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non-dream dream semi-lucid lucid FA / AP

Had been watching one of the Purge movies, so I had a long dream inspired on it. Don't remember all of it, but at some point I was seeking refuge with some people I know, in some modern building, who have a sort of secret attic accessible through a trap door inside some storage room. But we can't make any noise while hiding in there, which isn't at all easy. Our chasers don't find us at first, but somehow come back later knowing where we are. Since they are looking for me and a couple friends specifically, we decide to leave to avoid them hurting the others. We manage to get to ground floor to escape the building, but the doors are all locked. My friends get hurt, not shot but frozen somehow. They are stiff on the floor, like ice rocks and I carry them to near the door and hug and massage them to try to revive them. I don't have to face our chasers anymore for some reason, but there is someone at the reception who is controlling the entrance of the building and I have a confrontation with her. She says we won't go anywhere, but I manage to open the doors and then she calls back our attackers to chase us down again. We run outside through narrow streets as fast as we can. We arrive at a big park and we spread out to confuse our stalkers, but we have a rendez-vous point at the top of the park. I have to cross a swimming pool and fastest way is swimming, so I jump in and when I get out on the other side, I am wearing a red bikini and there are people swimming there at night and some guys start flirting with me but I push them away, have no time to deal with it. I meet my friends at a small flight of stairs leading to an old palace on top of a hill. But instead of taking the normal path towards the palace, I see some stairs to the right going through a small tunnel and I chose those instead. It leads us to a small stone house that seems frozen in time. There is a man living there and he is not pleased to see us, but he doesn't kick us out, he just tries to ignore us and sits at his wood stove carved on a rock wall, cooking his lunch or something. We look around for a while admiring how medieval this place is and then he opens up and says this house has been passed down for generations of caretakers of the palace. He also claims we are safe in there, if we are hiding from something. There is an animal, maybe a donkey, at a corner in the middle of a pile of hay.

I had some longer half-lucid or lucid dream but forgot about it. But I was going around admiring places and buildings and deciding what to explore. At some point I see a modern building with glass walls built in the style of a pagoda and I want to see it inside. I enter the surrounding yard, which as I go around the building, leads to a panoramic terrace with a view to a gorgeous city, very much like Paris in all its splendor. I see beautiful palaces and avenues with trimmed gardens and people promenading. My mom is with me and she says she doesn't see what I see, that she is not able to observe such details, just that we are at an indistinct building and sort of a void around it. it's as if she is sharing a lucid dream with me but unable to be as aware of its intricacies. I am telling her about how to boost and keep awareness, but the dream fades and I wake up for a few seconds before going back to the dream.

Back in front of the same building, I go inside and find a basket on the floor with some small animal in it. First I think it may be a puppy, but I pick it up and it is a baby elephant, newborn, still covered in gunk. He gets scared and jumps to the ground and runs away but I catch him again with a blanket. He calms down as I clean him and he imprints on me. H starts seeing me as his mommy.
I forgot part of the dream, but he grows up a little bit and I take him to some place in the countryside. It is some kind of farm. I am away from the house, near the entrance gate, where there is a vegetable garden in raised beds. Some of the vegetables will feed the elephant and others will feed people living there. All is well and I am admiring the road leading to the property, which is sided by a rammed-earth wall on both sides. it catches my attention that part of the wall is covered in old faded beige tiles. Then I hear a loud noise and I look back to see shots fired from the end of the path hitting the wall and coming closer and closer towards me. I run forward but on the other side I also see shots coming towards me. I feel trapped. Then I see a group of women running in front of a group of Talibans in front of me and and some men running away the shots from behind me. I feel confused about where to run to. The men behind me jump over the wall to the other side but they are still under fire somehow. I just freeze against the wall, unable to decide what to do and the women and their chasers just pass by me and ignore me. Apparently I am not a priority to them, but I still don't feel safe. I think they execute the other women. I run down the path and arrive at a road going upwards to the mountains. I run up for my dear life. Soon after the men who had jumped the wall behind me cross paths with me and instead of going up the road as I do, they go in a perpendicular direction towards the mountain. But doesn't take long until they appear again running down the road. They warn me about more Talibans coming. We go down the mountain again and they take me to a village, to the house of a western agent they know, who is actually Nighthawk. We stay in his place and everyone is nervous, not knowing what is going to happen next. They fear it is only a matter of time until the terrorists find this place and that we're hiding there. Some other guy hands Nighthawk a chip and tells him to hide it where it can't be found and he says he will, but then just puts it in a pocket in his pants.

22nd November 2020

Dream:

I was sitting at a desk and there was a piece of paper; it was blank or had something recently drawn on it. I wanted to practice doing buildings and started off with a very simple rectangular one. I wasn't being able to keep the lines steady in any direction, which annoyed me.

Then, next to this building, I started drawing another building starting with a sloping roof and then drawing in some windows but then quite soon I was drawing these small cross sections in parts of this building and these sections started draw themselves full of complete scenes of what the rooms were like. I kept drawing cross section bits and adding in small details and finding details adding themselves to the drawing. As I kept my focus on drawing, perceptually, it started to feel like I kept getting closer and closer to the paper.

Very gradually and seamlessly, I entered one of these scenes but I could somehow still see things sort of in cross section, like in a 2.5D platformer game or something.

I remember a few characters, there was an elephant lady on a bed in a room above or adjacent to the main view/focus; she had some lights on but it was otherwise dark in her room and she was sliding the end of her trunk on a grating to a ventilation shaft; this made noise that scared another character in a different room and I think that character became angry out of embarrassment or something.

Later on, some bit where there was a nurse character, whose details I don't remember so well. I knocked her on the head with something massive and she went down (through the floor or over a mezzanine?) and something broke her fall, I think maybe me. I remember telling her "you idiot, this is my dream!". In the dream this was meant as some sort of explanation to the confusion she displayed when she realised she was fine after the hit and the fall. Nearby up some steps on a flat tier was a giant cobra, but in the dream I thought it was an adder, for some reason.

Fragment:

An earlier dream focused on NCIS, but which I don't care enough to make full note of the details. The dream focused on McGee and he was flying a small private jet and then someone is with him passes him a phone, with Gibbs on the line. In the dream it was like in the actual show, in terms of witticisms, humour and timings. McGee was more self-aware as a character than any other and questioned how could it be possible that Ducky and Gibbs were already at the scene in this other country he'd now be landing in at.

---

Notes:

- In the first dream, the whole thing reminded me a bit of the type of crazy and silly drawings in "finding Wally". I went through a few of those books quite often when I was younger. I don't know where those books are or if they were thrown away.

- A lot of detail was missing from my recall but the from the moment the scenes started being filled in as I drew cross sections and windows, there was a huge amount of ornamental detailing to the scenes that made them feel overly complete.

- I haven't seen a snake in my dreams for a while and I don't think I'd ever had an elephant in a dream before (hm, which also has a "snake" on its face?).

