Recent DJ Posts

Fixing the Plant:

I'm at my current home in waking life, out in the yard.
I've started to plant something. I vaguely recall it may have been a hunk of meat.
HM from the Tots and somebody else are there.
I go back in the house for something and then return.
The two of them have 'fixed' my attempt at potting the plant by adding sugar to it.

Peachy Party:

I'm at my Grandma's current basement. There is a party going on with a large group of people.
There's a football team with blue and white colors I'm sarcastically following. I'm watching them play a game on my smartphone.
The team is here now, and some of them are jocks. One of them is holding up a sign. It is all symbols.
I intuitively understand it to mean "no girl delivery people." The symbol is a smiley face with long hair, circled with a line through it.
...
Later I'm hooking up with Princess Peach at the same party. We are under a stairwell. It is pretty vivid.
After the deed is done, we pass out on the floor, not concerned if anybody finds us.
In the moment I consider this a chad-move.
At some point in the night another person puts a blanket over the two of us.
...
We wake up and it is revealed that someone has taken pictures of us during the act.
The pictures are crudely edited, with cutouts over faces. I see us over by a TV center.
We are both embarrassed that there is evidence now.
...
I'm standing at another part of the room with YK from college.
Lights are dark now, and the scene is more sinister.
YK is scared that somebody is going to get him.
He is trying to hide and I follow suit.
I go to hide in a back area near the water heater, but YK tells me that hiding place is too obvious.
I turn and go to find a new spot, but now I'm out in the open.
I see my bike and my girlfriend's bike there, and I accidently bump into them.
They make a loud noise as they fall.
An old lady carrying what looks like a harpoon gun appears from the top of the stairs.
I ask her why she is here.
"I'm here to kill you," she replies simply.
She points the gun at me, and I grab it, trying to point it away.

Went to bed around 12:00AM.

Messy Awakenings:
I have a false awakening on my couch (where I currently was sleeping in waking life).
My uncle J is sleeping nearby. My dad is there and tells me that I should move to the bed so I don't hurt in the morning.
I heed the advice and head to my bed. When I entered the room, my sister is in my bed and there are some blankets and pillows on the floor.
The room is larger than I recall in waking memory but I don't pick up on the inconsistency at the time.
So as not to disturb my sister, I lie down on the floor and go to sleep.
While I don't recall exactly, I think this is where I must have reality checked and became lucid, because I realized that I had just gone to sleep, so I should reality check.
I'm now lucid in this larger version of my bedroom. My first thought is to take a deep breath and try to stabilize the dream.
But I'm not lucid enough to follow through and start engaging the senses. I only get through the deep breath.
While I do start to think about the dream being 'biological virtual reality', I don't truly engage with the question deeply.
I see a window at the end of the room and remember that I want to go to a new landscape.
I recall the blink-and-snap method for traveling from a Daniel Love video.
I close my eyes, imagine a grassy forest environment, and snap my fingers.
The ground underneath me has transformed into AstroTurf, but no forest.
I lose lucidity shortly after this.
...
Sometime later, I've regained lucidity and I'm with a girl that I know is my sister's friend. We're at my Grandma's condo.

Spoiler for Spicy Content:

She's angry with me about something. Out of pocket, I say "Well obviously the solution is to blow me."
Surprisingly, she agrees. I'm pretty excited about this. Another girl shows up and joins her. I can see the details of their faces...and what is on them.

When the activities are over, I consider whether I actually did finish in waking life.
I'm concerned about that, but it also transfers to the dream. I hurriedly try to make my way to a bathroom to inspect myself.
I'm now at the top of the stairs at my grandma's current condo. As I head down the stairs, it makes a lot of noise to my dismay.
But luckily it doesn't alert anyone.
I find a side door that I think leads to the bathroom.
There is an in-between passage that has another set of doors past it. There is a black poodle dog in here.
My sister is hot on my heels, and she chases me into the room.
But I hide behind the door as it opens (that's a classic trick of mine) and she doesn't find me. The dog gets a bit crunched as the door opens, but it doesn't mind.
After this I sneak my way to the bathroom to inspect, but I lose lucidity along the way.

