second
Lurker

all DILD
1) started out at lawton, walked around to ease anxiety about being a 20 y/o at an elementary school. escaped something a window of an empty classroom and ended up on a street i recognized as "Wall Street" with a "historic" building in the center of the block. i went in since in was the direction back toward the school, where i wanted to return.

whatever the building had been previously the rooms had been turned into offices. however, the offices had an undeniable residential quality. the decor was old but clean and deliberate, as if halted in time decades ago. the rooms were themed and each had a name like old manor homes. the names could be found on wall plaques if i cared to find them. i took one tour around the first floor. the rooms ran into each other without hallways. i spontaneously became lucid when i got back to the foyer. i became excited about finding myself in an environment actually interesting, but also became afraid that the building would evolve into something else before i could satisfactorily explore it. this anxiety was present the duration of the dream, and caused me to take measures against it whenever i felt on the brink of instability, i.e., whenever i wasn't in motion. see carpet, must feel carpet. see silver spoon, must pick it up; when examining it, keep it turning. see nesting doll, not interested enough, then move on, and hurry. for this reason i made few general observations. it's not lack of recall; i never processed them in the first place. (should note that broad observation/exploration is the very thing i was excited about doing in this environment, and this is probably why i was incapable of it.)

potential instability refers not only to the dream but to my emotions' effect on my imagination. the building supposedly in disuse or at least empty seemed as i said to have been regularly maintained. i wondered whom i was disturbing. soon character appeared to come out of an adjacent room. the first was a hollow man, as if CGI but incompletely rendered. he refracted purple and had no face, just facets. i seduced him before my imagination could turn him into something sinister. vaginal penetration was unsatisfactory, so i switched to anal which was great but unlike reality. i stayed on top for both. i didn't see orgasm happening, so i got up and left. i think i lost almost all lucidity soon after this, but who knows, it's been almost two weeks.

the other three characters i encountered (unless there was a fifth, which would've been a bear and with whom i wouldn't have interacted at all anyway) i don't remember the order. one was a suited gentleman whom i suspected was a vampire. he could've been called Vlad, to give you an idea of what he looked like, but probably wasn't since that'd be lame. we talked briefly, him asking polite questions and me defending myself being there. the other two characters was a former coworker P and her roommate. i encountered P first. she was excited to find me there. she asked if i wanted to see her room and i asked about the decor. she said with regret that it was [something lame] and indeed it was dorm room retro. the room was a tiny sleeping quarter with a 2x2 entry space, a platform that ran around that on which her roommate slept along the wall with the window, which let white sunlight in at the time, and an even higher platform recessed into the wall where P slept. we were going to have sex, a matter of course at this point, and i was already straddling her when i decided i just wasn't into it/females. as i exited i saw her annoyed roommate glance at me under her duvet; this probably happened a lot. i don't remember how the dream ended.

2) i was in a little cottage that was nominally the second home Josiah and i had rented, June 2011, Liz's place, but more resembled the layout of the house my family rented when we lived in the Philippines... or maybe not. like Liz's however, it was a unique, quaint space with questionable security, plenty of potential, barely-livable disrepair. you entered through the living room, which had a floor of hard white linoleum. facing in from the door the living room extended further to your left, there may have been a fireplace we hadn't bothered to use since it seemed not to have been used for a long long time. to your right the dining area began, the wall extending further out, a single window. the dining area was separated from the kitchen by one of those overhead cabinet + counter combos. the counter wrapped around the kitchen to form a U. there was a wall on the other side, which opened up to both a larger dining room (like the house in the philippines) and a hallway down which there were bedrooms and a bathroom. i went down that hall.

tbc

nutha DILD. not really into the thought of writing the rest of the dream down, (i can actually recall the last 2 REM periods/nite for the past 4 nights but been too laze to write about em), but the lucid part i can do.