- There was some kind of dark and red-ish lighting to the room/area the giant cobra was in.

- The nurse did elicit some type of pre-lucid awareness, especially considering my remark to her confusion.

- I slept quite poorly. My neck and lower teeth were aching as I wrote my notes and afterwards.

non-dream dream semi-lucid lucid false awakening

Huge storm forming. I am with Zilla and some other friend and we run indoors to take shelter. We're staying at a strange pretty house, sort of carved in the rock of a mountain side. It starts raining and a big hailstorm follows. I close the door but there is water still coming in, so I find ways to fix it. Meanwhile, I look to the side to one of our panoramic windows and I see a giant tortoise. I go tell my friends who are in some other room, they don't believe me. When I come back, the turtle knocked down our door and behind it comes a small elephant. I am freaking out, don't know what to do, but one of my friends appears and he can speak their language. He tells me they require offerings like rice, wine, music. I wonder if they are some kind of gods testing our generosity. I go to the kitchen and pantry. They pick up normal rice, but I say we have basmati rice and to look for it. They complain a bit and but I insist on offering the basmati rice.

I finally got back to the TOTY tasks (in the BOLD section)...

11pm+ up 1148pm to bathroom 12am-btb 550am something based on recent thoughts and events. *605 btb perfect again! The earliest dream I recall at the moment is at <snip for privacy>. Next memory is riding on the hood of a truck on the side of the hood with one girl and the other more in the middle of the hood close to the windshield maybe CM and her sister C at this point (transitions to little Ms CM and my younger brother in law). It feels a little precarious sitting on the hood as we make some turns but the driver is driving slow so we don't fall off easily it seems. At some point we get off and I see yellow shoes on the street and as we drove a little further I wondered if it was her shoes that fell off and I wanted to make sure she wasn't going to try to go get them in traffic. We start walking wherever we're going and I see this vending company dropping off this taffy candy like thing, a refill of the machine I think and it looks like we're outside of a school. It looks like we're going in to the school probably a high school and I think how I thought last night that I didn't fix my hair when running an errand and I say to one of them that I wasn't planning on going anywhere so I didn't fix my hair or wear anything nice. Oh before that when we're walking I was saying you know your brother C (I'm confused, he's my younger brother in law) is real nice, it's nice to have a brother like that, but she's walking next to me instead of him and she's smiling. I asked "I wonder what you would call me?" and she just smiles. I was thinking something like Uncle or Brother and it looks like she was thinking boyfriend. Anyway we go into the school and it transitions to looking more like a hospital and more than a few horror scenes with injuries etc but I don't seem to be bothered by it. I'm mainly concerned with where she went and I ask one of the people we're with and they said that they think she walked down that way, so I walked down the hall with all of these open bays with patients in them and I must have realized how crazy this was or my lucidity just came to me and I realize that none of this matters, I am dreaming, and I just start dancing there in the hospital to the song of the summer "standing in the bright lights" whatever the name of the song is. At some point it transitions to a classic rock song from maybe the 70s. One of those pop rock songs. After a bit of dancing I think about the task of the year and try the same thing I tried before and this time it works! I basically say "that sounds like an elephant" and sure enough I start hearing the sound of an elephant, it's bugle cry and stampeding feet and it hasn't fully materialized last yet but I can hear it more and more and the hospital scene around me has turned gray and I see a flash of gray and I jump up floating up in the air and land on what I take to be the elephant until it materializes and I go riding off in what now is an open plains area and I say there is the jungle up ahead and shortly after I'm stampeding through a jungle on the back of this elephant. I remember how the task mentioned what sounded like a bit of a violent romp through the jungle and I didn't think that would be my kind of thing but it was quite a bit of fun especially knowing that none of this is real, no one's really being hurt. I now intentionally seek to trample villagers and small huts on my path through the jungle and I succeed in doing so but the joy was really in just the brisk gallop through the jungle. I get to this ridgeline and I'm looking down over this beautiful valley where the jungle starts to clear and I am taken by how clear and vivid and beautiful all of this is, much like I was taken by the extreme vividness of what I took to be HHs when I was first going back to sleep after short wbtb. In hindsight I think I was already dreaming at that "HH" point, probably NREM and then nothing before the REM started. By the beginning of REM my awareness wasn't there but it came back to me towards the end maybe 5 minutes before waking. Anyway back to the Jungle scene: I'm almost in tears at the beauty and completeness of the scene below me and I consider making myself wake up to recall everything fully. I don't remember making the decision to wake up but I wake up shortly after, whatever the reason. The strong set of grassy sea practices during wake back to bed, even if wake back to bed is short like in this case, seems to be a very effective for producing strong lucidity.

Ritual: The new Twin Peaks started last night, so I watched the usual Sunday shows in their second round and didn't get to bed until after 2am. I woke around 7 or 8 and looked at my iPad a bit, enough to wake up my mind, with the usual vague intention to make this into a WBTB, but the only other mental preparation I did was to remind myself that dreaming involves proprioreception, so I should pay attention to my whole body as I fell back asleep. It was 9am when I woke after the dream, which I felt had lasted only a few minutes.

FA-WILD: During my WBTB, my husband mentioned that he was going to the grocery store this morning, so when I was half-woken by the sound of the garage door, I knew he must have left. This much was evidently a real perception, but right after that, still believing I was half awake, I heard voices. I knew my brother was in his room on the other side of the house, but I couldn't account for the other voices. [DL: My brother lives on the other side of the country, and the room I thought he was in does not exist.] Was he on the phone? But there were several voices, and the sounds of people moving around. Had he invited friends over? Then I recognized one of the voices as that of my maternal grandmother. [DL: She died over twenty years ago.]

Despite the dreamlogic, these observations did actually make me wonder if I was dreaming the voices, not because of the incongruities that would have been obvious to a waking mind, but only because of my conviction that if my husband just left for the store, then no one else (besides my brother) should be in the house so early in the morning. I tested to see if I was getting any dream imagery, and sure enough, when I partially closed my eyes, the four flaps of a manually closed cardboard box appeared superimposed over the rumpled covers of the bed that I had thought I was seeing with my waking eyes. [DL: In retrospect, is it apparent that everything I observed after hearing the garage door was already in dream, so I was mistaken in believing that I had woken up. My mind was half awake, despite the dream logic, which is what led to the confusion about which perceptions were dreamed and which were real.]

I realized that if I was already seeing dream imagery, then if I was careful I could probably "get up" out of bed and into the dream just like I do in WILDs. This was easily done. I crossed the room, an accurate likeness of my bedroom, and opened the window to look outside toward what I understood to be my brother's room, on the second floor above the attached shed. [DL: The shed has no second storey.] The ground was covered with snow, and I did recognize that this was incongruous with the current season. It gave me the idea to do the TOTY that I had attempted a couple times earlier, the sled ride.

