Recent DJ Posts

Morning of April 25, 2015. Saturday.



This is mostly a typical “being hunted” dream of the recurring type since childhood but it ends in a mostly comedic farce. This dream type, though slightly stressful during some scenarios, does not really have that much emotion at most points. I eventually have and maintain the typical three abilities in such dreams: Being able to fly whenever I want to, becoming and staying invisible, and intangibility (including the ability to travel through any wall or even person). These special in-dream abilities often create the impression of moving almost outside of my dream state at times even though I am still technically dreaming and fully in-body in most perspectives.

My dream starts with me being on a familiar city bus and looking at something on a notebook computer on the left side of the aisle, about the sixth seat back. When the bus stops, or is almost stopped at one point and I decide to get off, I hover, while in standing position, about two inches from the floor of the bus. When the bus does completely stop, I move backwards (while floating) and bump into some people seated in the back. I turn around and apologize and then leave the bus, still floating upright and not walking at any point.

From here, people are looking for me - possibly due to my special abilities (or even as a result of my bumping the people on the bus). In dreams like this, most people looking for me are not necessarily law enforcement (or dangerous criminals) but most often related to some sort of industrial business or paramilitary group. I fly for a time, and land on a few different roofs of mostly warehouses and industrial buildings. When I am lying on a roof on my side but with my head elevated and when a female is looking my way to point out where I am to the others, I decide to fly from that area and then land in an alleyway. At that point, I become invisible and eventually intangible. After this, I actually walk through someone (who is walking in my direction); an elderly businesswoman. They are not aware of me at all or that I had passed through them and they do not react in any way.

I walk through walls of some of the warehouses while there are people inside, but because I am invisible, I am not that concerned. Still, they do usually seem to have a special method for finding my general location (within about a two block range).

A Doberman (Doberman Pinscher) appears, running out from a building about half a block away, and knows where I am due to his sense of smell (even though I am still invisible). He begins barking a bit and indicating his awareness of where I am standing at this time. Not quite certain of what to do, as a few of the people will likely soon come to this area, I bend down and bite his nose off, which immediately seems quite disgusting to have to do this. The dog does not even seem that injured, though, but then randomly runs around barking in different areas and seems confused. (This is probably an incidental association with a line from “My Kingdom” by Echo and the Bunnymen, which has both “bite the nose off” and “climb the roof top” - as I had enhanced an old entry about my precognitive “Kingdom” novella though which has nothing to do with the song at all. Over the many years, I have learned that many dreams have associations with no meaning at all other than inconsequential or otherwise unrelated word associations and purely accidental puns.)

I then keep moving until I reach a stream about the same distance wide as railroad tracks and the immediate usual area around them, which is between a mostly featureless field and a higher embankment on the other side (though there are still a few old wooden buildings off to my left). The Doberman is off to my left, not knowing where I am anymore. Across the stream, the area seems far more rural, with a bit of tall grass here and there and a few trees. (Even though it is quite different, especially regarding the stream and higher embankment, it has a similar layout and essence as the area beyond the backyard in Cubitis and thus seems very loosely modeled on the area, as is the case with many other dreams that do not actually imply the area - this not being due to a particular memory but the brain simply using it for a “new” setting - I have seen this continuously throughout my life including with composite locations and bilocated features.)

Soon, about a hundred or more Irish Setters appear by approaching the edge of the embankment across the river. They are all of several different mostly solid colors in no particular order: Mostly black, darker brown, lighter rust-colored, and white. They start barking in large groups while sitting and pointing their noses upward, almost like an implied chorus, creating such a cacophony, it becomes ridiculous, and they are not necessarily barking at or sensing me, because the lines are long and they are all looking in one straight direction rather than arced around my general location. They are mostly in about three or four even suggested lines, but not fully together in any line other than in groups of about five or six. One male comes out from near where they are to see what is going on as he seems to be one of the owners or trainers. The loud sound becomes like a continuous “Ru-ru-ru-ru-ru-ru” - very realistic in the impression even though I have never heard that many dogs barking at once in real life.

These dogs on the other side of the stream are creating so much distraction and noise (as well as confusing the Doberman even more) that I know I will easily be able to move out of the range of my “hunters” from here by flying over the stream and moving on into what is probably a peaceful forest beyond. One of the males who was trying to locate me is about half a block away to my left, distracted by the dogs, some of which seem to be barking at him.

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

I'm on a street in a bright, sunny city when I realize that I'm dreaming. Pleased and excited to be lucid (as always), I stop and take a look around. I'm at a T-intersection, and on one corner is a big, tall building with businesses on the bottom few floors and apartments on the upper floors. It's white, with a red roof and other colorful accents. I turn to my right and see that its twin is on the other corner of the intersection.

There's probably a mirror in there somewhere that I can go through, I think. I approach the first building and go in the first door I find, a single door that has the name and logo of my real-life credit union on it. I go inside, and it is, indeed, a branch of said credit union. Almost everyone I see inside is a friend from real life, mostly from church, and I say hello to them as they walk past on their way out the door, but they don't seem to take any notice of me.

The main room of the branch is very small and narrow. I walk through it, turn a corner, walk down a very short hallway, turn another corner, and find a room with a rectangular, wall-sized mirror covering a fairly large area of one wall.

I stand facing the mirror. What do I want to be on the other side? I think to myself. One of the places I've lived before. I step forward confidently and easily go right through the mirror. I don't feel anything at all from it this time.

There's nothing but a completely empty, black void on the other side. When I'm all the way through the mirror, I find that while there's no floor, instead of falling down, I'm sinking down very slowly. Suddenly, I feel an overwhelming rush of profound thoughts and knowledge coming at me out of the void, while at the same time, it transforms from completely black and empty to a starfield of white stars. I'm frightened, and feel like all this is too much to handle, so I feel behind me with my hands for the edge of the mirror. [I'm now in a seated position, though I don't specifically remember getting into it.] I find the edge of the mirror and use my arms to pull myself up and out of the mirror, back where things are at least recognizable as normal. [No, I don't remember any of the content of those profound thoughts, just that it was like a tidal wave.]

[Side note: Woohoo! This is the first time I've ever completed the Task of the Month for two consecutive months! ]

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

[Last night, I had a long, vivid, elaborate lucid dream that felt like it lasted between 10 and 20 minutes. This journal entry only reflects the most significant and memorable moments of that dream, which are all I remember now. There were other stretches of experience connecting the moments below that aren’t written down in detail, because I don’t remember them that well. They mostly consisted of me flying around and observing the scenery.]

I’m at my university, at some sort of outdoor expo, standing in a booth made up of some folding tables and an EZ-UP shade structure. It’s a sunny day. I’m supposed to be there to represent one of the organizations I’m in, and I’m supposed to be wearing that organization’s T-shirt, but I can’t find it. The only T-shirt I can find in our booth is one I got from [a client company that my company has done work for in real life]. The logo on the front of the T-shirt I have is the same shape as the logo of the organization I’m representing (an oval), and the overall T-shirt design is very similar, but the letters in the oval are different, and the T-shirt I actually have says “[the client company's name]” across the back. I change into this T-shirt anyway. I do it while standing behind the open back of some hatchback vehicle, hoping that nobody will see me, because [for some inexplicable reason], I’m not wearing a bra.

