Verre

I was trying to make breakfast. I was standing in front of a kitchen island with a stove range with at least nine burners, maybe twelve, frying up slices of some sort of eggy loaf and making pancakes from a batter that appeared to contain whole grains of barley. Periodically I would go from there to the refrigerator, where I was checking on a large glass jar of liquid in which I was somehow (the logistics don't make much sense in retrospect) attempting to make a complicated frozen cube that contained a whole strawberry and some kind of alcohol.

After going back to the stove, I noticed that the things in the frying pan were on the verge of burning even though the heat was set to medium-low. What confused me even more was that the surface of the pancake batter appeared to be burning as well, though it was still in the bowl. I figured the latter must be an effect of oxidation, contact with the air, and mixed it up some more.

I checked on the refrigerator again and saw that at least my big strawberry ice cube was freezing properly, because it looked visibly white and opaque within the liquid. As I watched, it floated up and popped to the surface, but fortunately there was enough extra room at the top of the jar that it did not splash out and make a mess.

I went back to the stove... but now the arrangement had changed. Where was my frying pan? Had someone come and moved it? Now an empty ceramic baking dish was sitting on the hot burner! That wasn't good, they're not supposed to be used that way! I hastily moved it, and although I was concerned that the cookie tray I set it on might be cold enough to make it crack from the heat difference, I couldn't spot a better place to put it. The stove was crowded with pans and dishes, none where I had left them, and I wasn't sure what had become of the food I was frying just a moment earlier.

Who had come and re-arranged everything? My breakfast was going to be ruined! None of this made any sense! In desperate frustration I wailed aloud, "What the hell is going on here? What could it be? I don't understand!" But instead of recognizing the inconsistency as a clear dream sign, I woke up with those words still ringing in my head.

Ritual: This was my third experiment with the vibrating alarm. Again it was successful, though in a somewhat inexplicable way. I had intended to get lucid but slept from 1:00–6:20am, and realized when I woke it was too late for a proper WBTB. So I used the vibrating alarm, set to go off in 45m. It was 7:19am when I awoke again, so it must have triggered, but I never felt the vibration at all this time. I had an NLD I don't clearly recall, and then a DILD—in which I simply became aware that I was dreaming, with no particular RC or "aha!" moment. The lucidity was low-grade, though, in that I never remembered the tasks I had intended to work on.

DILD: I found myself in K&L in San Francisco. (This is a real wine store that I like, but the dream version had no physical resemblance to RL.) While browsing I noticed all the good food in the cases—fresh food, like slices of cake on plates, ready to be eaten—and reflected on how amazing the food culture is in SF that you can even get great fresh food in a wine shop. There was a tray with samples of wine, generous pours of about two ounces in full-size glasses, and another tray with samples of a variety of little cut bars and pastries. As I began eating and drinking, the impression dawned on me that I was dreaming, but I felt that I was not fully integrated. (This must have been dream logic; I was already deep in dream so there was no question of integration, but apparently what I was sensing was that I was not fully lucid.) I thought that using my senses would help, so I was focusing on the tastes and textures and even the sounds that occurred as I sampled the various confections. I wanted to find one that was more savory than sweet. A couple pieces were green in color, which seemed promising, but they turned out to be more dessert-like than I had hoped. I was amused to notice how I was behaving with dream protocols: if I didn't like a piece, I would just spit it out and leave it on the tray, an act that would be incredibly rude and disgusting in waking life!

I thought after I got better integrated I should go explore the dream—wasn't there something I was dreaming about earlier, a wilderness landscape, that it would be interesting to get back to? I recollected it only vaguely. But first I wanted to try each of the food samples. The very last one I tasted was savory after all, and had a kind of bi-layer construction with a spicy-savory mixture sitting on top of a nest of dried coconut strands—it was my favorite, and I wished I could get the recipe.

Nearby was a little display box full of pamphlets or maybe even CDs about nuns, and as I leafed through them I saw that they broached the question: do nuns wear their habits even when they are locked away together in their nunneries, or do they, like Muslim women, remove their head coverings when at home? I felt that in waking life I knew the answer but now I couldn't remember. I thought about it and considered that the tradition of nuns covering their head must be related to similar phenomena in related cultures and places, such as the way women have to cover their heads when attending a Russian Orthodox church service. I figured it probably did have ties to the tradition among conservative Islamic women to cover their heads. I concluded on this basis that nuns would indeed remove their wimples when alone among themselves. (In retrospect I'm pretty sure I wrong, but I can't say with absolute certainty. The only Christian nuns I've met don't wear habits at all!)

Earlier, when I had decided that I would go explore the dreamscape after I was done here, as if in direct response to my thoughts a horse had promptly cantered up outside the shop and stood there waiting for me. (If only my human DCs were so obliging!) Now that I was finished eating I went outside and prepared to ride away. The horse had been completed tacked up when he arrived—excessively so, I had thought, as he seemed to be carrying bedrolls and other long-distance gear—and when I mounted he had definitely been wearing a saddle because I distinctly braced my foot in the stirrup and held the pommel to get on. However, no sooner had I started riding away than I felt I was slipping around a bit and was surprised to discover that this was because I was riding bareback. Oh well, it will be good practice. I remembered how some people say that LDs can help you practice RL skills, and I figured that I could certainly use some practice improving my seat and position, so I decided to focus on that for a while and see if it paid off in this week's lesson.

I still felt we were in downtown San Francisco but everything felt old-timey. Even the cars looked like 1920s models. Fortunately there weren't many of them, because I was moving through the city at a canter. I realized how unrealistic this was: in RL I would hesitate to stress the horse's legs by cantering on hard paved streets, and I definitely would not cross intersections without stopping, like I was doing now, but since I knew I was dreaming I felt it would be okay. Crossing the street still felt dangerous as there were sometimes cars coming, but there weren't too many of them and they were going slow enough that we were able to dodge one another. I was cantering because that is the gait where I need the most improvement on my seat and position: I was focusing on trying to keep my legs long and heels down, with my core on, back straight and shoulders back.

We cantered right out of the city, though I was paying so much attention to my form that I didn't have much to spare for my surroundings. Just as in RL I noticed the tendency for my legs to creep up and my torso to lean forward at the canter, so I was trying to counter these bad habits and reinforce good ones. At some point I finally halted the horse, and I worked on trying to do that properly as well, keeping my seat deep and using my weight properly. The dream ended around this time, as though by halting the horse I halted the dream.

Ritual: Second try with the vibrating timer, successful but strange experience. This time it seemed to work not so much from going off (in fact I doubt it ever did), but because my anticipation of the trigger kept my mind alert during the process of falling asleep—to the point where I thought I was still awake long after I had evidently slipped into dream.

It's becoming apparent that anticipation can serve the same function as motivation. Actually my motivation was relatively low, for the same reason as last time: it is the busiest part of my work week and I realized that I wasn't sure I wanted to have to spend a long time writing up my dream report if successful. I went to bed a little after 12:30am, and woke up naturally around 5:40. (I checked the clock but can't recall the precise time, I think it was somewhere between 5:37 and 5:43.) I decided it was too late to do full WBTB and recognized my lack of motivation, so I just shoved the MotivAider in my pillow and went back to bed with no further technique, letting things take their own course.

Although normally I would fall back asleep in seconds or minutes at most after such a brief WBTB, I noticed that now I was oddly wakeful... it seemed like just waiting for the device to go off, even though it was set so that it wouldn't trigger initially until 45 minutes had passed, was keeping me awake. After a few minutes trying to get comfortable I grabbed the sleep mask from my bedside table because I knew the sun would come up soon. I then spent a very long time trying to get back to sleep... or so I thought. In retrospect it is apparent that for much of this period I was experiencing that obscure counterpart of a false awakening, a "false falling asleep" (FFA).

FFA: I think I must have actually fallen asleep very quickly, since a lot of the things I experienced while I thought I was trying to fall asleep turn out to be have been things I dreamed. For instance, at one point I was convinced that I was lying in bed with my body rotated in the opposite direction, my head facing the foot of the bed, but then I fixed this without really moving my limbs... a maneuver that would have been impossible to do physically.

Eventually I decided that I ought to have a back-up EILD method so I tried to program my sleeping mask. I reached up and pried apart the velcro near the top to flick the "on" switch, remembering to hold it down four seconds to enter "nap mode." I couldn't tell if I saw the indicator lights or not... I thought I did, but the impression was vague. Did I have the brightness set too low? Oh well, I don't remember how to change it. I'll just turn it off and turn it back on again to be sure. Hmm, same thing, the lights are vague... I'm not sure if I'm really seeing them or just imagining it. And then I realize... hang on... I'm not even wearing the Remee, this is just an ordinary cloth sleep mask! So I tried to correct the situation by putting my Remee on under the regular mask... and I really thought I had done this until, while writing this report, I began to have doubts and went to check. Sure enough, the Remee hasn't been touched all night! At least I can verify that I was wearing the ordinary mask, since that one has been moved and is now lying on my bedstand where I must have left it after waking up.

At another point in the FFA I even felt the MotivAider finally go off. The vibrations felt lengthened and distorted again. I ignored them since I thought I was still awake, and hoped I would be asleep by the time it went off next. In retrospect I realize I must have dreamed even this, because the MotivAider could not have gone off until 45 minutes had passed (even on random mode it initially counts down the full maximum set interval), and I got up to start writing this report at 6:14am, less than 45 minutes after going back to bed around 5:40... so it is very unlikely that it actually went off in that whole period!

I was getting annoyed with how long it was taking (or so I thought) to fall asleep, and eventually in my impatience I decided to just start "practicing" WILD separations in my imagination. I tried to envision an almost physical pull on my dream body that would tug it up from the lying position into a standing one, and after each repetition of this I imagined myself landing with both feet on the bed with the flourish of a gymnast who has just finished an acrobatic move. It felt at first like I was only visualizing this rather than experiencing it: as though I were just going through the motions, practicing for when I got closer to falling asleep... but before long the sense of immersion set in, and I realized that I was already in a light WILD state. I was surprised that I had been able to move so easily from full wakefulness to full REM, still unaware that I had evidently already been dreaming for quite some time already!

WILD: Since I was under the impression that I had only just transitioned into a dream state, my initial goal was just to improve immersion and stabilization, so without trying to do any tasks at first I simply wandered through the house. I soon half-woke and had to separate again. I used the same visualization as before "pulling myself up" from lying down to standing up, but it went more smoothly and easily this time. Once again I landed like a gymnast, but this time rather than landing on the bed I vaulted right out of it and onto the bedroom floor.