The last shot of the final show I watched last night was a woman diving backwards over the edge of a boat to go scuba diving. It made an impression on me because I had only ever dived into water face first, and at the time I had tried to imagine what it would feel like to enter the water that way. Now, as I was about to jump out the window, I decided to do it backwards like a scuba diver. For a moment I felt like I was falling and wondered if I would actually hit the ground, but then the nongravity of dream caught me pleasantly in an inverted arc, and I settled gently to my feet.

I remembered the last few times I had attempted the sled task, and how I had overcomplicated it to the point where I kept waking up before I could finish. This time I decided I'd better just get it done, even if my solutions weren't elegant. So instead of going to the trouble of finding or manifesting the necessary sled and mountaintop, I just asserted these conditions into existence. I'm on a sled, riding down a mountain. As is typical when I "brute force" things in dream, initially it felt like a fiction, but soon I began to feel plausible sensations of sitting on a sled and sliding down the snowy slope. It was far from my best work, but it sufficed.

I was sufficiently familiar with the task that before I had even intended it, my sled slipped through an irregular opening like the mouth of a cave, into a wide dark space. But then I wondered if this was good enough—I hadn't read the terms of the task in ages. Would a cave suffice, or did it have to be a proper hole through the surface of the earth? I couldn't remember, so I decided to play it safe and conjured a perfectly round hole, like the sort of thing you might see in a cartoon, just in front of me on the lower floor of the cave. My sled and I slipped right through, and at this point my interest perked up, because I didn't know what to expect, and had not planned or intended anything past this point.

It was dark down here, and I had no sense of the borders of the space, yet I could see the details nearest me perfectly well in the nonlight of dream. The place felt public and even familiar—familiar as a type rather than a specific location—but I can't think of how to relate it to anything in WL. A "town square" might be the closest analogue, but of course in WL town squares don't tend to be in enormous caverns underground.

I felt my mind shift over into observation mode and began to take deliberate note of the things I saw, but at the same time I felt really hungry and couldn't resist impulsively tasting everything. [WL: I hadn't eaten much for dinner and had even felt hungry again by the time I went to bed, so this was a genuine bleedthrough sensation.]

My sled had disappeared in the transition through the hole, so now I was on foot. The first object that I passed, on my left, was a piece of fabric that had been fashioned into the form of an elephant, about about eighteen inches wide. It was attached to the top of a pole stuck in the ground, elevating it to just above waist height. I pulled the fabric elephant off the pole to give it a closer look as I continued to walk. White was the dominant color, but the details were stitched in brightly-hued threads, red and blue and green. The base fabric had a thick pile, almost fur-like, akin to what you might see on a stuffed animal, but the object overall was flat, lightly padded like a thin quilt. My hunger impelled me to take a big bite, and in my mouth it had the taste and texture of a sort of bland taffy. (Tastes are rarely very distinctive in my dreams.) I dropped it and moved on.

The next object I encountered was also on a waist-high pole, and about the same size as the elephant. This one was made of paper and a bit more three-dimensional—it resembled a large origami fish folded from patterned paper. The taste and texture were even less remarkable, but I was so hungry it felt good to be chewing something.

As I observed with mild amusement the way my hunger was driving me to try to eat things that didn't even resemble food, the rational part of my mind responded that this being a dream, there was no reason I shouldn't try to eat literally anything I could see. I put this to the test, breaking off random bits of any surface I came across and nibbling on them. One thing I remember distinctly was a table. It was a round table covered by a long, dark-hued tablecloth. I think there was a vase of flowers in the center but otherwise it was bare, so I grabbed a hank of the tablecloth and started noshing on that. I was cramming far more in my mouth than I ever would in WL, but I didn't worry since I knew that this stuff had no real substance.

I was still in snacking mode when I came across a white-bearded gentleman in a navy blue blazer. The bronze buttons caught my eye, and without so much as saying hello, much less asking permission, I reached out and twisted off the top button, bringing it to my eyes for a closer look. Tiny convex letters around the top spelled out "Bartholomew," and a small human figure occupied the center of the button. "Saint Bartholomew?" I asked the gentleman from whom I had taken the button, while trying to remember if there was really such a saint or if I was just free associating. [WL: I still wasn't sure so I googled it. Apparently Saint Bartholomew was an apostle, and although I was not consciously aware of that, I suspect the influence of day residue, because in The Leftovers last night several disciples were mentioned, and I've never been able to keep disciples and apostles straight.] The man shook his head, and when I looked again at the button I saw the letters rearrange themselves into the name "Balthus," which seemed to make a bit more sense... in a way that I can't entirely explain. Still hungry, I licked the button. I thought it tasted a bit sour and metallic, a bit like licking a D battery but without the tingle. The bronze button had been darkly tarnished but now gleamed where I had licked it, so I licked it a few more times to polish the highlights. I looked at the letters again and now they read "Ubewiz," a name meant nothing to me, though I thought it sounded vaguely Polish. [DL: I just noticed the symmetry between the verb "polish" and the adjective "Polish," so I suspect dreamlogic lay behind this observation.]

FA: I woke up (so I thought) and immediately fished my dream journal out of the bottom drawer of my bedside table. [WL: This was a realistic detail, because although usually I keep it right on the table next to the bed, for the past few days it has been in the drawer.] I flipped through it and couldn't find a single blank page, but I didn't want to waste any time so I started writing my notes in the margins. I was jotting down keywords: "Bartholomew, Balthus, Ubewiz," read the first line. Then I included brief notes about the fabric elephant and origami fish. I hadn't gotten very far when I woke up again and realized that I had been taking my initial notes in a false awakening and would have to start over, so once again I pulled my journal out of the drawer and wrote—grateful for the blank page this time—"Bartholomew, Balthus, Ubewiz."

Ritual: After a year or so of initial successes with galantamine, back in 2010–11, it had stopped working very well for me to the point where I hardly ever use it anymore. But last night after going to bed late (around 3am) and waking up just before dawn, I still felt heavy enough with sleep that I thought I might give it a shot. (Galantamine is a stimulant, so the main risk is not being able to get back to sleep.) I took one of the red pills from a bottle of "Dream Leaf," which I had nearly given up on since it had never worked for me before, possibly because I only tried it long after I had gotten "over" galantamine. I know the red pills contain galantamine from the distinctive effects, but I must say that it greatly bothers me that this supplement neglects to identify the presence of galantamine on the label, or even on their website, much less clarify the actual dosage. In fact, I would go so far as to call this obfuscation shamefully irresponsible and borderline criminal. Galantamine is a powerful substance that should never be given to people without their knowledge. So for ethical reasons I dislike this particular supplement and definitely would not recommend it, but galantamine is galantamine, and on this occasion it actually worked. Woke and wrote at 9, so I'm a bit underslept with a slight galantamine hangover, but it's been so long since I've had this sensation that I'm almost enjoying it.

I've always found galantamine dreams a bit superficial, but that's not always a bad thing. My recent attempts to force dream events to unfold in a detailed and realistic way, in the name of quality, often prove counter-productive. Sometimes a little "cowboying" is necessary to get the job done, especially in the inherent instability of the dream environment. So tonight's dreams were ultimately successful, but not exactly Masterpiece Theatre.

