All DJ Entries

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.

This was the second of two LDs from last night.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #54: Into the Gray Matter

I'm seated on a train, looking out the window as a grassy landscape rolls by. An older lady sits down on the seat directly across from me so that we face each other. She tells me that she’s AH's mom. (AH is a friend from way back that I've lost touch with.) I'd never met her mom before, and we chat pleasantly for a bit. But soon I realize that AH's mother passed away before I'd even met AH herself.

The mother looks at me suspiciously the moment that I become lucid. She starts rocking in her seat, waving her finger at me, and hectoring me about why I chose that seat on the train and what business did I have on her train, anyway? She's speaking to me so aggressively and angrily that I'm taken aback. My fresh lucidity can't bear up and the scene blacks out. I refuse to believe that the LD is over, though, and I wait just a moment before I hear voices.

Through the darkness, I clearly hear Wife saying, “Sorry, guys, it’s time for bed.” I can hear my kids laughing and running around. It’s very loud and sounds incredibly real. Out loud, I say, “I know that I’m still asleep and that this is still a dream.” My voice, too, sounds shockingly real, and I can’t help but worry that I’m saying all of this in waking life as well.

I feel the kids hopping around me on the bed, but I remind myself that this is just my dream body feeling this, not my real one. My son E bounces nearby, gleefully saying, "Daddy's sleepin! Daddy's sleeeeeepin!" It seems so real that I feel like my lucidity is in jeopardy. I raise my voice until I'm almost shouting, "This is a lucid dream" over and over.

Suddenly, the voices stop and I find myself viewing a simple office that contains only a swivel chair and a desk with a hologram projected over the top of it. The hologram is a fully 3-d, semi-transparent projection of a human brain. I find that by thinking about it, I can rotate this hologram to the left or right.

I have no dream body, but as my curiosity grows, I find that I can move my viewpoint throughout the room, and I zoom in close on the brain. My perspective sinks into the brain itself and I zoom closer and closer until finally I can perceive individual synapses. I see neurotransmitters flowing across the synaptic cleft! To me they look like small, clear beads or little bubbles. I wonder what kind of neurotransmitter I'm looking at.

I watch this strange interplay for a moment, wondering whether I’m looking at my own brain or someone else’s. I travel around inside of this brain for a while before I wake up.

Nowhere near a success, but at least the Task of the Year is on my mind!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #53: The Cestus

I’m in a bathroom, looking for a stall to use. I don't feel desperate, but I'm not being very careful as I swing one open. Inside I find a guy standing there peeing right into the drain on the floor. I bleat, "Sorry! Sorry!" as I try to hurriedly close the door. But unfortunately, the stall door has completely disappeared, leaving me no escape from this excruciating situation.

I’m embarrassed for him peeing into the drain like a barbarian and I’m embarrassed for me throwing open the door like an idiot. I stand there marinating in the awkwardness for a moment before it becomes so painful that I have a false awakening into...

...the same bathroom. I don't buy that I woke up in a bathroom, and I become lucid. The bathroom is empty now and I’m standing by a sink looking into a mirror. I note that the stall doors are all closed again and that I badly need a shave. I cannot handle the idea of leaving a bathroom without washing my hands, so I'm glad that the faucet works. I don't see soap anywhere but fortunately I manage to get over this.

I head outside into the hall and it looks like the hallway of a dark hotel, deep blue carpeting and flickering fluorescent lights. I can go left or right and I choose left. When I head to the left, though, I see a writhing black cloud of smoke at the end of the hall. It looks like the smoke monster from Lost. I mutter, “I’ll pass...” and head back the other way down the hall.

The electric lights flicker for a moment and then the whole scene starts to darken and press down on me. I rub my hands together and the details feel real, down to the deadlift calluses at the pinky, ring, and middle finger joints. When I do this, there’s an electric crackle and the lights come back on. I walk for a long way down the hall but somehow it just seems to get longer and longer. I want to either find a DC for basic Task of the Month or get to Rome for the Colosseum battle Task of the Year. I start to feel fretful that I'm going nowhere and the scene fades to black.

