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Bedtime:
10:30pm-11pm
WBTB:
3am-4am (unsuccessful)
Woke up:
5:45am

Dream 1
This is just a dream fragment, but I remember either I was plugged into something, or something I had was plugged into something... Idk, but there were for chords and something was charging (it might have been me, I can't remember) and during the charging time, I was playing 3 songs on the piano (I can't remember what they were but I know 2 were in B major and 1 was in E major), and I know my sister and cousin were there. I think they fell asleep while I played.

Dream 2
I was on the front lawn of an old building, the lawn was surrounded by a metal framed fence, the kind you would find at a cemetery. I was digging something, and I saw a cardboard box nearby filled with little baggies of weed. I thought about taking some, but it wasn't mine and I wasn't sure where I was, so I didn't take any.

*time lapse*

I was inside the building, and my grandma was there watching 2 babies, they were both kids of my coworkers. 2 of my uncles were there as well. I now knew I was in a convent, and it's hard to remember the conversations that were going on, but I remember the nuns in the convent were dressed in regular civilian clothes. I also remember somebody telling me that they were all prostitutes and also heroin addicts. "They do heroin?" I said. "Yeah, they're doing it right now in front of us," somebody replied. and I remember looking over at one slumped over as she was shooting up. Not very nun-like, in my opinion.

The setting of the dream was the farm where I lived as a teenager, but nothing about the plot resembled waking life, and my own character was an adolescent boy. I was the son of our tribe's chieftain, and another adult male in the tribe approached me with an offer. He wanted to buy my father's flower that was growing near the chicken house, offering me a groat in exchange. I refused, of course: the flower was not mine to sell.

On my way to the barn I passed the flower and glanced at it. It was beautiful and otherworldly, with large hanging bell-shaped blossoms of red and purple. I thought I had made the right decision by turning the man away. I went into the barn, the bottom floor of which was completely empty of everything but a pile of horse manure that had been gathered into the center of the space. This was a bit odd, but my thoughts were elsewhere.

I was remembering what the same man had done for the nuns: by giving them an iPad, he had eliminated their tendency to engage in other, more heretical, forms of augury. Had he been testing me? Obviously it would have been wrong to sell the flower for my own gain, but perhaps it was also wrong to refuse outright. I should tell my father about the offer and see if he might want to sell the flower after all. Perhaps he needs a groat.

I go talk to my father. He is not a human but a ring of flexible tissue suspended within a rigid round frame that forms an outer ring. My character, the young boy, is not surprised by this, but OOCly I find it odd. It is hypnotic to watch the creature talk: the inner ring changes shape, forming geometric and other patterns, while vibrating. Together the shape-changing and vibration sound quite similar to a human voice, though higher-pitched and with more vibrato.

I mention that I want to talk about so-and-so, the member of the tribe who offered me the deal (at the time I knew his name, but lost it on waking), and at once my father starts describing a recent encounter with the guy:

"We chat a while, then he tells me what a fine young man you are. I'm thinking, wowwww!" He emphasizes the word "wow," drawing it out with varying intonations a bit like a hippy or stoner might... and then the sound blends into the chime of my alarm going off and waking me. I was annoyed to be interrupted mid-dream!

Standing in the street with a bunch of friends, we are all going to a skate park of sorts, but it is far away. They suggest I levitate to make the trip easier. I'm jump up in the air, and lay horizontally, levitating above the ground and slowly moving forwards through the air. I ask them how to go faster because I could walk this fast normally. One of my friends shows me that I can bang my fists together while holding them out in front of me to go faster. It works, but I only go a little faster. I keep doing it, and keep increasing speed, but only slightly.

A large crowd of people are walking in the street, and start tugging on me as I float past them. I think maybe they're jealous, so I stop levitating, and walk with them so they don't feel bad. They settle down when I do this, and we all walk together toward the skate park.

When we get there, it turns into a snow/ice version of a skate park, and I am on a snowboard. People look at me, expecting some fancy tricks. I realize I'm dreaming, and this seems fun, so I drop into a big half pipe type thing on my snow board.

