CanisLucidus

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #2??: The Curtain of Reality

I’m walking through a darkened hallway in some kind of restaurant with my friend RF. There’s an enormous guy coming down the hallway in the opposite direction, tall, Hispanic, athletic-looking, and probably close to 300 pounds, built like a linebacker. He seems to be coming right for me, so I squeeze myself over to the side wall so that I don’t get flattened. Something about this feels dreamlike, and I become lucid.

I walk further down the hallway toward a door, but before I walk through, the scene changes into a semi-darkness like the void. I rub my hands together and keep walking forward, preparing for the next dream scene. From out of the darkness, a voice says, “Oh, that’s the guy who thinks he’s a wolf.”

For some reason I take this as an affront to my lucidity and I shout back, “I am the motherfucking wolf!” :canislucidus:

The voice falls silent and now I can make out repeated patterns in my field of vision, though it’s not at all clear what the patterns represent. I reach toward them and they respond to me touch, moving like cloth. I go into a long monologue about how “I’m peeling back the curtain of reality” and try to push these shapes aside to see what’s beyond.

Finally the “curtain” parts and I’m in semi-darkness, seated in a huge, ornate movie theater. The seats are filled with people, animals, and even unfamiliar alien creatures. They’re all staring drowsily at the screen, fascinated by what’s playing out there.

I can make out shapes and action on the screen, but don’t study it too closely since I’m fascinated by everything else I’m seeing. I feel like all of these beings (myself included) are gathered here to dream. I narrate to myself, “That’s what dreams are…”

As I look around, I notice that every moviegoer has a little icon above their head which indicates what kind of food they’re eating. One tall, insectile alien has an icon representing Hot Tamales candy bouncing over its head. Not long after noticing this, I wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #256: The Swim to Sin City

I’m standing at my kitchen again, looking out into the darkened back yard. This is so familiar… I remember that my last lucid dream began the same way. I perform a nose pinch reality check and now I’m lucid.

I phase through the exterior door to a nighttime scene in my back yard. The pool is here, but it’s been drained dry. I phase through the pool fence and stand at the edge. I recall (incorrectly) that OpheliaBlue is attempting to complete a dare to go swimming. I think, hey, maybe I’ll swim in a lucid tonight, she will too, and it’ll be badass synchronicity tomorrow.

I raise my hands from waist to shoulder height, knowing that the pool will fill back up with water. It does, and I’m super pleased. I try to play it cool and not be so shocked when dream control comes through. I dive into the water, happily swimming about and noting that the water feels quite real. After a bit, my vision fades, and I’m in the void. A few more seconds of swimming, then that sensation fades, and I start rubbing my hands together, determined to come into a new dream scene…

… I emerge back in the kitchen, then phase back through to the outside. Through the pool fence, back into the pool, and more swimming. After diving down a bit, my vision goes dark. I try not to worry about this, though, and just swim forward as hard as I can. I go for a while before the swimming sensation dims a bit. Soon I feel some kind of hard surface and find myself…

… standing on a table in a Las Vegas casino, next to some kind of big, blocky control box. To my left, there’s a man sitting at a slot machine. He pulls the handle and I decide to make his day and get him a jackpot. Quarters start pouring out of the machine and the man dances with excitement. A man in a suit (a casino employee, I guess) points at me, looking annoyed, then points at the big control box that I’m standing next to. I have strange thoughts where I contemplate whether my dream powers actually affected this control box and not the slot machine directly.

My lucidity’s starting to fade a bit, and then I see a young boy in the lobby ahead, throwing up into a trash can. There’s a frazzled-looking man attending to him, and the man shouts that he’s not the boy’s father and who left this kid here? This additional distraction costs me my lucidity. I jump down off of the table to go help out. I spend a while wrapped up in the dream plot of trying to find this kid’s parents until the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #241: Not Quite Movie Night

I wander into a still-lit movie theater and see my cousin “SU” sitting next to one of his close college friends on his right, his two children on the left. How cool that they’re here! I’m looking forward to joining them for the movie, and the positive emotions remind me of dreaming, making me lucid.

Even though I’m lucid, I still want to walk down and join them for the movie just the same. As I’m about to head down, though, I realize that I’m not wearing a shirt. This bothers me, so I turn around, expecting to find a shirt on the seats behind me.

