All DJ Entries

I made it snow in this LD, but much earlier in the dream than I'd intended! I'd like to try this one again.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #35: The Blizzard

My friend J is showing off the contents of a huge wall safe to me and a couple of other people. The safe is about 5 feet tall and features not only a combination lock but also the dual-key system you usually find in safe deposit boxes. Each shelf is stacked with interesting little boxes. There's something dreamlike about all of this to me and I become lucid.

I ask J, "Have you got anything really cool in there?" He motions for me to move closer. "Oh yeah. Check this out." He hands me a small piece of paper with cursive printing on it. The top of it reads: "Receipt for Money Laundering". This amuses me, but I decide not to get too stuck trying to read the rest of it. The Task of the Month (making it snow) is on my mind now and I head for some automatic doors.

Fortunately, the automatic doors work perfectly well this time (unlike a few dreams back), and I walk through a two sets of them, repeating over and over to myself, "I'm having a lucid dream and I'm going to make it snow."

The next room is a post office filled with dream characters waiting in line. Hell if I'm going to spend a lucid dream hanging around in the post office, so I start running. Still repeating my mantra, I go through another automatic door into a quiet, windowed reception area.

Through the window I see that it's night outside and a fierce blizzard is swirling outside. There's a road outside and the headlights of passing cars illuminate twisting snow eddies. An 18-wheeler roars by and blows its horn for no apparent reason. The snowfall is so thick that the truck disappears quickly after passing.

I try to head for the building's exit, but it's extremely hard to move. Even though I can't feel the cold winds outside, somehow they're affecting things inside the reception area. I lean into "wind" that I can't even feel, trying to push forward outside into the actual blizzard. It occurs to me that I'm trying to get better at flowing with adversity in lucid dreams, especially adversity in the form of wind. My brute force progress is slow, but I make it close to the exit. Before I make it out, though, I wake up.

I've been reading Robert Waggoner's book so I took the opportunity last night to ask my subconscious a question. I had to ponder the reply a bit, but in the end the message made a lot of sense. Cryptic, yes, but felt very relevant.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #34: The Dinosaur Petting Zoo

I'm walking down a suburban road on a cloudy morning. I look up at the sky, noticing the way that the sun gently illuminates the back of the clouds. Even though everything in the scene feels as real as waking life, I know this isn't any place I've ever been before.

When I shout up at the sky, my voice is loud but takes on a slightly buzzing, almost robotic quality. "Tell me something important!"

There's no response, but I hear two dream characters chattering across the street. There's an Asian lady in her early 60's, dressed in a silvery fairy costume with puffy sleeves and fairy wings. She's talking to a young girl. (Her granddaughter?) I approach the lady and decide to talk to her directly.

Me: "Will you tell me something important?"

Her: "Yes. I'd say that you're not usually afraid, but sometimes you let yourself get scared."

Me: "When should I be less scared?" I can see the scene shifting around me. The house behind her is turning into some sort of white wall, but I ignore it for now, keeping my focus on her.

Her: "You're the kind who won't try the dinosaur petting zoo."

Me: "The dinosaur petting zoo?" Now her face keeps changing. She's becoming younger, then older again, her hair lengthening and shortening while we talk.

Her: "Yes. You're the kind that will walk right up and make a donation... and then be afraid to go in yourself."

I see that we're in a bustling airport terminal now, all white walls and windows. The lady has become a young woman, and she smiles and turns away. I lose her in the crowd.

Briefly, I consider exploring this new environment but decide that I want to remember every detail of this conversation so that I can think more on it later. No more exploration, and no DEILD. Time to just wake up.

A short lucid, but it featured some of the most arresting visual imagery I've encountered so far. I'd wanted to see the Great Pyramid, but this was well beyond what I'd had in mind.