WILD, "Fading Gift": I was lying on my back in bed, and recognized I was in dream even as I started making elaborate sweeping gestures with my hands, but continued gesturing for a while to increase my sense of motor control. At one point I closed my eyes and scratched my scalp, and I was amazed that the sensations felt exactly like like waking life. "I am the dreamer," I murmured a few times, as if to fix the idea in mind.

I recalled how often I make unnecessary difficulties for myself at this transitional stage and told myself that if I was already dreaming, I didn't need a ton of preamble before getting out of bed—I should just get up. So I did, and it was fine. I've really been wanting to do the "finding a leftover present" TOTM, so I started looking around the room. (As has become typical lately, the room did not resemble my bedroom in WL.) I looked under the dresser, on the table... nothing so far. I felt a slight contradiction in my mental outlook: on the one hand, the best way to find the present would be to expect or even to will it to be there, but on the other hand, since it was a present I wanted to be surprised rather than force the issue. So I allowed myself only a vague expectation and kept looking. I found a wooden cabinet much like the one in my office and when I opened the door there were a few presents on the middle shelf. The first two I noticed, very small objects, I rejected as not quite right. Although they were loosely covered in wrapping, it wasn't taped down, so it looked like they had already been opened and then put back.

I kept looking and on the left side of the shelf was the perfect gift: a wide cylinder about six inches high wrapped in red and white paper with a red ribbon rising vertically on four sides to form a neat bow at the top. The paper looked familiar at first so I studied it for a moment, but it was not any pattern I've seen before. It consisted of thin white lines on a red background, but they were awkwardly curving and abstract, like an elaborate doodle.

Just as I started to open the present, I felt the dream begin to fade. I moved quickly, trying to open the box in the little time I had left. When the top came off, I plunged in my hand and felt... tissue paper. I was almost awake now, and as I reached past the tissue paper I felt like I crossed that indiscernable border between dreaming and waking consciousness. Or maybe it is not so indiscernible: what had just disappeared was my sense of touch, without which the dream had lost its tangibility. Vision lingered a little longer, and I saw my hand pull out a thick gold chain the length of a necklace, sparsely ornamented with tiny flowers that were each composed of four thin petals of white enamel. I was dissatisfied, however, not only with the gift itself (I don't care much for jewelry and this was definitely not my style), but with the fact that the dream was fading so fast that I couldn't determine to what extent dream imagination or waking imagination (not that I clearly understand the difference!) had determined the nature of the gift.

I went back to sleep, resolving to try to get lucid again and complete the task in a more satisfactory way.

DILD, "Elephant Ride": I was lying in bed but felt uncomfortable, realized I was still wearing day clothes, including a bra. Ugh, had I passed out last night? As I removed it, I noticed it was a lacy underwire thing that didn't even look familiar. I wanted to get back to sleep but the television was on loudly, so I tried to find the remote to turn it off. There were four or five remotes on top of the dresser, and I pressed the power button on all of them but nothing worked. On a couple, the image would cut out as though it were turning off but then come right back, and other remotes had no effect at all. Fine, I'll pull the damn plug, I thought grumpily, but the TV was mounted on the wall and on closer inspection it seems the wiring was concealed behind the wall. I settled for muting the volume (at least that worked) and turning the screen to the side, which accomplished little but expressed my annoyance with the device. [Possible source: I just got back from visiting my mom, where the TV was on loudly in the mornings, making it hard to read or work.]

I headed back toward the bed, but suddenly realized I must be dreaming. That would explain the difficulty I just had with the televisions, at least! And with the realization came the memory of my earlier lucid episode and my dissatisfaction with the TOTM I had attempted. I was pleased with the chance to try again.

Looking around, I soon spotted a wrapped gift on the bedside table. It was a small square box, around two inches wide and one inch high, made of that shiny gold cardboard that is common in gift boxes, and wrapped with a red ribbon. I started to untie the ribbon and realized that I was wearing gloves. At first I thought it an oddity, but quickly understood that it was just the dream's way of representing the slight awkwardness I felt in my fingers as I tried to complete this fine motor activity. I considered pulling off the gloves but recognized that it would just be a pointless waste of time, and decided instead to ignore them. At least they were thin gloves, and didn't impede me that much in my attempt to open the box. By the time it was open, they were gone.

This time I was very pleased with what I found in the box. It looked like a single confection of some sort. "Perfect, I love food!" I thought to myself happily. I pulled it out and looked it over. It was not very distinguished in shape, light brown in color and vaguely round, but a bit lumpy. There was a darker spot in the center like a piece of chocolate. [Possible source: I've been eating my mother's Christmas cookies, which have a spot of apricot jam covered with chocolate in the center. They have a much firmer texture overall than this one did, though.] The surface was dry but felt a bit pliant between my fingers, a sort of rubbery texture.

I bit into the confection and found the mouthfeel similar to what the outer texture had led me to anticipate. There was just the hint of a thin crust, and then the inside was soft but chewy. It reminded me of mochi but was firmer and easier to chew. At this point I was analyzing it with the idea of possibly attempting to recreate it in waking life. I knew that it would have to be based on glutinous rice flour. However, the overall taste was lightly chocolatey and fruity. I looked where I had bitten and distinctly saw raisins, both black and gold. There were also pieces of another fruit that was harder to identify. It had faint striations that reminded me of the fresh jackfruit I had eaten last night in WL (so that was probably the source), but this had the texture of a dried fruit. Can jackfruit be dried and baked into cookies? I couldn't say. If not, I thought that dried apricot might work just as well. The taste could have been either; it was hard to tell with all the other flavors going on. I finished the confection and found it very satisfying. If I ever do manage to recreate something like this, I'll have to post the recipe here!

I felt that I had now completed the TOTM satisfactorily, so what next? I looked around the room, and wondered if I should just leave through the door and go exploring. But somehow that is never very satisfying; I usually get better results when I am pursuing a specific idea of some sort, even when the results are not what I expected. The dream felt reasonably stable, so I wondered if I might attempt one of the TOTYs. I recalled the "riding" theme, but unfortunately, I hadn't looked at the list lately and couldn't remember the specifics very well. There was a window here... maybe I could summon a bird and ride it through the night sky? That sounded fun, but I didn't think it was on the list. The only one I could clearly remember was the elephant ride, because my studies have given me such a distinct impression of how elephants were used in battle in pre-modern Siam. I had always planned to try that one, but how do I get from my dream bedroom to pre-modern Siam?