By this time I felt immersed enough to start working on tasks. One of the TOTMs is to dress in a costume, and I had decided in advance that I wanted to dress like a witch, so I went to the "costume closet" where I keep my clothes that are too dressy or impractical for everyday use. At first I was surprised to see (so I thought) nothing but the clothes that are there in waking life. I must have been a bit confused, because although in WL the closet contains plenty of gothy-looking wraps and dresses entirely suitable for a witch costume, the only thing I thought to grab at the time was a small halter top of some colorful iridescent material. I didn't put it on yet, since my priority was to find a mask.

The closet actually contains a box of masks on the upper shelf, but in the dream I "remembered" that I had a brown paper bag of them on the floor, so I went through it until I found a witch mask... or was it? Looking at it again, I thought it actually looked more like a Darth Vader mask that someone had clumsily tried to convert into a witch face with dabs of green paint. But then I "remembered" using it as a witch mask before, so I figured it would be adequate.

Next I needed the pointy hat. I must have one around here somewhere... I dug through the closet, but couldn't find one of the right shape. Nevermind, I can make one! I pulled out a fedora made of black leather, and started trying to pull the top to make it longer and more pointy. At first the material was resistant but I put some focus into the act and soon was able to mold the hat into a proper Halloween-style witch hat, and put it on my head. The fact that it was made of black leather made me feel extra stylish. I paused at the door of the room and wondered if I needed to change my clothes as well, but when I looked down I saw that I was wearing a long black dress that already looked witchy enough, so I never had to put on that stupid halter top!

After walking back out to the kitchen, I remembered to check my reflection in the mirror (in a spot where there is no mirror in WL). It wasn't bad! I looked like that classic witch from the Wizard of Oz: green face, hooked nose, tall hat. The mask was looking much less Vader-like now, and at this point I noticed that there was even an inscription on it (entirely legible in the mirror rather than inverted by the reflection) that gave the title "Witch," and was signed either "Robert" or "Richard." I assumed the name must be that of the local artist who made the mask, and was reassured by the title that it had been intended as a witch mask after all.

When people were contributing suggestions for the October TOTMs, I had really liked the one about flying on a broomstick to a witches' gathering, so this was something I had planned to do once I got in costume. But now I wasn't sure. Maybe it would be fun to work on my lucid dare instead, and go startle some elves with my witch costume! I felt indecisive. And in either case I'll have to leave the house, so which door should I use? I've let myself get into the bad habit of being paranoid that leaving the house might destabilize the dream, so I wondered if leaving by a door I don't often use would help bypass this impression. I know that this worry is a wholly self-imposed obstacle—and moreover that it is not supported by the evidence—yet I also know that even letting myself worry about destabilization can have a destabilizing effect!

While I'm standing there trying to make up my mind, I notice that the scenery outside the kitchen door has already begun to change. Replacing the back patio is now a beautiful summer forest, with green leaves, mossy trunks and a clear limpid pool of water on the ground, like a natural spring. The water is only a few inches deep and appears completely transparent and pure. The scene is so lovely that I immediately let go of my pointless worries and go outside to enjoy it, kneeling in the water and running my hands through it, lifting it in my palms and letting it splash back into the pool. I find myself wondering if these surroundings will transform my costume from that of an ugly old green witch into a young beautiful forest witch. And what do we mean by "witch," anyway? I start pondering the question: aren't those two archetypes (ugly old witch and young beautiful witch) from the same tradition? Don't they both imply a woman with an unusually strong connection to the natural world?

I still haven't decided if I want to look for a witch gathering or an elven gathering in this forest, as I think both could conceivably be taking place here. Would the elves resent my presence if I'm still a Halloween-style witch? But if this pool has transformed me into a beautiful forest witch, maybe I would blend right in. (I regret now that it never occurred to me to check my reflection again in the pool! Though I still had the impression that I was wearing the same black dress.)

Once again the dream distracted me from my thoughts, this time by the sound of a voice singing. It was an attractive male voice, a low tenor, drifting from somewhere up above. The pool where I knelt was at the foot of a rocky ledge, at least ten feet high, and it seemed like the main part of the forest was up there. I flew up (I can't recall if I used a broomstick or just levitated as usual) to see if I could locate the singer. I followed the voice and soon found myself in a green mossy glade. I could not see anyone but I could hear the voice distinctly, so I took note of the words:

On the new sensation lying within,
One can ride a stream of water, straight and thin.

There was another half line of verse after this but on waking it faded before I could record it. I think it had something to do with the feeling or awareness produced by the "new sensation" mentioned in the first line. I woke up before I could listen to any more of the song or continue to look for the singer.

Note: It was still very early after I finished writing all my notes, so I went back to bed. I had some NLDs and at one point as I was starting to wake up from one I found myself thinking about the song again. At this time I got the impression that the missing line might have been: And so a new feeling is won. Of course there's no way to confirm if that's what it was originally, but it's the best I've got to go on!

After reading about Tlaloc's homebrew EILD technique, I wanted to try something similar, so I compared the devices available on Amazon and settled on the "MotivAider." Although bulky and overpriced, I liked that the vibration length and intensity are fully customizable, and the fact that it has an option to go off at random intervals. It recently arrived in the mail, so I read the instructions before going to bed last night, but decided to wait until my WBTB to program it, since I figured the task would help reawaken my mind as well as focus my intention.

Went to bed at 1:30am, woke naturally at 5am. I realized my motivation wasn't as high as I had anticipated because I remembered how much work I needed to get done before the weekend was over, and reasoned that sleeping in after a long WBTB and writing a dream report if successful would really cut into my available time. However, the MotivAider beckoned, so I decided to do a very short WBTB, just long enough to program it and set it up before going back to sleep. I set the vibration to its minimal length (two seconds), programmed it to go off in random intervals up to 45 minutes, and placed it in the case of my leg pillow, where I should be able to feel it through the fabric. (I am a side sleeper and always use an extra pillow between my knees.) I thought the vibration would be too disruptive if it was near my head, so I wanted it somewhere closer to my feet. I returned to bed at 5:20am. I lay awake for a while with anticipation, and eventually decided I had better also put the vibration on its weakest setting, so I reprogrammed the device by the light of my phone.

At some point I must have drifted off to sleep, and then I felt the device go off. But something had gone wrong: the vibrations were pulsing repetitively without cease. I tried to ignore them, but they seemed to be going on for over a minute. I decided I must have programmed the device incorrectly, so I got up and took it out of the pillow, setting it aside. Tomorrow I could figure out what the problem was.

Shortly after that I was walking through the house, and I noticed something odd. Glancing through the sliding glass door in the kitchen, I saw that the water level of the river next to the house had risen way too high. In fact, the water was coming right up to the base of the door, like it was on the verge of flooding in. This observation was so startling that it made me realize I must be dreaming... maybe the EILD had worked after all! Had I ever really gotten up, or had it all been an FA?

In retrospect there was something very intriguingly incomplete about the observation that prompted me realize that I was dreaming. Through the door, I could see a vast sea of water that I interpreted as a wide river, with just a strip of land visible a mile or two distant on the other side. The water looked entirely natural, brownish-hued, its surface sleek and reflective of the warm pre-dawn light. At no point, even after I fully realized I was dreaming, did it occur to me that there is no such river next to the house, much less a broad vista of this kind... the only body of water visible in that direction is an in-ground pool of the conventional turquoise hue on a concrete patio bounded by thick trees that block any view further into the distance. Yet only thing that seemed odd to me in the dream, even after getting lucid, was the high level of the encroaching water, not the improbable existence of the vast river!

Probably because I have been thinking about dream music again, I was inspired to turn my observation into a song. "If there's water near the house, it's a dream," I sang, repeating the line several times to reinforce the association, just in case it came up again in the future. Then I wondered which tasks to work on. I decided to try StephL's lucid dare (enter an enchanted forest, look for an elven gathering and learn a new song from them), which I thought would pair well with the October bonus TOTM (create a song on a musical instrument that doesn't exist in waking life). No sooner did my thoughts turn to the bonus task than I could actually hear ambient music in the air around me, like notes plucked from a stringed instrument. Perhaps I should have paused and investigated—I could probably have found a suitable instrument to fulfill the task—but I already had a plan in mind for getting to the enchanted forest, so I walked out of the house through the front door.

Traveling to a forest on foot hasn't been working well for me in my TOTY attempts (I tried it in Hansel and Gretel a couple times), so I had been pondering alternate strategies. One possibility simply involved growing trees around me in the house until the environment around me transforms into a forest, but another approach I found appealing was to try to use the little fir tree growing outside the front door as a portal.

It was three or four years ago that I bought this little tree at the grocery store one December and that year used it as a miniature Christmas tree (at the time it was only about two feet tall). Afterwards I put it outside in the front yard. Improbably it thrived, more than doubling in size, and apparently seemed to be doing well with no care other than being watered by the automatic sprinklers that went on briefly every morning, so I left it alone. Then one day I went to move it and discovered the secret reason it was flourishing: its roots had apparently gone right through the bottom of the pot and grown directly into the ground! I am impressed by the resourcefulness of this sapling, so I had the idea of approaching it in a dream and asking it to transport me to the enchanted forest.

When I opened the front door, I was surprised to see snow on the ground. This is probably because last night I was looking up pictures based on the search term "winter forest" to incubate appropriate visual impressions. However, since I live in a climate where snow is impossible (it has been in the nineties the last couple days!), I immediately recognized that this was more evidence of the dream state, so I added a new line to my song: "If there's snow on the ground, it's a dream." Looking over at my little tree, I saw that it was also covered in snow, and added another line, "If there's snow in the branches, it's a dream." Since I was already singing, I saw no reason to stop. I walked over to the tree, grasped its narrow trunk, and requested in song, "Take me to the enchanted forest, the enchanted forest of dream!"

Unfortunately, I promptly woke up. Normally I might have been annoyed that the dream ended before I could accomplish anything, but this time I didn't mind because it was such an amusing first success for my new EILD device!

Sure enough, the whole experience turned out to be a false awakening: when I got up to start my report (at 6:10am), I discovered that I had never removed the device from the pillow like I remembered doing. And this indicates that it must not have malfunctioned after all, and that the extended sequence of vibrations I felt was most likely an experience of time dilation conditioned by the dream state.

Ritual: WTB 1am, woke 4:45am. Read, drank spice lassi, 7 minutes SSILD meditation, WBTB 6am. Relaxation, counting, mantra, took probably 30–45 minutes to fall fully asleep. Woke 7:30am with dreams.

Alchemy: 400mg L-Theanine, 400mg Alpha-GPC 50%, 750mg Aniracetam, taken at end of WBTB.