Suddenly, the dream is in 3rd person, as I watch myself doing tricks. But physically, I feel myself doing all of it with first person tactile sensations. I manage to do lots of spins and flips in this way, and people are happy with the performance. I also retain a physical sense of observing all this from about 30 feet away, standing on the packed snow. I go full tilt with spinning super fast, and doing every twist and rotation physically possible.

Now the audience becomes loads of Buddhist monks and nuns, who all look at me at once and tell me it would be a good time to wake up now. I recognize that it's up to me, but I trust them, so I concentrate my mind on waking up. I feel a peaceful tingling, kind of dull and soft, as the dream fades back into my subtle mind, and my waking sense of my body in the dark room gradually exists again in my awareness.

About 30 seconds later, I get out of bed, and walk over to the desk to check the time on my phone. As soon as I pick up my phone, the alarm starts to go off, and I silence it before it wakes my room mates :-)

Ritual: This was my third experiment with the vibrating alarm. Again it was successful, though in a somewhat inexplicable way. I had intended to get lucid but slept from 1:00–6:20am, and realized when I woke it was too late for a proper WBTB. So I used the vibrating alarm, set to go off in 45m. It was 7:19am when I awoke again, so it must have triggered, but I never felt the vibration at all this time. I had an NLD I don't clearly recall, and then a DILD—in which I simply became aware that I was dreaming, with no particular RC or "aha!" moment. The lucidity was low-grade, though, in that I never remembered the tasks I had intended to work on.

DILD: I found myself in K&L in San Francisco. (This is a real wine store that I like, but the dream version had no physical resemblance to RL.) While browsing I noticed all the good food in the cases—fresh food, like slices of cake on plates, ready to be eaten—and reflected on how amazing the food culture is in SF that you can even get great fresh food in a wine shop. There was a tray with samples of wine, generous pours of about two ounces in full-size glasses, and another tray with samples of a variety of little cut bars and pastries. As I began eating and drinking, the impression dawned on me that I was dreaming, but I felt that I was not fully integrated. (This must have been dream logic; I was already deep in dream so there was no question of integration, but apparently what I was sensing was that I was not fully lucid.) I thought that using my senses would help, so I was focusing on the tastes and textures and even the sounds that occurred as I sampled the various confections. I wanted to find one that was more savory than sweet. A couple pieces were green in color, which seemed promising, but they turned out to be more dessert-like than I had hoped. I was amused to notice how I was behaving with dream protocols: if I didn't like a piece, I would just spit it out and leave it on the tray, an act that would be incredibly rude and disgusting in waking life!

I thought after I got better integrated I should go explore the dream—wasn't there something I was dreaming about earlier, a wilderness landscape, that it would be interesting to get back to? I recollected it only vaguely. But first I wanted to try each of the food samples. The very last one I tasted was savory after all, and had a kind of bi-layer construction with a spicy-savory mixture sitting on top of a nest of dried coconut strands—it was my favorite, and I wished I could get the recipe.

Nearby was a little display box full of pamphlets or maybe even CDs about nuns, and as I leafed through them I saw that they broached the question: do nuns wear their habits even when they are locked away together in their nunneries, or do they, like Muslim women, remove their head coverings when at home? I felt that in waking life I knew the answer but now I couldn't remember. I thought about it and considered that the tradition of nuns covering their head must be related to similar phenomena in related cultures and places, such as the way women have to cover their heads when attending a Russian Orthodox church service. I figured it probably did have ties to the tradition among conservative Islamic women to cover their heads. I concluded on this basis that nuns would indeed remove their wimples when alone among themselves. (In retrospect I'm pretty sure I wrong, but I can't say with absolute certainty. The only Christian nuns I've met don't wear habits at all!)

Earlier, when I had decided that I would go explore the dreamscape after I was done here, as if in direct response to my thoughts a horse had promptly cantered up outside the shop and stood there waiting for me. (If only my human DCs were so obliging!) Now that I was finished eating I went outside and prepared to ride away. The horse had been completed tacked up when he arrived—excessively so, I had thought, as he seemed to be carrying bedrolls and other long-distance gear—and when I mounted he had definitely been wearing a saddle because I distinctly braced my foot in the stirrup and held the pommel to get on. However, no sooner had I started riding away than I felt I was slipping around a bit and was surprised to discover that this was because I was riding bareback. Oh well, it will be good practice. I remembered how some people say that LDs can help you practice RL skills, and I figured that I could certainly use some practice improving my seat and position, so I decided to focus on that for a while and see if it paid off in this week's lesson.

