Verre

NLD fragment, early: There was a band of Thai Buddhist monks in Bangkok called "Sacred Light." Contrary to what you'd expect, their music was surprisingly harsh and experimental. A musician from another band commented about one of the group, "His music has an edge of irrancidity." I woke up and for a few minutes I remained fully convinced that "irrancidity" was as much of a real word as "rancidity" (sort of like how you can legitimately say either "regardless" or "irregardless").

NLD: (I'll gloss over this since it was tedious and contains a lot of RL details. It was a basic anxiety dream: I was performing a task at my workplace and I was ill-prepared, everything was going wrong, and a senior colleague was observing the whole fiasco.)

Proto-lucid: After the anxiety dream I half-woke and was reminded of my speculations lately about the degree to which increased stress in waking life might actually be a condition actually favorable to lucidity. I slipped from these musings into a proto-lucid event—I don't want to call it a "lucid dream" per se because it felt too superficial and unformed. It started when I transitioned from my half-awake thoughts into walking past the house where I grew up. The back door was wide open, including the screen door, and this bothered me. Was the house abandoned? Or were the people who lived there now just careless? It was not a good idea to leave the door open like that because the nearby wetlands meant that the summer air was always thick with mosquitos and biting flies.

I stepped up to the threshold and called out, "Hello? Hello?" There was no response. The interior was decorated differently than I remembered, which I attributed to the fact that other people lived there now. I was reminded of the last episode of "The Leftovers" I watched Sunday night and figured that with the door wide open like that, even a large animal like a deer could wander inside. I decided not to go in—it didn't feel like "my" home anymore and I would be intruding on someone else's space, even if they weren't present. However, the wide open door still annoyed me, so I closed the inner screen door. Then I mostly closed the outer door as well. If the inhabitants came by and found their door unexpectedly closed it might startle them, but they should know better than to leave it open in the first place.

I continued walking around the side of the house and headed down toward the chicken house and barn. I was impatient to cover the distance so I started running, and I was reminded how good running felt when I was living here in my teens. Sometimes I would just run across the grass with sheer exhilaration and excess of energy. It's been a long time since I've felt like that—especially when running! When I got to the space between the two buildings I peeked into the chicken house, but it was empty so I went into the barn instead. I had noticed some people in the pasture so I crept quietly through the barn to the lower area where it connected with the pasture and peeked around the wall. Yes, there were definitely a couple people in the pasture, about a hundred yards away. I was pleased that the dream was finally starting to take some initiative and manifest something other than the basic environment. However, I didn't want those people to see me, since I still felt like an intruder now that they owned the place, so I remained hidden.

I went back inside the lower level of the barn and headed for the stairs that led upstairs. Meanwhile I reflected on how muddy and vague the environment still was, despite the fact that the dream had been otherwise stable so far. My senses were crap. I had experienced this in plenty of WILDs—which in hindsight this might have almost been, though since it had started in a non-standard location (my WILDS typically involve me "getting up" out of bed) I simply might not have recognized it as such. But at that time I still didn't want to give it credit for being a real dream at all, because I felt that it didn't quite measure up. Maybe I'm getting too critical; on reflection it looks more like a real dream than it felt at the time. But that's probably just a trick of print: the dreamstate was not really rising to the occasion, and I felt too much like I was "working the controls," as it were.

Anyway, I was contemplating the muddy, vague environment, which I felt was being shaped almost more through my conscious memory of the place than through the independent activity of the dream. Last night I had been reading a thread on DV about ADA, which included claims that greater awareness in waking life can also sharpen one's dream senses, and I couldn't help but acknowledge that my ordinary level of perceptiveness in waking life is probably much lower than most people's—because in effect I've spent most of my life practicing how to filter things out, not let them in. That said, my dream senses are usually reasonably sharp (with the exception of taste and smell) and my recall can be quite good, but I thought that perhaps the muddiness of the environment this time had been conditioned by that chain of thought.

I headed up the stairs to the upper level of the barn. I wandered around a bit more but don't recall encountering or thinking anything else of note before I woke up.

On waking, I realized that the circumstances were now all in order for a proper WILD attempt, but although I went through the ritual in a way that felt like it should have been successful, in the end I just fell into a period of regular sleep without even an NLD to show for it. This has actually happened several times over the last couple weeks, which is irritating given my satisfying successes earlier this month.

Complex narratives but poor recall all night. Just one fragment has enough clarity and interest to preserve in writing:

NLD: There was a big bed of ice cubes spread out over the floor, about fifteen by twenty feet wide and up to a foot thick. It was there to chill something that may have been on a small round platform in the center of it, but I don't remember what. I was more interested in the ice.

The ice cubes were all different sizes. I lay down on them on my back at one point and found this extremely comfortable: they weren't as cold as one would expect ice to be, but refreshingly cool. In fact, I wasn't sure they were proper ice, because most of them weren't melting. Only the smallest ones, spheres of ice about two inches in diameter still in their plastic molds (just like the ones I use for gin and tonics, I recalled) showed a slickness of water inside the plastic. I decided I'd better take care not use any of these ice cubes in drinks, however, in case the water was contaminated with chemicals.

The largest ice cubes also intrigued me. They were rectangular blocks around nine inches high and deep by about fifteen inches long. There was a slight asymmetry to their form, a matte textured surface of striations, and they weren't melting at all. I noticed that the blocks of this size appeared very similar to one another and knelt down to investigate more closely. After comparing two in detail, I determined that yes, they were clearly products of the same mold, however the molding process had resulted in very slight irregularities: one sculpted corner was complete in the first block but slightly truncated in the next as though the mold had not been filled completely the second time.

I find it amazing that I can muster such a close comparative appraisal of aspects of the dream environment, demonstrating that my critical thinking was not completely impaired, and yet completely fail to muster even a sliver of the kind of critical apprehension necessary to recognize that I am dreaming.

NLD: I was a stage magician, a white male in late middle age. I have the impression that my character looked and talked a bit like the actor Bill Nighy. I had been doing a really long show -- it started at 6, now it was 9pm, I had just taken a break and had to perform one more brief act before I could wrap up and call it a night. I realized I should streamline the show, this was exhausting, and the audience was probably almost as weary as I was.

I was trying to find my way back to the place where the theatre was located in a huge new building that had been recently constructed for my show, but I took a wrong turn and found myself on the roof. Up there I ran into a colleague who resembled (or was supposed to be?) Gary Gygax, and we commiserated, "We're getting too old for this shit." I retraced my steps, passing a teenager who I asked about something, but his answer was unhelpful.

As I made my way back to the theatre I was carrying a large bag of stiffened canvas printed with a cheerful decorative pattern. I had picked this bag up from the room where I had gone on break. It held a nested series of ever-smaller bags made from the same material. I was planning to give these away as prizes at the end of the show, like we always did, based on calling out random ticket numbers. I wondered if I should give away the largest outer bag as well, or save it to carry the smaller bags again next time. I examined it closely and realized that it had some discoloration around the handle and decided that it wouldn't make a very nice prize because it wasn't in new condition.

NLD, first sleep: Several of us are downstairs in a house at night. The front door is wide open. Through an adjacent window, I see a man sitting on a bench next to the road outside, waiting for the bus. Perhaps he tires of waiting, because after a while he gets up and walks right in the front door. I recognize him as "The Vagrant," a character played by Johnny Depp. He wears white face make-up and an old fashioned suit and hat, resembling a mime from the Charlie Chaplin era. I feel hospitable toward him and offer to let him sleep in the wife's room, as she is not home. (I have no sense of who "the wife" might be; there's something impersonal about all the DCs; they are more like roles than individuals.) Someone standing nearby ("the husband"?) gives me a dirty look for leaving the door open and then telling the vagrant he can stay. I don't openly acknowledge the glance, but gives me a sense of foreboding: I don't know anything about this guy, and I've just offered to let him sleep in one of the upstairs rooms. If he turns out to have ill intent, we'll be leaving ourselves vulnerable when we go to sleep.