When I find myself looking at a very vivid, colorful cityscape from the viewpoint of flying over it, it only takes me a moment to realize that I’m dreaming. I slow myself down, controlling the speed of my flight, just observing the landscape around me.

I’m standing on the ground in that city. I look across the street and see the gates of ‘the Asian Disneyland.’ There are solid-colored, blue and pink, cartoony humanoid figures walking around on the other side of the metal gates. [They look just like the figures in this cartoon (WARNING: Ads on that page are likely NSFW).] I think, Heck yes, then fly over and enter the “Asian Disneyland.”

When I get inside, I am on the second story of what looks like an indoor mall, looking down onto the floor of the first story. When I see what’s down there, I realize, Of course, that’s what would be in the Asian Disneyland: casino table games. The entire first floor is full of them. I have absolutely no interest in this at all [true in real life, too], so I turn right around and go back out the entrance to the mall. [I am very, very sorry for the stereotype evident in the content of this dream.]

Once outside again, I go, “Oh, yeah!” when I recall the current Task of the Month: fly up into the sky and find out where all the snow comes from. I start flying up into the sky. There is a puffy cloud there, and I fly toward it, aiming to get on top of it. As I approach it, it turns from white to dark gray. Lightning flashes across it, and it reaches out to threaten me with a pseudopod made of dark-gray cloud. I think, Uh-oh. This dream is going to turn into a nightmare if I don’t take control of it. Just by thinking about it, I make the pseudopod stop threatening me and retreat back into the cloud, the lightning stop, and the cloud turn white again. The threat nullified, I continue flying toward the cloud. It turns dark gray again only a moment later, but I realize that that’s because I know that precipitation only falls from heavy, dark-gray clouds. [When I first read the Task of the Month for this month, my first reaction was, “I’m probably not going to find anything but clouds up there; I’m a little too rational-minded for that.” This dream experience proves that I was right.]

[Sure enough,] When I get on top of the cloud, there is nothing there – just cloud. I sit down cross-legged on top of the cloud and decide to fly around on it, using it as a mode of transportation, just like Goku does in “Dragonball Z.” While flying on the cloud, I find myself flying down a corridor that turns lots of corners at crazy angles, lined with doors on either side. [I don’t know what it was, but] Something about this situation makes me go, “Of course,” and then start singing: “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,” etc. I continue singing as I fly through the corridor.

As I fly around some more, I think excitedly and proudly about how I’ll get to have my username in orange on DreamViews tomorrow or the next day. [Although now I don’t think I really deserve it, since I fulfilled the letter of the challenge but not its spirit. I really didn’t find out anything; all I found when I flew into the sky was the source of snow that I already expected to be to be there, namely, a cloud. I am so boring!]

I need to get out of a building very quickly. [It may or may not have been the mall-like building mentioned earlier. I think it was a different one, though.] The building has a glass wall right next to the entrance. I decide to go out through the glass wall. I run toward it. A second before I reach it, I focus my mind on activating my intangibility, an ability I have used in several dreams before. It works perfectly; I run right through the glass wall without breaking it, just like a ghost.

I’m in a circular meeting room with several levels of steps leading down to a central circle of floor. There are no chairs. There are a lot of people standing around in the room. I know that they’re all just DCs. They have gathered here to conduct a sort of tribunal to determine whether or not I am a goddess. Some of them have found out about the superhuman abilities I exhibit when I’m in the dream world, and have concluded that I am one, but others disagree. I think, I’m not a goddess. I’m just a human who knows how to lucid dream. I don’t say anything during the meeting, though. [I don’t know why not.]

--------------------------
Side notes:
Wow. I really feel like I took a step forward in my dream control skills last night.

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

I'm in my family's house [it doesn't look anything like any of our real houses]. P. has a terrible secret that she can't stand to tell our parents, so she's making me tell them for her. She actually cries when she tries to talk about it, because she feels so bad about it. Information about the secret is hidden on the computer in a file called “Sisters.nxt,” which is the type of file that contains programming instructions for the toy robots we use at my teaching job.

Our parents come in, and I gather my courage and tell Mom the terrible secret. Everyone is upset, including me.

When I woke up, I was quite stunned that it had just been a dream. It had been incredibly vivid and realistic. I actually made mental notes to call my sister and ask her if she was okay, and to to check my real computer later for a file named “Sisters.nxt.” [There was none, of course.]

I'm in my car [my new-to-me one], on my driveway. It rolls backward down the driveway, even though the parking brake is set. [Anxiety. I am afraid of this happening.] As I turn around to look behind me, I see JM backing a big truck up to our driveway. I smile and wave at him.

I'm back in the same house from earlier, with my parents. My mom's hair has suddenly turned gray, and is short and fluffy. It has two parts that come to a point on the top of her head, which she is feeling with her fingertips to find out how they go. My dad's hair is also turning gray. I realize that I'm back in the unfamiliar house that appeared in my previous dream, and therefore, that I'm dreaming.

I turn away from my parents and walk around the house, observing. The rooms are spacious and empty in the middle. Thoughts about how all this is a dream and not real just won't leave me alone, even though I try to ignore them, for fear that thinking about it too much will cause the dream to fade and me to wake up. I remember that I should try to stabilize and ground myself in the dream by engaging more of my senses, so I go looking for something to eat.

One of the rooms of the house is a kitchen. I open the refrigerator and get out one of those little plastic, single-serving cups of applesauce. I open it up and eat it directly out of the cup, by sticking my tongue into it. It tastes just like applesauce, but the flavor isn't as strong as it would be in reality. I also find that my lips are all tingly and semi-numb, as if I'd had a Novacaine shot that was wearing off. I think, That's happening because these sensations of eating aren't real.

[Dreamskip.] I'm outside, and I remember that I wanted to fly in this dream. I try to take off twice, and both times, I succeed only in jumping about six or eight feet and then falling back down to the ground. The first time, I end up on my butt. After the second time, I think, Wait, don't I usually do this just by thinking about flying? So I do, and it works. I fly around the beautiful scenery of a bunch of ocean harbors and inlets with towns on them. At one point, I fly through some power lines [?] intangibly. [I don't feel any sensation associated with it, though.] As I fly, I go, “Wheeee!”

I'm outside a big church building at night, still flying around.

I'm inside a shop full of shoes and other fashion items. It is owned by Yusuf, who is minding it. I fly through the shop and out the front entrance, into a street.

I'm now outside that same big church building during daylight. I say to myself, “It's daytime now because my real body says so.” I say this because I know it must be light outside by now, and I'm sure my body clock knows that. I decide to just walk across the grass to get to the entrance of the church, but then I use a small burst of my flight powers to get up all six steps in one leap.

There is some big event going on on an outdoor lawn, with tents or shade covers set up. [I don't really remember this part very well.]

--------------------------------------------
Side notes:

Last night was the one-year anniversary of the night I had my first substantial lucid dream. That fact made me really motivated to have another cool lucid dream, and I succeeded in having one. I was really pleased and proud of myself that I had. I wasn't quite as euphoric about it as I was that first night, but I was pretty happy. I'm really happy with what I've experienced in my dream life this year, but, of course, there's much more I want to do and learn. Here's to many more years of lucid dreams!