I still felt we were in downtown San Francisco but everything felt old-timey. Even the cars looked like 1920s models. Fortunately there weren't many of them, because I was moving through the city at a canter. I realized how unrealistic this was: in RL I would hesitate to stress the horse's legs by cantering on hard paved streets, and I definitely would not cross intersections without stopping, like I was doing now, but since I knew I was dreaming I felt it would be okay. Crossing the street still felt dangerous as there were sometimes cars coming, but there weren't too many of them and they were going slow enough that we were able to dodge one another. I was cantering because that is the gait where I need the most improvement on my seat and position: I was focusing on trying to keep my legs long and heels down, with my core on, back straight and shoulders back.

We cantered right out of the city, though I was paying so much attention to my form that I didn't have much to spare for my surroundings. Just as in RL I noticed the tendency for my legs to creep up and my torso to lean forward at the canter, so I was trying to counter these bad habits and reinforce good ones. At some point I finally halted the horse, and I worked on trying to do that properly as well, keeping my seat deep and using my weight properly. The dream ended around this time, as though by halting the horse I halted the dream.

What an odd dream.
I was at either Arkansas or Alabama (can't remember which). It was no village I had ever heard of, but many nuns resided in this village. It wasn't especially big, but it did have a little center area for restaurants. Lots of trees were scattered around this village, making it hard to see far in any direction. For some reason I was living with a kind young woman, probably 19 or 20 years old, who was helping me get my bearings in this new town. She had mid-length brown hair, and I can't recall her speaking much.
While I was out exploring the town, walking by the local Arby's, there was a shooting. More precisely, a man in a blue shirt on a nearby cliff held up a gun, aimed, and started firing at the crowd of civilians around me. Somehow, I knew that he was looking for a specific girl. I hid away in the nearby back parking lot and ran off, trying to find somewhere where I would be concealed. I eventually found a dirt path under some bushes, which led to a random house. I apologized to the people for barging into their yard and ran as fast as I could, hearing the gunshots and screams behind me.
I hid away in the young woman's house once more, this time locking myself in my room there. She wasn't there at the time. I peeked out the windows. Multiple nuns were walking hurriedly out of a nearby house and making their way to what I assumed was church. As I was watching them from my window, I suddenly realized they might see me, so I backed up. Too late. The head nun saw me, and her face contorted into sheer anger. She ran up to the window, pointing at me and shouting something. Judging by reading her lips, she shouted, "What are you doing in there?!" She moved away from the window, running, so I could only assume she was going to come into the house to try to get me.
Call me crazy, but something wasn't right about these nuns. They gave me an uneasy feeling. I knew my door was locked, but I put some things in front of it just to be safe. I I heard multiple shouts and banging against it. The obstacles started sliding away.
That's all I could remember after waking up. Also, my previous dream had a shooting in it too. If this keeps up, it could be a potential dream sign.

Dream starts off with my dad and myself at a giant church which is also a busy tourist destination, though the denomination is not clear. The building is square and seems identical on each side, and it five several stories tall. The outside of the church has bricked pathways that encircle the building and each each side (compass direction) of the building is painted different bright, solid colours. I cannot remember all of them but recall that the south side of the building was painted dark blues and either dark purples or greens. The crowds are made up of many people of different backgrounds, as well as non-humans. There are alien like creature that look like they just stepped out of a science fiction film like Star Wars, while others are antropormorpic animals, dressed in human clothing. No one is bothered by the wide range of non-human creatures, as this is quite normal in this dream world and though I am not bothered by it, I do take note of it because in the dream I have never encountered non-human civilians before.