I like to think of my conscious mind as the "coauthor" of my dreams, but sometimes I have to wonder if it's anything more than a proofreader.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #33: The Poolside Pyramid

I'm swimming at a pool party. Rather than relaxing and enjoying the moment, I'm scrubbing furiously at algae blooms along the pool walls while trying to make sure that my two kids are keeping their heads above water. A tall, gray-haired man swims up and makes some unflattering remark about my scrubbing technique. First a flicker of annoyance ("this isn't even my job!"), then one of realization. He stops talking as soon as I'm lucid.

I want to go but I can't make myself leave until I'm sure my kids are safely out of the pool. Fortunately, when I check for them, I see that they've already disappeared. I tell the guy I've got lucid stuff to do and he responds, "Oh sure, man. Go for it."

I fly up out of the pool, thinking vaguely about my goal of reaching the top of the Great Pyramid. I'm shocked when on the horizon I see an entire pyramid complex, fully formed. In front of the Pyramid, in even more vivid detail is the sphinx and a towering statue of an Egyptian Pharaoh. Incredibly, the statue stands even taller than the Pyramid.

Rather than the dull sand-colored stone that I imagine when thinking of the Pyramid today, it's clad in brilliant white. The sphinx's face and body is either painted or perhaps decorated from top to bottom with colored stones, the eyes specifically ringed in deep blue, like lapis lazuli. The statue of the pharaoh is gold, similar in style to King Tut's burial mask.



Everything that I see ahead of me is far, far beyond what I'd incubated (or even imagined) for the Great Pyramid, and I'm thrilled with the idea of exploring it further. A little too thrilled, it seems, because not long after I start flying toward the pyramid complex, I'm awake. My heart rate is elevated (though not quite racing) and I can't seem to settle back in for a DEILD.

Ayiee! Let me back in!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #32: Rollercoasters and REBMEVON

I'm in a bar confronting an 8-foot tall blonde man about why his biker gang threw rocks at me me in front of my parents' house. It's all too weird and soon I'm lucid. The dream feels really stable so I let him finish what he's saying before heading out the door. When I leave the bar, I discover that it's part of a closed-roof shopping center. I try to fly up to the 3rd story but end up floating horizontally across the floor. This time I try leaping off the floor instead. I overdo it, though, and blast all the way through the ceiling.

It's nighttime as I break through, and I fly high into the air, probably 1500-2000 feet up. The city is almost completely dark below me. I shout a grandiose, rather dorky "Let there be light!" and a wave of illumination bleeds over the city from bottom to top. I'm up very high so I see a lot of buildings passing by under me but I don't know what any of them are. For some reason, I think that I need to go back to my old school, so I say, "Show me the university." A group of buildings below starts to glow and I point myself toward it.

I swoop down toward the university buildings but rather than land, I transition immediately into a false awakening inside one of the dormitories. I'm in a small, virtually empty bedroom that I don't recognize. Vividness is very high now.

I step into the hallway and there's a girl sitting at a desk studying, her back to a screened window. She doesn't notice me, and I think about phasing through the window and escaping back out into the night. I try the phase and instead of feeling like I'm passing through liquid glass, my hand feels like it's ripping through a screen door. Shreddings of the screen are in my hand and the girl turns to look at me, saying, "What the hell are you doing?" I do the nose pinch reality check, a bit worried that I'm no longer dreaming.



She's making me feel embarrassed and self-conscious so I step into the next room to get away from her. This room's a study hall that has a narrow desk with hotel stationery and a white pen on it. The hotel stationery has indentations on it like somebody has written on it before. I can't see what the person wrote, but the indentations look similar to my own handwriting! The effect is so realistic that I nose pinch and finger-through-palm RC one after the other. I remember the Task of the Month (write "November" spelled backwards), so I sit down at the desk, grab the pen, and start writing. With vividness so high, my confidence is really solid. I immediately write down "REBMEVON" all the way through and the letters come out correctly (unlike last time.)

Satisfied, I get up from the desk and follow an exit sign through a double door. I stumble into a shabby bedroom where a mother, father, and school-age daughter are sleeping on scattered mattresses. The father wakes up and looks at me, bleary-eyed and displeased. "How'd you get in here?" I want to explain about the exit sign but instead decide to just get out of there. Another exit sign points me toward an external door, and I gladly slip out.

