All DJ Entries

07.06.2010

Twenty Questions (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I was sitting in a strange daycare for gifted children, and I believe that I was waiting to see my sister perform in a ballet troup. The waiting room was somewhat small, and there were about ten children playing on the floor, and although there were many black chairs around the room, I sat cross-legged on the floor. There was a massive, 7' television on the wall to my left.

On the television was a news broadcast. President Obama was making an odd broadcast with 20 children from different countries. He asked them each a different question. When the child gave an answer that the president didn't like, Obama told him or her that they were wrong. It was strange, and I stopped watching.

It was then time to go watch my sister. On our way to the dance studio we passed a gymnasium where a trombone player was giving a recital. I found it strange that he was playing a Mozart Horn Concerto on trombone, but, since the timbre of the instruments it so similar, I shrugged it off. The dream ended.

Originally Posted by Sean Lennon

05.06.2010

Confusing Music (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I was sitting in an orchestra concert, and the seats surrounding me were filled with family and friends. At the end of the performance, the conductor took the podium again and began asking the audience questions about the performance. I could tell that he was profiling people. The questions he asked and responses he gave were very rude, in a sense that he belittled those who did not know the work as well as he did. It was awkward.

After the interrogation was complete we got up and exited the rows of seats. To the left of us was a banquet buffet. There were ten round tables covered in simple white table cloths. As I walked towards them, I had my eye on a table with some of my friends for college, but they pointed to a table to my right ans said something about someone who wanted to sit with me. It was my band director, Mr. Newton and his wife. I haven't spent much time with him as of late, so it was fine. It was at this point that a few of my music teachers I had prior to college came and spoke to the banquet. They asked us if we thought the questions asked were condescending. We agreed, and that was the end of that.

Cake. I wanted cake. Many of the guests had already had dinner, so the dessert bar was all that was left. I decided to grab a large cupcake and a huge piece of white cake. The were so massive that I could barely hold them, even though I have larger than average hands. Someone offered to help, but I just ate the food in line. I hate sugar. I can't believe I wanted that much dessert.

I needed to wash the icing off, so I went into the restroom to do so. The restroom was built like a long hallway. Stalls on the left and sinks on the right. At the end of the room was a door. I went through the door to another restroom built identically as the last one. I did this a few times until I finally washed my hands. Going back to the banquet meant going back through the bathrooms. The doors I went through were the same, but the second one I passed through let out into the women's restroom. There were puzzled looks on the girls' faces, but no one said anything. I checked the door during my hurried exit to find that it did, indeed, have a women's room sign on it. I made my way through the last bathroom, but stopped halfway to see my girlfriend, Jen. She seemed just as confused as I was. Then I woke up.

Originally Posted by Sean Lennon

04.06.2010

Does Not Compute (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

A dream I had in a nap. It brings my dreams for the day up to one.

I am Lieutenant Commander Data on the starship Enterprise. I am in a lounge sharing a meal with a woman in her late thirties. She wears a standard red Star Fleet uniform. She is meerly picking at her food as she tries to describe her intense attraction to me. I do not understand. My android brain tries to make sense of it, but a comment I make send the woman running away with tears in her eye. I stand confused. Someone takes me gently by the shoulders and says, "Oh, Data, you have so much to learn."

No story is new. No great work of art is an original. Recurring themes in Literature and Art are constantly being recycled through ancestral knowledge. This knowledge is passed through ages, heedless of the constraints of time or space. This is what my Father taught me. My friend and mentor. I miss him terribly. I miss him now, as I hold this pillow to his withered face. As I listen to his dying breaths, and feel him struggle feebly under the white linen.

Long ago, before my Father adopted me as his apprentice and son, he had a wife named Margaret. He would talk of her often. A brilliant woman with a natural talent for storytelling, art, and all things creative. She was a student of my Father, much like myself. My Father told me in secret one day that he never truly had to teach her anything. Her work was inspired by a relentless muse. She would spend days on end locked in her room working on a painting. When it was completed, she would bring it out to display with pride.

The only problem was, each work she would produce would turn out to be a duplicate. A duplicate of a work she had never seen before. My Father, knowing much about art history, would hang her fresh painting on the wall, then bring out a dusty piece of artwork hundreds of years old that matched it exactly. The details would be different, but the forgery was clear. The only problem was, Margaret had never seen it before that moment.

