AcidicBeing
Member

In the car with my mother, suddenly and unexpectedly we were on a strange but beautiful road through an arid landscape with large, low, bulbous overhead lights, so I said to her this is an unfamiliar location and she said yes; then I realized one or both of us might be dreaming it in the car and she might be asleep at the wheel so I warned her! Remained non-lucid.

Night before Monday 2nd January

The second of these two dreams I had great progress, as even though I woke up in that one just before becoming lucid, this marked the most times I've managed to do reality checks in dreams in 12 months. The scene, which involved a recurring theme about school, was unusually vivid this time.

* I was about to kiss a woman I knew from long ago, at my Mum's dining table, and weirdly we both put on these very small imitation glasses cut out of white paper. Mine had spirals cut into them over the eyes. I paused just before the kiss and realised that I wasn't attracted to that person. The dream scene [and perhaps the dream] ended there.

* I was on holiday with my Dad and he had been driving us down south but we suddenly arrived in a northern, beautiful mountainous part of the world. It was a green natural space with mountains in the distance. I think they were green too, the bits I remember noticing. The sun seemd to be out [mainly going by level of daylight I remember] but it seemed like very late afternoon, early evening (though not a noticeable sunset). I had in my mind that it was Canada.

I asked Dad as we had been heading south why had he diverted [or turned around?] and come so far north? He told me he had cows up here and needed to give them water. I think I asked how we got here so quickly and he said he made great time and did it in two hours. He mentioned how economical it was pointing out that it was costing him less than a flight up there. At this point I remembered it was in his old car and given how worn out the car was, I wondered if the wear and tear on the car would end up costing him more [Interesting I was asking QUESTIONS a lot / good CRITICAL THINKING].

We started walking through a grassy area with a worn public dirt path. It was obviously a natural space popular with lots of tourists. Dad's cows seemed to be roaming free here. At this point I wondered why he would need to drive all this way to give them water and wouldn't all the people around give them drinks [Not the best dream logic, but neither is looking after cows hundreds of miles away and driving there unplanned to provide water].

After that I thought about how long we were staying in that part of the country before we had to move on and decided I had enough time to drive somewhere [for the evening? Also where did I suddenly get my own car from up here? I thought I came in Dad's?].

The dream seemed to cut to me having arrived in the road by my old school. [SCHOOL: Huge DREAM SIGN]. I seemed to know that I wasn't a pupil at this school anymore [I didn't really reflect on this, I just knew like I would when I'm awake, like I knew that I'm older now and don't go to school anymore, without actually thinking those thoughts specifically. This is a big step from my usual dreams about school where I almost invariably don't know that].

I saw the pupils walking around. For some reason I had to attend lessons at the school today, even though I was now a guest. I started to think about which lesson I needed to go to first (as I had no timetable) [SCHOOL: Not knowing where to be next / missing / incomplete timetable, one of my biggest DREAM SIGNS]. I immediately thought to myself that this is what normally happens in my dreams - I think I thought it a couple of times - but I didn't immediately become lucid because this dream was one of the most vivid I can remember and I can still remember how strikingly it felt 100% real. The visuals were very vivid and clear. [I don't remember noticing temperature, any breeze, really noticing any noise but that's because I wasn't paying attention to any of them, just where I was and where I needed to be next].

I remembered what I needed to do to find out what lesson I needed to go to next, as I dream about the problem so often, that I needed to go to the classroom where my tutor was who was responsible for dictating my timetable at the start of the year. The very next thing I knew was I was pinching my nose to do a REALITY CHECK - but I have no memory of deciding to do so. I couldn't breathe when I held my nose and I remember instantly trying to make sense of this [I guess thinking it's not a dream or it's not a lucid dream or similar] whilst at the same time noticing that the dream had just disappeared and I saw the blackness of my closed eyes and realised I was awake.


Night before Tuesday 3rd January

* I was sitting on the right hand side (maybe 3/4 of the way towards the back) of what could have been a coach but later turned out to be an aircraft. I had a number of belongings that I was trying to gather up on my lap - I think articles of clothing, a rucksack and maybe some other bags. I think it was almost time to leave. I seemed to be worried that a guy to my left would try to mess with or steal some of my stuff, so I was trying to pack it all away in a way he wouldn't be able to get at it. I think I decided I was going to have to clip or tie something - maybe another bag - onto the back of the rucksack and I was worried he might try to steal from it when I wore it on my back.