Scene change. There are about three of us upstairs now on a sort of balcony, in addition to the vagrant, who is swinging on a rope. He has not said a word since entering the house, and I start to wonder if we should be worried about his intentions. I consult the DM, who is not physically present in the scene: "If I do 'sense alignment', is it blatant?" It feels as though I ask the question aloud, but in a way that does not manifest audibly in the dream scene -- I'm asking OOCly (out of character). The DM confirms that, yes, the effect would be blatant, meaning that I can't cast the spell on the vagrant without him noticing, either because I have to make distinctive invocations and gestures, or because he would be able to subjectively feel the mental intrusion. I don't want to cast the spell if the vagrant will be aware of it, because at this point I already strongly suspect that his alignment is not on the "good" spectrum, and I don't want to alert him to my suspicions. After the vagrant leaves off swinging, one of the other players on the balcony asks the DM if she can use the same effect on the rope that he has just let go of. She's trying to be clever: a rope, obviously, won't notice anything amiss or feel itself being scryed on. However, she seems to be missing the obvious, so before the DM has a chance to respond, I scoff jokingly, "You can't 'sense alignment' on a rope!"

Note: I'm interested in the way dreams can take on aspects of other forms of representation. Mine are often heavily influenced by structural elements from films, video games, and even tabletop gaming, the first and last of which were strongly present here.

NLD, second sleep: The fabric of the dream was very thin and immediately frayed upon waking because I did not keep still enough. There was an elaborate plot that I wasn't able to piece back together. However, I was with a group of people that were playing costumed characters, acting out scenes that were somewhere between a play and a LARP.

Afterwards, an actor who is a dwarf (of the genetic, not the fantasy variety), comments to me about his disinterest in playing out live-action versions of stories he has already filmed or done on stage. "Kid, we want to see it, or we want to hear about it. We don't want to live it. We've already done that."

Note: This dream appears to have been incubated by the thoughts I wrote down after the last dream about the various representational formats that have been an influence on my dreaming. Dream would like to remind me that I left out plays and LARPs. Thanks, Dream, I guess my dreaming is also influenced by plays and LARPs (even if I haven't engaged in either since the '90s). Anything else?

We stopped at a Greek take-out restaurant. I saw bags of take-out orders being loaded onto a plane to be shipped all the way to Greece. "Wow, this place is hardcore," I thought.

We had parked right under the nose of the plane, where there was a niche just big enough for the car (a 2006 silver Volkswagen bug) to fit. I was a worried because it looked like the plane was about to take off, but figured it would be okay, since the plane would have to back up first, which would release the car from underneath it, and then the plane would turn ninety degrees to access the runway. The car should be fine. Still, I thought I should check. I called up to a lady in the cockpit, "Hey, is it alright if we park--"

Before I could even finish the sentence, a metal plate slammed down over the nose of the plane, closing up the niche where our car was parked. Meanwhile the plane began to pull backward, flattening the top of the car. There was a white flash and the sound of an explosion, and I knew the car was ruined.

I was annoyed because I had been hoping to inherit this car when my husband was done with it. Still, what was done was done, and there was no point getting bent out of shape now. So I tried to stay calm and figure out if there was anything practical to be done.

Note: 2006, the year of the car, is clearly WLR (waking life residue), as last night I was comparing various editions of a book that included this year. The plane is also WLR as I've been flying a lot recently. Not sure where the Greek restaurant came from.

My husband and I were visiting a city that felt familiar and somewhat reminiscent of an East Coast city like Boston, though it had no correspondence to any RL place I've ever been. We had just finished a nice meal, and were walking along the street. We leave the commercial avenue and start walking into a nice residential area. After about two blocks I realize that I need to pee, and the best bet is to turn around and go back to the street we just left, so we walk the two blocks back.

At the intersection with the commercial avenue is a group of people standing on the street. They are foreigners with black skin, and both the men and women are wearing long flowing light blue robes, very elegant. Despite the darkness of their skin, something about the shape of their faces and the sound of their language looks more South Asian than African, and I am trying to remember where they are from. Isn't it some small country or island between India and Africa? What was it called, Malvania? That's right, I remember, they are Malvanians, and they are here as refugees from their home country. (Obviously there is no such country as Malvania in waking life, so this was a clear case of false memory.)

I cross the street find the public restroom just where I thought it would be. To reach it we had to walk into a little courtyard and then go downstairs from ground level. One stairway leads to the women's room, the other to the men's. However, when we arrive we find that the line is incredibly long, with about three dozen Malvanians, women and men respectively, waiting on each stairway. Some of them are holding things like toothbrushes and soap, and I realize that since they are refugees who are living on the street, this is probably the only facilities that they have access to. I am sympathetic, but unfortunately I really need to pee now, and I'm not sure what to do.

"Come with me," I say to my husband, who is in the same predicament. I have just remembered that less than a block from here is a theatre I've been to before, and I'm pretty sure that there is a restroom in the lobby. We exit and walk further down the street. I'm trying to remember what time it is. Will the theatre be open? I think it must be at least 11am or perhaps just after noon, so they might have started the early matinees. Luckily we do find the door open and go inside. (More false memories, as none of the locations I was "remembering" bore any resemblance to RL places, much like the city at large.)

The route to the restroom is more complicated than I recall, leading back through several turns and passages, but I follow the signs and we eventually we find our way there. I'm grateful to discover that there are no lines! So I go inside... or try to. The door to the women's room pulls outward, but it is stuck. It is getting caught against a wire rack that is jutting from the side of a cabinet that has been installed too close to the door, so the door is only opening a few inches. Even though I'm of average size, I can't seem to squeeze through. I try to force the door open wider, tugging on it until the metal rack that is blocking it actually begins to distort and bend, letting the door open a few inches wider, just enough for me to slide in sideways. I think how distressing it would be if I were just a few pounds heavier—I wouldn't be able to get in! But I have passed this obstacle.

Inside the restroom at last, it looks very familiar and I remember that I have been here before. (Again, no correspondence to anything in waking life: if this was not pure false memory, then it must have been a setting from some prior dream.) The room is tiled in light green, but everything about it is old and broken down, an absolute ruin. Only about half the tiles are intact, the rest are broken or completely missing. There are not even stalls for privacy; the toilets are just arranged openly around the walls of the room. Many of them look in a state of poor repair as well. However, one detail is very different this time. Last time I found myself in this room, it was disgustingly filthy, but today, unexpectedly, it appears to have just been cleaned. It is as pristine as a room this run-down can be made: I can even smell the odor of cleaning chemicals in the air. Nevertheless, the memory of how dirty it was last time makes me remember that this is a dreamsign—and also, ever since the last failed RC in similar circumstances earlier this month, I've been diligently RCing every time I've found myself in a public restroom lately. Since I've been traveling for the last few days (in RL), I've had the chance to practice this a lot.

Fortunately there is no one else present, so I can RC very blatantly without being afraid of looking foolish. I lift my fingers to my nose and very forcefully try to breathe both in and out. Nope. The breath is fully stopped in both directions. This RC has worked really well for me since I started using it recently, so now when it suggests I am awake, I let myself be convinced. To some extent I realize that I'm actually relieved about this, because I've been having a nice interesting day so far, and it would be annoying to realize that it was all just a dream. On the other hand, I reflect, I'll be even more annoyed if I wake up later and it turns out that I was dreaming and failed to recognize it. But I feel confident in how attentively I performed the RC, so I figure I probably don't have to worry about that.

The dream went on for a while longer; the last thing I remember is being in a cab en route to some further destination. When I finally did wake up, all I could think was, "You've got to be kidding me!"

Note: My suspicion is that it is actually the very diligence with which I've been practicing this RC for the past few days that made it fail this time: every time I pinch my nose in waking life and can't breathe through it, I reinforce the sense-impression of what that feels like, which is perhaps what allowed the dream to duplicate the sensation.

Note: In reflecting on dreams in which I perform an RC but fail to recognize that I am dreaming, I have noticed something odd. The moment during which it occurs to me to think, "Hey, I wonder if I'm dreaming. I'd better check," actually feels like lucid-type awareness, even if the failed RC quickly leads to a passive resorption in the narrative.

