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Had a nice sense of freedom in this one, which left me feeling liberated enough to do Basic Task of the Month. This one was light and fun the entire way through, and even my flight malfunctions didn't get me too upset.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #55: Number Games and Ninja

Wife and I are seated on the floor with a dozen or so small children. The kids are probably 5 or 6 years old, but for some reason we're all taking a Japanese class together. We're working on a craft project while some unseen teacher barks simple instructions which Wife and all of the little kids easily follow. Not me, though. I'm fumbling around trying to glue something onto a paper plate and looking like quite the idiot.

The kids titter at my ineptitude. Wife shoots me a look of disbelief. The unseen teacher bellows more instructions and again I'm the only one who's not getting it. It's all really embarrassing and I think, "Well, I'd better hope this is all a dream. Because otherwise, this is humiliating." I use the nose pinch RC and become lucid.

Wife seems to have vanished, so I walk out of the room while the class continues to work. I seem to be in some kind of apartment, and I turn down a short hallway into a semi-dark, rather sparse bedroom. My friend "Leroy" is wandering around in here and I say, "Hey, [Leroy]! It's another lucid dream!" He ignores me, though, and seems to be looking for something.

A large window overlooks a nighttime city scene. It looks like we're about 10 stories up. I phase through the glass and step out onto a ledge, preparing to fly. I leap away from the building, ready to take to the sky... and give a little yelp as I plummet to the street below. I land pretty softly, narrowly missing a parked car. I relax my mind for a moment and then take to the air again.

I'm flying over a huge, grassy field that I think is supposed to be this city's equivalent of Central Park. The grass is short and extremely well-manicured. Golf course grass. Even though it's night, the park itself is strangely well-lit, and a few DCs are wandering through it. I see a couple of fancy archways and a miniature replica of the Arc de Triomphe.

Most interestingly of all, I see a ninja crouched behind a boulder, hiding in the shadows. Perhaps another forty feet away, there's an Imperial Stormtrooper and a man dressed like a World War I-era pilot searching carefully around the park, presumably looking for the ninja.

I remember the Task of the Month -- have a DC guess a number between 1 and 100. I swoop down to where the ninja is hiding and say, "Hey! I'm thinking of a number from 1 to 100. Guess what it is." The ninja seems horrified to see me. He presses his palms to the sides of his head, in disbelief that I would so bumblingly blow his cover. He points excitedly behind me at the Stormtrooper and the pilot. Guess they really are looking for him. "Oh, I see!" I tell him. "Sorry about that. Let me ask them instead."

I'm worried that the Stormtrooper will sound too garbled, so I address the World War I-era pilot. "Hey! I'm thinking of a number from 1 to 100. What is it?"

He thinks for a moment. "22?"

It occurs to me that I didn't actually think of a number from 1 to 100. I feel like a bit of a dummy. Okay, 38. 38 38 38. "Hey, man, sorry about that. I forgot to think of a number before I asked. Will you guess again?"

He pauses. Then a slightly sheepish guess of "Uh... 23?"

"No, but that's okay. Thanks!" The pilot and the Stormtrooper move toward the boulder, but I see that the ninja is long gone. The Stormtrooper growls something angry and garbled and I think how glad I am that I didn't try to play the guessing game with him.

I wander the park a bit more. The sun has apparently started to rise because it looks like early morning now. The number of DCs has picked up. I know that there's something I should be doing in New York, but I can't remember the task. (Task I was trying to think of: Transform into King Kong, climb the Empire State Building, and battle the military.) I think it's Task of the Year, but I incorrectly believe that there's something I should be doing in Central Park. I turn a corner past a food vendor, and rub my hands together. It doesn't feel as real as I'd expect. Things feel like they're slipping and I wake up.

This was the second of two lucid dreams from the morning of New Year's Day.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #52: The Obsidian Tower

I'm in a doctor's office, waiting awkwardly nearby while he examines some patient that I don't know. I'm a bit bored, so I think about the morning's previous lucid dream and how close I came to not recognizing that I'm dreaming. Things start to feel strange to me, so I hit the nose-pinch and become lucid.

I walk out of the office into a hallway and start looking for "Exit" signs. I'm excited to see one at the end of the hallway. I follow it and happily, there's another leading me further on. A tightly-packed group of DCs strolls through the hallway, taking up the entire thing. I "excuse me, excuse me" my way through them and work my way to the next "Exit" sign. This one points me toward a stairwell.

I begin to worry that I'm very high up so I decide that I need to get downstairs as efficiently as possible. I leap over the railing, intent on jumping my way to the bottom. Unfortunately, I just land in an untidy heap. A lady walking up the stairs nearby yelps when I crash-land. She hurries toward me and asks, "Are you okay?" It's pretty embarrassing. I tell her, "Thanks, but you don't need to worry about me."