There is a a small castle or fortress to the north of the church, that is much bigger and made of plain grey bricks. The whole place is set upon a cliff and a tan brick wall keeps people from falling off the edge into a churning ocean. Between the pathways and buildings are elaborate and beautiful gardens filled with many fragrant flowers. It is forbidden by law to touch or damage the flowers and benches are provided all along the cobbled pathways so that people can sit and admire them.

Along the pathways themselves are many sculptures, both abstract and figurative, that seem to have nothing to do with religion, made in a variety of different media. My dad and I are between the north end of the church and the fortress, looking at a brown (bronze?) sculpture. My dad asks me "Do you see him?" and points up. There is a little figure of a burly, bearded man dressed as a lumber jack and carrying a large axe over his shoulder. The rest of the statue itself looks like a crude replica of the Eiffel Tower. My dad is reading a plaque on the side of the statue about what it represents. I leave him to have a quick look around and encircle the church (and thus discover its different coloured sides) before I find my dad on the east side looking at some plastic, light blue and white triangular peices that are slightly curled, that I think are supposed to represent waves of water or something.

I am feeling impatient because I want to leave the crowded pathways and look inside the church, for that is I thought we had come there for. Eventually we do made our way inside, through the south entrance (as that is the only one open, the others are sealed). The inside seems warm and inviting, everything is made of wood and it looks like a simple cottage with a long hall down the middle. To the immediate right there is a small dining room where several (Christian) nuns sit around a dining table in front of empty plates and glasses made of fine porceline. They are dressed casually (wool sweaters, cotton skirts, slippers) and their nun headresses are grey, not black. They at first ignore us and the stready flow of people coming in and out of the entrance. I notice, and point out to my dad, burning embers on the dark brown wooded floor of the dining room, which the nuns have not seen or simply ignore.

We begin to stamp the embers out, as some of them are quite large and could possibly cause a fire, and only then does one elderly nun take notice of what we are doing and joins us in our stamping. When the embers are out she provides no possible explaination of what could have caused it but takes us on a personal tour which ends at a cramped but homely kitchen at the end of the hall. Many of the rooms along the way are sealed with heavy wooden doors and I cannot see inside them, while others are open, though windowless and dark and look mearly like the inside of a chapel with rows of pews and alters filled with candles, some burning and some not. Despite this there are not religious icons or statues anywhere and the only indictation that the building is a church so far is the casually dressed nuns walking the halls.

The elderly nun (who looks like the mother from James Cameron's Titanic) takes us to the second floor which is a special priviledge that the rest of the tourists are not afforded apparently, and it is much different in style the the main floor. Monks in brown cloaks wander the halls silently and avoid making eye contact with anyone and go out of their way to walk around. The walls and floors are made of plain grey bricks and there are many twisting passageways along the hall that go either up or down, yet do not contain stairs and hare been paved smooth and flat.

I ask the nun why this is so and she merely responds that it is to accomadate the many tourists in wheelchairs or those pushing strollers. She also mentions that the basement levels can only be reached by these twisting passages. At the end of one hall there is a large bay window and to the left of that there is a large red curtain from which silent monks enter and leave. A black man with a white turban, dressed in a dark blue robe decorated with silver five pointed stars and crescent moons, stares silently out of the window with a very sad expression on his face. He glances over his shoulder briefly and makes eye contact with me, before quickly looking away and returning his sad gaze out the window. I have a strong desire to speak with him, as I sense he holds much wisdom, but I do not because he seems so sad and unapproachable.

To the right of the bay window, there are two of the twisting passages, one going up and one going down. From the windowless passage going down an eerie green glow eminates. The passage going up has a single wooden frame window with a vase of daisies and seems more welcoming.

As I sit there and contemplate which passage I would like to take, the one going up (consciousness, the easy path) or the one going down (unconsciousness, the harder path) a tour group emerges from the passage going down. It seems to be a group of children lead by a middle aged man but they are all wearing radioactive protective suits that cover there whole bodies and trudge with great weariness as if their trek has been long and arduous. The sight of them needed such protection to explore the lower realm kind of scares me into impulsively running for the passage leading up. I quickly look over my shoulder and notice that dad is gone, as is the man at the window, and the hall is empty of monks, but the nun remains and smiles warmly at me, but she says nothing. Despite her reassuring glance, I scramble up the ascending path with no thoughts or expectations in my mind, like a scared animal being chased by something unseen.

