Cities in the Astral

LD17: There were some good parts, but the visual part of the dream kept fading in and out. I could feel myself interacting some times and some of the time I was just able to watch. I think it was a nice enough LD just one with disapointing graphics and sections I could not influence. I had tried to WILD 4 times last night. Maybe my brain is worn out from all the recent LDs. The 4th and final attempt kind of worked, but I was still a tiny bit awake I think, I kept hearng noises that must have been from the waking world.
It took a freakin hour to get to where I had little awareness of my body. I could see all the hypnogogic colors and feel crazy dream randomness. I had a very hard time being able to see my hands. They would form and then dissolve. The more I tried the closer I would come to waking. That is why I titled the dream this way. I guess I was a shadow person or something.
I kept hearing a crow somewhere. It was so loud I knew it must be a real crow. I tried to counter this by believing I was in a desert and it was part of the dream. I did see a desert landscape. The crow just blended into the dream as a background noise. I could feel a dream body and move my arms and legs. I decided to try and throw rocks as a stablizing technique. I would look down and see a rock, but when I picked it up my body would just be a black blur. I could sometimes see fingers, but they would blur out to black again. It felt just like I was picking up rocks and throwing them, and I could see the rocks fling out into the desert. I did this about 10 times, sometimes big rocks using both hands. I tried walking, and it was clumsy. Again, I could feel my body but the visual effect was all dark and blurred. I decided to climb a cliff wall slowly and really picture each action, hoping this would stablize me. I could somewhat vividly feel the cliff and both arms and legs. It felt very much like rock climbing, but I still looked like a vague shadow person with no detail. I came to the top and hauled myself up. The imagery kept getting to be more hypnogogic randomness than anything else and if I tried too hard to affect it I would feel at risk of waking.
At that point I decided to convince myself I was still lying on the top of the cliff, and just needed to take a break. I told myself the colors and patterns were the sky I was staring up at in the desert. That subtle attempt at control did turn the H.Is into cloud like masses and things that could be stars or what not. I had to keep telling myself "I am dreaming" I kept my brain from loosing lucidity by thinking what goals I had set for myself before bed. I had wanted 1)to go to the moon and watch the earth rise. 2)throw fireballs from my hands. 3)shoot lightning from my hands. The HIs calmed down and looked like a night sky finally. I tried to get an image of the moon to appear. It would not. I considered convincing myself I was already on the moon, but decided the goal was to go to the moon, why cheat. I tried to reform a body and had about the same shadow effect. I got up and squatted watching the landscape and sky from the cliff top. I was hoping to see the moon. I saw some clouds that were lit up, so decided I should assume the moon was behind them and get moving again.
I had a random thought that I could transform into a dragon and fly there. It only took about a minute and I stablized again by examining the new body. Oddly I could see more of the dragon body than I had of my human body. It still was kind of a shadow dragon though. I flew up trying to really feel like I was a dragon. I could feel the powerful hind legs and wings, but trying to feel all the parts at once was not happening. I stretched the long body and could move the tail. I realized the head would be on a long neck and could crane around to look at the rest of me. I felt myself having the massive jaws and snake like neck, but trying to turn it back on myself was not working well. Maybe just a little too strange. During the flight a loud rumbling noise happened and I realised someone was warming up a car outside my house. I flew into hypnogogic patterns and lost all aspects of the dream. I convinced myself it was not a car, but the noise a big dragon would make while breathing. Eventually the dream faded back into my mind and I decided that I must be almost to the moon. I was coming up on the ground ahead. I flew around the landscape which was largely in black and white trying to think what the moon should look like. I imagined craters. Sometimes the landscape would look right with craters and often the craters would just be round glowing spots. I decided to try and breath fire. It did work and was cool, but was in very low definition, not like I picture a dragon would feel if it were real. I landed.
I was supposed to watch the Earth rise, so why not watch it in a dragons body? I tried to assume it was about to happen to no effect. I tried to picture a globe and flew off into a barely lucid state of swirling colors and shapes for about two minutes, the shapes kept becoming spheres and reminded me about the dream. I became lucid again but was no longer on the moon.
I just kept seeing flashes of daily life dream stuff but could only watch, not interact or control. After about a minute of this I kept reaching up to open a stove and realized I had a dream body again. I pulled myself from the randon images and walked out the wall. I focused on seeing myself in my front yard and that is where I ended up. I remebered the other two goals. I kept creating balls of fire in my hands and throwing them. At first they rolled slowly along like a bowling ball. I pictured a tree and it appeared. I throw a few balls of fire at it and it finally catches on fire. The images were still very shadowy but much improved from before. I tried shooting lightning into the sky. It was pretty easy and massive amounts of lightning filled the sky. At that point I suddenly woke up. Duration ~20 minutes