I feel it coming, though, and I relax and prep for DEILD. Another scene begins to form. I’m walking through a concrete structure that looks like a parking garage or the innards of a stadium. I’m wearing something like a cestus, a nasty-looking, studded leather wrapping around my hand. This isn’t the Colosseum, but I feel like I can turn this into the “Europe” Task of the Year. I’m armed and the location seems like something I could massage into the Colosseum with a little effort.



But I notice that I feel like I’m no longer able to breathe. The breath simply doesn't feel like it's coming anymore. I know it has to be an illusion but the sensation is terrifying. I try to relax and wait for this to play itself out but some part of me panics and I wake up.

This was the second of two lucid dreams from the morning of New Year's Day.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #52: The Obsidian Tower

I'm in a doctor's office, waiting awkwardly nearby while he examines some patient that I don't know. I'm a bit bored, so I think about the morning's previous lucid dream and how close I came to not recognizing that I'm dreaming. Things start to feel strange to me, so I hit the nose-pinch and become lucid.

I walk out of the office into a hallway and start looking for "Exit" signs. I'm excited to see one at the end of the hallway. I follow it and happily, there's another leading me further on. A tightly-packed group of DCs strolls through the hallway, taking up the entire thing. I "excuse me, excuse me" my way through them and work my way to the next "Exit" sign. This one points me toward a stairwell.

I begin to worry that I'm very high up so I decide that I need to get downstairs as efficiently as possible. I leap over the railing, intent on jumping my way to the bottom. Unfortunately, I just land in an untidy heap. A lady walking up the stairs nearby yelps when I crash-land. She hurries toward me and asks, "Are you okay?" It's pretty embarrassing. I tell her, "Thanks, but you don't need to worry about me."

I hop back up and then leap over the next railing. It goes much better this time, and I hop all the way to the bottom like this, and it's probably 6-8 stories' worth of stairs. There's a long hallway at the bottom and as I walk along it, two boys of about 12 go running past me, one chasing the other. The boy in front is holding a handwritten note and the boy in pursuit says, "Give that back!" I stop them both, saying, "That's mine now", and pluck the note out of the first kid's hands. They register no objection to this and quickly wander away.

The note has 6 bullet points, each with a sentence. At the bottom is a phone number with the area code "666". (Yikes!) I read every sentence and try to memorize them, but they're very random and strange. One was something about the sky. I really work at the memorization task but the content is so random that it feels hopeless. After I've read the note, I follow another "Exit" sign that leads me outside.

I'm in a large, outdoor courtyard on a foggy morning. Across the courtyard from me is an obsidian tower made entirely of glass. It rises high into the fog and its top is entirely out of sight. I remember my goal of seeing the Pyramid, but this tower has really grabbed my interest. I float up into the air and start guiding myself toward it. One lady in the courtyard shouts, "Wait, how are you so tall?" I wonder for a moment whether I'm just growing to an enormous height and not flying at all. I double-check -- nope, there are my feet. (Oddly, they are clad in loafers.)

I start involuntarily flying backward away from the tower instead of forward toward it. I decide to see what happens if I simply turn around and put my back to the tower. Fortunately, this works well and I keep drifting toward the tower (now at my back) as I rise. I whip through several layers of fog before perching on the tower's stone roof.

My friend AJ is seated up there, looking out over the city. "Congratulations!" she says. "It's a great view from up here." I have to agree. The sky is brilliantly red now, and somehow I can see the courtyard far below, almost as if the fog was one-way. I can in fact see a great deal of the city from here. I wonder whether the people that I'm looking at can see me back.

"So what am I doing all the way up here?" she says.

"I'm not sure, but I think you've got it pretty good. I had to work my ass off to get up here!"

