All DJ Entries

It's been a while since I posted anything.

I dreamed I was trying to fit my cell phone into a side pocket on my purse and it wouldn't fit.

I dreamed I got up to check my phone (which I had, at one point in the very early morning, when it went off) but for some reason I went to sleep on the couch. When I 'got up', it was pitch black inside the apartment even though I knew it was morning. That didn't really clue me in, though, I just accepted it. Then, I tried to turn the light in the kitchen on. It didn't work. I then tried to turn the bedroom light on - it also didn't work. I realized that this probably wasn't due to the fact that both lightbulbs weren't working, but probably because I was dreaming. I shouted "It's too dark!" to try to create some light, but it didn't work.

I wound up back on the couch, trying to get up, and realizing I was still dreaming. I actually wanted to wake up for real, since I knew it was probably getting late in the morning and I didn't want to sleep in too late, but found myself in another false awakening. Frustrated, I tried to rouse my sleeping body and managed to turn over in my physical bed, waking myself up (for real).

I had a headache. I got out of bed and made some coffee.

After reading about Tlaloc's homebrew EILD technique, I wanted to try something similar, so I compared the devices available on Amazon and settled on the "MotivAider." Although bulky and overpriced, I liked that the vibration length and intensity are fully customizable, and the fact that it has an option to go off at random intervals. It recently arrived in the mail, so I read the instructions before going to bed last night, but decided to wait until my WBTB to program it, since I figured the task would help reawaken my mind as well as focus my intention.

Went to bed at 1:30am, woke naturally at 5am. I realized my motivation wasn't as high as I had anticipated because I remembered how much work I needed to get done before the weekend was over, and reasoned that sleeping in after a long WBTB and writing a dream report if successful would really cut into my available time. However, the MotivAider beckoned, so I decided to do a very short WBTB, just long enough to program it and set it up before going back to sleep. I set the vibration to its minimal length (two seconds), programmed it to go off in random intervals up to 45 minutes, and placed it in the case of my leg pillow, where I should be able to feel it through the fabric. (I am a side sleeper and always use an extra pillow between my knees.) I thought the vibration would be too disruptive if it was near my head, so I wanted it somewhere closer to my feet. I returned to bed at 5:20am. I lay awake for a while with anticipation, and eventually decided I had better also put the vibration on its weakest setting, so I reprogrammed the device by the light of my phone.

At some point I must have drifted off to sleep, and then I felt the device go off. But something had gone wrong: the vibrations were pulsing repetitively without cease. I tried to ignore them, but they seemed to be going on for over a minute. I decided I must have programmed the device incorrectly, so I got up and took it out of the pillow, setting it aside. Tomorrow I could figure out what the problem was.

Shortly after that I was walking through the house, and I noticed something odd. Glancing through the sliding glass door in the kitchen, I saw that the water level of the river next to the house had risen way too high. In fact, the water was coming right up to the base of the door, like it was on the verge of flooding in. This observation was so startling that it made me realize I must be dreaming... maybe the EILD had worked after all! Had I ever really gotten up, or had it all been an FA?

In retrospect there was something very intriguingly incomplete about the observation that prompted me realize that I was dreaming. Through the door, I could see a vast sea of water that I interpreted as a wide river, with just a strip of land visible a mile or two distant on the other side. The water looked entirely natural, brownish-hued, its surface sleek and reflective of the warm pre-dawn light. At no point, even after I fully realized I was dreaming, did it occur to me that there is no such river next to the house, much less a broad vista of this kind... the only body of water visible in that direction is an in-ground pool of the conventional turquoise hue on a concrete patio bounded by thick trees that block any view further into the distance. Yet only thing that seemed odd to me in the dream, even after getting lucid, was the high level of the encroaching water, not the improbable existence of the vast river!

Probably because I have been thinking about dream music again, I was inspired to turn my observation into a song. "If there's water near the house, it's a dream," I sang, repeating the line several times to reinforce the association, just in case it came up again in the future. Then I wondered which tasks to work on. I decided to try StephL's lucid dare (enter an enchanted forest, look for an elven gathering and learn a new song from them), which I thought would pair well with the October bonus TOTM (create a song on a musical instrument that doesn't exist in waking life). No sooner did my thoughts turn to the bonus task than I could actually hear ambient music in the air around me, like notes plucked from a stringed instrument. Perhaps I should have paused and investigated—I could probably have found a suitable instrument to fulfill the task—but I already had a plan in mind for getting to the enchanted forest, so I walked out of the house through the front door.

Traveling to a forest on foot hasn't been working well for me in my TOTY attempts (I tried it in Hansel and Gretel a couple times), so I had been pondering alternate strategies. One possibility simply involved growing trees around me in the house until the environment around me transforms into a forest, but another approach I found appealing was to try to use the little fir tree growing outside the front door as a portal.

It was three or four years ago that I bought this little tree at the grocery store one December and that year used it as a miniature Christmas tree (at the time it was only about two feet tall). Afterwards I put it outside in the front yard. Improbably it thrived, more than doubling in size, and apparently seemed to be doing well with no care other than being watered by the automatic sprinklers that went on briefly every morning, so I left it alone. Then one day I went to move it and discovered the secret reason it was flourishing: its roots had apparently gone right through the bottom of the pot and grown directly into the ground! I am impressed by the resourcefulness of this sapling, so I had the idea of approaching it in a dream and asking it to transport me to the enchanted forest.

When I opened the front door, I was surprised to see snow on the ground. This is probably because last night I was looking up pictures based on the search term "winter forest" to incubate appropriate visual impressions. However, since I live in a climate where snow is impossible (it has been in the nineties the last couple days!), I immediately recognized that this was more evidence of the dream state, so I added a new line to my song: "If there's snow on the ground, it's a dream." Looking over at my little tree, I saw that it was also covered in snow, and added another line, "If there's snow in the branches, it's a dream." Since I was already singing, I saw no reason to stop. I walked over to the tree, grasped its narrow trunk, and requested in song, "Take me to the enchanted forest, the enchanted forest of dream!"

Unfortunately, I promptly woke up. Normally I might have been annoyed that the dream ended before I could accomplish anything, but this time I didn't mind because it was such an amusing first success for my new EILD device!

Sure enough, the whole experience turned out to be a false awakening: when I got up to start my report (at 6:10am), I discovered that I had never removed the device from the pillow like I remembered doing. And this indicates that it must not have malfunctioned after all, and that the extended sequence of vibrations I felt was most likely an experience of time dilation conditioned by the dream state.

I had a false awakening followed by a DILD. In my false awakening, my wife was trying to wake me up. She was very happy about something, but I was too tired listen or understand. I looked at the clock and it said it was 6:30 Am, and my alarm wasn’t supposed to go off until 7:00 Am. I told her I need to sleep for another half hour. I rolled over and went back to sleep. Little did I know this was a false awakening. I fell back to sleep with the intention of trying to have a Lucid dream about my daughter. I found myself immediately in a dream, but I wasn’t Lucid yet. I was walking down a wooded path in my home town, feeling sad and blue about my daughter, who I miss so much. There was a 7 Eleven parking lot, coming up right beside the trail, in the clearing. I was only in my shorts, and I had a blanket from my bed. I figured I better wrap myself up in the blanket or I’ll get arrested for indecent exposure. I looked behind me really quick to see if there was anybody else around, because I was feeling a little exposed with my lack of clothes. Walking right behind me was my dream guide, or whatever you call him or her. He or she quickly disappeared and avoided me, as usual. I knew instantly I was dreaming. I’m Lucid! I looked at the ground and saw strange geometric object lying on the path. It reminded me of the Lucid dreams I use to have as a kid, and all the crazy stupid things I would do when I was Lucid. I then thought about my daughter again, and headed off down the path alongside the 7 Eleven parking lot, and I was tearing. Just then my daughter appeared in the parking lot, in all the beauty that she is, and then she walked up right beside me, put her arm around me, and pulled me in close. We walked together down the path past the 7 Eleven. I leaned over and kissed her on the head, and thanked her for coming for a visit. She started to clown around to lighten the mode, being the fantastic, humorous personality she is, and I quickly cheered up! It was so good to hear her voice and giggle again. The Lucid dream started to fade. I was getting too excited. I swirled frantically, but I woke up. I looked at my real alarm clock and the time was 6:20 Am. Thanks Sweetie!

