lucid

By chance I happened to have a pretty decent length lucid dream, so I'd like to be sure to document it.

The earliest part in the sequence I can remember was some sort of fake Harry Potter movie (during the dream I seemed to think it was the third in the series, but couldn't remember the name), only it starred the cranky-professor-guy-with-the-eye-whose-name-I-don't-remember (that guy from the Goblet of Fire). Anyways, it seems he was going away and people were giving him various going away presents but he was being extra cranky about them. I recall the second to last one vividly; one person (seemed to be a young adult) held up this large, ornate deep green crystal cross with silver metallic edges, stating that he was offering the professor a chance to examine it and that it was a magical artifact that had belonged to his family for many years (it seemed to imply he was some sort of royalty). However the professor cut the student off from his speech angrily, exclaiming that he knew several good men who died in the name of that worthless, magic-less artifact. After that people started to disperse, and an older professor picked up another going away present that looked like a chest and looked as though he was about to leave but then decided to offer it up (saying that after what had just happened he thought the professor wouldn't be interested but thought he might try offering it anyways). They open it, and the chest is empty except for a small recess near the top left that contained a brass metallic pentagram. The older guy asked him if he knew what it was, and the professor replied dramatically that he did indeed know. The camera seemed to look into the box and zoom in ominously on the pentagram; as it got closer you could see that there was a different place on the other side. As it zoomed through the camera shifted to my vision as I saw a group of people walk by and I followed them into what I seemed to think was a hospital. We were talking about some project I was going to work on (it seemed like a job interview?). Inside, we entered some board room through a set of doors and then went to another set of doors along the same wall to let two other people in (I was already with two other people). One of them was Dr. Werremeyer, whom I was happy to see after so long. At some point it transitioned to me at my car at what seemed to be the gas station on University Drive in Fargo that we used to always get gas at. I seemed to think for a moment that my brother was joining me. We got into the car and were waiting there for a while. We amused ourselves with the two extremely short old ladies in the car next to us. At some point he asked me what we were waiting for, I replied that I wasn't sure, that I'd started with 5 professors and now had 0 and that if this was a dream it was kind of a shitty one, which prompted a reality check. It didn't pass (I remember thinking it was going to and being initially surprised that it didn't). I managed to keep focus but immediately getting to work. As I was doing this I was looking across a street corner and there was a lot of Hispanic people walking across the corner towards me. I decided since I didn't like this dream that I'd clean it up a little bit, so I mentally ordered the wind to blow everything away. It became quite a bit windier (as I could notice in the trees in the background), but it wasn't enough to blow the people away. I tried ordering it again and was able to blow a few people off their feet. I incidentally noticed I had a bottle of lime slushy stuff that I was drinking from. I also recall thinking this dream was going on a while (my temporal perception seemed awry here in retrospect) and I should come write about it. Since my current efforts weren't working I tried to get out of my car but somehow got my head stuck in the door and in trying to get myself out I accidentally woke up.

Observation: as I'd previously noted, during a failed reality test my breathing becomes noticeable as the kind of nasal breathing my waking body would experience. This time I discovered that maintaining this nasal breathing sound helped hold lucid focus. I seemed to think this lucid dream was longer, but I can't seem to remember much going on. Anyways, good stuff.

Didn't have time to write this up this morning and after work I've been playing Civ 5 all day so there's been a bit of a delay getting this documented proper. I managed to go lucid for this one, but unfortunately I think I set a new record for how short it lasted. I'm still going to add it to the pile in light of the daunting lack of lucid dreams thus far this month.

As the dream started I was arriving to work at Metro Drug (where I recently spent a rotation), only the inside looked slightly different. Behind the pharmacy area was a larger, warehouse-like area. I'd managed to arrive before Mike and I didn't really want to see him so I hid in this back area around a corner where I couldn't be seen unless someone came all the way back there. After some time, a female intern I didn't recognize came back there and was browsing around the supplies there, taking some of them for herself. At first I interjected that she shouldn't be doing that, but then it occurred to me that I don't particularly care for Metro Drug and decided to join her in stealing supplies. Up in the pharmacy, it's apparently very busy and Mike is there alone. I realize that I'm not on rotation there any more and am thus under no obligation to help him. Somehow this transitions into the realization that I shouldn't be there, which calls the reality check. I'm not sure exactly what went wrong, I suppose I feel I wasn't ready to go lucid at that particular moment. I closed my eyes for a second, but realize quickly that this ruined previous lucid realizations so I open my eyes but it seemed it was too late; everything was fading into gray. I tried to put my palm on a counter to connect to the dream to attempt to stabilize it but with no success.

