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This is a dream from the morning of 12/15/2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #175: The War of Red and Blue

I’m in a building that looks like my new office, sitting next to my friend “Leroy”. He complains that his chair is uncomfortable and moves to a row of tables that’s just behind us. While Leroy goes on and on about how much more comfortable this part of the office is, I notice that Dwight Schrute from The Office is sitting here as well. I know that this is wrong and become lucid.

I walk over to the window and phase out to the street. The roadway looks similar to the one that the android and I saw in the previous dream, but now everything is vivid and quite detailed. It’s night and in the distance I see what looks like a spacecraft. Soon I see more and more ships flying through the sky. Before long they’re shooting at one another!

I take to the sky to get a better view and see that the sky is filled with blue and red ships firing at one another. Each building in the city is also apparently affiliated with either blue or red. You can tell because each window, rather than being simply transparent, glows brightly in either a blue or red.

I fly for a while and at one point a trio of red ships spot me and train their fire on me (just as I worry this will happen.) Fortunately, I shrug it off, feeling nothing more than a slight impact.

Flying higher, I soar over the top of the conflict. It’s just war as far as I can see, blue vs. red. Ships explode and buildings crumble, but from this high up I feel distanced from the whole thing. In spite of all the carnage below, the feeling is almost serene. I fly like this for a while, just observing until the dream ends.

This one is from the morning of 12/15/2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #174: Android

I’m sitting on the floor of an apartment talking to a guy who I think is Oneironaut Zero. I don’t really know OZ, so I think this is a little unusual, but I’m happy to be talking about lucid dreaming.

As we’re chatting, Wife walks into the room with a young woman in her early 20s, blonde, petite and with a slightly vacant look in her eye. Wife explains that this is a new model of android that they’re selling now very inexpensively and can act almost like a real person.

We greet the android and she responds with a shy wave and a slightly stilted “Hi.” With that, she crouches down on the floor and starts tracing her finger through the carpet. Wife leaves the room and, as I try to say something to the android, Wife yells from down the hall, “The kids are trying to sleep! Keep it down!” I feel annoyed that I can’t talk but she’s allowed to yell.

“Did you just roll your eyes at me?” says Wife from down the hall and storms back into the room, looking irritated. I know that I didn’t and as I wonder why she thinks so, I soon realize that I’m dreaming. I get to my feet and the scene shifts. Wife disappears, Oneironaut Zero disappears, and the android’s hair goes from blonde to brown and her skin becomes paler.

I grab the android’s hand and charge for the apartment window, phasing straight through into what looks like an unfinished street scene. The street seems to draw itself in chunks as we run along. I see a few buildings against the blank sky but they seem to raise up lazily just as I look in their direction.

We run along like this for a while before the dream seems to stop rebuilding and finally sags into the void. The android is still here and seems determined to stay in the scene. She says something like, “I want to go too” and starts grabbing onto my arms and head. At one point it feels like she’s trying to stand on my head.

Eventually the android settles down a bit, shifts herself next to me, and we make out for a little bit. After about 15-20 seconds, though, she becomes non-responsive and just sort of stops moving. This takes the fun out of it, so I start thinking about where to take the dream next, but it soon ends.

This dream is from the morning of 12/15/2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #173: Luxor

I’m in a hotel room bedroom talking with Wife. She has the lights off like we’re getting ready for bed but there's an errand to take care of. We need an access card for the pool and she’s sending me out to get it.

When I get to the main room of the suite, rather than our kids I encounter a guy that looks like Henry Rollins. I think he’s some kind of celebrity, although I’m not sure who I really think this is. We talk for a little bit and he tells some kinda funny but off-color joke. He motions toward our room and says, “Sorry, forgot about the wife.”

I decide that I’d better not leave Wife alone with a stranger in our hotel room so I decide not to leave. As I’m thinking through this, I become lucid and walk back into the bedroom. I crawl into bed next to Wife, planning on performing a WILD. Wait, no, I’m already having a lucid dream. I get out of bed, walk to the end of the room and phase out through the window into the void.

I rub my hands together as I fall through the void. The descent slows until I can no longer feel it and I give myself a bit of a pep talk about how “all of this is mine”, hoping to be ready for some dream control when I emerge from the void. I’m thinking of Task of the Year, and imagine that I’ll see the Great Pyramid when I emerge.

After a bit, the void gives way to a dusky desert scene. And about 70 or so feet away is the base of an Egyptian pyramid! There are a lot of smaller pyramids around the in the area as well, most of them only ten feet high or so. Everything’s covered in billboard and neon signs that say things like “Clearance!” and “For Sale!”

I make my way toward the main pyramid when I encounter an attractive brunette in her late 20s. “Can we help you?” she asks. Just as she says this, she’s joined by an identical twin. The idea of an attempt at sexytime sounds appealing, but no, the Pyramid is right here. Stay focused.

Confused about what the Pyramid task is (repair/reanimate the Sphinx and ride her to the top), I respond, “Can you show me the way inside the Pyramid?" Then I add: "By the way, you two are really cute.” (I think I was trying to impress them/myself for staying on track or something, I don’t know. )

They pose and raise their arms over their head in a “We know!” kind of gesture. One of them (the first one I met) says, “Sure, I’ll show you.” She heads off around the side of the Pyramid and I follow. As we’re walking she narrates like a tour guide, gesturing at some wares as we pass by some stalls in a market area. “Here’s where they sell Khuddush and vials.” (I’m spelling “Khuddush” the way it sounded to me, but it’s a guess since I don’t know this word.)

“What’s Khuddush?” I ask.