Ritual: WTB 1am, woke 5am. Read and drank a cup of Calea zacatechichi tea. WBTB 6am, attempted WILD (counting and senses scanning), fell asleep while still on my back and had an ordinary NLD.

NLD: We were assaulting a dwarven fortress. I had stealthed in and filled the place with a smoke that was supposed to put all the dwarves to sleep. There were three other people my party waiting outside. As I was leaving I noticed that the smoke didn't seem to be working: the guards were as alert as ever. But someone started firing and soon we were embroiled in a full-out battle, which was what we had hoped to avoid because we were outnumbered. Although not the slightest bit lucid, I had a good deal of dream control and was using both levitation and invisibility to avoid being shot or captured, but my companions were not so fortunate, and I wasn't going to abandon them. In the last scene, the four of us have been captured and are being taken somewhere in the back of a van wearing straightjackets. One particularly gruff member of my team said to the others, "That's why one doesn't start to shoot until the light says he's turning on." I think he was trying to tell them that they should have waited for me to give the signal before initiating battle, and that our plan had failed because one of them had jumped the gun. After I woke up I thought it odd that he had been referring to me with the masculine pronoun, since I hadn't felt distinctly male in the dream, but perhaps that's how the others had perceived me.

After I woke it was light out, so I started with my plan to experiment with Remee in nap mode, set to go off after 20 minutes. Anticipation made it hard to fall asleep promptly, so after a while I reset it for another 20 minutes, since I wanted to make sure I was well asleep and ideally in REM before the lights started. I hadn't been carefully checking the time, so when I woke up again I was uncertain if I had missed the signal or if it had not gone off yet. No dreams I could recall. I checked the time, it was about 8:10, reset the Remee and went back to sleep, more easily this time.

FA: I woke up, looked at the clock, and saw that it was almost 9am. I remembered it had been shortly past 8 when I had last set the Remee, so I must have missed the signal again. I got out of bed, completely oblivious to the fact that I was transitioning smoothly from a false awakening into a real rising, until I began to take off the Remee and just then the red lights started flashing on the mask. After brief confusion I realized that I had just been fooled by an FA: how could I have checked the time on the clock just a moment ago when at that time I was still wearing the mask? I checked the clock again now that I was really awake and saw that it was a lot earlier than I had thought, only 8:30, so the Remee was going off right on schedule.

Note: The fact that I had woken up just before the Remee went off didn't feel coincidental, but rather a manifestation of what always happens to me with alarm clocks. Although I rarely form an accurate conscious impression of time in my dreams, for some reason I have an eerily consistent ability to wake up right before any alarm that I set actually goes off—usually within a few minutes, sometimes less than a minute in advance of the alarm. This seems to be what accidentally happened here. Not helpful in this case, though!

After a month-long dry spell, today I had a random lucid dream.

I woke up and it was dark. I held my hand out towards the nightstand and grabbed my phone. I always try and feel the LED light button to switch the screen on, but this time I felt two buttons, one at the top and one at the bottom of the phone. I became lucid right away and did a RC with my hands. At first they looked normal, but looking closely I realised I had more fingers than normal. I got up and asked for light, for it to be daytime. I walked down the corridor towards the dining room and the dream felt very realistic, but there didn't seem to be any sudden change in lighting. However, as I was getting near the dining room, I saw light coming from the outside, as if the sun had risen a short while before. I stood on the balcony for a few seconds, thinking of what to do. I decided to try and jump off the balcony, but I was a bit scared because I didn't want to hurt myself. I knew I didn't have to be scared because I was in a dream, but still, I decided to throw a table first. I held it with ease and threw it, and it fell slowly. Then I did a kind of parkour jump and my feet met the ground very gently. I got the table and shot it back up to the balcony, and then I got up there myself.

After this, I decided to go back to my bedroom and see if I could achieve any change in lighting. I have read in some occasions that drastic changes in light are rare in dreams, but I thought I'd try with my nightstand lamp. As I was reaching for the switch, I asked for light outloud, and the bedroom got lit up a bit before I touched the switch. Proud of my work, I lied down on my bed and asked for some fine guys to walk in the bedroom, but then the dream finished.

I seriously wonder what is up with my brain sometimes.

Some long and very dull dream about some activity night going on at my dorm room. Most of it already slipped through my memory anyway. Skip.

Spoiler for Proceed at your own risk:

I was back at my old high school, having the classic 'class that I forgot dream'. I was at the school after hours though, so everybody had left and I was walking down the halls alone.
I come across one of the school janitors on my way out. But he doesn't look like one of the school janitors. He's a black man, probably about 60. Very small and skinny with a thin beard and big round eyes. And he's wearing these formal British clothes with a scarf and what not, all in this obnoxious brownish-orange color.
He starts asking me questions, but some of them seem a little off. He then takes me to show me his greatest secret. He walks me over to the old trophy case and opens a secret door to a back room that I didn't know existed.
This was the weird part. He has a huge secret room, right next to where the principals office was. And the entire wall of the room, every inch of it is covered in framed photographs of erect penises. All of the photos had been taken from the same angle. The man gestures to the center of the wall where there is a photograph of a huge penis. He says it is his and that he has the biggest one out of anyone he as photographed.
He was literally the winner of a dick measuring contest.
There is also a duplicate of the trophy case along each side wall of the room. Both trophy cases were filled with adult penis toys.
The man keeps giving me this really creepy look where he smiles and his eyes seem to bug out of his head. His teeth look fake. I woke up. It was the middle of the night.

I can recall in being what felt like my cousin's sub. I was walking down the street. I had become partially lucid.
...
My recall is more than a little patchy but I can recall at one point, I went inside of a house. The first room had a bunch of doors in it. There is also a bed and a dresser. A small piece of wallpaper peeled off from between two doors, entirely by itself.
The wallpaper then folded itself into a diaper. Parts of stretched out to become small legs and part of it ripped to become a mouth. Oh yeah, and because it was a diaper, it was full with crap that came out of nowhere. It had basically become this little monster thing that I wound up fighting.
The diaper had some connection to the house. Like the family that lived there had a baby and they made diapers out of wallpaper or something.
So we ended up having the worlds longest fight. I held the upper hand being... well a human and not a diaper. I can't recall the fight play-by-play but there was a part where I was whacking it with a big stick that I found under a bed that was in the room. There was a part where the diaper climbed onto the ceiling and tried to jump down on top of me.
There was even a part where I used firebending and the 'Fus roh dah' shout from Skyrim to blast it into a corner.
Eventually for whatever reason, the diaper monster became a squirrel. At this point I stopped fighting it and turned to walk back outside, only to find that the door that had led me into this random room led back out into my bedroom.
I looked outside. The weather was cold and grey. A rumble of thunder was heard in the distance. For whatever reason I decided I wanted to try flying. I opened the window, forced out the screen. I then did a last-minute stabilization by rubbing my hands together, and saying 'I'm dreaming!'
I then jumped out the window, and fell like a rock into the bush below my window.
Then I suddenly thought "What if this is real life, and I just jumped out of the window in real life?!" I did a nose pinch. I could breathe.
"Wait..." I said to myself. I forget what indicates being in a dream. Being able to breathe or not being able to breathe? Because I can most defiantly breathe." I then remember, being able to breathe means you are dreaming.
For a few moments I managed to anchor myself on the cold wind that was blowing in the dream. I start to become very lucid when I lose the dream.

