All DJ Entries

This was a fun little WILD and attempt at Advanced Task of the Month. It's been a while since I've had to navigate my house and I'd forgotten how challenging it can be. Darkness seems to lurk around every corner and I'm always trying to just get out. Couldn't do that for this Task of the Month -- had to head further in.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #78: The DreamViews Drive

I'm getting consistent hypnagogic imagery of the den of our house, so I feel like I'm getting close. I focus on staying aware, and after a few more flashes of the den, a fully three-dimensional picture emerges. I will myself to roll off of the couch, and my dream body complies. I check my hands and feet and everything looks normal. No extra fingers or troll feet. The carpet feels very realistic as well and I mentally confirm that there's no reason I would have fallen asleep downstairs.

I give the coffee table a little shove with my foot and it glides over the carpet. Okay, now I'm really sure it's a dream. I walk through the den past my computer, stepping on a bunch of the kids' toys as I go. Strangely, there's a laundry basket in the middle of the floor. I give the laundry basket a hefty kick and it goes sailing into the air and flies straight out the window. I'm quite amused with myself.

Outside there's just a hint of light, like it's the early morning. I don't think it's possible that the sun's up yet, but it makes me feel more urgent and focused. Since I'm in the house, I want to find the note that I left for myself for Advanced Task of the Month. I have to get back up to our bedroom. I wonder whether I'll find myself there. The thought of my sleeping body makes me feel a little wobbly, so I imagine instead that Wife is lying in the bed by herself. I wonder whether Wife's DC will be interested in "victory celebrations" if I can complete Advanced Task of the Month. (Menthol, is that you?)

I walk through the kitchen, dining room, and den, past the pool table to the stairs. For a moment I think about trying a pool shot, but decide that I'd better stay focused. I'm pleased that the baby gate is missing from the bottom of the stairs. Halfway up, though, I see that this dream house has the baby gate installed in the middle of the stairs. "That's not real," I think, and phase through it.

The upstairs looks really, really dark. I notice a light switch on the wall next to me. I try both of the switches several times, but each of them just controls the air conditioner instead of the lights! Every time I flip one of them, the air conditioning rumbles to life and I feel a light stir of wind.

I'm not sure what to do, so I just charge ahead. The darkness starts to get really bad, and I realize that I'm about to lose the dream. I grab onto the banister as darkness sweeps over me. I produce a gladius in my right hand and start swinging it around in the void, still clutching the banister. I stay like this for quite some time, not losing the dream but also not going anywhere. It feels like at least 30 seconds. I fail to formulate a good transition to a new scene (or a way back into the existing scene), and I either fade to black or lose lucidity...

It's a clear morning. Wife and I are in a car, pulling up to a two-story brick house to pick up my best friend F. F greets us at the door and comes out to inspect the car we're driving, an amazing classic car that looks a bit like a '55 Chevy Belair. Wife goes inside the house and I tell F that he and I should go for a ride. I hand him the keys and he drives.



As we start down the street, I tell F, "Man, I just had a lucid dream before we came over here. I've got to enter it into DreamViews." He says cool. There's something like an old-style typewriter embedded in the car's console. I know that if I type the dream into this typewriter it'll automatically get posted to DreamViews. I marvel at how convenient this is. I congratulate myself for renting such a wonderful car.

While I peck randomly at the keys, I ask F whether he's had any lucid dreams lately when he's commuting on the train. He says no, and we talk dreaming for a bit. I say something about dream signs and I mention that one of mine is "really bad driving." He laughs and says, "You mean like this?" He hits a quick 3-point turn and floors the accelerator, sending us streaking back toward the house.

"It's a rental!" I whine. "Be careful, man!" It's a residential street and he's doing 60 mph, easy. We're almost back to the house now and he hasn't slowed down one bit. I'm distracted, too, because I'm still trying to type my DJ entry into the car's typewriter-thing. Now I realize that I don't have a seat belt. I alternate between blubbering "It's a rental!!" and "There's no seat belt!!" As we hit the driveway, I throw in, "I don't want to die!!"

F cuts the wheel hard to the left. There's a squeal of rubber and the car stops a few feet from the house. I'm relieved to be alive. I'm not angry because I assume that he just didn't hear my complaints. "I was trying to tell you, man. I don't think my side has a seat belt!"

He laughts. "Nothing's going to happen to you, man!" I get out of the car and see that it's turned into a convertible. I get it now. "F! This is a dream, isn't it?" He's walking inside the house and I hurry after him, the dream growing dark. Fade to black...

So just for the record, I've gotten lucid three times in the past four days. >.> But I haven't felt like recording them because the one from Tuesday just totally disappeared from memory, and the one from yesterday I remember basically nothing of either, but I remember all of the non-lucid bits both before and after it. I guess I might add that one in here.... But the first one, I want to say that nothing important happened. But I might just want that to be the case. ._. There's really no way to say for sure. The second one... I'm pretty certain that the only thing I did was phasing, which is of course nothing new for me. I remember experiencing it and everything, I just don't really remember the experience itself. Oh well, the one from last night very much made up for it....

Oh, and for the last few days I've been taking 400 mg of L-theanine a day, divided into two doses of 200 mg with one in the morning and one in the late afternoon or early evening, usually.

Yesterday

#1 - But why are we in a skyscraper to begin with? [Non-Lucid]

I was in some school class in a huge skyscraper in some downtown area, and there were random people I graduated from high school with, this girl who sits behind me in my speech class I'm taking this semester at college, and my parents, for some reason. There was a massive storm coming our way with tornadoes visible through the windows and everything, and I was holding my mom's hand as we were all scared. There's a flashforward and things get hazy, but I remember seeing people evacuate but thinking that it wasn't on the same day but it was the same "windy season"....