“You don’t know? This is supposed to be your dream. If I know something that you don’t, does that mean…?” Her voice trails off. I have kind of a “whoa” moment. (I looked up “Khuddush” and couldn’t find anything. The closest match was the kiddush, a Jewish Sabbath ritual. Kiddush - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

I follow her into a high stone chamber where a few other DCs are wandering around. We walk toward a staircase leading down and the dream falls into the void. I can’t rescue it, but before I emerge, I hear an unfamiliar female voice say, “Don’t get too attached.” The dream ends.

Well, a close-ish call with getting to the Pyramid and some fun play with a few new techniques. Still have a lot of refining to do!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #168: Pyramid Artwork

I have a false awakening where I wake up excited about some video game idea. I’m desperate to write it down. I grab my dream journal, deciding that’s the best place I’ve got to write the idea down. This makes me think of dreaming, though, and I become lucid.

I walk toward the window, glancing over at the bed as I go. I see Wife sleeping peacefully on my side of the bed, and my sleeping body is nowhere in sight. I’m amused by the unusual layout and note that this is definitely not an OBE. I think about saying something to Wife as I pass but decide to just leave her alone.

I phase out through the external wall, winding up in the void. I imagine the scene as it should be, though, and after a few seconds it works itself into a convincing replica of my street at night. This gives me a nice confidence boost, so I imagine that the Great Pyramid is behind me. I turn around to find that it hasn’t worked, though, and it’s just more houses as far as I can see.

I’m feeling aggressive, though, so I use my fingers to draw a triangle in the distance. The triangle isn’t perfect, but it comes out in a shimmering neon green. With some focus, I’m able to slowly change the green outline into the distant Great Pyramid!

Seeing the Pyramid gives me a target to be excited about so I immediately attempt a zoom teleport. Something goes wrong, though, and the Pyramid actually gets further away rather than closer to me. This frustrates me and I start making a half-hearted attempt to fly there instead.

The scene resets somehow and I’m in a huge aircraft hangar. Okay, starting over. Again I go for the “draw a triangle” trick and I get a decent-looking triangle. I try to change it into the Pyramid but it stays stubbornly neon and triangular.

Several other attempts follow, including erasing and redrawing the triangle, chopping the top of it off and reforming it into a trapezoid, and drawing several copies at once. I can never quite make any of this work before the dream ends.

Got a Task of the Month on this one and tried to use it (unsuccessfully) for Task of the Year. Didn't manage to get them both but I'm glad I gave it a try though!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #152: The Witch

I'm riding in a car (driven by my friend "Leroy"), along with two other unknown passengers who are in the back seat. We're all out together on a road trip, heading down a clear highway during what looks like mid-morning. The road is steeply banked like a race track and we pass by a speed limit sign that reads "50".

Up ahead there's a section of the road that's pitted with giant potholes. In front of us, a pick-up truck is working its way gingerly around a huge pothole that's torn up most of our side of the highway. "Be careful here," I say, pointing ahead at the pothole. But as I say this, I realize that I'm sitting on the left side of the car, Leroy on the right. Yet he's got the steering wheel over on his side, as if we're driving around in the United Kingdom or New Zealand or someplace. I realize that I'm dreaming, even wondering whether it happened this way because I've been playing Dead Island lately.

I decide that if this is a dream, phasing out through the car should be no problem. I look down at my lap and focus on moving my body left through the door and out onto the road. It takes a couple of seconds, but once the phase takes hold, I feel myself lurch to the left and I move through the door as if it wasn't there. My vision quickly dims and I find myself in a semi-void. I reach out for the road surface and grasp onto it. While I still can't see anything I feel like I'm physically still out on the roadway.

I crawl forward for a bit until I feel confident enough with where I am. My vision is still very dark, but I decide not to worry about it until the next scene unfolds. I get to my feet and start walking forward, rubbing my hands together the whole way. I narrate to myself the fact that "I'm having a lucid dream" and keep moving forward until things clear up.

The dimness lifts and I find myself in something that looks sort of like a college gymnasium. A lady in her mid-50s with a long gray ponytail is chatting with another woman that's sitting at a desk behind a window. I remember the task to have a witch cast a spell on you and I decide that this lady will be my witch.

I interrupt them by announcing to the woman that "Okay, you can do that teleportation spell to the Colosseum on me now." She doesn't answer at first, seeming to want to finish up what she's saying.

Once she gets the last of what she wanted to say out, she turns to me and matter-of-factly says, "Okay, teleportation spell... where was that to?"

"The Colosseum," I repeat. As soon as I say that, the "witch" shoves me in the chest and I go tumbling through the air down the hallway, right toward a wall. I think that I sure hope I phase through that and sure enough, I pass right through the wall, kind of floating on my back. My vision rather crudely recenters itself and now I'm standing in a tall hallway with cinderblock walls. I can hear the noise of the crowd... this has to be the Colosseum! The cinderblock walls aren't historical but I think that I can make it work.

I move to the end of the hallway, turn, and find myself in another hallway, this one with a much higher ceiling. I jump/fly up to find that the wall doesn't stretch all the way to the ceiling and I perch on top of the wall to survey the area. Below me I see a twisted, mazelike series of halls where male DCs that look like athletes or possibly gladiators are wandering around. Just past this maze stands a tall gate that I think must be the entrance to the Colosseum.

As I'm planning to fly over the maze to the gate, I briefly wonder whether this dream will remain stable long enough for me to complete Europe Task of the Year item. In response to this thought, the dream almost immediately collapses and I'm awake.