FA in my college dorm room. I have peed in the bed. I get up and start changing out of my clothes.

FA in my home bedroom. I have peed in the bed here as well. I do a reality check and become lucid momentarily lucid before FAing once more.

FA. Something to do with the Simpsons of all things. Bart is buying these special schoolbooks that come with cereal. Supposedly these were supposed to help improve his grades because if you read the books while eating the cereal, you remember them better. Bart his happy because the cereal is dinosaur shapes.

I wake up into WL. Reality check and fortunately, I have not wet the bed.

I have had some pretty bizarre dreams before involving dreams within dreams. This one was so bizarre that I knew I had to come back to this site to discuss it. To begin, I want to mention that I had this dream after waking up and then sleeping in today, saturday, which is how I usually am able to Lucid Dream.

The dream began with me at my school and I was watching a horror movie on the TV. It was extremely realistic except for the fact that the lights were off and I was laying on the ground on my side. I then had a false awakening, and in the dream I was in my bed on my laptop. Usually when I pull out my phone in a dream, I just see a multicolored screen and never am I able to actually look things up on the internet. At most there will be a video playing that I then find myself becoming a part of.

However, this time I was actually handling my laptop and looking at videos on Youtube. I remember one of the videos was about albino ostriches and a variety of facial expressions that they make. I then dreamed that I was practicing WILD, and tried to control what I was dreaming but ended up dreaming that I was still in my room, only I wasn't sure if I was dreaming or sleepwalking. This is actually a common theme in my dreams due to how detailed they can really be when I am lucid, I know I am dreaming but still worry if I am sleepwalking. I was outside my house and fell down on my front lawn. I then had a faulse awakening again and was back to being in bed with my laptop. The laptop then fell over and broke the screen, and I had a second false awakening to find the laptop fixed again.

I went back to sleep in the dream and this time was near my neighborhood, only as usual in dreams familiar places become bizarre and twisted. I came across a large mansion which I somehow knew was my cousin's house. (To clarify my cousins do NOT live in a large mansion.) As I was approaching the house, a car pulled up behind me and a man got out and started shooting a gun at me. I ducked and was able to actually hide behind the sidewalk curb, which was now a few feet high. I then again had another false awakening, and this time in the dream I was on my laptop writing a dream journal about all of what had happened so far.

The last dream was so realistic though that I couldn't believe how detailed it really was. Usually when you are reading a book or something, it will change. This time it remained constant. I was in a classroom, for reference it looked like one of the classrooms from my elementry school, and the teacher was a man who was teaching us about the occult. I remember him wearing a blue vest with a shirt underneath with the sleeve rolled up, and him being rather muscular. He handed out these printouts that were stapled together, like an activity book but each page was related to monsters and demons.

I remember I was just looking through the booklet while the girl across from me was almost done, and I looked at her completed booklet to try to figure out what I was supposed to be doing. She commented that I should be glad I didn't reach near the end of the assignment where you have to draw various demons and symbols for their summoning. I page I looked at showed a monster destroying a city, and had instructions to draw a skyscraper in it's hand.

A man who somewhat looked like the tenth doctor (Doctor Who.) started questioning out teacher about his background and how he had a history of controversy with his teaching methods, and how he was in danger of losing his teaching license.

This was one of the most powerfully frightening and sleep episodes to date.

I'm floating in a sensory deprivation tank. I chose to do an hour and a half session since it had been a long day. This experience happened in the later half of the float.


I'm listening to music. It's sort of a slow, funky R&B beat with a man singing directly to me. He has a wonderful, deep voice that sent me deeper into my comfort zone. I realize quickly that this isn't the wake up music for my session, it is all in my head. I smile, or at least I think I do, and continue listening for a whole, beautiful minute. It's amazing what your mind can create in sensory deprivation.

The music fades and a twitch brings me back to present. "That was wonderful," I thought. "That's more than enough to write about."

Reflecting back on all this, I now know I experienced a false awakening, and a very convincing one at that. So, in my false awakening:

I'm going to flip onto my stomach for the last 30 seconds of my float (sometimes when I know I'm about to get out of the tank, I lay face down for as long as I can hold my breath. It feels good on my back). My extremities feel numb, but I manage to flip over. I soon realize I'm paralyzed. I have no control over my legs or arms and worst of all, my face is under water. I begin to panic. A hot rush of survival fear rushes me through my situation. My mouth is muffled by water and my arms can't find their way to bang on the wall for help. I'm going to die. I hold my breath as long as I can until I realize there is no use fighting it anymore. I have to inhale. I choose not to have my life flash before my eyes, since I knew inhaling the super saturated salt water would burn out any sentiment I could gather, so I just decided to go for it. A moment of courage. With all my strength, I take a mighty breath. Farewell.

Woosh. I'm back in my real body, frantically trying to catch my breath and calm my nerves. I knew exactly what had happened, having experienced false awakenings and sleep paralysis before. Never have both happened simultaneously. I was rattled, I still am.

I accepted death. Rather than inhaling the salt water, I took the most refreshing gasp I've ever tasted. It was beautifully humbling experience.

Ritual: WTB 1am, woke 4:20am, got up and read, drank spice lassi (yogurt, water, turmeric, cumin, salt), did 12 minutes seated meditation incorporation SSILD technique before returning to bed at 5:50am. Before going to bed I affirmed several times, "I vow to lucid dream," reflecting on how a vow is much more serious than an intention, a little nervous that I might inadvertantly break my vow, but reminding myself that I didn't dare, failing to go through on an intention is one thing, but you're never supposed to break your vows. I wanted to avoid supplements for the most part as that hasn't helped much lately, but I did use a few drops of Calea Zacatechichi tincture, because although I can't say for sure if it actually works, I thought the distinctive taste might contribute a useful placebo effect. I lay on my back in bed and did a series of tension-relaxation exercises, then cycled in random order through several affirmations ("I am aware / I do / I dream"). Drifted off, woke up a little, realized it was getting too bright out and my mind felt sufficiently wakeful that this might be an obstacle to sleep, so I put on my sleep mask (a device of last resort as I don't like wearing it), turned on my left side, and continued the affirmations until I fell asleep. I got a lot of distinct hypnagogic imagery and sounds every time I started to drift off, but I did not feel the physical signs of transition.

WILD, Part 1: I woke up again, thinking I might have transitioned successfully, and got out of bed. I could still distinctly feel myself wearing the sleep mask so I wondered if I was really dreaming, but realized that since it wasn't obstructing my vision, then I must be. I was tempted to rip off the mask but decided to just ignore it, and soon the sensations disappeared for the duration of the dream. Now that I was sure I was dreaming, I wanted to get started right away on my tasks. I reached behind me for my wand, a gesture familiar from a few years ago when I had been playing a lot with Harry Potter style magic. I got used the idea that my wand was sheathed just behind my right hip, so I could just reach back there at any time to draw it. However, this time I came up empty-handed. I realized that this was probably because, having just gotten out of bed, I wasn't wearing any clothes. Nevermind, I can work on that task later. By this time I'm in the kitchen, so it should be an easy matter to procure some fortune cookies!

I walk toward the kitchen counter, expecting to find a bag of fortune cookies ready to hand. Sure enough, there is a clear plastic bag right where I expect, but as I reach for it I see that it contains... what are those, pierogies? I laugh because they look almost like fortune cookies and are anything but, and it is just like dream to bait and switch this way. I pick up the bag and reach into it anyway, focusing my expectations around pulling out a proper fortune cookie, and by the time my hand closes around something, I can tell that it is falling into line: it has the dry smooth surface, distinctive shape and ridges of a fortune cookie. I pull it out and break it in half to get the fortune. I remember that I'm supposed to eat the cookie too, so I start nibbling at it while extracting the fortune, which was wedged inside the cookie in a crumpled up wad. As I smooth it, I see that the little strip of paper is covered with what looks like dabs of herb butter mixed with little shreds of nori seaweed, a kind of east-west fusion of ingredients. I'm disappointed to see that there is no writing on the paper at all, just the seasonings.