She laughs and soon my vision fades to black. I try to DEILD but then AJ says, "Hey, you're actually still up here. You just can't see anything." I try to think about what I could do to get my sight back, but in a few more seconds, I'm really awake.

This was the first of two lucid dreams from the morning of New Year's Day. What is it with me and holiday lucid dreaming?

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #51: The Thragian Age

I'm walking around a museum during a special event about "The Thragian Age". There are cool, semi-magical artifacts displayed all around, including a floating stone wheel that turns on its own and glows with strange white energy. A waitress offers me a drink from a tray. She's dressed in a sparkling blue skirt and a jeweled mask that I assume is also from the Thragian Age. I wish that I was better studied in this "Thragian Age" (or had heard of it at all.)

Wife walks up to me dressed in running shorts and a t-shirt and says that she feels "underdressed". I say, "Me too. And I'm tired. Let's nap." We curl up under a nearby table. I feel momentarily frisky but quickly reconsider when I remember where we are. I decide that while I'm sleeping, I might as well try to WILD. I close my eyes, wait for a dream scene to form and...

...find myself walking outside along an empty road, fully aware that I'm dreaming. It's also clear to me now that the previous scene was also a dream. I feel happy and confident as I jog along the road and start narrating to myself: "I'm in a lucid dream and I'm going to fly to the Great Pyramid." I take to the air near an overpass, swoop under it, and head for a distant set of mountains.

I fly for a while when the wind starts blowing against me. I really try not to fight so hard this time, saying, "Show me what you want to show me." I relax, and the wind turns me back toward the city. I fly for a while over houses, tree-lined streets, and people milling about in their yards.

The sun is bright and the wind is cool against my skin. A gust from the side makes me bank toward the city's downtown. I'm no longer concerned with visiting the Pyramid and I'm just enjoying the peace and the moment. I fly for a while longer, but before I reach downtown, the dream ends.

This was the third of my LDs from early Christmas morning. This WILD was rather nightmarish, but in the end pretty amazing. Hands down, the most hostile DCs that I've encountered.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #50: The Gauntlet of Greed

The WILD drops me into a wood-paneled room. There's a door in front of me, and behind me is a frosted glass window through which sunlight illuminates the room. In the middle of the room is a huge, square pile of $100 bills. It has to be, at minimum, something like $30 million. Probably more.

Someone starts shouting and hammering on the door. I feel grasping and suspicious that it's someone who is after my money. They slip a note under the door that simply reads, "You're broke, bitch." I should find this funny, but instead I feel insulted, entitled and petty. Not in my LD, not when I'm sitting on this much cash. There's a chorus of angry voices outside of the door now and fists and feet are slamming into the door. It's about to rattle off the hinges.

I throw the door open and I'm stunned to see a broad hallway filled with literally hundreds of hostile dream characters. The enraged mob (all male) is armed to the teeth, aggressive and bristling with guns. Somebody punches me in the face just as a mobster aims a lupara-style sawed-off shotgun at me. The crowd howls, and I see AKs, handguns, machine pistols, and every other manner of gun pointing my way.

They open fire and I feel a spray of bullets trace across my body. Buckshot rakes the left side of my face. Everything is chaos as stray bullets rip into DCs, who fall to the floor and are trampled by the others as they run toward me. I know that nothing can hurt me but I'm still gripped with aggression, fear and nervous energy. A man in a trench coat is unlucky to get close and I punch him as hard as I can. He goes flying, crashes into the wall, and lies still.

The chaos is getting to be too much for me and I feel lucidity slipping. I hate that I'm fighting and the madness of the whole situation dawns on me. Am I even sure that this is my money? Do I really want to go to war with some unknown element of my subconscious over this worthless pile of dream cash? I decide to just walk forward, leave the money behind, and separate myself from the riot going on all around me.

