some cool morning air in the normally oppressively Summer heat.

Reverse Gravity (NLD) 06.26.2023

I am in a building with some people when I start to feel an earthquake. At first I think it might just be a normal earthquake but it keeps getting worse and worse until suddenly it feels like gravity is pulling from a different direction. Gravity starts pulling everything in the room to the side and then up and it goes all the way around the room like that scene in Inception! It makes mess as everything in the room is flung around.

When gravity comes full circle and is facing down again the earthquake stops and for some reason it seems like a good idea to go outside. I look up and see little specs of objects in the air. Then cars start to fall from the sky... I take cover under an awning and narowly avoid the falling cars. They fall for some time.

Afterward the world is a mess so much so that my brain decides its a post appocalyptic setting complete with inventory system from Fallout: New Vegas.

“Purple Lordo” Drink, the Usual Floating, Travel

3 minutes to read.

Monday morning, 26 June 2023.

Dream #20,643-02.

My dream begins with inconsistent thoughts (for no particular reason) about seeing ActionKid, a YouTuber, in an unknown restaurant. I do not focus much on this scenario, so this first segment remains without definition or an outcome. Regardless of my recall of this person and the existence of YouTube, I have no recollection of my waking-life existence.

Proto-cognizance guides my imaginary self into the setting - but without physicality. In this stage, I often read or try to read. An unfamiliar man (emerging protoconsciousness “serving” my precursory consciousness) comes to my table to see if I want to order.

While reading the menu, I had been studying the phrase “Purple Lordo,” supposedly a drink. I ask him what it is, inferring I want to order one. He tells me I need to be a club member (associated with the restaurant’s bar), but this part of the narrative immediately fades. Instead of telling me what it is, a vague hologram appears on the table, and he pretends to mix the drink in a tall glass tumbler. Although I hear “hard liquor,” which fills about one-quarter of the bottom, the rest of what he says is gibberish. The last part is potato mash, which sits atop the last one-quarter of the drink.

I order the Purple Lordo drink.

My somatosensory response to dreaming engages at the typical time. He brings my order to me, but it is not a drink. My dream becomes exponentially more vivid as I open a vinyl package. It has a gray Walkman with a cassette inside (supposedly what I had ordered) and a gray case for an iPhone. Their arrangement is lengthways, side by side.

I do not have headphones, so I cannot pretend to listen to what I ordered. Instead, the narrative fades, and I enter a different dream.

There is a Native American man (in tribal regalia) whom I talk to, along with a few other people. He talks about how he cannot recall certain parts of his youth (signifying a direct correlation with my virtual amnesia while dreaming).

The setting is like a resort.

At one point during most sleep cycles, my vestibular response to REM atonia creates content where I float upward. In this instance, I float upward and bump the top of my head against the ceiling. It happens several times. The other people do not find it unusual, though I can intuitively sense my thoughts are creating their reaction as in many past dreams.

It is time for me to leave the resort and go home (though I have no thoughts about where “home” is). I walk to Bob’s car. Marilyn (half-sister on my mother’s side and Bob’s wife) walks with us. My dream self has no recall that they are both deceased.

I get into Bob’s car from its right side to sit in the back seat (intuitive awareness I am sleeping on Zsuzsanna’s right). There are two people to my left, a teenage boy and a young girl. Only at this point, I recall I have two children (solely my two youngest in real-world correlation when there are five in total). I am puzzled by why they are not in the car instead. Marilyn mentions that someone else is taking them home.

My dream transitions into the next stage of my proprioception response to REM atonia, making my dream more vivid again. As a result, Bob is driving in reverse before I shut the car’s door. I am unwary, but I make several attempts to close the door, but it does not shut tightly, so I open it again each time (typical arm mobility response as in all sleep cycles).

I feel extraordinarily joyful (as usual with imaginary kinesthesia). Details beyond the moving side of the car on my right are wholly absent as my physicality becomes more discernible over time. (This factor is because I sleep on my left side, so attentiveness to reality - absent in the dream state in this stage - is “to my right.” In other words, the right side of the dream state illusion is undefined.)

