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This was the second of two lucid dreams from last night. I'm excited about this new Great Barrier Reef teleport, even if it is very glitch at this point!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #131: Oceanfront Property

I'm walking through a university when I encounter the same male twins from my previous dream. They're dressed just as before and again they stare wordlessly at me. I remember this from the previous dream and become lucid.

"Who are you?" I ask them.

The twin in glasses only says, "Be careful out there," and together they walk off down the path behind me.

I immediately remember my intention to explore the Great Barrier Reef and leap up into the air to fly. I soar over a few buildings toward a shipping yard filled with shipping crates and huge cranes. I know that I have to be close to the ocean. Somehow the dream loses cohesiveness for a moment and I'm thrown into the void.

Rubbing my hands together, I think of what my fastest way to the Great Barrier Reef will be. After giving my dream body a quick probe, I pinch my nose shut and flop backwards like I'm plunging into water. This works incredibly, and almost immediately I'm swimming through clear blue water again, similar to the prior dream. But as I look around, I see that I'm swimming through an underwater version of my bedroom!

I swim out into the hallway, so surprised to be swimming through my house that I have no idea what to do. I keep colliding with random objects like boxes as I swim and I'm generally nervous about my navigation, so I decide to return to the master bedroom to phase through the window. Hopefully that'll be something like the open sea. I swim back to the window but when I get to the shutters I just bounce off of them. I'm having trouble believing that I can do it or imagining what it will feel like. I make another attempt at it, bounce off again, and worry that I'm going nowhere and that I'll just wake up. Inevitably, this leads me to a false awakening in a darkened version of our bedroom.

Wife has a little "dream checklist" that she's trying to go over with me. "Did you get to the Great Barrier Reef?" she asks, poised to check something off.

"No," I say, disappointed.

She frowns. "Did you ask about the meaning of life?" she inquires hopefully. It goes on like this for a while, but I don't remember what else happens afterward.

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

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #129: Map of the World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These were the most realistic non-SSILD false awakenings I think that I've ever had. Made for a fun series!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #121: Barefoot

I'm dimly aware that I'm dreaming in some scene that I can't remember, and as I become lucid, I'm thrown straight into the void. I hang on for dear life and start rubbing my hands together like crazy. It feels solid and realistic and pretty soon I feel comfortable that I'm anchored pretty well into the dream.

Right away I remember that I want to get to the Colosseum. Like the previous dream, I want to build the Colosseum scene from the void. This time I choose to do so by constructing the Colosseum's inner stone wall. I reach my left hand out and yes, it feels like it's dragging along stone. I walk along this wall, dragging my fingers upward until they reach a... ceiling? No, that's wrong. I deny the ceiling's existence and after a bit my fingers keep climbing until they reach the wall's top.

Now I'm feeling the top and side of the wall with both hands. It feels very realistic now, and the scene comes sharply into focus. I see that I'm rubbing some isolated piece of stone that's standing in a modern-looking, well-lit library. It's very cleanly decorated and only sparsely populated with bookshelves, and two spiral staircases lead up to a second floor. I see a couple of friends standing around. Near a table is "AJ", and standing across from her is "LS". Neither notice me. Further away I spot an extremely attractive female stranger (Asian, mid-20s, long hair). I suppress a strong impulse to approach her for "that thing" and instead turn toward the glass door, phasing through to the outside.

Outside is a plaza with a broad set of bricked steps leading down to a grassy area. At the top of the stairs to my right, two teenage girls are seated at a white metal table having a meal (lunch?) "Which way to the Colosseum?" I ask them, and one girl points immediately across the plaza, swallowing like she has a mouthful of food she wants to down before speaking. "Thanks!" I say, and start flying in that direction. I get high enough to spot a distant tower and a tree-lined street nearby, but the sound of a wet sneeze over the baby monitor sends me into the black. I keep my eyes closed, trying to DEILD, but I hear Wife groan unhappily, and now I don't think I can get back to sleep.

I open my eyes and find myself lying in bed in our darkened bedroom. (False awakening.) I get out of bed and reach over to grab my journal, expecting my Kindle Fire to be on top, but it's missing. Where the hell did it go? I step into the master bathroom, close the door so I don't disturb Wife, and try to flip the light switch on. Instead the fan comes on. I try the other switch. Fan again. Come on, what the hell? I'm going to forget everything. Both switches at once, and still no light, just the fan. I hit the nose pinch and blow through. Amazing.

I go back to the bedroom and it's brighter now. Wife's missing, and the shutters are open. I leap up, phase through the window, and perch on a dream balcony that's outside. The balcony overlooks a courtyard far below, very much unlike the geography of our real house. I fly out over the courtyard, soon coming to a forest of extremely tall trees. The trees are like pines that stretch far into the sky, coming close to touching the cloud cover. I think that if I can just get over these trees, I'll be able to look down at a huge chunk of the landscape, spot the Colosseum, and fly there for Europe Task of the Year.

I fly higher and higher, trying to crest just over the treetops. I get close to the top but keep feeling resistance. I know that it's mental, so I keep shrugging it off, insisting to myself that I am flying higher each time. I approach a cloud and do this flailing little grasp for it. For some reason, I briefly see stars and get the sensation of my heartrate increasing. This takes me straight into...

A false awakening in our bedroom. I look at the clock and see that the screen's completely dark. I nose pinch and blow through. I approach the window, phase through, and hop out onto a ledge. I'm over another courtyard (this one with a pool), and about 3 stories up, suddenly feeling very nervous about attempting flight. I just became lucid. Am I sure? I hit a secondary nose pinch and make sure that this feels vaguely like "dream gravity". I think about the phase and the multiple nose pinches, and decide that I should be okay.

I'm still nervous, though, and when I jump, I float to the ground rather than fly. The landing's soft, and I'm sure that I'm dreaming, but I decide not to push it with the flying just now. I walk around the pool, scanning the crowd for a while, seeing many familiar faces -- my friend "The Dragon" and his wife, my father-in-law, and a couple of other friends that I can no longer recall. I walk past the shallow end of the pool, past where some kids are playing some game with a ball. At the edge of the courtyard is an ivy-covered archway that I'm planning on walking through, maybe turning it into a gateway to the Colosseum.