It's daytime now and I step out into a huge carnival that's been set up in a mall parking lot. The rides are elaborate, though, and more like what you'd see in an amusement park: things like rollercoasters and swing carousels. Lines of people are waiting for rides and it's inconvenient to get around on foot. I try to fly over these lines but I go too low and have to step on some heads as I pass. Some of the DCs shout or curse at me as I go.



I get up into the air and start circling around the swing carousel, flying alongside the riders. Most of the DCs ignore me but one lady keeps pointing and repeatedly saying, "Holy crap!" After making a couple of cycles, I decide that I want to go for the other advanced Task of the Month, bringing a soul back from Purgatory. I've envisioned it as being placed in the oceans of the southern hemisphere, where Dante put it. I use the sun to get my bearings and then fly south, heading over a Macy's. A blonde kid with dreadlocks looks up at me as I fly overhead and the dream ends soon afterward.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #31: The Edge of Venice

I’m in line at a cafeteria salad bar, waiting behind a middle-aged lady. The salad bar is utilitarian, old, and no-frills, like something you’d find in a high school lunchroom. I suddenly notice that my noise-canceling headphones are draped over the top of the salad bar. “Great!” I think. “I’ve been looking for those.”

The lady in front of me grabs the headphones off of the salad bar. They turn into salad tongs and she begins using them to pile lettuce onto her plate. “Hey!” I complain. “Those are my headphones! You're gonna ruin them!” The lady just looks at me. I get a sense of how ridiculous this is and realize that I’m dreaming.

The lady continues to stare at me and I head for the cafeteria's exit door. It’s a bright, clear day and now that I'm outside, I see that the restaurant sits on the shores of a lake. The lake is dotted with rowboats and stretches away toward a mountain range. I pause to look at the rowboats and see that most of them are manned by little DC families of four, two parents and two kids.

I rise into the air and turn to the left, ready to explore. There's a huge cloud bank that rests against the mountains and extends almost all the way to the ground. The cloud is strange, and I realize that a) it’s pink and b) it appears to be much more solid and substantial than a typical cloud. After looking at it for a moment I realize that it’s actually a gigantic, super-detailed loofah.

I try to circle around the loofah but for some reason turning feels difficult. I sort of feel like I should be turning but nothing’s really happening. I don’t make a big deal out of it and fly around on the left side of the loofah. Up ahead I see a Venice-like city of canals. Gondola operators mill about on the docks as I drift by, relaxing in the sun and managing their boats. One of these DCs looks up at me as I fly overhead, raising one hand to shield his eyes from the sun.

I see buildings and a whole network of canals ahead of me and begin flying toward them, eager to explore this Dream Venice. Unfortuantely, I awaken abruptly. The dream was really vivid at this point so the awakening was an unpleasant surprise.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #30: Fire Escape

I'm leading a group of perhaps a dozen small children down a fire escape. We're on the third floor, there's no railing (!), and the kids are wandering everywhere. I'm holding hands with two of them and trying desperately to corral the others with my feet. My anxiety level is out of sight and I don't know how to get them down safely. To my horror, a pair of the kids wander off of the unrailed fire escape, falling to the ground below. One of the fallen kids seems to hurt his ankle and the other gets a huge gash on his arm. I scoop the rest of the kids up under my arms and run down to the bottom, grateful that they're not more badly hurt.

Later, Wife and I are standing on a viewing platform at the top of a skyscraper. It's night and I'm leaning against the railing, recounting to her what happened, still feeling really rotten. I tell her, "It was like some kind of nightmare..." I get suspicious, perform a nose pinch RC and now I have it all figured out.