Cars (as with all vehicles) correspond with my intuitive recognition of real-world mobility while intuitively seeking consciousness. They occur throughout all sleep cycles. Vehicles (or animals) often appear when my vestibular response to REM atonia is predominant. Somatosensory nuances typically emerge above that threshold, with auditory being the last, depending on how I respond to sleep dynamics.

---

I had two other dreams, but they're so disorganized that I'm only logging the semi-lucid here. Slept at 2:00 am, possibly very lightly before that, but I was trying out new sleeping positions so it took a while.

My phone was on a pillow and for some reason thought I was in South America. I searched something up on Google and found an article claiming that the U.S. gets the most unpredictable rainfall, with quotes from citizens like, "I was just minding my own business, eating a Chick-fil-A sandwich, and BAM! Hurricane Katrina!"

I somehow ended up at a swim center, sitting on the bleachers outside the pool, waiting for a swim coach to finish up with her students. She was a generous woman and gave out food in trash bags. After I ate mine I was still hungry, but most of the others had name tags so I was hanging around to ask for seconds. I remember one of her students came back and pooped in a bag, offering it as a present, and the coach freaked out.

At some point the bleachers filled with water, so I was swimming around in them, but the lifeguard blew her whistle at me.

"You can't swim while lessons are in session," she said. Then she sighed and leaned back in her chair. "That little kid can't tread water no matter how long she spends teaching him."

I glanced at the coach and the student she was with, my brother's friend Javier. He's not little at all, I thought. He was almost as tall as his dad in elementary school, and even body-slammed me once...

I didn't say anything though, because she might have been referring to my youngest brother N. He was being taught in the other pool and was struggling to tread water at that very moment.

I looked at the sky, and, blending into the clouds, saw a huge illusion of my brother Z. He was foggy and see-through, particularly his arm, but I whipped out my phone to take a picture. The time read 3:27 am and I worried I'd get in trouble for staying up so late. I had the sense that I'd seen illusions like this before that had never showed up on camera, so when this one did, I was quite surprised.

"Finally it's clear!" I exclaimed, but slowly awareness started to dawn on me. "Ah, wait... it's only clear because this is a dream. Yeah, that must be it. Why does this always happen?!"

I was annoyed that I wouldn't be able to keep the pics IWL, but decided it was fine since I could show them off to dream characters instead. Woke up at 3:30-ish before I could, though.

The lucidity level was quite low, and it might've just been the result of my imminent awakening, but I'll take it

