memorable

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!

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 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: 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!

Yesterday I came across the SSILD thread on the induction forum, and decided to try it out. Success!

Ritual: Slept about three hours, woke up with awareness of having dreamed though no recall of specifics, but figured since I had been in REM I might as well give the SSILD technique a try. Doing the sense-cycling delayed sleep onset more than I expected, even more than with my usual WILD technique of incremental counting, even though I kept reminding myself that I wasn't attempting to WILD. Interestingly, when I was starting to get closer to sleep I was experiencing much more vivid flashes of hypnogogic imagery than usual, which I attribute to having primed my attentiveness to it with the technique.

On the verge of falling asleep finally, when I sense that I'm in an empty room with plain white walls, and that it's substantial enough to enter as a dream space. "I can work with that," I say to myself, and close the door. The handle has a pleasing feeling of solidity and the door closes with lifelike sensations, so I know this is actually working.

WILD: What to do now? Well, I need traction, so I decide to just use my body a bit until I feel more substantial. Last night my husband showed me a video of a guy doing amazing acrobatic tricks on a pole, and that must have subconsciously inspired me, because without really thinking about it I start emulating him. It's fun because I could never do anything like this in RL (who could? It's real gravity defying stuff) and even in a dream it takes a bit of concentration, so it is a useful way to integrate myself better into this space. As I do it I remember to occasionally rub my hands in front of my face for more traction, and for some reason it occurs to me that it would be a good idea to feel my head, which I've never tried before, but the lifelike sensation of the shape of my head and texture of my hair is very helpful, they make this dream body I'm in feel more like "me." The vividness and clarity at this point is quite high, and I'm wondering what I look like. I see a mirror on the wall (the walls were featureless initially so the mirror seems to have manifested in response to my intention, though not before my eyes... it was just there once I decided to look for it) so all I have to do is position myself properly in order to see my reflection. I'm pleased with how much like me it actually looks, although my hair is different: loose, shoulder-length and with a layered, almost spiky cut. But the face looks just like mine, especially the eyes. It was remarkably like looking into a real mirror, which is not my usual experience of reflections in LDs.

Given how lifelike my body feels and my reflection looks, I decide to play with it a bit. A couple times in my LDs I've experimented with trying to create an extra set of arms, like you see on some representations of Hindu deities, and I want to try that again. I'm now standing on a sort of balance beam, looking at a second mirror that has manifested on the next wall (a little more conveniently positioned than the first) and I start waving my arms and trying to create a second pair. With a little concentration I have a partial success: I think I can see and feel a second pair, but they are moving in tandem with the first. To be more successful, they would have to move independently, all four arms moving simultaneously in separate directions. I try to get the second set to move independently from the first, but I can't figure out how to do it! I realize that I simply have no mental imprint of what this would be like. Perhaps with a little more creativity or effort I could get this going, but I sense that at this moment the strain might be close to disrupting the dream, so I give up the attempt, amused by how tricky this is, and re-stabilize.

What next? I remember my current task: "Creo vim." (I've been working through spell combinations from Ars Magica.) I anticipated this would be a fun one because I had no idea how it would manifest, and deliberately tried to avoid anticipating anything in particular, hoping the dream would surprise me. So I hold out my left hand and concentrate on the spell. Nothing happens at first. How should I do this? I wonder if I should be using my right hand (my dominant hand in waking life), but figure that since I instinctively started with my left, I should stick with it. "Creo vim," I murmur, since I've found that saying the name of the spell aloud can be an effective focus. A tiny bubble manifests in the air above my open palm. It looks like a soap bubble, and as I have this thought, it bursts like one. But I'm emboldened by the fact that something is happening, so I keep concentrating, and another bubble appears. It grows larger and slowly sinks until it is a half sphere sitting on my palm. From there it keeps growing, getting larger and lumpier and turning grey in color, but still completely weightless and seemingly inflated with air. When this mass is about a foot and a half in diameter, it lifts from my hand and sinks gently to the floor, and transforms into a small white goat.

The surroundings have changed around me while I was focused on the spell. I am no longer standing on a balance beam in a white room, now I am outdoors at night, standing on the ground, looking at this goat that has inexplicably appeared. My husband is lying next to me, asleep. Standing in front of me is a horse harnessed to a cart. I ponder the goat, wondering what it might signify. On the one hand, it is an extremely cute little goat, with long white fur and two straight horns that are only a few inches long. On the other hand, it subtly disturbs me for some reason I can't identify. I remembered a trial take of a commercial that I saw many years ago. The commercial was intended to advertise a financial services company, and was showing clips purporting to be the customers. The most memorable one was a dignified elderly gentleman who for some reason was accompanied by an equally dignified white goat. It was so random and surreal, elegantly and subtly satanic, that the image always stuck with me—though I learned later that the scene was cut from the final version out of concerns that people might be disturbed or distracted by the goat. So what to make of this little goat in front of me now? The goat itself was just standing quietly and not revealing anything, until before my eyes it abruptly transformed into a few pieces of ripe and runny brie cheese on a plain white plate. This was even more mystifying.

I wanted to ask someone's opinion about the goat and its transformation, but I looked around and couldn't see anyone else in this landscape. There was just me and my husband, but he was fast asleep and I didn't want to disturb him. Finally it occurred to me to ask the horse, as the only other creature around. I figured the question of the goat's moral status could be answered by how the horse responded to the cheese, so I picked up a piece from the plate and offered it to the horse to sniff. "What do you think?" I asked. The horse readily accepted the cheese and ate it with apparent relish. This seemed to speak well for the goat! "Want more?" I asked, offering the horse a second piece, which it consumed as eagerly as the first. I decided to try a bit myself, and found the taste and texture very much as I would have expected from a runny brie.

There was a cemetary nearby, surrounded by a low wall. I could see the tops of gravestones over the upper edge of the wall, and I instinctively knew that one of them was connected with the goat, so I should investigate it to find out more. The entrance to the cemetary was just across the lane on which the horse and cart were standing, so I walked around them and went inside. From my original glimpse across the wall I had made a mental note that the relevant gravestone was the fourth one in, so I counted the stones I passed until I reached the fourth. It was an old style of slab carved from reddish stone, only about two inches in width, about three feet tall, and with a simple curved top, unadorned except for the text that was carved on it. I knelt down and looked at the inscription. I was pleased to discover that I could read it easily, and one phrase that immediately caught my attention was "Ghast of Vail Light." I took this to be the title of the mysterious goat. It sounded a bit spooky after all, but I loved this phrase! I immediately determined to remember it. "Ghast of Vail Light," I repeated to myself several times, and even said aloud to myself, "Remember that." I wanted to get it just right. Was it spelled "Vail" and not "Vale"? I looked again at the inscription. The letters were remarkably stable, and the spelling was distinct: "Vail."

I hadn't done any tactile stabilization in a while, so I decided to run my hands over the face of the gravestone. It had the cool touch of real stone, smooth overall but a bit gritty in texture, like sandstone, and I could feel the indentations where the letters were carved in. I was still muttering to myself "Ghast of Vail Light." I didn't know how much longer the dream would go on, and wanted to make sure I wouldn't forget. But I concentrated so hard on the idea of remembering this phrase when I woke up, that it woke me up! I wasn't disappointed, though, because I had plenty to write about already.