Ashamed and confused about her gift for forgery, Margaret became a recluse. She left my Father to live on a small island in a lake. My Father corresponded with her through letters. Recently, the letters had stopped coming. My Father started to worry, and decided we would take a journey to check up on her. He thought it was time I was introduced to her, and perhaps inspired by her.

Our journey took us through landscapes that all looked familiar to me. I remember them as all famous paintings. Turners, Corots, landscapes from the Hudson River School. Arriving at her island (which looked suspiciously like a Turner), we were greeted roughly by her manservant. I could tell something was upsetting him, and he rudely kept trying to send us away. Upon closer inspection, we noticed that the house looked run down. The servant would not send down a ladder, and scuttled away to hide from us. After much difficulty, we made our way on shore, and docked our small boat.

We were greeted with violence. Out of nowhere, the servant lunged at my Father with a knife. His eyes were wild, and he was babbling nonstop about old stories and mythology. In a panic, I tried to pull the man off of my Father, and wrestle the knife from his hands. He turned his violent attention on me, and we toppled backwards onto the boat. He loomed over me, and I reached behind me to grab something to defend myself with. I grabbed the boat hook, and swung it in his direction right as he fell on me. I felt the hook sink into him, and heard him scream in pain. He stood up, looked at the gore falling out of his belly, and stumbled away. As my Father lifted me out of the boat, we watched the servant helplessly crawl back into the cottage with his entrails dragging behind him. My Father set off for shore to get help while I followed the servant into the dilapidated cottage.

The cottage was worse on the inside. The stench of old decaying death was the first thing I noticed. The stench that could only mean one thing. My fears were answered when I entered the bedroom and found the servant crying over Margaret's bed. In the bed, wrapped in Margaret's night gown, were the remains of what must have once been the poor woman. They were in a badly decomposed state. The servant was clinging to one skeletal hand, and weeping madly. I could tell he was dying fast, and as soon as he began talking, I realized the extent of his senility. While I stayed with him, trying to staunch the bleeding, He told me a fantastic tale. The story of the ghost of Nicholas Twist.

Nicholas Twist is a Muse. He is the messenger who brings ideas to those in need. He is the ghost of the world's oldest ideas and stories. The keeper of all ancestral knowledge and mythology. But he is also a businessman. He does not give ideas away for free. For each new story he brings to you, he takes one of your memories in exchange. For each inspired image he brings you, he takes your memory of a place you have been. This is the way he has been gathering ancestral knowledge throughout history. This is how he collects and transmits stories across continents and across generations.

The man was clearly mad, but this is how he explained his senility. As you grow old, your memories are taken one by one by the ghost of Nicholas Twist. The world grows rich with your inspired work, Nicholas Twist grows fat with your memories, and you are left with nothing. Margaret's servant had felt the touch of Nicholas Twist for too many years. He knew the pain and confusion of senility, and could not bear to see Margaret go through the same thing. So he killed her before Nicholas Twist could get to her. Margaret's life of limitless inspiration would be too much to repay to Nicholas Twist. Killing her was the only way her servant could save her.

I remember this story now, as I stand in my Father's bedroom. I remember all the greatness he gave to me, to Margaret, to the world. It was too much for him too. Nicholas Twist started to make off with his memories long ago. Now, there was nothing left but an empty husk. A vegetable that could not even recognize his own son. I remember the story as I lift the pillow from his slack and lifeless face. As I switch off the light and go downstairs to call the doctor.

I am not so young as I used to be. I make my living selling my ideas to the world, selling my memories to Nicholas Twist. As I lean against the phone trying to remember the doctor's phone number, I wonder how long it will be before Nicholas Twist takes his next victim.

I got the opportunity to design a beach house in an incredible location. The lot fronted on the pacific ocean, and sloped steeply up a hillside. I began by building a low sea wall at the front of the property that contained a private courtyard. I then created a series of small, connected buildings that climbed up the hillside, alternating with shady courtyards. I built the houses island style, with high ceilings, wide shady overhangs, and glass wherever possible.

As I finished landscaping and terracing the remaining hillside into a private garden, I noticed something strange. The hill behind the house had only a thin layer of sandy dirt. Beneath the silt were massive angular stone blocks. They looked ancient, and were covered in carved glyphs and runes. They looked pitted and worn by sea water with a thin fresh layer of sediment deposited on top. I thought about the meaning of this, and realized the only explanation was that the whole hillside must be in the intertidal zone.

