lucid

That stupid carpet. We're at a new house (again!) and we're talking about pulling up the carpet because it's in rooms that it really shouldn't be in.

---

Wanting to give a talk for authors at the library. My dream mixes up two people that I know in real life.

---

I'm walking through an American university campus. Apparently there's a new trend where entrepreneurs rent out chairs for five bucks. The chairs come with cherries, and there's something to do with cheese? You might be sitting on it, though.

The cherries look pretty meh, and a lot of the people around think it's silly because the whole point is to go for a walk with your chair and then find a good space to hang out. Who wants to walk? And they only take cash.

I go to walk away from the chairs, but the lady manning the chair-pile clears her throat and I realize that I'm hanging onto one of the chairs. I put it back in the chair pile, but she keeps glaring at me and I realize that I'm also carrying a chair in my other hand. I put it back.

On the edge of the chair booth, there's a short plastic fence blocking a steep, steep hill. I decide to hop over the fence, but I have a little bit of trouble with it. The chair-lady moves her chair a bit to let me pass. I get over the fence and I'm falling, bounce partway down the hill and land at the bottom, going into a roll. I have enough momentum that I keep running out of the roll, onto the sidewalk and—

Near miss. A bus almost hits me as it goes around the corner. I laugh, exhilarated, and keep running. If I run through the park, it will be cool enough despite the hot day.

I keep running, and eventually find myself at a library. I go into the building, heading towards the climbing wall (because there's always a climbing wall in libraries.) I'm going to climb it without ropes.

At this point, I stop and say "I'm dreaming. I know I'm dreaming," mostly so that when I do my challenges, my waking self will know that I'm allowed to claim the points.

I jump onto the wall and take the first few holds, moving upwards and then along a "ceiling" that juts out from the wall.

Up and around, and I'm counting as I go "six moves, seven moves, eight moves."

I'm two-thirds of the way up the wall.

I change gears, moving over to the "hard" side on the left. The final moves require you to move out from the wall and hang, unsupported by your legs. They look scary—the theme involves jutting teeth and wild colours.

I reach for the final moves: "fourteen, fifteen—"

And with a wild swing, I push out from the wall and barely keep my grip—

"Sixteen!" I shout, and let myself drop.

At the bottom of the wall, a man working for the library/climbing wall wants to know whether I thought it was too easy (but I tell him that I'm kind of playing on cheat mode, and it's fine). He asks about the first few moves on the "basic" side, and I tell him that they're perfect.

Next on my list: teleporting. I focus on the neighbouring house that I want to use for my Week 1 Comp task, and fwoosh—

Find myself pushed back into the waking world.

I'm at a networking event that's in someone's living room. In this dream, the very nice houses in the city are on a peninsula overlooking the water, and the host has a big house that fits everyone. It looks a lot like my house, but bigger.

---

I'm at the dumpster in our complex, and I've found a couple of really cool chairs that I could use in my studio. My husband is not happy with the prospect of dumpster chairs. I now realize that the chairs that were really nice a minute ago actually have broken lifting mechanisms.

---

I'm sharing a dorm with my mom and my brother. This is not a happy arrangement. We've just moved in, and the management is now telling us that we need to move to another one of their properties because they're renovating.

I'm arguing with my mom over whether we should rent a U-haul or take several trips in the truck. She vetoes my U-haul suggestion and says that we can make the truck work, but I say we have two hours to move and we need to take at least three trips in the truck.

A panel that we're loading into the truck snaps, and it flies with force towards my mom's throat.

Pause.

I realize that I'm dreaming.

With my mind, I catch the broken pieces as they fly towards my mom, absorb the kinetic force, and let them drop, harmlessly, to the ground.

I remember that my next task is to teleport—and that I want to teleport to a neighbour's house to fulfill two goals at once—but the dream is getting fuzzy and I'm starting to drift towards consciousness. Blearily, I think that it seems silly to teleport into a neighbour's house when it's right next door. I wake up.

---

Malfoy is sending a robot after me. It would be a physical threat, but as long as I pick it up and hold it on its side, it can't actually get to me, so that's a bust as far as evil plans go.