This LD was the second of two from the morning of 9/17/2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #148: Musical Travels

I have a false awakening early morning on a couch in a room that looks like a basement. Wife's sitting nearby. I'm unhappy to get up but there's something I need to be doing, so I follow her out into the hallway of an office building. Through the windows I see that it's still dark out. Some guy with glasses and a shaved head is dressed for work and waves toward the parking lot at someone I can't see. I wonder how he's in such a good mood so early.

Wife convinces me that there's something I need to look for in the bathroom, so I go to find it. I walk down a long corridor and take a right through a narrow hallway filled with people. As I'm pushing my way through the crowd I sort of knock this one guy to the ground. Rather than apologize, I hurry away, hoping he didn't see me do it. (Not nice at all, I know...)

Once inside the bathroom, I forget what I was looking for, so I wander out another door back into the hallway. There's a folksy country duet playing over unseen speakers, an older man and woman singing sweetly about the life and love they've shared. I think how cool it would be if dreams could produce music like this... and a wave of suspicion makes me hit the nose pinch RC and I'm lucid.

I continue down the hallway to a fat guy standing behind a small desk that's stacked with literature. One of his hands is resting on the papers and I grab onto it, trying to bring extra vividness into the scene. He looks horrified by this and when I think about it a bit more, I don't feel too great about it myself, either. "Sorry about that," I say, continuing down the hall. I think about what I intended to do with this dream and remember the Task of the Month about going into the girls' locker room.

I follow several twists and turns in the hallway, each one leaving the hallways narrower than the last, all the while expecting that the next turn will lead me to the girls' locker room. Finally, I step through a door at the end of the hallway into a room that looks like some kind of really nicely-furnished barracks or dormitory. A double stairway encircles an elegant fountain and leads up to a room that stretches far into the distance, either wall lined with beds. There's a huge number of DCs here, all female, many of them in the beds and some just walking around.

I try to verbally insist that this is a women's locker room rather than a big dormitory, but somehow I get the idea to sing my intent. As I do this, the whole thing turns into this huge musical number that both me and the women in the dormitory are singing at the same time. It was sort of 80s-sounding, but an original song. If I had to pick a song, it was probably closest to Bonnie Tyler's "I Need a Hero". The whole thing was pretty awesome.

Most of the DCs are dancing while all of this is going on, with a few of them even doing these fancy handsprings over the beds. I can't remember many of the lines, but one of them was definitely something like

"It's the girls' locker room,
Where the lockers have bras and socks and stuff!"

I know that this isn't the locker room and as cool as this musical performance is, I still want to try to pull off a task. There's a cinderblock wall behind me, and I phase through it, winding up in the void. I rub my hands together then try to feel my way forward. There's someone else here with me in this void, a female presence. Rather than speaking, she begins to softly sing. Her voice is beautiful and echoes everywhere around me. She says something like, "I can only take this journey with you if you <something something...??>" (What was it? Wish I could remember this!)

In a moment I feel my body settling onto some soft dirt. I'm laying on my back and the singer, a woman in her mid-to-late twenties is also lying in the dirt a few feet away. Her ethnicity is difficult to guess but I feel like she might be some combination of Asian and Hispanic. We're in some kind of construction site near an unfinished building. To her right, maybe twenty feet away is a chain-link fence. Past that I see a spotlight glaring at us and lighting the area where we've landed. She starts to get to her feet and as I follow her lead, the dream ends.

This LD was from the morning of 9/12/2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #145: Sleeping Body

I get the sense that a dream may have started, so I will my arm to move downward through the bed. It does, and now I'm floating blind through some sort of substance. It feels a bit like water but less substantial.

I swim through it for a few moments until I can dimly see that the stuff I'm swimming through is black and wispy. My right hand touches somebody else's who also seems to be swimming next to me. It's apparently Wife, because she says, "Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

Now I'm back in bed. I can see, but the light's very dim. I roll out in an OBE style and walk toward the bedroom door. Before I leave, I think to look back at the bed to see whether I'm there... and yes, there's Wife on her side, and next to her, rolled on his (its?) side is my sleeping dream body. For some reason my sleeping body isn't covered by the sheets so I can see that it's glowing slightly and is wearing some kind of blue shorts.

I think about approaching my sleeping body but I decide that I don't want to get too caught up in this. As I'm thinking this, Wife sits up a bit in bed, looks toward me, and says, "What was that?" I wonder whether she's speaking to me or the sleeping body. I sense that this scenario is starting to challenge my lucidity, so I move on.

I walk toward the closed bedroom door and then hear phase through it, briefly entering the void. I decide that the phase is just taking a long time and (somewhat reluctantly) the hallway scene appears and I'm walking through it. It still looks like my real hallway, but very dark.

I continue into my son E's room and find that the place is littered with a bunch of huge toys. Near one window stands a four-foot tall plush zebra with plastic wheels. It looks like you're supposed to ride around on it. There are several other big toys as well, but I didn't get as good of a look at them and don't remember them as well.

I don't see E, and I begin to wonder if he's here. I "sense" that there's a crib nearby and wonder if E is just younger than he was before. This train of thought is starting to distract me, so I move toward the window to phase outside. I wake up momentarily and then hold still for DEILD.

The DEILD once again starts from my bed, and like before, my arm sinks into the bed. I go into the void and float for a while.

Spoiler for Sexytime:

The scene stays dark, and I feel two women snuggle up on either side of me. I can vaguely imagine their shape but I can't directly see them. This doesn't seem to bother me, though, and I manage about 25-30 seconds of fun before...

I wake up.

Dream recall from today's WBTB/naps.