I'm in what appears to be a classroom and two lecturers are teaching others how to leave your body via astral projection. I volunteer and soon make my way to the front of the room. I lay down on a mat towad the end of a stage area. My vision soon goes dark and I become lucid. I'm aware that a dream is beginning to form and resolve to maintain my awareness through. I wait as a few visuals begin forming. I see white shoes and then pants as well as a wood floor below me. I begin to hear music and hum along in order to ground the dream. I carefully begin walking in the dream and sense now that I'm fully in my dream body. I think back to Sivason's intermediate skills #1, part 2, and for fun imagine a dream arm coming in front of me and actually feeling the limb moving in front. I'm already freely moving in my dream body but decide to play with it anway. I feel the movement to a degree. A continue toward the end of the stage area and walk down the edge. I begin flying around the area which appears to be a square classroom with wooden floors and wooden desks in roughly four to five rows of six desks each. I fly midway down on the right and sit next to a student working on a project for a moment. I soon get up and decide to fly out of the room, through an upper window on the right side. I quickly phase through and ascend rapidly into the clouds. The dream gets gray and blurry as I enter the clouds, but I'm not too worried about destabilization. I decide to descend thought in order to be cautious. As I come down I see that I'm at some type of campus with dark brown bricks. I fly down to a front area and land on the ground. I look up and see a three story wall to my right as well as a corridor ahead on the third floor with a two story passageway below. I fly forward and up to the third story, turning to my right and viewing long rectangular windows with a light view into classrooms beyond. I head toward the third story overhand and phase through the wall. I end up in an empty classroom with several rows of lab-style workstations. In the back of the room is a single black microscope. I exit the room by phasing through the wall ahead. I then stop and decide that I should work a bit more on phasing through solid objects and think back to the dreamviews competitions. I phase back through the wall slowly and re-enter the classroom. I try more dream control and attempt to use telekenesis to make the microscope explode. I try twice, but it doesn't work. I turn to my right and phase through the wall once again, re-enter the corridor and make my way down to the right. I soon see an elevator on my left and enter to see a girl in her early twenties along with what appears to be her mother. The girl is a bit shorter than me with auburn hair and a fair completion. I smile and nod at the two and wait for the elevator to descend. I soon enter an atrium which is crowded with many DCs. In the center I see a short, chubby DC with dark hair. I float to the bottom level and make my way through a corridor to the right. I see several DCs as well as a tall Indian girl who appears to be a student leaning back into the wall. I move on from this square room down yet another corridor leading to the side exit of a building. I'm soon at the corner of appears to be a city street with a horse drawn carriage in front of me. I decide to try some advanced summoning by creating some chocolate bars. I imagine a simple chocolate bar fairly vividly but it doesn't fully materialize. I try a more complex one with some success, but it doesn't materialize either. I decide to approach the storage section in the back of the horses and anticipate a stash of chocolate bars underneath the burlap covering on the wooden box in the storage. I pull the burlap back and there's a huge stash of two different chocolate bars with vivid wrappers! One type has a shiny silver and dark brown wrapper and looks like a wide Hershey's bar. The other has a near black matte wrapper and looks like an artisan bar. I take a handful of both and begin putting them in my left pocket. I open one bar, turn around, and continue to walk alongside the horse-drawn carriage, next to the driver. I'm walking on the left side of a brick building on the side of the street as I bite into the chocolate bar. I taste the flavors, however they're somewhat more muted than in real life. After a short moment, the dream begins to fade and I wake up.

+ I'm a racer in a 1-on-1 quadracycle snow race. We take off. Soon we are without our vehicles and are just running/skating with our feet on the snow. My opponent is taking cheap shots and cutting me off several times. We're moving at some point really fast uphill despite being on foot. Then I'm at the top of the mountain peak, looking around, it's dark, and in every direction is only super steep slopes, far too dangerous to try to (ski?) down. My opponent is there and mentions some direction but I say "no way, too steep." To show how high we are, I look up and notice the peak of "The Matterhorn" at eye level in the distance. As I'm looking for a path, I hear some rhythmic bumping sound [IWL perhaps dog wagging his tail wacking it on the floor!], and look down and discover a (trap door?) and see that there is a wide level path cut into the side of the mountain just about 10 feet below me, with people easily walking on it, I'm relieved that there's an easy path down and move to go there.

+ [f] There is some competition going on and we have to (guess numbers?) The MC is pushing me for my answer as time is running out. I'm waiting for the results from the web site ("URL cheaters") (or something like that) and my "screen" or "paper" in front of me is all washed out and unreadable. The MC says I can't change my answer from what the site says and I answer "I know that very well!". The number is (25? or 45?)

06-24:
+ Walking up some sort of narrow staircase, there are serving utensils and other things on the wall. On of them is a fancy Victorian silver plate serving fork/pie server, with a wide surface, like mom had. I say "This is silverplate!"

+ [vivid] I'm in a house of (friends?), standing around the kitchen table and the man of the house is sitting there reading a newspaper (I have a rolled up newspaper in my hands?). I start walking with the kids of the house towards the upstairs. On the first landing which is only a 1/2 flight up there is a bedroom/living room, I think (or someone says?) "yeah this room took a long time to finish." Keep walking around / up the stairs and looking in to all the various bedrooms. ("Someone says 'This is grandma's'?). The rooms are all dark. Really feels like I'm there.

From a draft I wrote on 06/21/2023.
Warning: gross.