DCs continue to run past, firing at me and occasionally striking me with fists and feet, but as more and more of them run into the room behind me, the hallway ahead clears out. I hear some kind of frantic melee going on in the money room but I ignore it. The few remaining DCs that run past now ignore me and as I continue forward through the hall, I soon find myself alone. I feel calm again, and the thought of the Pyramid refocuses me on my goals.

I pass a large window on my right that gives me a view into a busy newsroom. Reporters run excitedly from desk to desk but I don't investigate further. The exit is up ahead, and I find that it is the same set of automatic doors from the last dream. I again imagine that the Great Pyramid lies just beyond the door, but this time the dream fades just as I approach the doors.

This was the second of the three LDs I had early Christmas morning.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #49: Turtles All the Way Down

I'm sitting in a large classroom with a bunch of friends and coworkers. The teacher hasn't arrived, but it's all right -- we're seated at long desks that are covered with candy like turtles, caramels, M&M cookies, miniature pecan pies, Reese's... all kinds of goodies. Everyone is stuffing their face and having a great time.

I suddenly have a false awakening into a small dormitory room with a cot. I feel like I'm late for something so I spring right up and walk out the door, emerging in the same classroom that I just left. Everyone is still feasting.

I sit down next to my friend "Leroy" and tell him and several other friends and coworkers nearby that "You're not going to believe this, but I had a dream that this would happen. The classroom, the candy... everything!" Everyone seems happy to hear this and they plow into the turtles, caramels, and other goodies with even greater abandon. It suddenly occurs to me that this is also a dream, and I could keep "waking up" into this room of candy forever.

I turn to Leroy and tell him that this is a lucid dream, inviting him to follow along. He eagerly hops up and we stride out into the hallway. I hesitate for a moment when I realize that I forgot to try any of the food, but decide to focus on getting outside.

We get to a set of automatic doors and I imagine that outside these doors is the Great Pyramid. As I approach the doors, I catch sight of the Pyramid... it's just through the door, stretching so high that I can't see the top. But as the doors slide open, the Pyramid suddenly changes into just another generic city building. I feel a little surge of emotion but it dies out quickly. We keep going.

Leroy and I turn right and continue down the street past some food carts. I see people from my past and I explain to M who they are and why they're appearing in the dream. "That girl across the street? That's JG. I went to middle school and high school with her but haven't seen her since graduation. I still run into her brother sometimes." Now JG's brother appears. "Oop, there he is."

There's a stadium up ahead and to our left. I tell Leroy, "That's the stadium from when we were in school but it looks like I've placed it next to a side street like the one by my high school stadium." I turn to look at Leroy and see that he's trailing far behind, looking lost and unfocused. I realize that I'm not giving him much attention and it's probably time to cut him loose. It isn't long before he fades entirely from the scene.

I reach a parking lot from which I think that I see the Pyramid on the far horizon. I leap up into the air and start floating but can't seem to get any forward momentum for flight. As I will myself to fly forward, a counterwind blows against me, and I totally lose my cool. It's only seconds before the dream collapses.

This was the first of three LDs from early Christmas morning. This was my first time directly experiencing a creative work of my subconscious. I was grateful for the few minutes that I got, but I'd have enjoyed more. Some other night!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #48: The Arcade of the Subconscious

I am "in" a side-scrolling video game that's drawn in the style of a pencil sketch. My avatar is a small stick-figure man who runs, jumps, and shoots his way across a grassy landscape where boulders roll and hop all around, presenting a constant danger of smashing him flat.

I dart back and forth as boulders bounce over my head when I randomly realize that this is all a dream. The dream stays perfectly stable and I am able to continue playing further into the game. I (or my stick figure man) shoot at a boulder that's rolling toward me and find that within four shots it bursts into harmless fragments.

I continue running further along the track and all the while more and more boulders make their way onto the playfield. It's getting difficult to avoid them and I'm starting to feel pretty stressed by the difficulty. A new enemy presents itself, some sort of mole that tunnels underneath the floor where I'm walking and blasts a huge column of dirt up at me. It's a big distraction, and it's not long before a boulder strikes my player, knocking him horizontal (and presumably dead.)