Dream 1:

I am at home and i am trying to nap, suddenly dad comes into room and decides to fall sleep here, then a blanket randomly gets thrown onto me and it transforms into some other person, so i realize that i am dreaming. I go to balcony door and shift into quadruped stance and then phase through balcony door. I fly and feel wings, streets are snowy and there are some buildings, i fly around and search for that black dragon. Soon i find him, flying in the distance. I fly towards him, avoiding a dragonfly that randomly gets into the way(Icwutudidthar, dream). But as i about to get close i suddenly get teleported somewhere else onto the ground, i start flight again. Now here everything goes weird and i start phasing through stuff, walls, houses and teleported around randomly. Then i am back at home again, i fly through balcony door again and then sky turns into ceiling and i phase through it into different room? Then there's another sky and another ceiling and it turns into mess. Another i phase 'outside' the area like if i was using noclip in video game. Suddenly i fly into a my room again and then into different room? Then again through window and more random phasing, then i wake up.

Dream 2:

I try to nap but suddenly somebody starts trying to put plastic bag onto my head, i take it off and i see 'attacker' DC, he disappears and i go to balcony, this time i decide to avoid phasing through and just open door. Once outside i fly and feel wings, my house and balcony disappears and i am in some foresty place now, or rather, above it. I notice stronger feeling of wings and then there's suddenly strong wind all around, which at first gets me almost to the ground but then i manage to use it for gliding/flight for a bit but shortly i wake up.

This is the second lucid from the morning of September 3, 2013.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #142: Hotel OBE

During my mantra, I find myself staring at the ceiling of the hotel room we're staying in. I know that I'm wearing my sleep mask, though, so I'm positive that this is a dream. I will myself to roll away from my sleeping body, and now I'm on my feet.

Rather than walking, I'm just sliding around the room. The scene is dark and a little hazy, but everything looks just like I remember it. I don't look back at Wife or the spot where I was sleeping, although I wonder whether I've left a sleeping dream body behind in bed.

I slide into the adjacent room where the kids are sleeping. Now more things are different. My two kids R and E are each lying in separate cribs, both about two years younger than they are in waking life. R is now almost a newborn and E looks like he's about two. They're both sleeping blissfully on their backs, and I drift past them toward the front door.

When I phase through the hotel room door, I find myself in a darkened hallway that doesn't look very much like our hotel. I note how realistic the dream began and how quickly it diverged from reality. I want to turn on the lights and check out my environment. I give a grandiose shout of "Let there be light!"

The hallway is now better lit, but it's still fairly dim. From out of nowhere, I hear Wife's from behind me: "And there waaaaas light!" She follows this up with a mocking trumpet sound like "doo doo doo DOOOOOOO!!"

I look back, and yep, she's standing there behind me. "Whatcha doing?" she asks.

"I'm having a lucid dream. This one is an OBE." I'm preparing to explain what that is when I remember that there's no need to explain anything to Wife's DC.

I jump-phase through the ceiling, my head going right through into the void for a moment. I try this again, and get the same void result. Okay, next time I'll imagine a new scene... too late, the dream ends.

Long dream! I think that in all this dream may have gone for about 30 minutes. It's got me excited about the Great Pyramid Task of the Year again!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #139: Kunoichi

I have a false awakening in some kind of luxury hotel suite, feeling frustrated that I failed to have a lucid dream. All of the lights are on, and a digital clock on the kitchen counter tells me that it's 4:45 AM. Okay, I still have a little time left to have a lucid dream.

Suddenly I realize that Wife isn't here and I panic. I have a false memory that she went out just as I was going to sleep and I start freaking out that something has happened to her. Two men walk into the suite from the adjoining balcony and I run at them, demanding that they tell me where she is. They look bemused by the intensity of my reaction and I wonder whether this could all be a dream. I try the nose pinch reality check and become lucid.

Ignoring these two random guys, I phase through a glass door out to the balcony. Rather than go leaping off, I float up a few feet first (just to be safe) before flying out into the early morning sky. I'm about 80 feet up, and I swoop down toward a park that I see below me, landing near a tree. I notice that the tree looks amusingly pixellated and I remember my goal of trying to maximize dream vividness. I focus on drawing out the detail of the tree, feeling its bark and studying its needles until it becomes extremely vivid.

I follow a dirt path toward a mall, scooping up a handful of reddish dirt and (for some reason) popping it into my mouth. (It tastes about like you'd expect.) At this point, there's a long segment of the dream where my memory gets a little hazy, but I recall that it was fairly long, involved me travelling through a shopping mall and flying around a bit between levels. I remember flying close by a harried-looking mom struggling to manage a pair of kids and a pair of shopping bags, a bright central area, and at one point a black guy in a purple dress shirt gives me a thumbs up when I fly by.

Finally I leave the mall through an emergency exit and emerge in an alley. A man slouches lazily against the wall and farther away a dark-haired teenage girl is sitting on a stack of shipping palettes. I look at each of them in turn and they immediately return my gaze. I'm struck by the subtlety in the way their faces move, blink, and shift so realistically.

As I'm deciding which way to go down this alley, I remember the Africa Task of the year (fix the Great Sphinx then ride her to the top of the Great Pyramid.) I decide that the Great Pyramid is just at the end of the alley, imagine it in detail, then turn around with the image still firmly in my end.

I'm shocked by how well this works. I walk out of the alley onto a windy landscape of sand dunes. In the distance I see an enormous version of the Great Pyramid dominating the horizon, probably four times larger than the real thing. Dark storm clouds roll violently above the Pyramid. At the top of the Pyramid, the wind is so strong that I see stones rolling off of the top and tumbling down the side.