* I was in some big canteen or cafe with some young guys. We had to wash the food off the dirty plates but we weren't doing all of the washing up work, we just seemed to be doing one step to make other people's jobs easier. I think we were supposed to take them and put them somewhere or do some other extra step and I think I was trying to skip that step (to save time and effort) and the other guys were telling me not to.

* In some very incoherent scene someone was wearing an LCD display. I think it was on their lower chest. It showed something to do with a salt level I think - but in this dream I'm pretty sure it wasn't anything as meaningful as the salt level in their blood (electrolyte balance). I had a task I had to keep repeating [which I can only remember very faintly and was probably very vaguely defined in the dream. It could have changed from moment to moment] which might have been getting table salt, presumably to influence this reading on his screen.

I think I remember scenes from one continuous dream but they could've been separate dreams. Either way, I think the scenes I can remember were all on ground level. Most of them seemed to be inside various rooms of a hotel and bar (though in some scenes it might have been a different building in another place - it had a similar feel at the very least though) and in the car park outside it. As it was all ground level it must have been a single storey building like a bungalow.

* I was working with some other guys who were very faintly defined. I barely noticed they were there and at times I suppose they weren't. I vaguely remember we might have been moving around the building looking for various (mechanical?) parts. I remember a brightly lit white or lightly painted room with a row of large, tallish white framed windows with daylight coming into the room. Later we, or at least I, were outside in the car park and I had to fit lots of strange parts onto what seemed to be a motorcycle (as parts had obviously been removed). I had a sense we needed to get this ready for some kind of a job (maybe something a bit dodgy). One part I remember was smallish and made of grey metal. Part of it was sort of tubular like it was an exhaust tip or exhaust baffle and at the back it had a very rough shape like it had been melted or very poorly cast. I had to fit that near the back of the bike. It would make sense that it was going on the exhaust but my dream brain wasn't clear if this thing even had an exhaust. It quickly morphed into me working on what looked like the area where a back wheel would go, the hub or axle components maybe.

* In another large hotel (reception or lounge) room maybe facing a car park, again with quite a few largeish windows I think, I was complaining to someone about how my relationship was going badly. I think it was about a girlfriend losing interest or possibly showing signs of leaving. I think I was asking if I should take her on more dates (to rekindle interest) or the DC suggested it to me/agreed. But then I was saying something like there are only so many times I can take her to the cinema or [some other date ideas]. I get a sense I was frustrated about a number of relationships not really working out, rather than necessarily just this one.

* I was moving around a crowded bar area which might well have been part of the same hotel. In the middle of the wall opposite the bar was the front door with a large enclosed porch. I don't remember seeing tables in the bar. I think there were just lots of people standing all around the room. I got a sense that I had some sort of task or mission to complete which was why I had to keep walking back and forth through the crowd of people [This having some fuzzily defined mission / quest / assignment seems to be a recurring theme in my dreams lately. New DREAM SIGN: fuzzy or strange mission].

* I think I remember choosing food in a large canteen. It could've even been school [hazy about this - it might not have even been in this morning's dreams].

Very little dream recall. Just a couple of vague memories of dream fragments:

* A vague impression of maybe searching for a DC (some kind of mission?), possibly seeing boxy almost cubic houses. I think there were quite bright colours, red.

* I remember being in some kind of a street. I think I saw a large view of a traffic light. I don't think it looked real.

As I lay down to sleep last night my thoughts very quickly degenerated into nonsense sentences which is often my experience of hypnagogia.

In the morning I had a LUCID DREAM!

I was upstairs in the physics classroom and I was trying to make my way out of it. Trying to leave the room went on for quite some time [from what I can remember]. There were lots of male pupils I didn't recognise, so I was probably in the wrong class. They looked a year or so younger than me. I feel like they may have looked a bit similar to one another although not quite clones. I was more concerned with getting out of the room, presumably to my next lesson.