#2 - Who would build a bathroom like this!? >_< [DILD]

The details of this have gotten hazier since I didn't care to write it down at first, but there was some gigantic computer mouse whose cord stretched all the way across some city streets, and it got pulled away and I tried to chase it but lost track of it. I remember seeing my old high school friend AB's car, but then things get blurry.... This is around where I became lucid and phased but then my next memory picks again at the non-lucid point. :T I was spending the night somewhere with AB, M, and these guys J and Ma who I met through M. The next morning, I woke up and started blasting some really heavy club music and M got excited, and her boyfriend D, who's suddenly there, turns to me and says something like "We can catch up later." I then realized that I needed to go change my clothes so I went to the bathroom to do so, but there were big windows all over the door so it was very easy to see inside. Everyone was oriented in the direction of the windows, but just not looking directly into them, but of course it was making me very uncomfortable at the thought of starting to change. J was saying maybe they should turn in a different direction, but then I woke up.

Today

Last night, I took 250 mg of choline bitartrate immediately before going to bed. I'm fairly certain this had an effect, particularly on the lucid.

#1 - This would have been great to become lucid for!! [Non-Lucid]

I was playing some bizarre new PSP game the whole time, and there actually was something going on in the rest of the dream too but I pretty much missed it all because I was so focused on playing, so I don't really remember the plot anymore. What I remember about the game was that it had a setup where you had a team of playable characters that reminded me of the structure of NIS games, but it was mixed with a simulated life raising element like chao from the Sonic Adventure and Sonic Advance games, and the actual creature and level designs were sort of Pikmin-like. I really wish I could've played more of it because it seemed really interesting, but that's about all I can recall of it, and I remember walking up stairs or something maybe to see my speech professor... but no more solid details than that.

I woke up from this dream with a very strong headache. I'm fairly certain that my head was smashed into this part of the backboard of my bed and that's what caused it, because the pain slowly went away in a way that I can only relate to when you wake up with a numb arm and it slowly returns to normal, but it was my first time having that type of thing happen so I can only guess. But I really hope that that's what happened because otherwise it would mean I woke up with a severe unexplained headache. >___>

#2 - I could've told them this would happen... somehow. [Non-Lucid]

I was in a high school PE class (though I think the setting might actually have been my elementary school, sort of?) with O and people kept trying to give him balls that corresponded to different sports, but I remember equating these to video game weapons in my mind and thinking that they were doing it wrong because they didn't realize that "his growth charts are unique". Eventually he decided to play what I think was registered as either baseball or golf... but it's really just a bunch of balls bouncing around and people chasing after them with no clear goals. He makes the "winning play" I believe when at least one of the teams is "frozen" at 23 seconds left on the timer, but it switches to this weird TV view for it that only shows symbols to represent the player. He was excited that they run, but due to the odd way I saw it play out I asked him for verification that he actually was the reason they won, claiming that "they only showed the overhead", or some such nonsense. Suddenly he got all depressed at the thought because he didn't realize that he had won it, he thought he was just a part of it, so we asked some other guy and he said that that was the case. Suddenly O sank into despair, and this guy PR who I've known since elementary school tries to ask him what's wrong and cheer him up or something, but he proclaims that he may never play that sport again, and then walks out of the gym all dejected as class ends. On the way out I was trying to think of a way to explain his reaction to PR, but I couldn't really think of a good way to phrase it before I woke up.

#3 - I think it might have been inspired by Buffy? [DILD]

This was an odd driving dream, and I'm fairly certain I've had something like this happen before.... Basically, I was driving home in the snow at night, and I was stuck driving from the back seat where there was an accelerator but no breaks. As a result, I was forced to drive very slowly and frequently take my foot off the gas so that I wouldn't gain too much momentum. I have no idea why I didn't think to just climb up to the front seat, but I know that there was a car driving behind me too, so maybe I just didn't want to mess with the situation and cause any trouble. We came over this bridge in my neighborhood, and then when I turned on to my street it was suddenly daytime. Somehow I managed to go too far beyond my house though, and then this car started coming down the street in the other direction right for me, and I perceived someone else as being in the car with me at this point too, but I don't recall ever seeing anyone.... I started thinking "shit shit shit" because I couldn't stop the car or change the direction it was going in very easily, and then we ended up headbutting the other car. This is all unbelievably vivid... perhaps a mix of the supplements and the adrenaline boost? I started trying to rationalize this situation because I didn't want to have to actually be in a car crash again, and then I thought to myself "Wait, could this be a dream? This whole thing is pretty odd...." I climbed into the front seat and by then I had a feel for my state of mind and was sure of it, so I became lucid.

At this point I looked around at the street and the sky and just stared. This was one of those lucids that leaves you completely in awe from start to finish as you repeatedly tell yourself "There's no way a dream could be this real." As I looked over the neighborhood, there was no distribution of focus as in a regular dream, it was all fully rendered as a single image. It seemed exactly as if I was seeing it in waking life in every way, minus the snow. I ended up driving back down to where my house was (and I think it was using my first car which is long gone), and when I got there my house was pretty different. It was tall and thin, spanning multiple floors, whereas the real one has only one floor and is much more wide than tall. There were also large windows spanning most of the front face, and it had some kind of Greek-esque architectural design for what looked almost like a tomb on the ground floor, and it was covered in plant vines and everything. There was some large inscription at the top of this part, which was totally made out of stone, and I didn't get a good look at all of it but I do remember seeing the word "SOUL" in large print. Again, this was all extremely vivid. I wanted to go inside and check it out, as the front door was still right there where it should have been in the middle of that framework, but about that time I started feeling a headache again and woke up.