And there it is, a black polo shirt! Unfortunately, there’s also a discarded condom lying next to it. It doesn’t look obviously “used” but still, eww. I force-push it away with a wave of my hand and it sails out of sight. Unfortunately, even though I don’t physically touch it, I still feel it slap the back of my hand. Gross, glad that’s over!

I grab the shirt and put it on over my head. It’s getting hung up on my big head and just generally twisting around and seeming to go on forever no matter how much I pull it down. I remember my intent to perform a Task of the Month with Dreamer and start getting really antsy that I’m stuck doing this silly errand instead.

I address Dreamer, saying something like, “I can’t believe this! I’m really trying to find you!”

I flail around in the shirt and Dreamer’s voice responds: “Relax, stop struggling…” Yeah, she’s right… I relax my mind and put my arms up in a confident show-off pose and the shirt slips right on! The theater is still the same, but feels a little less stable now. I lunge for the back of someone’s seat, feeling a little worried about how stable the scene is, and the dream darkens into the void.

I open my eyes and see a dresser with a strange shape on it. Even closer to me is Wife, the two of us lying on our stomachs, facing one another during the nap. (I’m still dreaming, but this is precisely how we fell asleep together for this nap.) Wife looks completely lifelike, but I know I’m still dreaming and that this is a false awakening. I try to move my left arm, but I can’t... my mind has even simulated REM atonia! I marvel for a moment at the deadened feeling of my left arm before attempting an OBE-style roll out of my body. The dream doesn’t hold together through this, though, and I wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #238: Patronus Interruptus

I'm standing in a busy hotel lobby thinking about how I need a mini-USB cable to charge my phone. I reach down and dig one out of my backpack but realize that I’ve actually just stolen it from this other guy crouched nearby. “Sorry about that, dude!” I say, clapping him on the back. He turns to me and smiles politely. He’s an Indian guy and I recognize him as a random guy from the shopping area where I met Wife for lunch earlier in the week. I realize that I’m dreaming.

I’m excited to be lucid and the overreaction starts pulling me out of the dream and into the void. I rub my hands together, determined not to lose the dream. My hands feel stiff and oddly angled and I start tumbling forward over and over. I keep at it, though, saying something like, “I am having this lucid dream!”

After a bit of a fight, the scene resolves itself into a room on the second story house with two windows. I move toward the first window, attempting to phase, but the window feels stiff and resistant. I move to the other window and attempt it again, once again having trouble. This irritates me and makes me stubborn, so I head right for the wall this time instead, saying out loud that “There’s nothing there, you know.” I cut cleanly through the wall this time and float down to the front yard.

I remember my intent to summon Dreamer and say, “[Dreamer], yeah, you’re just… you’re right over there!” and gesture at the front entrance of the house. Dreamer steps out from the shadow of the front entrance. She looks like herself apart from her hair being pink rather than purple. She’s wearing a purple jumper that looks like fleece.

We approach one another and I realize that something seems off about her personality. She seems not to have much personality at all yet but I feel relaxed about this and that if we keep talking she’ll get set right. I give her a peck on the bridge of her nose and she reacts with surprise, smiles, and runs off down the street. I jog along behind her, and start telling her about her appearance in a previous non-lucid from that night. “Hey, in this last dream, you’d written a book!”

Dreamer stops. The area we’re in looks abandoned and urban. Now she has a huge smile on her face and seems like herself. “Tell me about this book!”

“Oh, I almost forgot!” I say, and give her a hug. It’s nice and I remember how she used thoughts of our friendship to produce her patronus. I also remember her words of “encouragement” a few nights ago for my own patronus attempt:

“I wonder if your patronus will be a giant turd!”

Chuckling a little, I extend my left hand out while continuing the hug with my right arm. Dreamer and I are both watching my outstretched fingers with anticipation but when I try to shout, “Expecto patronum!” I do a choking gurgle instead. I get antsy and lose the dream.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #237: I Melt with You
I'm standing high up on a viewing platform, looking over a view of the sparkling ocean below. Wife and my son E are standing nearby, looking silently out over the water. I realize that this is a dream.

I look back and E has disappeared. Wife doesn't react, and I tell her, "Don't worry. This is a dream."

She nods, smiling slightly. "Mm-hmm..."

I look out at the ocean again, resting my hands on the metal railing, which is cold to the touch. The sand of the beach down below has been replaced by a formless gray. I look back. Wife is still there, but a big chunk of the ocean is missing now.