The dream changes. I am suddenly in the castle north of the church, in a grand passageway that while still twisting upwards, is decorated with artworks and elegance befitting of a royal building. It is also much wider, does not slant so steeply and is lighted by large windows bordered by elaborate tapestries. People still wander the halls, but instead of nuns and monks, are woman and men dressed richly in Renaissance fashions of courtiers and aristocrats. A few of them saunter by me and sneer as they do so. I am not dressed as finely as they and instead have on a simple brown dress with a grey undershirt and light grey apron. I have read hair and know immediately that I have transformed into my deam incarnet, Kalima. I look out one of the large windows and can see the square, multicoloured church still surrounded by gardens and sculpures, though the cobblestone pathways are empty of modern-looking tourists and filled with merchants and vendors, peasants and aristocrats, human and non-human alike, bustling around in a budy medieval townscape.

I cannot consciously recall the previous part of the dream now and though I can sense that I do not belong here, and feel out of place, the farmiliarity of everything I am seeing makes me think that I have always been here. I unconsciously grasp at something hidden underneath my collar: a small silk bag containing a polished peice of jade hangs around my neck on a thin strap of leather. I keep it hidden because I feel that if anyone saw it, they would believe that I had stolen it, as it would seem too expensive for a mere peasant as myself to own such a thing. Beyound sentimental and material value, this peice of jade is magical and allows me to see beyond the constraints of the physical world, as well as grant me some minor magical powers. Through the Jade I can see the Truth at all times, and if someone were to discover it and take it away, I fear that I would be rendered powerless and blind.

Touching the Jade, I can feel its power, which pulsates with a warm but sharp electrical current, even through the rough cotton of my shirt and the thick silk bag that contains it. It jars my consciousness and I suddenly remember what I am supposed to be doing, though the sudden awareness is fragmented: Meeting friends. Finding and freeing a captive lion. Saving a King. I cannot compel the peice of Jade which, while still apart of me, is like an entity all unto its own, to show me more and I know that it reveals only what I need to know and it is up to me to figure out the rest.

I decend the winding passageway down to the main floor of the castle and meet a group of people whom I know are my friends. We came here out of curiousity at first, to see the castle, though later for an important task revealed to me through the Jade. My friends, who are all older than me by a few years, know of my power, and trust and protect me with great care. They are all humans except for one, who is a small antropormorphic ant like creature (about two inches tall) who is very wise and acts as our teacher and guide. He usually rides on someone's shoulder, since he is much too small to keep up with us walking on his own, and he greatly fears being crushed to death by being stepped on. All of us are orphans and outcasts and we have no one else in the world save for each other.

We find a lion in a cage and release it before the guards and discover us. We make are way through the lower parts of the castle and it is confusing and maze like. We are captured by some guards and brought before the King. My peice of Jade suddenly sends me a message about the King's life being in danger. I try to tell him so but he doesn't believe me. The lion captors have some how recaptured the lion and now use it as a weapon, making the poor creature attack and kill anyone it comes across, and beating it severely if it does not comply. The captors are just outside of the throne room when a soldier comes and tells the king what is happening. He finally believes me that his life is in danger and I use my magic peice of Jade to create and illusion so that my friends, the King and I can escape. We follow a secret passage revealed by the King behind the throne and it leads to the outside of the castle, but over the ocean and we have to jump into the water.

When I get out of the water I am seperated from my friends in the crowds of people outside the castle and for some reason my peice of Jade transformed me into a lion. I am immediately captured by the cruel lion tamers, who take my peice of Jade without which I cannot revert back. The King meanwhile regroups what soldiers he has left and surrounds and captures the would be assassins. I discover that I am able to revert back to human form under my own power and so not need the Jade. My friends and I are rewarded and we are no longer poor peasants. My friends take up residence in the castle, but I feel out of place because I vaguely remember my dad looking at the art outside of the castle and I leave to "find my way back home."


The dream ends there.