*sigh* That would've been cool to explore. That headache, too... not the real one, but this one in the lucid. It felt like the ones I get when I smoke too much or the last few times I tripped. I'm really starting to wonder if it's hippocampal in origin, and if the choline brought it out.... I guess this break from smoking will probably help in more ways than I thought, because it's going to be annoying if that headache keeps making an appearance in lucids. :/ Hopefully it was just a one-time thing though, and overall I still consider this dream very successful.

My attachment and affection for familiar DCs came back to bite me in this one. They are so lifelike that in the moment they feel every bit as real as the actual person. I love my DCs but I may need to learn to get better about leaving them behind in certain situations.

And I finally had the phase through a solid wall that I've been looking for! That's progress!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #67: All That You Can't Leave Behind

I'm sitting on a carpeted floor talking to my friend BS about strength training, in particular his recent deadlifting injury. At some point, he offers me responsibility or a promotion of some kind, saying that I will be level "17+". It occurs to me that I almost always communicate with him online rather than in person and I become lucid.

I see that I'm sitting on the floor of my master bedroom and BS has vanished. I know that I'm dreaming but the scene's almost distressingly vivid, sort of like a very realistic FA. Our laundry basket is in the middle of the floor but otherwise the room is impeccably organized. Yeah, definitely a dream.

It looks like it's early morning and Wife isn't in the bed. I want out of the house to work on some tasks so I decide to phase right outside Alyzarin-style. I walk up to a wall that leads outside, imagining that it's not really there. But when I try to walk through it, it stops me. This time I imagine the house having that entire section of wall missing, but my phase attempt is still a failure.

I take a few steps back and make one final run-up, focusing my mind on the fact that none of this exists... and pop right through the wall to the outside! My left shoulder slightly clips the window on the way through and a few stray fragments of glass fall with me to the driveway below. It may not have been the prettiest thing, but I'm happy to have finally phased through a solid wall again!

I'd been looking at pictures of Angel Falls during my WBTB and it's fresh in my mind. I Hulk-jump hundreds of feet into the air, willing myself to land at Angel Falls. Instead I come crashing back to Earth on a broad downtown plaza next to a long row of elegant, sculptured water fountains. The plaza is busy this morning and working men and women walk purposefully past, seemingly oblivious to my landing.

My 3-year-old son E is standing here watching the fountains. A few kids are playing in the fountains and I get the sense that he wants to join them. "Hey buddy!" I say. "I'm dreaming all of this."

He pops his thumb into his mouth. I think that he's getting way too old to still be doing that. "That's a lucid dream!" he declares, and smiles slyly.

I bend down and give him a hug. "That's right. We'll talk about this tomorrow. For now I'm going to take you with me." (I haven't thought through how dangerous it probably is to jump off of Angel Falls with a toddler.) I hoist him up to my shoulders the same way that I do every evening during part of our after-dinner walks. But somehow the lift feels awkward, strange, and too heavy. He slips out of my arms and crashes down to the plaza, landing hard on his forehead.

He wails in pain and I hurriedly bend down to scoop him up. I'm terribly upset, bordering on losing lucidity. I check his face and I'm relieved to see that he's unmarked. I hug him tight to me as he squalls in my ear. I'm too emotional to hold the dream together and I wake up.

I couldn't resist coming back just to post this quick little entry. Number 100!!

Catch Me If You Can [DILD]

I didn't make too much of an effort to remember the pre-lucid part of this dream, but what I do recall is that I was looking at multiple crazy new colleges with my old high school friend N, and he was interested in one specifically where there was this big paintball arena. Actually, I think he went from wanting to be in it to actually already being enrolled there, because he got to go into the arena while I had to wait outside (not that I had any burning desire to play paintball). However, around this time I became lucid and decided to see what the arena was like. All I knew of it so far was that it was totally inside and just set up like a maze with tall walls you couldn't see over that you had to find your way around in, and it was totally inside but there was plenty of lighting since the ceiling was still far above the walls. I started moving forward to phase through the wall into the arena and I was reminded of a discussion I've been in recently. I noticed that I was vividly aware of the solidity of the wall in front of me, but I was still able to drop that awareness willingly and pass through it without any trouble. As I did so, as opposed to normal how my perception just kind of blips, the entire wall was slowly decomposed into lines that disappeared as I fully got from one side to the other, and it was actually really cool, there were even little sound effects for it. This whole situation made me think back to this hacked character my cousin and I created on Super Smash Bros. Melee years ago, with a code that made it so that by pressing different button combinations you could activate or deactivate the collision detection for any map, and in combination with an infinite jumps code (to prevent you from just falling straight through the map to your death) you could basically hide in certain parts of the map until someone came by and you would jump out to attack them. I started acting off of the same concept in the dream. I would phase into a wall and wait there until a paintballer or two came by and then I would come out when they weren't looking and confuse them by running off and then phasing into another wall before they caught me. I was just having fun messing with them, but I allowed myself to stand totally still in one of the walls for too long and the dream sort of phased out and I lost lucidity. The dream briefly restabilized with me parked on the side of the rode somewhere with my car acting really weird and uncontrollable. I can't remember exactly all what went down, just that I got out of the car to look at it and suddenly realized that I was naked, and then I saw that there was another car full of people parked nearby who could just see me standing there totally clueless and I felt embarrassed. And I think that's the last thing that happened before I woke up.

And that's that.

This was really a lucid fragment followed by a short DILD. Ah, there was so much unrealized potential in this dream! Way too short for all its promise. Some phasing progress though!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #65: A Short Soliloquy

I'm standing in a rain forest clearing, standing in a shallow pool of clear water with my 3-year-old son E. I realize that this must be a dream. I immediately think of jumping from Angel Falls for Task of the Year.

E seems to read my mind because he panics and starts scampering around, squeaking, "Don't want to go! No! No! Don't want to! Don't want to go!" I try to get him to calm down but I quickly wake up.