Notes: Two days ago I was buying ice cream in RL, and it occurred to me that I should use this as a motivator. "You can't eat any of this ice cream until you have a lucid dream!" I told myself sternly. Then last night I was thinking of eating something else for dessert, and I decided to be even more strict: "In fact, no dessert for you at all until you get lucid!" Given everything else that went into my attempt, including excitement about the brand new TOTMs, I can't estimate to what extent this reward-based strategy was a factor in the successful outcome, but it's worth experimenting with some more. Either I'll have more LDs or I'll eat fewer sweets, so it's a win-win either way!

I've been working on my mantra, and I'm currently going with variants of "Do we perceive the dream?" When going to sleep while counting I was thinking this on the off-counts, and as the hypnagogic state started to set in, at one point I noticed myself thinking: "Do we believe the skies?" ("Skies" as in the sporting equipment, so the rhyme was preserved.) This was so absurd I had to rouse myself and write it on my notepad!

By the time I started dreaming, it seemed as though there was a degree of dream-awareness from the start of the sequence, but I don't think it blossomed into full lucidity (with agency) until I remembered my tasks. There was no specific "moment of realization," and yet overall the dream felt much more like a DILD than a WILD, so I'm calling it a DILD.

DILD: I was standing in a narrow lane, enclosed on both sides by walls and buildings, in a residential area. A woman came out from a nearby house and walked past me, carrying a cat. Two other cats were running after her anxiously, so although their size suggested that they were almost fully grown, I intuited that the they must be the kittens of the cat she was carrying. The cat in her arms had wonderful markings, almost like tiger stripes. One of the ones that followed had a similar coat, a cross between tiger stripes and a Bengal's spots. A few minutes later a third cat came along, also striped.

I was so taken with looking at the cats that I didn't want to get too far behind, so I followed them and called the young boys that were with me to keep up. One of them was pushing an empty wheelbarrow but soon left off and went to chase after his friend, who had now gone ahead of me. I picked up the wheelbarrow and pushed it along for awhile, but it was of very primitive construction, all wood, even the wheel was just a disk of solid wood, so it was cumbersome. I wondered why I even needed it. I had noticed that one of the other boys who had gone ahead was giving his friend a ride in another wheelbarrow, and figured if I kept pushing mine, one of the boys would likewise ask me if they could ride in it, which would make it even more cumbersome. So I put it down and continued along the path.

There was a barn to the left, with an open door, and I decided to turn aside and explore it. This meant there would be no way of catching up with the others, but I didn't feel much urgency to do that anymore. The barn was full of old objects, and seemed to be used as storage of some kind. I remembered the TOTM and reasoned that in a rustic place like this it should be easy to find a pumpkin, so I started looking around for one. I climbed a ladder to a ledge which was serving as a shelf for additional objects, and was pleased to find that one of them was a large pumpkin. Everything else was covered with dust, which made me wonder how long the pumpkin had been sitting here. It was probably this concern that made me notice that the pumpkin was looking a bit sagging and rotten, but I recalled that the TOTM instructions didn't specify anything about the condition of the pumpkin, so I figured that it would still work!

Before I could reach for it, I noticed that it wasn't the only pumpkin: now I saw that there were three more on the shelf within arm's reach, all of them of slightly different hues and shapes. I was glad there was an alternative to reaching into the rotten pumpkin, so I grabbed the one whose appearance I found the most interesting: it was small, squat, and had a faintly bluish tinge. I figured I would start with this one, and if I didn't like the results, I had three more to work with.

Part of me wanted to just punch my fist into the pumpkin, which would have been faster but less elegant, so I forced myself to take my time and cut it open properly. I produced a knife from somewhere, without really thinking about it, and began sawing a circle around the stem, just as if I were going to begin carving a jack-o-lantern. When I completed the circle I lifted up the top section, revealing the interior of the pumpkin, and reached inside. The pumpkin was small enough that my hand barely fit, and I was groping around in the stringy goop and slimy seeds trying to find something else in there, hoping to encounter something interesting and unanticipated. All I felt were the pumpkin's ordinary innards, though.

Initially I had left my anticipations open-ended, but now that the dream was coming up empty-handed I tried to seed them with some expectations. Although it was a small pumpkin, there would be plenty of room for a ring. Might there be a ring inside? I squished all the pumpkin innards around in my hand to make sure I wasn't missing anything, but there was nothing there, nothing that wouldn't ordinarily be found in a pumpkin. The only distinguishing feature was that the stringy goop and slimy seeds, despite their very naturalistic texture, had the same bluish tinge as the pumpkin's skin. (I think this might have been day-residue, as last night I had been reading an Amazon review of a set of mala beads beads made in China that complained how the wood had soon developed a weird bluish cast.)

At that point I decided to give up on the little blue pumpkin and get started on the other three, but inconveniently I woke up. I considered getting up and writing my report, but felt that I was still in a state where it would be possible to DEILD, so I fixed the previous events in mind and let myself drift back into dream.

DEILD: This time I found myself in a place I recognized: it was the house of my maternal grandmother that I often visited as a young kid. It is a place that often shows up in my dreams. On this occasion, the theme of "blue" seemed to carry over from the last dream, as I noticed that the house now had a beautiful deep blue carpet that looked brand new. "Nice new carpet!" I said loudly, in case anyone was home. My grandmother is long dead but in waking life my uncle lives there now. In the dream, however, the house seemed quiet and empty, and no one responded to my complement.

I felt very lucid and clear, more so than in the beginning of the last dream, and remembered my standing intention to reflect on my bodily awareness. Sure enough, I could feel the characteristic tingles in my abdomen and especially in my legs that I associate with dreaming. (My hypothesis is that this "tingling" is a product of REM atonia.) I also associate this sensation with the ability to fly in dreams, so I experimentally levitated a bit, and then tried to implant the mental suggestion to be more aware of this body state while dreaming, with the aim of getting lucid more often.

Returning my attention to the environment, I wondered what task I could try next. I had been interested in the other basic task, drinking blood, but I didn't want to have to go all vampire on anyone who I might happen to encounter in this house, given that this was a place where my own relatives lived. "Perhaps if I look in the refrigerator, there'll be a cup of blood in there," I figured. It seemed a reasonable speculation, but after opening the fridge (which at the time I didn't notice was on the opposite side of the room than it is in RL), I didn't see any likely candidates. What would a cup of blood even look like? And would it still count for the task if it came from the fridge? The instructions didn't specify a source. But the idea of drinking a cup of refrigerated blood was not appealing to me, so I thought I should save this task for a more suitable occasion. I much preferred the idea of drinking it vampire-style, especially if I could get the bonus by drinking it from a supernatural creature.

Closing the fridge, I wondered what other tasks might be suitable for this environment. I remembered my lucid dare, and that struck me as a perfect idea: when I was little I always used to walk and play in the forest behind this house, so it was the perfect "enchanted" forest in which to go looking for elves. I continued walking through the house and went out the back door.

The world that greeted me once I stepped outside was startling in its freshness. The colors were deep and rich and luminous, more so than I usually see in dreams, and I was struck by the beauty of my surroundings. There were some distinct differences from RL: in the far distance I could residential areas covered in mist, as though I were looking at a town from the summit of a tall hill. The forest I hoped to find was present, but quite a bit further away than I would have expected. And walking across the grass of the wide lawn that lay before the forest was... a minotaur? I looked again. No, not quite a minotaur... it had the same general lineaments, but the head was that of a horse rather than a bull. Nevertheless, the creature was clearly supernatural, and it reminded me of the blood task again. I didn't want to miss this opportunity, since it was walking right toward me, so I approached the creature.

I didn't want to just grab the monster and start biting him, since he would surely conclude that I was attacking him and fight back, which could be counter-productive. So I went up to him and asked politely, "Sir, would you mind if I drank some of your blood? I only need a cup." He was at least seven feet tall and surely had plenty of blood to spare, so I didn't see any reason he should refuse. To my consternation, he seemed unsettled by my request and tried to demur. But I didn't want to pass up this opportunity, and figured that I had already met the demands of good sportsmanship by clarifying my intentions, so I grabbed his left arm (I was facing him, so it was the arm to my right), extended my fangs, bit him right in the crook of his elbow, and began to drink. Although he was tense and rigid, he didn't fight back, and I concluded that he must be experiencing that peculiar pleasure that the prey of vampires are often said to feel while being fed upon.

I paused to look up, gauging the creature's reaction, and was surprised to see that his appearance had changed. His head was thrown back, his eyes closed, but it was the head of an ordinary man now, no longer that of a horse. The task was to drink from a supernatural creature and see how it changed me, but it turned out he was the one that was transforming! I returned to drinking his blood before he could recover his wits and fight me off. However, the blood wasn't coming very quickly. Either I had picked a bad spot where the blood couldn't flow freely or he was still resisting me in some way, perhaps stifling its flow through the tension in his arm, which was still very stiff. I woke up before I had finished drinking, and promptly concluded that I didn't think I hadn't drunk a whole cup's worth, if we're measuring technically by eight ounces. However, it turns out that it is hard to estimate the quantity of blood you're drinking when you're getting it right from someone's arm!

Ritual: WTB 1am, woke 5am. Read and drank a cup of Calea zacatechichi tea. WBTB 6am, attempted WILD (counting and senses scanning), fell asleep while still on my back and had an ordinary NLD.

NLD: We were assaulting a dwarven fortress. I had stealthed in and filled the place with a smoke that was supposed to put all the dwarves to sleep. There were three other people my party waiting outside. As I was leaving I noticed that the smoke didn't seem to be working: the guards were as alert as ever. But someone started firing and soon we were embroiled in a full-out battle, which was what we had hoped to avoid because we were outnumbered. Although not the slightest bit lucid, I had a good deal of dream control and was using both levitation and invisibility to avoid being shot or captured, but my companions were not so fortunate, and I wasn't going to abandon them. In the last scene, the four of us have been captured and are being taken somewhere in the back of a van wearing straightjackets. One particularly gruff member of my team said to the others, "That's why one doesn't start to shoot until the light says he's turning on." I think he was trying to tell them that they should have waited for me to give the signal before initiating battle, and that our plan had failed because one of them had jumped the gun. After I woke up I thought it odd that he had been referring to me with the masculine pronoun, since I hadn't felt distinctly male in the dream, but perhaps that's how the others had perceived me.

After I woke it was light out, so I started with my plan to experiment with Remee in nap mode, set to go off after 20 minutes. Anticipation made it hard to fall asleep promptly, so after a while I reset it for another 20 minutes, since I wanted to make sure I was well asleep and ideally in REM before the lights started. I hadn't been carefully checking the time, so when I woke up again I was uncertain if I had missed the signal or if it had not gone off yet. No dreams I could recall. I checked the time, it was about 8:10, reset the Remee and went back to sleep, more easily this time.