I run over the dunes toward the Pyramid and as I get closer I see not just one Great Sphinx but probably a dozen of them scattered near the Pyramid's base. Some of them are in a horrible state of disrepair, but this doesn't worry me. If I can fix her nose, I can fix everything else too.

As I'm approaching the top of one dune, a pair of female ninja dressed in red appear and come racing toward me, each wielding a pair of sai. The first one leaps at me and I force-push her to the side so that she flies past me. The second I force-push directly forward and she flops onto her back on the dune. I walk past her and I watch over my shoulder as the two of them regroup for another attack. I hold out my hands toward them and jokingly say "Now kiss!" They glare at me like I'm a huge pervert and I feel a little embarrassed. (This is a nerdy reference to this meme.) One ninja gives the other a quick peck on the cheek and then they return to glaring at me.

I say something about how I was only joking and that I drank a lot of peppermint tea before bed, and as I'm going on and on explaining myself, the two ninja start making out. I realize that all my blah blah blah is only making things worse and I'm feeling sexy and distracted. I turn back toward the Pyramid but the landscape doesn't seem stable anymore. I wind up in the void.

I rub my hands together to stay locked in and start feeling the floor, trying to turn the ground back into sand so I can return to the Pyramid. I go at this for a good while. After roughly a full minute, the floor starts feeling like carpeting and I emerge in what looks like a dormitory. I walk out into a nearby hall and run into a college friend that I've lost touch with (and is notorious for being hard to reach.) I ask him how he's been and he gives me an email address (!) and promises to respond if I email him at that address. I make him repeat the promise (which amuses him) and bid him goodbye before phasing through a glass door to a second-floor walkway.

My father-in-law is standing nearby with a few elderly Asian men and women. I jump onto the railing and start pulling myself onto the awning when I feel hands grasping at my legs and shouts of "You'll hurt yourself!" and "Are you crazy?" They pull me back down to the balcony and my father-in-law starts explaining to the other DCs that I'm "special". I fly down the walkway to provide a visual aid and the DCs react by speaking in astonished Mandarin. I think about how amazingly realistic this Mandarin sounds but then think, oh yeah... of course it sounds realistic to me. It's what I think Mandarin sounds like.

I fly off of the walkway, landing in front of an entrance to the same mall I was at earlier. I decide to retrace my steps through the mall, and I pass through a store that sells little pet sweaters for tiny dogs. Little sweater-clad dogs roam everywhere. I exit the store and it isn't long before I have a false awakening back in the same dorm room, no longer lucid.

I walk outside to find that it's daylight out. NewArtemis and her husband are standing nearby. We say hey, not at all surprised to see one another. Art lays down on the sidewalk, still participating in the conversation but also trying to sleep by curling up with this big canvas bookbag she's holding. I tell Art and her husband about the dream I just had, mentioning that I went through a store "that sells sweaters for those little yappy dogs". Immediately a little white yappy dog comes crawling out of Art's book bag, dressed in a green sweater. "Seriously?" I say, feeling like a jerk. "I'm sorry." She laughs and says it's cool.

Art seems to kind of fall asleep and I talk with her husband for a while about dogs, telling him they did the right thing by not getting huge, crazy dogs like us. I look down and notice that Art's hair has changed and become really curly and sort of red. It seems weird to me but since her husband doesn't say anything, I figure this is normal. He and I talk about other random stuff for a while until the dream ends.

Asia Task of the Year! (Vandalize the Great Wall of China and battle the authorities with kung-fu.) This was the second of two lucids from last night and the level of vividness in this one was incredible. It was literally more vivid than waking life, which is such a difficult experience to describe or recapture. Pretty amazing stuff.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #137: The Great Wall of China

I have a false awakening in my childhood home, wandering into the dining room to find that my parents are hosting a breakfast. Wife is walking beside me, my folks and brother-in-law "Muppet" are seated at the table, along with Mom and Dad and a few other strangers standing around nearby. As I approach the table, I realize that I am not wearing a shirt and feel embarrassed. Then I see myself in the mirror and I look really in-shape. Now I feel better. Still seems a little inappropriate but I sit down, hoping nobody will make a big deal out of anything.

I'm waiting for the food to arrive when something tips me off that this might all be a dream. I nose pinch and breathe in and out 2-3 times. I announce to everyone that I'm having a lucid dream, get up from the table, and phase through the window to the street outside. I hear Mom and Dad telling me to wait, that I'll miss the breakfast, asking me whether I'm sure that I'm dreaming. But yeah, after phasing through the window, pretty sure.

I take a moment to make the scene as vivid as possible, looking over all of the detail that I see around me, the sound of my voice, the way that the morning air feels (chill and humid.) Thick, spiral-shaped clouds hang in the street, totally immobile and so thick that you can't see through them. When I touch them they literally feel like cotton balls pushed together and just floating in mid-air.

I walk down the street for a while, checking out my hands for inconsistencies. They look completely lifelike, with the one exception being that I can't extend my left ring finger. Every time I try, it resists me and just winds up bending again. The street is still foggy but it's a more natural-looking fog now. The other strange thing is that every tree on the street is decorated with dozens of dreamcatchers that sway in a gentle breeze. The vividness is stunning.

At the end of the street is a house with a huge wall safe mounted above its front door. The safe keeps blowing apart in an explosion, reforming, and then blowing apart again, over and over. I pass by my college friend "Bear" as I turn the corner and then come to a roughly ten-foot stone wall that blocks me from going any further. I try to fly over it but end up just doing a weak jump and having to scramble over like this was waking life. From there I enter a mall area where I announce to the passerby that "I'm having a lucid dream." Some of them look at me with some interest, but nobody verbally responds. I find an exit and imagine that the Great Wall of China is right outisde.