I lay there and try to DEILD, but nothing comes. I flip to my back and start some fast SSILD cycles. I am halfway through the second cycle when I lose consciousness.

It's nighttime and I'm standing in E's darkened room, reflecting on the nature of life, illusion, and reality. I think, "Everything is just an illusion." I quickly realize how right I am.

I look around and see that E's bed and E himself are both gone. I hold up my hands, looking first at the palms. I bend my fingers into claws, noting how realistic my hands look. At some point, I stopped getting so many distortions and extra fingers, it seems. "My hands are an illusion," I whisper to noone in particular.

There's very faint moonlight trickling in through the plantation shutters of E's window. I say, "This wall is an illusion, too." I remember Alyzarin talking about how easy phasing became once she internalized that every wall was nothing but a picture that only she could make real. What could be simpler or more obviously true than that?

I imagine where I'll be when I step through that wall. I move toward the wall, thinking of the Colosseum. But then I have a vision of the top of Angel Falls. It's far more vivid, so I go with that.

As I pass into the wall, it feels like nothing more than mist. My vision cuts to milky gray and I vividly hear splashing water and the shouts and greetings of friends. People are already here waiting for me, but who? Is it people from waking life? DV members preparing to do Task of the Year? Suddenly I wake up. I try to go back to sleep but it's too late in the morning to transition back in.

#129 There Is No Wall WILD

I am deep into HI/HH. For some reason I remember how CanisLucidus likes to sleep on his stomach. "I hear him say have you ever tried it on your stomach?" My dream self rolls over halfway on my stomach. I can feel the blanket over my face and I begin to feel strange whirling spinning sensations. I was amazed how much better a WILD attempt this was. I focus on the sensations for a few seconds. (I didn't notice until later that I felt zero vibrations like I usually do. I am actually glad that this didn't throw me. Never give too much attention to the noise. Passively monitor it.)

Then I feel my wife in bed poking my ribs and telling me to wake up. I try to ignore her. But she keeps doing it. I say to her, "Stop it pleeeease! I am trying to have a lucid dream and you are waking me up."

I never open my eyes but I roll over to my back. She is still moving the bed around and saying to wake up. I realize this probably not really happening. I tell myself over and over that she is not real. I decide that I just need to get out of here. I can still feel a slight grip from the sleep paralysis making me move slow and awkward. But I manage to stand up without too much trouble.

It's dark in the room but I manage to see my hands clearly. I open the bedroom door and find myself in a long hallway. The dream is still blurry and insubstantial but I realize this is not my house. Something reminds me of my ex in-law's house. I begin to believe that's were I am. The dream comes together now and that exactly where I am. I make it to the living room and pause for a second. I think, "If this is their house then which wife is in the bed? Past or present?" I decide that I really don't want to know or want to be here so I continue out the front door.

It is really dark outside. I think the only way out of here is to just fly away. I see the sun coming up the west. I find that slightly funny as I start to fly up. Then, I get lost in the void and feel the dream breaking up. I decide to just go back to the ground and stay inside. For some reason the dream wants me here.

I go back inside and visually stabilize myself. I wonder around the living feeling slightly triumphant. I think, "Haha bitches I'm in your house and your not even here!" I explore the house some and realize there is very little clutter or furniture. Every thing looks spacious and organized. I see a small white wooden door with no knob in a random spot on the wall. I use expectation to make it open to some place else. Nope. It's a small closet with a water heater.

I walk around the wall into the kitchen and then back into the living room. I see a clear spot on the wall separating the living room and kitchen. I think maybe I can draw a doorway with my fingers to get out of here. I make a motion with both fingers at the top but realize my hands phased into it. HA phasing! I think about reaching past the wall into the space beyond. My hands pass through fine so I thrust myself into it. My arms get softly stuck at the elbows. I pull back and stare at the wall. I say, "There is no wall. There is no wall." I really focus on believing it. I think about the space beyond the wall again as I jump forward. I feel a slight sensation like a cool mist of water pass over me. I feel grounded on the other side but all I can see is the color of the wall. I think about the other side and what it should look like. The dream stabilizes.

I look around the kitchen/dining room and see the back door. I really want out of this house! I have TOTY on my mind and want to move on. I can see the door is open but the screen is closed. I can see outside and it is total darkness. I feel really confident from phasing and decide to take a risk. Without thinking things through I rush forward flying head first into the door and throwing it off its hinges into the darkness. I say,"This leads to another planet!" (why?)

I am now engulfed in the void. I feel spinning sensations. I relax myself like in any other DEILD and try to focus on seeing something. I think about the Colosseum a bit while I wait. After a while I wake up.

This was a fairly short little lucid, but I did get some phasing in and felt really happy throughout. And I guess I really like galantamine. LOL.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #60: It's Just a Phase

I'm walking around in my childhood bedroom, practicing lucid dreaming skills. Somehow, though, I'm not actually lucid. (This was a strange feeling.) I'm trying to fly around the room but keep bouncing off of the walls and ceilings. I try shouting "L-dopa!!" like in my previous lucid dream, but even this doesn't do much.

After a while, I feel discouraged. I'm standing by the window wondering what to do when I realize that I wasn't really lucid yet, and everything that had gone before was just me robotically acting out some sort of pseudo-lucid script.

I'm suddenly on the bed again, and everything now feels really vivid. It feels like an OBE except that I'm getting up out of my childhood bed, not the one my physical body's actually occupying. I move to the window again and look out into the street.

The mini-blinds are partially closed but I decide to phase through both them and the glass, get outside, and go play. I push myself through the window, right hand first and pop out in the front yard. It's pretty dark out but when I look at my hands, they're clear and detailed. (Undistorted, too, just like the previous lucid dream.)