I hop back up and then leap over the next railing. It goes much better this time, and I hop all the way to the bottom like this, and it's probably 6-8 stories' worth of stairs. There's a long hallway at the bottom and as I walk along it, two boys of about 12 go running past me, one chasing the other. The boy in front is holding a handwritten note and the boy in pursuit says, "Give that back!" I stop them both, saying, "That's mine now", and pluck the note out of the first kid's hands. They register no objection to this and quickly wander away.

The note has 6 bullet points, each with a sentence. At the bottom is a phone number with the area code "666". (Yikes!) I read every sentence and try to memorize them, but they're very random and strange. One was something about the sky. I really work at the memorization task but the content is so random that it feels hopeless. After I've read the note, I follow another "Exit" sign that leads me outside.

I'm in a large, outdoor courtyard on a foggy morning. Across the courtyard from me is an obsidian tower made entirely of glass. It rises high into the fog and its top is entirely out of sight. I remember my goal of seeing the Pyramid, but this tower has really grabbed my interest. I float up into the air and start guiding myself toward it. One lady in the courtyard shouts, "Wait, how are you so tall?" I wonder for a moment whether I'm just growing to an enormous height and not flying at all. I double-check -- nope, there are my feet. (Oddly, they are clad in loafers.)

I start involuntarily flying backward away from the tower instead of forward toward it. I decide to see what happens if I simply turn around and put my back to the tower. Fortunately, this works well and I keep drifting toward the tower (now at my back) as I rise. I whip through several layers of fog before perching on the tower's stone roof.

My friend AJ is seated up there, looking out over the city. "Congratulations!" she says. "It's a great view from up here." I have to agree. The sky is brilliantly red now, and somehow I can see the courtyard far below, almost as if the fog was one-way. I can in fact see a great deal of the city from here. I wonder whether the people that I'm looking at can see me back.

"So what am I doing all the way up here?" she says.

"I'm not sure, but I think you've got it pretty good. I had to work my ass off to get up here!"

She laughs and soon my vision fades to black. I try to DEILD but then AJ says, "Hey, you're actually still up here. You just can't see anything." I try to think about what I could do to get my sight back, but in a few more seconds, I'm really awake.

This was the first of two lucid dreams from the morning of New Year's Day. What is it with me and holiday lucid dreaming?

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #51: The Thragian Age

I'm walking around a museum during a special event about "The Thragian Age". There are cool, semi-magical artifacts displayed all around, including a floating stone wheel that turns on its own and glows with strange white energy. A waitress offers me a drink from a tray. She's dressed in a sparkling blue skirt and a jeweled mask that I assume is also from the Thragian Age. I wish that I was better studied in this "Thragian Age" (or had heard of it at all.)

Wife walks up to me dressed in running shorts and a t-shirt and says that she feels "underdressed". I say, "Me too. And I'm tired. Let's nap." We curl up under a nearby table. I feel momentarily frisky but quickly reconsider when I remember where we are. I decide that while I'm sleeping, I might as well try to WILD. I close my eyes, wait for a dream scene to form and...

...find myself walking outside along an empty road, fully aware that I'm dreaming. It's also clear to me now that the previous scene was also a dream. I feel happy and confident as I jog along the road and start narrating to myself: "I'm in a lucid dream and I'm going to fly to the Great Pyramid." I take to the air near an overpass, swoop under it, and head for a distant set of mountains.

I fly for a while when the wind starts blowing against me. I really try not to fight so hard this time, saying, "Show me what you want to show me." I relax, and the wind turns me back toward the city. I fly for a while over houses, tree-lined streets, and people milling about in their yards.

The sun is bright and the wind is cool against my skin. A gust from the side makes me bank toward the city's downtown. I'm no longer concerned with visiting the Pyramid and I'm just enjoying the peace and the moment. I fly for a while longer, but before I reach downtown, the dream ends.

This was the second of two lucid dreams that came out of an experiment with green tea during WBTB. In retrospect, I might have liked to take more time talking to this angry dream character to see whether I could learn more about what he was about. These sorts of things can be hard to remember in the moment, but I'll keep trying.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #45: Crowbar Clint

I'm in a mall clothing store and a crazed young man in a baseball cap is wrecking the place with a crowbar. Frightened dream characters give him a wide berth as he screams, curses, and knocks over racks of clothing. He shouts threats and abusive profanity, swinging that crowbar like a baseball bat. I'm frantically planning the best way to get out of here without taking a crowbar to the face when I realize that I'm dreaming. Somehow I also know that the young man's name is Clint.