I remember to try to summon NewArtemis. As I pass by the stairway out of the pool, without stopping, I extend my hand toward the pool, and say, "[NewArtemis], are you ready to go?" It works! Art emerges from the water, walks up the stairs, and hops out of the pool.

Her voice is faint, but as she walks along she says, "Don't want to wear shoes. Don't like to wear shoes."

I don't know what to make of this, so I just go back to my stuff: "The Colosseum's right through here. You ready?"

"Yeah!" Her voice is still faint, but much more enthusiastic. As we approach the doorway, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #120: Raiders of the Lost Colosseum

I'm an Indiana Jones type of character. I'm in a huge stone chamber, deep underground, sitting on a platform on the arm of some strange metallic device. The device appears to be some kind of scale, with two arms extending to the side, my butt planted firmly on the left arm.

There are square receptacles along each arm and I'm holding a square-shaped block. I'm somehow supposed to fit into the right spot in order to make the scale balance and unearth some kind of treasure.

It occurs to me that I might be dreaming and I quickly decide that I am. I'm fascinated by this device, though, and want to keep playing with it. I try the little square block in a couple of different receptacles, which seems to lower and raise the platform I'm sitting on. After doing this for a bit, I blank out and go into the void. It's pretty sudden, and I lose track of my dream body.

Now I'm seated at my kitchen table, semi-lucid and slightly confused. There's a weird cord hanging down by the back door like something that would go with a set of blinds. I don't recogznize it, and I realize that I'm still dreaming.

I phase through the door into the yard. It looks like my yard, but the sky is orange and the fencing around my pool is missing. There's a strange ripple in the water of my pool, and I walk toward it to investigate. When I'm a few feet away, though, my vision goes black and I wind up in the void.

I'm determined not to lose my dream body this time, so I quickly lick my right hand, then rub my hands together. (Why lick first? Nobody knows.) I poke at my jaw, chest, stomach, and weenie. All are present and accounted for, and I'm satisfied that my dream body is intact.

Now I want to get to the Colosseum. I drop down to one knee and rub my right hand in the ground, expecting to feel Colosseum sand in my fingers. Immediately I do. Now I recall that in the past I had imagined a gladius (ancient Roman sword) in my hand and started swinging it around to transition out of the void. I decide to do this again.

I feel the weight of the sword in my hand as I whirl it around like a crazed chimp. I can hear the noise of a crowd all around me now and my vision's beginning to form. It's still blurry, but I know that I'm heading in the right direction. The momentum seems to give out at some point, though, and I wake up.

Angel Falls!! Finally on the scoreboard for Task of the Year!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #119: Angel Falls

Wife and I are driving in a car through a field. Somehow, we believe that we're experiencing her brother's future and what will become of his life. The mood is relaxed and exploratory -- we're journeying with of a sense of curiosity rather than concern or foreboding.

I veer off on a path that goes to the left. "Not that way! The zoo is this way!" Wife grabs the wheel and yanks it back so that we're going straight once more. We follow this dirt path for a while before emerging onto a suburban street.

Somehow we're now pushing a big lawnmower rather than driving a car. The left side of the street is taken up by an angry-looking giant while the right side is littered with "doggy clean-up bags" that are filled with poop. Wife thinks that we should steer toward the poop bags and I think we should head for the giant because the poop will be too gross on the lawnmower wheels. We're not sure what to do, and as I examine the situation, I realize that this has to be a dream.

I'm slightly unclear on what happens from here, but I know that I was lucid for a good while, flew, found our 4-year-old son "E", and lost lucidity. Much later I'm walking through a train station with E when I remember how recently I was dreaming and realize that I still am. "[E]", I say, "I'm dreaming."

"That's a lucid dream!" he responds, and hops a little bit.

"That's right, buddy," I tell him. "Come with me outside. Remember that you can do everything that I can do." (I'm speaking to E, but mostly trying to remind myself.) I'm holding E's hand, and together we start flying toward the exit. A few DCs glance at us as we fly, but most ignore us. For no reason in particular, my flight momentum cuts out, but I focus on the street outside, thinking, We're out there now.

Now we're moving through the air again. I hear a DC shout "No!" and a hand grabs my ankle. For a moment this slows us down, but I think Bullshit, we're flying just fine... and right away we're moving perfectly again.

We land outside on a peaceful street scene. It's cobblestoned with no cars, just pedestrians. A river runs through the center of the road, running past the obelisk of a town square on our right, flowing toward a bay that's on our left. We follow the river, which grows broader and flows under a bridge before ultimately joining the bay. I decide that this river is perfect. This is the place where Angel Falls will be.

I turn back toward the distant town square and shout to the crowd: "This is Angel Falls! It's right here at the end of this river." And I unironically add, "Watch meee!"

From behind me I hear the thundering of a massive waterfall. Now when I look back toward the bay, everything looks strange. The original river is standing still, almost like time has stopped. But now there's a second, wilder river running right beside it. The bay has dropped completely out of sight, like we're at the top of a mesa. E and I fly over the calm river toward this new river and I can see it -- the top of an enormous waterfall! This is it!



I land close to the waterfall, realize that I'm no longer holding E's hand, and look for him. I want him to come with me, but I won't wait long. I'm too desperate to complete this task! Fortunately he's just behind me. "[E], hurry!" I tell him. "We're going over this waterfall!" He doesn't hesitate, scurrying up to the waterfall and leaping off in a clumsy-looking froggy posture. I plunge over the side, just behind him.

I'm freefalling now, soaked and yelling with excitement. I'm speeding toward a vast, green valley below me. I make no attempt to control my descent, move, or do anything apart from enjoy the sensation of falling through this curtain of water.

Suddenly I hit a pool of water below and instantly enter the void. I can still feel water all around me and for a moment I think about trying to reemerge. But no -- I did what I wanted to do. Time to wake up.