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

I'm trying to drive to a destination, and I go through an intersection and end up on a winding road that leads down the side of a mountain to a lake. I recheck my directions and realize that I was supposed to turn right at that last intersection. I start retracing my route and going back up the hill.

I'm at an outdoor amphitheater in Disney California Adventure. I'm way in the back of the amphitheater area, on some bleachers, watching a stage show. There is a bizarre structure on the horizon as you're looking at the stage; it looks like a pyramid with the points sticking out in a bunch of different directions, like what you would see if you put a normal pyramid in the center of a spherical structure with mirrors on all the inside surfaces. The show starts out with red fireworks that shoot out from the vicinity of this structure. The first round explodes in the sky above and to the right of the audience, the second arcs down to and explodes on the round, concrete slab of a second amphitheater behind and to the right of the audience, and the third explodes just above the audience's heads. I'm afraid that I'm going to catch on fire, but I don't.

On stage, there's some sort of announcement from a villainous character in the show that we need to prepare to be tortured. He also says that all the women should stay in the main viewing area, while all the men should move to the building at the back of the theater with the indoor concession and souvenir stands. They all do so. Then, large snakes appear throughout the viewing area. One is close enough to me to touch me with the end of its tail, which I know is poisonous [um, what?]. It's very long and all coiled around on top of itself. I visually pick out its head and tail from among the mass, and try to avoid them as I pick it up and attempt to toss it away from me. This doesn't work. It wraps itself around my waist and legs, binding me in place. I'm scared, but I resign myself to it when I realize that I can't get it off and that it's just a part of the show anyway.

After the show, which felt like it had lasted about 50 minutes, I make my way down to the stage. One of my college girlfriends is getting married here at Disney California Adventure. Several of the other girls from our group are bridesmaids, and they're all wearing long, grayish-white dresses with Disney vacation scenes on them. Two of them are pregnant, including EB. I'm here to attend the wedding, too, but I don't talk to any of them. When the wedding party starts taking pictures, I walk back to the concession and souvenir building at the back of the amphitheater.

My walk there takes me along a gently-curving grass path marked with steppingstones with the shapes of different Disney character heads on them. This path marks the edge of the amphitheater seating area. When I get into the concession and souvenir building, I talk to one of the men who was watching the show. He says the boys had their own torture: during the entire time the show was going on, they were all held in one area and none of them were allowed to pee. I tell him that the free T-shirts can be picked up at the Great American Icee stand, over there.

The dream I've been having fades to black [it may have been the one above, or a different one, I'm not quite sure]. When it does, I realize exactly what's going on, close my eyes, and think, When I open my eyes, I will be back in another dream. I open them, and I'm back at the same amphitheater, but the scenario is different.

[I'm not 100% sure I was lucid for this next part, though.] This time, there are a whole bunch of patriotic greeting cards in boxes at the back. Everyone there has been making them to send to the families of military members and people who died in the 9/11 attacks. Some people are still making them. I see that one lady in the back row has a plate full of lasagna, and take a bite with a fork. She tells me not to eat the lasagna, that it's for the people being honored.

Another show starts in the amphitheater. As it starts, people in front of me stand up, which forces me to stand up, too. I talk with the family to my left. They ask me about a “magic wand” that can be used to uncover secrets and extra content in the park. I point out one that a Cast Member down on a walkway that we can see from our seats is using. It looks a lot like a big, black metal detector, with a bunch of black tubes on top that form a Mickey head shape in the center. It detects sensors embedded in the ground and plays a sound when it finds them. The family climbs up onto the roof of the pagoda structure covering the back of the stands to get a better view of the stage, which is easy to do. I say, “Hey! That's rude!” but follow them up there anyway.

[Later, I had another dream in which I was definitely lucid, but I don't remember how it started or very many of the details. Here's what I do remember:]

I'm in an indoor environment, just walking around and admiring the scenery. I know none of this is real and acknowledge that fact in my mind, but I deeply appreciate how the scenery and the daylight illuminating it look completely real.

When I get to the top floor of the building I'm in, I attempt to fly through the ceiling, but it doesn't work. I just bump into the ceiling, which is completely solid to me. It's a stucco ceiling.

I'm flying around above a city, observing it from the air. Another female dream character [no one I know in real life] is flying with me. I take it slow, finding that I have full control over my speed and direction, but not wanting to do any more than relax and take it all in. I increase my altitude, and the other girl follows. We talk while flying. [I don't remember about what.]

[This is a catchup post.]

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

Night of August 31-September 1

[Fragment] I still have the box I shipped out via FedEx yesterday, for some reason.

I'm outside and lucid. I try to start flying, but am unable to. I move to another spot where I have an unobstructed view of the sky, and try taking off again. This time, I succeed. I think, I have to be looking up at the sky at about a 40-degree angle in order to fly - no, I don't! If I think that's true, then it will be! I can't set limits on it like that!

There is a large playground where I am. I fly toward it and, to my own slight surprise, am able to fly right through all the playground equipment intangibly, with no trouble at all. I get to see the dark-gray interior cross-sections of the upright pieces of the structure. I think, Oh, heck yeah. When I get all the way through the playground, I fly up to get an overview of the landscape.

September 4, 2011

I'm at my current house. My mom has come over to visit. She's sitting on the couch in the living room. [The living-room furniture is set up in a mirror image of how it is in real life. The couch is facing the outside wall of the house, rather than being up against that wall.] I'm upstairs, looking down into the living room. I jump down the stairs and float gently down onto the ground floor, in full view of my mom and all the other guests downstairs, not caring this time about being seen using my dream abilities by my DCs. None of them take any notice of what I've just done or comment on it as being strange. [I don't remember how this dream began, or how or when I realized I was dreaming, but I definitely knew I was.]

I sit down in an armchair to visit with my mom. We're talking about what it's like for me to be on my own, whether I'm lonely, whether I miss her. She asks me, “Do you ever dream about me?” I say, “Yes.” I decide I don't want to tell her that I'm dreaming about her right now and she's just a DC, though. She continues talking to me about dreams. While she's talking, I notice that she has one or two extra digits on each hand, but I decide not to point this out to her, either. I just find it interesting. I didn't know that that could happen to DCs, too.

[Different dream, later on.] I'm in a house somewhere, with my family. We're getting ready to go out to a movie, for which someone else is buying the tickets. I take my phone out of my purse to check it. It's my smartphone that I have in real life. I've set it to display my name as “Danny Boletino,” the name of a character in a heist movie, just for the fun of it.

I'm in another room of that same house, having a quiet conversation with my boss about fishing. He's surprised to learn that the last time I went fishing with him and his family was the first time I'd ever been fishing. I also tell him that I want to go fishing with them again, because I want to get better at it.

------------------------
Side notes:

Lots of day residue here. I saw my mom yesterday, and we had company over at our house. However, my mom did not really come over to my house; I saw her elsewhere. Also, one of the last threads I was this one, about looking at your hands to RC or stabilize the dream, so I'm not surprised that that showed up in my dream.

Neat. That's the first time my new smartphone has shown up in one of my dreams. It's been exactly two weeks since I got it, which is also exactly how long it took me to have my first false awakening in my new house after I moved into it (see this DJ entry). Evidently, two weeks is how long it takes for my my unconscious mind to accept something as normal and start incorporating it into my dreams.