I get a rush of positive emotion once I realize that I'm perfectly safe. I notice that I know one DC in the store -- T, a coworker of mine, is standing by the cash register making his purchases.

I speak urgently to Clint, like he's neglected some important task: "Clint! Buddy, you've got to get going. T is over there waiting for you to help him change out his hubcaps with that crowbar of yours." Clint looks at me, his anger turning into confusion. I keep repeating this new story to him over and over, placing a hand on his shoulder and leading him toward T. Clint, now docile, walks silently beside me.

Clint appears to be the only person who believes this story. Other DCs shuffle away nervously as we walk by. T seems to get what's going on as well but he plays along, saying, "Yeah, Clint, let's go have a look at my truck." They walk off into the mall and I follow a few feet behind them.

I step outside to find myself on a second story walkway near an escalator. T and Clint have disappeared into the crowds of shoppers. The sun shines through a large, arching skylight that spans most of the mall's ceiling.



It looks like a beautiful day outside, so I decide that I'll fly to the top and phase through the skylight. The sunlight becomes brighter and brighter as I ascend, but before I reach the ceiling, I wake up.

This was one of two lucid dreams that came out of an experiment with caffeine during WBTB that I tried last night. (Thanks, Xanous!) My beverage of choice was green tea.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #44: Pool Care in the Temple of Zeus

I'm standing outside of a pool where people are swimming around having a business meeting. They're fretting about the now-green condition of another pool that's one story down and perhaps 100 feet away from the one where the meeting is taking place. I jump into the clean pool, swim toward the meeting, and explain that all we'll need to do is get the Ph and stabilizer levels fixed up and then shock it with liquid chlorine or even household bleach. They're relieved and grateful, and I have one moment of contentment before I realize that I jumped into the pool wearing a backpack with a laptop in it and have probably ruined it. I'm pretty distressed by thus until I realize that I'm dreaming.

"Got to go, everybody! This is all a dream." The other swimmers seem mildly surprised by this but they quickly accept it and go back to their meeting.

In the distance I see that the pool ends at what appears to be a sheer drop-off. Past that, I see the skyline of a city in the early morning. Eager to explore, I try to rise out of the water but somehow have trouble getting into the air. I yell out that I am going to fly into the air and nothing will stop me. I employ some probably-unnecessary profanity in my speech. I shoot out of the water, knifing through some overhanging tree branches (where did these come from?) and land on the roof of a stone temple in the style of Ancient Greece.

I'm overlooking a large, open-air courtyard that's surrounded by Doric columns. Past the courtyard is miles of grassland and a sky that's dark with storm clouds. The clouds are lit up with occasional bursts of sheet lightning and I hear low rumbles of thunder.



There's a strange platform of gray stone suspended above me and it's hung low enough that I can't stand fully upright. I decide to phase and begin pushing my hand upward against the platform, which feels solid. I push harder, and my fingers start digging chunks of stone out of the platform. I'm somewhat pleased by this but I decided to refocus my efforts on phasing through the platform.

I push my hands and head into the stone and this time it feels cottony and insubstantial. My vision goes black as my head disappears into the stone and I feel my feet leaving the temple roof. I float upward through the "stone", gradually becoming disoriented. I feel like I'm in a bed now, but I don't believe it. Still blind, I reach out, grabbing onto a pillow. I suddenly become very aware of my sleeping body and wake up in my real bed.

I enjoyed getting back to a dream that was just pure play. I was a bit of a mall rat as a kid, so perhaps that's where the setting came from. Only regret: not looking for the video arcade!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #43: The Flying Mall Rat

I'm in a mall walking through a jewelry store out into the main hallway. I have to maneuver around a family coming toward me. For some reason I employ a fancy (and physically impossible) spin-move to get around them, twirling all the way around and sliding several feet across the floor. It suddenly occurs to me that I need to remember whether or not I'm dreaming and in this case it feels very obvious that I am.

I walk out into the main hallway and see that the mall is three stories high. There's mall music coming over the PA system. It sounds like it's three or four girls harmonizing, and they're singing about breaking up with some schmo. They're actually quite talented, with sort of a sound like a modern-day Andrews Sisters. The lyrics and the tune itself are utterly generic, but since it's my dream, I can be honest with myself and admit that I find it catchy.



I'm feeling excited and playful so I leap up onto the railing of a short stairway and grind down (in other words, ride down the rail on my shoes.) I want to see what things look like from higher up, so I hop up to the second floor, grab onto the railing and swing myself over. I then perch my feet on the railing and leap upward across the gap to the third floor's railing.