I exit the mall and find myself in front of a six-foot tall replica of the Great Wall of China. Now we're getting somewhere! I walk a little further down a covered walkway and see a sign that reads "Joy's Toys" and under that "Great Wall". DCs are walking into a brick building near the sign that looks like a gift shop. I decide that this is a souvenir shop that's located right by the Great Wall, meaning that the real thing is... right behind me.



I turn around and there it is! It's much taller, easily 50 feet, imposing, and really ancient-looking. I vault over a random pile of building materials to get closer. There's a small crowd of DCs gathered near the base watching as three terra cotta warriors perform some kind of odd, stilted dance performance. The terra cotta warriors take no notice of me but I figure they'll be the ones coming after me when I vandalize the Great Wall for Task of the Year.

Advancing right to the wall, I haul back and punch it once, hoping that this will break a piece off. Nothing much happens. I grab at the wall with my fingers and manage to break a tiny piece off, but this doesn't feel like the serious vandalism I was going for. I decide to go with my premeditated plan of tagging up the Great Wall with spray paint. I summon an aerosol can into my hand and start spraying out some letters:

"DV 4 LIFE"

The paint runs and blurs a lot and generally looks like a mess, but I'm still incredibly pleased. Okay, the final piece of this dream is to defend myself against the authorities with kung-fu. I turn around, expecting an enemy... and find myself face to face with a pale, doughy guy in his 40s. He's wearing glasses and is dressed in brown slacks and a rather tight white cardigan that emphasizes his belly and spindly arms.

"So you're 'the authorities'?" I ask, trying to lead him to say yes.

"Certainly," he says curtly in a British accent. He stares proudly back at me.

Immediately I try to do some "kung-fu" on him. I do this atrocious little low kick that clips the side of his left knee. Then I throw another little kick that misses entirely. This time I scream something like, "A-GOCK!!" to make it seem more like I'm doing kung-fu. It comes out really shrieky but the effect is kung-fuey. My opponent does an awkward little hopping kick that misses by a mile. We both kick at the same time and kind of clash feet. We keep throwing these terrible little kicks at each other and I keep shrieking "A-GOCK!!" Finally my awful little kicks get the better of his awful little kicks and he seems to lose interest, and after a moment wanders away entirely.

I take another self-congratulatory look back at the Great Wall and then let myself wake up before I forget anything.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #135: Caught in a Net

I'm in my childhood home, discussing a business venture with my friend "Leroy" and another friend "Crispy", someone I lost touch with a few years back. I have a false memory that we've been in business together for a long time and we're discussing the fate of a fourth partner, a guy I knew in high school that we'll call "Lucky Bastard".

Crispy wanders off somewhere and as she leaves, Lucky Bastard joins Leroy and me at a small conference table. Lucky Bastard reveals that his plan for the business is to inject hostile code into the video game Trine and upload it to a file-sharing service. I ask him how this is supposed to make us any money. He has no clue. Leroy and I look at each other. I tell Lucky Bastard that he's fired. He cries a bit and shrinks down, turning into a small gnome-like creature. I find this awkward, so I leave the room and walk down the hallway.

It still looks like my childhood home and I pass by a guest room. There's a queen size bed in there now and I see Crispy lying in it next to a man and a child, neither of whom I know. I worry that Crispy will be upset that I fired Lucky Bastard without including her in the decision but as I consider telling her, I see that she has disappeared. I become lucid.

I wander back into the hall to the living room. It looks the same except for the fact that all of the furniture has been removed. Something makes me worry about the stability of the dream, so I rub my hands together a few times. This helps, and I remember my plan to use my voice for added stability. I do a really loud yell and it comes out really low, roaring, and generally bad-ass. The walls of the house shudder.

Now I'm feeling like a bigshot. I try to yell "Clarity now!" but the words catch in my throat. I try again, and once again there's this awkward catch in my throat when I try. I feel humbled and a little embarrassed. Not wanting to get too caught up in this, I phase through the window out to what should be the front yard. Instead of this, though, I find myself standing by a pool.

A few different people are sitting around the pool in beach chairs. One guy who looks sort of like Jared Leto asks me whether I'm "from DreamViews". I tell him that I am and he says that he is too and that he used to go there a lot back in 2010. I don't really believe him but I decide that it'd be smart to give him some kind of password just for fun. I make something up and say it to him, and he nods, committing it to memory. (Too bad I forgot it immediately afterward. )

I stand at the edge of the pool, preparing to jump into it for Task of the Year Australia. I want to put a bunch of sand and corral into it and make it turn into the Great Barrier Reef like NyxCC suggested. As I do this, a tan guy dressed like a lifeguard stands there watching me. I'm a little uncomfortable that he's staring at me, but I go ahead with jumping into the pool.

I jump in a cannonball style so that my butt will strike the water first. But just as I hit the water, somehow the lifeguard is scooping me out of the pool with a leaf net. He says something about how unsafe what I'm doing is. I'm very annoyed by this and as I stand at the side of the pool contemplating what to do, I wake up.

I hold still for DEILD and after a little bit, a half-dream of an alleyway starts taking shape. I can navigate a bit but I'm not yet part of the scene. I can feel my arm sort of tucked behind the pillow and I try to imagine it waving around in a repetitive motion, hoping that this will draw me in. I try for a while, but after a bit the alley scene collapses.

I go for DEILD again, and get sharp auditory HI of my son "E" going "Yeah!!" followed by Wife saying, "Don't teach him that kind of thing!" It's very realistic and I'm pulled too far out to continue the dream chain.