Ritual: Went to bed at 2am, much later than I had intended. Wanted to wake up between 4-4:30 if possible so I could make a sandwich for my husband to take on his flight. Didn't set alarm, only intention; if it didn't work, that was fine. Woke up promptly at four so got up and went to the kitchen. Then I realized if I didn't stay up to give him the sandwich he would never know it existed, so in the end I didn't go back to bed until after he left at 5. I repeated my tasks aloud a few times to make them easier to remember, using simple keywords: "eyeball, calcifer, fairy tale." Wanted to give SSILD another fair shake after recent lack of success—been falling asleep too easily. After this hour-long WBTB I arranged a ramp of pillows to elevate my upper body and settled back to do SSILD, supposing that the half-reclining would help inhibit sleep. It did—and I realized I had been semi-dozing rather than really sleeping when I got up again at 5:40 and decided to dismantle the pillow-ramp to get some proper sleep. I didn't notice REM during any of these sleep and half-sleep periods so I wasn't optimistic, but I did a couple SSILD cycles on my side before drifting off to sleep fairly quickly. It was 6:30am when I woke up for real (after FA) and began this account.

FA: "....it ignored me, and I felt silly talking to a fire."

Okay, guess now I have to start over. Wrote half of the account up in FA. Which is funny, because when I woke up I did sense that I could probably re-enter the dream state but decided not to because I wanted to write a solid report on what I'd done so far. And here I had felt so responsible and industrious! I wrote down quite a bit but only remember the last line word for word, so I reproduced it above. It's interesting that it is worded in the past tense. My dream reports often swap randomly between past and present tense but the present tense predominates.

DILD: I was in my bedroom in the half-light of early morning, and I heard voices outside the room. This confused me, because no one else should be home right now. One of them sounded like my brother, but he shouldn't be here. And I could hear another voice, a man's voice I didn't recognize. I grabbed my phone from the nightstand, thinking I'd dial in "9-1-1" and have the call ready to go if needed before I investigated further, in case it was burglars or something.

The phone wasn't working. It seems to be stuck on the calendar app, and even this is in some weird and confusing format. I keep pressing the main button to try to get back to the home screen so I can reach the page to dial from, but nothing helps. I still hear the voices and worry that the intruders might come into the room before I can get the phone working and then I'll have no recourse. Should I go outside to the back patio, so it will be easier to run away if necessary? At some point the absurdity of the whole scenario finally strikes me and I wonder if I'm dreaming. Since no one is around to see, I do a quick nose pinch. I can breathe easily. So I am dreaming! Oh good, there were tasks I needed to get done! I realize that since this was a DILD, I'm probably already fairly well-integrated into the dream state and check my impressions. A bit of roughness as I begin to move but not too bad, and the dream feels stable. I don't feel the need for further stabilization as long as I can avoid letting the paranoia of waking wake me up, so I put it out of mind and walk rapidly to the kitchen.

I've brought my phone and figure it might come in handy at some point later on, so I try to slide it into the pocket of my skirt. Trouble is, I'm not wearing a skirt. I make the "sliding into pocket" gesture a few times, intending a long skirt with pockets to manifest, but it doesn't and the phone falls to the floor. Whatever. At least the pattern is in place, so I feel confident that I can get it out of my pocket later if I need it.

I grab the bread from the kitchen counter, noting that it is a packet of round pita bread rather than the sandwich loaf that is there in waking life, and head out to the patio. Which task first? I love the idea of Howl's Moving Castle so I decide to start with that one. First I try to summon the castle directly, not through any special method, just willing it to approach on its own legs. It doesn't appear promptly, so I start with plan B: conjure a fire, call it "Calcifer," and feed it until it becomes strong enough to build the castle from the ground up. The first part should be easy; I've practiced conjuring fire before in this very spot. So I hold out my right hand and concentrate on creating a flame in my open palm. There's just one problem. It is raining, quite heavily actually. Typical dream perversity! I'm trying to fill my palm with fire, but meanwhile it is filling up with water. I ignore the dream's little joke, and keep concentrating on the fire.

Sure enough, I shortly begin to feel the heat and see the brightness of the flame. I set it on the ground and start feeding it chunks of pita bread, calling it "Calcifer" and trying to coax it to respond. It grows larger at first, but doesn't show any sentience, and now the rain is causing it to dwindle despite my attempts to feed it. I decide to continue this experiment indoors, out of the rain. I pick up the fire, just carrying it in my hands, go inside and set it down again on a flat stone ledge, about two and half feet in width and height (the interior of the house no longer corresponds in any way to RL). I feed the fire and continue calling it "Calcifer" to try to get a response, but it ignores me, and I feel silly talking to a fire. I go outside, careful to take the fire out again with me so as not to leave it untended in the house, and fly up in the air before releasing it. I instruct it to go seek out Howl's Castle, hoping that it might reappear at some point later point in the dream.

I return to the ground, once again in a place recognizably like my back patio, though it is no longer raining. What next? I realize the eyeball task should be quick and easy, if I can stomach it, so I ought to knock that one out of the way. I consider going inside the house to use a real mirror, but I don't want to waste time so I stand outside the sliding glass door to the kitchen and rely on the faint reflection of myself I can see there. There is nothing unusual about my reflection—much less so than usual, actually. When thinking about this task in waking life I had decided (for the sake of safety and squeamishness) to try to remove the eyeball in a more hands-off way, simply raising my palm and trying to pop it out through will alone, but now that I'm ready to go I don't even remember that idea. Instead I lift my right hand to my right eye and just start digging in there. I feel a momentary discomfort, enough to make me think, "I'd better be damn sure I'm dreaming!" before I feel the fingers slide smoothly into the socket with little pain, and this reassures me.

The eye pops out easily, but it is attached to a surprisingly thick, gross, fleshy stalk. Even at the time I realize that my experience has probably been colored by other accounts of this task I've already read on the DV thread, some of which mention similar stalks. The stalk is inconvenient and ugly so I keep pulling until the eyeball breaks free, then turn it around to inspect it. It looks remarkably like an eyeball. I had been hoping that it would transform into something cool, like an orb of glass or even a jewel. But nope. It is a disturbingly life-like eyeball, with a distinct iris and pupil and even a bit of red tattered membrane where the stalk had been attached. When I aim the iris and pupil toward me, they already look dead and unseeing, so it doesn't occur to me to try to use this eyeball to see with. Also, although I don't take note of this at the time, in retrospect I can report that there was no subjective change in my experience of vision; I was still "seeing" as though with two intact eyes.

I had meant to look at my reflection again after pulling the eye out, but I forget to do so. Instead I'm absorbed in inspecting this very ordinary-looking eyeball and trying to find any notable details to report. I do observe that the iris seems to have changed color: from the initial blue it has faded to a drab brown. It is still kind of creepy to be holding my eyeball, so without experimenting further I pop it back in. Luckily no difficulties there, and only then do I remember to check my reflection. I look normal and still don't notice any changes to my vision. I feel a momentary regret that I didn't remember to try to transform the eyeball into something else before putting it back in, but I feel reasonably satisfied with the task so I'm ready to move on.

Now I'm down to the last of the three tasks I'd planned, and I feel a bit apprehensive. In one way or another, this damned Hansel and Gretel idea has been eluding me. But I still have my bag of pita bread, so I get started: my plan is to start dropping breadcrumbs as I walk, hopefully find myself in a forest, and see what happens from there. I re-read the story a few weeks ago in my copy of Brothers Grimm, but I haven't tried to flesh out the intended scenario because I want to give the dream leeway to respond creatively to my breadcrumb trail. So I start walking across the patio and dropping crumbs, and now I just have to figure out which way to go. My original plan had been to start on the street in front of the house, which had once transformed into an ideal forest in a previous unrelated dream, but now I'm behind the house and want to get started right away rather than have my plans potentially disrupted by a detour. It's okay, I'd planned for this too. I figured the hill behind the house might be wild enough that I could start climbing it and work it into a suitable forest. However, now when I look in that direction, I see a paved concrete footpath that leads between suburban houses with neatly trimmed lawns. Dream is being perverse again. In the opposite direction is a second path, smaller, with a similar suburban aspect. Which one will lead me sooner to a forest? Both look completely domesticated. I figure I'll just start with the first one and try thinking "forest" as I go. I start off, dropping my bread crumbs, but with no warning I wake up—or out of the dream, at least. As mentioned above, I sensed that I could re-enter the dream state but decided to write my report instead, was under the impression that I had gotten up, and wrote for quite a while before waking up for real.