I tried to remember the transportation spell from Harry Potter, but the command wasn't coming to me. All I could recall was "flue" something, and anyway there were no fireplaces in this bedroom (unlike my WL bedroom, which does have one!) I decided my best bet was probably the window. I knew you needed to mount an elephant from someplace high, so if I could summon one over, I could probably just descend from the window directly to its back. Then once I was on the elephant, it would be easier to get to Siam. On the way to the window, I felt impelled to opened the middle drawer of the dresser as I walked past. It was nearly empty, with just a few stray pieces of clothing... but in the far right corner was the gleam of gold. It was a pile of chocolate coins! You know the ones, disks of chocolate wrapped in gold foil stamped like currency. These were a few different sizes. I realized these might come in handy if I ended up having to buy the elephant, so I grabbed a handful and put them in my pocket.

I opened the window and felt the cool night air. The window was on the second storey, as I had anticipated, but looking out, I actually recognized that this looked nothing like my house. To the left, I could see a garage door extending perpendicularly to the wall my window was in. The house appeared to be painted beige. Across the driveway, which ran next to this wall to meet the garage, there was a wide grassy yard bordered by trees. I looked up at the night sky above the trees to see if there were any familiar constellations, and immediate recognized Orion. Of course... it seems anywhere I go, I see Orion, even in a dream. He was at an angle, almost on his side, just over the treetops... but not exactly the same in WL. At first I counted four stars in his belt, instead of the usual three. The more I looked at it, the more stars accumulated, but only in certain areas, so pretty soon Orion appeared to be wearing not only a belt, but also a brassiere, which amused me, and a crown. The crown had spikes pointing upward, like the common representation of crowns in modern iconography, but matching spikes adorned the brassiere and belt. At this point the whole shape of the constellation was getting a bit thin and stretched, and while I'm sure these transformations could go on indefinitely, right now I needed an elephant.

I knew my husband was in the next room, probably working, and even though I suspected this was dream logic, I hesitated to shout lest I annoy him. (Though I suppose it is still reasonable not to want to annoy the dream husband.) So I tried to summon the elephant quietly. Nothing happened. After trying for a bit without results, I decided to take a more dramatic approach. I stepped through the window and jumped, setting my intention for there to be an elephant down there, so I could land on its back.

There wasn't. But the results were promising nonetheless... from unconstructed dream space, I managed to conjure something plausibly like the interior of a palace in Siam. It was a bit of a hack job, without much detail, and I confess the throne was far too low (must not have been the formal audience hall), but it was sufficient for my purposes. There were various ministers standing around (another embarrassingly inaccurate detail; no courtiers would stand in the presence of the king in early nineteenth-century Siam! Good gracious!) and the king was on the throne, but a bit vague. My initial impression was that he resembled the recently deceased Rama IX, but that troubled me because I was going for an earlier era. I tried to make him look more like Rama III, but it wasn't working very well, so in the end I just didn't look too closely. At any rate, the king was vague enough that he didn't quibble when I handed over my handful of chocolate coins and requested an elephant. I didn't feel like getting into complex negotiations; I just allowed myself assume the success of the transaction and walked away.

As I exited the interior of the palace and momentarily noticed the bright sunlight reflecting off the whitewashed arch of the doorway, I felt a flash of familiarity. Of course, I thought to myself, This must be the Grand Palace, I've been here a few times. I let my memory conjure something akin to the elephant-mounting station I remembered observing there, and walked over to it. There was no elephant there presently, so I waited for someone to bring it around... and started getting impatient. No one seemed to be doing much, or paying attention to my repeated request. They must not understand English, I considered. I'll have to try it in Thai.

"Chang!" I shouted, the Thai word for elephant. "Ma nee!" I realized how rude I must sound: while "ma nee" would probably be correctly understood as "come here," or, given the contextual clues, "bring it here" as I had intended, it was a terribly rough and simple way of speaking. It was the sort of thing you might say to call a dog. I hadn't even appended a perfunctory "kha" at the end. But then I started wondering what level of politeness would be proper in this situation. I was in the palace, which made things more difficult, because royal Thai is another ballgame altogether. But what was my own social standing here? In speaking roughly I was assuming a great deal of authority... maybe that was not so bad in this situation. Fortunately, I saw my elephant being brought around before I was able to go too deep down the rabbit hole of Thai honorifics.

It was a disappointing elephant, by any standards... not only small but kind of flabby and soft, a cartoonish cross between a real baby elephant and Dumbo. Moreover it was completely unadorned, with no harness or howdah. I momentarily wondered if the lack was due to an inadequate mental impression of what a howdah should look like? But no, I could picture it clearly enough in my imagination... it just wasn't on the elephant. I guess that's what I get for being rude to the staff. To add insult to injury, they didn't even properly lead the elephant to the mounting station—though it was probably too small to get on from there anyway—they just dumped it on the stairs, where it crumpled over weakly. On the bright side, this made it easy to clamber up on its neck, so I did so and prepared to forge on.

I knew I had to enter a battle, so we promptly exited the city. I had thought to do this properly on a magnificent war elephant with a howdah and a driver and four soldiers to guard the legs—I've seen plenty of paintings and movies of proper war elephants in action—but instead I was alone, bareback with no weapon, on the most pathetic elephant I've ever seen. But at least in dream there was no risk of actually falling in battle, so I figured I could make do.

We had barely gone past the city walls when I saw the invaders approaching from the jungle. That wasn't much of a stretch; it seemed like Ayutthaya was always under attack. (I had originally envisioned myself in Bangkok, but had already slipped back to an earlier era more appropriate for elephant combat). The invaders were on horseback, I noticed, and I was relieved to see that they were only coming in ones and twos, given that I was going to have to take them on alone. They had long black hair and Asian features, and naturally I assumed that they were Burmese... until I got close enough to swing at one and saw the pointed ears. Elves?! Last night I was playing Witcher II and Pillars of Eternity, and the portrait of Aloth in the latter game closely resembled these invaders, but I wasn't sure why they were showing up here. Also, I'm fond of elves and felt loathe to fight them. Fortunately, our combat was more play-acting than anything. I had a good mental image of the kind of long-handled glaive I should be wielding, but though I swung it toward the elves and they gamely mimed being struck, the weapon did not visibly appear in my hands—and I was thankful that it drew no blood.

So I marched forward on my pathetic elephant, going through the motions of bashing the elves (elves?!) with my invisible glaive, while they went through the motions of being knocked aside, until the jungle started to coalesce into a new kind of space, a kind of wide passage under an increasingly low ceiling. The texture of the ceiling interested me, and from my position atop the elephant I could reach up and just touch it. It was covered with a kind of thick cloth, like a yellowish patterned felt, and I reached into the seams between two pieces and felt something hard and smooth. I pulled it out and found an object streaked with yellow and brown that resembled a wild bird's egg, but it was too hard and irregular, so I thought it must be a stone. I slipped it into my pocket. The felt overhead was gaping at the seams so I grabbed it and tore it off, revealing a kind of wide hatch with a knob for a handle. I wondered what it might be concealing so I pulled it open... and found the dream space deconstructing, muffling me in a soft blankety texture. Instinctively I tried to protect myself by putting the stone I had just found in my mouth, but I was still being enveloped in the stuff. I tried to pull at it with my hands, and as my fingers sank into it I was struck by the familiarity of the texture, like coarse sheep's wool—not the clean feel of a fleece, but the dirty, oily texture it has when it is still on the sheep. That was the last thing I felt before waking.