No problem, the bag contains several cookies. I'll just get another. I try again, and fortunately the next cookie contains a larger slip of paper, one that comes out properly this time and contains actual text—quite a lot of text actually, four or five lines of it. I start to read it, murmuring aloud to help fix it in memory. It starts something like: "And earth her allies rift..." It goes on from there, not making much sense, and worse, by the time I get to the second line the first one is already changing, now "her allies" looks like it has been replaced by something in German, "die Beile."

(Weird, according to my German dictionary app "die Beile" means "axes, hatchets." I've studied a bit of German, which is why I have the app, but I'm not aware that I've ever learned that word and didn't even know if it was a real one until I looked it up.)

I continue reading the fortune, and by the time I get to the end the first line has changed again even more, and I'm pretty sure so has everything else. I realize this is somewhat hopeless, the fortune was so long that it would have been hard enough to remember even if it were static, much less track all the changes, so I just determine to remember the part that I read initially, since I think I can keep at least this much in working memory: "And earth her allies rift."

By this point the fortune has transformed into a large plastic wrapper like the sort that might have wrapped a whole box of cookies, and as I continue to look at it, I'm surprised by how much additional text is written on the side in small print: mundane details like the address of the manufacturer, etc. I see a date, "1945," and note that the place of manufacture is San Francisco, which makes sense (wasn't the fortune cookie invented there?) but by now the date has already changed to "1929."

FA: Around this time I wake up and grab the notebook I keep next to the bed to start writing things down. Something's wrong, though: even though I normally open it to a blank page before sleeping, it is now open to a page wholly printed with graphics resembling some type of manga. I don't remember the notebook having graphics! I flip through to find a blank page quickly while my memories are fresh, but all the white pages are already filled with previous notes, and they are interspersed with the manga pages, like a cross between a notebook and a graphic novel. I find a space of blank color on one of the manga images, just enough room to scribble, "and earth her allies rift," but then I feel guilty about spoiling the drawing. I don't even remember what the story is, but if I write all over it I might end up regretting it.

While I'm still trying to figure out where to put down the rest of my notes, my husband comes into the room carrying two boxes wrapped in paper, like presents. Apparently this is some new game that has just arrived that he wants to play together, a console game. I remember him telling me about it earlier: the plot has something to do with cartoonish kids and their gorilla allies. It seems that the game can only be played in two-person mode, so he has come in to try to wake me up. I'm still lying in bed, so he sets the two boxes down right on top of me and starts to rip off the paper wrapping. The boxes are cubes measuring about a foot on each side, and at first I wonder why they are so large, but as he tears off the paper I can see from the box art that they contain individual devices like Playstation controllers.

Although I do want to play the game at some point, I'm annoyed at this disruption because I was in the middle of a lucid dream attempt! After jotting down my notes I had been planning to try to re-enter the dream state. However, I already vaguely suspect that this might not be a real awakening because everything seems so exaggerated, from the problems with my notebook to my husband's rude attempt to wake me. He may not share my hobby, but he's aware of it, and would be unlikely to disturb me while I'm still sleeping, much less set boxes on me! This remains only a suspicion, and I don't become fully aware of the fact that I'm still dreaming. Rather, I conclude only that I'm still on the verge of it, since I can still feel the heaviness and tingling in my limbs that lets me know that I can probably re-enter the dreamstate once this distraction has diminished. So I quietly grumble at my husband until he leaves, careful to keep calm and not lose my temper since that could wake me up too much and make it impossible to to return to the dream. After he goes out of the room, I get myself settled in the bed again and prepare to re-transition. This is amusing in retrospect because evidently I was fully dreaming the whole time—I had the impression that I was DEILDing back into the dream, but obviously if this had been a real awakening DEILD would have been impossible after such a chaotic interlude! When I felt confident I was dreaming again, I got back out of bed.

WILD, Part 2: Having done fortune cookies, I thought I should put all my focus now into completing the Patronus TOTM. Once more I reach for my wand and once again come up empty-handed. No matter, I've used a chopstick as a wand before with great success, and I keep a jar of those right on the kitchen counter, so I walk up to it and pluck a nice sturdy one. Although the jar is mostly full of delicately-pointed Japanese chopsticks, I choose a sturdier one of the Chinese type, cut half-square and half-round. It looks just like one of my real chopsticks, from a simple and practical set I acquired many years ago in Nonthaburi because I didn't know I was supposed to give them back to the door-to-door noodle vendor, and it feels comfortable and familiar in my hand.

I figure that it would be most appropriate to summon a Patronus if there were a real threat, but I don't want to over-complicate things by going to look for one. I reason that since my husband was annoying me just now with the boxes and almost woke me up, this could serve as a sufficient stand-in. So I find him in the living room, point the wand toward him and say firmly, "Expecto Patronum!" I hear an audible "pop" like something bursting but see no change in the visual field. I try again and nothing happens at all. I strengthen my resolve, try a third time, and... what is that?... I look closer... it's... moths! The air between us where I was aiming the wand is now occupied with a cloud of small shimmering moths!

I'm delighted with these results because they were so unexpected. I figured my Patronus would turn out to be something predictable like a type of animal I like, maybe a cat or an owl or a raven or even a horse, but moths had never crossed my mind! However, I had intentionally left the form of the Patronus unspecified, because I was hoping the dream would collaborate with me creatively and come up with something interesting and unanticipated, and in this respect it fulfilled its role splendidly.

Moths! I would never have consciously arrived at this solution, but now it makes perfect sense: I am very much a night person, after all, and these are definitely night moths. I watch them for a few moments, entranced by the glitter and sparkle of their silver bodies in flight. They are relatively small, with wingspans of roughly three-quarters of an inch, but there is a whole cloud of them, many dozens filling an area several feet on either side. Although we are indoors, they appear to be illuminated by moonlight. It is incredibly beautiful. And they've fulfilled the function of a Patronus, it seems, in that they have averted the "threat" (such as it was) and completely defused the tension in the room. My husband is watching them too, and appears just as enchanted with them as I am.

After admiring the moths for a while, I notice a rabbit on the living room floor. It is wonderfully well-articulated, closely resembling Dürer's famous drawing of a hare. (Probably WLR because I briefly saw that drawing yesterday.) Since I'm still holding the wand, I figure I might as well try out another HP spell. I recall that there's one that ends with "leviosa," and although I can't remember the first word, I figure it is unimportant because clearly "leviosa" is the operative term. So I point the wand at the hare and say, "Leviosa!" Sure enough, it rises right off the ground into the air. I set it back down and pet it fondly.

I now feel satisfied that I have accomplished both the tasks I had intended, and I know I should wake up now and write promptly before I forget any details. But the dream is going so well, so clear and stable and responsive... it would be a shame to leave it so soon... I give in to the temptation to take a quick look outside, just for a minute, before coming back in to wake up and begin my report.

Walking back through the kitchen, I open the screen door to the back patio. Sometimes my WILDs become more unstable after I leave the house, probably in large part because I've developed the expectation that this can happen, but in this case I plan to wake up soon anyway, so I walk outside without hesitation.

It only takes a step or two before the environment no longer resembles my backyard. I encounter a group of four DCs, a mix of men and women who appear to be in their twenties. They begin to approach or accost me in a vaguely threatening manner. I try the Patronus charm again, but it is not as effective this time: the cloud of moths is much smaller and the DCs appear unimpressed. I'm not sure if I actually see them holding wands, or only rationalize that they might be, but I figure this would be the perfect opportunity to try another HP spell. "Expelliamus!" I shout, aiming at the guy on the far left. Sure enough, his wand jumps right out of his hand toward me, and I catch it neatly. You'd think this would give the others enough warning to prepare their defenses, and indeed they seem to be scrambling to try, but I promptly disarm them all using the same technique.