I came in from the outdoors, where I was doing something I can't recall now, and joined a group of other people in a room. It was like a big classroom, there were two or three dozen of us, and, we were each given papers relating to a long questionnaire with instructions for how to fill it out. There was a white sheet, a green sheet, maybe even a blue sheet with the actual questions, and a portion to be answered by computer, and the instructions were very confusing. The white sheets were all pre-marked with answers from various previous respondents -- different for every sheet -- which made things even more confusing. "So are we supposed to put our answers on the green sheet only, the computer only, or duplicate them on both?" After asking a lot of questions along these lines I went to a smaller room and got started. There was a middle-aged Asian guy sitting in a chair who had already gotten through a few questions.

The first question asked me about the window curtains in the room, and a display of copper figures set up on the window ledge. I was to axamine these first, then return and answer some questions about them. I examined them and was able to ascertain that they portrayed the flight of Helen and Paris to Troy, the event that led to the Trojan war. While I was studying, them, the aministrator of the questionnaire (a middle-aged white guy with a stern military bearing but remarkable patience for my constant questions and expressions of disgust at the confusing protocols) came into the room to see how we were doing. He gave us further advice not to answer the questions in such a way that we would incriminate ourselves, The Chinese guy nodded ruefully as though he had already made that mistake. "I haven't even finished the first question yet!" I exclaimed, frustration in my voice. Even the first question was so complex it was taking forever. "I'm supposed to examine this tapestry first!" I was tempted to point out that I would probably be here until late at night, well after the others had all left, which I assumed meant that the administrator wouldn't be able to go home either, but figured it was too early to say for sure. So instead I just complained, "And why does it start with question 'B'"? Indeed the very first question was labeled "B". I was afraid my tone be too irritable and anger the administrator, but he just nodded sympathetically and left.

I turned to the text of the actual question. It said that the copper figures on the windowsill had been made in the 13th century by an artisan named "Jason" something. I wondered why such old pieces had been gathered here, in this unremarkable building, instead of in a museum somewhere. Then the question went on to suggest that the identification of some of the figures had changed over the years, and asked which ones I thought they were. I had noticed that some of the figures had small white sticky labels with the names of the characters handwritten on them, so I concluded that these must be the ones that needed special identification, likely because they had previously been understood differently. So I wrote something to that effect on the green sheet, trying to keep my answer concise because the form only provided a single line to write on.

Then I moved to the second question. It was more abstract. It was something along the lines of, "If you are in a building and instructed to find room 190B, where would you look?" (I'm not sure of the exact number; it was a 3-digit number followed by the letter 'B'.) I had a brief vision of an exit that led directly outside, thus evidently on the ground floor. I was starting to wonder if these were all trick questions. Feeling sarcastic and and annoyed, I wrote: "Is this a Google application?" (I've heard that Google tests potential applicants with puzzles, though we had been told the questionnaire was just a standard performance measure.) I thought the vision of the ground floor might be deliberately misleading, and remembered how the numbering of soom buildings got confusing because they were built on a slope so the ground level was different on either side, and wrote next, "Is the building on a hill?" I reckoned then that the "B" might be significant and provide the easiest answer to the question, which didn't ask which floor the room was on, after all, only where to find it. The number itself might be a red herring. So I concluded my response with "Is there a 190A?" I wondered if it would be acceptable to answer the question with three questions of my own, but given how irritating this questionnaire was, I decided that I would not restrain myself from responding sarcastically when the question was vague.

After some non-lucid sequences in my hotel room, I found myself in the kitchen of my house. I knew I was out of town on a trip, so I felt like I was just checking in. However things were a mess, even I knew the catsitter had been coming. There were lots of bowls of food out but they looked old and uncleaned, and the water was dirty. I went over to the sink to start washing them and I noticed that the sink was already full of dirty dishes. However, I distinctly remembered that I had done all the dishes before leaving on my trip. "Does this mean I'm lucid?" I thought to myself, and decided, "Of course, certainly," and felt that I had been aware that I had been dreaming all along even though I evidently had not been until I noticed the discontinuity. (In one of the earlier sequences I had been confusing about whether I was awake or dreaming to the point where I felt convinced that dream events were impinging in impossible ways on waking life.) I wondered if there were other discontinuities and looked around. I noticed that the catsitter had not taken the check I left for her, and that seemed odd. Wouldn't she have taken it on the first visit? However, I realized that this wasn't necessarily a discontinuity, because there might have been plausible reasons for her to have left it until later.

I started washing a dirty bowl at the sink, one that the cats could use, but then I reflected, "If I'm lucid, maybe I should go do something else. I know! I'm in my kitchen, it would be a great opportunity to go outside and leave a trail of breadcrumbs to try to do the Hansel and Gretel task. But first I'll just wash this bowl and leave some fresh food and water for the kitties." So I stayed at the sink and continued washing the bowl, and also washed and refilled a water bowl.

Even though the dream felt very stable to start, I was a bit paranoid that it wouldn't last long enough to let me get to my more interesting task, and I felt like this anxiety about waking was pushing me closer to actually doing so, and tried to put it out of mind. However, I soon felt my senses disengage and half-woke. But I didn't lose the mental image, and after a moment felt my senses re-engage and knew I was back in the dream. So I rushed to get a can of catfood and put it in the bowl I had now cleaned. A dream version of one cat came out and didn't seem interested in the food I had selected, though I figured, maybe this is a good thing, because if the catsitter feeds her food she likes better, the cat (who is very skittish) might feel more friendly to her. Just as I had finished this and was ready to start on my new task, I woke up again, and though I held very still, the dream state was too disrupted to re-enter.

I was a bit annoyed with myself for wasting a lucid opportunity, but I understood my rationale. Even though I knew I was dreaming, I was not comfortable with the idea of leaving my dream-cats ill-tended, so that took priority over any other task. However, the error I made was in tending to them using the tedious methods of waking life: actually standing at the sink and washing bowls, actually going to another room to get the food and walking back with it, opening the can and using a spoon to empty the food into the bowl. I guess I did it this way out of habit, as it certainly felt like I was going through very familiar motions. I should have just manifested some clean food and water and then gotten to my task much more quickly.

I was in a big enclosed public space like a mall and needed to use the restroom. I found the ladies' room, which was a relatively large one with around nine stalls in a single row. I found a stall that was clean and was about to go inside when another woman barged right ahead of me. The next stall I checked had an unflushed toilet, as well as the one after that, and the third one was clean but had no toilet seat. I decided to use it anyway. I stepped into the stall and then remembered, "Wait... aren't dirty public restrooms one of my dream signs? This one isn't particularly dirty but still, I'd better RC." I counted my fingers and saw nothing unusual, then focused on the sensation of gravity and it also felt completely normal.

I remembered the time that I had failed an RC under similar circumstances and decided I'd better make extra sure. So I focused on levitating, really putting a lot of effort into it, but my feet remained firmly stuck to the ground and even the sensation of gravity or my bodily awareness did not alter or feel any more dream-like. So that was how I knew I was awake... until some time later, when I actually woke up, and wondered how the RC could have failed so completely. The gravity RC is usually very reliable, and even on the rare occasions that I don't levitate promptly, I'll notice that gravity or my body don't "feel" right. On this occasion the illusion was perfect!

Ritual: Went to bed 1am, woke at 2, too early to do anything, woke again at 5:40 with fresh NLD, so forced myself to get up and do a proper WBTB. Returned to bed at 6:15, did hybrid of SSILD and counting, but kept getting disturbed by environmental factors. Hard to sleep, eventually dozed off without awareness, finally woke at 7:20 and declared it a failed attempt. I could still squeeze in another hour of sleep though so I figured I'd just try FILD as a last resort.

After this things get confusing. My best guess is that I did FILD, then fell asleep and into a NLD, then... I woke up, or thought I did (might have been an FA), and did FILD again (possibly in the dream state). Then I noticed that my arm was lying free on the bed rather than tucked under my pillow as usual, so I thought, "Fine, I'll do the stupid nose pinch RC," and what do you know, I could breathe! So I knew I was dreaming, but I was very perplexed. I had just been doing FILD and hadn't observed any kind of transition or even a momentary lapse of awareness in which the transition could have occurred. How could I have fallen asleep and not realized it? In retrospect, I really do think that this started as an FA that I mistook for a real waking, so I did FILD without realizing that I was already dreaming. Hey, whatever works.