The robot follows me uselessly around the room.

We're in a playground, and I've hijacked Voldemort's followers by pretending that I, Harry Potter, am actually the next incarnation of Voldemort. (Or maybe I am?)

Malfoy is teetering on top of something that looks like the Cirque du Soleil-inspired stunts from Mad Max: Fury Road. He's trying to prove a point. He falls, but he's currently invulnerable.

The nice thing about dreams is that in the right circumstances, you can just fall forwards, and the air will catch you, like polar opposites of a magnetic field pushing you away from the ground. I float over the grassy hills, and then swoop down to gain momentum and angle my way up into the sky.

I land on a set of stones on a hill and kick back off. I'm in some sort of a competition with other climbers, or flyers, related to a memorial or military ceremony.

---

I have a blender, and half the components of the other blender, and they're both the same make and model. There's been a recall, and I'm disappointed, because I just swapped out a bunch of parts between the two blenders so one would work, and that means I won't be able to get the full return value of both blenders.

I leave the blender that I scrapped for parts in a "free to take" area in a local community hall. Later I come back for it because it turns out that as long as I still have the original boxes I can return both blenders, regardless of whether they're missing parts.

I box up the two blenders and bring them to the returns area. After I've returned those, I keep boxing things up and bringing them to the counter.

There's a good quality secondhand drill on the wall, and I think about buying it, but it's $125 used, and that seems pretty steep.

---

I'm in a farmhouse, playing with cats. There are a lot of them.

Outside. Sailor Mercury, swathed in shadow, looking sad. I'm trying to tell her that we can fight off the dark thing together, but she smiles sadly and says that she's going to hold it off until I can find a way to defeat it. There's only one way: to create some sort of black hole—something like the wind tunnel in Inuyasha—and trap the dark thing on the other side. When that happens, it will take Mercury with it.

Images of the dark thing tempting travellers into its lair and devouring them. Mirrors hiding the horror beyond. A woman with a seductive smile, waving a man to follow her (she opens her mouth to reveal sharp fangs and no tongue.) Flashes of the different temptations that they'll face. One almost turns away... but it catches him in its web.

I have to stop it.

---

Having done a set of dishes before I want to bed, I go to the dishwasher and unload it. I load one set of dishes into the dishwasher, and the dishwasher cleans them. And then I load another set of dishes into the dishwasher. Maybe I can get the place clean before my guest shows up later today.

Notes: I'm mad at my cat because he woke me up. I was chaining those challenges like woah.

My three-step goal for the Sensei Comp is to Reality Check, use Elemental Manipulation and Teleport. I shortened that to "Check, Fire, Port" so I could memorize it yesterday, or I never would have been able to carry that list into a dream.

Onto the dreams.

---

I'm driving through, across, around a series of nicely winding roads. There are some problems with traffic, but it happens. I'm just enjoying the ability to slalom through the roads and enjoy the drive.

There's something about me dating a woman.

Then I'm Tony Stark, and I've just managed to get the arc reactor removed. Apparently I was dying immediately beforehand, because I get a phone call that goes immediately to voicemail, and I hear my voicemail playing morosely -

I rush to to the old-style landline and pick it up like a hot potato. "Pepper!" I say, "I was just going to call you!"

So Pepper's here, along with the other woman I was dating. At this point, I'm no longer Tony Stark, but I am some rich guy who needs to have kids to... um... leave things to. (It made sense at the time; let's just say that if I was playing as myself, this idea would really freak me out.)

Neither of the two women that I am now dating want to have kids, so I'm talking to a third woman who my family had an arranged marriage thing going on with. All four of us are sitting in a guest bedroom, hashing out legal details. The arranged marriage woman thinks that I should actually get married to one of the other two women because I'm romantically involved with them, but Pepper points out that marriage is actually a protection for the kids.

---

(I wake up briefly and attempt to WILD. It doesn't work, but the dream goes lucid later on.)

My point of view is following a sky train car suspended from cables over a vast forest. Inside the train car are dozens of sloths, and they're crawling all over the inside and outside of the suspended car.