Lucid dreamed that I befriended a parasitic bloodsucking tic. He was really sweet, actually! So naturally, like friends do, I let him suck my blood.
I figured, you know, it's a dream. No biggie. I was only able to handle it for 15 mins though. I told tick buddy I was done and he got off me. I asked if he wanted help finding another host, feeling bad that I quit so early. He was all engorged and couldn’t move on his own, because he was a tic, but he needed more blood to survive.

So me, tick buddy, and a brooding anime side character went on a small adventure to find a new blood host.

Yes, there was this lone wolf brooding anime guy with blond spiky hair who kept hanging around in the background, because he was a background character. I thought it was hilarious, so I went up and pestered him with questions like "Hey, what you think'n about? What's your backstory? Is it dramatic?"

Every time I went up to him, I turned into an anime girl.

Also everywhere he went, there was a fullmoon in his backdrop to make him look extra brooding.

He told me to go away. “You’re not supposed to know my backstory! It’ll ruin the mystery. I’m mysterious!” he said when I asked for details. He said “No! I’m supposed go be a background character! Go back to the main plot!”

So I did eventually go back to helping tick buddy find an unsuspecting new victim. We walked into a grocery store full of potential humans full of blood.
Why it had to be human, IDK. But I put tick buddy on a sandwich and told a random stranger that I'd buy it for him.
He was confused about why he was getting a free sandwich, but didn’t say no. I distracted him with pleasant conversation, he probably thought I was hitting on him. Whoops.

So we all stood in line with the sandwich, giving our tick friend enough time to crawl his fat engorged self from the sandwich onto the new host while I kept him talking and engaged with me.
New host almost took a bite out of the sandwich while we were standing there, but I stopped him, reminding him that he was still in line. Can’t eat it until you leave the store, silly~

Tick buddy was relieved, because he almost got eaten.

I looked over at anime guy while we were in the store and laughed because that full moon backdrop was in the store. In broad daylight, too. No matter where he went or what time of day it was, it would look like he was standing in a forest with a full moon at night behind him.

That’s it.

I'm in a new, high-tech startup digital art gallery with a friend. It's small, with a reception desk straight from the entrance, and only a few metres of space on each side. There are fake vines hanging from the ceiling and windows, and fake plants lining the brick walls, giving a very sort of indie cafe look.
There are screens displaying impressionist artworks, mostly Claude Monet. My friend and a few other visitors in the building are looking at these works on the huge screens, and as they do that I begin to take a look around the building. To the right of the reception desk, tucked away in a corner, is a little shelf with a couple of small screens showing fan submitted artworks, each with their own paragraph long descriptions next to them. Most of the drawings are children's drawings submitted by their parents, or amateur paintings/sketches done by visitors. As the drawings cycle through every couple of minutes, I absentmindedly read their descriptions and pick out my favourites from each cycle, until one catches my eye.

It's a small, vertically long sketch with limited colour. Down the middle of the page is a sidewalk with hopscotch on it, outside of a cafe with tables and chairs out the front. On the other side of the sidewalk is lush, green shrubbery. Sunlight is streaming through the leaves and pouring onto the sidewalk in little white splotches. At the top of the sidewalk strolls a young girl in a long white lace dress, with brown hair and a white sunhat. At the bottom of the sidewalk, where the hopscotch is, is two lion cubs playing, one with a sun for a head, and the other with a moon. It is the most beautiful artwork I have ever seen.
Then I look closer at the drawing and see it's been done completely on lined workbook paper, with nothing more than a blue pen and some coloured markers. I'm stunned. Something so engulfing had been done by some student, doodling in their notes, without a thought about it.

As I stare at the drawing, the cycle reloads again, and another takes its place. I panic, I don't want it to go yet, I have to find it again. I try to find an author's name, but the descriptions have cycled out. I go to the gallery's website and find a list of all the authors that had recently been displayed in the fan corner, and find the artist's name. I'm so happy that I get to see it one more time, and then I woke up.