Right as I had this thought, a change in the light made me turn around and face the ocean. I looked down on the ocean far below me, and saw the sun reflecting off the water in beautiful hues of gold and purple. It was the start of an incredible sunset, but that was not what caught my attention. The moon was huge. In the sky, it looked 10 times the size of the sun. And it was moving fast. It was rising up from the horizon, and giving off a warm purple glow. It lit up the sky and cast a hazy purple light on the landscape around me.

I realized the moon was not the only thing moving. The ocean was swelling against the horizon, and rising along the seawall. I watched as it overtook the seawall, and poured over the top. The house I had just built was swallowed in a matter of seconds, and the water was coming at me too quickly to avoid. I climbed to the top of a trellis, and looked down to see hundreds of creatures swarming in the water below me. There were sharks the size of whales with jet black skin. Giant squid and octopus tentacles whipping around madly. The head of a sea serpent the size of a city bus shot out of the water, with its long body trailing behind it.

Behind me, water started pouring down the cliffs like a waterfall. It washed the sediment off the stones to reveal their hieroglyphs and runes. The writing started to glow brightly in the moon's light. I had a second to stare in wonder before a gigantic wave crashed over the mountain top. I dove off my perch towards the monster filled ocean below me. The wave caught me from behind, and lifted me even higher into the air. I rode on the crest of the wave as it sped down the mountainside. I saw the monsters in the water far below me twisting and squirming hungrily. I crashed into the mess of tentacles and teeth, knowing I would be ripped apart. The open mouth of a huge black shark sped towards me, and I swam to meet it. I wanted to be swallowed whole, but the rows and rows of twisted teeth frightened me into waking up.

Originally Posted by Sean Lennon

03.06.2010

Filling the Bowl (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

I was sitting in my grandparents house, and I heard my grandpa talking about how his next door neighbor always wanted to beat him when it came to cars. Grandpa buys a Nissan 350Z, his neighbor buys a Nissan 380Z. My Grandpa won, though. He bought a yellow 2011 Corvette. It was the most incredible car I had ever seen. The color of the car was intense and incredibly reflective. The car may have been a convertible, because the roof was black. It had a very sleek design, with chrome accents along the doors and paneling. It was then that I realized that it was in the living room. No one seemed to mind.

Someone said that it was time to leave, and I felt that a trip to the bathroom would be a wise idea. Instead of going to the restroom, I found a ceramic bowl in the kitchen, and I decided to use that. The more I relieved myself, the closer I was to the ground, until I was crouched down in a standing fetal position. It just kept going and going. I was filling the large ceramic bowl to the rim. My cousins kept coming up to me to tell me that it was time to leave, but I couldn't leave yet. I wasn't finished. Finally, it was filled to the brim, and I was finished. I was still close to the ground, and it was at this point that my parents walked over and crouched down next to me.

Dad had a video camera, and they both had silly grins on their faces. Mom was talking to me like she would a pet, saying, "Look what you did! Good boy!" I don't know why, but we decided that we needed to take the bowl with us for transport. It was night when we got in the car to drive to I don't know where. At this point, there was a percentage meter above the bowl for how much was in it. The road was bumpy, and whoever was driving was making very sharp turns. The bowl sloshed around, and the percentage dropped to 83%.

When I got out of the the car, I was in Pittsburgh with my friend, Paul. We were outside the church that Andrew preaches in. When I told him that we would be going to the show that his church was having. His response was "Excellent, brother, excellent."

We sat in a room that seemed to be a small theater. It was dark except for the stage. Jen's ex-boyfriend was performing a spoken word act, but I couldn't hear it because someone next to me was talking. I saw Jen stand up a few rows ahead of me and quietly exit the theater. I stood up to follow her, and the dream dissolved.

I don't remember the first half of the dream, or how I became lucid. The furthest back I can remember is walking on a sidewalk in a residential suburban neighborhood, and coming across a group of people sitting on a low stone wall. As I passed, one of them called my name to get my attention. I stopped to say hi, and recognized him as an old friend from 20 years ago. He was thrilled to see me, and shook my hand vigorously. I then recognized the other people with him. They too were long lost acquaintances.

The house down the street was having a great party, so I walked over to check it out. One of my best friends from high school was on the lawn to greet me. We embraced, and he invited me inside. The whole house was filled with people I haven't even thought about in 10 years, 20 years, or more. There were some friends who I knew are now dead, and some friends whose names I couldn't even remember. It was some sort of surprise party just for me.