I start running, overcome with joy. As I race down the empty street, I gush without a hint of irony: "Galantamine, how I love you!" (That is so freakin embarrassing to type now! ) Darkness descends before I get very far, I don't properly prep for DEILD, and the dream ends.

This lucid was fueled by pure desperation. I've never fought this hard to save an LD that was going bad, but it paid off. I'm getting a lot of mileage out of this gladius thing.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #58: Generosity and Giants

A young woman named "Crystal Fleming" is collecting money for a charity, and I've pledged $33.13. I'm proud of my "generosity" and totally thrilled that I've found exact change down to the penny. But now I can't find Crystal. It's night, and I trudge across a snowy field to a picnic table where I think she might be waiting. But rather than Crystal, seated at the table is my friend W.

This is unexpected, and as soon as I question whether I'm dreaming, I know that I am. I tell W, "Gotta go, this is a lucid dream." His face is harshly lit, stony, and expressionless. I realize we're in a small, dark room now, getting darker by the moment. I head for the exit, but the scene fades...

Now I'm in the dark. I'm desperate for a lucid dream, though, so there's no way I'm letting this one go. I start swinging a gladius (ancient Roman sword) and willing myself to be in the Colosseum for Task of the Year. On top of this I shout, "This is still a lucid dream!"

I hear Wife muttering and rolling over nearby, and now I'm scared that I'm really yelling and waving my arms around in the bedroom. I want a lucid too badly to stop trying, though, so I jam the index and middle finger of my left hand into my mouth and start chewing on them. This all feels totally real, but I decide to ride it out to the end. If I look like a psycho, I look like a psycho. I'm not dropping this LD.

Suddenly, a sharp new dream scene forms: I'm standing on our bed, fingers in my mouth, swordless right hand swinging madly. The scene's extremely vivid, but there's a slight motion to everything that I see, like I'm slightly drunk. I hop down from the bed and run out into the hall.

The hallway outside of our bedroom is totally transformed. The carpeting is bright pink and the room is decorated floor to ceiling with stuffed animals. There's an exit to the right that doesn't exist IWL, so I explore it, curious where it leads. I find myself in a new hallway with a tall picture window overlooking an early morning street scene.

I phase through the glass out onto the street. The street is wet as if it rained overnight. A few cars pass by, headlights on. It looks like a work day that's just beginning. I fly up into the air, but my confidence isn't what it should be. My altitude is low and my speed's really pitiful. There's an entrance to a mall food court nearby, and the dream seems to be ushering me toward it. I don't resist.

In spite of the early hours, this food court is packed. It's a two story mall, so I try flying again, getting about 6 feet off of the ground and doing that slow drift again. I spot my reflection in the exit door on the opposite side of the food court. Except the reflection isn't me flying -- it's my 6'8" Uncle J walking toward the door with me flying over his shoulder. He looks solid, substantial, and real, while I look like some kind of phantasm. I look down, and he's not there. But in the glass's reflection, he's solid-looking and completely realistic.

Now I can't decide whether I'm me flying toward the door or if I'm my gigantic uncle, lumbering toward the exit on foot. I switch between feeling like I'm the one flying... then the one on foot... then both...

I raise my hand to phase through the door. Uncle J's reflection does the same. The phase fails. From below, an attractive DC calls to me, saying, "Hi! Come down here." The LD's starting to feel thin and I float down. The DC is about 30 with long, dark hair, and attractive almost to the point of absurdity. I remember reading Waggoner during my WBTB and want to ask her what she represents. I feel weak and insubstantial, though, and my voice is just a hoarse whisper. She looks at me, arms crossed, a wry smile on her face and the scene fades to black.

This lucid was long enough that I became legitimately concerned about remembering it. This worry wound up being a bit of a downfall, but it still took me in interesting directions.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #57: Gladius and Darkness

I'm experiencing deja vu as I walk through an airport terminal, sure that I've dreamed of this place before. I note all of these little details that I believe my mind left out of the dream version of this place -- the color of the carpeting, the man arguing at the ticket counter, the way that the ceiling curves into a dome in this room. Then I hear the sound of hurried little footsteps. Someone tells me "E is looking for you!" (E is my oldest son.) Now I'm lucid.

I hear E shout playfully from somewhere further down the terminal: "Looking for Daaaaddy!" I know that we're playing hide and seek. I eagerly set off, loving the idea of playing like this in an LD. I move through the terminal and wind up in a series of twisting, narrow office hallways. Other children run by me, possibly engaged in their own games of hide and seek.

As I'm moving through these hallways, a little hand swipes the back of my leg and E declares, "I got Daaaaddy!" I move toward E to scoop him up but he laughs and runs in the opposite direction. I follow but almost immediately I've lost him in the hallways.

I wind up back in the airport terminal and wander through there a while longer before coming to a craft table. Wife is standing at this table wearing a smock and molding some sort of clay. I walk up to the table but she doesn't acknowledge me. I grab a piece of clay and tell her, "I'm having a lucid dream." She responds in essence that I should "show her" what that means. (I don't remember her exact words.)

As I begin molding the clay, it starts foaming and fizzing until the entire surface is covered in a layer of foam. I wipe the foam away bit by bit and underneath is a carved image of a human face. Wife looks astonished. I tell her, "I'm telling you, being lucid is the way to go."

She hands me a round piece of glass. "Make me a picture of a Christmas tree." I nod, take the glass from her, and rub my hand across it once. Instead of a Christmas tree, I produce a little stained glass picture of an eye.

Wife looks at it. "Nice. But that's not a Christmas tree. I thought you said you were having a lucid dream."