I move toward Wife, cutting my eyes around the scene, more and more pieces falling into gray. Even the platform goes to gray. Soon there's nothing left but Wife and a vertical strip of ocean and sky to her left.

I wrap my arms around Wife and start intensely kissing her. Before long my vision goes entirely gray but I can still feel the sensation of kissing her. I run the fingers of my right hand through her hair, following the moment through until the end of the dream.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #232: Chasing Shadows

I’m alone on a dirt road at night, and I know that this has to be a dream. The dirt road stretches forever in either direction, but that’s fine. I don’t intend to follow it anyway.

I clearly remember my intent to summon Dreamer, and I extend my right hand. “I know you’re already here,” I say. I don’t feel anything just now, but I don’t worry about it.

I look down at the road and see my shadow there below, alone. I look up and speak out loud to Dreamer about where I’m intending for us to go. I still don’t feel her hand but when I look down, there’s the vague shape of a woman’s shadow standing next to mine, her hand seemingly extended to where mine would be.

Good enough, then. I jump into the air and start flying upward toward the stars. After a few moments something feels wrong and I fall into the void.

I keep talking to Dreamer, reminding her and myself of where I’m going to take her in this dream, but I’m still missing that feel of a physical hand. I feel nervous that I’m spending too long in the void without a plan and I’ve forgotten what I’d intended to do in this situation.

I bring my hands back together and start rubbing them. It feels like I’m giving up on the summon, and I feel a little frustrated. The hand keeps me in the dream as I fly through the void. It works for a good while, but I’ve lost touch with my plans for the dream now.

I hold my hands up in front of my face, staring at them until I can make out their shape and a little bit of the detail. I’m lost, and without me driving the action forward, the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #227: The Dream Queue

I’m holding my oldest child E’s hand as we make our way down a crowded hallway. Something feels off to me and I realize that I’m dreaming. E pulls away from me and runs off down the hall, disappearing into the crowd.

I try to follow him but the dream feels very unstable to me, almost as if I’m drunk and can barely walk properly. I realize that the people ahead of me in this hallway are all waiting to have a lucid dream, but I’m having mine right now. I don’t belong in this line with them. I stagger to my right, crashing into a wall and fall into the void.

I rub my hands together, making my way through the dark. I can feel people passing close by me on all sides, so I still feel like I’m in the scene. After enough hand rubbing and lurching around, I finally get my vision back and find myself standing near a corner wall near a bin full of envelopes.

I reach out to touch the envelopes but ungracefully bat them onto the floor. They scatter everywhere. I flail out my arms to grab something else but the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #221: The Singing Robot

I’m taking an unusually long time to fall asleep after WBTB and I sense a shift which makes me wonder whether the dream has begun. I will myself to roll out of bed and I find myself floating in the air about 3 feet above and to the left of where I normally sleep.

The sun shouldn’t be up yet but a trickle of daylight’s coming in through the shutters. I roll a couple of times, a little out of control. When I try to fly I wind up just heading straight downward, soon faceplanting in the floor. The scene goes dark and I hold on for DEILD. After a while I give up,I incorrectly thinking I’ve failed and have a false awakening, feeling disappointed that the dream was “so short”.

I log onto DV and see that Dreamer has left a series of comments on one of my DJ entries. Rather than text, these comments are a series of giant images that are larger than my screen, so I have to scroll around to see the entire picture. The first is one of Dreamer standing with one foot on a balcony railing, looking back at the “camera” and grinning. She’s holding her other foot over her head almost straight up in the air like some kind of crazy ballet move.

The next few pictures show different angles of a similar scene from a Japanese manga and I see that she’s just creating some favorite piece of a manga she likes. I think that this looks dangerous but I chuckle at her cleverness.

Soon the dream ends and I hold on for DEILD. I feel another shift and I once again roll out of bed into the air. This time I’m able to fly again but my dream body feels slight and insubstantial. It’s daytime, just as before, and I phase out through the shutters. The dream’s feeling really thin, and I try to rub my hands together but I can’t even manage that simple act. The dream soon falls into the void.