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

I'm on my laptop, playing one of the mini-games within Petpet Park, when the game interrupts me with a pop-up notification saying that I've set a score record and asking me to fill in the name I want to display next to the record. I type in my player character's name. As soon as I finish typing it, it changes to a completely different, longer name. I think, Computers don't usually change what you've typed after you've typed it. I must be dreaming! I reach up and pinch my nose and, just as I had expected, feel that otherworldly sensation of being able to breathe through it. I feel a strong surge of excitement and happiness.

Suddenly, I find myself lying in my bed in my current bedroom. Still knowing perfectly well that I'm dreaming, I climb out of bed and walk out of the room and down the stairs. I hop down the last few steps, enjoying the way it takes me a couple of seconds to float down and land as gently as a feather on the floor, unlike in reality. In the living room, where the stairs end and where the ceiling is high, I float into the open space like a balloon for a few moments. I'm having a great time.

Then I decide to go out the front door. I start trying to go through it intangibly, thinking, I know I can do this. I've done it before. I can see the door and its interior, which are dark brown, and then the front yard as I begin to go through the door. I don't get all the way through it, though. I end up walking out onto the front path, then realizing that I've made a hole in the door with my face, and my face is still stuck through it; I've brought it with me. “This is stupid,” I say. I peel it off and toss it aside; it feels like it's made of thin plastic.

Now that I'm outside, I start floating again. I see two dogs in somebody’s yard and start flying higher, making sure I'm out of their reach in case they try to jump up and attack me. [Darn irrational fears. I have that one in real life, too. I know I could have confronted it and perhaps reduced its hold through this dream, but it didn't occur to me to do so at the time.] However, the dogs do no such thing. I continue flying, and think, It's good that I'm in my own neighborhood, and it looks just like it does in reality. [Except that it didn't, not quite. The street turned to the right in the dream at a place where it dead-ends in reality.] Down on the street, I see two cartoony-looking kids named Sam and Sarah talking to each other. At some point during their conversation, I woke up.

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

I'm traveling to Epcot on a highway. The highway is elevated relative to the park, which is long and narrow, and lush and green. There is a giant, inflated jack-o’-lantern in the center of the park. I’m dismayed to realize that the jack-o’-lantern has become the park’s de facto icon; it was never meant to be.

[Different dream.] I'm at a summer camp somewhere. [The day before I had this dream, I'd suddenly, randomly come to the nostalgic realization that it had been a very long time since I'd been to a camp of any kind. Thanks, brain! :-) ] I arrive at a wooden pickup station (sort of like a bus stop) at 8:15 A.M. [I think], in time to get picked up by a horse-drawn, wheeled wagon. I climb up into it and sit down on one of several benches. The wagon takes me and several other campers to an Old Western town where a reenactment activity will take place.

When I get there, I'm really glad I got up in time to catch the wagon, because the town is pretty cool. There are a bunch of animatronic figures that re-enact the shootout at the OK Corral. They have guns that fire styrofoam bullets, which stick to designated, smooth, flat target areas on the other animatronic figures. I move out of the way and take cover while the shootout is going on, not wanting to get hit by the bullets.

When the shootout is over, a large bunch of balloons comes floating toward me. I understand that it’s to transport me back to the point where I entered the town. I take hold of the ribbons on the balloons and allow them to pick me up and float me over some buildings to another part of the town.

I touch down in front of some town official, possibly the mayor or the sheriff. He asks me, “What do you think of the town?”

“I think I’ll stay,” I answer. When I say this, what I mean by it is that I want to get a souvenir picture taken in period costume. There is a kiosk nearby where you can do this. I’m about to do it, but when I look at the signs on the kiosk, I see that the pictures cost $5.00 each. I don’t want to pay $5.00 for a photo, so I change my mind and turn away.

[Dreamskip.] I’m floating with my bunch of balloons again [I think], heading toward a theme park with a roller coaster. I’m thinking about how theme parks are architectural works of art, and should be appreciated as such.

[I waited too long to start writing this, so I don't really remember what happened between the end of that scene and the beginning of the next one, nor do I remember how or why I became lucid.]

I'm in the entrance corridor of a big, fancy office building with a beautifully decorated interior. In front of me is a long wall with a door in it, and a sign next to the door indicating that these are the offices of a financial company. I know that it's a subsidiary of another company, and that it's in charge of the other company's finances.

I think, Okay. I'm going to try to walk through a wall again. I start walking forward, thinking about that goal. I begin to pass through the wall, and the room on the other side becomes visible. I continue moving forward. Even when I've gone far enough that I should be all the way through, I can still see parts of the ornately-decorated wall; they linger in my vision, semi-transparent and seeming to stick with me, like the strands of a spiderweb stick to you when you walk through it. I think, Just keep going forward. They'll go away, and you'll get through. You can do it. I keep moving forward, and the last strands of the afterimage of the wall finally fall away behind me, leaving me standing in the financial offices. There's no tactile sensation this time, though, unlike in my previous lucid dream when I went through the car door; this time, I don't feel anything at all from the wall. I'm happy and proud that I've finally walked through a wall without leaving a hole in it.

I wander through the financial offices a bit. There are employees of the company there, walking around, going about their everyday work. I think, I'm invisible and inaudible to them. Or, if I am visible, I just look like another employee. Somehow, I just know intuitively that one or the other of these things is true.

Eventually, I end up in front of another long wall, this one made of mirrors. [I don't remember now how I got from one scene to the next.] When I find myself in front of this wall of mirrors, I think, Now that I've figured out how to walk through walls, I'd like to try out another dream ability. I wonder if I can create a portal. Remembering what I read in somebody’s DJ here on DreamViews, I use my right index finger to trace a circle on the mirror-wall. [I don't know what exactly made me pick this destination, but] In my thoughts, I pick “heaven” as the destination that I want to be on the other side of the portal. When I'm finished drawing the circle, the area inside it doesn't transform into a portal; instead, it swings inward, like a door on a hinge. I go through the doorway.

The doorway is on one of the short sides of a rectangular room. The floor, walls, and ceiling of the room are all the same dark, metallic slate-gray color. At the opposite end of the room is a raised stage, also that same color, and on the stage is a smaller-than-life-size, cartoon lion. He's very definitely alive, though, and I know who he is immediately. I kneel down on the floor where I am and exclaim, “My Lord Aslan!” [Hmm. Well. That's reassuring.]

[I don't really remember how I got to the next scene. I remember attempting to create another portal and finding only darkness on the other side of the circular door because I hadn't been thinking of any particular destination, but I don't remember whether that was before or after the above scene. In any case, here's the next scene that I do remember.]

I'm now outside the building I was in before, walking across a grassy field. I happen to glance down at my feet and notice that I'm barefoot, and that I appear to have an unusually large number of toes, sticking out at odd angles and overlapping each other in unnatural ways, just like my fingers sometimes do when I look at them in dreams. I look down again, and this time I see that I have eight toes in a neat row on my left foot. It makes me smile to discover that toes can exhibit the same odd behavior as fingers in dreams.