A bit baffled, I shrug and say, "I don't know what to tell you." She goes back to her crafts and I walk further along in the airport terminal. I'm loving the experience of being lucid again and I suddenly fret that I'll forget everything that's happened. I try to recall everything that's happened up to this point, but this destabilizes the scene. Everything collapses into darkness.

I remember that Xanous had talked about handling "dark scenes" by acting out some action like riding a bike or running. I want to perform a Task of the Year, so I will myself to have a gladius in my hand. (The gladius is a sword of ancient Rome.) I swing the sword back and forth in the darkness, imagining that I'm locked in a dark tunnel underneath the Colosseum. I can hear the crowd now, and I know that the gates will open any moment to let me out for my match. I'm nervous with anticipation. I try to remember whether I have to kill for this task, and think that I do.



I see a blob of light forming in the corner of my vision. I'm filled with fear and nervous tension. But just as I'm bursting with anticipation, the crowd noise dies down and the blob of light forms into a high window in the hallway of a university. My vision is badly distorted around the edges, almost as if I'm wearing a shredded contact lens.

The window is about 15 feet above me, and I float up to it to start phasing through the glass. The phasing is difficult and awkward. It feels like I'm dragging my body through thick plastic wrap. I finally make it through and then I'm flying over a park in the mid-afternoon. The dream feels thin now, and I fly only a short distance before waking up.

I'm just playing catch-up here a little bit. These are the dreams I have recorded from the past couple of weeks that I haven't uploaded yet.

#1 - Hmm [Non-Lucid]

I was in a bed in a dark room with A, this girl that I know through some friends that one of them has a crush on, and T, a different friend's old roommate. T wasn't very involved, I could just hear him moving around. I was giving A a full-body massage. Afterwards we all got up and walked to a classroom, which was just down the hall from the room we were in. Hmm.

#2 - Kenny Dies [DILD]

Most of this dream is blurry in my memory now, but I remember it starting with me, my old friend D, and Kenny from South Park all being chased by someone. We were going through some obstacle course connected to a mall or something and we were trying to escape from a room that was filling up with water before it was too late. At one point D and I turned around and saw Kenny floating in the water, having drowned. D looked shocked and said "Oh my god, they killed Kenny!" I jumped up and said "You bastards!!" I tried to go after him but D pulled me away, and then my memory gets hazy again.... The next thing I remember is walking outside the mall in the parking lot and becoming lucid. There was some cool pattern in the clouds, but I can't remember what it was now. I decided to walk through the mall and gathered up a crowd of DCs around me all chanting a mantra of stability with me, something like "this dream is long, vivid, and solid". While we were walking around I was also picking up various pieces of furniture in the store effortlessly with one hand and hurling them across the store. I was really worked up and this girl next to me did part of the chant wrong, so I looked over and said "No!" and shoved her headfirst into a glass wall. It didn't break, she just hit it really hard and then fell over. When I saw that it was actually someone I know and like in waking life I felt bad, and I picked her up and sat her down on a chair to see if she was alright. After that I started getting kind of unfocused and the dream ended.

#3 - Too Much Energy [DILD]

The main thing I remember about this dream is that I was pissed when I realized it wasn't real, because it was going really well. I became lucid around the time I was doing all these crazy calculated flips around this huge auditorium that were really fun and impressive as hell, and then when I realized what was going on I just had endless amounts of energy. I got really unfocused and just started grabbing stuff and throwing it all over the place until I woke up.

#4 - Back Once Again [DILD]

I was back at my old middle school with O and we were visiting our old orchestra teacher Mr. L. Afterwards we somehow got lost in the crowd and became part of the student body there, so we started trying to find our English class that we were supposed to head to next. We realized that we needed to pick our schedules first, so we started walking to the office and on the way we saw an old friend of ours wearing this cute sweater that I own that looked totally weird on him. X) We were also on the second floor of the building and I could see a tower of people stacked on top of each other coming up and leaning in our direction from the first floor visible beyond the railing. >_> Around this time I became lucid, and I ran into the girl M in the hallway who I haven't seen at least since we graduated high school but who I knew since kindergarten. I walked up to her and said "Hey, girl." She came up to me and I grabbed her and ripped her shirt down and started groping her and kissing her neck, but I got a little too into it and the dream faded away.

I took 50 mg of zinc at dinner the night that this next dream happened. I like to think that it had an effect.

#5 - More Summoning And Possession Practice [DILD]

There was some weird school stuff going on this dream before my memory really cuts in. The first thing I really recall is becoming lucid while packing up my stuff in a dark room. I wasn't immediately lucid enough to break out of this action at first, so I started repeating a mantra "electricity works in dreams" while I kept trying to turn on the lights and use my cell phone light to help me find stuff. It worked to an extent, and some of the lights showed up or got brighter if they were already on. My cat was also in the room with me but walked out it and down the school hallway at some point. I decided to walk out to the hall myself and followed it down to a large open area in a very fancy hotel-type building. There was also a large window spanning several stores to the left of us that was visible because every floor ended in a balcony. I decided to fly forward and grabbed a sofa with people sitting on it with my right hand as I passed by it, and I phased us through the window. Outside I could see groups of people eating dinner at tables below us, and I chucked the couch at one of them and then just moved on without even really watching what happened. I flew higher up to where there was a rooftop balcony with no covering and saw a family eating dinner or something. I decided that I wanted to see if I could summon a whole group of people, so I flew a ways over to the next rooftop thinking that I wanted to see a small group of gossiping women. When I got there it worked perfectly, there were four women in classy dressed gossiping about something at a table, and they didn't seem to take notice of me. I decided to possess one of them but it didn't go completely smoothly, and the other women started looking at me (as her) and asking if I was alright, I was making weird faces trying to adjust the feeling. I finally started getting situated but then my libido started ramping up and it woke me up. Man, if I could just control that feeling without waking up more often....