I was actually quite mad that it was a dream. The whole night I thought it was real, and I was just as worried when I woke up that I'd lost the drawing again as I was in my dream, even more so that I would never be able to find it because it wasn't real. But then a few hours later I realised that the artwork I was so obsessed with came from my mind, in my imagination, meaning I would be able to recreate it. I'm so lucky to have the ability to create art, I wish I could live forever so that I could dream and create and dream all over again.

I leave the large building and head into a parking lot. I'm standing in front of my car door on the driver side. I suddenly realize my waking body is asleep and I'm in a different reality. It feels very realistic and I wonder how long I can stay in this reality. I then wonder if I can come back to this place. I get in the car and start driving toward the entrance of the lot. Cars are fitting through metal gates that are swinging open, and begin losing lucidity. I fit my car through and get on speaker phone with a family member as I make a left asking when they're going to be home.

After over two weeks without a lucid, I finally got one! And such a fun one, too! I'm quite happy. Slept at 11:50.

Dream #1 (Fragment, Non-Lucid):
I was at an abandoned carnival and intentionally ruined my phone with "Fn poisoning." I figured it would be fine since my phone sucks and I need a new one anyway, but I was trying to come up with a lie to tell my parental units.

Later J&L and I were talking… (illegible).

I was quite lazy with journaling this dream so I don't remember most of the details. Don't know when I woke up from it either, nor from the next one.


Dream #2 (Non-Lucid):
My childhood friend Mason was in our basement. I hid my discomfort at him being there and tried to act cheery, smiling and chatting with my brothers. Eventually I fled upstairs and looked in the mirror, smiling at myself. A circular piece of purple cardboard was wedged in my gums.

I was terrified, although I had the sense that this had happened before, and went to my mom. Much to my distress, she yanked it out and let it bleed. My dad was pretty mad at her as well. I could feel the air flowing through the wound and tried to assure myself that this kind of injury didn't matter, that lots of people have holes in their gums.

I was taken to the hospital and a doctor offered me three treatment options. One was a full face mask with the label: "Is this fabric bad for your skin? Screw your skin!" Needless to say, I quickly disregarded it.

In the end I selected a nasal spray and felt quite comforted after squirting it into my nostril a few times. (I'd forgotten that the wound was in my gums.)

Then I disappeared from the dream, and the scene switched to a group of teen boys running from the hospital, one of them jumping on the roofs of buildings as they went. The others followed along, but with hesitance, and one nervously voiced his concerns. The boy said it would be fine because they were all sick, citing a time when his poor health scored him a get-out-of-jail-free card.

At some point they were on a bridge and started making up a gay story featuring characters very much like them. One character was described as a "sick boy who plays soccer."

I re-entered the dream and ran ahead of them, toward a hill resembling the Big Hill in my neighborhood. A girl, or rather the silhouette of a girl, was standing there. She was made up of a gradient, flowing rainbow. I was under the impression that she was part of an MV, and I had entered the MV using virtual reality or something.

Since I believed I was an MV, my moves were quite dramatic as I chased the girl around, spinning and doing cartwheels and striking poses. I thought that if I caught her, something special would happen. In the background was a Japanese song with English subtitles singing a song about schizoid issues. The voice sounded like a mix of Raon, Yorushika, and Tsukuyomi's vocalist.

I kept trying to pause the video to figure out how to say "schizoid" in Japanese, which is difficult to do when you're literally inside of it. It wasn't working, but one of the "whoa" vocalizations was supposed to sound similar to it. I thought it was the most accurate schizoid song I'd heard (that intentionally depicted schizoid topics), then thought of another (false?) Japanese song that was a close second. I found it mildly remarkable that they were both Japanese.

I gave up the chase and looked at my wrist, finding a single itchy bump there. The song ended with the girl throwing her hands into the air and the lyrics reading, "The world of human connection is so large." Then I woke up.


Dream #3 (Non-Lucid):
J and I were hunting down a monster. He had been created by some god, with the specific purpose to perform evil acts and kill people. He was also a writer, Herman Hesse I think. I felt bad for him, but he said he was not opposed to killing and requested we exterminate him before he did.