So I sat up, and immediately became more perplexed. I was in a bed, but it was not the one I had gone to sleep in, and the bedroom also bore no resemblance to mine in RL. I got up and started looking around, but then I realized that I recognized the place after all: hadn't I been having a non-lucid dream here, just before I woke up and tried that FILD attempt? (This also argues for the FILD-during-FA hypothesis, and it wouldn't be the first time I've had a "WILD" that was initiated from within an ongoing dream—a DIWILD?)

This is hard to confirm because I always have a hard time putting dream events in their proper sequence, but there were events I remembered taking place in this building that don't seem lucid and don't fit into my memory of the lucid episode, so I think that must be what happened. That is, all the previous events took place downstairs, but the entire lucid sequence took place upstairs in what I took to be the same house.

NLD: Earlier when I was downstairs, there had been some complicated narrative I don't recall, but it resulted in me opening the front door several times to let cats into the house. At one point there was a really big one, an orange tabby, both large-bodied and very plump. When I saw him sitting on the doorstep I thought he was the biggest cat I'd ever seen, and I invited him in and closed the door. But there had been two or three other orange tabbies of normal size sitting with him, so I relented and opened the door again to let them in too. "Okay, fine, we'll just let them all in." I knew we didn't have room for them all, but figured it wouldn't be fair to turn them away after I'd already let in others. We could sort it out later.

After this I stood in the entry and watched the extra-big cat ambling away down the hall. Now it was even larger than it had seemed at first, with a lean, bony frame that was not at all cat-like. In fact, I thought I recognized what it was, and said to someone standing nearby, "That cat looks an awful lot like a moose. You know, I think it might actually be just a moose with no horns." Only it was still orange, which seemed a very odd color for a moose.

DIWILD: So apparently this all happened earlier, before the FILD attempt, and afterwards I was convinced I was still in the same house. In the wall facing the end of the bed was a doorway to another room, and when I went inside, I encountered someone that I immediately recognized as the moose-cat from earlier, although now he was a human-looking man with orange hair. I was still curious, so I asked him, "Are you a cat or a moose?"

"I have three types of glands," he answered, and I had the impression he was suggesting that he was both, and something more besides, a protean type of creature.

The two of us sat down on the couch, and for a moment my dream libido took over, and I started making out with him. But as things got more intense I recognized that this was a distraction and would accomplish nothing useful. Didn't I have tasks to do? I remembered that last night I had been on DV looking over the monthly tasks for August, and there had been one that I particularly wanted to try out. This seemed like the perfect opportunity. So I disentangled myself from moose-cat-man's embrace and said firmly, "Tell me a word in a foreign language."

It was hard to make out what he said at first. It sounded like "Arab mormon."

"What?" I wasn't sure if I had heard him correctly.

This time he distinctly just said, "Mormon."

It didn't sound like a word in a foreign language, but whatever. Run with it. "Alright, now tell me what it means."

"A married man."

I wasn't very satisfied with this result and wanted to try again. Another DC was in this room, sitting on another small couch further along the same wall, so I went and sat down next to him. This time I made sure my instructions were more explicit from the start: "I want you to tell me a word in a foreign language, and then tell me what it means."

"Sprenn," he said promptly.

"Spread?" I repeated what I had thought I heard at first.

"Sprenn," he clarified, and helpfully spelled it for me. "S-P-R-E-N-N."

"Okay, what does it mean?"

At this he smiled coyly, as if embarrassed. "I'll... tell you later."

I had the impression it must be a word for something naughty, but I needed to find out. "Please?" I wheedled. He shook his head.

I decided to be more forceful. "Come on, you have to tell me!" I tried to think of how to back this up, and added, "It's my homework assignment."

He tried to explain in a roundabout way: "It has to do with the city of Myrkbalik, and the laws of Garibaldi."

The two names he mentioned sounded complicated, so I wanted to make sure I had heard them correctly. "What was the name of the city? Mrkbalik?" He nodded. "And the second name? Garibaldi? Garifaldo?" This reminded me of a name I had heard in waking life, so I tried to remember, then joked with him, "The laws of Janeane Garofolo?"

He laughed, though it wasn't clear whether or not he recognized the pop culture reference, and repeated the name for me. It still sounded closer to "Garibaldi" than anything, though I had so much to remember at this point that I didn't dare ask him to try to spell it. Already in the back of my mind I was cycling through data points "mormon... married man... sprenn... mrkbalik..." trying to make sure I would be able to preserve them through waking.

Mrkbalik... that's how it sounded, and I didn't ask him to confirm the spelling of that one either. But he had said it was a city name, and to my ears it sounded Russian or Eastern European. I had a sudden insight about this DC, and asked him, "You majored in Slavic studies, didn't you?" He confirmed this.

I felt as though this conversation was winding down, so I got up and crossed the room. Against the opposite wall was a sort of shelving unit, framing square cubbyholes about the size you might put a pair of shoes in, six cubbies high and six wide. It was resting on some elevated base so that the fourth row of cubbies up was equal with my eye level. I looked in this row and saw that a couple of the cubbies were inhabited by small kittens. Could the kittens talk, I wonder? If so, I might even try the task again. But as I was wondering this, the little grey tabby kitten in the cubby I was peering into addressed me first. It had a tiny creaky high-pitched voice, like you might expect of a kitten, and said something about how its eyes were damaged or hurting. I was troubled to hear this and wondered how I might help. Since this was a dream, I figured the most effective way to help the kitten would be to correct its expectations. I smiled and said encouragingly, "No, your eyes are perfectly fine!" We had a few more exchanges like this, where the kitten would say something upsetting and I tried to reassure it. I don't remember anything afterwards so around this time I guess I woke up, although I don't have a distinct sense of the moment when it happened.

Ritual: wtb around 12:30am. Had to get up at 8am so no time for serious WBTB, but I had been reading about FILD and how it relies on short WBTBs that allow one to go back to sleep quickly, so thought this would be a good opportunity to try it out. I was waking up naturally every couple of hours and each time did FILD as I went back to sleep, but no results. If I was having NLDs, I didn't take notes and don't remember them now.

My fourth waking occurred at 6:50am. I did FILD again. This time, as I was nearing sleep I saw a tiny white light, rayed like a star and unusually bright, appear in the darkness behind my eyelids and seem to come closer. This reminded me: wasn't I supposed to be paying attention to hypnogogic imagery? Actually I don't think that is a part of the FILD technique but in my half-asleep recollection I was convinced it was, so I focused on that white star, and for whatever reason I felt like it was actually effective in helping me transition.

I had not been doing the "nosepinch" RC during my FILD attempts, as the tutorial recommends, because it struck me as potentially counter-productive to make such a large motion—if the body is not already in SP then one would end up moving one's physical arm and disrupting the transition. Plus, I figured, if I still had the presence of mind to remember to RC in the first place, then I could probably figure it out in some other way.

As I was trying to come up with alternate RCs that didn't involve physical movement, at one point it occurred to me, "Hey, if I'm lying here with my eyes closed, how come I can see my bedside table?" What a giveaway! So then I realized I must have transitioned without even knowing it, and got out of bed.

WILD: The first thing I did was go look out the sliding door in the bedroom. In RL it leads to the back patio, but in the dream, it opened onto a wide grassy lawn that extended a great distance. The air felt very real and fresh as it came through the door. I remembered my tasks, but after botching them last time because I rushed out of the house before the dream had stabilized, I didn't want a repeat of that failure. I realized I'd better take some time first and let the dreamstate develop a bit more strength. It felt unusually "thin," even for an early-stage WILD.

As I walked down the hall, I noticed three coins lying on the floor just inside the door to the library. This pleased me immensely, because I recognized it at once as waking life residue, the consequence of a conversation yesterday, and I was glad the dream was showing a bit of initiative. I picked up the coins and then wondered where to put them when I discovered that was wearing a skirt that had no pockets. "Don't be silly," I reminded myself, observing that this shouldn't be an obstacle in the dreamstate. So without looking, I slipped my hand down until I could feel the edge of the pocket that manifested on the skirt just where I "expected" it to be, and slipped the coins inside.