That's it for now!

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #55: Number Games and Ninja

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He thinks for a moment. "22?"

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

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

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

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

12-22-2012 -- I am at the old Hickory house, though oddly enough, with a lot of new people around the place. I can vaguely remember bits of walking around the house and finding places that I have dropped bits of money (mostly the occasional $5 bill?), and I am happy to find them again, so I am not completely broke.

Meanwhile, though this is the Hickory house, Lorenzo still changed all the locks [something that happened a few days ago where I currently live, some 25 years after the last time I was in the Hickory house], and for some reason I feel I need to have a spare key to hide somewhere, in case I lose or forget mine. Oddly I find he is keeping the spare keys in the toilet water tanks. It feels disgusting looking for the keys there, even though these aren't the parts of the toilet that get disgusting.

Soon I find myself relaxing in my second bedroom, though as usual, people and animals keep popping into the room through both doors. I start mumbling to myself about getting locks for my own doors, and everybody is shocked and surprised at this for some reason. Seems perfectly reasonable to me, though.

There is somebody walking up the path toward the front door, and I can see them through my window, but then suddenly they kind of phase directly through the wall and are standing in my room without going through the front door. We're both kind of shocked by this, and neither of us know what's going on or how it happened, we just know it is very unusual.

Anyway, I ask the guy what he wants, and he tells me he heard my music blaring (Oh! So that's what that noise was. I wondered ... it was giving me a headache! [Yes, in my dream I didn't realize my stereo was blaring and I was hearing it until somebody else pointed it out to me.]) and wanted to know if I might be willing to make copies of some of my old CDs for him.

The stuff that I have been playing (without knowing it) was old Christian rock music from perhaps the 70s and 80s, stuff like Petra and the like, and he wants a copy of the stuff. I don't feel comfortable with the idea, and I am worried that he is trying to trap me and get me in trouble for piracy or something, but I don't seem to be able to stop myself, and am trying to gather stuff together for him.

Meanwhile, one of Rosemary's grandkids is coming in, saying the Christmas party is starting, and I have to come in and join them. I don't feel like it at all, but I know there will be a fuss if I don't come out, but I explain it will be a few minutes, and go back to looking for the CDs so I can make copies of them. I can't find them, and suddenly I remember they were in my backpack, out in my car. I walk out the front door to the parking lot (never mind we didn't have a parking lot at the Hickory house) and though I look up and down both rows of parking spaces, my car isn't there! Dang thing has been stolen again!

I stalk back in the house, ranting and raving that my car has been stolen again. That makes something like the third time this month! Why?!? Why do they keep stealing my car? It's old, beat up, not very good, why do they bother? Everybody else wonders why I am ranting so much, and says I ought to be used to it by now. We'll call the police, and in a couple of days, they'll have it back to me as usual. I point out that my backpack was in the car, which means I've lost it as well, and all my school books, and I can't afford more, so now I am going to fail all my classes, as well.

[Yes, if anyone is new to my dreams, for some reason my car is always being stolen in my dreams. Never once in real life.]

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #44: Pool Care in the Temple of Zeus

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

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

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

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



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

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

This is from November 21st, I just didn't get around to typing it all up before.

Early in the night I originally fell asleep on the couch in the living room in front of my laptop, then I woke up a couple to a few hours later and shut down everything in the house and moved to bed. So that technically makes these with a WBTB.

#1 - Creeper Nightmare [Non-Lucid]

Throughout this dream, for some reason all of the windows in my house had open blinds and were larger than normal, making it very easy to see into the house from the outside at any point. It was really creeping me out because in the house next to mine which was visible through the windows there were these four guys that kept peering around corners or over fences to just stare at me in a really freaky way, and then they would start laughing when I got anxious. Even when I tried to go out front or out back I would see them watching me from somewhere. At one point I was even crawling around on the floor in the house and reaching strategically over and around objects to avoid being seen by them, knowing that they were just out of eyesight staring into the window. Eventually I just got pissed, and I went out front, walked over to their fence, and jumped up on it in one swift movement. This is not uncommon for me; my dream self seems to think that walking on fences is fairly normal, though still something to be considered significant. I ran along the top until the second floor balcony of the next door house (which doesn't actually exist, it's a one-story house) and leapt over to it. I went in through the door and walked up to one of the guys who said "Oh shit!" and looked shocked. I was ready to smack a ho, but then my memory of the dream gets really blurry and I just remember there being something about my old friend T, I saw him for a second... but then, I woke up. Ah, well.

#2 - Modeling Assignment [Non-Lucid]

I was at some big school function where they paired us up with different students and had us take tests and do modeling jobs and stuff. There was some girl there that I was just trying to be nice to for some reason, and I remember lending her a pencil, but then she still got totally pissed at me for something. However, AB, this girl I used to know since elementary school but barely ever talked to since then, got up and started defending my honor with some long speech. Oh, also, I think for most of this dream, or at least this part onward, I was JY, this guy I also knew since elementary school. No idea why, I haven't thought about him in ages.... Anyway, like I said, we were paired off and we were supposed to be doing a modeling gig. For ours they were expecting us to submit some comic we'd made, but my partner was the one who had it on him and he didn't show up. I tried doing the gig myself and they told me my image was nice but it needed more, it had to be both of us or neither. I decided to go walking around the mall/school looking for my partner and somehow ended up back at my house. (My real house, not JY's house.) I was in my parents' bedroom and I decided to just jump back on the bed and give the guy a phone call. I told him the situation and he said that he had to ditch to go to a dentist appointment. I just said that that was fine because the school was just pushing us into it anyway so I didn't really care that much.