FA: I woke up, looked at the clock, and saw that it was almost 9am. I remembered it had been shortly past 8 when I had last set the Remee, so I must have missed the signal again. I got out of bed, completely oblivious to the fact that I was transitioning smoothly from a false awakening into a real rising, until I began to take off the Remee and just then the red lights started flashing on the mask. After brief confusion I realized that I had just been fooled by an FA: how could I have checked the time on the clock just a moment ago when at that time I was still wearing the mask? I checked the clock again now that I was really awake and saw that it was a lot earlier than I had thought, only 8:30, so the Remee was going off right on schedule.

Note: The fact that I had woken up just before the Remee went off didn't feel coincidental, but rather a manifestation of what always happens to me with alarm clocks. Although I rarely form an accurate conscious impression of time in my dreams, for some reason I have an eerily consistent ability to wake up right before any alarm that I set actually goes off—usually within a few minutes, sometimes less than a minute in advance of the alarm. This seems to be what accidentally happened here. Not helpful in this case, though!

Ritual: WTB 1am, WBTB 4–6am. Plenty of hypnagogic imagery but hard to fall fully asleep, last noted time at 6:45am. Woke at 7:30 with dream as follows.

Alchemy: First experiment with phenylpiracetam, 100mg. Stacked with 300mg Alpha-GPC (50%), and 200mg L-Theanine. Took in first hour of WBTB (in retrospect, I think this was too early and interfered with sleep). In second hour of WBTB, drank yerba mate tea (this was also probably overkill, as it turned out).

NLD: I was in a big auditorium. No memory of what was going on there, but I was trying to climb a big pole in the center (maybe I was already prospectively thinking of Jack and the Beanstalk?) However, I felt weak and uncoordinated, and couldn't make it up very far.

Later, I ended up in conflict with a guy. He was lean and wiry, small-framed, with a short trimmed greying beard. He and my husband had been in tiny vehicles on an indoor track and this guy, for no apparent reason, started aggressively crowding my husband into the side of the track. I was so angry I chased him. He got off his vehicle and disappeared into the crowd. I kept watching his movements and followed up until I was finally able to catch up. At the last minute I wondered if I was really going to go through with my intention to beat him up when I caught him... and decided yes, he needed to learn a lesson. So when I got close enough I immediately threw a punch, dodged his return blows, and finally knocked him down to the floor.

He had a dream device on him—I took it to be his journal, but it resembled a long strip of chromed metal, several inches wide by about sixteen inches long, with some holes running along the center area. I took it away from him as a punishment. I wanted to hide it somewhere it would be hard to find, so I took it into the women's bathroom, where he presumably wouldn't think to look. There was an incinerator in there as well as a garbage can, but I decided that I couldn't destroy his journal, no matter how much I disliked him, because dreams are too important, even his. I just wanted to inconvenience him for a while, so I put the device in an inconspicuous shelf where I figured someone would come across it eventually. There were a lot of dream herbs and supplements on the shelf, apparently free for the taking, but I reminded myself that this was a public place and anyone could have tampered with them, so I'd better leave them alone, and stick to my own at home which I know are clean.

DILD: It was around this point that I remembered to RC and realized I was dreaming. My goal was to work on the fairy tale TOTYs. I had actually come across a sandwich bag containing a handful of Giant White Beans in my RL kitchen the other day, and thought that these would be ideal to plant outside to grow the beanstalks. So after getting lucid, I headed straight for the kitchen and grabbed the bag, then went outside to plant them in the little plots of soil that abut the wall of the house. I felt like I was rushing, but the dreamstate felt shallow and unstable so I was motivated to act quickly.

In the dream it was drizzling lightly, so the soil was soft and easy to work. I planted the beans by hand, three in the first plot, and then went to the next plot to plant three more. But by the fourth bean I realized that they might take a long time to germinate if I didn't hurry things along. Fortunately I had a plan for this. I had been meaning to work with the Ars Magica Form "Herbam" for a while anyway, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Would "Creo" or "Rego" be the proper technique for this case? I decided to go with "Creo" since I was growing the beanstalks from seed.

I held my hand over the soil where I had just planted the fourth bean and intoned, "Creo herbam." After a little concentration it readily responded, a thick sprout emerging from the earth. It didn't look so much like a beanstalk as a huge stalk of asparagus, at least six inches in diameter. I figured that would be okay, as it would turn out sturdier this way... and I like asparagus. I quickly planted the other two beans in the second plot, but the stalk was growing rapidly and was already a few feet tall. There were still two more beans in the bag but I decided to save them... what if I needed to plant another stalk to get back down? Jack probably saved a few beans if he was smart.

Remembering how much trouble I had experienced attempting to climb in the previous NLD, I came up with a better idea. While the stalk was growing past chest height, I grabbed onto it and let it lift me as it grew. I wondered if this would still count for the TOTY, but figured probably, in terms of altitude I was certainly climbing, even if the stalk was doing all the work!

We went up and up. I was waiting to reach some kind of surface or platform that I could step off onto. How did this go in the story? I don't think I've ever actually read the original, and started to regret that I hadn't done a bit more research, because it was hard to imagine what kind of solid ground Jack could have encountered at the top of the stalk. Did he step onto the upper surface of the clouds? Or was there some kind of floating island? I may have been overrationalizing, but it annoyed me that I couldn't remember how this was supposed to work.

The dream seems to have responded to my confusion, because the space around me became ambiguous. I had started outdoors but now felt like I was indoors again, still on the beanstalk, which was still growing. However, it was now "growing" through what was effectively a visual loop: I noticed the same attic space passing by again and again in front of my eyes, like a skip in a record. I attempted to wait it out but it just kept repeating, so finally I figured, okay, I'll take the hint, I'll get off here.

Around this point the dreamstate was feeling very thin and shallow, and my senses felt poorly integrated. I had to focus my attention for a moment on just on staying engaged in the dream. When this awkward passage resolved, I was back in a room that somewhat resembled my RL bedroom, only now the beanstalk seemed to be growing from the middle of the bed and burst right through the ceiling. I didn't have the impression that any giant was in the vicinity. Maybe I needed to climb it again? But the hole in the ceiling was only big enough to accommodate the beanstalk. I would have to widen it if I wanted to crawl through.

This reminded me of my separate and fallback intention to work on Hansel and Gretel if the beanstalk idea went awry. My new strategy involved breaking off pieces of a house and eating it, to encourage it to turn into the gingerbread cottage of the story. I reached up with my hand to tear a piece from the edge of the hole in the ceiling. It broke off easily in my hand like rotten wood. I took a bite: it has the texture of a dry crumbly cookie but not much flavor. I tried to conjure the taste of gingerbread but I don't notice much change. I went wandering through the house looking for a witch but there's no one else home.

There's a vague section here. I can't remember if I actually ended up climbing the first stalk to end up outside on the roof, or if I just walked outside to check on the other beanstalks, but at some point I am outdoors again, and I observe that the other beanstalks I planted also grew at some point but are now brown and withered. I can't remember what became of the first one, but evidently it couldn't get me any farther than the roof. Still no giants, but I see what looks like a higher platform on top of a neighboring building. I break off a length of one of the dead stalks and try to use it to pole vault myself up onto the platform. It gets me almost to the top but not quite.

Occupying the center of the wall leading up to this platform is a very tall bookshelf, only about three or four feet in width but running all the way up to the top of the thirty or forty foot wall. After my second or third attempt to pole vault up, I realize that I can't make it all the way to the top using this method, so I get off on one of the uppermost shelves. I don't think I can finish the climb directly from here, but I have another idea. My weight is already destabilizing the bookshelf, pulling it down and me along with it, so I realize that I might be able to use the rebound effect to launch myself onto the platform. As the top of the bookshelf sinks all the way down to ground level, I climb over the top and position myself on the back of the shelf (which is level with the ground and facing up after the bookshelf has fallen all the way down). I anticipate that the whole shelf is going to rebound back into its original place, and sure enough it does. Using the force of its rebound, I jump off when I'm near the top and finally make it up onto the platform... when the dream ended.

Note: Although I managed to get a fair amount done despite adverse conditions, the dreamstate was low quality throughout. I stayed up during the WBTB about twice as long as I had originally intended, which meant I took the supplements way too early so that they were actively inhibiting sleep by the time I returned to bed, and drinking the caffeinated yerba mate on top of that was evidently a mistake. But it is hard to argue counterfactuals because sometimes if I don't overdo it, I don't get lucid at all, so it's always a tricky balancing act.

Ritual: WTB 1am, woke 4:20am, got up and read, drank spice lassi (yogurt, water, turmeric, cumin, salt), did 12 minutes seated meditation incorporation SSILD technique before returning to bed at 5:50am. Before going to bed I affirmed several times, "I vow to lucid dream," reflecting on how a vow is much more serious than an intention, a little nervous that I might inadvertantly break my vow, but reminding myself that I didn't dare, failing to go through on an intention is one thing, but you're never supposed to break your vows. I wanted to avoid supplements for the most part as that hasn't helped much lately, but I did use a few drops of Calea Zacatechichi tincture, because although I can't say for sure if it actually works, I thought the distinctive taste might contribute a useful placebo effect. I lay on my back in bed and did a series of tension-relaxation exercises, then cycled in random order through several affirmations ("I am aware / I do / I dream"). Drifted off, woke up a little, realized it was getting too bright out and my mind felt sufficiently wakeful that this might be an obstacle to sleep, so I put on my sleep mask (a device of last resort as I don't like wearing it), turned on my left side, and continued the affirmations until I fell asleep. I got a lot of distinct hypnagogic imagery and sounds every time I started to drift off, but I did not feel the physical signs of transition.

WILD, Part 1: I woke up again, thinking I might have transitioned successfully, and got out of bed. I could still distinctly feel myself wearing the sleep mask so I wondered if I was really dreaming, but realized that since it wasn't obstructing my vision, then I must be. I was tempted to rip off the mask but decided to just ignore it, and soon the sensations disappeared for the duration of the dream. Now that I was sure I was dreaming, I wanted to get started right away on my tasks. I reached behind me for my wand, a gesture familiar from a few years ago when I had been playing a lot with Harry Potter style magic. I got used the idea that my wand was sheathed just behind my right hip, so I could just reach back there at any time to draw it. However, this time I came up empty-handed. I realized that this was probably because, having just gotten out of bed, I wasn't wearing any clothes. Nevermind, I can work on that task later. By this time I'm in the kitchen, so it should be an easy matter to procure some fortune cookies!