I walk on a little further, and encounter a few more DCs sitting on a low brick wall and chatting. The initial four have followed me, and I get the impression that the new ones are their friends. I wonder if they are going to retaliate at me for having taken all their wands, so try the Patronus charm yet again: "Expecto Patronum!" This time only a scattering of moths appear, a half dozen or less. I feel a bit embarrassed at this poor showing. "It must be out," I muse, wondering if the wand can only conjure a limited number of moths in a given interval.

Nevermind, I've got more tricks in my arsenal, and I want to intimidate these DCs so they'll back off. I wonder if I can levitate the whole group of people? "Leviosa!" I command, trying to make them all rise in the air at once. It doesn't work, and I speculate that maybe this is like game mechanics, where it is easier to perform such effects on simple creatures like animals, but harder on a more intelligent creature like a person, since they get a free roll to resist. I think it over and decide, well, maybe so, but... I have all the wands! Their combined power should be enough to counter any resistance. Is it possible to use more than one wand simultaneously to cast a spell? Only one way to find out!

Standing in the center of the DCs, who form a ring around me, I levitate myself initially—partly to cement the idea of levitation more firmly in mind, and partly because some of them look like they might want to make a grab at me at any minute. Hovering in the air just above them, I arrange all the wands together in my right hand so that I am gripping them evenly, and try again: "Leviosa!" This time I am pleased to see the whole circle of people around me—about six or seven now I think, the initial group plus their friends—rise simultaneously several feet into the air until they are almost even with my own level. They all look discomfited and alarmed by this change of circumstances, so to reassure them that I mean no real harm I let them sink gently back down to the ground and come down as well myself, satisfied with the results of my experiment.

I decide to stop fooling around now and go back into the house to write my report. It seems dream logic has made me forget that I can just wake up whenever I want to, I don't actually have to go back bodily into the house and manually start writing. But as I turn to go, one of the girls who has returned to her seat on the brick wall yells something hostile and sarcastic after me. I figure she's upset over my levitation stunt, so I decide to use friendliness to try to transform her attitude. I walk right up to her and, maybe taking "friendliness" a little too far, kiss her on the lips. Although she just looks startled and confused now, I smile warmly and say with genuine affection, "See you later!"

Returning to what I think must be the spot where I came out of the building, I go back inside. Just in case the DCs are still feeling miffed and try to follow me in, I lock and bolt the heavy door behind me. This is no longer the sliding screen door to my kitchen, but a large and solidly made wooden door with numerous locking mechanisms. I'm not sure if I came in the right door at all, because when I turn around I see that I'm in what looks like a nineteenth-century boiler room: it is full of heavy, old-fashioned machinery. Nevermind, I'm sure I can find the entrance to my kitchen just a little further on, so I'll go through and look for it.

As I pass by some of the machines, I marvel at their intricacy and the clarity with which I can perceive how they are constructed. I pass one machine that has a cylindrical body like an old stove. Although it is made out of solid black cast iron, there is a primitive electric cord incongruously coming out of it, so I figure it must be from a period of technological transition in the late nineteenth century. The electricity is driving some kind of rotating grinder that is hidden in the upper part of the cast iron body under a round upper plate, and with a flash of insight I think I know what this is: it must be a mill of some kind! But what is it grinding? I look at it a little longer and see a lower basin, also cast iron, positioned below the cylindrical body to catch drippings of some kind: the drippings resemble hot slag, semi-melted metal. Whatever this thing is milling, it is definitely not flour!

I continue to make my way through the room, dodging complex pieces of shaped metal and machinery that crowd around closely on all sides, but when I get to the far wall I'm disconcerted to find that there's no door. How am I going to get back into my house? Although there seems to be no exit in the walls other than the door I came in, the ceiling is so far overhead as to be out of sight, and I observe that this is less a room than a vertical shaft filled with industrial machinery all the way up, so I begin to levitate and rise through the lattice of metal bars. When I get about three storeys up I see in the wall what looks like the worn wooden cover of a hatch, arched on the top and with a flat base. There is no handle and it looks like it would be too small to crawl through comfortably, but I figure I can make a portal in the wall here to pass through.

Aiming my wand at the wall, I intend for a portal to form in the location of the hatch. Although nothing appears that I would recognize as a portal, the wall changes, the area in front of me becoming transparent, and just a few feet beyond I see a vertical transparent sheet of glass, apparently the wall of a neighboring building, a modern glass-walled high-rise. Directly across from me through the glass, I see what looks like the interior of a cafe, the sort of place the people who work in this building might stop for coffee or a snack on their lunch hour. It is dark inside and empty of customers, as it is nighttime, but I notice with mild alarm that several cops are running through the cafe and aiming guns at me! They seem very deliberate, as though this was a sting operation directed at stopping me. If they shoot, they'll surely break the glass and then I'll be exposed.

I consider making the first move and breaking the glass myself to engage them, but I don't feel like getting into combat. I point my wand toward the cops with the intention of creating some kind of protective barrier between us, but I don't see any change and can't tell if this is successful. I decide to just get out of here. Making another portal directly in front of me seems like a bad idea, because the cops might shoot at any moment, so I get a bit creative and make the portal directly under my feet—all this time I have been hovering in the air, after all—and then I take what feels like a leap of faith and simply let myself fall directly into it. Would any pursuers be able to follow? As I fall, I decide that probably the best course at this point is to let the portal lead me to waking, and so I transition from feeling as though I'm falling through a round tunnel of undefined space to waking up in my bed and scrambling to start taking notes before the memories fade.

It's interesting how clear and stable my dream memory remains—even of such a complex series of episodes—for as long as I am still dreaming, and it is only on waking that the whole fabric begins to thin and fray unless it is captured immediately. Fortunately there were no problems with my notebook this time so I jotted down the key details quickly by hand and then spent the next hour and a half typing up my full draft of the report while the memories were still fresh in mind. I don't mind devoting the time (and sacrificing the sleep) for it when the dreaming is so good!

Ritual: I got fed up with the dry spell I've been having for the past couple weeks and took drastic measures. Back in 2010 I experimented a couple times with nicotine (in patch form) as a lucidity trigger, but quickly gave it up because I found it impossible to fall asleep with even a very low dose (half a 7mg patch, so 3.5mg). These days my problem—and the main thing hampering my lucid attempts—is that I've been falling asleep way too easily, so I thought there would be a good chance I'd be able to fall sleep wearing the patch and see if it had any effects on dreaming after all.

Went to bed at midnight, woke naturally at 3:30am and stayed awake until 5am, mostly reading, but finishing the WBTB with a brief seated meditation. I googled to make sure using nicotine patches well past their expiration date was advisable, but was reassured by what I found. So I took 200mg L-Theanine to make it easier to fall asleep, and applied a 7mg patch with half its surface covered, so 3.5mg total (though the dose might have weakened with age). I also worked on my mental motivation, not just intending but vowing to get lucid tonight.

When I returned to bed I felt my heart beating faster than normal, though I wasn't sure if it was the nicotine (if so the patches must be exceptionally fast acting, because this was only minutes later) or just a consequence of the excitement and anxiety of trying something new. The feeling reminded me trying to fall asleep on galantamine, which also has a very powerful stimulant effect. However, I started counting and was reassured (and somewhat surprised) when I began to lose my place already by the time I hit "ten." I reset and kept counting, rarely making it as far as "ten," and often not past "one," until I felt my mind had reached a place where I could easily fall asleep, then turned on my side to do so.

I fell asleep very quickly, although my intention to remain aware of the transition went nowhere—I just zonked out. I woke up almost two hours later with the memory of a DILD and least one FA. The dreams were definitely atypical in tone: the plot was epic and confrontational, which I attribute to the nicotine. The dream awareness was spontaneous rather than triggered, but the lucidity was at very low level. Worse, my dream recall was unusually vague and fragmentary.

