Recent DJ Posts

Ritual: This was my third experiment with the vibrating alarm. Again it was successful, though in a somewhat inexplicable way. I had intended to get lucid but slept from 1:00–6:20am, and realized when I woke it was too late for a proper WBTB. So I used the vibrating alarm, set to go off in 45m. It was 7:19am when I awoke again, so it must have triggered, but I never felt the vibration at all this time. I had an NLD I don't clearly recall, and then a DILD—in which I simply became aware that I was dreaming, with no particular RC or "aha!" moment. The lucidity was low-grade, though, in that I never remembered the tasks I had intended to work on.

DILD: I found myself in K&L in San Francisco. (This is a real wine store that I like, but the dream version had no physical resemblance to RL.) While browsing I noticed all the good food in the cases—fresh food, like slices of cake on plates, ready to be eaten—and reflected on how amazing the food culture is in SF that you can even get great fresh food in a wine shop. There was a tray with samples of wine, generous pours of about two ounces in full-size glasses, and another tray with samples of a variety of little cut bars and pastries. As I began eating and drinking, the impression dawned on me that I was dreaming, but I felt that I was not fully integrated. (This must have been dream logic; I was already deep in dream so there was no question of integration, but apparently what I was sensing was that I was not fully lucid.) I thought that using my senses would help, so I was focusing on the tastes and textures and even the sounds that occurred as I sampled the various confections. I wanted to find one that was more savory than sweet. A couple pieces were green in color, which seemed promising, but they turned out to be more dessert-like than I had hoped. I was amused to notice how I was behaving with dream protocols: if I didn't like a piece, I would just spit it out and leave it on the tray, an act that would be incredibly rude and disgusting in waking life!

I thought after I got better integrated I should go explore the dream—wasn't there something I was dreaming about earlier, a wilderness landscape, that it would be interesting to get back to? I recollected it only vaguely. But first I wanted to try each of the food samples. The very last one I tasted was savory after all, and had a kind of bi-layer construction with a spicy-savory mixture sitting on top of a nest of dried coconut strands—it was my favorite, and I wished I could get the recipe.

Nearby was a little display box full of pamphlets or maybe even CDs about nuns, and as I leafed through them I saw that they broached the question: do nuns wear their habits even when they are locked away together in their nunneries, or do they, like Muslim women, remove their head coverings when at home? I felt that in waking life I knew the answer but now I couldn't remember. I thought about it and considered that the tradition of nuns covering their head must be related to similar phenomena in related cultures and places, such as the way women have to cover their heads when attending a Russian Orthodox church service. I figured it probably did have ties to the tradition among conservative Islamic women to cover their heads. I concluded on this basis that nuns would indeed remove their wimples when alone among themselves. (In retrospect I'm pretty sure I wrong, but I can't say with absolute certainty. The only Christian nuns I've met don't wear habits at all!)

Earlier, when I had decided that I would go explore the dreamscape after I was done here, as if in direct response to my thoughts a horse had promptly cantered up outside the shop and stood there waiting for me. (If only my human DCs were so obliging!) Now that I was finished eating I went outside and prepared to ride away. The horse had been completed tacked up when he arrived—excessively so, I had thought, as he seemed to be carrying bedrolls and other long-distance gear—and when I mounted he had definitely been wearing a saddle because I distinctly braced my foot in the stirrup and held the pommel to get on. However, no sooner had I started riding away than I felt I was slipping around a bit and was surprised to discover that this was because I was riding bareback. Oh well, it will be good practice. I remembered how some people say that LDs can help you practice RL skills, and I figured that I could certainly use some practice improving my seat and position, so I decided to focus on that for a while and see if it paid off in this week's lesson.

I still felt we were in downtown San Francisco but everything felt old-timey. Even the cars looked like 1920s models. Fortunately there weren't many of them, because I was moving through the city at a canter. I realized how unrealistic this was: in RL I would hesitate to stress the horse's legs by cantering on hard paved streets, and I definitely would not cross intersections without stopping, like I was doing now, but since I knew I was dreaming I felt it would be okay. Crossing the street still felt dangerous as there were sometimes cars coming, but there weren't too many of them and they were going slow enough that we were able to dodge one another. I was cantering because that is the gait where I need the most improvement on my seat and position: I was focusing on trying to keep my legs long and heels down, with my core on, back straight and shoulders back.

We cantered right out of the city, though I was paying so much attention to my form that I didn't have much to spare for my surroundings. Just as in RL I noticed the tendency for my legs to creep up and my torso to lean forward at the canter, so I was trying to counter these bad habits and reinforce good ones. At some point I finally halted the horse, and I worked on trying to do that properly as well, keeping my seat deep and using my weight properly. The dream ended around this time, as though by halting the horse I halted the dream.

I'm walking down this street, it looks like somewhere in New York city. Then this double decker bus pulls up in front of me, and I stare at the side of it and zone out into and old film from like the 20's or 30's. I see a couple in topless car, and a crowd gathered around while it drives slowly cheering them on. In the car it looks exactly like jay-z and beyonce, but in old attire and hair style. They are important people in that era and not necessarily in a good way, they are driving down this exact street in New York that I'm standing. Then I zone back into the scene I was before, almost like I was in a trance. Now there's a woman standing there and she told me that is their doppelgangers, I ask her I f I had one, but she doesn't answer me and she returns to the bus and it drives away and I'm left tortured thinking about it.