Now I'm inside a building in a downtown area, stone and brick and lots of windows. My hands are sore because I've been climbing the indoor jungle gym using only my index fingers... because that's what sloths do?

There are fireworks outside and I hurry over to a window to watch them with the three people I'm here with: my mom, a girl from my childhood who died a few years ago, and her mom as well. The fireworks aren't super extravagant, but they're inside the city over the square, so it's pretty cool to see.

Back inside the building on the lower floor, there's a grocery store. A villain—possessed Harry Dresden?—is threatening the people there.

I've wandered back inside, and while the grocery store is on the ground floor, I'm on the second floor despite having just walked in from the square. I remember the Sensei Comp, and think about how I've always had trouble phasing through a floor, even though walls aren't that hard.

I drop to all fours and focus on pushing my hands through the hardwood floor. Three inches down, four inches down.

I remember that in order to earn points, we do have to be lucid. OK, I think. I know I'm dreaming, I'm lucid, I'm lucid. I chant it as a mantra as I start to feel my knees sinking through the floor. I'm lucid, I'm lucid.

The floor has almost enveloped my torso and I blink -

I fly through the air and land on the floor below, coming face to face with Not Dresden. He turns from threatening the people in the store and looks at me with a wide grin. I ignore him.

Fire, fire is definitely a thing, I think to myself. Ah, reality check first. Then fire, then teleport.

"One, two three four five six," I count on my fingers. "Reality check done."

Then I throw a wall of fire at Not Dresden. He jerks back and dissipates the flame, but it's a close thing. The look on his face is something.

Also, apparently sending flames at your enemies counts as flirting.

Remembered another dream from last night as I was surfing Dreamviews. Weird that I didn't remember a lucid at first—I must have had it earlier in the night.

This dream references Sensei's Sexy Comp (tell your friends.)

---

I remember that I wanted to try pushing through a solid object. There is a wooden door in front of me, with standard front door patterns routed into the wood—it's something like a grid of 3x2 rectangles. I put out a hand, and feel some resistance, like a rubber bubble. I push through, and for a brief second it's like I have my eyes closed, and I'm through to the other side.

Does that count? I think. I feel like I was supposed to keep my eyes open for this challenge.

---

Apparently when I read through Sensei's challenges from the last competition, the idea of phasing through an object stuck in my head, apparently because it's not something that I've done very often. Even in non-lucids, I'll be running away from something and there will always be a door there.

Adventure: 1/10
Control: 7/10
Fear: 1/10

02/24/11

"When can I schedule an appointment for you?"

Needing a doctor's appointment, but I don't have a day free for a while. I'm working every day this week.

"Why are we walking to the train station?" I ask the nurse.

"I need a light. You don't carry a lighter."

"Only if I'm dreaming," I say, amused, and I snap my fingers. A sliver of bright red flame flares up over my closed fist.

Zippo. Scare Factor: 1.

★★★★★

SOLO SENTENCE ESPRESSO

The ballroom explodes into chaos as the giant chess set dismembers the guests, forcing me to escape with the elderly ghosts of the manor who then try to trap me as I escape through the cracks in reality with the maid and her sister who don't trust me after I rescue them from drowning because I can't die (from that point on, we're followed by their zombie-like blue-tinged doppelgangers who are haunting their mostly-dead father who says, "This is our eternity," and means, "This is Hell.")

Eternity. Scare Factor: 5. Rating: Awesome.

★★☆☆☆

Samael Presents:

(your daily)

SOLO SENTENCE ESPRESSO

(the contents of which you should still)

FLEETLY FLEE FROM

(with all due haste.)


On a deserted stretch of Saskatchewan highway, after I wake up in the back of an empty car surrounded by empty cars, I watch a figure approach from the distance (I don't expect him to attack me until the door is opening and I can't wrench it shut and I barely remember to break the dream into a thousand million jagged pieces of glass).

The Road. Scare Factor: 7.

Samael's SOLO SENTENCE ESPRESSO is not at all similar to Mzzkc's ¡Single Sentence Sizzler!® and disclaims all semblance of copyright infringement thereof. That would be stealing.