Recorded at 1:08AM.

War Games:
I'm in a war. In the moment, it felt like a training camp, but later the dream treated it as if it had been actual combat.
I'm with a group of people, perhaps a platoon. The area is sandy and surrounded by wooden walls on all sides.
We're running forward trying to reach cover. The cover is on the left, and there is an enemy soldier sitting on a chair on the right.
I can't recall, but I may have attempted to shoot the soldier in the chair as I ran for the cover.
...
I'm in a room. We've lost the war, so I'm being held there as a prisoner.
I'm thinking about whether my friends are OK and what will happen to us.
TH from somewhat recently at work in waking life arrives at my holding area.
He is there to tell me that the others are OK.
Then, back to isolation.
...
Sometime later my niece shows up at the back window (the window is up high, since the room is partially underground).
I try to hide under a desk in the room because I don't want her to have to deal with her uncle being imprisoned.
She doesn't find me.
...
A phone in the room rings and I answer. The person on the line tells me that there might be a chance of me getting out.
There is a form that I can fill out and if done correctly I can leave isolation.
I pickup the form and go outside to where the guards are outside.
I approach them and ask what my options are.
One part of the form is asking whether I actually killed any enemy combatants.
I honestly couldn't recall if I had killed the man in the chair, and the guards seemed compassionate to my memory inaccuracy.
...
I'm in a cafeteria eating, so perhaps they let me go.

Recorded at 7:53AM.

Bathroom Wonder:
I'm in my childhood home, it is about highschool timeframe.
My friend DR is visiting, and my brother and him are across the hallway playing Super Mario Bros Wonder in the basement living room.
I'm in the downstairs bathroom, trying to rub one out. I recall thinking that I had been playing Zelda Twilight Princess recently (but I'm not sure why this detail is here).
The toilet I am sitting at is on the opposite wall that it should be,
I can hear my brother and DR talking about how good of a game Wonder is, in terms of the level design and how the music interacts with it.

Recorded at 7:53AM.

940 words for the night.

Went to bed around 12AM.

AI Dream Augmenter
I'm in bed telling S about a dream I just had.
I have recorded it on my phone through voice, and an AI program augments it with video and sound.
It's playing an anime-esque intro about me as a ninja.
I think it is hilarious and cant wait to record more dream with it.

Game Night
I'm at my current home, though it is mixed with my parent's house from northern Michigan.
We are sitting by the doorwall on the ground ready to play a board game. It might have been snowing outside.
D, my brother, and my sister were among the group. Some of my sister's friends may have been there too.
D is standing nearby with a big bowl of goldfish crackers.
The game pieces are mixed with another game. There are red, white, and off-white. The game was Risk.
My sister says they were playing something last night, to explain why they are mixed up.
We start to unsort the pieces.

Grandma's Mafia
I'm at a mixture of my Grandma P's past houses. This one feels more like a compound.
Currently upstairs in the guest room getting ready for a shower.
My Uncle J calls for me before I can get in.
...
I'm out on the patio. It's sunny.
There is a wooden file organizer, and there are dollars sorted into smaller sections of it. I think I see a $1000 bill.
A black lanky man approaches and I'm worried he'll attack me.
Turns out he's just here for payment.
I now 'know' the backstory that my Grandma P runs some mafia operation.
I direct the man to my Grandma, because I don't know how to pay him.
My Grandma P shows up, gives him some money and walks him out.
My brother and sister are here now.
My Grandma P gives me a see-thru golden ball, and there is a sudden urgency to deliver it to a safety shed nearby.
I run to the shed, make it past a closing metal door, then a sharp turn inside, and another timed door.
Shed is barren and musty, but more brown and orange hues from the sun bleeding through.
There is a conveyer belt running through the shed, but it goes through a wall.
There is a tiny opening to the room where the ball needs to go, but I can't fit.
...
I'm out in the yard below the patio with my brother and my sister.
We're talking about the big reveal that Grandma has been a mafia boss this whole time, and Uncle J too.
It has been generational too. We talk about that and look at the muddy yard in front of us where some kids are throwing footballs around.
I reach a troubling conclusion that this mafia info explains my Mom's death, and that she had been innocent.
I see here briefly as a ghost, and she seems relieved that I understand.
I'm hit with an intense sadness and I fall to the ground for a minute.
My sister notices and asks if I'm OK. I lie, saying everything is fine, and move along.
We reach the underside of the patio and enter a garden area.
I'm carrying some garden wireframes of dogs.
Grandma P is there, and she shrugs off our concerns about the situation, as if we disapproved of her new bingo meetup or something of similar caliber.
We move up the stairs leading to the patio deck, and I hear an incessant bee or bug buzzing at my ear.
I start slapping my arm at it, not wanting to be stung.