I'm very pleased with my achievements so far tonight, but no other ideas for new abilities to try out come to mind, and the sky and the grass are so inviting, so I decide to fly. I kick off the ground with my right foot and take off. I find myself being forced backward by some unseen, unidentified force, just as I have many times before when I've started flying. I move my fists into the position I learned from my dream dad in my previous lucid, with my left fist close to my chest and my right one further away from my body, and move them back and forth relative to each other, trying to use that new technique I'd just learned to gain control over my flying. It works. I stop feeling the unseen force, and begin flying forward.

[That’s the last I remember of my dream.]

I woke up and found myself still in sleep paralysis. I didn’t feel any vibrations this time, though; it just felt like my arms and legs were really heavy, and like I couldn’t move them even if I tried. I waited a few seconds before moving my arms from their position up over my head. I didn’t even remember putting them there before falling asleep. A few minutes later, the feeling goes away.

-----------
Side notes:

I get to check another goal off my list of lucid-dreaming goals! Yay! I really look forward to continuing to improve my intangibility skills. Now that I've more or less gotten the hang of going through things, my new big goal is to get good at defining, creating, and getting into dream environments of my choice.

[This is a catch-up post. I had another good lucid dream on the night of April 27-28, 2011. It took me a long time to get around to finishing the writeup of this, but here it is.]

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

I'm at a meeting of my local community advocacy and action group. It's being held in a big, spacious, public multipurpose meeting room. There are no chairs or tables in the room, just empty floor space. A lot of the people there are wearing our team color, orange. We're electing the new secretary for the group. The election process begins with everyone who wants to run for the position walking out of the crowd and going and standing in a line, facing the rest of the crowd. My friend J. is there, and she starts to go and stand in the line of candidates. I tell her something like, “Oh, don't run for this. You already do so many things.” I'm specifically thinking of choir when I say this. [In real life, J. and I are in choir together, but she's not part of the advocacy group.] I say this to her because I don't want her to get overwhelmed with too many responsibilities.

[Later, different cycle.] I'm walking through House #1. Everything looks gray, dimly-lit and fuzzy. Because of that, I suspect that I might be dreaming, so I do a reality check. [I don't remember what it was; I think it was trying to go through a solid object.] It doesn't work. “Aw, nutbunnies!” I say aloud, disappointed that it isn't a dream.

And yet, a part of my mind is still suspicious. As I continue walking through the house, I decide to try doing the nose-pinch RC. This time, it works. I'm delighted to find that I really am dreaming! Breathing through my pinched-shut nose feels really cool, too. I do it several times, to verify that I'm dreaming and to experience that cool, weird sensation. It's been a while since I've experienced it.

As usual, I'm eager to just explore the world of this dream and see what there is to see, so I leave the house through the front door and go outside into the yard. It's a bright, sunny, breezy day, and now everything is in color, rather than shades of gray. I walk through the front gate and out into the front yard. Standing on the front lawn between the hedge and the liquid-amber tree, I allow myself to be lifted up into the air on the breeze. It's really fun. “Wheeeee!” I say aloud, enjoying the moment with pure, childlike playfulness. The wind blows me into the branches of the liquid-amber tree, which are pointy and scratchy. I return to the ground.

Our brown car is sitting on the north side of the driveway, the side furthest from the front lawn. [I think it might have been the Mazda we had when we lived in House #1, not the Honda we have now.] I decide to continue practicing my intangibility skills by passing through the closed car door to get into the car. As I start to go through the door to the back seat on the passenger side, the door becomes semi-transparent and stretches inward, like a rubber sheet. I get all the way through and feel the door pull away from my body as it snaps back into place. It feels like rubber, too. I'm now sitting in the back seat of the car. “Holy s***, that was awesome!” I exclaim aloud. I'm really proud that I succeeded in going through the car door like that.

I sit in the back seat of the car for a moment, just taking in the realism and detail of its interior and basking in the glow of my achievement. Then, I decide to get out of the car the normal way, by opening the door. By the time I get out, a van has parked on the other half of the driveway, right next to my car, and there are people getting out of it.

I think, Hey, I'm here in the dream version of my old neighborhood. This would be a great chance to go fly up to the top of the baseball backstop in the park. So I start flying toward the park. To get there, I fly above the streets that lead to it. “I’m not exactly going as the crow flies,” I remark to myself. I realize that I'm following the same route to get from my house to the park that one would follow if one were driving between the two points; I'm just following that route out of a habit that was ingrained into my mind in the real world. The thought crosses my mind that I might wake up from this at any moment, but I immediately push the thought away and ignore it, because I want to stay in the dream.

I arrive at the park. “I’ve always wanted to do this!” I exclaim. [Some background for DV readers: As a child, I once came across a book about out-of-body experiences in a bookstore. I didn't buy it, and I was too afraid to try to induce an OBE, but I thought the idea was really cool. I fantasized that if I were ever to have one, the first thing I would do would be to go to the park, fly to the top of the chain-link baseball backstop, and sit on the edge of it. I wanted to do that in this dream because it was something I had wanted to do for many, many years.]

I start flying through the park toward the baseball backstop. My dad is there, and he stops me and shows me a way to hold my arms that will help me fly better and faster. I do what he shows me: hold my arms out in front of me, elbows bent, fists out, right fist in front of my left one. He tells me that I can fly faster by pushing my right fist further away from me and pulling my left one in closer to my chest, as if I were pulling a rope taut. I try it, and it works. During this training session, I notice that I’m suddenly wearing red boxing gloves.

Using this new method, I continue flying toward my goal. It's a long, long way to the place where I think the baseball field should be, over wild, natural terrain. When I get to where I think it should be, there is no baseball field there, just a broad area filled with rocky hills. I spot the backstop among the hills and land next to it.

“What?” I say aloud, surprised and confused. There is a metal baseball backstop, but it's tiny [maybe two feet tall], overgrown with weeds, and covered with the spiky seed pods from liquid-amber trees. “That’s pretty lame!” I say in disappointment. I turn away and fly back the way I came.

I eventually fly back to what appears to be the counter of a sporting-goods store. I land there and take off the red boxing gloves I'm still wearing, and the bicycle kneepads I have on my feet. I then leave the store by flying through the big, high, square window above its front door. Flying through it creates a sort of flashing, ripple effect in the glass, somewhat similar to what I saw the first time I went through glass, but more visible and flashier. I knew I could fly through glass intangibly because I’d done it before.

I'm now flying outside. There is a concrete parking structure that looks a lot like the one at the local mall right in front of me, and there is another park off to the right. I head toward the park to fly up onto one of the baseball backstops there. As I’m making my way over there, I hear the very faint sound of smooth jazz music. I realize that there’s only one place that music could be coming from: my parents’ clock radio. [I notice that the music is playing at normal speed, too – this demonstrates to me that time does indeed pass at the same speed in my lucid dreams as it does in the real world.] The combination of the music and my knowledge of where it's coming from cause the dream to fade and me to wake up.

[This is a catchup post. This dream is from the night of April 8-9, 2011.]

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

I'm in my current bedroom. I have my mom's purse, and I'm on my way to take it out to the living room and put it on the cedar chest, where it goes. I think I must have just woken up normally, so as I walk to the living room, I'm thinking something like, If this is the real world, then that's fine. But if this is a dream...