At this point, I remember the Christmas carol Task of the Month. For some inexplicable reason, I decide that "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" is a Christmas carol and try to see whether I can remember it. In spite of it being several years since I heard it, the first verse comes back to me without any trouble, and I go swinging and leaping around the mall singing it, vaguely worried that I'm singing in waking life. From what I read in the TotM thread, this is a very common worry.

I spend a few more minutes having fun soaring around the mall. As I reach the end of the main hallway, though, I notice the entrance to a movie theater. I land on the ground floor and step inside the theater, curious what's playing. The theater is packed and I'm surprised by how many people I recognize from my own life. I walk through the crowd for quite a while, greeting old friends and acquaintances as I pass by them. The lights in the theater aren't dark yet, but everyone returns my greetings with whispers, as if they don't want to talk over the movie.

I happen on one friend, S, who appears to be the size of a child in her seat. For some reason I feel like I need to make her look "right" and tell her "Oh, you're much taller than that." She starts stretching out until her height seems correct, but now her head has gotten distressingly skinny. I start getting flustered and fixated and it's not long before I wake up.

[This is a catch-up post. This dream took place on the night of December 5-6, 2012.]

Non-lucid, Semi-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm at my university, and I have to fill out and turn in a form to get rid of a dorm room that I don't want or need, because I'm living in an apartment. I go into a computer lab to work on it, and the computers have floppy disk drives. When I remember a previous episode in this ongoing plot, I realize that I'm dreaming. [I don't remember that previous episode now, though. I think the lucid part of this dream continued on from this point, but I didn't write down what happened.]

I wake up, walk into the room where I work, and go to my work computer. As I'm walking across the room, I think, Hmm, am I still dreaming? This sure looks and feels real, and gravity feels normal, but I have a sneaking suspicion... When I get to my work computer, I see an instant-message conversation on the screen, and it's between two fictional characters. Yep. Still dreaming, I think. I start trying to type up a dream journal entry on my work computer, but I find it's very difficult to type in a dream. It's really slow going; it feels like my fingers don't know what to do. [Makes sense - that part of my brain that knows learned skills like typing must not be active when I'm asleep.] After just a few sentences, I lose interest in finishing my dream journal entry.

I start floating away from my desk. A friend gives me a push to help me along. I go into another area, where there are a bunch of people having some sort of gathering, possibly a picnic [I don't really remember now]. I decide I want to try making myself bigger. I crouch down on all fours, close my eyes, and concentrate on expanding the size of my body. At first, I don't think it's working because I don't feel any sensation, but when I open my eyes, I discover that it worked: I'm now huge compared to the DCs.

I wake up at somebody's house, having spent the night there after a party. I drive myself home, but get lost along the way. While I'm driving, my alarm clock wakes me up for real.

[This is a catch-up post. This dream took place on the night of November 20-21, 2012. The title of this dream is in Japanese, and is read "Sora ni Tondeiru Yumebito-Tai." It literally means "Flying in the Sky Dream Person Team (or Corps)." The dream felt a lot like being in an episode of an anime series, so I gave it a title that would be suitable for an anime series.]

Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm outside somewhere, lying in the warm sun. The sun's rays are making me too hot in my flannel pajamas. I'm wearing dark-colored plaid pajama bottoms [the same ones I'm wearing in real life], and a white flannel pajama top with red roses on it [the same pattern as on a bedspread my mom has at her house].

I'm in a large department store, filled with racks of cold-weather accessories and other clothes. I'm wandering through the racks by hopping up off the floor, hovering above it for a few seconds as I float forward, and then sinking back down. After several repetitions of this, I think, Hmm, this is longer than I should be able to float like this. Oh - that's because I'm dreaming.

I fly out of the room with the clothes and winter accessories and into a larger room. It's still part of the same store, but it has a higher ceiling and has a skylight. I stop to ground myself in the dream by landing on the ground and touching things with my hands, including some packages of batteries that are hanging up on a rack. It works.

I join up with a a group of kid DCs that includes Merida from Brave and a curly-haired blond boy. We all set off from the department store together to battle some evil force. We run out of the store and come to a hilltop that overlooks an ocean bay. Some of us, including Merida and myself, jump off the top of the hill and start flying over the bay. I shout “Woohoo!” as I jump off. I notice that some of the others in the group are simply running down the hill, rather than flying. [For the first time, it seems perfectly natural to me that some DCs can fly, too, and I don't feel any need to hide the fact that I can fly, as I usually do when I'm around DCs.]