I'm overjoyed not only to be lucid but also that nobody actually got hurt and none of that earlier stuff even happened. I float up and then fly off into the night, forgetting entirely to say goodbye to Wife. I fly over the city, circling around another skyscraper before banking left. Ahead of me is an empty bridge that crosses a bay. I fly under it, performing a high-speed barrel roll as I go. It feels amazing, but as I emerge from under the bridge, my vision goes completely dark.

I'm still flying, though. I can feel cool air rushing past my body, so I just go with it, flying blind for a while. I don't want to lose my lucidity so I start belting out songs that talk about flying. I think that I may have mostly performed Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly" but I sometimes suffer from musical confusion in lucid dreams. Whatever song it was, I was really going for it and I became vaguely worried that my sleeping body might be singing too.

I suddenly find myself standing in our master bedroom, no longer in flight. The room's dark and Wife is asleep on her side of the bed, but I'm not fooled. Still dreaming. For some reason, I drag our bookcase out into the middle of the room to see how realistic it feels. (Very.) But then I worry that Wife will get up to go the bathroom and run into it, so I shove it back into place.

I float downstairs and head to the back door. I know that it's deadbolted shut, so I phase through, the glass pane chilling my skin like cool water. I remember that I want to find Purgatory for the Task of the Month. I imagine as Dante described it -- as a terraced mountain located somewhere in the seas of the southern hemisphere. I take flight again and start looking for it. I realize now that I flew north instead of south... oops! Somehow I wind up flying into a huge cavern that takes me downward into a sewer, where I'm soon lost.

Rather than flowing with things, I become alarmed and want to find my way out of this "mess" to get back on track. The ceilings are low so I'm forced to run through the (fortunately quite pristine) sewer water. There's daylight somewhere up ahead and I race through twisting, turning passageways to find it.

I finally spot a hole in the ceiling up ahead with daylight streaming through it (is it daytime now?) Unfortunately, along with the daylight, a steady stream of enormous, squealing rats is pouring in through the hole as well. They come right for me, and I'm not thinking clearly enough to come up with a clever plan. I punch the rats in the head or their potato-like bodies when they draw near, and each time I do the rat flops limply onto its back, not moving.

I'm almost to the hole when Erik Estrada himself steps in front of me, telling me to stop. I've unfortunately gotten swept up into caveman mode and I summon a weapon with which to fight Erik Estrada. Fortunately, I look at my right hand and discover that the "weapon" I summoned is just a modest zucchini squash. As the dream fades, I tell Erik Estrada that I am "really sorry about that", but he doesn't seem to hear.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #29: The Lucidity Machine

Wife, dressed in a labcoat, straps me into this huge contraption that we've built called "The Lucidity Machine". She explains that when she turns this on, "you're going to be lucid and the dream will be really pixelly, like an old video game." I tell her that I'm ready. Wife walks over to a huge rocker switch on the wall, flips it, and I'm lucid.

As promised, my view of everything is extremely pixellated, reminiscent of classic Atari games. I'm immediately reminded of Adventure:



I appear to be in a low-resolution version of the same room but Wife is no longer here. I get out of the machine, focusing on sharpening the scene, knowing that it will grow clearer and clearer as I work my way through it. Sure enough, the graphics tighten up with every step that I take and within a few seconds everything's in full clarity.

I walk outside of the building into the sun and my recall gets hazy for a bit here. At some point, I find myself standing in front of a cute bungalo that's surrounded by a broad moat. It has a pleasant garden in front of it and I want to see what's going on in here.

I decide to use a technique that Xanous described in an old DJ entry that I believe he got from Robert Waggoner. Basically, I employ a sort of "targeted flight" where I focus on where I want to go and imagine myself being drawn there rather than on any specific mode of transport, like flight. I focus on a flower in the bungalo's garden and sure enough I'm pulled into a vivid close-up of this bright pink flower.

I hear voices coming from inside the bungalo and my perspective returns to normal. I'm now standing by the front door, safely across the moat. I open the door and walk through a small foyer into a modest bedroom with a window that overlooks the ocean. Two young women in their mid-20s are sitting on a bed taping a video podcast about lucid dreaming. I feel like they must be from DreamViews but they're both strangers to me.