This is probably the first time that I've done high speed flight since I flew into space so long ago. Very exciting to experience!

Color legend: Non-dream Dream Lucid

Lucid #112: Water Pressure

It's the middle of the night and I'm walking around the front yard of my childhood home. The sprinklers are all on and it's my job to somehow turn each sprinkler head off by touching it. As I do this, I'm narrating out loud to one of my waking life friends what I'm doing. (Can't remember which friend this was, since they were "off camera".)

"These big sprayers at the front of the yard are the worst ones!" I explain to my friend. As I approach the sprinkler head, it hits me with a powerful jet of water that starts pushing me away from the yard and out into the street. "See what I mean!" I shout as the jet continues to shove me.

Pretty soon I'm tumbling and sliding all the way down the street, trying to fight my way back to the yard. Okay, this has got to be a dream... The spray continues to hit me, pushing me along faster and faster as I slide down the street. Somehow it's not getting me soaked but it is pushing me at an incredible rate of speed. I'm sliding past houses like I'm on a bobsled attached to a rocket.

I leap into the air and start flying, still going really, really fast. The speed is absolutely dizzying, easily ten or more times faster than any lucid flying I've ever done. I soon leave civilization behind and I'm flying at super speed over grassland and hills. The sun is now up and early morning light is illuminating the landscape. My flight control isn't perfect and I do a couple of unintentional barrel rolls, fly higher than I mean to, then lower than I'd like.

Just as I'm flying over the top of another set of hills, I find myself in the void, suddenly moving much more slowly. Except it's not a complete void. I see a distant dream scene in front of me, almost like something I'm watching on television through a long, dark tunnel. I'm moving toward this new scene, rubbing my hands together and preparing to enter it.

It's a scene from some sort of grand luxury hotel, bright and really classic-looking. The men look sharp but indistinguishable from one another and the women are dressed in crazy feather- and sequin-clad dresses like something from the Roaring 20s. I'm now a part of the scene, standing in this hotel lobby, looking up as these amazing DCs pass by on the balconies above. I try to remember what I'd intended to do next, but the dream ends.

Two poachers had killed a massive lion and it was lying dead and floating in water in a large swamp. They were upset at each other because they didn't know how they were going to carry it out of the place. Not only was the body heavy, it was submerged in water so it felt like a nearly impossible task. At some point I became lucid.

I walked into a large building next to the swamp. It ended up being a 1920's train station. It was decorated nicely. For some reason there were bookcases with large books and odd assortments of things you would picture in a study room - such as telescopes and globes etc. Everything was perfectly new and well kept even though it had a definite 20's feel. Swing music started playing in the background and I started dancing to it counting the correct steps we used in swing dance in high school. Shortly after that an older lady DC walked into the hallway from a seperate room. She was probably in her 50s or 60s but still looked very pretty, like Jessica Lang, and was also dressed to fit the vintage look of the place. I walked over toward her.

"Do you know who I am?" I asked her

She cupped my face in her hands and I could see tears forming in her eyes.

"You don't remember, do you?" she said.

She fell to her knees and just started sobbing. I felt so much sadness and sorrow emanating from her. I didn't know what to do - I really did not know who she was or where I had seen her before. I knelt down and kissed her lips. I don't know why. It just felt appropriate at the time - as if it were to say I was sorry. As i did that, everything faded to darkness and I woke up.

NoDaniel's Dream

(Non-Lucid, Fragments) Fell Asleep by 1:30AM Woke Up at 11PM
-I'm in a video game, a video game set in the 1920s. It felt like LA Noire. I was riding a back down a road into a tunnel in a 3rd person view. i was wearing blue suit pants and a white shirt. The bike had white rimmed wheels with red fenders. I parked the bike in front of a bar and walked in.

-I was in Roswell, New Mexico with my family. There was a junk yard that had some sort of reddish stone pyramid at the center. Looking around we saw a ufo-esque craft. We walked towards the pyramid and saw an alien with a gun. We tried telling it to put it down and we are peaceful. It didn't listen and shot us. We respawned in the Futurama Planet Express ship. Leela gave me a hand and helped me up into the ship saying, "How dare he shoot at us!"

-A continuation of the video game.... I was in the center of a small town where there were five routes surrounding it. My friend Jocelyn was on my back. I walked down one of the dirt roads for a few minutes. I got lost so I kept walking. We discovered a sort of trailer park, we knocked on one of the trailers. A boy with black hair answered the door. We asked if we could use his telephone. "Go away!" He yelled. We begged him and he kicked us out. So I cut his mother's car breaks. I threw Jocelyn in a tree so she would be safe. The mom started her car and the kid went in with her. ( I don't remember anything after that until...) We were teleported to a street much like the one i live in, with one main road and cul-de-sacs branching off on one side. We walked through a couple and barged into a yellow house. Inside was a friend of mine sitting criss-crossed on her bed while in her pajamas screaming, "GET OUT! GET OUT!D:" It started getting dark and I became frightened. Jocelyn said, "Have you figured out how to use the map?" I looked at a map and we ended up back in the center of the small town.