The game ends immediately and cuts to a title screen. Why can't I remember the title? I watch the title screen, hopeful that it'll let me continue playing. After a few seconds of this, the game switches to a demo mode where I am no longer in control. I'm contemplating what to do about this when the dream ends.

This was the second of my galantamine dreams from last night. The beginning and middle were fun. The end? Not too good.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #47: Lost in America

The wind is loud outside but the noise suddenly settles into a murmur. I know that I'm close to a WILD, and soon... I'm in a light rail station, holding hands with my son E. The floor is red brick and the sky above us is clear. Tall buildings surround us on all sides. I don't recognize the buildings, but for some reason I believe that this is New York.

I tell E, "Well, buddy, we're in New York. This is... well, this isn't real, but it's a train station." He hops around, pointing gleefully at the train. I walk with him to the opposite end of the station.

The train starts to move, and E suddenly breaks away from my grip and runs toward it! I'm panicked at the site of him running carelessly toward that train and I run after him. He stops short of actual danger and I grab onto his hand, making sure I've got a good grip this time. "E, you can't do things like that! If you're going to run off, we can't be here."

I take him with me out to a parking lot and our family car is waiting there. There's a small memory gap here, but I'm pretty sure that the car didn't have child seats, but I just ignored this. We're driving in the neighborhood where I grew up. E is there at first but after a few blocks I look back and he's gone.

I pass a set of kids that look like they're fighting. I can't tell what's going on but it looks like someone might be taking a beating. I jump out of the car, forgetting that it's still moving. To my dismay, the car keeps going, turns the corner by itself and drives out of sight. The kids disperse, and nobody seems upset anymore. There's another memory gap before I find myself being shown a house by a real estate agent who looks kind of like CSI's Marg Helgenberger. She calls herself "Madge" and the house has a beautiful, open interior. I'm impressed with the place and wonder if it's similar to any other houses I've seen IWL.

When she takes me into the back of the house, though, things take a horrible turn. The rooms in the back are dark and smoky with makeshift drapes blocking out the sunlight. Drug addicts are passed out all around the place, laying on beds, floors and furniture. Some of them twitch occasionally and I see one man whose leg is streaked with blood. Madge seems mildly embarrassed and says, "It does need a little fixing up."

When we get to the bathroom, I see a clearly dead man lying in the tub. I panic, probably lose lucidity, and run back down the hall. Madge is running too, but the hallways have all changed. I can't find my way back to the sane part of the house and my panic collapses the dream.

A wild chain of false awakenings and DEILDs finally led me to a most interesting encounter with Wife's DC, who was even more irrepressible than usual. This was the first of two lucid dreams from last night's session with galantamine.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #46: The Blind Man, the Bully, and the Nerd

I'm in the kitchen with Wife. I'm talking to her but I'm almost completely blind. I'm embarrassed by my blindness, convinced that it's some side effect of the galantamine that I just took. Rather than seek medical attention, I try to slink up to bed so Wife won't know. Unfortunately, she keeps asking me to hand her things, and I flail around the kitchen knocking things over. "What's wrong with you?" she asks. I have a false awakening into...

...sitting on the floor of our living room as my 1-year-old son "R" runs around me. My vision is dim but I can see better than before. I'm still convinced that I'm suffering from some kind of bizarre galantamine side effect. R is sprinting around the room, pulling objects off of tables, knocking stuff over, and tossing various knickknacks into the recycling bin. I try to stop him, but he just laughs, squirting right through my arms when I try to grab him. He says, "This is so fun, Daddy!" and I briefly become lucid, remembering that he's way too young to speak like that.

I quickly wake up but keep my eyes shut and hold still for a DEILD... and I find myself lying in a bed in a room I don't know. I get up, ready to explore. A strange, gnome-like creature with a hooked nose hops off of the floor and gets in my face, waving his arms wildly about. He's about three feet tall, covered with warts, extremely agile, and very annoying. He brags to some unseen listener: "See? I can stop him from doing what he wants in this dream!"