★★★★☆

01/16/10

I coax my motorcycle to its maximum speed, streamlining my body as I approach the closing elevator doors. The elevator cab has already left for the top floor, and I strain to hold the metal doors open. In half a second, I'll crash into the back of the open elevator shaft and hurtle half a dozen stories into the secret basement of the compound.

Pause.

No reason for that. I don't have to follow the rules, after all. I stand in the open air, looking up at the elevator cab as it slowly escalates to the top floor. That's where I'll find her.

Go.

I fly through the doors, over the pit below. The front wheel of my bike hits the far wall, and I twist

Speeding up the elevator shaft at maximum, up the vertical wall. Vertigo. Disassociated from gravity and catching up to the elevator cab, about to impact. I jump away from the vehicle; it fades away. Suspended in the air for a moment, and I reach toward the closed doors leading to the floor second-to-the-top. I pull myself in, catch on the small ledge there, hang for a moment, looking at the bottom of the elevator cab. It's moving towards me now.

Jump. Over the elevator, clinging onto the doors leading to the top floor. With a wave of my hand, they're opening...

I wake up. Damn it guys, could you break up a little more quietly?

Action Movie Physics. Scare Factor: 3.

★★★☆☆

01/09/11

I just found a Star Wars game for my phone. I decide to try it out, so I'm tilting it left and right, figuring out the controls. Spacebar is jump.

I'm in the game. My surroundings are a dank green, covered in vines and rot. This was a school once. I try out the jump command, disappointed when I realize I have only first-level force jump. It doesn't matter; I'll be able to get around just fine.

Obi-Wan's shade appears beside me to explain my mission. This is strange, because I'm pretty sure I'm a past version of him. The force ghost fizzles out and disappears, exploding into four green blobs of goo. They reform and immediately begin to scuttle about, taking shape as Gravelings, mischievous reptilian creatures that arrange the accidental deaths of the people around them.

I strike with my single lightsaber, v-stepping in and twisting away after I cut through the torso of one of the gravelings. The creature goes still in shock, before it disintegrates in a flash of red sparks. With a sweep of my lightsaber, the others are scuttling away. I finish them off with force lightening.

Later, alone in an empty room, I suddenly realize that I'm dreaming. It feels like waking up. I try to remember my goals, but I come up blank. Fine - I'll run. I love to run in dreams. I take a running start and leap from a four-foot ledge.

In one reality, I can feel myself flying.
I drift away, into the blue, blue sky, heedless of the ceiling that used to be there. Simultaneously I'm falling, landing. I can feel the remnants of the other reality until all four of my limbs slowly reach the floor. I lay my forehead onto the cold cement and just breathe.

I see Zoe, walking away into a crowd of faceless people. I call out to her, chase after her. Her blonde hair swishes as she half turns, keeps walking.

We're sitting side by side, looking at the massive crowd milling about through the mall. She's counting the cash in a till.

"There's something you want to tell me," she says, flipping through a pile of five dollar bills.

"Yep."

She scowls, but doesn't turn to look at me. "Well?" she asks, "What is it?"

"You could say," I smile faintly, "That I have slightly more than platonic feelings for you."

Her hands go still. "Oh."

"But that doesn't matter," I say, leaning back.

"And why is that?"

"Because," I say, and I stretch my hands out in front of my face, "None of this is real."

And the dream dissolves into static.

Running. Scare Factor: 3.

★★★☆☆

10/28/10

Scrambling up wet black rocks, spray from the waterfall soaking me to the bone. Straight up to the top of the vertical cliff face. Looking out over the dark river snaking through the vast canyon, all sound drowned out by the constant roaring of the falls. Green, black, silver, and blue... It's a clear, crisp day, and I let the joy of the moment wash over me.

The water is too shallow for me to jump safely... but this is a dream. I'm already half awake as I jump, as I plummet. Icy tendrils cut through me as I hit the ice-green water with a splash.

I crawl through the interior of a small school bus surrounded by schools of fish. The sunlight from above barely reaches us, filtered through the water to be a dark yellow-green. I push through the wall of the bus, and it gives way like plastic wrap.