By the time I get out into the living room, I've figured out that it is a dream. No specific trigger or dream sign tells me this; I just recognize the feel of the world around me, and what it feels like to be in a dream. I set my mom's purse down on the floor next to the cedar chest and turn to walk out the front door. As I move my hand away from the purse after letting go, I can see that no part of the purse or its strap is touching my hand, and yet I feel resistance on my hand, as if the strap were caught on my wrist. I realize, I can't just carelessly set it down and walk away, like in the real world. I have to think that I'm setting it down. My mind is controlling everything, and I didn't think about wanting to put it down, so it feels like I still have it. So I consciously think about letting go of the purse, and the feeling of the strap goes away.

I turn my attention to the front door. The main door is open, but the screen door is closed. It's a beautiful, sunny day outside. "This screen door..." I say to myself. I decide to take this opportunity to work on my goal of becoming intangible and walking through things. I concentrate on the ideas that door is not solid when I will it not to be, because this is a dream, and I am able to pass through it, and start walking through it. It works! I get part of the way through it, but I'm so pleased to find that it's working that it takes some of my concentration away from those ideas, which immediately causes the door to become solid again. I end up with the door stuck around the middle of my body. The door is now parallel to the ground, and my body is sticking through the hole I've created in the middle of the door. I can feel the ends of the metal wires poking me in the stomach and back. I feel very silly.

I give up on that for now and decide to just go flying again, since I know I'm good at that and it's fun. I turn back toward the interior of the house, take a step inside, and kick off the floor with my ankles, like always. I launch myself toward the ceiling and find I can easily stay up there, flying just under it in a lazy arc. I laugh out loud, feeling contented, pleased with myself, and so happy to be back in another lucid dream.

[Dreamskip.] My mom and I are riding on a train through our old town. The train runs along Church Street, which is lined with very large, elaborate church buildings in a variety of different architectural styles. [In real life, that street only has one, fairly small church building on it.] Some of the churches are still open, but others are empty and closed, and still others are now being used for other purposes. One of them is now a Ralphs grocery store. My mom says something about how our church is still open, even though several of these are closed.

The train comes to a stop. I say, “Isn't this our stop?” [I think I was still aware that I was dreaming throughout all this, but it completely didn't occur to me to do anything other than follow along with the dream plot.] We get off the train and walk through the high-ceilinged train station until we get to the entrance of a bird exhibit. The exhibit consists of a series of crooked, jointed tubes through which visitors have to climb upwards. There are chains hanging down from the ceiling of the tube near the entrance. There are windows in the tubes so that you can see out into the birds' habitat.

I start climbing up into the tubes. There is a guy climbing in front of me. There are lots of small handles attached to the walls in convenient locations for climbers to grab on to. As I climb, I notice that one of my hands [my right, I think] is partially numb. My ring and pinky fingers, especially, feel like they've fallen asleep. This makes it more difficult to get a solid grip on the handles with that hand, so I have to rely more on my left hand and arm.

[Dreamskip.] I'm now in this shop/museum exhibit place. I see a procession of people leave the room through one exit, including Willy Wonka as portrayed by Gene Wilder. I turn back to the interior of the shop, and see that my mom is at the checkout counter, buying something. There are several other people gathered around it. I ask an employee standing in the middle of the shop for directions to the exit. She makes a sarcastic reference to flying to get there. I reply, “Besides that.” She gives me directions to another exit. I follow her directions into another room of the shop. [At some point during this sequence, I don't remember when,] I see a page with lines from a musical written on it.

[Dreamskip.] I'm flying through an area where there are a whole bunch of big rectangular swimming pools, each with giant humanoid robots designed to look like sports players standing at either end of the pool.

[Dreamskip.] I'm flying up into space, flying backward and watching the view of the Earth below me. I go up high enough that I can see the entire round Earth at once. Then I decide to start going back down again. As I do so, I pass through a field of light-brown, rocky asteroids that surround the Earth. I see the ground getting closer and closer as I descend. I'm heading toward the center of North America.

I end up someplace in Kansas. I find myself in a large room with a bunch of other young women, all of whom are wearing old-fashioned green-and-white dresses with aprons. I tie a green cloth around my waist in an attempt to blend in with the crowd. A white pattern appears on the cloth as I watch.

The group of young women walks out of the room, and I go with them. The room proves to be underground; we exit it and go outside by walking up a sloping tunnel into the sunlight. When we get outside, I see that we're in a very well-done historical theme park with a richly detailed environment. I decide to start flying again, and I fly over the theme park, admiring the view of it from up high.

[Fragment – not sure where in the sequence this was, but I remember dreaming it.] I'm in the ocean, with waves moving around me. The waves are washing me up on to a shore. I think, Oh, crap. Is this the shore of my own subconscious? [I don't remember what came next, though.]

[The next thing I remember,] I find myself back at the area with the pools and the giant robots, still flying. I fly up in front of a robot who looks like a giant football player. He throws a football to me, and I try to catch it, but miss. He says something like, “That would have been complete for 10 yards!” I answer in a smart-alecky tone, “Yeah, it would have been complete... if my feet were on the ground!”

[Dreamskip.] I'm now in an airplane hangar, still flying. The hangar has very large windows that can't be opened. I decide to try to fly through them. I succeed.

“Holy s***! I did it!” I exclaim aloud. I've finally successfully gone through a solid object without leaving a hole in it! I'm very excited and pleased.

I fly around a bit more outside. I see that the hangar is one of many like it, all painted tan on the outside and all built in a big, dusty lot.

I woke up to discover that I'd fallen asleep with my forearms still resting against my ribcage, thus cutting off most of the circulation to my right hand and forearm. I realized that in the dream, when I had been climbing and noticed that one of my hands felt partially numb, it must have been because of the sense data coming through from my real body.

-----------
Side notes:

Wow! This was a really long, elaborate lucid. The dreams that I remember probably lasted a total of between 15 and 30 minutes. I accomplished this via two means:
- setting a WBTB alarm for about 6 hours after I'd gone to bed and staying up for about 5 minutes, reading entries in my paper DJ
- MILDing for longer and with more tenacity than I have been lately, using phrases that included "I will have a lucid dream tonight," "When I'm dreaming, I realize that I'm dreaming," and "I bring awareness and clarity into my dreams."

When I woke up and was recalling my dreams, I made a connection that I hadn't made while I was dreaming: I've passed partway into mirrors in dreams on two separate occasions before. I always know that they're going to be intangible to me, and they always are. Mental techniques and expectations similar to the ones that have allowed me to pass through mirrors should also allow me to pass through other solid things, like walls. In fact, going through the screen door worked similarly: I knew that it would be intangible to me, at least when I first set out to go through it. In the future, I just need to sustain that thought/belief/knowledge for long enough to get all the way through the object.

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

I'm in dream!Las Vegas. At some point [I don't remember when or how], I realize that I'm dreaming. From the top of one of the lower, more square buildings, I admire the view of the city around me, with its many tall, themed buildings. “Beautiful day for it,” I remark. It is indeed: sunny and clear with a few puffy clouds.

Looking down and to my right, I can see a big, broad swimming pool. I say, “There's a pool, if you're into going swimming.” I'm not that much into it, myself. [True in real life, too.] Nonetheless, I find myself swimming in the pool at some point, once again naked. [I don't know why dream!me likes skinny-dipping so much. I've only ever done it in reality when I was totally alone in our backyard spa.]