I was lucid, and felt very sad that this all was not real. It was so emotional to see all these old people again. All these people that used to be meaningful in my life, but are now lost to me. The feelings of loss and regret made me so depressed, I started to cry. Everyone was having such a good time, and I was having such a terrible time. I didn't want to be at this party. I was in the garage, and everyone was yelling greetings to me, hugging me, patting me on the back, and shaking my hand. All I could do was cry, knowing none of this was real.

I wanted to escape, so I pushed everyone away, and flew up to a large storage shelf hanging from the roof. It was full of all my old toys from when I was a kid. This made me even more sad, and I started to become angry at myself for creating all this. Just as my sadness began to turn to anger, I heard my mother's voice in the crowd below. By now, the garage had grown to the size of an airplane hanger. I was a hundred feet or more above the ground.

My mother's voice floated up to me. She was saying, "He's always been like this. Always over-thinks everything. He can't just have fun. What mother could be proud of a child like that? We've only recently felt any love for him at all. You should have seen him when he was a kid...."

I was really angry now, and decided I was through with this dream. I looked down to see water trickling under the closed door below. Just as the crowd started to notice, the door blew off its hinges in a forceful jet of water. High pressure water began spraying into the room from the doorway. People started screaming and pushing to get away. I heard a horrible moaning coming from the wall, then the entire wall gave away, like a dam, to the flood of water. From my vantage point above, I watched the whole building get washed away in a violent flood with everyone in it.

The water level quickly rose to my height, and I felt the strong current pulling at my feet as I struggled to hold on. I heard a roar, and looked up to see a wall of water a hundred feet high rushing towards me. I only now remembered that this was the task of the month. I laughed at the thrilling feeling, and let go of the platform as the wave approached. I felt the swell as I was pulled up to the crest of the tsunami. It was an incredible rush, but I timed it wrong. The wave curled and crashed down on me. I felt my spine snap, and was whipped around under the water, totally disoriented.

I was not afraid, and I did not wake up right away. I laughed in excitement as I was thrown around like a rag doll.

My brother, Patrick recently committed suicide. His depression was too much, so he swallowed his pet beta fish and then drowned himself in the bathtub. After his funeral, I spent the night at his fiancee's house to comfort her. She was totally devastated. We sat around the dinner table reminiscing and telling stories about him. In the smoke coming off the cooking fire, the stories began to come alive. It was as if my memories of my brother were being projected into the smoky air. The more we talked, the more substantial these images became. Soon, I could see the ghostly outline of my brother sitting at the table laughing with us as we exchanged stories. As I ended my tale, he picked up the conversation. He told us the story of what became of souls as they entered the underworld.

Each person's life on Earth is mortgaged against their soul. As you live your life, you slowly repay your loan. A complete life will win you ownership of your soul. A life cut short, or left unfulfilled, will return your soul to the king of the underworld. Suicide is the quickest way to default on your loan. It wins you eternal slavery to the Underworld King.

My brother needed my help. He needed me to make the journey to the underworld, and rescue his soul from captivity.

As he finished his story, I reached across the fire to embrace his smoky reflection. As soon as I touched his shade, I felt myself pulled into the underworld. I instantly recognized the feeling as that of falling through the void into the dream world.

I fell into a room in an old abandoned castle. Waiting for me was my Dream Guide, a short, disfigured man dressed in rags. He was 2 feet tall, and was gruesome to look at. He had won his dream guide powers by defeating lesser demons and implanting them into his body. He had countless lumps under his clothing where he had grafted the creatures into himself. His brain was half exposed, and he had a small demon crudely sewn into the slimy tissue. It was a sex demon, and it was furiously fucking his brain. Every time it climaxed, it would impart to him knowledge of the underworld. He had a second demon head protruding from his shoulder. It's mouth was stitched in a way so it was always open, waiting to devour any soul that got too close.

We were immediately attacked by the underworld king's armies. They shot us with arrows that would turn us to stone. Several of my Dream Guide's demons were killed in the fight, but I managed to escape by jumping out the window into a courtyard pool. I met two other ghosts. They were the spirits of virgins sacrificed to the demons. I freed them by having sex with them so they were no longer virgins. Together we hid in the catacombs under the castle. I discovered that my lucid dreaming tricks worked in the underworld. I hid us from a hideous demon called "The Janitor" by creating a screen of light that would make us invisible.

The Underworld King sent his armies to find us, but my lucid powers were too much for them. They each returned without success. He would not accept failure, so each army that returned would be immediately destroyed. This caused many of his armies to abandon him instead of returning empty handed. I gathered up his scattered forces, and convinced them to help me overthrow the tyrant.