This one was a lot of fun, in large part because it was the first time I managed to really modify terrain in a major way. I still can't believe that I fell for the last false awakening, especially after catching the others.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #117: Carving the Coasts

I'm standing on a bus, blathering some false memory to the other riders about how a friend of mine was on an episode of Friends. I suddenly realize that I've missed my stop by miles, we're in the final bus terminal, and everybody's getting off. A middle-aged bald guy hands me a bunch of coins, including a JFK half dollar and a weird coin with a hole in the middle of it, and announces that he's paying everyone's bus fare. I hand the coins over to the bus driver, who takes them all. Once we're outside, the bald guy asks for his change and then berates me when I say that I gave the driver everything.

I feel like an idiot and everyone's staring at me, so I slink away and walk outside, wondering how I'm going to get home. On the corner I see a gang member carrying a pistol and wearing a blue bandana face mask. He jumps out from behind cover and starts firing at some unknown enemy. I think that this must be a really bad neighborhood and that I'd better get out of here. I look up at the sun to figure out which way is east, but notice that the sun's too low in the sky for the brightness of the day. The sun self-consciously moves higher in the sky to match my expectations and I realize that I'm dreaming.

I'm walking by an apartment complex with a little playground filled with grade school kids. I start flying to look for Angel Falls and one of the kids says, "It's Superman!"

"That's right!" I say, and start "bah bah baahhh"ing the original John Williams Superman theme. I decide that I want to hear the real thing and immediately my subconscious produces the original soundtrack (or close enough to convince me, at least.) I fly off, the Superman score playing in my head and filling me with nerdy confidence.

I come to a broad river with some low hills along the water's edge. I fly along the river until I come to a coastline, proceeding along that for a while, looking for Angel Falls. I start eyeing those low hills and think about whether I could turn them into Angel Falls. As I do this, they start growing taller, and I find that I can raise and lower the height of these hills just by thinking about it. Something seems to stop them from getting up to full mountain height, but I can still get them high enough to impress myself, at least. I keep flying along the coast, building the hills taller and watching as the occasional small waterfall even erupts from the side. These waterfalls are all pretty modest, though, and not nearly high enough for Angel Falls.

As I'm happily traveling down the coast and raising the hills up to the sky, a group of elderly people that look like tourists start flying in front of me, way too close, and blocking my view a bit. The tourists are pointing at the hills and reading some kind of guide book, and disturbingly, one of them is only wearing a diaper. I maneuver past a couple of them, but the old man in a diaper won't get out of the way. I say, "You want to land," and he immediately banks to the left and drops out of sight. Satisfied, I continue flying and trying to make the coastal hills climb higher and higher. I can't get enough of watching this! As I'm raising one set of hills really high, I start to see water cascading off of it, and I think that it's going to turn into Angel Falls. As I look up and up, my perspective suddenly clonks onto its side and I'm pitched into the void.

I rub my hands together to make sure my dream body's ready to go, then I try to find the floor. I imagine my hands rubbing against the smooth rock of a river bed, but the sensation I feel is different. More like cloth. Soon I can see out of my left eye, but only in a small circle. Right eye's still blind. It looks like I'm laying facedown on our comforter -- false awakening. It's morning and I'm alone, laying across the bed.

I get up and check myself in the bedroom mirror. I've got a bunch of blankets and sheets and stuff wrapped around me. I put my arms out so they can fall to the floor. I look just like myself except that my eyes are filled in with black and these dark wisps of smoky electricity-looking stuff are crackling around my head. Overall effect: badass. There's still something wrong with my right eye, but I just tell myself that the blankets are gone and I can see fine. Pretty soon, I do.

There's a new door in the wall of our bedroom, and I walk through it into some kind of sunroom. (This is strange since our bedroom is on the 2nd floor.) My friends "Leroy" and "Leroyette" (husband and wife) are here working on some kind of art project with a bunch of strangers. Everyone's working away with scissors, paper, and cloth. I call out, "[Leroy]! I'm having a lucid dream."

"Here, let me get the door," he says, undoing a bunch of strange locks on an external, glass-paned door. I step outside and there's a small waterfall, about 15 feet high, going in a small garden. I'm wondering how to turn this into Angel Falls when the scene goes dark right before...

I have another false awakening in my master bedroom. The door to the sunroom is still there, and I head through it again. There, again, is Leroy. This time I try undoing all of the locks myself. There are an unbelievable number of curtains, locks, and shutters covering the door, and I'm finding it really frustrating to mess with them. "I don't recall your doors being covered with this much bullcrap," I whine. Leroy chuckles and tries to help me. (Apparently I thought this was his house, but it doesn't resemble any room in Leroy's home.) "You know, I could have just phased this whole time. Sorry, man!" I phase through the door onto a grassy lawn, jump into the air, and start flying again. After flying for a short time...

Another false awakening, this time in the sunroom. Embarrassingly, this one fools me and I'm non-lucid. An overweight bearded guy in his 20s is dressed in a wookiee costume (sans head.) He's complaining about how girls are always too interested in lucid dreaming. Don't they understand that stuff is just fantasy? He puts the head of the wookiee costume on and poses for a photograph, doing his best Chewbacca cry. Cameras flash. The dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #116: Dive Bomber in Darkness

I'm walking out of the lobby of a hospital, some important errand on my mind. When I head through the bank of automatic doors into the night, I'm confronted by a huge crowd of reporters and spectators that are hanging around like something important is about to happen. Is this a dream? Yes.

Looking into the crowd, I see my high school physics teacher, "Mrs. C". I walk up to her. "[Mrs. C]! I know that you've been waiting, like, forever for me to go on Draw Something. Sorry about that. How have you been doing?"

"Oh, that's all right!" she says. "My wife and I have been doing great." This is strange -- Mrs. C has a husband, not a wife. He even came by the school a couple of times.

"Well it was good talking to you," I say, and I step back from the crowd a bit, thinking about my next move. I remember wanting to go to Angel Falls so I decide that'll be my goal for this dream.

But just as I'm making my plans, I notice that one of the reporters standing nearby is extremely attractive. She's about 30, probably half-Asian, and lightly freckled. I start thinking very sexy thoughts before catching myself -- if I approach her, I know for sure that the dream will only head one way (and not to Angel Falls.) I back quickly away, my mind still going sexytime. The reporter stops speaking into her microphone, looks directly at me and says, "I think I love you."

I put out my hands and kind of wave them around. "No! No, you don't! I'm sorry, that was my fault!" Immediately she returns to what she was doing, forgetting all about me.