Despite his request, he wasn't cooperating and made us chase him to a large field where families were having picnics. J threw a dagger at him and missed, and the surrounding people murmured excitedly. He shrunk down to plushie size and I grabbed him by the leg and took his gun.

J pinned him down and I said, "It'll be over soon, Hermann."

Then I shot him in the right side of the chest. He let out a long, piercing scream. Then he lay still in quiet agony, tears forming in his anime eyes. I sat next to him to be of some comfort and waited for him to die.

A strong wind suddenly rustled all the trees' leaves, and an ominous presence fell over the area, accompanied by the sound of something approaching. It sounded like an extremely large tractor, but I knew instinctively they were footsteps.

I worried it was the god who'd created him, or perhaps his monster buddies responding to his cry for help, so I bolted. I ran down to a different neighborhood, figuring it was okay to leave J since I was the one who killed him, and therefore the one in the most danger. I decided to stay and listen instead of running farther, but I woke up before anything happened.

When I opened my eyes I saw a cartoonish, squiggling black scribble on the wall. I stared at it for a few seconds, thinking, What a simple hypnopompic hallucination. Then I sat up and recorded the dream at 7:30, doing SSILD as I fell back asleep.


Dream #4 (Lucid):
Don't remember much about the beginning of the dream, just that there was a warrior with long red hair who was being ridiculed for being a woman and wearing a white dress. Then she used transformation magic to form a heavy suit of armor, which was apparently very high-level magic. She walked past them, scowling, and the armor changed back into a white dress.

I entered the dream later. The setting was similar to my house, but somber and monochrome. It was being used as a base for kids in training to become soldiers. I bounded down the stairs and saw chicken on the table, while someone on the intercom kept saying ミート (meat) over and over. I asked one of the kids in charge about it, saying that I thought meat was rare in times of war. He said it was, and that that was all the meat we had. I was displeased by this answer.

At some point had a false awakening. Now I was in the living room with my mom and brother N. My dog Nile was on the couch and my mom patted his chest, asking in an affectionate voice if he would eat his food now. He whined in response, and I was so amazed that he understood her that I laughed out loud.

Somehow we started talking about dreams and I jokingly said, "Haha, what if this is a dream?"

I plugged my nose and was in disbelief when I could partially breathe. You really can be dreaming at any moment, I thought.

My mom and brother exchanged a look, and for a moment I worried that they would turn against me like some other people's dream characters do once they become lucid. (I know this is just a schema.) I brushed off the thought, but by that point my mom had grabbed me by the legs, restraining me.

"Mom, let me go," I said, but she just smiled at me in a way that was simultaneously playful and creepy. I phased through her by imagining myself already in the location of the living room that I wanted to be. It took a couple tries, but then I effortlessly, without even thinking about it, phased through the window onto the balcony. It was so cool, there was a clear visual transition, and I may have felt an interesting sensation as well but I wasn't paying attention to it.

I flew into the air, but it was a little unstable. I wondered if my mind could not properly calibrate my body size, though some part of me knew that was silly. I touched down on my neighbor's deck, looking out at the neighborhood. It was so incredibly accurate—the woods, the path, the wall, the fence, the retirement home. I refrained from thinking about stability and took flight again.

In my peripheral vision I tried to summon a burger in my hand, but it didn't work, so I thought back to that non-lucid dream where I summoned chicken nuggets right before my eyes. I cupped my hands in front of me and visualized a burger. Just like last time, it appeared first as a dark shadow, then an outline, and then I realized I was trying to imagine lettuce and tomato on it even though I don't like veggies. Once I stopped that, the burger formed completely. I thought that if the competition were still going this would have earned a lot of points, but whatever.

I bit into it and said delightedly, "Ha! So much for 'limited meat!'" (Referring to the pre-FA scene.)