Later, it occurs to me, “Just let yourself drift... drift...” I start floating upwards off the ground, very slowly, not really flying, just sort of drifting away. [Clearly, the subconscious influence of the wording of the “Hypnosis for Sleep” audio recordings was at work here.]

I eventually end up in a grassy field where hundreds of golf balls are flying at me in a thick, fast, continuous onslaught. I firmly determine in my mind, “This is a dream. I'm going to let those golf balls go through me, instead of hitting me.” It works. I feel one of them bounce off my shoulder, but it doesn't hit nearly as hard as it would have in real life. I don't feel any of the others touch me at all, so they must be going through me. [Awesome! I finally convinced myself that I can become intangible to objects in the dream world! I'm one big step closer to walking through a wall without leaving a hole in it now!]

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

I'm on a dark ride at Disneyland. When I concentrate on the images that are moving vertically in front of me, I can accept and maintain the optical illusion that traditional animation is taking place right there in the space in front of me on the ride.

Later, I'm in a dream version of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion. This version is two-story and walk-through, with a large, rectangular open space in the center of the house where you can see the walkway that runs in front of the entrances to the second-floor rooms. I think, They've redone this entire place again? It's actually this realization that makes me aware that I'm dreaming. I've dreamed about this attraction many, many times before, and it's different every single time, so if I'm on yet another new version, I must be dreaming. I continue to make my way through the house, being scared [in the good way] by some of the ghosts that jump out at me.

I somehow end up in the landscaped outdoor area around what appears to be a shopping mall. I look at my hands and see that they look normal [I've been doing this a lot in reality lately], but don't lose lucidity. I'm pleased to find that the dream is stable, my dream self feels real and normal, and that I'm not aware of my real body at all. I then remember my current personal dream goal and decide to start trying to walk through a wall. I see the orange-tan-colored outer wall of some restaurant and think, Maybe it'll be easier to go through if I don't know in advance what's supposed to be on the other side. [I don't even know.] I don't end up going through it, though. [If I attempted to, I don't remember it now.]

While walking around the outdoor area, I touch a metal hand rail and find that it feels real. I also try to walk through a low, rectangular concrete wall intended for seating, but it's just as real and solid to me as it would be in reality. [I think I just haven't fully convinced myself that I can walk through things like a ghost yet.]

I continue walking and find a small, amphitheater-like concrete area where there are big concert speakers set up, playing hip-hop or rap music. Facing the speakers is a picnic table with a bunch of teenagers sitting on it, all of whom are really into the music. One girl, however, is sitting on a bench off to the side by herself, reading a book. On the opposite side of the table from the speakers is a grassy lawn. Fifty or so yards away at the other end of the lawn, a live rock band is playing on another stage. I think it's kind of sad that the poorly-designed setup of the area, with the big speakers so nearby, means that no one is paying the band any attention. [What is it with me and rock concerts in my dreams lately? I don't have any plans to go to one in reality.] I think about talking to one of the teenagers there, but [for some unknown reason] decide not to.

The back of my left thigh started to itch, which made me aware of my real body again, which caused the dream to dissolve. I scratched it, now awake and disappointed at the interruption.

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

I'm descending slowly through the levels of a house. When I realize what's happening to me and that this is a dream, I decide to stop in the third level down and explore it. I will myself to stop moving downward and to be standing on the floor, and achieve both of those desires. I begin walking through the rooms, concentrating both on the action of walking and on the scenery around me, knowing that my concentrated attention will keep the dream stable. There are some steps down into a large living room. I think, This reminds me of some of my friends' houses. Well, of course it does. That's where my mind must have picked up the images that this dream is made up of.

I turn around to take in more of the room. While I'm doing so, I think, I need a mirror. When I look back at a particular section of wall a second time, a large, tall, rectangular, frameless, wall-mounted mirror has appeared there. [Cool! I guess I'm getting better at controlling the features of the dream environment.] I come up to the mirror and stick my hand into it. My hand goes right into the mirror and is obscured by silver mist, but I feel nothing at all. I still don't particularly want to try to go anywhere else that way, though, so I don't. However, on the floor to my left, I see a large, freestanding flatscreen TV [the same size and model we have in my real house], and decide to try to go through that. As I crouch down in front of it, I think briefly of a couple of specific places from my past that I would like to find on the other side of the screen. I then start going through it. I feel the screen snap when I start pushing through it, and feel the edges of its two halves dragging against my body as I climb into the TV. There's nothing inside but darkness. I ended up just waking up. [I failed to choose a single destination and truly believe that it would be there on the other side of the screen.]

I went back to sleep and had another dream. I'm in a room with a bunch of computers, and someone is directing me to complete a series of questionnaires on one computer, which is on the aisle that goes down the center of the room, between the rows of tables. One of the questionnaires involves looking at frames from an animated TV show and identifying what show they're from. I recognize them as being from the Garfield and Friends TV show.

From there, the dream shifts, putting me in that episode of that TV show. I'm standing right behind the protagonist, watching him/her [not sure] have a conversation with another character just outside the gate to a town. The setting appears to be a medieval fantasy story. I recognize that I'm dreaming. The conversation is finished, and the second character admits the protagonist and me through the gate. As I pass the gatekeeper character, I say to him, “It's good to see you again.” I start walking along through the open space in the center of the town, again concentrating on walking and on the scenery around me. As I walk, I cover my mouth with both hands and whisper into them, “I was actually talking to the town.” I can actually feel the warmth and moisture of my breath on my hands, which impress me with their realism.

I pass by a shop building with off-white walls and a window, and go, “Oh, yeah.” I remember that I still want to try to walk through a wall. I turn to my right, walk right up to that wall and keep on walking. I can only get a little way into it. It feels like walking into a flexible, but thick, strong, and semi-solid piece of rubber. [That's the last I remember.]

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

[This is a catch-up post. This dream is from the night of December 21-22, 2010.]

I'm at a ticket booth in a train station, trying to buy a round-trip train ticket from home to L.A., where I plan to spend the day. The train ticket costs $35 and change; when I receive my ticket, it's a plastic card with my picture on it.

I'm at a desk at a music studio, explaining that I'm there because I want to record a demo. The lady at the desk doesn't want to accept a demo from me, until I mention that it's for a contest. She takes out the CD she has of demos for the contest, puts it in her computer to see how much space is left, and sees that there's enough space on it for one more song: six minutes. She tells me I'm lucky, because I'll be the last person to enter a song in the contest.

I'm standing outside some building [the music studio? I'm not sure; I get the impression this may have been a different scene], near the side door, waiting to get in to do something. I realize I'm dreaming and turn away from the door, looking at the other buildings on the street around it. Again, the scene looks just as sharp and vivid as reality. I hesitate for a moment, deciding whether to go along with the dream plot or go off and do my own thing. I choose the latter and take off, flying away. All it takes is an act of thought and willpower and a very slight push off the ground with my legs and feet. I have no problem taking off, but I immediately find myself being pushed backward again, unable to fly forward. Then I realize that it's only the wind pushing me in a particular direction, and if I let it carry me instead of trying to fight it, I'll have an easier time of flying. So I let the wind push me along, and it is, indeed, much easier.