I try to leave the room but the little gnome keeps hopping up in my face, cackling and poking at me. He jabs me in the eyeball and I get incredibly angry. I grab the gnome by the throat, push him to the floor and hold him there. He growls and kicks his legs, but he isn't able to move. Even though he's immobilized, I'm so out of control that I still punch him once, hard right under his left eye. I immediately feel terrible about this and release my grip, allowing him to scamper away.

I stand there brooding about this for a moment before the gnome walks back in. He no longer looks disgusting and infuriating, but just like a small little man. I tell him, "I'm sorry that I hit you. I didn't need to do that." He walks up to me, points at his blackened left eye and softly says, "Fix." I nod, touching his bruised skin, and the black eye immediately heals. "All right, hug it out," I say and I kneel down to hug the little dude. The dream fades...

I buckle down for another DEILD and in a few seconds I'm back in another bed room, although it's different from the last. I'm standing and Wife is here making the bed. "Hey!" I say. "This is a lucid dream. Quit making that bed and let's go play."

She keeps making the bed. "You can go do what you like, but this work still needs to get done."

I can't believe it. "But it's all a dream. You don't have to worry about whether beds get made. Come on, I've got lucid goals I want to work on."

She stops for a second, laughs, and looks at me, wrinkling up her nose a bit. "Lucid goals? What does that even mean? You better not be trying to arrange a threesome on the bed that I just spent all this time making!"

"Come on, get serious. You'll like this... I want to visit the Great Pyramid." Then I look at her, hold out my right hand and say, "You will come with me."

She laughs. "Oh my God, nerd! I can't believe you just tried to 'command' me. Is that the kind of stuff you do in these dreams of yours?"

I smile, amazed at how like herself she is and how much I'm enjoying her company. "I think I can do this, though," I say, and levitate her a few feet off of the ground. She looks amused.

I float her over to me and set her on the ground. When I try to kiss her she doesn't resist. I feel her fingers graze my left temple but then she turns to walk away. "I still need to make this bed," she says, as the dream fades.

This was the second of two lucid dreams that came out of an experiment with green tea during WBTB. In retrospect, I might have liked to take more time talking to this angry dream character to see whether I could learn more about what he was about. These sorts of things can be hard to remember in the moment, but I'll keep trying.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #45: Crowbar Clint

I'm in a mall clothing store and a crazed young man in a baseball cap is wrecking the place with a crowbar. Frightened dream characters give him a wide berth as he screams, curses, and knocks over racks of clothing. He shouts threats and abusive profanity, swinging that crowbar like a baseball bat. I'm frantically planning the best way to get out of here without taking a crowbar to the face when I realize that I'm dreaming. Somehow I also know that the young man's name is Clint.

I get a rush of positive emotion once I realize that I'm perfectly safe. I notice that I know one DC in the store -- T, a coworker of mine, is standing by the cash register making his purchases.

I speak urgently to Clint, like he's neglected some important task: "Clint! Buddy, you've got to get going. T is over there waiting for you to help him change out his hubcaps with that crowbar of yours." Clint looks at me, his anger turning into confusion. I keep repeating this new story to him over and over, placing a hand on his shoulder and leading him toward T. Clint, now docile, walks silently beside me.

Clint appears to be the only person who believes this story. Other DCs shuffle away nervously as we walk by. T seems to get what's going on as well but he plays along, saying, "Yeah, Clint, let's go have a look at my truck." They walk off into the mall and I follow a few feet behind them.

I step outside to find myself on a second story walkway near an escalator. T and Clint have disappeared into the crowds of shoppers. The sun shines through a large, arching skylight that spans most of the mall's ceiling.



It looks like a beautiful day outside, so I decide that I'll fly to the top and phase through the skylight. The sunlight becomes brighter and brighter as I ascend, but before I reach the ceiling, I wake up.