DILD: The dream had a complex narrative that I can't satisfactorily recall. The most notable aspect was that my husband was in it and my dream logic concluded that it was a shared dream and that he was actually there and trying to learn the ropes of lucidity from me. We were trying to summon spirit allies, and he wanted a gryphon. The first version looked cartoonish, reminiscent of the monsters from Where the Wild Things Are, but it wasn't a proper gryphon. Neither were the next two, though they were massive, monstrous creatures that reminded me of the kinds of avatars you would summon in the later Final Fantasy games. When I summoned my own spirit ally, I was surprised to find that it was just a somewhat transparent virtual version of me.

(Source: I think this was day residue, as last night in ME3 my Shepard came across the holograph AI of herself on the Citadel. The notion of iconographically incorrect gryphons might have been inspired by the poor versions I saw in the astonishingly bad—so bad it was almost good, I couldn't stop laughing—film version of Hercules I caught the last fifteen minutes of on cable yesterday evening.)

I wish I remembered the plot of the dream more clearly. There was a group of entities that we were in conflict with, and they were insisting that I was breaking the rules of dream in some way. I disagreed, as I felt justified to do as I liked in my own dream, so I countered by exerting a massive field of control over the environment that made the ground shudder and shattered buildings. It wasn't quite an earthquake, more a gravity-reversing vibration: I have a mental image of dust and dirt rising and hovering in the air accompanied by an almost subsonic drone. It felt good to do this, powerful, though something of a guilty pleasure.

(Source: I was sure there was a waking life source for this image of dust rising from the earth in the wrong direction but couldn't remember; now it occurs to me that it might have been from the movie Transcendence, which I saw last month.)

At one point I had the presence of mind to wonder, or maybe someone asked me: was I actually hurting anyone by doing this? But I pointed out that you can't hurt DCs merely by disrupting their physical bodies, because the dream state does not have that kind of continuity. I demonstrated this by plucking my own spirit ally from deep in the rubble where she had been buried and reviving her.

I might actually have remembered somewhere in all of this to try the Patronus TOTM, which had been my intention before falling asleep, but if so I don't recall the outcome, unless that was somehow connected with the idea of spirit allies. Too vague to be sure, unfortunately.

FA: I woke up next to my husband and wondered if it had really been a shared dream, so I watched his reaction carefully. He gave me a look which led me to conclude that it had been. But before long it began to dawn on me that this might be a false awakening, and soon I was sure of it. I decided to review the events of the previous dream in my mind before I forgot, but as I was doing so, I became aware that my mind was interpolating new ideas, and whole new scenes were even taking place, spinning off from my memories of the previous plotline—this is the risk of reviewing dream memories while you're still dreaming!

For instance, when I thought about our spirit allies, a girl showed up at the foot of the bed who I took to be a transformation of the gryphon in the previous dream, only now she looked human and very familiar. I tried to place her face and decided she resembled the character "Marnie" from Girls. Not sure where that came from, as I haven't watched an episode of that since the last season ended.

Then when I was trying to remember the main plot, it became confused with a new plotline in which I was worried that war was imminent and that if it took place, the spirits of mythological creatures would fuse with nuclear bombs to create a weapon that was as devastating to dream as to the waking world.

I was out trying to investigate and prevent this outcome, and found myself in the house of people who had melee weapons shaped like real or imaginary animals. One was a rod with a sculpted head shaped like the head of an animal that mingled the qualities of a lizard and a single-horned rhinocerous. Another was a club shaped like a narrow stylized boar, and while my husband was handling it, I noticed that it could also be fired like a crossbow. Again, very random imagery.

Conclusion: I would call this a partial success at best, as the low-level awareness and limited recall made the overall experience less than satisfactory, and I didn't actually succeed in doing the TOTM that was my original goal. Still, breaking my dry spell by any means is reassuring. It definitely felt like nicotine had an effect on dream content, and I attribute the unusually "epic and confrontational" quality to its influence. However, after waking up I felt almost as uncomfortable and unrested as I do after using galantamine, so while I might experiment a little more along these lines, I will not be making this a frequent induction method—which is probably for the best, nicotine bad and all that.

30.08.2014

Lucid Hattrick - Three Dares completed! (MILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

Lucid Hattrick!!! Three dares completed in one shot!!

After waking up and not able to recall a dream, I started to use the MILD technique, something I have been doing for a couple of days and I focused on getting some dares done.

I ended up forgetting the non-lucid part of the dream, actually, I recalled right away writing down this whole dream in my Dream Journal and getting comfy back in bed, and I hoped to remember it in the morning, but I did not mind if I did not, as it was not a spectacular dream anyway, and well... I forgot it lol.

So, this dream started with a False Awakening. I was in my room and I was going to write down the dream, but I had some difficulty and I was unable to write the dream down, so I sat on the side of my bed and trying to focus a little bit to be able to write it, but I felt weird and I my wife woke up. I told her I was feeling funny and I said,

- Imagine I was dreaming.

My wife laughed and told me:

- Yeah, right. Go back to sleep. - And she just tucked herself back in bed and I did a Reality Check. And I laughed and said, "Well.. I am in dreaming indeed. But my wife was either gone or just she fell back asleep." The dream quality was not great and I had the feeling all the time that I was going to wake up, so I exited the house and started to fly, demanding to get clarity and to anchor myself in the dream. A few times, I lost vision, but I knew I was still dreaming, so I did my best to open my dream eyes while I anchored myself into the dream, with success.

I found myself in downtown but I still did not feel like myself, so I decided to enter a big building, which was a hotel and eat some food, as I was sure that the taste of food would anchor me further into the dream. I asked a woman I saw there if she knew where I could find an apple, and she directed me to the kitchen. When I entered the kitchen, it was not a kitchen, but one of those meeting rooms, with large tables on the side and said tables contained food, veggies, fruits and meats from all times, apparently, the meat was raw and uncooked, but as I was looking for something to eat, I realized my dream was pretty good and clear, so I passed on the fruits and decided to work on some dares. Since I have not been dared yet to anything, I decided to work on the "anyone" dares, and I got started with:

"Let yourself fall from a great height and hit the ground at full speed (Xanous)"

I felt it was an easy one and since I was in a huge building, all I needed to do was to climb it, so I started to fly, exited through one of the windows and flew to the top. As I reached the top, I could see that I was in the tallest building of all downtown (I believe this mightn't been the Trump Tower because of the shape.) All the cars and people looked tiny.







I decided to jump. Before I did, I was laughing with myself because it would be funny the mayhem I was going to cause when I crashed in the ground. So I just jumped off, head first and I flew at full speed. It still took a while, even though the speed of the fall fell amazing on my face. As I was about to hit the ground, I wondered if someone would grab me, but no one did and I crashed hard in the ground. It felt similar to when you fall in bed, but it was a lot harder, but I bounced back. I could hear a big noise type of "splat!" but it did not hurt and it neither affected the quality of the dream.

So much for thinking I would make a mess... no one seemed to care I crashed in the ground... oh well! Dare completed!!

I recalled the next task:

Do a 'trust fall' (free fall backwards) into the arms of the nearest DC. Did they catch you? (Dreamer)

I had no idea who made this challenge, but I was able to recall it well, so I walked to a plaza that was busy with a lot of people. I walked by a lady who was in her 30s and very good looking, so I thought it would be a great opportunity for this catch.







I said, "Hi there!" and immediately, gave her my back and I free fell. She indeed grabbed me and asked me if I was okay! I told her, "Sure I am, thanks a lot!! Another Dare completed!!" (I thought that I had t be caught in order to successfully accomplish this dare.) The lady appeared to be attracted to me, as she making a lot of eye contact with me and she was like taking care of me, if you know what I mean...