Okay, Angel Falls. I scan the horizon but there's nothing to really use. I could just start flying and try to work from there... As I'm planning, I start thinking about the good-looking reporter again. Okay, I really need to get out of here...

I allow myself just a moment to imagine that the top of Angel Falls is right behind me. Then I fling myself backwards as if I'm jumping off of a cliff, imagining myself going over the falls. There's a weird moment where I'm stuck upside down, my head sort of embedded in the sidewalk. After a couple of awkward seconds like this, I wind up in the void.

I rub my hands together, then imagine that I'm falling along the falls. Almost immediately I feel the spray of water against my face and arms. I point myself facefirst at the ground, arms tight to my sides. Air rushes past my skin as I gather speed. I feel myself going faster and faster, air filling my mouth. I keep "falling" like this for at least 30 seconds, and the sensation is so awesome that I don't even mind not having visuals.

I feel amused that "Angel Falls" is so incredibly high that I can skydive like this from it. I wonder how long this can go on. Even though I'm enjoying myself immensely falling through the darkness like this, I know that I need visuals to complete the task. I try to focus on what this should all look like but the intensity of the rest of the experience has me a bit distracted. The dream ends before I can make it all come together.

Pre bed: Gingko, l-arginine

Total sleep time: 6 hrs

Dream quality and recall: Very vivid, unstable, hard to recall all details and honestly didn’t notice them as much

WBTB: >1/2 latte, insomnia mostly caused by heat, dehydration and discomfort due to heavy junk food consumed at dinner

Technique: In the approx. 2 hours of insomnia, I faithfully did all possible techs I could think of, including mantras, SSILD, WILD, noticing dreamlets, initially to induce an ld, but mostly just trying to get back to sleep. As I was dehydrated had to drink some water then go to restroom several times, which made insomnia worse.

Dreamlet: some kind of palm tree as it is being painted

Pre WBTB dream impressions: high vividness, flying, friendly dogs in hometown (can't remember anything, just there was some strangeness involved)

Post WBTB LD Pack 1 (DILD+ 2xDEILD): I finally fall asleep, and find myself in a bus in a familiar city. My bf is to my right and there is a woman in front of me with a baby that she is about to feed. To her left is man, just another passenger that reacts to her moving around. I want to remark that there is not enough space for any action but then notice the hand of the man, he is now a woman and on his palm, slightly below the little finger is what looks like an eye.

An eye on his hand? Alarm! This can only be a dream! I am more excited than usual, possibly because I spotted this eye. I keep looking at it with interest. The eye on the hand is following the movement of the woman with the baby. Soon enough there is a whole face on the palm of that DC. It looks really crazy and cool! I am overjoyed and for some reason decide to shout out loud exactly "Dreamviews", this stabilizes the dream somewhat. Then I begin to ponder about undressing when the dream fades, I quickly pass through the void, and then feel my physical body.

I wait a bit and the dream picks up again. It is as if I am following a dream scenario so my dream self is on the way somewhere. This is very close to where I was previously in the bus. There is a small garden next to the bus station, so I am there, trying to hold on to the dream. I concentrate on the ground and look at the ultra detailed and vivid grass. Reminding me of the movie Gladiator, I have a moment of enjoyment touching and playing with lots of beautifully looking grass ears. They have a slight pinkish hue and are not like any grass type I have seen. As I move my hand from one grass ear to another, the dream slowly fades, I go through the void, and am back in bed.

I wait some more and the dream is back, but this time it is super unstable. If I remember correctly at this point I also get some of my dream paralysis, being unable to move my hand/shoulder (right one this time), but I try to ignore it, adjust my posture and it somehow disappears. I am more or less on the same place, I am trying to make my dream body behave according to a fake dream scenario and pretend that I am going somewhere again. On the street, facing a traffic lights pole, the dream is slipping away. I hug/grasp the pole and try to hold on to it, feel it, etc, then remember all that discussion about making out with the dream. I stretch out my tongue and start licking the pole with all might, but initially don't feel anything. I keep on licking until finally there is a distinct sensation of my tongue and the pole is more solid. The dream fades and I am back in bed - I have been moving my real tongue as well!

I decide to visit the restroom and continue with my efforts to fall asleep.

Random lucid fragment: I remember looking at the sky and seeing some strange white transparent ghost-like bird. I follow its flight and remember the other lucid where birds were transparent. My thinking is that maybe this is an OBE and real creatures look like that. I try to interact with the bird by calling it, exerting some kind of dream control on it.

Non-ld: Some kind of a FA, in our bedroom, with bf and Angela Merkel comes in. I am very happy that I will finally have the chance to ask her a few questions about her meetings and the state of the world economy. My memory is vague, but we talk about something, the dream fades and I wake up.

Struggling to fall asleep again.

LD Pack 2 (WILD + 2xDEILD): Because of the going in and out of the void, my memory is really elusive with this one, although it was very vivid and each part lasted a while.

I find myself in what vaguely reminds me of my ex-room. My boyfriend is sleeping in the bed. I notice that it is kind of dark (but not totally dark), so more out of habit than rational thinking, I head to where the light switch is, find a different looking light switch, give it a bit of a thought "What am I doing, expecting the room to become better lit after using a dream switch?", find this absurd, but turn on the light nevertheless. There is a slight change and some more light. It's ok. I am in mischievous mood, so decide to wake up my bf's DC. No way this DC puppet is my bf, it looks like him but I know it's not him. On with my task "assign a lucidity DC", I engage in a long talk with fake bf DC, explaining to him that he should keep on reminding me that this is a dream. He looks kind of dumb and doesn't respond anything and there is something creepy about him as well. I am starting to have regrets about waking this DC up. There is also some aggressive buzzing, some object is pushing me just next my right foot, I can feel it there, and really don't want to have anything to do with it or the fake bf DC. I look down trying to brush the small aggressor away, but there is nothing there, just my clothes and body....the dream destabilizes, passing throughout the void....I remain still.