I dropped the burger and decided to find J, but didn't want to waste dream time flying all the way to her house. So I called for her, hoping she would appear somewhere. In the distance I spotted someone running down the path. I could tell it wasn't J, but chased after them anyway, for some reason tempted to shoot them down.

I followed them all the way to the road, but they wouldn't approach me, so I intentionally fell off my drone (I was now riding a drone), crying out "Ah!" in hopes that they would be sympathetic.

They were, tentatively coming over to help. It was a young girl, 12 to 14 years old, with short, curly brown hair. I quickly lost interest in killing her.

"Why were you running away?" I asked.

"The drone scared me, I thought it was an attack helicopter." (We were in war times.) "Also, I was getting a very 'predator-hunting-prey' vibe from you..."

We walked beneath a tree, and she explained that she was fighting in the war to strengthen her cheek muscles. I jumped and tore a few leaves from their branches, enjoying my lucidity.

"I thought kids and children weren't allowed to fight in the war," I said distractedly, thinking back to the first part of the dream. "Oh sorry, I meant kids and women."

She shrugged. I clapped her on the shoulder and exclaimed, "Well, good on you! I think that rule is stupid anyway, get stronger all you want! Even though you'll probably be traumatized for life, hahaha."

She smiled weakly. During the conversation we had occasionally been ducking behind cars and running around to avoid bullets and laser beams from attack vehicles.

I asked if she would accompany me to J's house, but she adamantly refused, probably thinking it was miles away. Out of nowhere K appeared, assuring her that it was just down the street. Sure enough, we were somehow much closer to J's neighborhood than before, only having to turn the corner and walk to the end of the road to reach her residence. But before we could, J came around the corner herself! We all called her name in excitement.

"How is she here?" K asked incredulously.

"Because this is a dream!" I replied, then pointed to my old friend S.E. who was passing by. "J loves shooting and killing—J, kill that thing!"

J made finger guns and shot S.E. in the forehead with a chi bullet. She went on to shoot other people, and each time she did, an itchy lump would form on the back of my right hand. I showed it to the girl and explained that it was the result of the dream characters' deaths, as everything in this world was made of my energy.

A small bump formed on my left wrist and I remarked, "Ah, she must have shot in the other direction."

We entered a building, but a black placard above one of the doors reminded me of the dream with Herman Hesse, and I was unsure if I wanted to go in there.

———

When I woke at 8:20 my hand was actually itchy, indented with clothing lines. I'm so happy though, this lucid was long and stable and chill and fun and... yeah Though I did notice all of the dreams were violent and/or stressful in some way. The one with Hermann Hesse was the closest I've had to a nightmare in a long time.

Nothing much happened, but I'll post the notable parts here Entries in quotes are things I actually wrote at the time, either in my DJ or my phone. (Rewrote most of the DJ logs because they're very messy.)

(From 0-30 hours I was at my house, 30-55 hours I was at J & L's house, and 55-59 hours I was back home.)

3:10 am (18 hours): Was paranoid that my brothers were awake, so I lay still for a while and entered a half-asleep state. Felt refreshed when I snapped out of it twenty minutes later.

??? (~19 hours): Was rubbing my ear and could've sworn I heard my mom yelling my name from downstairs. I was terrified she'd somehow heard me moving around or creaking the bed, but I didn't hear her coming up the stairs, so it must have been a hallucination/hypnagogia.

5:23 am (20.5 hours): Fell into the same half-asleep state for the same amount of time, and again felt refreshed afterwards.

6:30 am (21.5 hours): "Tired. Eyes keep unfocusing, can't read. Still feel gross. Closing eyes leads to instant hypnagogia, auditory and visual."

6:45 am (22 hours): Decided to lay down until 7:00, accidentally fell asleep for 10 minutes and had this dream:

I was in a house for a swim team meeting. Kept floating and a little girl was making her bear stuffed animal float as well. I jumped down from a ledge onto the bed she was on, then bounced to the floor.

"Wow, did you purposely avoid my legs? 'Cause that was a close call!" she said. Her legs were curled into her chest underneath the blanket.