“I’m having a lucid dream,” I say, but my voice comes out very gargled and robotic. I don’t want to lose the dream, so I try singing. It works, but every word comes out in this strange, metallic robot voice:

This is a dreeeeeeam,
This is a dreeeeeeeeeeeam…
<pause> Dream dream dreeeeeeam…

The audio holds together for longer than I expect, but eventually I lose even this and wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #219: The Conga Convention

I’ve arrived for work at some kind of computer lab where we build or test hardware. Dreamer works here, too, and when I walk into the back room I find her interviewing a candidate, a young woman in her early to mid-20s. Dreamer’s in the middle of having the candidate assemble the scattered parts of a computer, so I decide not to bother them.

I return to the front room to find the door blocked with tables and computer parts. I figure that Dreamer moved all this stuff to make room for the interview but I’m confused as to how it all got here. The idea of lucid dreaming crosses my mind, so I try the nose pinch and I’m lucid. My breathing is clumsy and difficult, though, and I lose stability, falling into the void.

I rub my hands together and talk out loud to myself about lucid dreaming until a new scene forms where I’m walking through a large, nearly empty room with a few tables against the wall. I think this may be the office again and that Dreamer will be here, but there’s only one unfamiliar, dark-haired woman in her early 30s sitting at the table writing on a clipboard.

I walk through a door into a large, brightly lit convention hall, filled with DCs seated at round tables, most of them sitting in front of plates of nondescript convention food. I remember that I need to summon Dreamer for the challenge so I say, “That’s Dreamer right over there,” and turn my gaze to the right while doing this sweeping gesture with my hand. When I turn I see a tiny child (about a foot tall!) with purple hair standing between two of the tables. This mini-Dreamer giggles, hops up in the air, and scampers away. When she’s run about 20 feet, she disappears in a purple flash. Several of the DCs look at me in confusion.

This was not what I had in mind, so I circle the room for a while, rubbing my hands together and thinking about how I want to do this. Okay, new plan. I do a vague, sweeping gesture at several tables and say, “Ah, Dreamer, you’re sitting over here.” A very tall woman is hunched over at one of the nearby tables and I see that purple hair cascades all around her head, hiding her face. She’s covered in layers and layers of shawls, rags, and wraps to the point where she just looks like a big pile of rags and hair.

The enormous woman begins to stir, slowly unfolding herself to full height. When she finally draws herself up to full height, it’s Dreamer, but a seven-foot-tall (2.1336 meters ) version of herself draped in colorful, purple-hued cloth. She smiles and then walks past me before I can say anything else, vanishing behind me.

I’m getting agitated about these summons, so I decide to go for Task of the Month instead. All I can remember is the “get naked” task, so off comes the shirt. Next I whip my pants down, but they get stuck around my shins like I’ve gotten sweaty or something. I get a little annoyed by this and simply will myself to be de-pantsed. Should have thought of that first!

The problem is that none of the DCs are taking notice that I’m in my birthday suit! I throw in a few booty-shaking dance moves, hoping for more of a reaction, and now the DCs start picking up on it. They start getting up from their tables, strip off their clothes (only down to underwear, interestingly) and start dancing as well. A big conga line starts forming to my left and after a moment the whole underwear-clad room is conga-ing around the entire place.

While all of this is going on, I just watch for a while. As I'm doing this, I experiment with looking away from dream characters and looking back to see how they change. They seem to mostly stay the same except some of the DCs seem to undergo slight changes in make-up or facial appearance. As I’m toying with this persistence trick, an attractive blonde woman in her late 20s drapes her arms around my neck and kisses me.

Spoiler for Awkwardness:

She tells me that she wants sex, and what do you know? Apparently I do too. But when she removes her undies, her entire body is made of some kind of smooth, rubberized plastic like a life-sized Barbie doll. She positions herself seductively, but the doll effect is so unbelievably off-putting that I decide to just wander to some other part of the room and pretend all of this never happened.

The conga line dies down and I seem to be dressed again. The DCs are all dressed and seem to be heading for the exit of the convention hall, and after a bit of wandering I decide to give the Dreamer summon another good shot. As I’m heading toward a double door, I pick one of the women at random and say, “Okay, there’s Dreamer…” One quick morph later and now I’ve finally got a proper, purple-haired, normal-heighted Dreamer walking toward me.

I give Dreamer a hug and start walking with her toward the exit, explaining out loud my plans for the dream. She nods and “uh-huh”s along but before we get to any of this, the dream fades out into a false awakening in an outdoor courtyard with a garden. There’s a woman in her late 40s with curly hair standing nearby and I tell her about the dream that I just had.