All of us, those who ran and those who flew, reassemble at our destination, which is a small house on the cliff overlooking the ocean. We realize we're being pursued by some kind of monster that will kill us and eat us. There is a newspaper article about the monster in the house. The kids all seem to be sure that the monsters have found us, that they're coming, and that we're all doomed. For a second, I'm genuinely afraid, but then I remember: Oh, yeah, this is a dream. I know what this most likely means. I roll my eyes and announce to the group: “They aren't really monsters, they're just tasks that I haven't done and that I feel bad about.” [Or words to that effect.] I think about it for a moment and come up with what that task must be - paying a bill [among other things that I don't remember now]. Everyone in the group seems to relax, and no monsters ever actually appear at the house.

One of the DCs in the group says to another, “See about adopting her [meaning me] into the practice.” They are both young men, about 17-19 years old. The second one looks at me and says, “You're [Emiko].... Roboto.” [He used my real-life first name.] I reply, “Yes, that's a name I've used here before. I don't really like it, though.” [Huh? That's definitely not my real-life last name, and I certainly don't remember using it in a dream before. It was a big part of my childhood, though.] I say something about how grateful I am to have been accepted into this group of people, even with my mismatched pajamas. I'm still wearing the same dark pajama pants and light pajama top from the very beginning of the dream, while most of the other people in the group are wearing neat, matching, school-uniform-like outfits. [This isn't surprising; I was an anime fan for a long time, and a lot of the characters in the shows I liked were high school students who wore school uniforms.]

The group of DCs and I all feel a general sense that that is the end of this adventure, but that there will be more in the future. We start flying off over the landscape, looking back at the buildings where we've just been: the big store with the skylight, and a motel [?]. There is an upbeat, exciting rock song playing in the background. It feels exactly like I'm experiencing the end credits of an anime show.

I'm now traveling along in some kind of vehicle with the two young men, watching the scenery pass by from a tree-lined road that runs along the crest of a ridge opposite those buildings. I say to them, “Also, your ending theme song kicks ass.” [I think the context for this was that they thanked me for sticking with them so long at the end of the adventure, and I replied that of course, I wanted to prolong the experience as long as possible and have as much fun as I could. I don't remember the beginning of the conversation very well, though. The song I heard reminded me a little bit of this one, except it was at a faster tempo.]

I have a false awakening in the bed I'm actually in [I was sleeping on a futon because I had family in town that week], where I can see my bare legs, before waking up for real.

---------------------------
Side notes:
THIS DREAM WAS SO COOL!!!! I hadn't had a really long, fun, clear lucid like this in a while before I had this dream. I was so happy to have it!

This was the Aurora Borealis Task of the Month, and led to a really outstanding dream with some personal firsts. Some big ones for me were changing day to night and performing the task while the DC of a loved one (my son) accompanied me.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #36: Aurora Borealis

Wife and I are sitting at our breakfast table chatting with RI, a high school friend that I haven't seen in a long time. I look at the clock, realizing that it's 1:10 and I'm ten minutes late for a #DVA chat session. Wife and I go upstairs without IR, leaving her just sitting at the table. (Rude, I know.) I'm about to join the #DVA chat when Wife says, "Shouldn't you show her out of the house?"

I leave, and become lucid halfway down the stairs. The downstairs is different from my real house now. The floor has become shag carpet rather than hardwood and the ceiling is barely six feet tall, my head reaching right to the top of it. IR is still at the breakfast table but she just smiles and waves me on. My three-year-old son E is waiting for me at the back door, and I scoop him up in my arms, knowing that he would love to see the aurora borealis.

I step outside and find that my back yard is either gone or has swollen to gigantic proportions. There's a huge barbecue going on to my left. Vividness is top-notch -- I literally cannot detect any difference in visual quality between what I'm seeing now and what I see in waking life. I walk on, passing a set of grills where a man in a red football jersey numbered "52" is turning over some burgers. His shirt is emblazoned with the words "UNCLE BO". I stare at the guy for a moment, a bit stunned by how real he looks.

I perch my son on my shoulders and start running past the barbecue into a city. A long line of DCs is waiting in line for a movie or a show. I notice that C, someone that I haven't seen since high school is manning the ticket line. He smirks at me and shrugs his shoulders when I recognize him.

I walk to the base of a skyscraper and look into the sunny sky. I need darkness for this Task of the Month so I tell my son, "It's getting dark now." The sun fades out of view and the color of the sky deepens to twilight. As soon as night falls, I see the autora borealis above me!



I start to rise off of the ground but my son is squirming on my shoulders, saying, "Don't want to go! Don't want to go!" He starts crawling around on my head, even giving me a little foot to the face. I shift him so that his arms are around my neck and he seems to settle down. I fly straight up, staying close to the skyscraper to keep my bearings.

I'm feeling an overwhelming sense of excitement as I fly toward the aurora. I'm so pumped that I shout a continuous battle cry as I rise. In response, the dream starts blasting a full symphonic orchestra soundtrack to my ascent. Looking back this seems totally cheesy, but I can't even care! It was amazing. The music was fantastic... I wish so badly that I could have somehow recorded it.