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.

I enjoyed getting back to a dream that was just pure play. I was a bit of a mall rat as a kid, so perhaps that's where the setting came from. Only regret: not looking for the video arcade!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #43: The Flying Mall Rat

I'm in a mall walking through a jewelry store out into the main hallway. I have to maneuver around a family coming toward me. For some reason I employ a fancy (and physically impossible) spin-move to get around them, twirling all the way around and sliding several feet across the floor. It suddenly occurs to me that I need to remember whether or not I'm dreaming and in this case it feels very obvious that I am.

I walk out into the main hallway and see that the mall is three stories high. There's mall music coming over the PA system. It sounds like it's three or four girls harmonizing, and they're singing about breaking up with some schmo. They're actually quite talented, with sort of a sound like a modern-day Andrews Sisters. The lyrics and the tune itself are utterly generic, but since it's my dream, I can be honest with myself and admit that I find it catchy.



I'm feeling excited and playful so I leap up onto the railing of a short stairway and grind down (in other words, ride down the rail on my shoes.) I want to see what things look like from higher up, so I hop up to the second floor, grab onto the railing and swing myself over. I then perch my feet on the railing and leap upward across the gap to the third floor's railing.

At this point, I remember the Christmas carol Task of the Month. For some inexplicable reason, I decide that "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" is a Christmas carol and try to see whether I can remember it. In spite of it being several years since I heard it, the first verse comes back to me without any trouble, and I go swinging and leaping around the mall singing it, vaguely worried that I'm singing in waking life. From what I read in the TotM thread, this is a very common worry.

I spend a few more minutes having fun soaring around the mall. As I reach the end of the main hallway, though, I notice the entrance to a movie theater. I land on the ground floor and step inside the theater, curious what's playing. The theater is packed and I'm surprised by how many people I recognize from my own life. I walk through the crowd for quite a while, greeting old friends and acquaintances as I pass by them. The lights in the theater aren't dark yet, but everyone returns my greetings with whispers, as if they don't want to talk over the movie.

I happen on one friend, S, who appears to be the size of a child in her seat. For some reason I feel like I need to make her look "right" and tell her "Oh, you're much taller than that." She starts stretching out until her height seems correct, but now her head has gotten distressingly skinny. I start getting flustered and fixated and it's not long before I wake up.

I experienced some challenges in this LD and, sad to say, I didn't exactly pass with flying colors. I need to be confident with producing a light source and finding my way out when I'm lost in some building. I wish I'd remembered darknightedlady's observation that "Exit" signs seem to work well for me in navigation. They're a reliable tool for me and I need to keep them in mind.

Not my best work, but I very much enjoyed the exploratory romp anyway!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #37: Hotel California

I'm business partners with my good friend "Leroy", and we ride a bus to a conference at some sunny resort. We pass by a nice pool complex on our way in, and many DCs are soaking up the sun poolside. I recognize MS, a friend from high school, but she disappears into the crowd as we draw closer.



Leroy and I walk through the hotel entrance and move toward the elevator. There are smashed eggs all over the floor in front of the elevator door, and I say, "[Leroy], I'm tired of walking on eggshells around you." Two things dawn on me: a) That joke was terrible and b) This is all a dream.

Leroy has disappeared, but momentum still has me reaching for the elevator button. I stop when I see that the elevator only goes down. I remember that I'm trying to either witness the Trinity test or relive the Apollo 11 mission. Neither of those are likely to be in the basement, so I start looking for a way out.

I turn toward the hotel entrance and see that it has been replaced by a solid, slightly reflective metal plate. I try to phase through it the way I do with glass, but it feels totally solid. Unwelcome anxiety starts to creep in and I set off down a nearby hallway, hoping for an easy exit. A set of double doors at the end of the hallway takes me into a tunnel that's built of concrete blocks. I feel like I'm descending in spite of my best wishes. There's a door further down the hallway but it's one way and offers no handle.