I walk toward the kitchen counter, expecting to find a bag of fortune cookies ready to hand. Sure enough, there is a clear plastic bag right where I expect, but as I reach for it I see that it contains... what are those, pierogies? I laugh because they look almost like fortune cookies and are anything but, and it is just like dream to bait and switch this way. I pick up the bag and reach into it anyway, focusing my expectations around pulling out a proper fortune cookie, and by the time my hand closes around something, I can tell that it is falling into line: it has the dry smooth surface, distinctive shape and ridges of a fortune cookie. I pull it out and break it in half to get the fortune. I remember that I'm supposed to eat the cookie too, so I start nibbling at it while extracting the fortune, which was wedged inside the cookie in a crumpled up wad. As I smooth it, I see that the little strip of paper is covered with what looks like dabs of herb butter mixed with little shreds of nori seaweed, a kind of east-west fusion of ingredients. I'm disappointed to see that there is no writing on the paper at all, just the seasonings.

No problem, the bag contains several cookies. I'll just get another. I try again, and fortunately the next cookie contains a larger slip of paper, one that comes out properly this time and contains actual text—quite a lot of text actually, four or five lines of it. I start to read it, murmuring aloud to help fix it in memory. It starts something like: "And earth her allies rift..." It goes on from there, not making much sense, and worse, by the time I get to the second line the first one is already changing, now "her allies" looks like it has been replaced by something in German, "die Beile."

(Weird, according to my German dictionary app "die Beile" means "axes, hatchets." I've studied a bit of German, which is why I have the app, but I'm not aware that I've ever learned that word and didn't even know if it was a real one until I looked it up.)

I continue reading the fortune, and by the time I get to the end the first line has changed again even more, and I'm pretty sure so has everything else. I realize this is somewhat hopeless, the fortune was so long that it would have been hard enough to remember even if it were static, much less track all the changes, so I just determine to remember the part that I read initially, since I think I can keep at least this much in working memory: "And earth her allies rift."

By this point the fortune has transformed into a large plastic wrapper like the sort that might have wrapped a whole box of cookies, and as I continue to look at it, I'm surprised by how much additional text is written on the side in small print: mundane details like the address of the manufacturer, etc. I see a date, "1945," and note that the place of manufacture is San Francisco, which makes sense (wasn't the fortune cookie invented there?) but by now the date has already changed to "1929."

FA: Around this time I wake up and grab the notebook I keep next to the bed to start writing things down. Something's wrong, though: even though I normally open it to a blank page before sleeping, it is now open to a page wholly printed with graphics resembling some type of manga. I don't remember the notebook having graphics! I flip through to find a blank page quickly while my memories are fresh, but all the white pages are already filled with previous notes, and they are interspersed with the manga pages, like a cross between a notebook and a graphic novel. I find a space of blank color on one of the manga images, just enough room to scribble, "and earth her allies rift," but then I feel guilty about spoiling the drawing. I don't even remember what the story is, but if I write all over it I might end up regretting it.

While I'm still trying to figure out where to put down the rest of my notes, my husband comes into the room carrying two boxes wrapped in paper, like presents. Apparently this is some new game that has just arrived that he wants to play together, a console game. I remember him telling me about it earlier: the plot has something to do with cartoonish kids and their gorilla allies. It seems that the game can only be played in two-person mode, so he has come in to try to wake me up. I'm still lying in bed, so he sets the two boxes down right on top of me and starts to rip off the paper wrapping. The boxes are cubes measuring about a foot on each side, and at first I wonder why they are so large, but as he tears off the paper I can see from the box art that they contain individual devices like Playstation controllers.

Although I do want to play the game at some point, I'm annoyed at this disruption because I was in the middle of a lucid dream attempt! After jotting down my notes I had been planning to try to re-enter the dream state. However, I already vaguely suspect that this might not be a real awakening because everything seems so exaggerated, from the problems with my notebook to my husband's rude attempt to wake me. He may not share my hobby, but he's aware of it, and would be unlikely to disturb me while I'm still sleeping, much less set boxes on me! This remains only a suspicion, and I don't become fully aware of the fact that I'm still dreaming. Rather, I conclude only that I'm still on the verge of it, since I can still feel the heaviness and tingling in my limbs that lets me know that I can probably re-enter the dreamstate once this distraction has diminished. So I quietly grumble at my husband until he leaves, careful to keep calm and not lose my temper since that could wake me up too much and make it impossible to to return to the dream. After he goes out of the room, I get myself settled in the bed again and prepare to re-transition. This is amusing in retrospect because evidently I was fully dreaming the whole time—I had the impression that I was DEILDing back into the dream, but obviously if this had been a real awakening DEILD would have been impossible after such a chaotic interlude! When I felt confident I was dreaming again, I got back out of bed.

WILD, Part 2: Having done fortune cookies, I thought I should put all my focus now into completing the Patronus TOTM. Once more I reach for my wand and once again come up empty-handed. No matter, I've used a chopstick as a wand before with great success, and I keep a jar of those right on the kitchen counter, so I walk up to it and pluck a nice sturdy one. Although the jar is mostly full of delicately-pointed Japanese chopsticks, I choose a sturdier one of the Chinese type, cut half-square and half-round. It looks just like one of my real chopsticks, from a simple and practical set I acquired many years ago in Nonthaburi because I didn't know I was supposed to give them back to the door-to-door noodle vendor, and it feels comfortable and familiar in my hand.

I figure that it would be most appropriate to summon a Patronus if there were a real threat, but I don't want to over-complicate things by going to look for one. I reason that since my husband was annoying me just now with the boxes and almost woke me up, this could serve as a sufficient stand-in. So I find him in the living room, point the wand toward him and say firmly, "Expecto Patronum!" I hear an audible "pop" like something bursting but see no change in the visual field. I try again and nothing happens at all. I strengthen my resolve, try a third time, and... what is that?... I look closer... it's... moths! The air between us where I was aiming the wand is now occupied with a cloud of small shimmering moths!

I'm delighted with these results because they were so unexpected. I figured my Patronus would turn out to be something predictable like a type of animal I like, maybe a cat or an owl or a raven or even a horse, but moths had never crossed my mind! However, I had intentionally left the form of the Patronus unspecified, because I was hoping the dream would collaborate with me creatively and come up with something interesting and unanticipated, and in this respect it fulfilled its role splendidly.

Moths! I would never have consciously arrived at this solution, but now it makes perfect sense: I am very much a night person, after all, and these are definitely night moths. I watch them for a few moments, entranced by the glitter and sparkle of their silver bodies in flight. They are relatively small, with wingspans of roughly three-quarters of an inch, but there is a whole cloud of them, many dozens filling an area several feet on either side. Although we are indoors, they appear to be illuminated by moonlight. It is incredibly beautiful. And they've fulfilled the function of a Patronus, it seems, in that they have averted the "threat" (such as it was) and completely defused the tension in the room. My husband is watching them too, and appears just as enchanted with them as I am.

After admiring the moths for a while, I notice a rabbit on the living room floor. It is wonderfully well-articulated, closely resembling Dürer's famous drawing of a hare. (Probably WLR because I briefly saw that drawing yesterday.) Since I'm still holding the wand, I figure I might as well try out another HP spell. I recall that there's one that ends with "leviosa," and although I can't remember the first word, I figure it is unimportant because clearly "leviosa" is the operative term. So I point the wand at the hare and say, "Leviosa!" Sure enough, it rises right off the ground into the air. I set it back down and pet it fondly.

I now feel satisfied that I have accomplished both the tasks I had intended, and I know I should wake up now and write promptly before I forget any details. But the dream is going so well, so clear and stable and responsive... it would be a shame to leave it so soon... I give in to the temptation to take a quick look outside, just for a minute, before coming back in to wake up and begin my report.

Walking back through the kitchen, I open the screen door to the back patio. Sometimes my WILDs become more unstable after I leave the house, probably in large part because I've developed the expectation that this can happen, but in this case I plan to wake up soon anyway, so I walk outside without hesitation.

It only takes a step or two before the environment no longer resembles my backyard. I encounter a group of four DCs, a mix of men and women who appear to be in their twenties. They begin to approach or accost me in a vaguely threatening manner. I try the Patronus charm again, but it is not as effective this time: the cloud of moths is much smaller and the DCs appear unimpressed. I'm not sure if I actually see them holding wands, or only rationalize that they might be, but I figure this would be the perfect opportunity to try another HP spell. "Expelliamus!" I shout, aiming at the guy on the far left. Sure enough, his wand jumps right out of his hand toward me, and I catch it neatly. You'd think this would give the others enough warning to prepare their defenses, and indeed they seem to be scrambling to try, but I promptly disarm them all using the same technique.

I walk on a little further, and encounter a few more DCs sitting on a low brick wall and chatting. The initial four have followed me, and I get the impression that the new ones are their friends. I wonder if they are going to retaliate at me for having taken all their wands, so try the Patronus charm yet again: "Expecto Patronum!" This time only a scattering of moths appear, a half dozen or less. I feel a bit embarrassed at this poor showing. "It must be out," I muse, wondering if the wand can only conjure a limited number of moths in a given interval.

Nevermind, I've got more tricks in my arsenal, and I want to intimidate these DCs so they'll back off. I wonder if I can levitate the whole group of people? "Leviosa!" I command, trying to make them all rise in the air at once. It doesn't work, and I speculate that maybe this is like game mechanics, where it is easier to perform such effects on simple creatures like animals, but harder on a more intelligent creature like a person, since they get a free roll to resist. I think it over and decide, well, maybe so, but... I have all the wands! Their combined power should be enough to counter any resistance. Is it possible to use more than one wand simultaneously to cast a spell? Only one way to find out!

Standing in the center of the DCs, who form a ring around me, I levitate myself initially—partly to cement the idea of levitation more firmly in mind, and partly because some of them look like they might want to make a grab at me at any minute. Hovering in the air just above them, I arrange all the wands together in my right hand so that I am gripping them evenly, and try again: "Leviosa!" This time I am pleased to see the whole circle of people around me—about six or seven now I think, the initial group plus their friends—rise simultaneously several feet into the air until they are almost even with my own level. They all look discomfited and alarmed by this change of circumstances, so to reassure them that I mean no real harm I let them sink gently back down to the ground and come down as well myself, satisfied with the results of my experiment.

I decide to stop fooling around now and go back into the house to write my report. It seems dream logic has made me forget that I can just wake up whenever I want to, I don't actually have to go back bodily into the house and manually start writing. But as I turn to go, one of the girls who has returned to her seat on the brick wall yells something hostile and sarcastic after me. I figure she's upset over my levitation stunt, so I decide to use friendliness to try to transform her attitude. I walk right up to her and, maybe taking "friendliness" a little too far, kiss her on the lips. Although she just looks startled and confused now, I smile warmly and say with genuine affection, "See you later!"