I am lucid.
A golden old-fashioned car with it's doors wide open manifest. I jump in. It starts flying. Soon I am in space. The planet density is ridiculous for my knowledge of astronomy. I fly past them until I see an icy planet. I start descending. I land into this icy arch. A chipmunk scrambles past and attempts to exit the arch. It evaporates. I get out. I see an elephant dressed in orange walk across the crevasse.
On the top of the walls of the crevasse there are elephants in purple. The orange elephant tries to get a purple elephant to give him money. He says "I am your father's brother. [give me some]" The other elephant refuses. He says "I don't care about my father's brother." They bicker until I wake up.

Morning of October 13, 2014. Monday.



There were (among other dreams on this date) three dreams that slightly ran into each other. The last one was extraordinarily lucid, of the type of apex lucidity I do not usually post online, though there is a humorous side here. I enter the state somewhat slowly, being aware of the various environmental features which come into focus and which I know are solely in-dream (which is typical of this state since earliest memory). Finally, when I am in the full-body state, having arrived, so to speak, I notice it is a version of my sister Marilyn’s house, being similar to her living room. This was probably residue from the previous longer dream (which was non-lucid). Within a short time, with no need to mentally will a scenario, a goddess-like girl appears, seemingly a younger version of my wife but dressed somewhat atypically. (The Loomis Street house is where I was staying when she first wrote to me in 1991.) I am fascinated with the realism and reach out for a full embrace. She seemed to have walked from around a corner, although technically there was no corner and it was more like walking from behind an invisible prism of human height. I am amazed by the clarity and the beauty of the imagery. However, I am also aware of environmental noises at times (in the real environment as I am sleeping).

I decide to leave the dream state to make sure my real body is in a comfortable position. However, when I “wake”, I do not notice right off that I have had a false awakening into another dream (though I am not lucid now) and in much the same environment. Eventually, I do come to realize that I went into a less vivid dream rather than really waking up, which seriously annoys me, so then I do wake up.

Previously, my earlier dream was a typical “search” type where I just look for old documents and such. I had wanted my mother’s old letters to my sister to do more research on my life that I had not documented myself, as she wrote quite often to Marilyn from mid-1967 to mid-1978. However, after my sister died in real life it was the typical fiasco where one person (not even a relative, but a supposed “friend” of hers) decides to throw everything out with no consideration for anyone else in the family or even attempting to communicate with anyone. In my dream, though, I actually see a younger version of my sister walking to one of her dressers and she seems slightly confused by how everything has been put into bundles, with almost everything in her house in stacks (including clothes, books, personal documents, and so on). I do manage to find some letters, which I believe are the ones I want. There is also a scene where a box has been put aside with certain things wrapped for my oldest daughter. There are many manila envelopes in the front room that seem sealed, some apparently related to comic books I had made for her (far more than in reality).

In another dream, I am seeing most of humanity as a different “species” than myself, which is no surprise. People, that is human beings, start out as some sort of chimpanzee-like being and as they grow older, they turn into a creature that resembles a baby elephant. This is possibly a play on how “apocalyptic” elephants came from representing my childhood fear (pachydermophobia developed out of real-life events) to representing people falsely promoting soon-upcoming worst-case scenarios (doomsday or judgement “trumpeting”).

Dream - Lucid

I was outside somewhere in a parking lot. I noticed a car with lots of little signs propped up on the hood that said things like "Blow me!" and other similar statements. Upon further examination, I noticed it was an anti-rape thing that people did. It was like you'd put all these vulgar statements about oral sex on your car while it was parked, and it was supposed to be an anti-rape thing.

The things were then on my car, though in the dream, I had a mini-van or an SUV, not the car I currently have IWL. Dallas didn't like it at all. It made him mad. At one point, I believe he was taking the signs off the car.

Then, we were inside a mall. There was a table that had all the signs on it. For some reason, I went to go pick the signs off, and noticed there was a necklace at each place. I started to pick up all the necklaces. Some were gold, some silver. I particularly liked one with a large elephant pendant on it, but I knew it would be way too long on me. I then noticed that the table was set for a dinner that was going to take place that had something to do with the anti-rape thing. The necklaces were gifts. I started trying to put all the necklaces back.

~

I was at Disney World at Hollywood Studios, though it didn't look like it at all. I was with my mom. We were walking when I looked behind us and saw that The Tower of Terror was collapsing! I also saw other tall buildings collapsing. I thought maybe it was a tornado. I then saw one off the the right destroying more buildings. At this point, I started to question where we were. Was it Disney? It must be. My mom and I started to run the other direction, and I was thinking to myself that you probably shouldn't try to outrun a tornado. We then came across some tall grass and somehow figured that was the best place to go.

I then was walking towards the ruined Tower of Terror, thinking about how many people had died in the tornado, when I figured out I was dreaming. I did some finger counts, and only came up with 6 once. The rest of the times I came up with 5. I also noticed that my nails were painted. I then tried to stick my finger through my palm, and it went through.

I knew I didn't have much time left for this dream, so I decided to fly a little. I was right next to the ruined Tower. I was jumping, trying to get into the air. I then remembered to just let myself float, and it worked. I floated effortlessly into the air. I didn't go very high, but I wasn't trying to. I did let myself float a tad higher, and would start slowly sinking down again, so I'd have to do the floating thing again to gain my height back. I floated into the ruins of the tower; it was literally just the base that was left and nothing more, not even a ton of rubble or anything.

I then couldn't think of what else to do. I decided to talk to my mom, whom I suppose was nearby somewhere, though I didn't see her. I said
"Hey, you know I'm lucid dreaming, right?"
She said
"Yes, but only for like 5 more minutes!"
"Less than that!" I said back.

Nothing else exciting happened. A few minutes later, I woke up.

~

I was walking through a mall, looking for a particular clothing store. I walking through this laser tag place where kids were running around. One little boy was trying to shoot me. I don't even have a vest on, I thought to myself. I then walked out of it and back into the mall. I was at a dead end. I felt as if this is where the store should be, but it was the same stores that I had already passed. I felt silly for going in circles.

~

I was at the bakery. Barry, an older man who works there, was in the freezer getting something. I was standing in there as well in front of the open door. I was messing with my phone and just plain zoning out. I then walked out of the freezer and Barry followed. He was carrying a box. Had he needed to get out of there this whole time? I then wondered how long I had been standing there. He hadn't said anything to me about moving, though.

I then was in a room that doesn't exist IWL. It was dark in the room, but only the colors of everything around me; there was enough lighting in there. There was a chair in the middle of the room. On it, there was a box of what looked like donut holes. It should have been in the freezer. I picked it up, and it was room temp. Wow, it had been out for awhile! I went up to Barry to ask him if I should put them back or what he was doing with them. He told me he was going to eat them. When he said this, along his bottom teeth, I could see this whitish cream that I could only assume was the filling of the donut holes.