Back to the same room, but of course it has changed a bit. It is on the ground floor and leads to an inside yard. One other thing that is worth noting is that I also heard some music playing in the background while in the room, it stopped while in the void, and then resumed with the dream. It is bright and sunny outside, autumn hues lit by the sun. My mood reflects the scene and the scene my mood. I am holding a bottle of coke, wonder whether I should leave it, but notice how much better I feel with my hands around an object. I continue walking, there are residential buildings surrounding the yard and it is raining and sunny at the same time. I want to have some fun with the rain, enjoy the scene. I lift up in the air in exhilaration, this lasts a while and as I am midair the dream fades and I am in my bed.

I know what to do, I wait and then wait some more. This time it is harder, but the dream comes back (same place). I feel my head touching the branch of a tree. It is as if I landed on the tree with my forehead. I shortly wonder whether this sensation may come from my physical body, but dismiss the thought. On the ground now, and happy to be back in this nice place. I notice a puddle and sure enough there is my reflection staring back at me. My dream reflection looks great, smiling, and my hair is just perfect. (It rarely looks that well styled irl) Naturally, I am impressed by this and especially by the flawless hairstyle.

Then it dawns on me that this was TOTM and I remember CL's comment that it seems like I always try to do all TOTM in one dream. At that moment, I am super confident that I will be able to do all the tasks even if the dream interrupts. The problem is I never memorized all 5 because of my task flexibility goal this month, so I try very hard to remember what they all were. I remember that with the dinosaur egg and look around. The yard is merging into an open room with all kinds of junk objects on the floor. I am looking for an egg. There are two balls, and one changes to have the hard surface of an egg and elongates slightly and there we have it - a perfect red egg the size of an ostrich's egg. (Finally some positive side effect of dream instability). I put the egg under my butt and start hatching it, holding it with one hand. It cracks and I expect something to come out and then of course the dream destabilizes and I am in the void in a strange position and feeling my body as well. I wait and wait but nothing happens this time, so I wake up and try to remember as much as possible before it fades.

Counted as 2 Lds (official) and 1 micro ld (info only).

PS: Writing this whole thing took much longer than dreaming it.

This was the first of five lucid dreams from last night/this morning. It was a crazy night!

I've got until the kids wake up from their nap to get these all journaled. Go Canis go!!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #106: The Terminator Locker

I WILD into a long, empty gym locker room. I'm unsure whether I'm in the locker room or an observer. I sense the presence of my friend "Conan" but I don't see him.

Conan says, "What's it like to have a lucid dream? Is it like in Limitless?"

"No. Not like that. He was smart in that movie. In a lucid dream, I'm stupider than when I'm awake but I can do really cool stuff. It's more like Inception or The Matrix."

"Really?" he says. "I want to be like the guy in Limitless. But I guess it's better to be in The Matrix if Terminators came crawling out of those gym lockers."

The moment that he says this, a skinless T-800 smashes through one of the gym lockers on the opposite wall and starts running toward me. (Us?) Almost immediately, time slows down, the color in the scene shifting slightly toward yellow and a faint heartbeat sound playing in the background like in Max Payne. I want to be armed, and right away there's a Dirty Harry-style .44 magnum revolver in my hand.



I fire once, blowing a hole the size of a silver dollar in the T-800's forehead. As it crashes to the ground, three more Terminators break through the wall of lockers. Time slows further. I fire three more times, and this time I can actually see the bullets fly through the air. As the three T-800s fall, I wind up in the void.

I expect to transition into a new scene, so I plan to reach my hand out for help. I still feel the revolver in my hand, so I toss it away. But the moment that I do, I feel my real hand jerk and I'm awake.

Looks like I need to go back to my "stop falling for false awakenings" and "stop missing dreamsigns" fundamentals. Still a fun dream, and got to try out a new teleport method (with mixed results.)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #102: El Camino Real

I'm at a lucid dreaming camp with lots of people from my past. Throughout the day, we swim and boat in the lake, walk by the lakeside, and do various crafts. I tell everyone that "it's too late for me. I took galantamine and it didn't work. Let's get the rest of you lucid." I teach them about dreamsigns, awareness, and even supplements. I'm frustrated that I've failed to have a lucid dream but I figure maybe I'll feel better if some of the other camp participants can have a lucid.

This goes on for a really long time and eventually I run across Britney Spears eating a blueberry muffin in one of the hallways. She complains that her career is in a slump. I suggest that she would be a perfect spokesperson for blueberry muffin sales. She's thrilled with the idea. In celebration, she takes a staggeringly huge, very unladylike bite out of the muffin, paper and all. I feel incredibly savvy and very proud of myself.

From there, I have a false awakening: Wife and I are starting our day and she switches on the TV. (She never does this in the morning.)The music video for Madonna's "Like a Virgin" is playing on the TV. Her love interest is the guy who played the mummy in The Mummy movies. After the first verse, the TV switches to a 3d rendering of The Killers performing in front of the university Wife and I attended. "That's The Killers," she says. (She doesn't know what they look like.) We're sitting in a cafeteria now, watching people order food while I complain about how I failed to realize I was dreaming just a moment ago when it was so obvious. Some guy carrying a tray of food totally wipes out and gets spaghetti all over himself. Wife laughs when this happens, which seems cruel and out of character. (Big dreamsign. She thinks the part in Karate Kid where Daniel-San spills spaghetti on himself and everybody laughs is super mean.)

Now I'm staring out of a window in some kitchen, feeling sorry for myself that I didn't get lucid. I think that I could be dreaming right now, but everything is just too vivid. And yet... it finally dawns on me. I look over at Wife preparing food at the kitchen counter and it's so real that it almost costs me my lucidity. I decide that I'd better get moving.

The next room is a darkened dining room with an elegantly set table and an unlit candelabra. It's dark in the room and I decide that it would be best to leave the house, so I head for a wall and phase through it. There's no scene beyond the wall, and I wind up in the void.

I quickly rub my hands together and keep walking, thinking that I'll try a new teleport method out of the void, building on an idea that PennyRoyal had suggested. I place my fingers in front of my eyes and imagine them gently wiggling. Pretty soon my hands take shape in front of me and I begin to imagine a new scene behind them -- the Alamo, the arranged meeting spot with Art. Once I feel like the scene's ready, I move my hands aside and find myself in...