Had another lucid-for-a-few-moments-but-lost-it episode.

It started with a longer sequence for which I only remember some. I was with a few people whom I suspect were my parents (at least one of them was my dad) and we were in a car going to what was some kind of mall/fast food restaurant combination--it had a drive through window. We ordered and picked up...something, but we forgot to order something we needed so I got out to go into the store and get it while they circled back around to pick me up. When I came out, as I got into the car my dad asked, "Do you know what 'los loco lobos' means?" to which I replied, "The crazy dog."

Cut to me sitting in a theater watching some romance movie. It featured an Asian couple from New York City. The only part of the movie I can remember was a segment where the girl went into this long-winded monologue about how her boyfriend was so awesome because he had all these manly, rugged qualities because he was such a "Minnesota man", which I recall thinking was outrageously stupid because they were both from New York City.

Cut once more to me in bed; I would wake up, my wife would tell me something, and then I'd go back to sleep. This would happen over and over. At some point she woke me up and started reciting sappy lines from the romantic movie from before, and when she did so I thought, "Oh god, I'm in a nightmare now!" semi-jokingly, then did a nose pinch reality check which failed. Had a quick "Yeah!" moment, then got up quickly (thus far I'd been thinking my last lucid slipped away because I stayed laying down) to get to work. My wife was now babbling incoherently, trying to get my attention so I waved her away since I was planning to clear out my apartment as a start to environmental control practice. I started to head to the front door of my apartment to turn on the light (since it was still dark in the room), but the dream dissolved to awakening. Reality check passed; lost it again quickly unfortunately.

It's nice that I'm still getting lucids and that they seem to be occurring with a little more frequency, but I need to find some way to stabilize them.

I'm evidently back in high school again, trying out for the annual play. It's some Sherlock Holmes play directed by Mr. Lucas, much to my surprise I end up with the lead role (I should note now after the fact that the fact I knew it was directed by Lucas should have been a red flag, he would never put me in a decent role). It's early in the week but I seem to think that the play will debut that Thursday so we're already in dress rehearsal and somehow I already know most of my lines (or am completely improvising them). My costume, heavily unfinished, is mostly large pieces of wool cloth held together by pins. As we get to the end of the dress rehearsal I line up at the end for the curtain call, but they wave me up to the front since I'm the lead. I apologize making my way up through the tight space--I'm not used to not playing insignificant shit roles. After my exit (I note a curious lack of Watson hereabouts), I hopped off the stage and left, eager to tell my dad about Fargo North High School's production of Sherlock Holmes.

It seemed to cut to what was either me in bed at home; I suspect I may have gone there from the school in the previous dream but it feels more likely that it was a false awakening because I recognized that something wasn't right (I awoke in a strange room that was clearly not mine) and did a reality check. I was lucid for a moment, I closed my eyes and kept my nose pinched to try to collect focus but it dissolved back to my bed in real life--my hands had clearly dissolved back to my real hands which were nowhere near my nose and additional reality check confirmed it. I guess I'll add it to my lucid tally, but it was disappointingly short.

I'm pretty sure I just had my first lucid dream. It seemed kind of long at the time but I may only remember some bits and pieces now, gonna try to get down as much as I can. And it's weird, it feels so foggy now. Was a very intriguing experience. There was another dream before it but I want to get down as much of the lucid as I can so I'm writing it first.

