Of Animeneth And His Coming To Dreamland

[Animeneth]

Last night marks my first official journey into the realm of the lucid. After having a pre-lucid dream last Sunday night I began to feel more confident that I would soon truly become lucid. Last night, after a procession of several dreams, I was in one where I was in a hospital room in the middle of the night. Urine began to spray from the ceiling (apparently coming from the room above). I jumped up and ran for the bath room, intent on washing my hands, all the while urine continued to rise around me, flooding theroom. I started to wash my hands again and thought to myself, "Forget the hands! You're about to drown in urine!" I'm not entirely sure if the voice I heard next was a dream character or my own internal dialog, but I heard a voice say, "Don't worry about it, you're really safely in your bed anyway." That was enough to snap me into lucidity. My first thought reaction was to awaken myself and escape drowning (Something now recall having done in the past when confronted with “nightmare” situations). But then I shouting, "Stop! Wait!" I planted my legs and held my arms out at 45 degree angles--like when you are attempting to balance yourself. I was still in my dream and had averted the disaster of waking to RL. I immediately noticed that the scene had changed slightly. It was now day, and the tiny bath room had now expanded to a large hospital room. An elderly woman lay on the bed in front of me to whom I said, "Do you realize what this means?!" She gave me a look in reply that revealed the fact the she thought I was crazy (and perhaps a bit frightened as well). Receiving no other response from her, I looked about me in order to observe details, and hopefully gain better stability (up to this point I had a slight feeling of vertigo ever since attaining lucidity). The room before me was filled with bags of various kinds of potato chips and two litre soft drinks (probably mental spill-over from the office party earlier that day in RL). I attempted to read the ingredients on a Dr. Pepper bottle only to have the print “rush” into my field of view, and thus multiplying the vertigo. I quickly turned my head to avert my eyes, which resulted in ejecting myself from the dream. The whole experience latest perhaps a grand total of ten seconds. [Edited for style and consistency]

[Animeneth]

Last night was another long procession of dreams, from which I awoke several times during the night. I notice I tend to LD toward the end of a night of good recall. I think perhaps remembering that ‘dreaming feeling’ all night helps my consciousness to awake inside the dream. The last dream began with my family and myself. We were in a rich neighborhood and I had the sense that we had just moved there. A dream character was jogging along the sidewalk, and for some reason I decided I'd jog too. I took off down the sidewalk in the other direction. At times the running was slow and laborious, as it sometimes is in my dreams. Nevertheless, I managed to get a good way around the neighborhood before encountering the same dream character I saw jogging earlier. I had the feeling that I needed to talk to this guy, that he had some important info or insight for me. We began chatting and had a lengthy conversation (none of which I remember ). We were sitting on a bench in some sort of park in the middle of the neighborhood. Two small block buildings stood behind us. The conversation must have been over because I stood and walked into one of the buildings. It was dark inside and water covered most of the floor, which turned out to be a pool. People were there and I think they were mostly Japanese, or at least they were speaking Japanese. They had a device that a group of people could get in and use to jog underwater. It was like a cross between a subway car and a shark cage, which led me to immediately think that there might be sharks in the water. Strangely enough, and despite the pervading sense of foreboding, I got into the ‘jogging shark tank.’ But as soon as I got in, I decided that this was not kosher at all; and I was certain a shark was going to attack us at any moment. I dashed out of the cage and started swimming like mad for the platform, which was now blocked by a series of metal gates similar to the shark cage. I fought my way around and through many of them, but could not seem to gain any distance. I remember thinking, “I hate when this happens.” Then I realized it was all a dream. No sooner had a realized this then the gates ‘fell’ away and I was alone in the water. The clarity was still terrible and I could feel the dream already slipping from me. I knew I could do nothing at this point to stabilize the dream, it was just too far gone. I decided the only thing to do was to get some flying in, even if it would only be for an instant. I flew through the water and into the darkness of my bedroom. The dream was over.