I fly over the Aurora and see that inside it conceals a vast mother ship, almost like a space carrier that stretches for miles. As far as I can see down the length of the ship, smaller yellow spaceships are taking off from the carrier to destinations unknown. As each leaves the mother ship, it emits this purple flash of energy that joins the rest of the Aurora. It's the energy "exhaust" of each of these smaller spaceships that creates the aurora.

All along, the soundtrack (and, amazingly, my battle cry) keeps going. I realize that I can do just as these ships are doing and I start pouring that purple energy outward from my palms, and it bleeds into the rest of the Aurora. More and more energy pours from my hands as the dream begins to fade. Soon all I can see are my hands, and after that I wake up.

Mom's Army

My mom is an evil wizard. We would be able to deal with that, but apparently she is somehow using her powers to give similar powers to other people as well. I discover this when I overhear some men talking about how they're on their way to a ceremony gain those powers and join her army. They say that she's planning to convert one percent of the world's population, then stop, allowing them to rule over the rest of humanity. This is bad news for me and the rest of my family.

Cruelty to Animals

A woman from the housing system has taken my family's dog for a walk while we're on a camping trip. While most everyone else is distracted, I see the woman use the shock collar to zap the dog for absolutely no reason. This makes me very angry, and I immediately report the event to my dad.

Frags:

• bugs being scary
• "fly -- over [illegible] northern realms"
• orchestra audition

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #32: Rollercoasters and REBMEVON

I'm in a bar confronting an 8-foot tall blonde man about why his biker gang threw rocks at me me in front of my parents' house. It's all too weird and soon I'm lucid. The dream feels really stable so I let him finish what he's saying before heading out the door. When I leave the bar, I discover that it's part of a closed-roof shopping center. I try to fly up to the 3rd story but end up floating horizontally across the floor. This time I try leaping off the floor instead. I overdo it, though, and blast all the way through the ceiling.

It's nighttime as I break through, and I fly high into the air, probably 1500-2000 feet up. The city is almost completely dark below me. I shout a grandiose, rather dorky "Let there be light!" and a wave of illumination bleeds over the city from bottom to top. I'm up very high so I see a lot of buildings passing by under me but I don't know what any of them are. For some reason, I think that I need to go back to my old school, so I say, "Show me the university." A group of buildings below starts to glow and I point myself toward it.

I swoop down toward the university buildings but rather than land, I transition immediately into a false awakening inside one of the dormitories. I'm in a small, virtually empty bedroom that I don't recognize. Vividness is very high now.

I step into the hallway and there's a girl sitting at a desk studying, her back to a screened window. She doesn't notice me, and I think about phasing through the window and escaping back out into the night. I try the phase and instead of feeling like I'm passing through liquid glass, my hand feels like it's ripping through a screen door. Shreddings of the screen are in my hand and the girl turns to look at me, saying, "What the hell are you doing?" I do the nose pinch reality check, a bit worried that I'm no longer dreaming.



She's making me feel embarrassed and self-conscious so I step into the next room to get away from her. This room's a study hall that has a narrow desk with hotel stationery and a white pen on it. The hotel stationery has indentations on it like somebody has written on it before. I can't see what the person wrote, but the indentations look similar to my own handwriting! The effect is so realistic that I nose pinch and finger-through-palm RC one after the other. I remember the Task of the Month (write "November" spelled backwards), so I sit down at the desk, grab the pen, and start writing. With vividness so high, my confidence is really solid. I immediately write down "REBMEVON" all the way through and the letters come out correctly (unlike last time.)

Satisfied, I get up from the desk and follow an exit sign through a double door. I stumble into a shabby bedroom where a mother, father, and school-age daughter are sleeping on scattered mattresses. The father wakes up and looks at me, bleary-eyed and displeased. "How'd you get in here?" I want to explain about the exit sign but instead decide to just get out of there. Another exit sign points me toward an external door, and I gladly slip out.

It's daytime now and I step out into a huge carnival that's been set up in a mall parking lot. The rides are elaborate, though, and more like what you'd see in an amusement park: things like rollercoasters and swing carousels. Lines of people are waiting for rides and it's inconvenient to get around on foot. I try to fly over these lines but I go too low and have to step on some heads as I pass. Some of the DCs shout or curse at me as I go.