I step through an open doorway into a dimly lit room. An unseen door closes gently behind me and now there's barely enough light to see. I hold my hands out, saying "Illuminate!" Nothing. "Illuuuuuuuuminate!" I squall, but nothing happens. Fear is growing in me, a helpless sense that there's no way out of this hotel. I try to shake that off, instead imagining that there's light coming from an unseen side tunnel... yes, I see it now.



I start crawling through this new tunnel on hands and knees, but it becomes a tighter and tighter squeeze as I move forward. There's light ahead of me, though, and I shimmy desperately forward. Anxiety begins to slip out of my control and I'm soon awake.

This was the Aurora Borealis Task of the Month, and led to a really outstanding dream with some personal firsts. Some big ones for me were changing day to night and performing the task while the DC of a loved one (my son) accompanied me.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #36: Aurora Borealis

Wife and I are sitting at our breakfast table chatting with RI, a high school friend that I haven't seen in a long time. I look at the clock, realizing that it's 1:10 and I'm ten minutes late for a #DVA chat session. Wife and I go upstairs without IR, leaving her just sitting at the table. (Rude, I know.) I'm about to join the #DVA chat when Wife says, "Shouldn't you show her out of the house?"

I leave, and become lucid halfway down the stairs. The downstairs is different from my real house now. The floor has become shag carpet rather than hardwood and the ceiling is barely six feet tall, my head reaching right to the top of it. IR is still at the breakfast table but she just smiles and waves me on. My three-year-old son E is waiting for me at the back door, and I scoop him up in my arms, knowing that he would love to see the aurora borealis.

I step outside and find that my back yard is either gone or has swollen to gigantic proportions. There's a huge barbecue going on to my left. Vividness is top-notch -- I literally cannot detect any difference in visual quality between what I'm seeing now and what I see in waking life. I walk on, passing a set of grills where a man in a red football jersey numbered "52" is turning over some burgers. His shirt is emblazoned with the words "UNCLE BO". I stare at the guy for a moment, a bit stunned by how real he looks.

I perch my son on my shoulders and start running past the barbecue into a city. A long line of DCs is waiting in line for a movie or a show. I notice that C, someone that I haven't seen since high school is manning the ticket line. He smirks at me and shrugs his shoulders when I recognize him.

I walk to the base of a skyscraper and look into the sunny sky. I need darkness for this Task of the Month so I tell my son, "It's getting dark now." The sun fades out of view and the color of the sky deepens to twilight. As soon as night falls, I see the autora borealis above me!



I start to rise off of the ground but my son is squirming on my shoulders, saying, "Don't want to go! Don't want to go!" He starts crawling around on my head, even giving me a little foot to the face. I shift him so that his arms are around my neck and he seems to settle down. I fly straight up, staying close to the skyscraper to keep my bearings.

I'm feeling an overwhelming sense of excitement as I fly toward the aurora. I'm so pumped that I shout a continuous battle cry as I rise. In response, the dream starts blasting a full symphonic orchestra soundtrack to my ascent. Looking back this seems totally cheesy, but I can't even care! It was amazing. The music was fantastic... I wish so badly that I could have somehow recorded it.

I fly over the Aurora and see that inside it conceals a vast mother ship, almost like a space carrier that stretches for miles. As far as I can see down the length of the ship, smaller yellow spaceships are taking off from the carrier to destinations unknown. As each leaves the mother ship, it emits this purple flash of energy that joins the rest of the Aurora. It's the energy "exhaust" of each of these smaller spaceships that creates the aurora.

All along, the soundtrack (and, amazingly, my battle cry) keeps going. I realize that I can do just as these ships are doing and I start pouring that purple energy outward from my palms, and it bleeds into the rest of the Aurora. More and more energy pours from my hands as the dream begins to fade. Soon all I can see are my hands, and after that I wake up.