“I just had a lucid dream myself,” she responds. “I’m glad that one ended. It was getting strange. I think that REM cycle was all played out, so I’m up for the morning.”

“I’m going for more,” I tell her. “If you just wait long enough, there’s always another REM cycle.” She nods, pondering this. I wander the garden for a bit until the dream fades for good.

Not my best dream control, but hopefully I can learn from this!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #218: Empty-Handed

I hear my oldest son E calling for me. It feels like it’s very early morning and the sun’s still not up yet. I walk through the dark hallway into his room to find him sitting up in his bed. “Daddy! I’m up!” he announces and hops off of the bed. “I’m going to go tell Mommy.”

I follow him back down the hall, feeling disappointed that the morning’s starting so early and that I missed my chance to have a lucid. As E starts climbing up into bed to shake Wife awake, I’m hit with a huge wave of regret to have missed out on having a lucid dream. I decide to make one last desperate move and try to phase through the wall, phasing right through and falling into the void.

I’m floating through the darkness now so I just relax, rubbing my hands together and repeatedly muttering to myself that “I’m having a lucid dream...” It takes an uncomfortably long time, but after maybe 30 seconds of this, a bright new scene forms around me.

It’s mid-morning and I’m outside, standing by the exterior of what looks like a movie theater. I look up at the bright sky and notice that the clouds are moving across each other in all kinds of odd, crisscrossing directions. “I like that!” I shout, pointing up to the clouds. “Very nice!” I experimentally drag my right foot along the pavement and it feels like I’m wearing running shoes.

The dream is feeling really stable to me now so I decide that it’s time to summon Dreamer and earn some challenge points. I reach my right hand behind my back and say, “[Dreamer], grab onto my hand!” Nothing at first… then a slight prodding feeling on my hand!

I turn around to find a brown-haired woman in her late 30s, hunched over and poking at my hand with her index finger. (I decide that this is definitely not Dreamer.) She’s up really close, staring at my hand like it’s the strangest thing she’s ever seen. I feel frustrated and annoyed that she’s messing with me while I try to summon. “Cut it out!” I say, and she hurries away.

Something bad has happened to my confidence at this point, though, and I feel this combined surge of self-doubt, disappointment, and anger, and in a few seconds I wake up.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #216: Through the Roof

It’s some time after 4 AM and I’m wandering around downstairs, badly wanting to get some sleep to have a lucid dream. Somehow, Wife’s still awake watching something on her computer and I’m worrying that she really needs to get to sleep. “Well, I’m heading up,” I hint.

“Good night,” she says, still staring at the computer.

I head upstairs into the master bedroom. It’s dark, but there’s enough light that I can clearly see Wife curled up in bed. Wife downstairs and Wife upstairs? Dream! Since I’m in the bedroom, I get the sense that I’m supposed to start the lucid in the OBE style and “roll out of my body”. But I’m standing. How would I even do that?

Instead I decide to just float up through the ceiling, phasing out of the house and into the void. I thrash about a bit in the darkness and do a half-assed summon. Something that feels like a dry erase marker pops into my left hand, so I jam the end into my mouth and start chewing on it. With my right hand I make awkward swimming motions and imagine that I’m making forward progress.

After a bit of swimming, the void lifts and now I’m standing in my bathroom, all of the lights blazing. The bathroom looks mostly like it does in waking life apart from the fact that the mirrors are a little fogged up and have these odd creases in them. I can see my double in the mirror, making chewing motions with his mouth but he has no dry erase marker in his mouth. I grin and my double grins back, his mouth still shaped like he’s got the dry erase in it.

I dash around the room for a bit, keeping my eye on the mirror and my double does the same. I remember my intent to summon Dreamer. I reach behind me and try the summon, remembering my tip to Xanous to “try to just feel the person’s hand as if it’s already there”. To my complete embarrassment, this doesn’t work at all.

I try again and it’s not working. I become paranoid and wonder if it’s because I’m trying to summon in front of mirrors. I realize this is stupid but decide to try getting out of the room to see if that helps. As I’m walking to my left, I get this sense that I’m stumbling forward and the dream ends.

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #202: Hoodie

I’m crossing a dark street, wearing a hoodie, sneaking around, and trying to keep a low profile. Three tough-looking young thugs seem to notice me and start walking in my direction. I turn away, not sure that I’ve been spotted, and draw my hoodie further over my head. As I’m doing this, I realize that this has to be a dream.