... Silicon Valley, walking along El Camino Real. There's even a roadsign marking out the intersection of "82" (El Camino Real) and "93" (unknown road.) It's a beautiful day, typical perfect weather for the South Bay. I jog up a residential street, and a lady power-walking with her dog gives me a friendly wave. I wave back. I know that I have tasks that I'm forgetting, but they refuse to come to mind.

Moving a bit further along the street, I pass my old friend Wang. I ask him how he's been and he says, "I can't talk right now. I've got to be careful not to catch a cold." When I accept this, he breaks into a laugh like he really pulled one over on me. "I'm just kidding!" he says. "I know that you're dreaming this!" He shouts across the street to a lady who's watering her lawn. "Do you know he's dreaming all of this?" I'm a little distracted by how hyper-realistic Wang looks. His lips move flawlessly with the words he's speaking. I wonder how it's possible for all of this to fit inside my head.

The woman is dark-haired, mid-40s, clad in sweat pants. "Oh, like that 'lucid dreaming'? I've always wanted to do that." I respond with a few encouraging words and jokingly say something along the lines of "better make sure that you're not dreaming right now, too." She and Wang laugh and I say, "You know what? Let me show you guys a couple of things." With that, I hope onto the trunk of a parked car and leap to to top of another parked car, intending from there to take off in flight. For some reason the flying doesn't happen, though, and I wind up hovering face-first a few inches off of the ground. Fortunately, this is still cool enough to impress.

"Guys," I tell them, "I'm going to try another teleport. It was good talking to you." They say goodbye, and I put my hands over my eyes again, trying once again to imagine the Alamo. I give it a little longer to incubate this time, waiting until I can "see" the structure fairly well in my mind. But when I remove my hands, I'm somewhere else near Palo Alto. I can see the Stanford Foothills. The vision out of my left eye looks odd, sort of like I have one messed up contact lens. I ignore it, take to the air, and fly just a bit before the dream ends.

Date: 7 June

Total sleep time: 8+ hrs

Pre bed: SJW, B6

Sleep quality and WBTB: I have been sleeping like a sloth all week long. One thing I have changed in my WBTB routine was to switch from using an alarm to using natural wakes. This has worked out partially fine. I do wake up naturally 2-3 times after sleeping 4-5 hrs. I think that in this way I am allowing my body to determine the best time for WBTB, instead of me forcefully using the alarm. The only problem is that, out of fear not to cause insomnia and possibly due to laziness, my WBTBs were not as serious as they should have been, thus not raising alertness to desired for LD levels. Will have to work on that.

Dream recall: While my recall has been somewhat reduced by my sleepiness, I have additionally been skimming my dreams. I have been putting only keywords instead of journaling, which has allowed me to...sleep more. The dreams weren't too interesting, so there wasn't much that I have missed apart from a brief lucid yesterday, that I couldn't access at all. I think that's fine so far.

WBTB: peppermint oil capsules

Dream1 DILD: I missed the transition. I suddenly find myself in front of my parents' place but the way it was a few years ago. I spend some time looking around, feeling happy. Then the neighborhood begins to morph into other buildings from my home town, so I stop staring at them, because I feel that I am causing the change. I check out my hands and they are in a mudra. After yesterday's discussion, I now wonder if I should try meditating in the dream or try to recall a past memory. I spend too much time in idleness and the dream escapes. I find myself in the void.

I feel that if I wake up I can successfully DEILD back. I am in the void and not back in bed yet but get confused because I feel my body? Obviously this is my dream body and some dream is starting to form, but I think that I am in my bed feeling my real body. In real life I am sleeping in my bed, but the body I feel while in the void is sitting in a chair. I am too dumb to realize that this is my dream body, get irritated with the strange position I have assumed, try to change it and lie down? I struggle in the dark. Then I wake up in another dream.

Dream2: Short FA, where I am in bed, reviewing the event and now completely sure after the dream that whatever I couldn't remember yesterday was indeed a very short LD where I didn't get much done.

I wake up (left side) for real and take key notes

Dream3: An elegant Asian woman talks about investment opportunities. She recommends that Western countries allocate 50 percent of FDI to China and the other 50 to Malaysia. This interview happens during some event. While this is happening I hear a piano playing. It is part of the melody from Mika's Grace Kelly. The sound is astonishing.

Fragment4: A classmate follows me around kissing me. While it feels pleasant I try to avoid him because I have a bf.

Fragment5: Me and a friend enter in a luxurious store where they sell toothpaste. It slowly changes and is now some kind of bar full of hookers.

Fragment6: I look into the nearby building and Christian Slater is there with more hookers having some night party

Fragment7: Me and bf, no comments

----------------------------------------------------------
Progress with this month's goals:

- Do 100 RCs (added)
- notice real life DS 100 times and RC (added)
- 10 proper WBTB attempts -> days (3/10)
- 10 morning RCs (1/10)
- 2 proper WILD attempts (0/2)
- task flexibility
- journal flexibility

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #101: Choke

I'm sitting in a car with Dad at a place that's a cross between Sonic and a Chinese take-out restaurant. We're pulled up next to one of those mic/speaker combos where you place your order and I'm debating whether to order sweet & sour chicken or just get a giant bucket of tater tots. (I don't actually eat like this. )

A guy who looks like Mako Iwamatsu sticks his head out of the main restaurant building and shouts something about "three orders of sweet & sour chicken". I get out of the car and approach to hear him better. Then Mako makes some remark about our order and something about dreaming. It's semi-amusing, so I chuckle politely and look up at the night sky. The stars look artificially bright and the moon has been replaced by a flying saucer! "This is a dream," I say, and immediately start walking.



I leave the restaurant parking lot, moving through an alley that dead-ends at an open door into a house. I go inside, exploring the house for a bit. It's nicely decorated and very realistic. I'm pleased with how vivid it looks -- classy carpeting, great lighting, really tasteful decor. I wonder why I suck so bad at decorating IWL if I can imagine scenes like this. It occurs to me that no matter how many LDs I have, part of me always thinks They can't really look that good, right? But they can and they do.

I'm a bit lost in the house and as I turn down one hallway, I suddenly find myself in a noisy European street scene. It feels like Germany. The fast transition surprises me and before I can think to speak gibberish to these DCs for Task of the Month, I round another corner and wind up back in the house again. Well that was weird.