#3 - Nothing Wrong With A Little Bondage [Non-Lucid]

I was at some kind of station waiting for transportation with my parents, and there were these two random girls standing not far from us. I turned to my parents and asked them if the train that just left was the one that we were supposed to be taking, and the girls startled giggling and said that it was actually a bus. I just responded that we call it a train where I come from. It was clearly based on a train from around here, so I wasn't wrong lol. Eventually a couple more arrive and we got on a different one from them and I get a third-person view (from outside and behind the train, though it may have become a bus considering what we did next) of the train swerving through traffic and over all these crazy highways that bend at impossible angles. It basically looked like a huge video game obstacle course set up all around some big city full of skyscrapers. The dream then transitions to when I'm already off the train and I'm at a mall restaurant of some kind meeting up with M, some random DC, O, ET (heh, not the extra terrestrial), S (5 hits, for self-reference), and maybe C and a few others. We were going to do something though I can't remember exactly what now, and this random guy walked up to me and kissed my hand. I just patted him on the back and said "Sorry, I'm taken." and moved on, and I saw a friend comforting him as he walked away. Then, ET just up and decides to grab me by the arms from behind, pick me up, and hold me locked in some bondage position to parade me around the mall for everyone to see. At this point many of the people in the crowd were suddenly in fetishy outfits, and everyone was just staring at me amused as we went by. And yes, it was awesome. >.> I could hear the whole gang talking about movies or something behind me, but I never got back into the conversation before the dream ended. I had a brief false awakening where I typed up most of the previous dream on my phone, almost letting it fade from memory. Luckily, I still remembered it well upon waking for real.

#4 - And Now The Creepers Can Fly ;-; [MILD]

In this dream I felt that I was visiting home for the holidays, though I'm not entirely sure where exactly I would've been visiting from. I was wandering around outside on the side of my house by the next door neighbors' fence and I saw some random girl followed by SC, this girl I knew in middle school, breaking into their yard through the fence. The girl was saying that it's just something she likes to do to mess with people so they have to take the time to clean their yards up. Now this next part I really have no memory of at all, though I really wish I did. Instead, I'll just have to quote it. "Then some old guy comes running by and uses me as an external pacemaker for a second." I go back inside my house through the garage and see the girls sitting out back and think that something must be up because they should still have been in the neighbors' yard. I approach our back door and think to myself "Alright, if I can fly right through it then this is a dream." I leapt off the ground and went right through the door and wall and flew into the sky. I was excited, but immediately after the happiness set in and I turned around slightly and saw some creepy guy flying right behind me. I had an adrenaline rush and the scene transitioned into my bedroom, and I was convinced that I'd ruined my shot. I almost lost this dream to a false awakening as well, but thankfully I woke up shortly afterward.

This failed "Task of the Month" attempt ended up being a great time. I'm so happy to be getting more flight time after all of the trouble that I had with this initially. I was sure that I was doing to meet a Dreamviews member in this one but it just didn't quite happen!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #23: Halloween in the Sky Fortress

I'm walking through the mall with my friend T. We encounter a scrawny old man that I recognize (wrongly) as a professor at the university that T and I attended together. The "professor" excitedly describes his latest invention -- a self-propelled wheelchair that is guided and powered by your mind. With that, one of these wheelchairs pops out of an unseen hole in the floor, scoops T up, and starts racing around with him.

T shouts in protest, insisting that his legs work fine. I decide that this is completely insane and I become lucid. I ignore T and the professor, and they lapse into silence. I can see daylight coming in from around a corner so I start moving toward the exit, making my way through a food court that's packed with dream characters. Sprinting toddlers and their harried parents crisscross my path but always move aside in time for me to pass. I'm tempted to check out the food but my desire to get outside is stronger.

When I reach the automatic glass doors they don't open. For some reason, this doesn't worry me and I press my left hand straight through the glass. (I think that I owe this to reading about all of melanieb's phasing yesterday.) I phase the rest of my body through as well, feeling a slight chill as I pass through.

When I get outside, it's parking lot as far as the eye can see. The day is mild and breezy and all I can think of is what a perfect day it is for flying. I float up nicely but get hung up in the mall's entrance overhang. There are a few moments of grinding where for some reason I have trouble turning my perspective. Fortunately I manage to force myself sideways just far enough that I break free and shoot up into the sky.

Straight ahead there are hills shrouded in fog. I'm eager to avoid turning so I fly toward the fog, imagining that in these hills is the neighborhood where all of the Dreamviews folks are. (I want to perform the "trick or treat" Task of the Month.) As I near the fog, the wind increases to a howl, pushing upward and against me. Rather than force forward progress, I imagine that I am going the wrong way and that this wind is trying to guide me to the real Dreamviews neighborhood.

I turn with the wind and it carries me upward the way that a thermal column lifts a condor. This feels amazing! I'm being carried toward some kind of sky fortress. The "sky fortress" is an enormous collection of buildings connected by a tangle of walkways and I know that this must be where the Dreamviews neighborhood is. Dream characters move unafraid along the narrow, unrailed walkways and I see guards armed with rifles patrolling some of the paths and rooftops.

I arrive at a row of townhouses. Above the front door of each townhouse floats bubble letters that spell out the owner's name. The row stretches as far as I can see in either direction and most of the names are unfamiliar to me. I do see "Xanous" above one of the doors and I fly toward it, imagining that there's a huge DV party going on in there.

The door has a television screen in front of it that seems to show what's going on inside the house. I'm astonished that the screen displays a prairie dog splashing around in a big bathtub. "Xanous?" I ask. The prairie dog stares at me, a bit shocked. He barks, "Phil doesn't just open the door for anyone who knocks!" I can feel myself growing confused but don't know how to regain my composure. "Are you some kind of bodyguard? Are there Dreamviews people in there?" But the dream is beginning to unravel and soon I'm awake.