My dream body has sort of faded from my awareness and the two podcasters don't appear to see me, so I just listen. They describe a guy who "built his own lucid dreaming machine" and describe things that I'd done earlier in this dream. I remember them talking about us building the machine in our lab and mentioning something about me hopping on a train (DC nonsense or forgotten scene?)

Suddenly, a group of people in lab counts bursts into the room, completely unnoticed by the podcasters. My friend S from work is part of the group, which is led by an older lady with graying hair. They're an amiable group but they announce that they are here to put a stop to my "abuse" of this "lucidity technology". The gray-haired lady says, "What you did was impressive but now it's gotten out of control." She gestures at the podcasters, and I see that one of them has turned into a 3-foot-tall Asian of indeterminate gender.

Lucidity is probably starting to slip, and I become angry that they want to take this technology away from me. I tell them that they'll never destroy what took years to build. The gray-haired lady says, "You'll find that these things are much easier to destroy than to build." Emotion sweeps me away and I lose my lucidity. I get wrapped up further in this new dream plot but my recall gets very hazy from here.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #28: REBMEVON rejected

I'm watching as Breaking Bad's Walter White (dressed as Heisenberg) plans to set fire to a Jeep full of laughing teenagers. He pours gasoline all over the kids in the car but they don't react, somehow not understanding what's going on. I'm panicked and horrified and feel like I can't let him get away with this. The intense emotion makes me lucid and the scene vanishes.

Now I'm sitting in what looks like a log cabin, staring at a simple television that's no longer switched on. I see daylight through a nearby doorway so I run outside, passing through a short alleyway before I emerge in a grassland with mountains on the distant horizon. It's a beautiful scene and I'm so relieved to be free of the nightmare that I start flying.

I've been in the air for only a couple of seconds when the Task of the Month occurs to me -- I need to write "November" backwards. I've created a mnemonic device that instantly brings the correct word ("REBMEVON") to mind. (My chosen mnemonic device is my friend Von introducing himself to Reba McIntyre.)

I try to produce a pen and paper from behind my back but only manage a pen at first. I try writing on my hand but can only fit "REB". That won't do, so I do another "behind the back" object creation to get a notebook. I try to write the word but end up getting sudden strings of garbage characters like "REBhjklhlhlh". I scratch it out and try again, but only get a similar string of garbage characters as soon as I get past "REB".

I can see the word perfectly in my mind so the garbage character problem starts making me feel agitated and doubtful. It's not long before I wake up.

Interesting little converted nightmare. Producing the .44 out of thin air seems sort of like lucid dreaming techniques bleeding over into my non-lucid dreams, which is interesting.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #27: Paranoia

I'm in a false awakening where I'm a kid living in my old room at my parents' house. I sense some terrifying presence in my room so I jump out of bed, crouching down in fear. I reach under the bed and pull out a long-barreled, Dirty Harry-style .44 Magnum and hold it in front of me, searching wildly for whatever is after me.



I suddenly have no idea what I'm doing holding this gun and I'm afraid that I'll wind up shooting myself or my parents with it. I duck into the bathroom and close the door behind me, trying to figure out what to do. I try the light switch but it doesn't work. Something reaches out in the darkness and starts wrestling with me for the gun. My fear combined with the craziness of the scene is enough to make me lucid.

I gently pull the .44 back toward me, no longer believing that there's any lurking presence trying to pull it away from me. I try the light switch again but it doesn't do anything. I'm trying to think of some way out of here when the scene suddenly shifts to a cluttered basement. The basement is a roughly ten-foot cube and walls are gray concrete. There are no doors or windows but benches, tables, tools, and other assorted pieces of junk litter the room.

Seeing no way out, I float up and try to phase through the ceiling but the concrete stops me cold. I shut my eyes and imagine the Great Pyramid, but nothing has changed when I open them again. Next, I try some Stephen Laberge-style spinning but I move with an odd slowness when I spin and the scene won't change.

