The Lab Notebook

Non-lucid, Lucid, [Commentary made while awake]

I'm in the parking lot of the office complex where I work. I suddenly think: I distinctly remember going to Toastmasters yesterday morning, then to work, but I haven't had any time off work since then. [I go to Toastmasters on Friday mornings, and I have the weekends off.] How did I get here? I'm here out of sequence, and I don't remember coming here. Oh, s*** – I must be dreaming. I pinch my nose and can breathe. Yep, I'm dreaming.

I decide to climb the outdoor stairs to the back door of my office. It only takes me four strides to get to the top of a staircase that I know has 14 or 15 steps. [Again, this was an example of that dream phenomenon where you focus on arriving at your intended destination and quickly arrive there, having “fast-forwarded” through the act of getting there.] I figure that the door is probably locked because it's not business hours, so there shouldn't be anyone inside. I attempt to use my dream ability to become intangible and walk through things to get into the office, but it doesn't work. The door remains solid to me. However, I quickly discover that the door is, in fact, unlocked, and just open it. [Apparently, my brain likes to do things in the simplest way possible.]

The office looks exactly like it does in reality, except that there is a large, round, pink toy Jigglypuff sitting on the reception desk. This makes me laugh. [In real life, that desk is decorated only with pictures of the occupant's kids, who are now young adults, and some artificial plants. The occupant would never even own such a thing, much less display it on her desk.] I think, That's a random thing for my brain to put there!

I wander into my boss's office. There is a small, clear plastic bag of broken crayon pieces on his desk, mostly blue, orange, and green. It makes sense for them to be there, because he has young children. I pick up a crayon piece and contemplate eating it, but I think that that wouldn't be very nice, because these crayons belong to the boss's kids. Then I think, The real $Boss is never going to know, and pick up a small piece and swallow it. As in my previous lucid, I can feel it, but the sensation is weaker than it would be in real life.

I go back out to the main room, where the reception desk is, and stand just to one side of it. I hear my boss's voice as he comes up the indoor stairway. Then my boss comes into the office through the front door, followed by his entire family. I'm naked [as I have been throughout this dream, but I haven't felt the embarrassment that I usually feel in my dreams that involve nudity]. At first I stay where I am, thinking, I don't mind if he sees me. It's just a dream, after all. But the force of the social taboo overwhelms me, despite my conscious effort to resist it, and I try to hide behind the reception desk. He doesn't appear to take any notice of me at all.

I run back out the back door, down the stairs, and into the parking lot. I see that it's nighttime. I say aloud, “Well, I can bloody well make it daytime!” I attempt to change the dream scene from night to day by closing my eyes, turning in a circle while thinking about what I want to have happen, and then opening them again. It doesn't work. It's still nighttime.

Then the dream shifts. It looks like the new scene is rising up from behind the foreground of the first scene, then replacing it. [That's the best I can describe it; I don't remember the transition really well.] I say, “Cool!”

I'm now indoors, in a portable classroom filled with school desks. I'm wearing regular clothes again, too. There are students and teachers here. One of the teachers starts singing “Amazing Grace,” and I sing along. We sing the entire first verse. I think, Cool. I've been wanting to sing an entire song in a dream. I know there' s more than just that one verse, but I feel like I've accomplished that goal.

The classroom starts to fly. It flies over a cityscape that I know is in China. We're heading out toward the ocean.

[There was another dream scene after this one, but I don't remember much about it. I know it was indoors, and I think it involved me and my mom searching for and trying to identify the perpetrator of a crime.]