All recalled/recorded on waking around 9AM.

Went to bed around 11:00PM. Used a sleepmask for the first time.

Wisdom Teeth
I'm at the dentist's office. The dentist reminds me of Butch Hartman.
He's talking about how he has lost a pen.
I talk about how there should be more colors than red/blue.
I have impression I am here because I'm to have my wisdom teeth finally taken out.
Recalled from earlier in the night.

Fragment
I'm in a city, its day-time. I'm in an alley somewhere.
Recalled from earlier in the night.

Visiting Grandmas
I'm standing outside a small home, it's night-time. There are some fairy-lights around.
I'm with my family (Dad, brother, sister, and Grandma P) and we are visiting Grandma M.
Grandma M is very short. I got to give her a hug and I need to practically kneel to do so.
We enter the home and start to help my Grandma P unpack.
My brother and I are to share a room on the left, with two twin size beds in it.
My Grandma P's room is just across the hall on the right, but there is a laundry room there.
The laundry room resembles the one Grandma M used to have, but the orientation is wrong.
Someone is taking out a kid's costume of some animal out of the drier.
Recalled upon awakening, around 7AM.

Fell asleep at: 11:30 PM

Woke up at: 7:40 AM


Dream 111: Hitchhiker's Guide For Getting Whatever You Want

Nighttime; Grandma's house. A raging party is going on outside. I'm in the living room, watching Spanish television, thinking to myself "Wow, Latino TV is lewd as hell. There are also a lot of clowns." Then I pull a tablet out of my pocket which resembles the Guide from the Hitchhiker's Guide, though a yellow one and slightly extended. It has three LED lights on the side, red, green, and yellow.

It turns out to be a genie in a bottle, so to speak. And as is turns out, the three lights stand for something. Red is for 'Evil', Yellow is 'Neutral', and Green is 'Helpful'. Under the Red section one of the wishes is 'Create a clone and kill it/Create life then kill it'. I decide to use the machine to stop the party outside. Everyone leaves but they leave all their trash on the patio. Then the dream ended.


Dream 112: Not Really The Last of Us

The dream starts with a zombie covered in some dark green goo--which I presume is the cause of the apocalypse--chasing down a woman in her house. It pins her down on the floor and bites her ear off. I see the lights flickering on and off in the house.

Now suddenly in the house, I bolt it and run away as fast as I can from the goopy monstrocity. Then the dream ended.

Fell asleep at: 2:00 AM

Woke up at: 11:58 AM


Dream 107: The White Room

At my grandma's house, midday. I accidentally walk into an all white room with a weird green light on the ceiling. I ask one of my relatives what the purpose of this room is, and he says it's a mind erasing chamber, used for wiping bad memories. Only downside is, it wipes out your entire history and personality.

I ponder about it for a second. All of my fears and anxieties will be gone if I stay here, but isn't it my experiences that make me who I am? Isn't that basically mental suicide?

With only little time remaining I bolt it out of the white room and into the living room, only barely escaping the eponymous White Room.


Dream 108: Nostalgia

I wake up in someone else's bedroom, early hours of the morning. It seems to me that I'm lying next to my girlfriend (Not any real girlfriend just a DC). Her bed is just a mattress on the floor with possibly way more blankets than she needs. The lighting is moody and dark, you can pretty much figure out what happened last night.

I lie in bed for a couple minutes, waiting for her to wake up, and try to remember how it got to this point.