Just then I notice a tiny surveillance camera attached to the ceiling and I feel like the presence that I sensed earlier is watching me through the camera. I float to the camera, determined to phase through it and see who (or what) is watching me. I push myself through the lens but immediately find myself awake in bed.

This was simply the most amazing lucid dream I've ever had. The description is long, but it's as abbreviated as I could get it -- the dream itself felt like it lasted an hour and a half! Absolutely unreal.

Just the thought of having another LD like this might be enough motivation to last me forever. All I can be is grateful.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #26: Transcendental Turkey Shoot

I'm a spectator in an arena where dueling teams of wizards battle it out with fire and ice spells. I'm ranting with another spectator about how terribly they're playing. The spectator says that "it's like they have no awareness!" Hearing about "awareness" instantly makes me lucid (thanks, subconscious!) and I run out of the stands into an outer hallway that's filled with dream characters.

I want to perform the Task of the Month which requires shooting turkeys with 17th century weaponry. I imagine that I have a huge bundle of preloaded flintlock muskets strapped to my back and it isn't long before turkeys start darting around in the crowd in front of me. I reach over my right shoulder, grab a musket, and aim it at a nearby turkey. I carefully aim and fire, the musket thundering and kicking my shoulder. The shot's a clean miss, and the DC's in the scene start running and screaming.

I toss my old musket aside and grab a new one from my "bundle". I keep catching sight of turkeys up ahead and I run after them, firing and missing time after time. I chase them onto the arena floor itself, the magical combat still raging wildly around me. I skate across a field of ice that's melting beneath the heat of a raging volcano, the floor nearly collapsing beneath me. It's vivid and exciting but what really has my attention is getting one of these turkeys.

I take a side door that leads me into a golden elevator. The elevator begins rising the moment that I enter and through its ornate viewing portals I see the shore of an island. I sense that this is an island filled with turkeys and I immediately dive through the portal, plunging headfirst toward the shallow water along the shoreline. I manage to float just in time to avoid a jarring landing and immediately spot a turkey ahead in the distance.

I run for miles, grabbing musket after musket off of my back and tossing them aside each time that I miss or get a "close call" that yields nothing but a puff of feathers. I even manage to cleanly hit 2 or 3 of them, but each time that I draw close I see that they were really just large pigeons. At one point I reach a narrow valley that's painted with brilliant, cartoon-like colors. I laugh, feeling elated and invincible, like I can run here forever.

After some time I chase a turkey deep underground through an old barrow. Dream characters join me and leave at times, all strangers. Eventually I run through a weapons display area that's arranged around a giant upright sarcophagus, but all the weaponry appears to be from the Egyptian Bronze Age, not the 17th century.

In the next room I stumble upon a sad, sullen group of friends and coworkers arranged around a board room table. They're being lorded over by some obnoxious stranger named "Rod" who announces that he's taking over our company and that I should "sit down and shut up". This annoys me, and I slap him so hard that it leaves a handprint on his face. He orders me not to do that, and in response I slap him hard enough to send him sprawling out of his chair. The others around the table applaud, and I jog out of the room, spotting daylight up ahead.

I emerge onto a dirt road and lean against the guardrail for a moment, thinking about how this is the first time that I've ever attacked a DC. I reflect on how thin my justification was and wonder how this relates to dream yoga's description of playing out negative "karmic traces". Unable to really digest the concept of karma in the dream state, I walk further along the road.

At the end of the road stands a Roman arch with golden light spilling out of the arch onto the roadway. The arch is designed roughly like the Arch of Constantine:



When I approach the arch, an enormous flock of brilliantly glowing turkeys goes flying through the arch, passing right overhead! It must be hundreds of them. This kicks up a rush of wind that picks me up off of the road, lays me flat on my back, and carries me gently backward as the stream of turkeys goes flying by above me. It's beautiful and serene and I'm overcome with bliss and elation. I can't stop laughing at how incredible it all is.