We had an epic battle as we laid siege to his castle. My dream guide led an army of demons, and I led an army of ghosts. We took the castle, and freed all the enslaved souls. I decided to stay as the new king. Seeing the similarities, I decided to remove the boundaries between the dream world and the world of the undead. This way, the souls could communicate to their loved ones through dreams.

We just got a contract at work that we were not at all prepared for. We were supposed to be directing a short film sequel set in the Star Wars universe. I don't know anything about Star Wars. I've never even seen the movie. I haven't done any 3D animation in 4-5 years. Our office is not at all set up for a film with a budget of this size.

I was running around the office in a panic trying to clean up. If George Lucas is going to meet in our conference room, I better make it presentable. I found a gallon size Ziplock bag filled with old Nintendo Entertainment System controllers. They looked very valuable because they were miniature sized. Something I've never seen before. I thought to myself, "Why the hell do we have mini NES controllers in an Architecture office? In fact, why are we directing films in an Architecture office? Oh, shit, dummy. This is a dream."

Next thing I know, the guy I work with walks in and tells me that his mother who lives in the nursing home next door has passed away. What a great opportunity. I call all my friends. We are going to use the rift caused by this woman's death as a way to enter the underworld. The back stage to the dream world. We will enter the door left open by her spirit's passing. You can do things like this in dreams.

As I'm running down the stairs, my friends are all fighting to decide who will ride "shotgun" in the front seat of the car. I don't have any shoes on, so I know I'll never get there in time. I say out loud, "This is where dream control really comes in handy." I summon my shoes to my feet. As they fly by, I jump onto them like a skateboard. I then think, "Lets just teleport to the front seat, while all these assholes argue about it." I warp the world around me to be the passenger seat of Gary Coleman's yellow hummer. A suitable ride.

We arrive at the dead woman's house. It is abandoned, and I can feel the residue of her spirit like an opening in the fabric of reality. I step through into the backstage. It looks like a screening room, or an arena. I hook myself up to the equipment, and start broadcasting my thoughts directly into reality. I create three short dream sequences.

The first dreamlet is the one we got the contract for. It is about a Star Wars pilot who has to break into a space station to win his freedom from an evil emperor. He flies a small spaceship against thousands of bounty hunters there to destroy him. There is a cloud of millions of missiles he must navigate through. It is so dense it looks like a swarm of bees. Each missile is a different color to designate which bounty hunter it belongs to.

The second dreamlet is about several elemental monsters who battle. I control them like action figures. They are filled with slime of a color that matches their element. I push this slime out from the bottom of the action figure when I want to activate them.

The third dreamlet is a documentary about how I was able to model a giant Chinese Dragon for a cheesy B-movie. I started using a geometric mesh with control points. I then decided to abandon this strategy in favor of a series of organic shaped bones jointed realistically with a skin stretched over them. This way, I could use the interior of the model, the skeleton of the dragon, as a cavern I could enter.

When I enter the body of the dragon, something goes wrong. I somehow give it life, and lose control. I find myself in an ancient tomb that is lit with a green ambient glow. I see the monster I just created in the center of the tomb. There is a beautiful woman holding his huge head in her hands. She looks like she is made completely of smooth metal. Her skin is liquid quicksilver, and her hair looks like finely worked silver rope chains. I realize the green glow is coming from the dragon. It pulses in time with his heartbeat.

The silver woman lifts his enormous head easily with one hand, and places the other palm on his snout. The dragon starts to warp, and is drawn into the woman's palm like he is made of liquid. The light starts to dim, and when the dragon disappears into the woman's hand, I am left in total darkness. I think the dream is about to end, then I suddenly see the woman's face appear out of the blackness in front of me. She is inches from my face, and I feel completely intimidated by her beauty. She places a metal sphere in my hand, then backs away into the darkness.

I can feel the sphere pulsing in my hand with the dragon's heartbeat. I've done something terribly wrong. Something I'm not supposed to have done. As my eyes adjust to the darkness, I see a faint green glow coming from the sphere. I feel that the monster I created is trying to break free of its prison. I must maintain perfect focus, holding the image of a perfect sphere in my mind. If I let my concentration slip for a second, the sphere starts to stretch, warp, and grow back to a living creature.