Returning to what I think must be the spot where I came out of the building, I go back inside. Just in case the DCs are still feeling miffed and try to follow me in, I lock and bolt the heavy door behind me. This is no longer the sliding screen door to my kitchen, but a large and solidly made wooden door with numerous locking mechanisms. I'm not sure if I came in the right door at all, because when I turn around I see that I'm in what looks like a nineteenth-century boiler room: it is full of heavy, old-fashioned machinery. Nevermind, I'm sure I can find the entrance to my kitchen just a little further on, so I'll go through and look for it.

As I pass by some of the machines, I marvel at their intricacy and the clarity with which I can perceive how they are constructed. I pass one machine that has a cylindrical body like an old stove. Although it is made out of solid black cast iron, there is a primitive electric cord incongruously coming out of it, so I figure it must be from a period of technological transition in the late nineteenth century. The electricity is driving some kind of rotating grinder that is hidden in the upper part of the cast iron body under a round upper plate, and with a flash of insight I think I know what this is: it must be a mill of some kind! But what is it grinding? I look at it a little longer and see a lower basin, also cast iron, positioned below the cylindrical body to catch drippings of some kind: the drippings resemble hot slag, semi-melted metal. Whatever this thing is milling, it is definitely not flour!

I continue to make my way through the room, dodging complex pieces of shaped metal and machinery that crowd around closely on all sides, but when I get to the far wall I'm disconcerted to find that there's no door. How am I going to get back into my house? Although there seems to be no exit in the walls other than the door I came in, the ceiling is so far overhead as to be out of sight, and I observe that this is less a room than a vertical shaft filled with industrial machinery all the way up, so I begin to levitate and rise through the lattice of metal bars. When I get about three storeys up I see in the wall what looks like the worn wooden cover of a hatch, arched on the top and with a flat base. There is no handle and it looks like it would be too small to crawl through comfortably, but I figure I can make a portal in the wall here to pass through.

Aiming my wand at the wall, I intend for a portal to form in the location of the hatch. Although nothing appears that I would recognize as a portal, the wall changes, the area in front of me becoming transparent, and just a few feet beyond I see a vertical transparent sheet of glass, apparently the wall of a neighboring building, a modern glass-walled high-rise. Directly across from me through the glass, I see what looks like the interior of a cafe, the sort of place the people who work in this building might stop for coffee or a snack on their lunch hour. It is dark inside and empty of customers, as it is nighttime, but I notice with mild alarm that several cops are running through the cafe and aiming guns at me! They seem very deliberate, as though this was a sting operation directed at stopping me. If they shoot, they'll surely break the glass and then I'll be exposed.

I consider making the first move and breaking the glass myself to engage them, but I don't feel like getting into combat. I point my wand toward the cops with the intention of creating some kind of protective barrier between us, but I don't see any change and can't tell if this is successful. I decide to just get out of here. Making another portal directly in front of me seems like a bad idea, because the cops might shoot at any moment, so I get a bit creative and make the portal directly under my feet—all this time I have been hovering in the air, after all—and then I take what feels like a leap of faith and simply let myself fall directly into it. Would any pursuers be able to follow? As I fall, I decide that probably the best course at this point is to let the portal lead me to waking, and so I transition from feeling as though I'm falling through a round tunnel of undefined space to waking up in my bed and scrambling to start taking notes before the memories fade.

It's interesting how clear and stable my dream memory remains—even of such a complex series of episodes—for as long as I am still dreaming, and it is only on waking that the whole fabric begins to thin and fray unless it is captured immediately. Fortunately there were no problems with my notebook this time so I jotted down the key details quickly by hand and then spent the next hour and a half typing up my full draft of the report while the memories were still fresh in mind. I don't mind devoting the time (and sacrificing the sleep) for it when the dreaming is so good!

Ritual: I got fed up with the dry spell I've been having for the past couple weeks and took drastic measures. Back in 2010 I experimented a couple times with nicotine (in patch form) as a lucidity trigger, but quickly gave it up because I found it impossible to fall asleep with even a very low dose (half a 7mg patch, so 3.5mg). These days my problem—and the main thing hampering my lucid attempts—is that I've been falling asleep way too easily, so I thought there would be a good chance I'd be able to fall sleep wearing the patch and see if it had any effects on dreaming after all.

Went to bed at midnight, woke naturally at 3:30am and stayed awake until 5am, mostly reading, but finishing the WBTB with a brief seated meditation. I googled to make sure using nicotine patches well past their expiration date was advisable, but was reassured by what I found. So I took 200mg L-Theanine to make it easier to fall asleep, and applied a 7mg patch with half its surface covered, so 3.5mg total (though the dose might have weakened with age). I also worked on my mental motivation, not just intending but vowing to get lucid tonight.

When I returned to bed I felt my heart beating faster than normal, though I wasn't sure if it was the nicotine (if so the patches must be exceptionally fast acting, because this was only minutes later) or just a consequence of the excitement and anxiety of trying something new. The feeling reminded me trying to fall asleep on galantamine, which also has a very powerful stimulant effect. However, I started counting and was reassured (and somewhat surprised) when I began to lose my place already by the time I hit "ten." I reset and kept counting, rarely making it as far as "ten," and often not past "one," until I felt my mind had reached a place where I could easily fall asleep, then turned on my side to do so.

I fell asleep very quickly, although my intention to remain aware of the transition went nowhere—I just zonked out. I woke up almost two hours later with the memory of a DILD and least one FA. The dreams were definitely atypical in tone: the plot was epic and confrontational, which I attribute to the nicotine. The dream awareness was spontaneous rather than triggered, but the lucidity was at very low level. Worse, my dream recall was unusually vague and fragmentary.

DILD: The dream had a complex narrative that I can't satisfactorily recall. The most notable aspect was that my husband was in it and my dream logic concluded that it was a shared dream and that he was actually there and trying to learn the ropes of lucidity from me. We were trying to summon spirit allies, and he wanted a gryphon. The first version looked cartoonish, reminiscent of the monsters from Where the Wild Things Are, but it wasn't a proper gryphon. Neither were the next two, though they were massive, monstrous creatures that reminded me of the kinds of avatars you would summon in the later Final Fantasy games. When I summoned my own spirit ally, I was surprised to find that it was just a somewhat transparent virtual version of me.

(Source: I think this was day residue, as last night in ME3 my Shepard came across the holograph AI of herself on the Citadel. The notion of iconographically incorrect gryphons might have been inspired by the poor versions I saw in the astonishingly bad—so bad it was almost good, I couldn't stop laughing—film version of Hercules I caught the last fifteen minutes of on cable yesterday evening.)

I wish I remembered the plot of the dream more clearly. There was a group of entities that we were in conflict with, and they were insisting that I was breaking the rules of dream in some way. I disagreed, as I felt justified to do as I liked in my own dream, so I countered by exerting a massive field of control over the environment that made the ground shudder and shattered buildings. It wasn't quite an earthquake, more a gravity-reversing vibration: I have a mental image of dust and dirt rising and hovering in the air accompanied by an almost subsonic drone. It felt good to do this, powerful, though something of a guilty pleasure.

(Source: I was sure there was a waking life source for this image of dust rising from the earth in the wrong direction but couldn't remember; now it occurs to me that it might have been from the movie Transcendence, which I saw last month.)

At one point I had the presence of mind to wonder, or maybe someone asked me: was I actually hurting anyone by doing this? But I pointed out that you can't hurt DCs merely by disrupting their physical bodies, because the dream state does not have that kind of continuity. I demonstrated this by plucking my own spirit ally from deep in the rubble where she had been buried and reviving her.

I might actually have remembered somewhere in all of this to try the Patronus TOTM, which had been my intention before falling asleep, but if so I don't recall the outcome, unless that was somehow connected with the idea of spirit allies. Too vague to be sure, unfortunately.

FA: I woke up next to my husband and wondered if it had really been a shared dream, so I watched his reaction carefully. He gave me a look which led me to conclude that it had been. But before long it began to dawn on me that this might be a false awakening, and soon I was sure of it. I decided to review the events of the previous dream in my mind before I forgot, but as I was doing so, I became aware that my mind was interpolating new ideas, and whole new scenes were even taking place, spinning off from my memories of the previous plotline—this is the risk of reviewing dream memories while you're still dreaming!

For instance, when I thought about our spirit allies, a girl showed up at the foot of the bed who I took to be a transformation of the gryphon in the previous dream, only now she looked human and very familiar. I tried to place her face and decided she resembled the character "Marnie" from Girls. Not sure where that came from, as I haven't watched an episode of that since the last season ended.

Then when I was trying to remember the main plot, it became confused with a new plotline in which I was worried that war was imminent and that if it took place, the spirits of mythological creatures would fuse with nuclear bombs to create a weapon that was as devastating to dream as to the waking world.

I was out trying to investigate and prevent this outcome, and found myself in the house of people who had melee weapons shaped like real or imaginary animals. One was a rod with a sculpted head shaped like the head of an animal that mingled the qualities of a lizard and a single-horned rhinocerous. Another was a club shaped like a narrow stylized boar, and while my husband was handling it, I noticed that it could also be fired like a crossbow. Again, very random imagery.

Conclusion: I would call this a partial success at best, as the low-level awareness and limited recall made the overall experience less than satisfactory, and I didn't actually succeed in doing the TOTM that was my original goal. Still, breaking my dry spell by any means is reassuring. It definitely felt like nicotine had an effect on dream content, and I attribute the unusually "epic and confrontational" quality to its influence. However, after waking up I felt almost as uncomfortable and unrested as I do after using galantamine, so while I might experiment a little more along these lines, I will not be making this a frequent induction method—which is probably for the best, nicotine bad and all that.

Ritual: After five hours of sleep I woke naturally and was determined to make a good WILD attempt. I spent an hour-long WBTB reading and writing about dreams, then returned to bed just before the sun rose. Despite a promising transition phase in which I observed hypnagogic visuals and audio distinctly manifesting, I was interrupted by frequent re-awakenings and eventually realized it was time to turn on my side and enter real sleep. I fully expected to WILD at this point because the conditions felt ideal, but instead I just had NLDs.

NLD: I had just left a cafe and was walking down the sidewalk to where I had parked a couple blocks away. The sky was oppressively dark, darker than seemed natural, and I composed a couple lines to try to describe it:

The world cowers beneath an enormous dark,
Unrepentent and unredeeming.

I wasn't sure if I liked them but figured I should write them down as soon as I could, because if I came up with a whole structure I could always come back to it and work it into something better.