I have a flashback to the first time I met her. It was at a Wal-Mart, she was walking past a food court and I was just passing her by. She was carrying a hell of a lot of bags and she accidentally dropped her purse. I pick it back up to her and I tell her, "Maybe you should've gotten a cart while you were here, huh? Here, I'll help you with your bags."

After that it was just a bunch of conversations on the way to her car, things about family, friends, and other stuff. She told me about the place she works and recommended that I visit her sometime. As you can guess it took quite a while from getting to 'I'll help you with your bags' to being in bed with her. And it seemed like something I was pretty nostalgic about in the dream.

As for the girlfriend herself? She was Hispanic, had tan skin, and had black curly hair. She carried herself like a confident and peppy woman, and wasn't afraid to speak what was on her mind. That's about all I can remember.

Day 15 and 16:

Fell asleep at: 11:00 PM

Woke up at: 6:45 AM


Dream 11 and 12:

Both of them were a no dream phenomenon. I literally can't remember anything that happened during those nights.



Day 17:

Fell asleep at: 12:30 AM

Woke up at: 8:00 AM


Dream 13: I ain't leaving without my food...

It's a cozy Saturday night at my grandma's house. Unfortunately, my entire Video Game Design class is there. I know it's some sort of meeting, but I'm not quite sure.

They're looking to get some food from this box. I don't now of it was donuts, but they got all of it before I did. I'm bummed, of course, but I let one of the girls get the donut anyway, since she also hadn't eaten in a while.

I go over to the fridge (Which is in the complete opposite direction than real life) to get a snack. I managed to swipe a tiny little cereal box from the pink tray. Sadly, there's no milk to go along with it. I found a spoon, but no milk.

I'm standing in grandma's dining room next to Hyuk. He's holding one of my hands and with his free hand he's holding out a piece of paper for me to see. From what I can tell it's a kind of permission slip that i need to sign for some reason. I reach out and grab it from him. Hyuk then leads me by the hand to Hongbin, Leo, Ravi and Ken, who are all standing in the room as well. One by one I spend a good minute holding their hands. Hyuk says that I have to bond and it's important. I don't question him and hold each members hand happily. Then Hyuk pulls me by the hand towards a sliding glass door that leads to a porch. Sitting outside is Hakyeon. Hakyeon looks up at us and smiles. He pats the spot next to him and so I sit down. Hyuk stays standing, holding onto my right hand. Hakyeon grabs my left hand and our fingers interlock. I feel really happy to be holding their hands the most.

Fragment 1: I keep trying to catch up to this girl. It's important that she knows I'm like her. I finally catch up to her and tell her that I'm the same, that I'm of the blood too. She smirks and says, "Did you think we don't already know?".

Fragment 2: I'm in Grandma's bathroom. The door is cracked open slightly so that I can see my older sister still, but I'm able to keep away from her. She keeps threatening me.

Fragment 3: I'm trying to roll a giant bowling ball home. It's really heavy and hard to control. As I pass a boy, I grab onto him and have him help me roll it home.

Just hanging around
I'm standing/hanging wrapped up in a hammock/sleeping bag which is standing up right. I'm in front of the door to the balcony at my grandma's house, with my back to the door. The hammock/sleeping bag serves to keep the cold away, as the door is damaged. The upper right corner is bend outwards, as if someone pushed with a lot of force at that spot only. Somehow I've seen that corner of the door, though I'm facing away from it. My phone is placed on a flat platform to my left. I've got an incoming message. I ask my cousin to rotate my phone so that I can read the message. It's easier for her to do so than for me to get my arm out of the sleeping bag.

Fragment
» My friend Janet has sent a message on whatsapp to a group which we're both a part of. I ask her what she's doing and she tells me that she's studying. She mentions that a mutual friend of ours is a complicated guy. Dave, also in the group conversation, responds to that, though I don't remember what his reply was.

There are two ill siblings, they seem to be recovering but then the girl relapses and starts fading away.

The younger boy is left and is depressed. I find him in a room looking for a book on knives. I go through the cooking books on the shelf and find the only one, but it’s a technical one and I keep stumbling over my words. The boy is unhappy and leaves.