The classroom seemed to have lots of exits all around and the other pupils were moving backwards and forwards around the classroom in lots of lines in different directions, around the desks and to the various exits. It was a slightly unnatural pattern of movement. I remember this had the result of delaying my access to the exits. At one point I think I saw out of a window or doorway from the physics classroom and could see that it was high up overlooking a large hall with a light wooden floor which might have been a large sports hall or assembly hall.

As I slowly made my way out of the classroom around the other pupils, for some bizarre reason I kept repeating a phrase out loud in French, "Je suis [...something I can't remember]" [It would be nice if I was saying that I am dreaming, but that wasn't it.] I have a feeling I might've been trying to weird out the other pupils or somehow assert myself to help me get out of the room. That's the only thing I can remember about the end of the phrase, a vague impression that I was saying something a little odd about myself.

The next thing I remember is that I was coming out of the classroom or had just stepped out of it and I was either trying to think of the way out of the building or possibly an indistinct DC might have been asking me about it - if they were there at all, they were very faintly defined so maybe I was just talking to myself [in my head?]. I saw steps that seemed to go out onto a small felt covered roof and I think there was a bright light greyish sky. I don't think I actually went out there. I may have been looking through a glass door - those details weren't clear.

At this point I remember confidently thinking to myself that I DO know the way out of this building, that it's down these (wide, darkly coloured) steps. I don't remember the exact thought process that I had now - I may not have thought many or any words to myself at all but I very quickly seemed to attain LUCIDITY [I expect I just subconsciously remembered that this building recurs in a lot of dreams about school and moving down steps to the front of a building at the school seems to be a big DREAM SIGN in itself - it happens a lot. School itself is one of my biggest DREAM SIGNS, so is losing my school timetable, my timetable being incomplete or confusing, not having the right books, and not being able to find my way around, or classrooms and other parts of buildings moving around. In this case I'd certainly been struggling to find my way around but it seemed to be the moment that I did find the way onto those steps that brought on the possibility of lucidity].

I decided to do a REALITY CHECK as I was walking down the stairs. I held my nose and tried to breathe through it, a little unsure how well that might work I think, but it worked instantly. I must've held it for less than a second and just the momentary feeling of being able to breathe was enough for me. I was LUCID! I felt pretty happy. I probably smiled though I wasn't aware of it, just aware of the burst of happiness for a moment. At this point I thought to myself that this was the second time I had become lucid in this dream - that I had been lucid quite a bit earlier in the dream, so I reflected to myself that I must've lost lucidity earlier on [The thing is I don't recall the earlier parts of this dream at all and when I woke up I had severe doubts that I actually had been lucid an extra time earlier on - it's just as likely or more likely that it was a false memory, maybe created by the dream].

I instinctively knew at this point that I needed to focus on keeping the dream going. This time I didn't try and do my usual effort of trying to focus on the details or spin around. I just said to myself that I would stay in the dream because I hadn't got a lot of time [as in, I needed to continue it now as there were things to be done and maybe wouldn't be time later, or something a bit like that - as I reflect on it now it wasn't the most logical thought process but it did calm down the initial joy and excitement I had felt, though I was probably still a bit excited at this point] and I began rushing down the stairs more quickly towards the glassy doorway and windows that led out of the front of the building.

The dream then kind of blurred out I think. I think I remained calm [which is a big improvement on my usual self-defeating disappointment and apprehension of thinking "I'm going to wake up"
- it will be great to move past that and not do that in future] but as I tried to observe the dream scenery now there was absolutely nothing there. It was just black and empty. I remembered a suggestion I read on dreamviews and shouted "MORE VIVID" and something else which might've been "MORE LUCIDITY" [technically probably not what I wanted to have given I was waking up, but hey, I was trying]. I can't remember if any more imagery came into my head at all at this point. If it did it would likely have been a consciously induced daydream image in my mind's eye rather than any continuation of the dream. I was awake now. I did try and remain still and try to go back to sleep for a short while but it didn't work.

I was quite happy to just wake up and work on my dream recall of my first LUCID DREAM in about five months or more! It's also the first time I've done the nose-holding RC in a dream and quite possibly the first time I've done a confirmatory REALITY CHECK rather than my more usual detective work to gain initial lucidity.