I breathe. Around me, in every direction, are silver fish of every possible size and description. A face appears through the murk. A mermaid, her tail flicking around my leg and then she's in front of me. We're reaching for each other and we're kissing and the scene fades...

And I'm sitting next to him, our knees touching as we laugh about some random happenstance.

Seaweed. Scare Factor: 2/10.

★★★☆☆

...because burning them just isn't dramatic enough.

11/18/10



A sleek metal bridge extends over the choppy sea. I stand near the center, unable to see the shores on either side, obscured as they are by mist. Rain lashes out in sheets and the wind impedes my movement - block, parry, slash - as I slice through an imperial guard with my lightsaber.

Something is speeding towards me, about to impact. I catch the missile with Force Grip, send it spinning into an enemy tank. There's a bridge running parallel to this one, and stormtroopers are setting up missile launchers on the edge. They fire -

A wave of my hand sends them careening back into the shooters.

A spider-like droid, twice my height, uses the distraction to scuttle towards me, using its legs as blades. I dodge, jump over the droid and land a glancing blow to its head. Its head swivels towards me as it prepares for another run.

A purge trooper takes a swipe at me. It misses, barely, and I go on the offensive with a flurry of lightsaber strikes. Seconds later, it collapses to the ground, spent.

I keep a wary eye on the spider droid, but it's smarter to take out the smaller enemies first.

...and I'm skating down a barely frozen river. I'm on skis, I'm on a toboggan, I'm holding on to some sort of ski lift as it takes me up, no, down the river.

And I'm stealing some sort of precious coffee grounds. Or beans. One big pile, holding together only because it doesn't occur to me that they shouldn't.

And I'm running through a house, up stairs and through hallways and secret passages.

This room, says a voice, my voice, Was created by my father as a haven for me. No one else can enter it. And I'm laying down behind the couch so that no one can see me through the window in the door.

And then I'm me, for just a moment. I look at the door and I smirk, knowing that the family that's following me will find me, only because that's what I'm expecting. I don't care. It's a dream, and not a particularly awful one. I just want to rest and not think and play through whatever game my subconscious is dreaming up...

I wake up to the family pounding on the door, yelling. I pick myself up from the ugly, floral brown couch and pad across the room. I open a closet door methodically, pull a gun from the rack.

I'm standing in front of the door, holding a crossbow at the ready, pointing through the window. The banging has stopped, and the father asks me if I'm really going to shoot his son.

Everything's all right. The gun's not even loaded.

Exploding Bridges. Scare Factor: 2/10

As an interesting aside, I have not played the game that the picture is from. Before today, I have not seen any pictures or previews, so you can imagine my surprise when I come across an actual spider-like droid from Force Unleashed II, which the dream was based on.

Granted, mine had more legs.

★★★☆☆

10/22/10



People continue to crowd into the elevator, and I'm starting to feel claustrophobic. On the verge of freaking out, I start to push the sheep-like masses in the direction of the buttons, hoping that no one else will be able to get on and pick a different floor.

One woman won't budge. She faces the back corner of the elevator. She's looking down at the floor; I can't see her face. Her blonde ponytail swings a bit as I tug on her arm, and it takes me a moment to realize that she's missing a hand. Blood drips onto the floor below us.

In the next second, she swings around with a snarl. I try to back up. I'm pushed away by the other people in the elevator. She's attacking me with her remaining claws, and her teeth are razor sharp and coming towards my neck -

Pause.

The scene stops for a moment, and I disassociate myself from my body. Hanging back, away from the elevator, I think about waking myself up. I'm about to, but

That never works.

All right, so we'll try something else.

Play.

I block the girl's attack and catch her by the forearm. I'm tugging her towards me, stepping forward and sinking elongated teeth into her shoulder. I'm pulling and her arm is coming loose with a sick tearing and a spray of blood.

Scare Factor: 5/10

★★★☆☆

Work's still trying to kill me, but I think it's time to start posting in my DJ again. I've been writing in my paper DJ every day, but it's just not the same.

So here's the only lucid I've had in the last couple weeks.