Everything else is too foggy to remember, except this part where I went to the bathroom at my grandma’s house and saw myself in the mirror on the back of a door. I tried to remember if that’s where it was supposed to be. A tiger was peering at me from under the door…

Inspiration: Reading the Tower of God webtoon with Baam and Rachel, her disappearing on him. Mirror from me thinking about the TotM and what mirrors were around places I go. Tiger comes from a cat toy Jazzy has, I sometimes hang it from the window so she can play with it.

1. I become aware that I’m lying in bed. The atmosphere feels weird. The shadows on the wall look odd.

Now I’m facing the other way, looking at my fan’s light. It morphs from a round circle to a star shape, and I’m shocked. I realize that I could be lucid dreaming. I look over at my clock and it says 1:00.

But when I do a memory RC it’s fine? Then I look at the clock and it says it’s only 11:00, just about 40 minutes after I laid down for bed.

Note: I wonder if I was dreaming for part of it, but then woke up. It was pretty choppy.

2. I look out a window to my right and see a balloon floating in the yard, I hurry outside to it. It’s got a bag filled with something to anchor it down on the end of the string. I see more of them around the yard and remember that there’s some event going on here at grandma’s house.

The balloons are starting to float up into the sky and I think that the anchors sure didn’t last long.

I’m making my way through the back yard by riding on some kind of ball (similar to a soccer ball). There are caravans and animals everywhere, either sharing caravans or lying on cloths on the ground or just wandering around. I first come across one with a deer in it, and I wonder if it’s a dead one that grandpa hunted. But when I get a closer look, it seems to be alive, and there’s some kind of feline predator in there with it but it’s just lying there too, staring at me.

As I pass along, I come to realize all the animals are a mix and they don’t seem to be attacking each other.

I’m kind of nervous and focus on making my way through everything. Some fox-dogs appear and one of them nips at me (they look kind of like the dogs from a previous dream but I just knew they were dangerous and more fox-like).

I come across an elliptical that I think looks like mine, only bigger and it seems to have a seat, but it has clothes draped all over it. I think ‘what a waste’.

Somehow I end up knocking clothes off of it but keep going. I feel kind of guilty though and end up going back to haphazardly drape them back on it. When I get to the carport I see another elliptical.

I’m back in the room I started out in on the bed. Mom comes in looking for someone’s number. I find two slips of paper with numbers that have some 2’s and 0’s in them and other writing, but one is longer. I compare them and say that they’re the same.

I think they didn’t work or something, because I end up saying that I have Matthew’s phone number in my phone.

Mom has my phone now and a ringtone starts playing of ‘The World is a Vampire’ by The Smashing Pumpkins.

Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage ♪
Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage ♪

Except it sounds kind of clipped around the ‘rage ~ I am’ part and I think that she must be fast-forwarding through it. When I heard it I looked over at her like ‘oh, so you went and listened to the song?’ (see inspiration notes).

She’s talking to him now, and I think I’m lying down and kind of out of it. I tune in for a moment and think how awkward it is to be listening to this so I tune back out.

“Hello? Matthew? I have a feeling you’ll be calling me back.” I hear. Matthew had hung up so she’d left a message.

She tells me that she likes taking any opportunity she can to remind him of work, and that he’s built up this whole fear about it. I want to add that Rane works hard and is still able to make time for other things like Jack.

Inspirations: Grandma has an elliptical and I found out she put it out in the yard. The fox-dogs probably do come from the dogs in a previous dream. I’ve had multiple dreams that were about the dream mystery that is the back yard of my grandma’s house. IWL they own a large property so the back yard is big. Not a bad place to dream about! Yesterday I sung that line of ‘The World is a Vampire’ and mom was like “??” so I told her about the song and how it was the theme for ‘Whale Wars’. So in the dream, I thought she had went and found the song to listen to afterword. The Matthew thing is complicated but he was my sister’s ex and had issues that caused them to break up.

There’s some kind of festival going on and people arrive for it. We’re all werewolves. We’re in this big house like my grandma’s IWL and I’m helping mom out.

