Way of the Lizard

1. This one was long and detailed, covering several days of dream-time, with some on-the-ground action, some movie-screen views of other characters, and even some back-story. It all took place in the little town in PA where I grew up. It started with the story of Altrip Jones, a man from my town who went out and made a fortune in the city, then came back and built this weird monument of a public building, with huge, white marble gargoyles jutting from the corners. It was some kind of culture/community center. So I saw this as if in a documentary, then I was back in my hometown, but a weirdly prosperous version where this guy had infused all this money into it.

2. I'm attending a funeral in my hometown, and it's a big family gathering, but it's a dream family, not my real family, and pretty much a dream-town, too. Mostly I'm interacting with two little brothers who have never met me before, because I've been away that long, and I"m working to protect my little uncle (real person) from professional assassins, including a 40-something Gene Hackman. These guys really like to rapel down buildings. I'm not resisting them violently, just tracking their movements and evading them.

3. At some point, I'm taking a walk with some dude I don't know, and he lights up a j. We turn a corner and here we are at a big, sandy beach (nothing like this in my real town). We pass it around and a few people join us, then security comes sniffing around, so I have to evade them and end up alone way down the beach. I start running back toward the crowd (now leaving--it's night-time, and they're closing down the beach), then realize it would be much faster to glide over the sand, then think "Well, why don't I just fly?" So I'm flying down the beach, and I stop and think, "Wait a sec, am I dreaming?" The dunes and everything look pretty real, but I do an RC (my first ever deliberate RC--thanks DV), which for me is kind of a karma-probe to see if objects around me have history and depth--dream objects are more transparent, have less presence than waking objects, even if visually identical. So anyway, I'm lucid, but everything stays pretty solid. I walk around and come to a pliant barrier where the beach just stops, but recalling some stuff from the forums, I try to dissolve or push through, and manage to get my hands through, like pushing through saran wrap. I didn't get to do much else before I woke up. Still, that's two LDs in a 10 days, after many months without any. Whoop!

I was snooze-alarming before work, so I noticed right away when I went from laying in my bed to being in a room full of people. I looked around at all the dream characters, and decided to talk to someone, so I went up to the cutest lady in the room (who else?). She was very friendly, and shortly things got down and dirty. My lucidity was spotty from there on, then I woke up rather happy.

This was also last week. There was stuff leading up to it that I don't remember, but...I was on a freeway curving out over a large, still body of water with some trees growing out of it and lots of greenery along the banks. I didn't have a car, but was just gliding along the road at very high speed (a common dream sign for me). I was going so fast I flew off the road and was heading for the water, and for a second I flashed back to a childhood falling-off-a-bridge-and-drowning dream, and got scared, but then I thought "this whole situation seems familiar, I'll bet I can get out of this." So I slowed my fall, and looked around for a place to land. There was a stump sticking out of the water, and I aimed for it but missed, and I was still losing altitude, so now my legs were dragging in the water. I made another pass, and now there was a statue growing out of the stump, like maybe a statue of a saint in robes with one hand stretched out, and I missed again but saw a tree closer by, and got to that (waist deep in water) and climbed up out.

So, I figured out I was in a world where I could slow down and control a fall, but didn't figure out it was a dream world.

Nightmare (1st vivid dream after I joined this forum)

This was last week, and I didn't dwell on it, so my recall is so-so. My nephew (he's 3) was kidnapped, and I was communicating with the kidnapper through this guy at a pharmacy-window. Dude let me know that my nephew was being held with a bunch of other kids by a pedophile ring with one guy in charge. Somehow, I managed to find the guy, and turned him over to the cops. I was feeling all frantic, like "How bad was this for my nephew, how are we all going to deal with this?" Then I was with my sister, and when I ask how my nephew is, she very calmly tells me that on the way back from the pedophile place he crawled out the car-window, and she tried to hold onto him, but he flew off and died. My sister was really calm, but I totally broke down, reviewing the situation and thinking maybe I should have killed the pedophile-guy when I had him, but that wouldn't have helped anything, and OMG my nephew's dead, his life got so bad that he killed himself at age 3...etc.

I woke up just numb, and it took a minute to realize that this world where my nephew was dead was not the world I was now in, and I wasn't even relieved, just numb. This is how nightmares are for me on those rare occasions I have them: here, have some intense emotional trauma, no wait, ha ha, it was just a dream.