Somehow the hoodie is badly constricting my vision to the point where I’m now just looking out through a tiny little tunnel. I look behind me and only one of the thugs is still there, but now he’s really coming for me. I start walking away, trying to gather my wits well enough to ignore him.

My vision keeps getting smaller and smaller, which annoys me and stresses me out. To my surprise, the thug starts singing, and his voice is deep, rich, and melodious. He repeatedly sings: “This ain’t the way my game goes…”

He’s right up on me now, so I turn toward him and force-push him off. He makes a sound like “Whuf!” and seems to fly backward just as the last of my vision shrinks to the void. I feel myself falling forward to where the street should be, but I go through, and after a moment of strange acceleration downward, I’m awake.

Yet another near miss on Task of the Year! I really need to work on learning to close these. Lots of fun though!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #193: Magic Carpet School

I’m part of a large parenting group that’s exploring a gloomy cavern illuminated by translucent pools of water. After quietly exploring this place for a while, we all wind up back at one of the mom’s houses. Somebody suggests that we do a group hug, and we all awkwardly move toward the middle of the room.

I notice that Andy Bernard from The Office is part of the group. He looks sweaty and awkward and I think, “Hey that guy who plays Andy Bernard sure looks sweaty and awkward in person.” I do a quick mental check to see whether this is a dream and decide that yes, it definitely is.

I walk out of this living room into an elementary school classroom that’s in the middle of some kind of lesson. I pass through without interacting with any of the dream characters, wanting to get outside for a Task of the Year attempt. (The Aladdin’s lamp task with a magic carpet and three wishes.)

Leaving this classroom takes me to a second classroom and I start worrying that I’ll spend this whole lucid wandering through an endless series of grade school classes. I head for a wall, announcing that “This is a phase outside,” before plunging right through. I wind up in the void, but my hands and forearms are still brightly illuminated and clearly visible.

I rub my hands together and slowly the void becomes filled with a swirling field of stars. This fades into a scene from the Matrix that has the Youtube logo and controls underneath it, and I see that I am watching a video whose length is “0:98”. I briefly wonder if I went to bed wearing VR goggles or something and that the images are penetrating my eyelids. Scenes from The Matrix flash by and the image slowly rotates.

Now there’s a crackling sound and my vision fills with a series of strange characters that I can’t identify. I feel a sharp tug backward and I wait for the new scene to form. My vision reforms into… another elementary school classroom, this one a little bigger with an adjacent windowed playroom. I head immediately for the exit and I’m pleased to find myself in an entrance area. I bolt through a set of glass doors and now I’m outside.

Immediately I start attempting the lamp summon by “finding” it behind my back, but my hand just keeps coming back empty. After three failures, I’m really frustrated by this. On the last attempt my hand comes back with some little piece of dirty, wooden-looking junk about the size of a sugar cube. This time I pretend that this is the lamp but it’s just way too small. “Bigger… bigger…” and do a little magician-esque gesture. It plumps up nicely into a real magic lamp! It’s way too light to be realistic, but who cares, next step!

I rub the lamp, wishing for the magic carpet. I decide to be really specific, saying, “A magic carpet. Make it rolled up.” A simple little rolled-up rug appears on the ground. I immediately think, Why’d you ask for it rolled up? That’s just a pain in the ass. I expect the magic carpet to unroll and it does, so I quickly sit down. As I do, it lifts me up into the air and starts flying leisurely forward.

For my second wish, I quickly say “Delicious cookie!” and a tiny little sliver of cookie appears in my hand, like someone had already eaten most of it. I find this awfully stingy for a magic lamp but I stuff it in my mouth. It’s chocolate chip, not bad at all.

I think about how close I am to completing the task and the excitement gets the best of me. I get one last look at the roof of a one-story building as I float over it before the dream ends.

Interestingly, this was my second lucid in a row that hit very close to the onset of sleep. I woke up to write this down around 1:15 or so in the morning after being late to bed. I'm not sure what to make of it, but it's definitely encouraging me to continue my pre-bed MILD work!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #192: The Shadow of the Pagoda

I’m sitting at a table with some random people, working on something with pen and paper. My mind’s wandering and as I recall my intent to have a lucid dream, I almost immediately pass into one.