started out as yet another dream where i inexplicably found myself in high school again at age 20 and really irritated and confused by the whole situation. (recurring theme since i graduated, but has been occurring frequently lately. must've dreamt it at least 6x in the past month. the irritation is a new thing.) i ended up walking out of the classroom permanently, my intention was to go home. walking down the school's hallways. typical white painted brick, high walls, skylit. huge lush murals by students, historical bent, started out with ancient egyptian scenes, later aztec jungle. one of them turned out (as in dreams you just know these things) to be painted by the boyfriend of a girl i know who's been grating on me lately. he signed it at the bottom, Matthew Camp David. (obviously, not his IRL name.) i sought to find the mural that she had painted-- it existed undoubtedly. i began to rush. the murals grew spare and minimal. at one point i thought i had found it, but because it was signed with an alias, i couldn't be sure. kept looking. i was halfway down a plain hallway when lucidity hit, prob belatedly recognizing the girl as a dreamsign. i had stopped moving at this point. thought a moment, kept walking. i wanted to go outside. my footsteps felt like i was slapping, like i was wearing tap shoes with no sound. i picked the second door i came to. considered that it might not be that easy. indeed, there was an elevator just inside the door. closed my eyes, visualized something other than a wall beyond the elevator doors. in my mind, the beginnings of a foyer. satisfied, i opened the doors, and there it was, set up like a public waiting room, bright like a greenhouse. a hallway to the outdoors was just past. i walked toward it-- too quickly, i decided halfway, remembering that i had intended to take detailed note of my surroundings for recall's sake. i backtracked. i looked around. there mightve been 4 rows of seating on either side of me. bright, lite vinyl, blue, and at one instant orange. mid century airport waiting room chairs. looked up to see many hanging sculptures, each like a large kite. blue cloth stretched over stick or wire frames, triangular modules in maybe 15 different permutations throughout the room. the ceiling was fairly high. i counted three tiers of differently shaped windows, then was ready to move on. in my hurry i felt the dream destabilize. i was rapidly resurfacing, and despite effort to maintain visuals, i found myself in my bed. i reality check'd. then i fell back asleep, probably within the minute. i remember that dream too, where the highlight was me sitting in a tree watching three boys i barely knew in high school rearranging the lines in a parking lot by dragging rows around like it was carpet.

as far as "observing the room" goes i was kind of at a loss at the time about what to do after the first 10 seconds of ogling. now i'm like, i could have sat down in one of the chairs or something, or walked around at least a little. come to think of it, my lack of interaction with the environment mustve contributed to my premature awakening.

the content of my dreams the past 2 weeks have been exceptionally boring i.e. earthbound, unabstracted, all generally based around the same several themes of high school, ex-workplace, normal activity in my city, and that insufferable girl. i've been trying to recognize them as dreamsigns. there's still a good deal of typical weirdshit dream phenomena going on here and there, but it never characterizes the foundation of the dreams, which lately only ever get up to tier 4 fantastic on a scale of 1-11, where i'd say my "normal zone" is about 6-9.

got lucid last night. DILD, tho a failed WILD attempt contributed by running consciousness close enough to the dream's inception that it was easily retrieved. i probably lapsed in awareness for less than a minute. until i fell asleep for this dream, i had remembered the previous one perfectly. it was much longer; i felt it was probably the preferred REM cycle. i might or might not make an entry for that one.

...i entered a tunnel to escape from a frenzy. a bear? indoors, public, carpet, cheap decor. like an office whose decor hadn't changed in 40 years. the opening to the tunnel existed in the wall, probably more toward the floor. the inside was like what at the time i compared to the ear canal, but now am thinking glacial cave is more like it: undulating, "ribbed", organic walls, taller than it was wide. cramped. i was horizontal and had to crawl or drag my body through with my arms. it wasn't difficult. (likely inspired by a "snow fort" my friend's brother made in their backyard years ago, a narrow tunnel laboriously carved out of a mound of compacted snow). it was a short tunnel. it curved. the walls were off white beige smooth plaster, which contributes to the ear comparison, like it was an anatomical play structure at a children's museum. as i rounded the bend i spontaneously became lucid, or more aptly, remembered that lucidity was my goal, to which i reacted w/ an "oh right, yeah. let's do this."

-pause-
for the past ~6 years, every time i became lucid, my enjoyment of the dream was impeded by an "imperative" attitude: as soon as i became lucid, i would impulsively try to recall some "thing i wanted/have to do" and attempt to accomplish it "before it was too late". these would be things like frantically attempting to stabilize an already-stable dream, impulsively dream spinning for no reason, labored flying because "it's supposed to be fun goddamnit". either that, or just experiencing the dream influenced by a general notion that there is a "right way" to be going about that i'm neglecting. these intrusive notions occurred around the same time i was trying too hard to attain lucidity, and both factors ironically contributed to fewer and shorter LDs. i eventually gave up, although the imperative attitude still managed to bleed into accidental LDs that occurred every now and then.

fast forward to this "3rd wave" of active LD interest. one of the first things i did when re-acquainting myself with the principles of lucid dreaming was realize that i had been trying too much too soon. instead, in order to acclimatize myself to the lucid dreamworld, i've been planning, the first (half?) dozen or so LDs, to just. chill. sit down, feel the grass, look around. maybe meditate, as enso from IRC suggested, saying that it helps stabilize and improve the quality of the dream. as last night's LD reminded me, however, focusing on even the simplest agenda is easier said than done.
-resume-

i knew there was another office at the end of the tunnel. before lucidity it was likely to be just as perilous as the previous, but it was practically empty of characters once i reached it, as i knew it would be. i looked around. to my left, there was a "fireplace", unlit, possibly fake, by which stood a "bear", stuffed or real i didn't really care since it wasn't about to do anything. might've totally been a hat tree. to my left, a large desk and a row of green windows, some partly open, fluttering the long lightweight curtains. it was overcast outside, which i could tell not from looking outside, but from the light. up ahead, who knows? a wall, a hall off to the side, and a sofa, i imagine. the carpet was short, old, a dusty faded red. i felt it. it felt like a carpet that looked like that should feel, rough, though my focus was more intensely on the sensation than it would be in real life. brushing the carpet released a smell. it rose in wafts, i saw them. they were powder blue, with dust. there might've been some big cartoon stars. it smelled dry and musty.