The wind sets me down some distance from the arch and my friend A is standing nearby, smiling at my reaction. He asks how much longer I think this LD can last. I say that I don't know but that it feels like it's been an hour and a half. I tell him that I took some B6 and wonder whether that will change the dream's length. Gently, I wake up, still blown away by what I just experienced.

This LD started off with some incredible promise. But for reasons that still aren't clear, I wasted the majority of it yammering about lucid dreaming. A strange and extremely embarrassing mistake, but live and (hopefully) learn!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #25: A Little Less Conversation, a Little More Action

My very close friend F is a famous rap star and I'm his manager. I'm driving him to the marina in a black Escalade, arguing with him not to buy a helicopter for "one million dollars". He's adamant that he needs this helicopter and he brushes off all of my objections about his spending vs. his record sales. As I park the Escalade, I suddenly remember that F is an IT consultant with two kids, not a rapper -- now I'm lucid.

We get out of the Escalade and I see that we're parked near an absolutely pimptastic white yacht. The day is bright and clear and the sun is high over a calm ocean. And in spite of my earlier helicopter-related harangues, there's also a nearby helipad with a helicopter waiting on it. F and I have been friends since we were kids, so I'm psyched to be hanging with him in an LD. And with all of these cool toys just lying around!

I follow F as he heads toward the yacht. I stop him on the gangway, saying, "Hey man, I'm having a lucid dream." He nods and says, "Cool." But F and I have never discussed lucid dreaming IWL. For some reason, I'm overcome with the desire to explain it to him right now. I ask him whether he knows what LD is and he tells me not to worry about it.

But for some reason, I cannot let it go. I go into the whole thing, talking about the sleeping brain, how consciousness is activated, the role of serotonin, all kinds of stuff. At one point I even start rambling about acetylcholinesterase and its role both in dreaming and nerve gas. I'm feeling terribly pleased with myself for recalling all of this information while having an LD and I've lost all regard for my "audience" or my own experience.

Suddenly, a shudder seems to run through the whole dream world. The gangway starts to shake and the sky flashes black for a moment. F grabs the handrails and shouts some kind of profanity. The dream ends immediately afterward. I try to DEILD back in but I come up dry. Curses!

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.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #14: The Kid Is Not My Son

Wife and I are attending a class led by my neighbor K, who is for some reason now a history professor. He's giving an interesting lecture on the early 20th century and every student in the class is captivated by his talk.

One very attractive student (who identifies herself as "Melinda") is shamelessly flirting with him. I lean over to Wife and whisper this to her but she insists that she hasn't noticed it.

I look to my right and notice that there's a mirror running the length of the wall. I see myself in this mirror except slightly from the back. Also apparent from my reflection is that I have chosen to attend class wearing no shirt. The combination of these two oddities brings me into lucidity.

My hair is cut short just like waking life but my physique is leaner and more muscular than in reality. I rub my hands together and my beefcake reflection does a perfect replica. Clarity is very, very high. I remark out loud that, "This lucidity is just incredible." Wife verbally agrees, "It really is! But quit checking yourself out in the mirror." I laugh because she totally caught me.

All of the students and Professor K are looking at me now. I see that Melinda is now wearing a Baby Bjorn that contains a squirming little blonde baby. Melinda looks Asian or half-Asian so the blonde hair is a bit of a surprise. A bigger surprise still is when Melinda says, "It's yours."

I'm left shocked and stammering for a response/denial/whimper. Melinda laughs, saying, "Not him! He's mine. She's yours." She points to my left. A nurse in scrubs and a surgical mask walks up to me and hands me a brown-haired little girl of about one. The little girl reaches for my nose and smiles up at me. I'm about to look for Wife's response to all of this but I wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #12: Whistling the "Ashokan Farewell"

I'm walking past a school building with Wife. For reasons I can no longer remember, I'm clutching a handful of documents.