An insane chain of eight DILDs, DEILDs and false awakenings from this morning. Completely crazy! I apologize for the length, but it was a ton of dreaming. I gave the dreams headings to hopefully make the breaks clear. What a ride!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #129: Map of the World

Choline
I'm standing in the kitchen with Wife as she holds our two-year-old son "R" in her arms. She asks me when I was planning to take my choline bitartrate. When I tell her that I've already taken it, R starts to wail pathetically.

"How could you take your choline without letting him watch?" she says, annoyed at my apparent thoughtlessness. "You know that he loves that!"

I'm stammering out some excuse when it occurs to me that this has to be a dream. My vision goes a bit crazy and I go more or less blind. I fumble my way around the kitchen, feeling my way from the countertop to the breakfast table and sit down heavily in a chair.

"Are you okay?" asks Wife. I really think that I'm dreaming but I feel uneasy enough that I nose pinch and blow through. Suddenly, my vision is dominated by a huge still-frame close-up of my own unshaven face shouting something. Other than that, I'm still blind. "Are you okay?" she asks, more insistently this time.

Highlander
I have a false awakening back in bed, still suspicious that I'm dreaming. Wife snuggles closer to me and I hit the nose pinch, blowing right through again.

Wife rolls on top of me and sits up. I feel excited about where things seem to be going but rather than doing anything amorous she starts saying strange stuff about the Highlander series of movies: "Did you know that Michael let us borrow Highlander I through XV? I didn't even know there were fifteen. He and [female name] love those movies."

The Full Xanous
Another false awakening back in bed, and I roll out immediately. My vision is very blurry and the whole dream scene feels wobbly to me. I think that I need to get myself anchored in and I remember my intention to try the technique of "making out with the dream scene", suggested (jokingly) by DarkMatters and put into practice by Xanous. I'd promised to try to test this so I could talk about it on a future podcast.

I move around to Wife's side of the bed. I briefly that I can test this method by just making out with Wife instead, but I realize that I'm just telling myself that as an excuse to get frisky with her. Instead I attack the corner of the mattress, totally making out with it. The sheets feel like t-shirt material against my tongue. After a moment, all sensation disappears, and I'm awake, my mouth kind of moving around. (In waking life, I believe. Pretty embarrassing. )

22:48
I DEILD into a bedroom scene and roll out. The computer monitor on the nearby desk is on, which it rarely is. The computer is showing the old Windows XP "Bliss" background with the grassy hill. The computer's clock reads "22:48".

I want to get out of the house, so I try to dive through the window. It feels oddly gummy, though, and I wind up with my torso stuck through the window. On the other side I just see blackness. I decide to back out, imagine a new scene, and try again. I'm about to make another run at it when I sort of fall back into...

Amazon
A false awakening where I'm lounging on a window seat in a sunlit room. A group of three women are standing nearby, laughing and chatting over stories about their kids. I nose pinch reality check (blowing through) and get up from the couch. As I stand up to my full height, I notice that one of the women is really tall (probably about six feet even) and very fit. As I walk nearby, she turns to look at me -- long brown hair, probably mid-30s, and very good-looking.

She starts walking toward me and it occurs to me that if I don't get away, the dream's probably ending in this room. As she joins me by the window, my quick internal deliberation ends in a verdict of "worth it". After about 20 seconds of making out, I wake up.

The King of the Colosseum
I quickly DEILD into a scene where I'm standing in my bedroom. It's very dark, so I let the void overtake me and start rubbing my hands together. I get onto my hands and knees and feel the floor, imagining sand between my fingers, thinking that the Colosseum is all around me. After a while, I can see the sand, and then the stone walls of a huge chamber. It's not the Colosseum I see, though, but more like a huge throne room with no ceiling. It's close, but just not quite right.

At the other end of the room, a cartoon king sits on his throne. He's a slimy-looking Jafar lookalike dressed in flowing red robes, and I think that he'll make the perfect opponent for Europe Task of the Year (the Colosseum battle.) As soon as I decide this, he lunges from his throne and charges toward me, a scimitar in his hand.

As he closes the distance, I decide to summon NewArtemis to help with the fight. "Jafar" is moving too fast, though, and he's practically on top of me before I can even start the summoning. Not even close, I'm on my own. I try to swing a sword at him, but in spite of my expectations, my hand is empty. My movement seems to surprise him, though, and as he stands there unsure of how to react, I grab his hair with my left hand and strike him hard on the side of the neck with the edge of my right hand.

His head pops cleanly off in my left hand. There's no gore involved, and the injury doesn't seem to slow him down much. The head spouts a series of angry curses at me before suddenly changing into the head of penguin. This shocks me into...

Map of the World
Another false awakening in my bedroom. I decide to get out of the house the direct way this time, running out of the master bedroom, vaulting over the baby gates as I move down the stairs (both gates higher than in waking life), and phasing through the back door into the yard. It's early morning now, and the pool has overflowed into the now-swampy back yard. Random objects like boxes and beach balls float in its waters. Floodlights are strung up in the trees all around me, shining brightly down on the yard.

I marvel at these changes before hopping over the fence. Rather than the neighbor's yard, I find myself in a construction site near a pile of steel girders. I try to fly, but I can't seem to get off of the ground. I walk for a while, moving past a cage composed of chainlink fencing where they're holding some kind of Little League practice. As I pass by, the kids and parents keep trying to talk to me about baseball, but I ignore them, trying to stay focused on the Colosseum.