10/06/10



I'm looking down at the ledge of a window, standing on top of a platform. I stick my head through the window and look down at the ground. I want to keep moving, running, going somewhere, I don't know. I should really stop and stabilize. The scene is staticky, overlaid with a red filter.

I breathe, take a moment to watch the world around me. The moment ends, and I jump -

We're running. Non-human figures, all of us, made of light, each an almost pure, bright colour. One is bright red, an orange glow streaking out from the center, like fire. Another is white with gold rays, woven through with colourless threads. Another gives me the impression of a stormy sky and the smell of ozone. I have no sense of myself, but I don't have a body. I just am, and I'm interacting with the others - we take the shape of wolves and run across the sky of the prairie below.

Mzzkc and I communicate.

We're dream-sharing, says one of us. Do you want to try a password, see if both of us remember it?

Q and K, says the other. That's the password.

Hard to remember, says the first. How about 'quark'?

I try to wake myself up so I'll remember it, but I go spinning into a dream I won't remember.

Scare Factor: 2/10

★★★☆☆

LUCID

If my hair keeps changing colour in the pictures, it's because that's what it tends to do IRL.

09/26/10

Fragment about going to my (late) grandma's church for a Halloween party. There were some really cool decorations. A distinct lack of alcohol, however.

I'm in the front entrance to our house. Everything seems normal, and I do a routine reality check just because. I count my fingers. Onetwothreefour... new ones start sprouting. Well, that's weird. It's almost like I'm dreaming or something.

I try again, and I get to seven before I give up. Obviously I am dreaming. So... Nomad's task. I need to get to a forest. I jump out the nearest window into the front yard. My brother is there, hanging out with a DC from the Halloween party. Definitely dreaming, then, and whoa...

The dream is destabilizing. The entire world tilts on its axis, and white lines start running parallel to every object in the scene, as they do in Assassin's Creed. I stop to take a breath, keeping my eyes open, and I start touching the objects around me. I kneel down and touch the grass, the concrete driveway, a metal railing, and I'm back.

I decide that the best way to get there is to run in a straight line. There's a forest directly to the south, I convince myself. I cross the street at a run, hit the wall with one foot, and leap onto the brown-shingled roof.

I don't stop. From the first house, I jump onto the roof of the next. Keep moving. I land on some kind of antennae, and the structure sways dangerously as I make the jump to the next structure.

I'm on a scaffold. The next building - a warehouse - is an impossible distance away, several feet higher than the platform I'm jumping from, and twenty feet away. I jump the gap, and I'm suspended in the air.

I pull at my momentum, bending the dream to allow me a few more meters in height - and I grasp the edge of the roof. I pull myself up near the chimney. On the other side of the warehouse is a big camping tent set up in someone's backyard. I jump. I land on the tent, and it cushions my fall, billowing out around me. My vision is filled with yellow and red, and I think hard, imagining the demon boy I'm supposed to rescue, and the dark thing that's after him...

The forest is oppressively quiet. I can smell the pine, feel the hot mugginess created by a recent rain. Fully immersed in my character, I stand in the center of a huge clearing, waiting.

A flash of red goes zooming by. I've found Nomad's demon boy. I'm slightly disappointed. I was hoping I could use this opportunity to discover Amon's origin (a DC I've apparently mentored throughout his life). Instead, it's just a regular demon.

He's being chased by a wolf. I recognize the creature as an entity from my childhood nightmares. It's back, and I'll have to deal with that eventually. For now, I allow the demon child to distract it.

I spot a piece of paper on the ground near a pond. Picking it up, I skim the text. Instructions from Nomad on what to do next.

Did you save the demon boy? Y/N

I look up across the clearing. The demon is running as fast as he can, frantically trying to get away from my nightmare creature. The wolf is gleefully giving chase. I'm not sure whether he's actually any danger, or if he's just toying with the demon. Either way, I have no interest in rescuing the child.

Did you propose to the barmaid? Y/N

I look at the paper, and blink. And blink again. No, WakingNomad, I did not propose to the barmaid. Although, I should pay a visit to Denn sometime in the near future.

Scare Factor: 3

Also, this result amused me.