Shannon, my manager, was then there talking to someone, telling a story, but then she switched her attention to telling the story to me. I couldn't really hear her or understand what she was saying, but she was smiling, so I assumed it was a funny story. She then pulled her phone out to show me something on there. I wasn't sure whether I should just go with it, or tell her that I couldn't hear her.

I then was out in front of the counter. There were these velvet line dividers up like you see at the movie theater that were leading up to the bakery. These two teenage/early 20s guys came up and were asking me something about getting hired, but I couldn't understand them either. I said
"I'm sorry, what? I can't hear very well."
They smiled, and I then quickly added,
"But you don't have to yell." to make sure they weren't going to start talking too loud. My hearing isn't THAT bad.
They started to speak again, and I still couldn't understand a word they were saying, though I could hear them. I just felt so zoned out. So, logically, to escape the situation, I just fell onto the floor, knowing that it would actually work and I would be somewhere else. I somehow had an inkling that this wasn't reality, but I wouldn't say I was lucid.

I then woke up.

07.09.2014

Expecto Patronum at Downtown (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I had a False Awakening and noticed that my wife was waking up. It was morning, but it was still dark outside. My wife went to the living room, and she appeared to be complaining because none of the lights worked. I asked her what was going on and she said that the lights wont turn on. I figured it was the classic light fail from dreams and double checked with a failed reality check.

I jumped out of bed and I planned to go outside and fly away to make the dream stable. As I was about to leave my house I recalled the Basic ToTM to put some shoes on. So I just grabbed a pair of shoes from the entrance and put them on. Easy. I recalled that if they had laces and I tied them both, it was bonus, but my shoes had no laces, as they were the same shoes I am using in waking:







As I looked up, I visualized some laces spawning and be able to tie them, but the shoes did not change, and I did not feel wasting my time staring at my shoes, so I just flew away.

As I was flying, I tried to recall the advanced Tasks but I was not luckt at it.

I demanded a few things to make the dream stable, such as, "Clarity now!" When the dream was clear enough, I tried, "Remember Advanced ToTM" but I had no lucky.

I recalled the Robin Williams one, but I do not care at all for Celebrities and I did not feel like it. So I kept flying to downtown and landed in a busy street. Still trying to remember the advanced task of the month, I recalled Dreamer's Dare so I planned to teleport myself to the blue world. As I was focusing on this, I heard some background voice saying, "Percy is a psychic, so he ain't no muggle!" As I heard that, I instantly recalled that I needed to cast the Expecto Patronum spell. I was going to cast it but I believed I needed a wand or I would fail the task.

I tried to look for a wand and to spawn one myself with little luck, but then, I found a branch laying on the ground and I grabbed it and I would pretend it was a wand. As I held it for a few moments, the branch turned into a black wand:







So, as lifted the wand and chanted, "Expecto Patronum!" Lucky me, a white mist started to form and what appeared to be the face of an Elephant started to spawn. It floated around me for a while until it vanished. Not a very exciting thing, but oh well, task is done. No one around me seemed to noticed this spell.

As I centered myself into working on Dreamer's Dare, I woke up.

Morning of August 3, 2014. Sunday.



This dream occurred in four main sections but with several other minor scenes. Its first is related to a mysterious small rock with Mayan glyphs (also called Mayan hieroglyphs) supposedly related to alien technology being around during the time that the writing was new. Two students at my old middle school (probably grade eight) talk about the rock and what it could mean. Later, it is studied by my teachers and is going to be used for experiments and to advance one particular student as some sort of “prince” or “king” in mostly a metaphorical sense, it seems. I think this may be the same old “replay” of a real-life event where a fellow student found a “rock” back in fourth grade (which was actually made mostly of concrete) with the “writing from an old Russian newspaper about the Sputnik” being said to be on it. It was actually from an American newspaper with mirrored writing (due to it somehow being transferred into the concrete when it set - I assume, a bit like Silly Putty) but nothing would convince this other student. The only “English” letters “reversed” in Cyrillic (but having a different pronunciation) were the “R” and “N” - yet my classmate really thought it was Russian.

My dream meanders into unrelated events and ideas for the most part, though the rock mostly remains a main element that relates to some sort of supposed “magic” or possibly advanced technology that seems like magic. Another two students are talking about it in front of the middle school and who the person is that the rock supposedly “picked” to be an advanced student of telekinesis and such. I am much younger in my dream (as is often the case) and am somewhat annoyed that people are claiming the rock is special or attributed to things which I know it is not. During this time, I actually seem to be present inside a “movie” or “fictional world” - yet it is a movie of which the “actors” do not know they are actors - almost like a forced “organic replay” where there is minimal free will to manifest a story continuity for an unseen audience by which a few may actually participate (vaguely similar to a “Star Trek” holodeck but much larger; the size of a planet). I watch and listen in on one scene regarding a minor conflict and one male notices me (although in one mode, the viewer is not seen at all even when present and close to a character) but I tell him that I am only there as a spectator - speaking in a manner that I “know” I am dreaming (yet in contrast to this, I am not actually lucid). I casually wave to him and he waves back briefly and absentmindedly with two fingers extended horizontally, leaving the area near the portico’s rectangular column which the group had been near.

From there, I walk into a large room. A boy is trying to make the rock float in the air through some sort of implied telekinetic ability but is not doing that well. This is supposedly the special “chosen” boy to be the student of the implied extinct(?) alien culture. The male teacher of about thirty or younger is patiently guiding him, giving him encouragement and instructions as other students and I think a few members of the public look on. Knowing that mainstream society mostly only has pretense in such things and actually ignores or fears people with any truly unusual abilities, I start to think on a mischievous level. I casually focus on the rock and cause it to float quite high into the air, almost to the ceiling. After this I make a few motions with my right hand and cause the rock to spin and move in a circle quite rapidly (fast enough to cause a breeze inside the building with an implied faux nonthreatening “tornado”), also forming an implied large circle in midair just below the ceiling for several minutes. Even though I am able to do this effortlessly, apparently I am not the “chosen” of the rock - someone without a clue is. In some ways, this annoys me, but in other ways, I am thankful for my anonymity.

The teacher, of course, is frustrated by my antics and does not see it in a way that would logically dictate that I am the one with the abilities and higher potential and not the other boy, but this is not the issue anymore, and is typical of mainstream culture and “herd mentality”, I reason. As such (regarding “herd mentality”) as I leave the room, I “magically” transform (with a fairly effortless mental focus) an industrial floor polisher (the larger ride-on type) into an elephant, deliberately taking my time as it slowly transforms and begins to trumpet as soon as the transition is complete. I can sense the teacher’s aggravation and find it amusing, knowing that many people will find it hard to leave the room upon being blocked by the elephant. (Doing such, I am still not lucid. This seems to have another childhood association where I mentally manipulated a small elephant marionette, from a distance and while invisible, in a school show - the elephant being a representation of the Carol Burnett cleaning lady character.)