The glow from the sphere is enough for me to explore the small cell I am in. It has walls made of green oxidized copper panels. There are no openings. I get the feeling that the sphere is a key. I press it against a wall panel, and the panel tilts backwards and falls loosely to the ground. I use the fallen panel as a shaky bridge to cross a void of total blackness to a platform made of the same green copper. The platform has hinges built into it, so it folds and tilts as I shift my weight. To maintain its stability, I must hold its image in my mind perfectly. I know that the dream is fading, and that I must maintain perfect focus of everything to finish my task before time runs out. There is nothing but a black void as far as I can see, with a maze made of these shaky floating platforms. I jump from platform to platform, making my way to the center of the maze. The degree of concentration needed to keep the platforms stable, and the dragon from escaping its prison makes my head spin.

I try to maintain focus as I pass several more silver women like the first. These women appear to be sick. Their silver paint is peeling off, their hair is sparse, and they look fat and unkempt. Somehow my tampering with the dream world has made them sick and lazy.

I finally come to the middle of the maze. Three matronly old women sit around a wooden table. They are looking through old dogeared catalogs that are yellowed with age. They are searching for a certain pair of antique designer glasses that are priceless and powerful. They laugh at me as I approach, drained of energy and confused.

The world is shaking, and I can start to feel my body back in bed.

"You think you can find them, when we have been searching for an eternity?" One of them asks. "You wouldn't know where to begin."

"Fou de chocolat!" Another replies. "Can't you see the poor dear is lost?"

And I find myself back in my bed.

Originally Posted by Sean Lennon

03.06.2010

Buying a House (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

Jen and I were walking down a street in my neighborhood. There were two homes that were models for the constructions company. A realtor was giving a tour for a family, and Jen and I decided to tag along. As we walked by the houses I could see that the basement windows had been kicked in by rowdy children in the neighborhood.

We followed the tour group into the first house, which looked like a one story buiding from the front, but upon entry we found it to be a three level home built deep into the ground. For a mostly basement home, it was well lit with sunlight. Directly in front of us as we crossed through the threshold was a set of three staircases. The one in the middle went up six stairs onto a lookout, and the two on either side descended to the lower level of the home. We walked with the group up the carpeted stairs and walked to the rails to look down into the rest of the house. I could see the living room, which had simple, but elegant wood furniture and a large, soft-looking couch. Jen was smiling, and she started talking very quickly and excitedly as she described how she could use the space for a salon. She began clapping and hopping about. I couldn't help but smile, until her elation brought her too close to the wooden rail, and she toppled over it. I could only watch as I saw her plummet 35 feet to the floor head first. She landed with her head and her shoulders, and I thought, "Oh God, I've lost her!" Luckily, she sat up. That feeling of shock, however, was enough to wake me up.

Type: DILD.
Lucidity: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Vividness: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

I was in a friend's house. The floor throughout the entire place was dark brown hardwood, polished nicely, and the walls were beige. It looked like a fairly modern house; the living room contained two dark burgundy leather sofas and a loveseat, and a brick fireplace, slightly misshapen. I was walking around looking for my cat, Meepy. I found her eventually though, which was good. I was picking up large vases and even the couches looking for her, and found her underneath a large tan vase, more round than tall. How could she be hiding under a vase? Maybe she flattened herself out. I dunno. It didn't occur to me that this was strange for a while, but then finally I became lucid.

I decided to finally attempt the Advanced Task for June 2010, creating and controlling fire, also known as pyrokinesis. This would be easy, I knew, because I had done it before. I used my usual spin-around-to-summon technique to summon a cigarette, sizzling on the hardwood, and then used telekinesis to make it float in the air. Just to have a bit of fun, I sat down cross-legged as the cigarette floated up, and I began to float too. It took a bit of effort to keep myself up, but it worked. Both I and the object were floating now, and I was still floating as I held my hands out, pulling a stream of fire from the cigarette, reeling it in using a pulling gesture. It touched my hands and looked more orange than red now, and also looked more like a ribbon. Regardless, I completed the task.

I eventually lost lucidity, going on to sit on the ground, petting Meepy. After doing this for a little bit, I went to where the fireplace was to find someone sitting on the brick, crying. He looked up and I realized it was one of my friends. "Why are you sad?" I asked, sitting down beside him. "I don't know," he told me.

Alien beings have traveled from a far away planet to invade the earth. They are here to harvest humans as food. To do this, they have converted their spaceships into giant meat processing plants that grind humans down to pulp.