It's close to dusk and the sky is growing red. I look up as we walk beneath the branches of a live oak and suddenly I'm lucid. I stop walking and look down at the papers in my hand. On top is a piece of sheet music that I can't read. I try to think of what I had intended to do and I (incorrectly) think that I wanted to perform a piece of music that I know from waking life.

I tell Wife that I'm going to whistle "a song from the Civil War" that I know from childhood. (I looked this up -- I meant Ashokan Farewell, a song that is actually from the Ken Burns documentary on the Civil War. I had not thought of this song in many years.) Wife laughs, saying, "Only you would pick a song like that." She waits to listen. I whistle a few bars of "Ashokan Farewell" before I wind up accidentally turning it into "The First Noël".

Once I'm done with the chorus I decide that it's time to fly. I realize that I've completely forgotten to stabilize the dream and I feel myself losing my grip on the experience. Suddenly flustered, I'm frozen in place as the dream scene collapses around me.

I attempt to DEILD back into the dream scene but sleep won't come. My alarm clock rings a few minutes later.

Tonight was my first chained lucid dream (achieved via DEILD.) The first lucid segment was induced via SSILD. I chained from this one into my second with DEILD. This was a very cool experience but it came with a price: I lost almost all memory of how I became lucid in the first dream!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #11: Lucid Chains, Lions, and Evasive Olympic Dreams

I'm standing in the vast courtyard of a Shinto-style shrine. There are signs to guide me but they're all written in Japanese. It's early morning and the sun is just beginning to rise. Dream characters mill about peacefully in the courtyard.

I walk by a dream character that I recognize as DK, a very old friend that I grew apart from in childhood. I had not thought of him in a long while. We shake hands and exchange pleasantries, reminiscing about the past (especially the "Quest for Glory" game series.) However, when I ask DK what he's doing with his life and what sort of career path he took, he will no longer answer me. He looks guarded and embarrassed.

We walk to the edge of the courtyard and find a waterfall. Next to this is an enormous rollercoaster here that goes along a track which is somehow made entirely of water. I leave DK behind and grab on to the roller coaster. It immediately starts rocketing along the track, spraying water on me and rushing alongside the temple wall. I realize that the roller coaster car has no seat but only tiny handholds that I must cling to for dear life. Feeling completely exposed and unsafe, I jump off, falling about 30 feet to the ground.

A nearby sign is in Japanese but has a tiny bit of English text warning me (in big red letters) that this is a "Nature Preserve". A few feet away from the sign, a dangerous-looking lion has his eyes locked on me. I try to remember what you are supposed to do when you're close to a lion. I have no idea, so decide to try backing slowly away. This isn't good enough and the lion charges at me, knocking me to the ground. The jolt is enormous but I'm seemingly unhurt. I choose "flight" over "fight" and run back toward the temple wall, the lion charging after me. He bashes me again just as I'm running through a door into a poorly-lit room with a single table in the middle of it.

I wake up but don't open my eyes. I decide to try to chain back into another lucid dream via DEILD. I think about that little room for a while and seconds later, I am lucid again. The room's better lit now but otherwise the same. I decide that I'm going to try for the Olympics again. There are four exits from the room and I command the dream to show me the one that will lead me to the Olympics. Obediently, one of the exits is illuminated and I step through it into an auditorium full of howling spectators. There's a table tennis table in the middle of the auditorium -- so table tennis it is, then!

After approaching the table, I find that rather than a proper paddle, I have an old, deflated latex balloon in my hand. I put it out of sight and will it to turn into an excellent paddle with top-notch rubber. This works. My opponent comes bounding down the stairs and the crowd goes wild for him. They're all cheering for him rather than me in my own dream! Ah well, doesn't matter. This is my dream, so it will be his butt receiving the shellacking.

The crowd starts performing this ridiculous, choreographed rump-shaking dance in celebration of my opponent. I command them that "You will stop doing that stupid dance!" They obey but my opponent runs up into the stands, whoops once, and starts doing laps, refusing to come down to face me. I'm exasperated by his obnoxious behavior and soon wake up.