"Yeah, I have lots of practice jumping on beds," I said, referring to my brother's.

She pointed to my brother's friend Vinson and said he had a younger brother. I was shocked, and they were amused that I didn't know. She asked if I could go get him and with a sense of deja vu I agreed. I sensed that he had not come any of the other times I went to get him.

Went into a hallway/basement area, was a bit worried because I knew I was sleep-deprived, and even if it was only for 24 hours exposing myself to creepy situations wasn't a good idea. But I ignored it and went on, calling for the brother, "Arglot." (Pronounced Arr-glow.) I heard Valerie [person from swim team] calling for him as well.

Surprisingly, he appeared around the corner and said bluntly, "What do you want?"

To diffuse his attitude, I said in a casual tone, "Your friend and brother… well, just your friend, really, is asking for you."

"Okay, okay, well tell her…"

Forgot what he said. We were going up the stairs and I saw Kira, was thinking about how Arglot looked like her brother Marcus and how I didn't know she and Marcus were related till recently.

I really am clueless, I thought.


7:50 pm (35 hours): J&L and I were watching a movie and I felt pretty horrible the whole time. Wasn't sure if I'd be able to make it through the night. The feeling cleared up after the movie ended.

??? (~41 hours): Briefly fell asleep for ten minutes. J was calling my name but I didn't respond, had to be slapped awake.

3:04 am (42 hours): "Watching Inuyasha but very tired and keep drifting off, was shocked awake by hallucinating my brother's echoing scream/roar."

3:16 am (42 hours): "Keep drifting off slightly and hearing songs before an Inuyasha character speaks loudly and snaps me out of it. Cannot focus on screen, eyes too blurry and unfocused. But I can keep track of the plot."

4:27 am (43.5 hours): "Feels like I fell asleep, but it's just the plot of the anime feeling like a dream."

5:40 (45 hours): J gave up. She was somehow able to stay awake just by lying on her back and daydreaming, though at one point she hallucinated me asking if she was up and mumbled "mmhm" to the air. I was very confused.

9:37 am (45 hours): "...I accidentally fell asleep at 6:30-ish. The experiment is probably ruined but I'll just subtract three hours. Might've had a dream but not sure. Something interesting did happen, though:
"I don't know if this was a dream or hallucination or what, but when I woke up my Chromebook was open in front of me with a bunch of text-to-speech voice options on the screen. They kept playing and it was difficult to move the cursor, but I managed to close the tab. Then I logged out, closed the Chromebook, and placed it on the desk.
"I know the TTS tab was not real because I don't have anything like that on the Chromebook. But it actually is on the desk, which doesn't make sense because I didn't plan to go to sleep and must have fallen asleep with it open on the bed. Well, whatever...
"My eyes are slightly bloodshot. Last night J said they looked purple, like a raccoon."

1:39 pm (49 hours): "I'm not tired, but when I close my eyes I feel dizzy. A throbbing dizziness, similar to that boat-rocking feeling I used to get when I was younger."

8:11 pm (56 hours): "Again, could've sworn I heard my mom calling for me, but it was very quiet and unclear."

9:35 pm (57 hours): "Tired only in my eyes. When my mom asked me for help with something, I suddenly felt a strange, full-body fatigue."


And that's it. The rest of the time I felt fine, sometimes a little tired. I also got a feeling similar to heartburn once in a while, and had a mild headache. Would've done another night if I could spend it at J&L's, but doing it in my shared room with only books and podcasts to keep me occupied (plus trying to stay quiet) is agonizingly boring.

Donkey Kong Country Returns 3
I'm seeing a Nintendo Direct reveal for a new Donkey Kong Country game.
They are showing off gameplay where, based on your score, Cranky Kong will be angry or less angry.
Angry Cranky had red-colored skin and 'anger clouds' coming out of him. Typical styling.
When he is angry, you get negative modifiers, and vice versa when he is less angry.
Mechanics would be locked behind Cranky's current rating of you.
There is a level selection screen and a "Visit Cranky" option on a menu.