For some reason this reminds me of my intent to get to the Alamo and meet up with Art. I decide getting outside will be the best way open up the map and get where I want. The closest internal wall of the house is brick (oddly enough), and without hesitating, I phase through it. There's nothing on the other side of the wall, though, and I wind up in the void.

Rubbing my hands together, I continue walking through the void. I imagine that I'm walking along a street outside. I can feel the roadway underneath my feet (which feel like they're in nothing but socks.) I keep walking forward, waiting for the new scene to form. After a while, I see a pattern of squareish lights that coalesces into the window of my darkened childhood bedroom. I leave immediately, phasing through the window into the street.

It's late at night and I'm outside on the street where I grew up. I try to figure out which way San Antonio (and the Alamo) would be from here... and totally get it wrong. When I look out at the horizon, I see a huge observation tower surrounded by some scaffolding, like it's under construction. Was there some kind of tower in San Antonio? (Yes, it turns out -- the Tower of the Americas.)



I start to zoom-teleport to the tower but the moment I begin to move, I swallow my gum. Swallow my what?? Did I go to bed chewing gum? I try to remember, worrying that it's now lodged in my throat IWL and that I'm about to be in big trouble. I freak out and the scene goes black. I manage to calm myself at the last minute but the dream is too far gone and quickly ends.

I had little time to sleep this night and I made it worse by getting overexcited about TOTM so I couldn’t fall asleep. Managed to have a mini-WILD when doing WBTB; instead of turning the alarm clock off as planned for today, I had on this occasion unintentionally pressed the snooze button, which interrupted me while trying to DEILD back.

Fragment1: OK, I wrote three key words in my notepad and made some drawing. I can’t read what I have written! One thing I do remember reminding myself during the restroom visit was that some parts of TOTM were there. But it wasn’t lucid, that’s for sure.

Dream2: I am kind of in front of grandma’s place, but not exactly. I’m watching some kids playing, they are very young and I wonder how their parents could have left them alone there. They are climbing a tree, two of them fall, start to cry. I go there to see what I can do. I get worried that parents will arrive and think I have done something to the kids. I see a pinkish flash of lightening and hear the thunder. I decide to get in the building. I was expecting to see some dog on the stairs, and there were four. One unidentified breed, one Dalmatian, two white terriers. The terriers were absolutely friendly and happy, jumping on their owner. I thought again how emotional dogs can be.

Dream3: I am back to some woman with whom I talked some dream fragments ago. This time I am with my boyfriend and we are looking at some items she is selling. My boyfriend selects a metal monopoly type of toy with Lincoln and a cylinder hat. I tell the woman that was exactly the piece she recommended a while ago. She gets very worried, it seems that her gift is working again, she has some psychic powers obviously and doesn’t want people to know. I think of telling her to just ignore people if they come with unreasonable requests, but she doesn’t want to listen.

Fragment4: Made some kind of cake, the size of a large baking tray, and I remember eating almost all of it. Left only one piece of it for my mom.

Fragment5: In a bus, the inspector comes to check our tickets, I tell her that I will not show her mine, because I can’t hold my poo anymore? I nevertheless decide to show her the ticket.

WBTB alarm. I try to shake myself more awake, restroom [did not poo!], back to bed, concentrating on mantra. This time it was the perfect combo of sleepiness and mantra. I fell asleep, and transitioned in the dream.

Dream6 [mini WILD]: A short moment of darkness, then I find myself staring at my hands. I am a bit surprised at myself, but anyways satisfied to have made it. I am in our old neighbourhood all by myself, so no distractions, I am also calm. I concentrate on holding the dream, as I usually do in my DILDs. I may have mumbled a few things, for I remember some vibrations resonating in the air? I feel that the dream is slipping away, so I try chanting Om to stabilize it [I was in the middle of the street nothing nearby]. I notice the sound resonating better this time, but it doesn’t help the dream. One moment I feel my dream body, and then this is happening with a tremendous speed, I cannot feel it anymore and find myself floating in the void. No! I try desperately to hold on to something with my mind, and DEILD back. At that very moment the snooze alarm sounds and wakes me up. What? I didn’t put snooze this time. I must have hit the wrong button 9 mins ago. [snooze usually works great with DILDs for me; also almost in most DILDs snooze or regular ones, I don’t get driven out of the dream so fast, so I take it is the WILD to blame? Will monitor this in the future]

After that, I make sure I turn off the snooze and set for 30 mins later- final wake. I go back to sleep almost immediately, some dreams may have started I don’t remember. I wake 10 mins later rather stressed that the sleep time will be over soon and I won’t be able to lucid. Then I remember I just had a lucid and become angry at the alarm clock. I can’t fall asleep anymore and there is no point either so I go to DJ.

I took a pass at Advanced Task of the Month (turn a lump of coal into a diamond) but was running into all kinds of cognitive and dream control problems. My brain seemed to be a little zonked. This was my first lucid where I'd taken Valerian Root for sleep, so it's something to consider. Still, a nice long dream, even just counting the lucid part! If I'd managed to get lucid earlier I might have even had more time (and avoided that chaotic freeway scene.)

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #84: Vehicle Fire

Everything in the house is breaking at once. The plumbing is leaking all over the place, the dogs have destroyed a bunch of stuff, and I hear some kind of weird crunching noise from outside. To top it off, we're late picking up the kids from something.

I head outside to find my brother-in-law Muppet swinging around like a monkey on one of the external brick columns that supports our house. Each time he swings around, a couple of bricks fall off of the house and land nearby. Plus, the pillar is actually moving a little bit each time he goes around it. "What the hell are you doing?" I say to him. "You're gonna break our house!" I perform some half-assed reality check and it succeeds.

"What did you do just now?" asks Muppet.

"That was a reality check," I explain. "Everything is such a mess that I hoped I was just dreaming."

"Ah," he says, not especially interested. He points at our roof. Three objects that look like wooden shipping pallets are sticking out of it. "Hey, what are those?" asks Muppet. I grimace, thinking that they must have fallen out of a plane or something and wound up embedded in our roof. Muppet gets distracted, makes some remark about the flowers on the banana plants in our back yard, and then hops away over the top of our house. (Yes, over the top of our two-story house.)