I recalled it would be another good chance to get one more dare completed, which is:

Get naked in front of a DC (Dreamer)

So, since the mood was there, I just found out it would be a cheap way to get this one done, and then, hattrick the dares. I look my clothes off and she started to do so as well, while we were still in the middle of the place, but no one seemed to care. Dare completed!!!!

I felt this was a great dream, and I did not want to risk it due to having sex with the woman, so I just took of and started to fly away from there.

I suddenly lost control of the dream and had a false awakening. I felt, "So much for not having sex to save the dream..." As I was about to write down the lucid, I had a funny feeling that my mind was playing games with me. I could not see a thing, so I started to touch my fingers. I could feel five fingers, but something was not right. I had a couple more false awakenings and then I lit a small light in order to see my hands, the light came out to be very pale, but that, I did not notice, however, upon checking my hands I realized I was still dreaming.

I walked away from bed, and I was still naked, but I did not care, I fly naked many times, so I just took off and I started to fly. It was dawn and it was very foggy:







It felt great to fly in the nude, as it was fresh, but not cold. While I was flying I thought of a fourth dare to get done while I was at it:

Apparently, it was not a anyone dare, in fact, I cannot find this dare at all, but I know someone said to do this in Dreamviews recently. It was about applying Photoshop effect to something:

I landed next to some city lights, and decided to apply the Photoshop effect. I moved my hand, pointing at the city lights and visualized them changing color, which they did successfully. Then, I decided to apply Bevel and Emboss to one of the city lights upon waving my hand into them, I was able to see how it turned thick, like if it was a Photoshop layer. I decided to wrap it up with adding shine light effect to the light bulb of one of them, said bulb turned very shinny and bright.

As I was about to do something else, I woke up.

25.08.2014

Eating flowers on a mountain after a chain of False Awakenings (DILD)

NON-DREAM DREAM LUCID

This was a very "interesting" dream... very inception type of dream, very confusing but i beat my subconscious and turned lucid. Since I am pretty much settled already then I have again my journal next to me, and I reminded myself to go back to the old good doing of journal dreams.


So this dream started after a FA, where I recalled perfectly the previous dream I had, very long and it appears it was one of those healing dreams. I tried to write it down, but then I had another FA.

After that, I had several FAs in a row, on some of them I would start to write down the dream and then fall asleep while doing it. On others, I would have issues moving and I would think I was awake under sleep paralysis, so I would try to WILD, tricking me into a chain of FAs.

Until one time that I had another FA, and I tried to write down the dream. I would find several DJs, some of them from years ago, and most of them without clean papers, all full of text and I wondered what it was going on until I realized that those DJs are from the past and I was dreaming. I thought that I was going to forget the 1st dream, but I did not care. But as soon as I tried to stabilize the dream, I passed out and started another FA.

I was going to write down the dream and my wife awoke and started to distract me. I told her that I needed to write down a dream as I was in the verge of forgetting it. My wife tried the best to avoid me writing the reading. I found that it made nosense and I was in another dream. My wife tried to tell me I was awake, what was I taking about and I showed my hand to her and said, "I have seven freaking fingers, and this one is as large as a Twizler, come on!"

I jumped out of bed and I exited the house. My subconscious already got used to this house, and being a house I do no longer have the staris to just jump and fly, so I had to jump a few times on the ground to take off.

After a while flying, I landed on a mountain and I realized that being so busy at all, I did not do the ToTM yet, so I was going to get started with it, until I realized that I have not even checked the ToTM for this month (gooooooooooood jooooooooob!!) so I realized what could I do instead.

I recalled someone dared to eat something you hate in waking life. I remember those flowers that fancy restaurants put with meat sometimes, that you actually eat them, they are disgusting, so I decided to look for some. I saw a bush with several of those flowers (no bees, yay!) and I grabbed one and put it in my mouth.



It tasted like a mix of watermelon and lettuce, and it would just literally melt in my mouth, did not taste half bad actually and grabbed a few more. Once with the task done, I decided to wake myself up in order to hope to save the first non lucid dream.

I had a few FAs until I finally woke up for real.

Recalled the lucid perfectly, but the first dream... entirely obliterated, lol.

Ritual: Went to bed at 2am, much later than I had intended. Wanted to wake up between 4-4:30 if possible so I could make a sandwich for my husband to take on his flight. Didn't set alarm, only intention; if it didn't work, that was fine. Woke up promptly at four so got up and went to the kitchen. Then I realized if I didn't stay up to give him the sandwich he would never know it existed, so in the end I didn't go back to bed until after he left at 5. I repeated my tasks aloud a few times to make them easier to remember, using simple keywords: "eyeball, calcifer, fairy tale." Wanted to give SSILD another fair shake after recent lack of success—been falling asleep too easily. After this hour-long WBTB I arranged a ramp of pillows to elevate my upper body and settled back to do SSILD, supposing that the half-reclining would help inhibit sleep. It did—and I realized I had been semi-dozing rather than really sleeping when I got up again at 5:40 and decided to dismantle the pillow-ramp to get some proper sleep. I didn't notice REM during any of these sleep and half-sleep periods so I wasn't optimistic, but I did a couple SSILD cycles on my side before drifting off to sleep fairly quickly. It was 6:30am when I woke up for real (after FA) and began this account.

FA: "....it ignored me, and I felt silly talking to a fire."

Okay, guess now I have to start over. Wrote half of the account up in FA. Which is funny, because when I woke up I did sense that I could probably re-enter the dream state but decided not to because I wanted to write a solid report on what I'd done so far. And here I had felt so responsible and industrious! I wrote down quite a bit but only remember the last line word for word, so I reproduced it above. It's interesting that it is worded in the past tense. My dream reports often swap randomly between past and present tense but the present tense predominates.

DILD: I was in my bedroom in the half-light of early morning, and I heard voices outside the room. This confused me, because no one else should be home right now. One of them sounded like my brother, but he shouldn't be here. And I could hear another voice, a man's voice I didn't recognize. I grabbed my phone from the nightstand, thinking I'd dial in "9-1-1" and have the call ready to go if needed before I investigated further, in case it was burglars or something.

The phone wasn't working. It seems to be stuck on the calendar app, and even this is in some weird and confusing format. I keep pressing the main button to try to get back to the home screen so I can reach the page to dial from, but nothing helps. I still hear the voices and worry that the intruders might come into the room before I can get the phone working and then I'll have no recourse. Should I go outside to the back patio, so it will be easier to run away if necessary? At some point the absurdity of the whole scenario finally strikes me and I wonder if I'm dreaming. Since no one is around to see, I do a quick nose pinch. I can breathe easily. So I am dreaming! Oh good, there were tasks I needed to get done! I realize that since this was a DILD, I'm probably already fairly well-integrated into the dream state and check my impressions. A bit of roughness as I begin to move but not too bad, and the dream feels stable. I don't feel the need for further stabilization as long as I can avoid letting the paranoia of waking wake me up, so I put it out of mind and walk rapidly to the kitchen.

I've brought my phone and figure it might come in handy at some point later on, so I try to slide it into the pocket of my skirt. Trouble is, I'm not wearing a skirt. I make the "sliding into pocket" gesture a few times, intending a long skirt with pockets to manifest, but it doesn't and the phone falls to the floor. Whatever. At least the pattern is in place, so I feel confident that I can get it out of my pocket later if I need it.

I grab the bread from the kitchen counter, noting that it is a packet of round pita bread rather than the sandwich loaf that is there in waking life, and head out to the patio. Which task first? I love the idea of Howl's Moving Castle so I decide to start with that one. First I try to summon the castle directly, not through any special method, just willing it to approach on its own legs. It doesn't appear promptly, so I start with plan B: conjure a fire, call it "Calcifer," and feed it until it becomes strong enough to build the castle from the ground up. The first part should be easy; I've practiced conjuring fire before in this very spot. So I hold out my right hand and concentrate on creating a flame in my open palm. There's just one problem. It is raining, quite heavily actually. Typical dream perversity! I'm trying to fill my palm with fire, but meanwhile it is filling up with water. I ignore the dream's little joke, and keep concentrating on the fire.