I'm trying to recall what it was that triggered the reality check. I think it was that I was laying in bed or on the phone with my wife and she said something absurd (I think it had something to do with her saying she was on her way home from class at university, and I quickly realized she doesn't go to school in reality) that caused me to quickly consider that this isn't real and pull a nose-pinch reality check. I was able to breathe like my nose was just a little stuffy despite the nose-pinch. There was an obligatory, "Holy shit, I'm lucid!" moment. To keep the dream from fading from excitement and to calm down, I closed my eyes and (for whatever reason) pictured a topographical map key. Feeling it was stable, I opened my eyes, did another reality check (marveling of course at how weird it was to be breathing through a pinched nose, and then started wandering my environment. I seemed to be in what looked and felt like my old house on Broadway. I was a little unprepared for my first lucid; I hadn't thought of anything cool to do. The first thing I did was go into the bathroom. I figured since I was lucid I might as well start playing around with how well I could control it. I went to the door of the bathroom and decided I'd summon something on the floor outside and close the door to see if it appeared; I arbitrarily chose cake, and then I sort of glanced up and back down and it was there on the floor, slightly stale and with a big slice missing--I didn't even have to close the door. Happy, I went to the big picture window out front and continued experimenting by swapping between night and day by closing my eyes for a second then looking at the sky. I noted some unusual mixed success, namely whenever I wanted it to be day or night it would literally only be just starting day or night (ie at dawn or dusk). It's a little foggy if there was something occurring between now and what happened next, but the next thing I remember was that I was quickly running out of ideas for things to do, so I thought, "Well, I've always wanted to experience sex as a woman, let's give that a try." So I went back to the bathroom (it's notable that the previous time it was the bathroom from the old Broadway house, but it was now the bathroom from my previous apartment on Oak Street), stripped down, then looked in the mirror. Quick comment after the fact, the mirror worked just fine for its purpose in the dream, but before transforming I started in my normal dream avatar--which is myself as I recognize but much thinner. I was able to transform myself by pointing to the parts of my body that I wanted to transform and focusing on them. I started with breasts, then moved on to my penis. I recall being amused/annoyed that as I was shrinking my penis my foreskin wasn't shrinking with it so I had to do that separate. I started to get a little impatient so I just waved my hand around in front of my crotch and looked up at the ceiling to try to speed things up. Eventually everything looked pretty good, wasn't perfect, and I noticed that at some point I had lost all my body hair without intentionally trying to, but it was good enough for a first attempt. I was trying to decide what I wanted to do first with my new body when I noticed I sorta needed to pee so I decided to get that out of the way first, so I did. Just that was an unusual new physical sensation. There was some toilet paper sitting in the bathtub next to the toilet, so I grabbed some to clean things up a bit (since I was planning to shortly be playing around down there soon anyways); as I was cleaning up the phone rang and I answered it. The voice on the other end was some woman trying to tell me about how there were cloths in the tub that I could use for whatever but to leave them there so she could wash them later (I noticed here that it was hard to focus on what was happening now while I was on the phone trying to listen). I looked back into the tub and the toilet paper had been replaced by dark blue cloth. I shortly regretted flushing a few of them down the toilet. I checked the mirror one last time to see if things were still good and then went back out to the living room. I'm think there may have been somewhere here where I experimented with my new body, but if so unfortunately I don't remember it. Eventually there appeared in my house (as though she was familiar with the place) a thin, light-skinned black girl. Delighted to find another person to help me experiment with my new body, I asked her if she wanted to have sex with me. She seemed apprehensive; focusing on her I first removed her clothes then, noting of course that she too was female and thus would make proper copulation difficult, made her instantly grow a penis. She wasn't very amused by this, however, and she angrily stormed off to the basement. Shrugging, and once again bored, I decided to turn my attention on mentally recreating graphic-update remakes of old school video games I love in my mind for entertainment. I started with what I assume was Final Fantasy 6, though thinking on it after the fact the action doesn't match up properly with the game (though I specifically recall Terra's appearance). At some point this was interrupted with my wife calling, when she called what had been the video game scene taking up my entire stream of consciousness suddenly appeared as though I'd taken it out of full-screen mode on my monitor on my computer at my current apartment. I even had my headphones on, so I had to remove one of side of them to expose an ear for the phone like I usually do. I was annoyed at the distraction but answered the phone anyways. I don't remember the contents of the actual phone message, but I note again after the fact that it started to break my lucid concentration. The last part I remember now was going down to the basement where I found the black girl (who had now been transformed into some sort of small Pokémon-like creature) cuddling on a table with another small Pokémon-like creature. Saying, "Oh, so you'll have sex with him but not me!" and did my own storming-off-angrily upstairs and back to the living room, where I waved my hand and did some sort of mental slash across the table they were lying on and killing them both. My memory of this dream ends here, though when I woke I seemed to think that there was more non-lucid dream that came after this. I awoke just prior to starting this journal entry and did a quick reality check that passed, officially ending my first lucid dream.

Note to self: be wary about answering phones once you're lucid; it seems to help break lucid focus. In fact, I'm going to try to make an effort to start reality checks whenever answering and/or ending phone calls. I'm going to try to remember that the next thing on my agenda for practice when a dream goes lucid is controlling the environment; this time I kind of let the environment do what it wanted around me.

There was a dream sequence either prior to or leading up to where it went lucid. There was a long prelude to most of what I remember, but the bulk of what I remember was that there was this stretch of interstate that I would drive down as though I was in a GTA-ish sandbox type game and try to score points on this segment of highway. The segment of highway was kind of a long straight section with a curve off to the right. I'm thinking I may have lost more memory of this dream out of excitement for the lucid one, so maybe more will come back to me later.