I get up into the air and start circling around the swing carousel, flying alongside the riders. Most of the DCs ignore me but one lady keeps pointing and repeatedly saying, "Holy crap!" After making a couple of cycles, I decide that I want to go for the other advanced Task of the Month, bringing a soul back from Purgatory. I've envisioned it as being placed in the oceans of the southern hemisphere, where Dante put it. I use the sun to get my bearings and then fly south, heading over a Macy's. A blonde kid with dreadlocks looks up at me as I fly overhead and the dream ends soon afterward.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #30: Fire Escape

I'm leading a group of perhaps a dozen small children down a fire escape. We're on the third floor, there's no railing (!), and the kids are wandering everywhere. I'm holding hands with two of them and trying desperately to corral the others with my feet. My anxiety level is out of sight and I don't know how to get them down safely. To my horror, a pair of the kids wander off of the unrailed fire escape, falling to the ground below. One of the fallen kids seems to hurt his ankle and the other gets a huge gash on his arm. I scoop the rest of the kids up under my arms and run down to the bottom, grateful that they're not more badly hurt.

Later, Wife and I are standing on a viewing platform at the top of a skyscraper. It's night and I'm leaning against the railing, recounting to her what happened, still feeling really rotten. I tell her, "It was like some kind of nightmare..." I get suspicious, perform a nose pinch RC and now I have it all figured out.

I'm overjoyed not only to be lucid but also that nobody actually got hurt and none of that earlier stuff even happened. I float up and then fly off into the night, forgetting entirely to say goodbye to Wife. I fly over the city, circling around another skyscraper before banking left. Ahead of me is an empty bridge that crosses a bay. I fly under it, performing a high-speed barrel roll as I go. It feels amazing, but as I emerge from under the bridge, my vision goes completely dark.

I'm still flying, though. I can feel cool air rushing past my body, so I just go with it, flying blind for a while. I don't want to lose my lucidity so I start belting out songs that talk about flying. I think that I may have mostly performed Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly" but I sometimes suffer from musical confusion in lucid dreams. Whatever song it was, I was really going for it and I became vaguely worried that my sleeping body might be singing too.

I suddenly find myself standing in our master bedroom, no longer in flight. The room's dark and Wife is asleep on her side of the bed, but I'm not fooled. Still dreaming. For some reason, I drag our bookcase out into the middle of the room to see how realistic it feels. (Very.) But then I worry that Wife will get up to go the bathroom and run into it, so I shove it back into place.

I float downstairs and head to the back door. I know that it's deadbolted shut, so I phase through, the glass pane chilling my skin like cool water. I remember that I want to find Purgatory for the Task of the Month. I imagine as Dante described it -- as a terraced mountain located somewhere in the seas of the southern hemisphere. I take flight again and start looking for it. I realize now that I flew north instead of south... oops! Somehow I wind up flying into a huge cavern that takes me downward into a sewer, where I'm soon lost.

Rather than flowing with things, I become alarmed and want to find my way out of this "mess" to get back on track. The ceilings are low so I'm forced to run through the (fortunately quite pristine) sewer water. There's daylight somewhere up ahead and I race through twisting, turning passageways to find it.

I finally spot a hole in the ceiling up ahead with daylight streaming through it (is it daytime now?) Unfortunately, along with the daylight, a steady stream of enormous, squealing rats is pouring in through the hole as well. They come right for me, and I'm not thinking clearly enough to come up with a clever plan. I punch the rats in the head or their potato-like bodies when they draw near, and each time I do the rat flops limply onto its back, not moving.

I'm almost to the hole when Erik Estrada himself steps in front of me, telling me to stop. I've unfortunately gotten swept up into caveman mode and I summon a weapon with which to fight Erik Estrada. Fortunately, I look at my right hand and discover that the "weapon" I summoned is just a modest zucchini squash. As the dream fades, I tell Erik Estrada that I am "really sorry about that", but he doesn't seem to hear.

Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm flying through a large, rectangular, exhibit-hall-like space with an entryway connected to one end of it. Every time I make a complete loop through the exhibit hall, out into the entryway, and then back into the exhibit hall again, the scenery and displays in the hall have changed. While I'm flying through the entryway after a couple of iterations of this, I catch on to the fact that I'm dreaming.

I remember that I need to stabilize and ground myself in the dream, so I will myself to go down. I sink straight down, in an upright position, until I'm standing on the floor. I immediately walk over, reach out, and touch one of the walls, then squat down to touch the carpet. The thought of licking the floor to bring in that sense crosses my mind. [I was reading a thread on DV before I went to bed that mentioned engaging all five of your senses in a dream.] I decide not to, but thinking of things you should do in a dream brings to mind the current Task of the Month: spell “November” backwards.