I find myself a prisoner in one of these huge meat processing concentration camps. I am there with several other people waiting in line to get shredded alive by a giant spherical meat grinder. Everyone except for me seems to be in a drugged trance. Like zombies walking to their horribly painful deaths. I am horrified, but somehow realize that this is a dream. I reason that I am lucid, but everyone else is still dreaming. This is why they are all zombified.

I start yelling at people, shaking them, trying to get them to realize that this is a dream, and they don't have to be killed. I try to save them. No one will listen to me. I watch helplessly as they are ripped apart one by one and ground down in giant pencil sharpeners. I remember the task of the month as a way to wake people up. I get up on a platform and yell to the crowd, "This is a dream! If you become Lucid like me, we can escape! I will prove it by jumping into this grinder, and coming out unharmed."

I lower myself into the top, and feel the wind from the spinning blades blow against my feet. I lower myself further down, and my foot gets ripped off in a spray of blood. I feel the pain, but it feels distant, so I am reassured this is a dream. I jump in all the way, and feel a thousand blades close in around me. They close in from the bottom up, and the outside in, like a giant pencil sharpener. My legs and arms are torn off first, then my entire body is ripped and sliced into a thousand pieces.

My consciousness remains, and I feel myself pass through the machine, and slop out the bottom in a pile of gore. I form the puddle of my remains back into a body, like the Terminator or Alex Mack. Somehow my survival has destroyed the machine. I see them failing all over the factory. The lights shut off, and alarms start to sound.

Everyone runs from the building, and I meet up with a group of survivors in a burned out house. I recognize several of the survivors as DV members. I recognize Adam, Burns, Twoshadows, and Aquanina We discuss our plans to retake the earth from the aliens, and save all the people who are still not Lucid. It appears that my lucidity destroyed all the meat plants all over the world, and the alien Alien spaceships. The aliens were planning on harvesting us as food and then returning to their home planets. Now that we destroyed their spaceships, they can not go home. They have given up on killing humans, and are now gathering all the world's energy and fuel to create portals home.

We scramble to pack our things. I run through the house gathering everything valuable to me. As I pass by a copy of Exploring the World of Lucid Dreams by Stephen Laberge, I am reminded that this is a dream. I look at the bag of dirty socks I am trying to stuff into my suitcase. I think of the other task of the month, and dump the socks out on the ground. As they fall, I will them to life. They turn into mice that still look like socks. They start squirming and inching all over the floor. Burns laughs, and pulls two kittens out of her suitcase. They chase the sock mice, and disappear under the furniture.

As I gather my things, I feel the dream slipping. I try to imagine what the outcome of this dream will be. How the story will end. I get brief flashes of the future, like a movie preview. Myself, Adam, Burns, Twoshadows, and Aquanina piled into a car on a road trip for the rest of our lives. We run from town to town in a post apocalyptic wasteland trying to find enough gasoline to keep driving. At one point, stuffed in the back seat with all our suitcases and pillows, I reach over and take Aquanina's hand. I know that we will have a love story that is crucial to the plot of the dream. I think how great this will be that we will all become such great friends.

I see a view of the closing credits. It's Burns's kitten walking to the car with my dirty sock in its mouth.

I was able to string together around 10-15 brief lucid dreams early saturday morning. They were all very unstable which made them unpredictable and crazy fun. I was able to change the scene dramatically by just casually thinking about where I wanted to be or what I wanted to do.

I'm in my bed after just waking from a LD. I don't move, but imagine myself getting out of bed and running out of my house, out my front yard, out the gate, down the street running as fast as I can. By the time I reach the street corner, I am completely in the dream and lucid. I think about the lucid task of changing genders, and I am suddenly snapped into a richly decorated hotel lobby. I am a little surprised at the abruptness of the scene change, and I wonder why the hell my subconscious chose a hotel lobby.

I see the walls are mirrored floor to ceiling, so I walk over to one of the mirrors. My reflection looks normal, and I start to think about how to turn into a woman. I see, reflected in the mirror, a long line of travelers waiting to check in at the front desk. There is an attractive blond woman in a business suit who makes eye contact with me in the mirror. I smile at her and think about maybe swapping bodies with her somehow.

By the time I look away from her and back at my own reflection, My reflection has completely changed into a middle aged woman with dry frizzy black hair. I look a little like a haloween witch without the hat. I am a bit surprised at how easy that was. I look down at my body to make sure It's not just my reflection that changed. I run my hands down my body, feeling my new womanly curves through my clothes. I am amazed by how convincing the change was.