Shortly after this the dream was disrupted by a half-waking, but I was able to re-transition. I got out of bed again and realized I'd better work more deliberately on stabilization, running through each of my senses in turn to better engage them. Touch always seems the most foundational, so I rubbed my hands together and over various differently-textured surfaces in the room: the fluffiness of a sheepskin, the scratchiness of the wool rug, the smoothness of the wall. My sense of touch tends to be robust even in the most poorly-integrated dreams, so the results were satisfactory. What next? I thought of sight and sound, but immediately hesitated. The dream felt so thin and fragile that I felt convinced engaging sight and sound would expose me to RL stimuli and risk waking me. I thought it might be better to do taste and smell first to try to get a little more traction. As I walked toward the kitchen I saw a potted basil plant (much like the one I had bought yesterday from Trader Joe's) sitting in the door of the hallway bathroom. "That'll do for taste," I thought, plucking a leaf and putting in my mouth. It tasted very much like real basil, spicy and herbaceous, but somehow not entirely pleasant on its own. The leaf was unusually large and now it was filling my mouth in an unpleasant limp wad, so rather than chew and swallow, I took out what was left of it and put it on the counter. Surely there must be something else to eat? Ice cream maybe? I looked in the freezer, but remembered that I had finished the chocolate ice cream last night. I considered manifesting some more, but didn't get around to it. This might have been around the time the second half-waking occurred, and I had to re-transition.

It's not unusual that I have to chain a few WILDs like this before the dreamstate stabilizes, but this time it only seemed to be getting weaker rather than more robust, despite my deliberate attempts to gain traction. I guess my REM state wasn't very strong or I was already too wakeful. At one point I had opened the screen door by my work area and was standing with one foot inside the room, one foot outside on the patio, looking down the side of the house and thinking how unusually lifelike it looked, rather than showing the typical degree of dream-like distortions. And not long after that I woke up for the third time, too fully awake to retransition. I checked my clock and it was 7:35am.

It was a rather unsatisfying WILD in that the dream started out thin and only got thinner as time went on... there was one rough patch in the third part where I felt like I was holding it together through imagination alone before my senses re-engaged. By the very end, after it became apparent that I wasn't going to be able to accomplish anything worthwhile, I think I just gave up and was indulging in libidinous pleasure—through thought alone, as it seemed too much trouble at that point to try to create a scenario.

I'll have to keep trying with FILD to see if I can get better results. On the upside, it has the advantage that it can be practiced during very brief WBTBs, so it can be used at times when other techniques that require more mental focus would be unsuitable.

Ritual: Went to bed around 12:50am. Woke naturally at 3:32. Seemed a bit soon to WBTB but my motivation was good and I recalled traces of imagery so decided to go for it. Drank guayusa tea and read Brooks & Vogelsong. Before going to bed did hybrid of SSILD/counting/affirmation while sitting in chair. Technique: counted incrementally while breathing slowly and deeply, thinking the number on each in-breath, and on outbreath rotated between senses (thinking "look," "listen," or "feel") and then adding an affirmation, letting it fall randomly between "always lucid" or "always aware." Counted to fifty in this way, though I was impressed how easily it was to lose track of the number (this is good, it means the mind is losing its focus on waking life) even while sitting upright in a chair. Returned to bed at 4:52am and continued counting up to 70 while lying on my back, then ceased the practice and turned on my left side to sleep. I soon realized that I'd overdone the WBTB a bit and was excessively wakeful, but consoled myself that I should be able to return to sleep eventually given how few hours I had gotten so far, and my chances for WILDing should be improved by this touch of insomnia.

I had made sure to fix a very clear task in mind: I had read about the "fairy tale" challenges on DV and they seemed potentially interesting, but I realized I should make a clear plan. If I did successfully WILD I would find myself in my house, so how would I go about pursuing the task? My idea was this: grab a loaf of bread from the kitchen, exit the front door, turn right and walk up the hill, where in a previous WILD I had passed through a tunnel and found myself in a deep, dark forest. I could leave a trail of bread crumbs and see what happened from there.

WILD #1: It took a long time to go back to sleep. Eventually I felt sensations I interpreted as the onset of SP: tingling and distortion of the physical body, then a sense of weight on my chest so localized and specific that I wondered if the cat had actually jumped on me, but the weight quickly increased beyond that of any cat. I was encouraged because it seemed like this transition was happening very cleanly and consciously, and turned my attention to beginning to "move" the non-physical "body." I was careful not to wiggle my fingers or adjust my limbs lest I break SP, so I concentrated on unnatural movements like full-body rotation. I could begin to feel my body swinging in a horizontal rotation but didn't yet have enough traction to "get up" out of bed. Suddenly I felt a vertical "lift" as though my body had floated up several feet, and the next moment I was standing on my feet next to the bed. "And I'm up!" I thought to myself, pleased.

I noticed right away how dark it was, and despite the clarity of the transition, I did not feel well-integrated into the dream body. I deduced that this was probably a consequence of weak REM-state, given how little sleep I had gotten before the WBTB. I thought I'd better do some stabilization, so I touched some surfaces around me and then rubbed my hands together. This felt lifelike enough, so I became too easily complacent and didn't do anything further to integrate... a mistake, as it turned out. But I was pre-occupied with performing my task and didn't want to get distracted to the point where I never left the antechamber, as so often happens, so I rushed to get started.

I moved swiftly toward the kitchen and picked up the bag of bread from the counter as I passed through. It felt quite full, and I recalled that I had bought a new bag just the other day in waking life. Although the environment was still very muddy and vague, I could easily find my way through the house out of habit, so I headed straight for the front door. As I was crossing the threshold, I noticed that the bag of bread suddenly felt very light, as though there were only a few slices left. I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I should return to the kitchen, but didn't want to be distracted from my task, so I figured, "That's alright, I can always manifest more."

I walked out into the night, the outdoor environment no more distinct than the indoors had been, but I knew where I was going. I turned right and began to walk uphill, reaching into the bag to start dropping breadcrumbs. To encourage the right environment to appear, I started muttering under my breath: "Entering the world of Hansel & Gretel. Entering the world of Hansel & Gretel." But I only got off two recitations before I abruptly awoke. I realized my error at once: the dreamspace outside the antechamber is always less stable, and in my impatience to get started on the task, I hadn't integrated properly before exiting.

I lay for a long time in the position I woke in. Often I can seamlessly re-enter a WILD if I half-wake and don't move. But this was no half-waking: my mind was fully awoken and I soon realized that holding my position would be of no use, sleep had well and truly gone. I used the bathroom so it wouldn't pre-occupy me later and returned to bed, lying on my other side now to make a fresh start. By now the sun was rising so I got out my sleep mask from the drawer. I hate wearing it, but I could tell the light would be disruptive today. I considered checking the time but was trying not to stimulate wakefulness any further, so deliberately decided not to. It was evidently around sunrise, anyway, which occurred at 6:01am today according to Google. That was well over an hour after I had finished my WBTB and the dream can only have lasted a few minutes, so it must have taken me a very long time to fall asleep beforehand.

WILD #2: I lay on my right side and tried to keep a positive attitude: of course I can do it again! I re-WILD all the time! Not usually from such drastic awakening, admittedly, but I didn't let myself focus on the negatives. I wondered if I should rise and write a report, but reflected that there was little to report apart from the exact wording of the phrases I had thought or spoken, and these I had already scrawled in my notepad. The rest, what little there was, would be easy to remember. So I let go of those worries and focused attention on my breathing, remembering not to "try" to fall asleep but just let it happen. Eventually, it did.

Whereas the previous transition had been so vivid, this time I was surprised to find myself simply standing at the foot of the bed. I hadn't noticed the separation. But at least I remembered where I had gone wrong in the last attempt, and reminded myself: don't rush it. Get traction. Find something to do in the antechamber to better immerse yourself.

I noticed that this time the bedroom was full of books, stacked in messy piles and filling bags all over the floor. I figured that these would provide a good opportunity to more fully engage my senses in the dreamspace. So I selected a few and carried them with me as I moved out of the room. The kitchen floor was also covered with books, so many piles and stacks that was actually hard to pick a path through them. I was picking up volumes more or less at random until I noticed what was clearly an artist's sketchbook, a spiral-bound 9"x12" Strathmore, on top of one pile. "Oh, I should look at that!" I thought, and grabbed it. Finally I made my way to the living room, where I found a small oriental rug on the floor (about 2'x3', black pattern on a white background) and sat down on it to begin to peruse my books.