While still squatting down, I start tracing the shapes of the letters on the carpet with my finger. R...e...b...m...e...v...o...n. I get all the way through it, and feel very proud and pleased with myself. I feel just as alert and self-aware as I do in waking life, but I notice that it's slightly more difficult to keep track of the letters and what order they go in than it would be if I were awake. Then, I suddenly find that I have a ballpoint pen in my hand [a plain black Bic pen with a grip, the exact same kind I'd just been using in real life to do my homework for a class]. I take the pen and print “Rebmevon” on the wallpaper on the nearest wall. It's still a little hard to focus on spelling. At first, I write an “e” in place of the last “o,” but then I cross it out and correct it. I write it a second time [I think] because I can, but then I think, Okay, now you're just doing it to be a smartass.

[There was more, but I only have time to write the part that has to do with the Task of the Month right now.]

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #28: REBMEVON rejected

I'm watching as Breaking Bad's Walter White (dressed as Heisenberg) plans to set fire to a Jeep full of laughing teenagers. He pours gasoline all over the kids in the car but they don't react, somehow not understanding what's going on. I'm panicked and horrified and feel like I can't let him get away with this. The intense emotion makes me lucid and the scene vanishes.

Now I'm sitting in what looks like a log cabin, staring at a simple television that's no longer switched on. I see daylight through a nearby doorway so I run outside, passing through a short alleyway before I emerge in a grassland with mountains on the distant horizon. It's a beautiful scene and I'm so relieved to be free of the nightmare that I start flying.

I've been in the air for only a couple of seconds when the Task of the Month occurs to me -- I need to write "November" backwards. I've created a mnemonic device that instantly brings the correct word ("REBMEVON") to mind. (My chosen mnemonic device is my friend Von introducing himself to Reba McIntyre.)

I try to produce a pen and paper from behind my back but only manage a pen at first. I try writing on my hand but can only fit "REB". That won't do, so I do another "behind the back" object creation to get a notebook. I try to write the word but end up getting sudden strings of garbage characters like "REBhjklhlhlh". I scratch it out and try again, but only get a similar string of garbage characters as soon as I get past "REB".

I can see the word perfectly in my mind so the garbage character problem starts making me feel agitated and doubtful. It's not long before I wake up.

This was good fun, in spite of failing at nearly everything I tried, becoming obsessed with a hopeless task, and losing my pants.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #24: Pants Gone with the Wind

Wife has sent me to a restaurant to find out whether they recycle "#19 plastic". I'm just about to ask the cashier this inane recycling question when I see that a nearby table has our diaper bag and Wife's wallet sitting unguarded on top of it. I hurry over to pick all this stuff up and see Wife herself standing a few feet away. I recognize all of this for the weird nonsense that it is and tell Wife that I'm having a lucid dream. "Okay," she says, and wanders off.

I turn back toward the cashier to find that she and the register are gone, replaced by a bunch of school lunch tables jammed together in a tight rectangle. I skirt around these and head to the back of the cafeteria. High up, a bit outside of my reach is a large window showing an overcast day outside. I float up in order to phase through it like I did last dream but this time my hands just bounce off of it. I float back down to the ground and look for a door, not wanting get hung up on this.

There's a pair of doors equipped with crash bars to my left. I shove my way through and emerge outside under a cloudy, gray sky. To the right, I see a huge gathering of runners and spectators for some sort of foot race. I'm intrigued and I jog toward it, deciding that I want to compete.

I become very aware of my clothing as I run and I notice that I'm wearing shorts without a belt. The shorts are too big for me and they keep trying to slide down off of my hips. I hike them up once and then do my best to ignore them. I'm surprised to find that I'm also wearing some kind of baseball cap. I remove it and see that it's black with a Papa John's style logo that instead reads "Papa Go's". (I know something's wrong with this name but can't figure out what.)

The race starts when I'm about 30 feet away, runners ranging from hardcore 30-year-olds to 4-year-old kids setting off on the race. They stream through a huge pizza-decorated starting banner that reads "The Papa Go's Race". Since I want to win and also wow the crowd I take to the air, flying about 20 feet up. But the moment that I catch up with the other runners, a sharp gust of wind kicks up against me, stopping me dead.

I'm determined to participate in this race so I stubbornly imagine a fresh wind blowing from the opposite direction. This gives me a huge, exhilarating kick forward. But before long, the current of wind that's against me shoves back even harder and I'm stuck again. I force my own wind to blow even harder but the opposing wind rises to a shrieking gale.

I feel stubborn and unbeatable, though, and I keep pouring on more power. But the howling wind rips my pants away and I suddenly feel much, much less "unstoppable" with no pants. Tears stream from the corners of my eyes and cold wind blasts down my throat. Trees are swaying crazily below me and DCs are running in panic. It dawns on me that I've started something I can't finish. Moments later, I'm awake.