As the people arrive, I quickly jump down from somewhere to the carport where mom is, and ask her what she needs me to do as the people walk up the drive. She gives me some task, so I jump back up to do it after kissing her cheek. Only, I end up knocking this roof type covering off and have to fix it, and someone helps me. I’m clumsy because I’m nervous.

I’m keeping away from some guy I saw in the group too.

I’m around the front porch area and there are three girls standing on the drive. One of them calls out to me, asking if I’m going to swim. I say no, because I don’t know how to. She taunts me about it and I keep calm at first, but she goes on and I snap and call her a bitch before I storm away.

Later, a woman and another girl appear. The girl had told on me to the woman. “She called her a bitch!” I respond sarcastically something like, “I would never say that word (that she just said)!” like that girl had done something way worse. The woman calls me out saying that she knows I’m lying.

I’m talking to a woman about swimming, and she says that she’s not swimming either and doesn’t know how to. She’d rather ‘be buried than drown’. I think that sounds a bit weird and repeat it to her for confirmation.

I’m working on something, bending over. I realize something isn’t right – I’m not wearing underwear, just a shirt. I remember that dad is nearby and quickly stand up and try to figure out what’s going on.

There was something about sparkles and candy too.

Inspirations: Werewolves from one of yesterday’s dreams, same with swimming. Think the no-undies thing comes from me taking off my boxers shorts last night from under my pajamas. Probably took place in a grandma’s house setting because mom told me she was going over there today.

Ritual: WTB 1am, woke 4:45am. Read, drank spice lassi, 7 minutes SSILD meditation, WBTB 6am. Relaxation, counting, mantra, took probably 30–45 minutes to fall fully asleep. Woke 7:30am with dreams.

Alchemy: 400mg L-Theanine, 400mg Alpha-GPC 50%, 750mg Aniracetam, taken at end of WBTB.

Notes: Two days ago I was buying ice cream in RL, and it occurred to me that I should use this as a motivator. "You can't eat any of this ice cream until you have a lucid dream!" I told myself sternly. Then last night I was thinking of eating something else for dessert, and I decided to be even more strict: "In fact, no dessert for you at all until you get lucid!" Given everything else that went into my attempt, including excitement about the brand new TOTMs, I can't estimate to what extent this reward-based strategy was a factor in the successful outcome, but it's worth experimenting with some more. Either I'll have more LDs or I'll eat fewer sweets, so it's a win-win either way!

I've been working on my mantra, and I'm currently going with variants of "Do we perceive the dream?" When going to sleep while counting I was thinking this on the off-counts, and as the hypnagogic state started to set in, at one point I noticed myself thinking: "Do we believe the skies?" ("Skies" as in the sporting equipment, so the rhyme was preserved.) This was so absurd I had to rouse myself and write it on my notepad!

By the time I started dreaming, it seemed as though there was a degree of dream-awareness from the start of the sequence, but I don't think it blossomed into full lucidity (with agency) until I remembered my tasks. There was no specific "moment of realization," and yet overall the dream felt much more like a DILD than a WILD, so I'm calling it a DILD.

DILD: I was standing in a narrow lane, enclosed on both sides by walls and buildings, in a residential area. A woman came out from a nearby house and walked past me, carrying a cat. Two other cats were running after her anxiously, so although their size suggested that they were almost fully grown, I intuited that the they must be the kittens of the cat she was carrying. The cat in her arms had wonderful markings, almost like tiger stripes. One of the ones that followed had a similar coat, a cross between tiger stripes and a Bengal's spots. A few minutes later a third cat came along, also striped.

I was so taken with looking at the cats that I didn't want to get too far behind, so I followed them and called the young boys that were with me to keep up. One of them was pushing an empty wheelbarrow but soon left off and went to chase after his friend, who had now gone ahead of me. I picked up the wheelbarrow and pushed it along for awhile, but it was of very primitive construction, all wood, even the wheel was just a disk of solid wood, so it was cumbersome. I wondered why I even needed it. I had noticed that one of the other boys who had gone ahead was giving his friend a ride in another wheelbarrow, and figured if I kept pushing mine, one of the boys would likewise ask me if they could ride in it, which would make it even more cumbersome. So I put it down and continued along the path.