As I entered the parking lot I noticed the moon. The last few days have seen a huge harvest moon, but this one was even bigger, with that sallow yellow hue that tints it when it is still low in the sky. Moreover, the pattern on its face was unusual: it resembled a winged dragon, drawn with iconic simplicity and in a rampant position like a figure on shield heraldry. I felt an urge to photograph it.

I opened the passenger side door, left it open, and sat down on the edge of the seat to brace myself so I could try to frame a good clear shot of it on my iPhone. I thought I felt movement and the image was bouncing around on the screen, the moon lost among some trees now. Was the car driving off with me? How inconvenient! I reached to the side and jerked up the emergency brake, then returned to my attempt to take a picture.

As I held up the phone again and looked at the image on the screen, I was more alert to the possibility of movement this time, and yes, I was able to confirm from it that indeed we were moving, and this was preventing me from taking clear photograph. Bad car! We were now driving rather quickly down a city street so I scooted fully inside and managed to get the door closed. (I realize now that in the dream the car door was hinged in the back and opened backwards, flat against the side of the car, rather than being hinged in the front and opening outwards as in WL.)

Once the car door was closed I wanted to get control of the car back, so I awkwardly climbed over into the driver's seat. A towel seemed to be wrapping around my feet and impeding me, but with some effort I managed to get myself seated appropriately so that I could take over the driving. I had been planning to do some other things before leaving the quarter of the city that we'd come from, but by now we had driven away too far for it to be convenient to return, so I decided to just go home instead.

After that I was waking up, but there was one more scene where I was standing next to a tram and again wondered if I wanted to return to the area I'd been in at the start of the dream. Once more I decided not to, since I couldn't be sure the tram would go to the right place either, and I was at that point under the impression that it was the tram, not my car, that had driven off with me.

Then I realized with exasperation how absurd it was that dreams continually present me with situations that are extraordinary by the standards of waking life, yet I usually don't recognize them as evidence of dreaming. Why not? "I guess I just don't find them strange" was all I could come up with. Later I realized that I was at least still half in a dream state as I had these thoughts, and didn't realize I was dreaming then either.

NLD: I was in large cavern with pools of water on either side of a land bridge and wanted to go fishing. I found a rock-lobster tail on the ground and since I didn't know where it had been or how old it was, I didn't want to eat it, but thought it might make useful bait for fishing. I baited my hook with a small piece of the lobster meat and cast the line. I wasn't sure how deep the water was but let the line sink naturally. I wasn't using a modern fishing rod, but the old-fashioned kind made of a single long bamboo cane with a simple length of cord attached to the tip.

Soon I got a bite, and from the degree to which the pole was bending, I knew it must be something big. I didn't want the pole to snap so I rapidly moved up to the end where the cord was tied and started drawing in the line directly, folding it around my elbows like rope as I was able to pull it in (it was a rather thick cord, closer to thin rope than the modern fishing line filament).

When I had drawn in enough cord to see my catch surface, I was startled to see the shape of a giant lizard breach the surface of the water. I momentarily wondered whether it was an alligator or a crocodile but couldn't remember how to tell the difference. Right after that I realized that the difference didn't matter—this thing was dangerous either way! I needed to cut the cord and quietly back away before it recognized me as an antagonist.

Probably because I had been thinking of the "Expecto Patronum" TOTM before bed, during one scene in a long sequence of NLDs, there appeared a phoenix resembling the one kept by Dumbledore.

NLD: I was standing outdoors talking to three men (random DCs, no resemblance to anyone from WL). At one point I noticed a very large bird flying overhead, crimson and crested, and recognized it as a phoenix. I thought this was a remarkable thing to see, so I lifted my right hand in the air as a gesture of acknowledgment and welcome.

The phoenix turned began diving toward me. What would happen if it touched my hand? I momentarily worried that it might choose that moment to burst into flames, consuming me. But I kept my hand up to see what would happen, and the phoenix flew right over my head, just low enough that my fingers grazed its soft belly feathers.

I felt honored and delighted by this contact, so when it turned for another pass I kept my hand elevated, and it happened again. When it turned for a third pass, I wondered if it would be okay if I switched hands: would changing the pattern scared it off? I raised my left hand, and it flew down to gently graze that one too.

As it readied itself for a fourth pass, I began to suspect there must be something deliberate about its actions. What was it doing? I had the impression that it was trying to protect us. But what sort of protection could be imparted this way? "Fire resistance," I thought, and in another simultaneous scene, as though the dream had split into two concurrent but disconnected spaces, I was consulting the new D&D Player's Handbook I had been browsing in an earlier dream sequence, looking up the rules on fire resistance. How much FR might we get from touching a phoenix? +1? +2? Total protection?

Meanwhile, in the main scene, the phoenix was turning for a fourth dive. "Touch it," I instructed the others, so they would be protected too. Why was the phoenix trying to protect us in this way? Were we in danger of some immanent conflagration?

After several promising WILD attempts failed for no good reason over the last couple weeks, I was afraid I was headed into another dry spell. Then last night, when I wasn't planning to lucid dream at all—having only seven hours to sleep before getting up early for a busy day—I had spontaneous lucids all night during the few short periods I managed to sleep at all, and had to sacrifice even more sleep writing up my notes promptly (as a matter of principle). I should have known better to drink that big mug of coffee before bed on a night when I was likely to be prone to anxiety anyway, but now I can report that caffeine + anxiety make a great lucid trigger!

I went to bed at 12:30am. Knew I needed to wake at 7:30 and intended to go to bed earlier, but I never find it easy to go to bed before midnight unless I'm sick or already exhausted. Woke at 2:30am and realized that the coffee was a mistake: I was now wide awake. To counter the insomnia I started doing counting and deep breathing, basically just like my WILD practice but without the intention to LD. I counted to fifty, one number for each full breath cycle, then left off counting and did the breathing only. I'm not sure how much I actually slept—it felt like I spent a long time in a transitional state—but it was 3:45am when I woke up fully again, this time after slipping spontaneously into the very briefest of WILDs.

Brief WILD: The transition was really interesting, because there must have been a point when I was already asleep, but I still thought I was awake. I know I was confused about this because I was under the impression that while lying in bed I was selecting and leafing through fantasy-game themed magazines from a low shelf that was just to my right, apparently in the bed with me. Of course in waking life there is no such shelf set up in my bed nor any magazines of this kind within arm's reach, distinct evidence that I had dreamed the whole thing. But as I was flipping through through the magazines, I was also well aware that I was in the process of trying to fall asleep, and I even noticed a curious phenomenon: when I closed my eyes, I could still make out blurry forms and colored shapes corresponding to the content printed on the pages I was reading. This made me think that reading through closed eyelids might be a great technique for encouraging REM onset, because it was stimulating pictures to form in my mind. A great technique indeed if you can do it while you're already dreaming! But I didn't realize that at the time.

Eventually I felt the onset of that bodily dislocation that suggested I was close to a WILD transition, and encouraged it. Sometimes I levitate, sometimes I rock or rotate, but this time sinking felt more natural, so I let the sinking sensation grow while thinking, "Down, down," until I felt that the transition was complete. Then I easily "got up" out of bed. However, I still didn't have much control of the dream body, so I discovered that I couldn't stand or walk yet. Instead I collapsed face down on the floor and had to crawl. This didn't alarm me, because I often lack full motor coordination right after the transition. The environment was recognizable as my bedroom but still very murky. My mind felt incredibly active and clear, by contrast—probably because I was barely asleep.

I remember thinking distinctly, "Oh good, I haven't lost it"—meaning the ability to WILD, given that my last few attempts have gone nowhere. I crawled toward the bedroom door and remembered my task, "Fairy tales." Then I paused, realizing that I would need to improve my integration before trying to leave the room, as my WILDs tend to destabilize if I try to rush things. I thought, "Time for some clean-up"—but alas, there was no time, as I woke promptly at this.

Such a disruption was not unusual, as my early WILDs are normally strung together by multiple DEILD chains (for some reason this seems to be almost the only time I can successfully and instinctively DEILD, so I've never even counted those DEILDS as distinct dreams; instead they end up seeming more like segments of the same chained WILD). Unfortunately, I could tell at once that this time I had woken up too fully to DEILD, and even though I held very still and sought a way back into the dream, I could feel that I had surfaced past the point of re-entry, so I got up to write this. A bit disappointing, but not overly so as I have to get up insanely early tomorrow for a full day of activity, so no time to write more without cutting into sleep.

5:50am: up and writing again after two more DILDs. Both times I thought at first that I was awake in the house, but instinctively realized that I was dreaming.

DILD#1: As soon as I realized I was dreaming, I remembered my task, still determined to carry out my "Hansel and Gretel" experiment. I was already deep enough in dream to feel well-coordinated, so after getting lucid I went immediately to the kitchen and grabbed some bread from the counter. It was the end of a baguette. Last time I tried this the dream destabilized shortly after I left the house and started dropping crumbs, so this time I decided to begin more cautiously by starting the trail of bread crumbs while I was still inside the house. I walked from the kitchen to the living room, tearing off pieces of bread and dropping them on the floor. Meanwhile I was thinking to myself with amusement, "Oh man, I'd better really be dreaming. If we wake up tomorrow and it turns out I've left bread all over the floor, my husband is going to say this lucid dreaming thing has to stop!"

But I was sure I was dreaming, despite the stability and lifelikeness of the environment, so I asked myself how I could tell. I thought it would be a good moment to test the differences in self-perception between dream and the waking state. No sooner did I turn my attention to my body than I felt it—yes—that subtle tingling in the limbs that I have always associated with dream. The sensation used to be extremely prominent, especially earlier in life when lucid dreams occurred only rarely and spontaneously, but now I hardly ever notice it unless I pay deliberate attention. Unfortunately, this re-orientation of focus on my physical senses meant that I began to notice something I was hearing as well: the sound of my husband's breathing in the bed next to me. This reminded me of my body asleep in the bed, which promptly woke me up.

Upon waking, I could still hear the breathing just as I had in the dream, but with one peculiar difference: in the dream, the sound was distinctly coming from my right, but when I woke up I remembered, of course, he is sleeping to my left. Perhaps the discrepancy can be explained if I was sleeping on my left side with my left ear against the pillow so only my right ear could hear clearly? I forgot to take note of my position when I awoke.

DILD#2: After going back to sleep, once again I was doing stuff around the house under the impression that I was awake when I noticed once again: am I dreaming? Yep, pretty sure I am. Okay, well, back to work then. I remembered that I had taken the bread from the counter in the last dream, briefly worried that I might not find any more, but casually "expected" to find another loaf and sure enough it was there. I started dropping crumbs while I was still inside the house again, then went out the door to the back patio. I was still anxious about destabilization (I have tried this task several times before and haven't gotten very far, and tonight's previous episodes demonstrated that waking up abruptly was indeed a hazard) I so thought, okay, I'll just walk around the pool in circles and continue dropping crumbs until the dream shows some receptivity.