I chose the sketchbook first, because I was the most curious what I might find inside this one, and dream pictures tend to be easier to perceive and remember afterwards than dream text. The first picture I saw upon opening it was a portrait of what looked like a tribal chieftain, showing the upper half of his body and filling the whole page. He looked about middle-aged, with angular but weather-beaten features. The most distinctive element of the portrait, dominating most of the visual space, was the enormous headdress he was wearing. It wasn't made of feathers or any obvious RL material but seemed composed of abstract patterns with a Mayan styling to them. I took note of the colors. The headdress was all in shades of red, mostly an earthy brick shade. There were constrasting shades of muted green in the distinctive wide straps criss-crossing his body in various places. It didn't occur to me at the time, but the obvious deduction is that these straps were there to secure the enormous headdress.

After looking carefully at the first drawing, I turned the page. The next image I saw was more cartoon-like. The page was divided into four rectangular panels, each one the width of the page, and stacked vertically. There was a caption, though I don't remember if it was above or below the panels: "Doyle Oss Toss." How clever, I thought... until I realized that it didn't rhyme as well as I had thought at first, because I was aware from the start that "Oss" meant "Owl" but soon realized that the RL word had been distorted unrecognizably to fit the rhyme. My dream texts often demonstrate this tendency to favor rhyme and alliteration over comprehensible meaning.

The four panels showed the Doyle Owl being punted by a large shaggy grey wolf. The Owl was on the left, the wolf on the right, and the setting suggested the outdoors but was very plain, with little in the background to distract the eye. The sky behind them was dark. The first panel showed the Owl already in mid-air, with the wolf's head lowered, evidently having just head-butted it. The second panel showed the Owl about halfway down, in the act of falling, the wolf's head still lowered. The third panel showed the Owl having come to rest again on the ground, the wolf's position unchanged. The last panel showed the Owl lying on the ground where it had fallen, and now the wolf had lowered its haunches into a crouch and lifted its head toward the sky, howling in what I interpreted as triumph.

I think I might have spied one more drawing but I don't remember it, because around this time I woke up. In a false awakening. Which I didn't recognize. Responsibly, I immediately began to record the dream on my notepad, first sketching out the four-panel cartoon I have just described. After completing that, I started blocking out the tribal chieftain, and made some notes about the colors. I think I wrote about the green straps first, and when I started trying to describe the particular shades of red in the headdress, the dream began to evolve, and I thought I remembered dreaming that I was a sultan who had a vizier who wore a turban constructed of red cloth in various textures and shades, including a dark red kerchief. It's possible that this image relates to a drawing from the original sketchbook that I've forgotten, because as I was jotting down notes about color of his headgear a new visual appeared, where I could see the vizier from above and behind, with a clear vantage on the dark red kerchief, and I was surprised because I knew that I had not previously seen him from that perspective.

Before the FA could evolve any more, I woke up for real and recognized that I had just been writing my dream report in another dream, and I'd better get up and do it properly. In this case I didn't mind the delay because writing it down in the FA had helped cement the details in memory (this is not always the case). So I started jotting down my notes on the notepad next to my bed... only to realize soon after I'd started that even though I was more or less awake now, I still wasn't actually doing it, I was still just experiencing a kind of half-dreamed enactment of writing, and I should stop tricking myself and physically get out of bed so I could be sure I was doing it properly. So I got up and hastily sketched out the four-panel again—noticing with amusement how much crappier it looked in RL than in the more elegantly sketched version from my initial FA. I noted the time of rising as 6:56am, and recorded the rest of the dream on my laptop.

Ritual: wtb 3:15am, last wbtb 9:15am, woke 10:38am, SSILD: WILD

Last sleep, last chance. It was already 9:15am, but since I'd gone to bed so late, and all my previous attempts that night had been without real motivation and had resulted in falling asleep before completing a single cycle, figured I could try once more. SSILD: tempted to mix it with other techniques, but if I was going test this properly, ought to do it straight up. My timing was messy and uneven, but remembered that was okay. Did maybe three cycles on my back, uneven length, afraid of waking myself up too much, given that it was already mid-morning, so turned on my side and prepared to let myself sleep. A few times I ran through the cycles very lightly and quickly, just to get back in touch with my senses. At some point in this process the cat jumped on the bed. I was getting closer to sleep but figured I could work with this if he settled down and didn't just start yelling. Fortunately he decided to sleep on me, and I was able to work that sensation into my rotation. I wasn't cycling regularly, just randomly once in a while when I felt I might be losing touch.

I must have been already dreaming without knowing it, because I thought I was only thinking, and it never occurred to me that the presence of sustained visuals suggested otherwise. I was replying to posts on some online forum made my a friend—nothing to do with DV, no one even connected with dreaming, just an old friend I haven't talked to in a while (AS). He was posting something about falling asleep a certain way and used an acronym like "TILD," and I wanted to reply snarkily with something like, "Does TILD stand for 'talking to yourself in bed'?" At the time, I was convinced this phrase perfectly fit the acronym, so I was apparently already touched by dream logic. So I was trying to type out my reply, and I simply could not type "TILD" properly. I tried over and over, and my fingers kept slipping and hitting everything else on the keyboard. Technical difficulties like this are one of my dream signs, but since I was convinced I was still awake, it didn't occur to me to RC. On the contrary, I thought I was having this trouble typing because I was getting too sleepy! This was precisely the opposite of a false awakening: instead of losing dream awareness by believing I had woken up, on the contrary, I failed to realize I was dreaming because I thought I hadn't fallen asleep yet! (If there's no acronym for this yet, I propose FFA for "false falling asleep," as it pairs well with the more familiar term FA.)

Around then the music started. I could hear a Pixies song. At the time I was sure that it was a song I knew, and it was playing perfectly down to the last note, even though I hadn't heard it in years. (I can't remember now what song it was, if it was indeed a real one.) I knew the music wasn't coming from outside me, and figured it must just be hypnagogic activity. The whole time until now I had been aware of lying in my bed, which was part of the reason I thought that I hadn't quite fallen asleep yet. After the Pixies song played in its entirety and then concluded, a new song started. This one intrigued me even more, because I was sure it was a song I had never heard before. It was lively enough to make a good follow-up to the Pixies, but the singer had an accent that sounded African. It reminded me of the song "Rise" by Seun Kuti, one that I downloaded free from Amazon and put on my running mix—but I'm not familiar with his other work. This song, like one before it, was crystal clear... like so often before I regretted that I am not more musical in waking life, because I felt sure if I were musically literate I could wake up and recreate it. But I didn't feel like rousing myself and trying to hum the melody into my iPhone when I hadn't even gotten to sleep yet.

WILD: At some point around here the transition finalized, and I realized, hang on, I think I am asleep now! I'm in my dream body! I could probably just 'get up' without disrupting anything... so I got out of bed, and even though everything felt extremely lifelike, there was a lightness to my body that I was sure meant I was dreaming. I was impressed how bright and clear everything was, and how mobile I felt, unlike a lot of WILDs where it's dark at first and I'm crawling over the carpet trying to get traction. But perhaps integration wasn't perfect yet, because hardly had I gotten out of bed when I was disturbed by a loud rhythmic noise that threatened to disrupt the dream state and wake me. At first I thought it must be the mailman knocking on the door, because I'm expecting a package. But as it continued without abating, I realized it must actually be construction on the house up the hill. How foolish it was, I chided myself, to do my dream practice so late in the morning! The world wakes up and starts making loud noises; at least during the night it is quieter. (RL: It turns out there's nothing at the door and no construction going on outside, so despite these very reasonable hypotheses about bleedthrough stimuli, the sound appears to have been largely or entirely internal.)