Sure enough, I shortly begin to feel the heat and see the brightness of the flame. I set it on the ground and start feeding it chunks of pita bread, calling it "Calcifer" and trying to coax it to respond. It grows larger at first, but doesn't show any sentience, and now the rain is causing it to dwindle despite my attempts to feed it. I decide to continue this experiment indoors, out of the rain. I pick up the fire, just carrying it in my hands, go inside and set it down again on a flat stone ledge, about two and half feet in width and height (the interior of the house no longer corresponds in any way to RL). I feed the fire and continue calling it "Calcifer" to try to get a response, but it ignores me, and I feel silly talking to a fire. I go outside, careful to take the fire out again with me so as not to leave it untended in the house, and fly up in the air before releasing it. I instruct it to go seek out Howl's Castle, hoping that it might reappear at some point later point in the dream.

I return to the ground, once again in a place recognizably like my back patio, though it is no longer raining. What next? I realize the eyeball task should be quick and easy, if I can stomach it, so I ought to knock that one out of the way. I consider going inside the house to use a real mirror, but I don't want to waste time so I stand outside the sliding glass door to the kitchen and rely on the faint reflection of myself I can see there. There is nothing unusual about my reflection—much less so than usual, actually. When thinking about this task in waking life I had decided (for the sake of safety and squeamishness) to try to remove the eyeball in a more hands-off way, simply raising my palm and trying to pop it out through will alone, but now that I'm ready to go I don't even remember that idea. Instead I lift my right hand to my right eye and just start digging in there. I feel a momentary discomfort, enough to make me think, "I'd better be damn sure I'm dreaming!" before I feel the fingers slide smoothly into the socket with little pain, and this reassures me.

The eye pops out easily, but it is attached to a surprisingly thick, gross, fleshy stalk. Even at the time I realize that my experience has probably been colored by other accounts of this task I've already read on the DV thread, some of which mention similar stalks. The stalk is inconvenient and ugly so I keep pulling until the eyeball breaks free, then turn it around to inspect it. It looks remarkably like an eyeball. I had been hoping that it would transform into something cool, like an orb of glass or even a jewel. But nope. It is a disturbingly life-like eyeball, with a distinct iris and pupil and even a bit of red tattered membrane where the stalk had been attached. When I aim the iris and pupil toward me, they already look dead and unseeing, so it doesn't occur to me to try to use this eyeball to see with. Also, although I don't take note of this at the time, in retrospect I can report that there was no subjective change in my experience of vision; I was still "seeing" as though with two intact eyes.

I had meant to look at my reflection again after pulling the eye out, but I forget to do so. Instead I'm absorbed in inspecting this very ordinary-looking eyeball and trying to find any notable details to report. I do observe that the iris seems to have changed color: from the initial blue it has faded to a drab brown. It is still kind of creepy to be holding my eyeball, so without experimenting further I pop it back in. Luckily no difficulties there, and only then do I remember to check my reflection. I look normal and still don't notice any changes to my vision. I feel a momentary regret that I didn't remember to try to transform the eyeball into something else before putting it back in, but I feel reasonably satisfied with the task so I'm ready to move on.

Now I'm down to the last of the three tasks I'd planned, and I feel a bit apprehensive. In one way or another, this damned Hansel and Gretel idea has been eluding me. But I still have my bag of pita bread, so I get started: my plan is to start dropping breadcrumbs as I walk, hopefully find myself in a forest, and see what happens from there. I re-read the story a few weeks ago in my copy of Brothers Grimm, but I haven't tried to flesh out the intended scenario because I want to give the dream leeway to respond creatively to my breadcrumb trail. So I start walking across the patio and dropping crumbs, and now I just have to figure out which way to go. My original plan had been to start on the street in front of the house, which had once transformed into an ideal forest in a previous unrelated dream, but now I'm behind the house and want to get started right away rather than have my plans potentially disrupted by a detour. It's okay, I'd planned for this too. I figured the hill behind the house might be wild enough that I could start climbing it and work it into a suitable forest. However, now when I look in that direction, I see a paved concrete footpath that leads between suburban houses with neatly trimmed lawns. Dream is being perverse again. In the opposite direction is a second path, smaller, with a similar suburban aspect. Which one will lead me sooner to a forest? Both look completely domesticated. I figure I'll just start with the first one and try thinking "forest" as I go. I start off, dropping my bread crumbs, but with no warning I wake up—or out of the dream, at least. As mentioned above, I sensed that I could re-enter the dream state but decided to write my report instead, was under the impression that I had gotten up, and wrote for quite a while before waking up for real.

I've had this strange false awakening today. Well, like every other false awakening, I found myself in my bed. Still lying down, I tried to recall the dreams I had had. There were at least four of them and one of them was a lucid. I remembered quite some details about all of them, but when I woke up for good I was unable to recall anything more than this. I wonder if the dreams I recalled within the dream actually were dreams I had had during the night or just mere projections that appeared at that moment.

Fragment 1 ,12:33 AM: Dreamer is teaching me how to WILD. A neat SL where I am "aware" that I am in a NLD. Driving in a car, with brightly-colored backgrounds to the environment. Dreamer's main advice seems to be relax and have fun. Dog bark and shout in WL from the street wake me up and out of this. Believe Xanous here as well, but not sure.

Fragments 2, 5:28 AM: Dreamer is teaching the whole DV community how to WBTB and incubate dreams. At some point I am nervous about my dream practice, but then decide that whatever I am doing is probably OK. More here but C/R.

Lucid, 8:45 AM: I am walking between classes back in high school. I am outside, and walking along a sidewalk outside. I glance at my wristwatch and realize it is 6:40 pm. I am confused, as I am not sure how it can be 6:40 at night while I am at school. I nose pinch and can breathe. I become lucid, but do not fully understand what is going on. I am under the impression that my WL body is asleep somewhere on campus (maybe I took a nap somewhere?) and that I will be late for class if I don't wake up. I try to wake up a few times (by "opening my eyes") and fail. I am surprised, b/c this has not failed me in the past.

Before I try to wake up, though, I decide to enjoy the dream a bit. I attempt to fly, and C/R whether or not I manage to do so. However, I do climb up a metal radio tower of sorts, and consciously make my body lighter in order to pull myself through the air and not damage the thing, fragile pieces of tower. In dream, I think I am adjusting gravity, lol. I try very hard to remember where I have fallen asleep, or what waking life looks like at the moment, but cannot.

FA: I "awake" from this dream into a world more populated with DCs, but same landscape. I am no longer a student at the school but am now a teacher (wtf?). I hear a PA announcement telling me to come to the dean's office. I follow, and am met by someone who demands to know where I have been. I explain that I fell asleep "up in some damned tower" and am told my picture needs to be taken. A ceremony is going on, and I am asked to partake in it. A special, heavy jacket is placed on my shoulders. However, the people involved soon find out I am not a Christian and take the jacket back! I don't care though and just wander off. Another announcement comes over the PA and says employees cannot leave until 4:30 pm.

Fragment 3: My stepfather taking family out to eat. My mom narrates this dream, explaining how he has exerted control over us using his wealth and influence (). He says something nasty to me, but I do not respond, as I am conscious of eating the roast beef dinner he has just paid for.

Fragment 4: A man is teaching children to LD. He explains that a good reality check for children to do is to stop breathing, and wait for a superhero to rescue them. He advises parents to keep a good watch on their child though, as sometimes a superhero will not arrive and the child may die. He demonstrates by saving a child who is currently not breathing (and obviously not being rescued via dream!).