I'm flying over a town. I remark aloud, “And, of course, it's another beautiful, perfect, sunny day here in the dreamverse!” I'm complaining again about the lack of snow.

While flying, I happen to pass over the backyard of a gray building that might be an older apartment building, and I spot two duplicates of myself there. I land in the backyard to get a closer look, but I don't want them to see me, so I try to will myself to be invisible to them. I can't tell whether or not it works.

I wake up in my bed. I'm a little disappointed to be waking up so soon from a lucid dream. I can clearly see a single eyelash moving back and forth in front of one of my eyes as I open and close them. I'm lying on my right side. Looking across the room from this position, I can see my closet. I think, I can't see the closet when I'm lying on my right side in bed in the room I have now. This is my room in House #1. I'm still dreaming! This is just a false awakening!

So I walk out into the living room of House #1. I look around to see if there's anyone else around, but there isn't; I'm all alone in the house. Since there's no one around to see me do it, I decide to try to walk through a wall. The wall I choose this time is the one directly to the right of the front door (as I'm facing the front door from inside the house). This wall separates the living room from the kitchen. [This is exactly how that house is laid out in reality, too.] I say to myself, “I'm going to walk through this wall,” and start walking through it. It's not completely solid to me, but I do feel a slight resistance at first. I continue pressing forward, and feel something hard, but thin (like a very thin sheet of balsa wood) break under the pressure my body is exerting. I continue walking, and end up on the other side of the wall, standing in the kitchen. Looking back, I see that on this side, the section of wall I've just walked through is blank except for a couple of metal panels with doors in them, like the kind that cover circuit-breaker boxes. [In the real-life House #1, there are kitchen counters and cabinets attached to that section of wall. Go figure.] Said metal panels are on a flap of drywall that is now sticking out from the wall at an angle, like a door. My passage through the wall has left a big, rough-edged rectangular hole in the drywall, the same height as I am. I can see the inside of the wall, and how thick it is, because the hole goes all the way through. This wasn't what I had been expecting to happen, but nonetheless, I say aloud, “Hell yeah! I did it! I just walked through a wall!” I'm pretty proud of myself. [Actually, that does make sense. I've had enough experience helping to build houses and doing home improvement projects in real life that I have a very detailed and complete schema for what the inside of a wall is like. I'm not surprised that when I said, “I want to walk through a wall!”, my mind answered, “okay, but you know that means breaking a hole in the drywall.” Interestingly, though, there were no studs to be seen in the dream.]

After that, I go out onto the street that House #1 is on. I climb up on top of a car that is parked on the street in front of my house, just because I can do so with almost no effort (unlike in reality,) but I don't start flying again. I just climb down the other side and walk along the streets of my neighborhood, which are also laid out just like they are in reality. The dream starts to fade, but I focus my vision and attention on the environment around me, and successfully bring it back into focus. Then, off in the distance, I see several tall, scary-looking metal structures rising up above the houses. They're as tall and narrow as construction cranes, but they aren't construction cranes. I'm frightened, so I run off and hide in a nearby public restroom.

[At this point, the dream transitioned from a lucid dream to a long, elaborate non-lucid dream that I don't remember much of now, so I'll summarize:] I'm watching a sci-fi story unfold from third-person perspective, like watching a movie. In it, people are punished for using long words. My dad is one of the people being punished.

When I woke up, I discovered that I actually had managed to fall asleep while lying on my right side in reality, corresponding to my position in my false awakening. I also realized: It's my dream. I don't have to be scared of anything I see in a dream - I can make it go away, by ignoring it, if nothing else. I can also transition to new scenes at will, and could find some snow that way. I just need to learn that these things are true.

----------
Side notes:

I had this dream the night after I had had a small, private celebration of lucid dreaming, as I'd announced in this thread. I was so proud of myself that I'd not only had a lucid dream that night, but had accomplished one of my lucid goals in it!

Morning of March 28, 1970. Saturday.



One of my favorite dreams, very long and with many parts, I had at age nine and this was a time period where the color of Pepto-Bismol sometimes dominated as a main feature (dreams only, not hypnagogic or hypnopompic visions). I am not sure why; I had not actually taken it that much. I tend to wonder if we had never had Pepto-Bismol in the house, if the features in my dreams would have been the same other than that color, because all the things that did have that color would not be remotely associated with that shade of pink for the most part. In fact, in this dream, the cane actually does seem lighter greenish-blue at times.

This time it was a cane with a small sliding switch on the top that activated special powers for me. It was shaped like a candy cane and was that familiar Pepto-Bismol color. A lot of major events occur, and my dream was probably an hour long, or so it seemed (although it is possible it was a series of dreams in one night, which were linked).

In the very first part of my dream, there are two prisoners looking out through a jail cell (I eventually associated them with “Hudd and Dini” from Cracked Magazine). It actually seems to be more like a cage, I suppose, as I can clearly see the scene as if it was inside a normal jail, although there does seem to be some sort of “outside office” to the east. Other people walk about and notice the criminals. However, at the same time, it seems to be taking place in the playground in the middle area of the southern side, closer to the fence (where beyond are normal residential homes).

Somehow the prisoners escape, and for some reason, because I am right there at the time, may be after my special cane and start to chase me. However, I chant “invisible…invisible…” and I both turn invisible and sink down into the ground (several feet). The prisoners are running perfectly in step with each other, reminding me of a scene from Alice in Wonderland or a scene from older issues of Mad Magazine (or maybe Scooby-Doo), with their knees lifted comically high in the air. Soon, I am above ground and actually chasing them. They realize this, and do a double take, but I still am able to get away by going through the outside wall of the auditorium.

I notice Brenda W (female classmate) is putting on some sort of marionette show, but is having a lot of trouble with the strings, and the audience is booing her. She is sad - but I become invisible to help her, and am able to move the puppet around and perform all the actions and such of the whole play. It mostly involves animal antics, with an elephant mopping the floor in a sort of Carol Burnett-like routine mixed with a scene from “Fantasia”. The audience is amazed and marvels at her show.

Later, I am at an area that seems to be a combination of a brother’s home (in Cubitis) and the principal’s office in school. I am marching around in my invisible state and making “booing” sounds and another boy my age (sitting on the couch) is looking terrified.

Eventually, along comes Ricardo Montalbán driving a taxi. He has the two criminals of the first part of my dream with him. He is after my “magical” cane (which has a “real” technological explanation for what it does). I am worried for a little while, but I surprise him, and float up through the roof of the taxi and escape.

I then end up at an older house with two floors and an attic on “King Street”. This part was amazingly precognitive in that is actually where I was living years later (in Wisconsin), including the street name - and the mood I then had was very precise (there was no way to know my family would move to Wisconsin again at a later date or that I would feel just as I did at that much later stage of my life). Somehow, the cane stopped working and I was trapped as a “ghost” who could only walk around and haunt the place by knocking chairs over and such until someone came along and helped me. But I remained a “ghost” at the time. Not the greatest ending, but it was still a fun dream. There were several other parts that I did not originally write down. I know there was something about avoiding mosquitoes by becoming of no substance so that they just moved through me and could not bite.