by the time i was done i had already decided i'd have to find a place where soft chillin' would be less boring, probably outside. i looked up and i was already by a window. i opened it and looked down. green and yellow grass, not too far, but far enough that i wouldn't be able to get back into the window if i failed to take flight-- i was hoping the height would give me a head start. i've experienced enough failure trying to launch off ground zero. in any case i knew it wouldn't hurt if i fell. it all came true, of course. i jumped, i fell, didn't hurt.
the building was behind me. ahead, maybe 20 feet, was a small wood. to the right of that, a field of white clouds, gray above, pink below, fluffy. i got up and tried again to fly, upright, and succeeded. it was a slow rise. i watched the clouds change with my perspective: they began 10 feet off the ground as a plane of hovering watermelon sized puff balls. they multiplied as the altitude grew, to thicken. i watched as each new plane of texture approached, became level with me, then passed below. in the back of my mind i dreaded my inevitable deceleration. (note that by this point, i had obviously lost sight of keeping it simple.)

it wasn't long before the expectation of running out of flight juice overrode my enjoyment of the clouds. i felt i had been flying in one direction (upward) too long. gravity would take over any moment. so i leaned, left. i watched the building's grounds pass below me. i went the distance of a football field. i slowed down while nearing a lot of high school students standing in small groups, socializing; perhaps school had just ended. (who knows what that building was for? it was a school AND an office, alright?) i landed by one of them. i knew these people. nerdy friends of friends. i don't remember saying anything, though i would have remembered several hours ago. i woke up seconds after.

what did i take from this experience?
-i'll have to make a better point of keeping it simple, since my dream self has a natural bias against it, even when lucid.
-i'd like to try to take deliberate note of the details and makeup of my surroundings. for one thing, it'd make recall easier. i'm tired of knowing exactly what happened but being uncertain of the details that would allow me to put it into words.
-even when you're lucid and you think you'll remember everything, you won't. i already knew this, but now i have recent experience to substantiate it.

it was a very short dream, which was disappointing, but otherwise not a bad thing. keeps post-analysis manageable. however, i can't imagine keeping a dream journal every night; writing this took forever, and nothing even happened.

by a little over a week ago i'd been regularly remembering 3-4 dreams a night and had built up a habit of casually retelling them to Josiah, just cuz, who's been an eager audience. his conscious experience with dreams and dreaming is so spare that despite my hazy recall and clumsy spotty storytelling there's novelty enough to make him interested. for me the reward is in observing their "concrete" formations and recognizing the very personal associations upon which they're based-- trends in day to day thought i'd heretofore failed to acknowledge...embarrassing associations i thought i'd successfully failed to acknowledge...decade-gone associations my mind somehow excavates in an instant... dreams are characterized by a peculiar, niggling familiarity with every experience i direct attention toward, every moment. i revel in it. more on this some other time.

because of xtra recall and spare time i thought now could be a good time to give lucid dreaming an honest stab. it's been 4 years i'd been struggling (for the most part passively) with this hangup centered around what i thought was SP, where after some minutes of lying still i'd feel a wave of (hilariously) mild numbness pass over my entire body, which i've described previously here and here. until last weekend i had had this huge festering misconception abt what was happening and the correct course of action to induce an LD after the numbness, which was mostly based on an experience with an unreasonably successful WILD attempt 4-5 years ago that took 5 seconds to complete with virtually no effort: i had woken up in the middle of the night in a very comfortable bed in a pitch black room, saw it as an opportunity to try WILDing, lay there breathing for a bit, then a tremor, and all my faculties of perception crumpled inward, and i existed in an unmistakeable Blackness... from there i just rolled into a busier dreamworld. in other words, i just kinda "fell under". i consciously and subconsciously expected every subsequent WILD attempt to have/require these characteristics, which, along with excitability, was my ticket to failure. last weekend tho, after reading a bit and talking to a couple of super helpful people in irc, i've come to understand the following:

-above all, KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID.
-"WBTB, then just lay there motionless, relax, and wait; it'll happen" is a fine strategy.
-SP is not necessary to WILD, and many people experience only partial paralysis. don't make it a goal.
-operate without goals in mind. passivity is key.
-"everyone's different, all normal" in general. no single correct way to do anything, no imperatives.
-that initial "numbness" is not SP, obviously.
-nothing wrong with swallowing, or moving at all/"messing up" for that matter, as long as you go back to what you were doing.
-as far as recall goes, it's cool if you dont try to remember/talk about/write down every minute detail. practice recall in whatever way works for you.
-you'll improve through practice and experience. period.

tbc