Later, I seem to be walking through my sister Marilyn’s old house (she died this year), but it is larger and different. My brother Jim (deceased) is on my left. I apologize for “bringing” him to the location (I am still not lucid, though) but he does not seem to mind and mentions something about having been sleeping for a time, also implying that he had been watching television at one point. Another sister (also deceased) is in the house but goes to the backyard. Somehow we end up coming from the backyard and walking towards the house even though we had just been walking through the house towards the back door (though there is a vague idea that we had actually walked back and around from the south side of the house where there is a sidewalk in reality). Jim then goes up to the landing of a fictional wooden staircase (about seven steps) near a fictional embankment near the back door and somehow slowly slides, seemingly by intent, between the edge of part of the landing (on the left side) and down under the staircase and into the ground, which seems quite unusual in afterthought. My dream loses cohesion after this.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #223: Final Heart

I have a false awakening in my childhood bedroom and as I’m contemplating going back to sleep, I realize that no way am I really sleeping in my old room. I become lucid and attempt to get out of bed, which fails. I try rolling out OBE-style and after some clumsy attempts, I’m finally on my feet.

I walk out to the living room, looking at my hands. They’re darker and more grayish than they’d be in waking life, but other than that they look pretty much just as they should. The dream’s feeling a bit dark, so I shout, “Let there be light!” Embarrassingly, nothing much happens, so I just wander around in the den some more, trying not to focus too much on this.

I look to my left to find my doppelganger (a lookalike or double of me) standing at the door I emerged from. He’s dressed like I do to sleep and he’s sort of got bed head. He smirks sleepily at me and I walk toward him, but as soon as we get close to each other, I snap suddenly to his perspective (more or less) and find myself alone again. I drift toward an external wall and phase outside onto the street.

Outside it feels like early morning. In the neighbor’s yard I find a woman in her late 40s standing around as 4 small dogs scamper happily at her feet. She nods a casual greeting. I remember my goal of summoning Dreamer, so I say to the woman, “Ahh, you’re Dreamer.” She seems confused at first, but even as I watch I see her becoming friendlier, younger and more familiar. She’s starting to look like Dreamer, but the transformation’s not complete.

“I will be soon,” she says, smiling. I smile back and we walk through the yard together. I drape an arm over her shoulder as I explain (to her and to myself) the plans for this dream. I lose the dream, though, and wake up.

I sit tight for DEILD and wind up back in the kitchen of my childhood home. A couple of Brazilian men are sitting at the dining room table saying unkind things about my brother-in-law “Muppet”. One sarcastically calls him a “phenomenon.” I feel myself becoming invested in this plotline, but no, let it go, it’s a distraction.

I phase back outside and it’s nighttime now. I want to find Dreamer again and for some reason decide that a playground or dog park is the way to go. I fly up high into the air at high speed, piercing the cloud cover. When I look back down, I expect to see a park but nothing is showing up. I try to pretend that I already see it but when I pierce back through the clouds back to Earth, I’m half a block away from where I started.

There’s a badass three-wheeled police car here that looks a little like The Dark Knight Batmobile. It appears to be stuck because it hit another car and the officer seated inside is berating a teenage girl, blaming her for what happened. I just want the car, though, so I open the top of the car and boot the cop out of the driver’s seat with my left foot and drive off down the street.



I have a fun time driving for a couple of blocks until I come to an intersection where a cement truck is gushing this huge, oozing wave of wet cement everywhere. I avoid it by driving up onto someone’s yard and going around, but all the bumping seems to make the car sort of disappear within a half block or so.

I walk out onto DA street to see this amazing parade of armored elephants going by. There must be dozens of them, marching slowly and regally in single file. There’s something sad about their demeanor and from out of nowhere Wife is standing next to me, saying, “This last march they do is called their ‘Final Heart.’” She’s moved by what she’s seeing and I am too in spite of not really understanding it.



Further down the road I encounter a vertical sandstone wall with small outcroppings that could be used as handholds. When I look across the street to my left, I see my doppelganger already climbing up an identical wall! He looks over at me and grins. I decide that this is a great opportunity to practice my dream climbing, so I make my way up about twenty feet or so. I keep looking over at my double as I go, a little envious of how quickly and confidently he can make the climb. As I’m climbing, the dream ends.

So I volunteer at the zoo.

I don't remember much, but the other night I dreamed that:

I leave the indoor elephant area to find Captain Picard (who I know to be the zoo curator) and the elephants' zookeeper sitting on lawn chairs facing the outside area of the elephant exhibit. There's an empty lawn chair between them, but Picard tells me to feed the elephants instead of sitting. Obliging, I pick up a basket of eggs and throw them one by one at a basketball hoop that's high up on the outside of the gate. However, I miss all that I try to throw (and hit an elephant once), so I turn back to Picard and say something like, "Can we just not? 'Cause all I'm really doing is egging the elephants." Picard nods, stands, and says something that I don't remember, then we all leave together.

Some people (Young men and women) tied an elephant's trunk in a tree limb, Pulled the elephant around the tree and let it go like a slingshot around the tree while it cried out in pain and the abusers were laughing at the abuse they were doing. Later, A woman in her 30s or 40s looked out a window at the abusers and started talking to get their attention. I get the feeling this woman wasn't very nice; she started screaming by the third time she tried and the abusers were nonchalant and ignored her. One of them wearing an orange shirt then sat in acid and burned his rear end, He got up out of the acid and then fell in the acid but I pulled him out and he was alive. Then, he fell in again and was either dead or didn't move and didn't burn (to my perception) but was face-down and floating in the acid.

Consider the phrase "Pink Elephant in the Living Room" or "Looking at an Elephant through a microscope."

non-dream dream semi-lucid lucid false awakening


(...) Walking by a street in a poor neighboorhood. I see a girl who used to be my neighbour and I follow her. I end up inside a lady's home, not understanding how I got inside until I realize she doesn't have wall on one of the sides of her house. I excuse for my invasion and try to go back out in the street, but it seems that all houses are interconnected open spaces and there's really no street anymore. Then it gets so bad, that I have to walk over people's beds, with the people laying and sleeping on it, because in each division, there's tens of people and there's basically no floor space, just beds packed together. I realize how lucky I am to have a gigantic home compared to them. Just my bedroom is bigger than this room where some 15 people live. Then I finally find an exit, to a back alley, but I feel vertigo when I see that this back alley is just a tiny stretch of dirt before a precipice. I almost fall down. But other people use it to go from house to house, no worries. I see my old neighbour again and I follow her, to find myself in a sort of communal open space where kids play. They are so sweet and we become friends so easily. I feel warm hearted. Then I am approached by a small elephant and a blue and white bird. So cute! I play with them and we end up cuddling together, the elephant hugging me from the left and the blue bird stuck between us, with his belly up and a look of absolute happiness and delight. I feel so much love.