Wife and I get in the car to go pick up the kids. We drive around the city for a long time but every road seems to be closed. Finally we take a tollway but traffic suddenly gets really heavy. I lightly bump some car as I'm driving around but nobody makes a big deal about it. Looking up ahead, we see the reason for the delay: ahead of us a disabled car is engulfed in flames. Black smoke billows up to the sky.



"We've gotta get off this road," I tell Wife, and steer the car toward a left exit. Just as I do that, though, a fire engine comes racing toward me, going the wrong way up the exit. I throw the car in reverse to try to get out of the way. I have to bump a lot of cars to clear a path, but I figure that's okay.

Finally, our car gets totally stuck, so I hop out and start pushing it sideways, kind of lifting it each time. I realize that I'm way too strong and become lucid. Wife has vanished, which is probably for the best -- the scene has grown totally chaotic, with cars driving around everywhere bumping into each other and the siren from the fire truck wailing in my ear. I pick up the car over my head and throw it across the road. In mid-air it changes from an SUV into a yellow Volkswagen Beetle. Then it becomes just the front half of a VW Beetle.

The license plate looks like a bar of soap with words carved into it in cartoony handwriting. I get closer so that I can study it. There are four words, but I only remember "ship" and "check".

Now I remember Task of the Month -- turn a lump of coal into a diamond. Unfortunately, I start trying to conjure a diamond at first. I'm very aware of my hands for some reason, and even when I put them behind my back I can't seem to make myself buy into the conjuration. I bring my hands back to the front of my body and see that now I'm wearing these black, rather lady-like leather driving gloves. Annoyed, I take them off and pitch them away. I try the conjuration again -- again, more lady-gloves. Then I remember that I wasn't even supposed to be conjuring a diamond in the first place but a lump of coal. I start working on that, wind up with lady-gloves again, and start getting frustrated. A car clips me as it goes by, I start getting agitated, and darkness comes over me, pitching me into the void.

I feel relaxed, and start probing at my dream body. It's only a few seconds before I find myself standing in my own bedroom, walking toward the door. I say something encouraging to myself like, "Hell yeah, sexy new dream body!" For a moment I contemplate turning around to see whether Wife is in bed and might be down for doing something sexy but I get scared that approaching the bed I'm actually occupying IWL would be destabilizing.

I head to the top of the stairs. The baby gate's blocking me but I just power through it and it sort of snaps open. I get nearly to the bottom of the stairs when everything stretches way, way out and takes on that stereotypical "endless hallway" look. I keep moving but no matter how far I go everything seems to stay in the same place. Then the entire room suddenly rotates 90 degrees, floor becoming wall, and I slide down the rest of the way to the first floor.

Our coat closet has been replaced with what looks like a giant iPhone. The screen is displaying a game with a 5x5 array of tiles. When you touch various tiles, you receive prizes in the form of troops for Clash of Clans. I earn 4 Minions and a Hog Rider just pushing tiles at random, but now I'm interested in learning what the rules of the game are. I'm trying to figure this out when the dream ends.

This Task of the Year attempt was a big step forward for my teleportation from the void. I combined my idea of relying on tactile sensations to teleport with Chimpertainment's approach where he focuses on a single point while allowing the rest of the scene to build. The results were excellent. Even though I didn't manage Task of the Year, this was a pretty big one for me.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #80: The Sands of the Colosseum

I'm driving with Wife over a hilly, Dr. Seuss-like landscape in a car with giant tires. It occurs to me that this all might be a dream and I decide that it is. As I become lucid, Wife immediately stops talking.

I drive for a bit, wondering where I should take my funky new car. But then I remember my goal of touching and engaging with the dream world as quickly as possible to really draw myself into it. I stop the car (seemingly through an act of will) and feel the seat with my left hand. I reach my right hand over to Wife and begin to feel and massage her left thigh. My initial intent was non-sexual but right away I feel a stir of excitement and distraction, so I stop. I try to touch the seat with my right hand instead, but I somehow miss and transition into...

...a false awakening where I'm standing by the bed in a dark hotel room. I remember everything, though, and I remain lucid. I see Wife's vague outline in the bed, but darkness is already pressing down. I know the void's coming so I start rubbing my hands together. Soon everything is totally dark and I keep probing my dream body. I probe each side of my chest and try flexing just a bit. Everything feels totally realistic. I check my junk to make sure all is as it should be (yep, we're good ), and poke the outside of my thighs with finger-spears.

Comfortable with my dream body, I crouch down in the dark and move my right hand in a rubbing motion, imagining that I'm moving my palm over sand. Soon I feel something like a thin layer of sand. As I keep rubbing, the layer seems to grow thicker and thicker. Now I can actually see the motion of my hand and I can vaguely make out sand shifting around. I think specifically of the sand in the Colosseum, then dig my fingers deep into the sand. I feel them scrape what feels like a wooden board.

The sand comes fully into view, sharp and detailed. I keep staring at it, imagining that I'm surrounded on all sides by the Colosseum. I hear the crowd now, and after a few more seconds, I have imagined right where I'm standing in the Coloseum (close to one wall), what kind of day it is (sunny), and what I'll be trying to do (kill orcs.)

I stand up, raise my eyes, and I am there in the great arena. Every detail looks perfect. I sweep my gaze from side to side, grinning at the thought that I'm actually here. I think that it looks just like stepping into a scene from "Gladiator". I'm excited and happy to have finally made it!



I want to see more and more of the scenery, and without meaning to, I allow my perspective to float high up above my dream body. I scan the crowd for a while, eventually viewing the scene from high enough that I see the surrounding Roman streets. I suddenly zoom in on a street scene packed with Roman citizens. Lucilla from "Gladiator" is laughing and playfully hopping down the street. It feels strange because the whole scene is playing too fast.

Now I realize that I'm just watching all of this on my Kindle Fire and a little display tells me this is being played at "4x". I'm distressed that I'm now just watching all this on a screen and I try to "rewind" to the part where I was in the Colosseum. The controls don't seem to work properly, although I do manage to slow the scene down to normal speed.

I've lost all connection to my dream body and soon I wake up.