There was a barn to the left, with an open door, and I decided to turn aside and explore it. This meant there would be no way of catching up with the others, but I didn't feel much urgency to do that anymore. The barn was full of old objects, and seemed to be used as storage of some kind. I remembered the TOTM and reasoned that in a rustic place like this it should be easy to find a pumpkin, so I started looking around for one. I climbed a ladder to a ledge which was serving as a shelf for additional objects, and was pleased to find that one of them was a large pumpkin. Everything else was covered with dust, which made me wonder how long the pumpkin had been sitting here. It was probably this concern that made me notice that the pumpkin was looking a bit sagging and rotten, but I recalled that the TOTM instructions didn't specify anything about the condition of the pumpkin, so I figured that it would still work!

Before I could reach for it, I noticed that it wasn't the only pumpkin: now I saw that there were three more on the shelf within arm's reach, all of them of slightly different hues and shapes. I was glad there was an alternative to reaching into the rotten pumpkin, so I grabbed the one whose appearance I found the most interesting: it was small, squat, and had a faintly bluish tinge. I figured I would start with this one, and if I didn't like the results, I had three more to work with.

Part of me wanted to just punch my fist into the pumpkin, which would have been faster but less elegant, so I forced myself to take my time and cut it open properly. I produced a knife from somewhere, without really thinking about it, and began sawing a circle around the stem, just as if I were going to begin carving a jack-o-lantern. When I completed the circle I lifted up the top section, revealing the interior of the pumpkin, and reached inside. The pumpkin was small enough that my hand barely fit, and I was groping around in the stringy goop and slimy seeds trying to find something else in there, hoping to encounter something interesting and unanticipated. All I felt were the pumpkin's ordinary innards, though.

Initially I had left my anticipations open-ended, but now that the dream was coming up empty-handed I tried to seed them with some expectations. Although it was a small pumpkin, there would be plenty of room for a ring. Might there be a ring inside? I squished all the pumpkin innards around in my hand to make sure I wasn't missing anything, but there was nothing there, nothing that wouldn't ordinarily be found in a pumpkin. The only distinguishing feature was that the stringy goop and slimy seeds, despite their very naturalistic texture, had the same bluish tinge as the pumpkin's skin. (I think this might have been day-residue, as last night I had been reading an Amazon review of a set of mala beads beads made in China that complained how the wood had soon developed a weird bluish cast.)

At that point I decided to give up on the little blue pumpkin and get started on the other three, but inconveniently I woke up. I considered getting up and writing my report, but felt that I was still in a state where it would be possible to DEILD, so I fixed the previous events in mind and let myself drift back into dream.

DEILD: This time I found myself in a place I recognized: it was the house of my maternal grandmother that I often visited as a young kid. It is a place that often shows up in my dreams. On this occasion, the theme of "blue" seemed to carry over from the last dream, as I noticed that the house now had a beautiful deep blue carpet that looked brand new. "Nice new carpet!" I said loudly, in case anyone was home. My grandmother is long dead but in waking life my uncle lives there now. In the dream, however, the house seemed quiet and empty, and no one responded to my complement.

I felt very lucid and clear, more so than in the beginning of the last dream, and remembered my standing intention to reflect on my bodily awareness. Sure enough, I could feel the characteristic tingles in my abdomen and especially in my legs that I associate with dreaming. (My hypothesis is that this "tingling" is a product of REM atonia.) I also associate this sensation with the ability to fly in dreams, so I experimentally levitated a bit, and then tried to implant the mental suggestion to be more aware of this body state while dreaming, with the aim of getting lucid more often.