So I began circling the pool counterclockwise, dropping crumbs as I walked. When I reached the area just behind the pool I noticed the place where I had encountered "Boneface" in a previous dream and wondered if anyone would be waiting there, but no DCs were visible. However, the dream was starting to respond: already I was no longer circling the pool but on a path, walking through an environment that no longer resembled any place I know in waking life. The path led me through a dense suburban neighborhood, but I saw trees in the distance and figured a forest must be out there somewhere. I needed to reach the forest to proceed with the "Hansel and Gretel" plot.

I continued dropping breadcrumbs as I walked along the path, but then I remembered—hang on, if I'm doing "Hansel and Gretel," then obviously I can be Gretel, but I'll need a Hansel! I tried to summon him, calling out "Hans! Hans!" and "Little brother!" The dream responded promptly but unexpectedly: a little dog showed up, with long wavy fur in brown and white patches, and started trotting along with me. It looked just like a toy spaniel, but smaller, about the size of a chihuahua. I shrugged and figured, "Okay, good enough." Maybe he would turn into a boy later on, or if not, whatever. (I've always been able to summon animals easily, but have less success with human DCs, so the results weren't that surprising.)

To get more into the spirit of things, as we continued to walk along the path I started singing a song about our journey—how we had left our parents' house because there wasn't enough food, and hoped to find some in the forest. (I just realized a discrepancy in the story: if food is so scarce that they have to leave home lest the family starve, why are they wasting bread by dropping it on the ground? Or is that why mom wants to kick them out, the flagrant bread wasters!)

The dream felt very stable but I knew I couldn't be in very deep because I was having trouble with the song: rhymes weren't coming easily, like they do in deeper dream, and my melody was very simple (The Hobbit was on TV last night, and my song ended up with a similar tune and rhythm to the "goblin town" song from the movie, though naturally with very different words). When I got to the end of a line and couldn't find a rhyme, or even a suitable word, I just sort of hummed over the blank spot and kept going. Improvise! So I sang a number of stanzas in this haphazard way, dropping the bread in smaller and smaller crumbs since I was getting near the end of the loaf, while little Hans the dog trotted beside me on his tiny legs.

Finally we made it to the edge of town, and there it was ahead of us! The forest! Would we go in and find a gingerbread house, a threatening witch? I was looking forward to what we might discover. But I felt sorry for Hans and wondered if he might prefer to be carried. I picked him up and put him on my right shoulder (he was so small). No sooner had I perched him there then at once I clearly and distinctly heard a voice saying my name in my right ear—it was my RL name, and it woke me up. This happened immediately after I put the dog on my shoulder so I had the impression that he had been the one speaking, but the voice was clearly a woman's and, as far as I could make out, it sounded like my own voice.

Anyway, that woke me up past DEILD recovery so I got up and wrote again. It's now after 6am. Nothing like a short night before a busy day in which I have absolutely no time to spare for dreaming to really bring on the LDs, eh?

Brief DILD event in last sleep period: I was at home, and stepped out of the library to find what I thought must be catsick all over the hallway. It was confusing, though, because it occurred in distinct splats all over a wide area, almost forming a lattice pattern, and there seemed to be way too much of it to come from the cat. Then I noticed that there was a hole in the ceiling, as though something had burst through. Was this something that had fallen through the roof from outside? Or something that had been lodged under the roof and had now fallen through the ceilling? And what the hell was it? It was beige and chunky, and sure did look like cat vomit. It was spread over such a wide area that I couldn't help but step in some as I passed through the hall, and I was even more disturbed to feel a tiny movement under my toes. Oh my god, was it full of maggots or something?

I walked carefully across the kitchen floor, trying to step only on the heel of the dirty foot so I wouldn't spread the stuff around more, and then washed my foot in the kitchen sink. I needed to put on shoes to protect my feet, as well as clothes better suited to cleaning up this mess. I went into the living room where I thought I could find sandals and maybe some clothes I had left next to my worktable, and I stopped, stunned to discover that all the furniture in the room was missing. It was just a blank expanse of floor. How could this have happened? There was just no way... I realized that I had to be dreaming. Upon questioning the scenario my initial impression was that no, I wasn't dreaming, but I refused accept this and persisted firmly in my doubt: sorry Mind, you can't trick me this time, I'm obviously dreaming, get with the program. In the face of such resolve my mind finally acquiesced and acknowledged that I was dreaming by spitefully waking me up.

Type: Paranoia/Evasion
Perspective: Mixed (initially Self, transforming to Character, male hobbit)

NLD: The dream began with a long complicated plot set in a futuristic world. The antagonist was trying to find me and some other people; I had the codes to some device of his that would frustrate his plans. At this point my dream character was still me, I know this because enemy agents were using my name and even showing around a picture of me. (The prevalence of this "paranoia/conspiracy" theme in dreams is one of the reasons I suspect—pure speculation—that schizophrenia in waking life is a condition related to dreaming.)

Enemy forces had located us, were closing in, we knew we had to run. We decided to split into two groups that would flee separately. I was with a group that was going to go on a very long journey. There was no perceptible shift in the dream or narrative, but by the end of the dream this was all entirely a group of male hobbits, and I, going with them, was also a male hobbit. There was no precise "moment" when the shift took place though, the dream narrative was continuous, and the transformation imperceptible: I was still "me' before the start of the journey then woke up remembering that I was one of the hobbits.

I had anticipated that we would need to flee and already packed a backpack, so while the two group leaders were waiting for the rest of us to prep and join them, I went and grabbed it. I checked inside first to make sure I had the right bag. I saw lots of warm clothes—that was good, I'm always inclined to get cold. I grabbed a few more things from my pile: a fleece jacket, a wide-brimmed hat. I was already wearing a leather pouch around my neck with my ring in it. When I had noticed this earlier I had wondered why my ring was in the bag instead of on my finger; I assumed I had to hide it for some reason. (Source: the dream played out with an increasing LOTR theme, so this could be a nod to the way Frodo carries the One Ring; it could also be day residue, as the other day I had taken off my ring for a long time for some task.)

On the table with the gear I was choosing from was a sort of talisman made of a round disk of leather, as well as a few masks which I grabbed at the last minute—they weighed almost nothing and might come in handy. I considered the options: should I put on a mask before we left? If I needed to conceal my identity from those who would recognize me it could be useful, but if we were trying to pass incognito among people who wouldn't already recognize me, wearing a mask might draw too much attention and be a disadvantage. But better to have the option than not.

I was the third one to gather around the group leader, a male hobbit, and we were waiting on about three others. While we were waiting I went through the masks I had grabbed at the last minute to make a more careful selection, trying them on in a mirror. A couple were cheap plastic full-face masks, and I wasn't sure if they would stand up to the rigors of travel, so I set them aside. I kept one, though, because it gave me a scary monster face and I thought it might be handy if we needed to play a trick and scare someone. I kept a plain black eye mask and another one that was just a single sheet of light brown translucent plastic—it weighed nothing and could serve as sunglasses, I figured. For now, I decided to wear the simple black eye mask. When I put it on, I noticed that I was strapping it over the glasses I was wearing: they had huge round lenses. I didn't remember owning glasses like this, but that was just one of many, many clues that should have alerted me to the fact that I was dreaming—I had not an inkling of it.

When our full group had assembled, the leader then instructed us to get rid of a lot of stuff that he figured we had probably packed. He had a list of very specific things we were supposed to give up, unnecessary objects that he said were a result of "emotional packing." Already on the table were a lot of little boxed games, like dice and tile games (source: Scrabble on Colbert last night). I worried that our long journey would get dull and depressing if we didn't even have a few games with us, but I understood his reasoning—we needed our packs to be as light as possible if we were to outrun our pursuers—so I reluctantly gave up some things as well.

There was one item that I wasn't sure about, so I went to consult the leader. It was a boxed set (I hadn't opened it yet) containing a special kind of saw blade that could function as a lathe, cutting wood into round or shaped dowels. The leader and I opened the box and inspected it. I felt a tool like this might be useful at some point, though I couldn't think of a precise situation in which I would need to lathe a dowel to survive. The only problem was that the tool was made out of solid metal, a complex shaped piece about eight by eight inches, and it was extremely heavy. "It's about as heavy as a two-liter bottle of water," I estimated aloud. This decided it: the leader reasoned that water was more essential, so if the tool cut down on the amount we could carry, it would have to go. I reluctantly left it behind. Later as we began our journey, I thought back and regretted this: I realized that dowel-shaped wood might be very useful in making traps, and moreover that even if we had only brought the tool with us to sell, we could probably get up to 50,000gp for it, because it was an object from our futuristic world that would be completely unique in the fantasy world where we were going.

I realized that we were pushing the limits of the time we had left and needed to leave right away. But as the leader and I stepped out from the room where we'd consulted about the saw blade, something caught my eye. It was a tiny fluffy grey kitten sleeping cozily on its back, lying in the hallway against to the wall on our right. "Wait—just two seconds," I said to the leader, "Look!" And we knelt down and tousled the kitten's belly. I explained, "It reminds me of something Sam said: this is what we're fighting for." I was remembering the line late in LOTR where Frodo is losing heart and Sam reminds him "That there's some good in this world... and it's worth fighting for." Naturally my version involved kittens.

We then rejoin the rest of our group—which was more diverse in the beginning but by this point consisted of the full set of LOTR hobbits plus me as a random male one—and started down a lane. No sooner had we set out then I look behind us and see a group of fierce orcs, at least eight of them, less than fifty yards behind us and moving faster than we are, already closing in. Did we waste too much time with our preparations, losing our head start? I needed to act now, or our journey would be cut off before it began. Fortunately I recalled that I knew Ars Magica magic (all that practice in LDs paying off!)

Twisting to look back while still running at full tilt, I held out my hand and blasted a frost effect at the group of orcs: it created a slippery ice slick on the ground where they were running and also iced their bodies directly, covering them with a pale layer of frost and slowing them considerably. I knew it wouldn't last forever so I was already trying to decide what my next trick should be. A grease trap on the ground might be useful: the lane was narrow and walled on both sides, so they wouldn't be able to bypass it. Then I was trying to remember the mechanics of Ars Magica spells: were they limited by a specific pre-set quantity (like in D&D) or could they be chosen freely but the rate was restricted by a mana pool, or could they cast at will but it was just really hard to succeed at the roll? Around this time the dream must have despaired of my ability to transform even a thrilling adventure chase scene into tedious decision-making and option-weighing, and I woke up.