From here, I fall quickly into the void. I rub my hands together, expecting a new scene. Before long I emerge into a false awakening in early morning, sort of seated at the edge of my bed. Some kind of suction is drawing me away from the bed and toward our closet. This worries me for some reason and I ask Wife to “Pull me back in…” in this thin, weak voice.

She kneels on the bed and strains forward to reach for me, whimpering and fretting like she wants to help but doesn’t know how. I recognize that I’m starting to get caught up in this sense of powerlessness, and I let go, falling into the void again.

I make my way forward and emerge in a fancy-looking house, facing a set of glass doors that open to a veranda. For reasons I can’t recall, I decided to head deeper into the house and wandered through a series of rooms. The house is attractive but large and confusing and I start regretting my decision to stay inside.

I wind up in a bedroom with a simple but comfortable-looking bed that has a large stuffed teddy bear laying on top of it. Wife is standing off to the side near one corner and I remember to ask her for her middle name (for Task of the Month.)

When I ask for her middle name, she responds, “Ba ba!”

“Your middle name is ‘Ba ba’?”

She laughs. “Oh, sorry! I actually meant ‘Ba ba ba ba’.” I’m amused but I consider asking her a third time. The teddy bear catches my eye for a moment and when I turn back Wife has vanished. I think about asking the teddy bear for its middle name but decide instead that it’s time to move on.

I leave and walk through a dining hall where my son “E” joins me and starts to follow. I say something to him that I can no longer recall and we walk through more confusing rooms. At one point I’m in a dimly-lit kitchen and notice that my vision has gone blurry. I stare at my hands to draw out the detail and it works pretty well, though not as completely as I might have hoped.

I walk through another dining hall with E and as we’re exiting, the door shuts automatically behind me, cutting me off from him. I see him through the door as it closes and I feel a moment of concern that I’ve left him behind. No, let it go. I continue to a series of glass-panelled doors at the rear of the room and phase through, with some minor difficulty.

I emerge from the phase in a shady courtyard. Towering above me is an immense pagoda, stretching far away into the sky. Even in a dream I’m amazed by how tall and broad it is, far out of scale with everything else surrounding it. It’s at least 500 feet tall and dominates the landscape.



Two women walk by at the other end of the courtyard, casually chatting. They look like they’re from the 1900s, each wearing a large hat and carrying a parasol. I contemplate taking off for some flying and exploration, but the dream ends.

One notable thing about this dream was that I had it very close to the beginning of my sleep. Burke's MIT article gave me the idea to do a really determined MILD before bed and it certainly paid off here!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #191: Enjoy the Silence

I’m sitting in an airport terminal, waiting for a flight. A few seats over I spot Kurt Klimanski, a guy who did some lucid dreaming youtube videos several years ago. I think hey, great opportunity to talk about lucid dreaming with someone while I pass the time.

As I’m getting out of my seat to approach him, I notice the dreamlike way that I glide out of my chair and question whether I’m having a lucid dream right now. Hey, turns out that I am!

I move toward him but the chairs are all in my way. Mildly annoyed, I float past the chairs and land next to him. “Hey, the guy from the video, right?” I say. Kurt Klimanski looks up. “I’m actually having a lucid dream right now.”

“Oh, okay… cool, man,” he responds, bobbing his head up and down.

He starts talking about something LD-related but I feel myself slipping into the void. I grab for his hand but miss and wind up scrabbling at the carpet. He’s still talking, seemingly oblivious to how hard I’m trying to hang onto the scene. This goes on for a bit but eventually I fall into the void.

I’m relaxed here, though, and adopt a swimming motion to move silently through the darkness. I get the sense of motion and catch imagery that looks like I’m swimming past a series of huge, slowly turning pages in a book.

Then I’m pulled into a false awakening. It’s super realistic, but I have a strong sense that I’m still dreaming. I open my eyes and even feel the sensation of them opening, but I still know it’s all an illusion. I should still have my sleep mask on but I have relatively clear vision of the darkened room around me. Wife sleeps silently beside me.

I look up at the ceiling and see two large, projected circles filled with stars there. The two star circles slowly rotate in opposite directions. The effect is hypnotic and beautiful.

I watch for a good while, surprised that I’m able to maintain this much stillness without the dream falling apart. I almost feel like I’m getting away with something by just sitting here watching. I feel like my dreaming brain still believes that it has me fooled. I lay there for a while enjoying the experience until the dream ends. This time my eyes open to the pitch blackness of my sleep mask.