I look back up to the mirror, and notice that I have now turned into my girlfriend. I look exactly like her when we first met, 10 years ago. I'm a little creeped out and upset by this change, especially since I was just feeling myself up. I notice the line of people has all stopped what they are doing, and they are now staring at me in a horrified way. I turn around and yell "Hey! Mind your own business. Nosy dream characters. Nothing going on here!"

I am very uncomfortable being in my girlfriend's body, and having all these people staring at me, like they're about to cause some trouble, so I wake myself up.

Originally Posted by Sean Lennon

03.06.2010

The Parking Lot (Non-lucid)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

Two fragments, but here they are: I remember parking my white Buick Century in a parking lot on a hill. It wasn't a very high hill, maybe four a five feet up from yet another parking lot. I was with a female friend whom I don't remember, probably because her identity shifted as the dream went on. We exited the vehicle and proceeded to walk through the parking lot, down the four concrete steps to the next parking lot, through yet another parking lot separated by a small median of grass, and finally we came to whatever building in which the event we were attending was. The building was very modern, with brushed steel and glass structures that were the entryway. I have no idea what the event was or why I was attending. That is the missing fragment of the dream, and even as I first woke from it I could not recall it.

The next thing I remember in the dream is leaving the building. There was a crowd of people, but my eyes focused on one person: Lindsey. I haven't spoken to her in two years, because we broke that friendship off on such nasty, regrettable terms. In my waking life I would think that my reaction towards her would be fury and venom, but in my dream she looked at me like a puppy that knows it's done a bad thing. I walked up to her, and all my anger melted. I knew even then that I would never trust her again, but there was no resentment for her in my heart. I said, "Hey, Linds, how are you doing?" If she responded, I don't remember, but she and a high school friend of mine, Lisa, all walked back to my car together.

Lisa kept telling me that the three of us should go out on a semi-date of some sort, and I laughed and told them that it was just impossible. "I'm too in love with Jen to even think about hanging out with other women." At this point I couldn't find my car. It wasn't in the parking lot where I thought I left it, but then I realized that it was in the parking lot on the hill, and we made our way up there. I said goodbye to the girls, got in my car, and woke up.

I always get the feeling there is someone in the room when I'm in SP, but this time it was strange because I was positive that David Hasslehoff was right behind me. I'm not a 'Hoff fan at all, and sort of forgot he even existed until he appeared in my room last night.

I step out of my bed (and out of my body), and walk out to the living room. It's too dark to see anything, and I can tell the dream is very unstable. I try to 'will' the lights to turn on, but I can feel the world slipping away when I focus too hard. In the darkness, I have this feeling like there is someone next to me who is about to attack me, and I'm worried this is about to become a nightmare. I run into the bathroom, hit the light switch, it doesn't work, but the lights are on anyways for some reason.

I keep worrying that there is someone next to me, just outside my vision, with a knife, and I know that the more I worry about it, the more it's going to come true. I turn quickly and turn him into someone non-threatening... My brother. When I see the mirror, I remember the task of the month, and decide to give it a try.

I lean across the counter toward the mirror, and inspect my reflection. It looks perfectly like me. I start to wonder if this is really a dream. It's so convincing, almost too detailed. Just then, my reflection winks at me, and I say out loud "Tight!". As I open my mouth to say it, I notice that my reflection has messed up Hillbilly teeth. I then also notice that he's wearing a white softball tee, with black 3/4 length sleeves.

I put my hand on the mirror to try to reach in, but the surface feels way too solid. I decide to try to pretend the mirror is not there, and try to reach through like it's a window. I put my had down, and then quickly reach up and right through the mirror to grab my reflection's shirt. When I hit the surface of the mirror, I get the most intense pain in my hand and arm. It feels like peeling off a really bad scab, or what I would imagine peeling the skin off your hand would feel like.

I pull my reflection forward, and he doesn't resist at all. He floats out of the mirror, and it seems like he's just a head and shoulders. I ask him "Why do we dream?". He smiles his hillbilly smile and says "I guess, at a certain point, we just need something to keep things interesting".

I let go of him, and he sort of refocuses back into the background of the mirror without moving. I sort of wonder if I hurt him pulling him out, since my hand hurt so bad going in.

I spend a bit more time flying around outside on the lawn, changing my size so I can fly between the blades of grass. Things go downhill from there. I find my dream journal to write the dream down. It's sitting in a sheep pasture, it's about 2"x2" in size, and is filled with mini travel photos. I end up having a picnic on the lawn where I argue about whiskey vs bourbon with some really bossy lady.