Returning my attention to the environment, I wondered what task I could try next. I had been interested in the other basic task, drinking blood, but I didn't want to have to go all vampire on anyone who I might happen to encounter in this house, given that this was a place where my own relatives lived. "Perhaps if I look in the refrigerator, there'll be a cup of blood in there," I figured. It seemed a reasonable speculation, but after opening the fridge (which at the time I didn't notice was on the opposite side of the room than it is in RL), I didn't see any likely candidates. What would a cup of blood even look like? And would it still count for the task if it came from the fridge? The instructions didn't specify a source. But the idea of drinking a cup of refrigerated blood was not appealing to me, so I thought I should save this task for a more suitable occasion. I much preferred the idea of drinking it vampire-style, especially if I could get the bonus by drinking it from a supernatural creature.

Closing the fridge, I wondered what other tasks might be suitable for this environment. I remembered my lucid dare, and that struck me as a perfect idea: when I was little I always used to walk and play in the forest behind this house, so it was the perfect "enchanted" forest in which to go looking for elves. I continued walking through the house and went out the back door.

The world that greeted me once I stepped outside was startling in its freshness. The colors were deep and rich and luminous, more so than I usually see in dreams, and I was struck by the beauty of my surroundings. There were some distinct differences from RL: in the far distance I could residential areas covered in mist, as though I were looking at a town from the summit of a tall hill. The forest I hoped to find was present, but quite a bit further away than I would have expected. And walking across the grass of the wide lawn that lay before the forest was... a minotaur? I looked again. No, not quite a minotaur... it had the same general lineaments, but the head was that of a horse rather than a bull. Nevertheless, the creature was clearly supernatural, and it reminded me of the blood task again. I didn't want to miss this opportunity, since it was walking right toward me, so I approached the creature.

I didn't want to just grab the monster and start biting him, since he would surely conclude that I was attacking him and fight back, which could be counter-productive. So I went up to him and asked politely, "Sir, would you mind if I drank some of your blood? I only need a cup." He was at least seven feet tall and surely had plenty of blood to spare, so I didn't see any reason he should refuse. To my consternation, he seemed unsettled by my request and tried to demur. But I didn't want to pass up this opportunity, and figured that I had already met the demands of good sportsmanship by clarifying my intentions, so I grabbed his left arm (I was facing him, so it was the arm to my right), extended my fangs, bit him right in the crook of his elbow, and began to drink. Although he was tense and rigid, he didn't fight back, and I concluded that he must be experiencing that peculiar pleasure that the prey of vampires are often said to feel while being fed upon.

I paused to look up, gauging the creature's reaction, and was surprised to see that his appearance had changed. His head was thrown back, his eyes closed, but it was the head of an ordinary man now, no longer that of a horse. The task was to drink from a supernatural creature and see how it changed me, but it turned out he was the one that was transforming! I returned to drinking his blood before he could recover his wits and fight me off. However, the blood wasn't coming very quickly. Either I had picked a bad spot where the blood couldn't flow freely or he was still resisting me in some way, perhaps stifling its flow through the tension in his arm, which was still very stiff. I woke up before I had finished drinking, and promptly concluded that I didn't think I hadn't drunk a whole cup's worth, if we're measuring technically by eight ounces. However, it turns out that it is hard to estimate the quantity of blood you're drinking when you're getting it right from someone's arm!

I'm in my Grandma's back bedroom with my niece. We are sitting on the lower bunk of the bunk bed. I'm packing a bag for us. I'm not really in a hurry and I feel pretty calm. My older sister walks into the room and sits down next to me. I look up and notice her hair is lighter. I ask her about it and she tells me how she's been, little by little, making it a lighter and lighter blonde. I look at it more closely and notice that it's not just one shade. There's yellow blonde and white blonde. There are also streaks of shimmery silver as well. She looks very beautiful. Mom walks in and looks at us. She notices me admiring the hair and gets mad. She knows that it's being done only to get the attention of an ex-boyfriend. My sister looks sad and she looks at the floor as mom leaves the room. I smile at her and tell her that she looks beautiful and I love her hair. She looks back up at me and smiles. She says thank you and gets up to leave. My uncle then runs into the room and says that we can't leave. There's a storm that's gotten too big and dangerous, which will make it almost impossible to travel on the ship we are taking. It's not wise to travel when the ocean is so dangerous. I feel a little bummed, but I understand and I stop packing.