As I walk further on, I somehow end up on a ledge on the side of a building, high above the city, with nowhere to go. I try to fly again, and this time it's easy. I shoot upward to an incredible height, moving all the way past the clouds, higher and higher until I can see the world laid out under me like a map. Some of the continents are even labeled in flowing calligraphy. I pick a spot below me, deciding it's the Colosseum, and fly downward. I'm shocked, though, when I land after flying only a few feet downward. Now I'm standing on an enormous stone floating through space. The "world" has disappeared entirely, and I'm walking on a painted mural of the Earth.

With nowhere to go, I suddenly remember the success that bemistaken just had with closing her eyes and mentally teleporting. I close my eyes, imagining the Colosseum. Without meaning to, I think of the possibility that I'll wake up when I open my eyes. I'm really worried about this, and I start hurrying. This flows into...

Commercial Break
A false awakening in what looks like an office kitchen. It's the early morning and Wife is here with me eating a bowl of cereal and watching a small, staticky television set. On it, two Russian men are arguing about photo editing software.

"Sorry if I woke you," she says. "I knew you'd want to see this!"

"I wish you'd let me sleep," I whine. "I was having a lucid dream."

"Oh really?" she says. "It sounded like something erotic was happening."

I think of saying something like "I only made out a little with a six-foot-tall woman" but this doesn't seem like much of a defense. So I just say, "Well, that's embarrassing."

"Ew," she says, wrinkling her nose and going back to her television program. I finally nose pinch, realizing that the teleport didn't wake me up at all! All of this was expectation. I get excited thinking about this, and the dream falls apart, finally ending this crazy chain of dreams...

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #127: Hagia Sophia

I'm touring a new school for my son "E" that's exclusively available to children who lucid dream. E is in his "level 2" class, and his teacher, a short, friendly, gray-haired lady is showing me around the room. It's a large classroom with basic carpeting and lots of little beds and sleeping nooks everywhere. All of the kids are running around, and I remark that if I had the opportunity to just sleep all the time for school, I'd definitely do it. It occurs to me that I might be dreaming right now... and it turns out that I am.

"I'm having a lucid dream right now," I tell the lady, and head for the exit door without waiting for a reply. I phase through the glass to find myself standing by a harbor in the early morning. There are two amphibious helicopters floating idly in the water, pontoons on their skids. I wonder whether this kind of helicopter really exists.

I remember that I want to find the Colosseum, so I start flying to get high above the water. I emerge from a light covering of fog that I hadn't even noticed, finding myself in a landscape of gently rolling hills that are covered with tightly packed buildings. I tell myself that the Colosseum is one of these buildings and that all I have to do is find it. I see a building that catches my eye, but instead of the Colosseum, it's Hagia Sophia.



"I know the Colosseum is here," I say, expecting it to glow (a trick I've used in the past.) "Show me where it is." A small site off to the side of Hagia Sophia starts to glow. It looks too small, but I fly toward it anyway. A sudden gust of wind starts pushing me in the opposite direction and turning me away from the glowing site. I decide that this wind is trying to carry me to the Colosseum so I won't get lost. It turns me all the way around so that I'm looking out over the endless ocean. I'm worried for a second that it's going to leave me facing out to sea, but it dutifully turns me around and starts moving me back toward Hagia Sophia and the glowing spot nearby.

The wind carries me all the way to the spot, and it's nothing more than a tiny plaza with a small raised platform of stone. I land, and when I examine the platform I find a small button with what looks like a glowing, golden bear's paw on it. Okay, hopefully this button will take me there. I press the button, and my vision is covered by a pop-up message like something from a video game.

The message contains two lines of text and I feel really intimidated at the thought of having to remember it. I try to lock the words in place but I feel like every word I'm not looking at is trying to change. Keeping them all steady feels like playing Whac-A-Mole and it's dawning on me that I should stop obsessing about this. As best I can remember the message says: "Use 4 parts of Vendarite to increase strength"

I'm not sure what this means, but I figure that in a lucid dream I can be as strong as I want to be (and have as much "Vendarite" as I like, for that matter), and will the message to close. I feel like something is happening to the plaza and that it's shifting in some way, but the dream soon ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #126: Mad Dog

I'm sitting in my childhood bedroom on my old bed. I look out the window and some thug-looking guy in a tank top is standing outside by a parked car, loafing around with a somewhat overweight girlfriend. As I'm trying to figure out what's going on, I unintentionally make eye contact with the guy and he starts mad dogging me. I quickly look away but out of my peripheral vision, I see him walking aggressively toward my room. Great, what's he want?

The guy reaches behind his back and draws a revolver from the waistband of his pants. I dive out of the room into the hallway as a gunshot blows through my window. I'm surprised by how soft the sound is. I think that it's so quiet that nobody might hear it. Will anyone even hear it and call the police? I duck into the bathroom, waiting there for a bit before baaaarely peeking my head around the corner to look out through the office window down the hall. But the guy is there, too, and fires immediately.

I scramble to the back of the house into my parents' bedroom, but I see the guy circling around to the back yard. I can't believe how hard he is to shake, and I realize that this is all a dream.

Relaxed now, I head back to the front of the house, walking through the hallways, through the den to the front door. I phase through the front door out into the street to find the car (and my assailant) gone. I'm trying to remember my goals but absolutely nothing is coming to me. I don't remember the Colosseum, I don't remember my intention to summon NewArtemis, nothing. I think that I'm supposed to be working on Advanced Task of the Month and that it has something to do with California. (Totally wrong.)

I decide to explore, hoping it'll come to me. I fly up into the air for a while, soaring over my old neighborhood. I fly over a creek at one point, but I don't get to explore very long before the dream ends.