The sound was extremely disruptive and I felt alarmingly close to being woken by it. But I had just gotten into a perfectly good dream and had no wish to lose it so soon (like that time recently when I was woken from an otherwise fantastic WILD by my own snoring—come to think of it, this is another possible culprit for the sound!) How can I deal with this and remain in the dream? The answer occurred instinctively: dance! So I started dancing to the noise. It was a bit like dancing to the sound of hammers, and my dance was correspondingly jerky and spasmodic, but it did the trick! After a while I felt that the dreamstate was no longer threatened, so I paused and looked at myself in the bedroom mirror. Once again, as in the last SSILD, I was impressed how much like my waking self I looked: the hair was different, shorter, but the same face, same eyes. I smiled at myself and could see the smile in the reflection. Interestingly, even though it was a full-length mirror, I have no conception of what I might have been wearing. I wasn't curious about it at the time I was looking, so I have no impression of it now. If I had to guess, I would suppose it was a loose white summer dress of the sort I've been wearing around the house lately (I don't wear these to bed though).

Even though I had come to terms with the noise, it was still loud and annoying, so I decided to leave the bedroom and move deeper into the house, hopefully away from it. It might have diminished slightly by the time I got to the kitchen, but only a little, so I keep walking through to the living room. I notice my fluffiest down comforter is heaped up on the couch for some reason. I pull it off, and as the folds of cloth open I see the dark silhouette of a butterfly within them. I am momentarily confused: is butterfly a dream figment, or is it real? That is, just as I thought the sound might have a source in waking life, it didn't seem improbable at that moment that a butterfly might have accidentally made it into the house. Dream logic prevented me from realizing that, even were that so, how would I realize it when I was asleep in my bed? The butterfly flutters up and flies into the kitchen, so I follow it. Around this time I am too distracted to notice the noise anymore, being completely engrossed in the butterfly. When I enter the kitchen, I notice that in place of the little black one I followed, about the size of an ordinary monarch, there are now two very large butterflies, their wingspans about 16 to 18 inches across. One is slightly larger than the other, a very pale greenish yellow. The other one has the same base color, but its wings have black borders.

I am reminded of the task I had been intending to work on next, "creo animál." However, it seems that the dream has jumped the gun and already created the animal for me, so I roll with it and decide to experiment with "rego animál" instead—apparently forgetting I've already done this one numerous times. I know I should try "intellego animál," as I've never tried anything with that technique, but I'm not sure how to go about it, so I decide to put it off until later. I hold out my hand and command "Rego animál," focusing on the larger, lighter-colored butterfly and intending for it to land on my hand. The butterflies flit around and ignore me. I try again. Doesn't work. What's the problem? They are "animals," aren't they? I mean, in the broad sense of the term, I'm pretty sure insects count. Do I need the "auram" sphere for this, as they are creatures of the air? But I've worked with wind before—I've found it quite straightforward to conjure all the elements directly—yet somehow this is harder. I'm forgetting all the times I have commanded animals very easily in other dreams, and am probably just making it harder for myself by all the Ars Magica rigamarole, but truth be told I like rigamarole... it's more stylish and satisfying than just making things happen in a perfunctory way. I conclude that the main problem is that I'm just not putting enough focus into my intent, and so the third time I sing the command. For some reason, I always get the best results in dreams when I sing to shape them, and sure enough, now the butterfly comes over and lands on my proffered hand.

What next? I walk the few steps back into the living room, and command the butterfly to fly up again and go land on the small table by the window on the other side of the couch. Again, it takes me a couple tries, but the butterfly finally obeys. As it lands there, it turns into a young light-haired woman. I am distracted from this transformation by a young blonde man who is now at my side. He is not the second butterfly, the one with black-bordered wings: around this time she transforms into a dark-haired woman who is standing near the closet. With all this transformation going on, I am inspired to try "Muto animál," so I direct this command to the young man, intending for him to turn into a butterfly. He stands there looking a bit obstinate or confused, so I sing the command in what I intend to be a very persuasive manner, and he finally complies—sort of. He lies down on his right side in a fetal position. He is not lying on the floor, but on some platform a few feet high that doesn't exist in RL (there would just be a wall there). He produces a bundle of red yarn that he stretches along the length of his spine. I watch, waiting for the transformation, but nothing happens. I command him again, and he respond that he is doing his best, but that it will take a very long time—maybe up to a year!—because the timing isn't right.

It's possible that the guy is just dicking me around, but he seems sincere, and he does offer that he could transform more easily into a goat. (OMG! I hadn't even realized until I wrote this that my first SSILD also involved a goat... odd coincidence, as I don't remember dreaming of goats under any other circumstances.) I say that this would be fine, so he gets back up, discards the red yarn, and transforms at once into a brown goat of ordinary size. He warns me that when he is a goat, he speaks in a strange high voice—which seems contradictory at first, because he has already turned into a goat and is still speaking in the same voice as before. However, after delivering the warning, his voice does change. From his description of a "high voice," I was expecting him to start speaking in falsetto, but instead he sounds more cartoonish, like his voice has been sped up. With his new voice he introduces himself to me, telling me his name is "Hemm." I find myself wondering how this is spelled. I imagine it with two 'mm's, but having only heard it spoken, I can't be sure. Should I ask? Well it can't hurt, and might help me remember the name better. "Is that spelled H-E-M or H-E-M-M?" I inquire. He replies that there's no way to know: he was just a blacksmith's son and never saw it written down.

I realize that I should get the names of everyone in the room, because then I'll be able to write a more detailed report when I wake up. So I turn and ask the girl sitting on the small table, formerly the pale butterfly. She tells me her name is "Anna." She is now holding a painting, a vertical rectangle about 24x36 inches, and turns it around to show me the back. "And his name was 'Jakachibe', he was a Japanese thief." I gather that the guy she mentions is represented on the front of the painting, but I barely had time to glimpse the image before she turned it around, and now she is just showing me the back of the canvas, where something like 'Jakachibe' is written in large sloppy pencil letters on a wooden crossbar. I say "something like" because the transliteration of the name is even worse than what I've rendered here—there was another 'h' in it somewhere, maybe even a 'q', something more like "Jaqhachibe," but I can't remember precisely—and I have to bite my tongue to refrain from telling her that "Jaqhachibe" doesn't sound like a proper Japanese name and even if it were, it certainly wouldn't be spelled that way in English. I just smile and nod, then turn to the dark-haired woman who has continued to stand by quietly. She tells me her name is "Caroline." After I hear each name, I am repeating it aloud, to better impress it on my memory.

After talking to each of the women in turn, I notice that the young man who had transformed into a goat has returned to his former human appearance. He is of average height, with wavy blonde hair, short but not too short, a bit tousled, and he has a pleasant, open face. He volunteers that his name—in this form—is "Viryec." Or at least, he says something that sounds like that phonetically, but is probably spelled very differently—"Virjece" occurs to me as the most likely possibility—so I start inquiring more about it. He tells me that his name means something like "sincere effort." This rings a bell—both in sound and meaning, it reminds me a lot of the Pali word viriya, which has been on my mind lately, so I ask him if that term has any relationship to his name. Although he and his name both strike me as coming from northern European stock, perhaps there is some ancient Indo-European etymological relationship with the Pali... but before he can reply, I wake up. I don't know why my dreams so often seem to end just before what promises to be some interesting revelation, but here we are again. Still, I'm not that disappointed because I have so much to write down!

Woke after five hours vaguely remembering a dream about being on a space ship. Some kids were catching a ride by hanging on to our landing gear as we went between stations, and I wondered how they didn't freeze and suffocate in the airless void.

I wasn't planning on doing any real practice since I didn't sleep much last night after my excellent LD got me out of bed early and writing furiously, but since I'd woken up from REM I thought I'd run through some SSILD cycles just for fun... and this provoked a sleeplessness that eventually got me out of bed an hour and a half later without having fallen back asleep at all. So no dreams, but I did manage to record fragments of the hypnagogic phrases that manifested at certain points:

"...the beautiful eye, and the faithful smiling hand..."

"...the stress of a healthy city farm too..."

"...semantic, and by the way kill the emperors..."

Mostly these were just words running through my head without any corresponding imagery, but at one point I had a hypnogogic image like I was looking at a forum post (unsurprising given that I waded through almost the whole SSILD thread yesterday, a tedious enterprise at 36 pages). So this one I "read" visually rather than thought directly. My recall of first few words flickered out almost immediately, but the sentence concluded "...and the king's building in apotheosis."