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non-dream dream semi-lucid lucid false awakening

At a nudist swimming pool with my mom. We go take a shower before going to the pool and it's all genders mixed. Robert Mueller is taking a shower there. He is to friendly and gets to close and his penis touches me. I feel very uncomfortable but my mom seems to like him... until he kisses a younger guy that arrives and then she feels a bit shocked. He asks if we are ok with it. I say I am (now his dick touching me doesn't affect me much) but my mom is suggesting it isn't ok by her. We have a bunch of stuff to put in the lockers, but they are all taken. She decides to just leave stuff on the ground over a towel, but I go back because I think some one will steal it. I find a Chinese and an Indian or Pakistani dude putting prices on our stuff and trying to sell it. I have an argument with them, they get a bit scared, asks me for proof it is my stuff. I raise my voice and say I am ready to fight and they back of. (sorry for this sort of racist dream)

In a nerd convention with Riverstone. We are sitting at a table, eating and drinking. I won some contest but it's because I followed a hint from him. Something about a quote that I guess it's from Star Wars. They call half a dozen winners to the front of the stage to hand the prizes (several electronic items). They are all marked with our names but someone used a marker that disappears on touch causing a chaos. Meanwhile, some Latin dude in a camouflage jumpsuit is walking among us, and someone yells he wants to kill someone. I look back and he has an electronic command in his hand and points it over all our heads to a nearby stand. There is an explosion. He is pinned down by people and some of us run to the stand to help whomever needs help but luckily everybody is ok. There were also some kittens on a box for adoption and even they are ok. I pick them up and kiss them gently. Then I meet Riverstone who had lost me in the chaos and is sick worried.

Lisbon is very changed, lots of tourists, even more than nowadays. I am taking a tour under the theme of urban art. At the Anjos area, some guy spots me at a distance and starts yelling announcing me. I don't remember his face but I go check if it is someone I know. It is some guy from my activism days. And he was yelling at his friends, but a bunch of them has already left in a car. They get however suck in traffic not so far ahead, so they wave at me. They aged, some are fatter, other grew beards. The one guy left behind takes me to visit a girl who now works in a fancy restaurant of a famous chef. She looks like Guiomar. She shows me around, the chef is baking some cakes and I say I am hungry but are they vegetarian? The chef says no.
Then my friends have some gifts for me that they say I must absolutely take: a kind of wooden centerpiece with colorful paintings.

Then I get to see through the eyes of some guy who robbed a museum with some friends and he is now on a wheelchair. He wants to revisit the place and a friend says not to or they'll catch him, but he is not worried. They do catch him but he doesn't feel so bad about it. Asks what's in the menu in the prison. I think he actually wanted to be caught.

non-dream dream semi-lucid lucid false awakening

Going through an office, like a school or library administration, until someone detects I am not a worker there. But I am trying to go across and find the exit or a passage or access to some place and I say I am just leaving. (This is a recurrent dream).

Then with mom at what seems like a museum and we are caught in the middle of people marching or parading. I see a giant snake gliding on the floor between them. For some reason we start following them while singing along Bohemian Rhapsody. Then we continue our path on the street. It's already dark and we need to be careful as by the side of the road, there are lots of potholes with lava. I see someone falling into one but doesn't die. Instead, he gets his legs covered in lava as if it is jam or something sticky.

Surprised to find that my house has a basement and lots of storage space and my dad saying "I told you, you would forget about all the rooms you have in such a big house". Except that no, it is not my house but a house I visited when looking for a place to buy. We had loved this house but the price was so high we didn't even argue with the salesperson, we just left. Also, the house is in the city, why did we even check it out? As we leave, I notice my mom looks much younger and thinner, must be about my current age.

Then I visit my uncles in Amadora, at their first house that I can only remember in dreams, but it looks different. The streets are modernized. They used to be just empty land and now there is a brick pavement all around with nice parking lots. It's like I am accessing memories and rearranging and changing them.

non-dream dream semi-lucid lucid false awakening

I woke up in my teenage bedroom at my parent's house. There is a noise of jets outside and I go check it out and see three Northrop black planes passing by. They are flying quite low. But the stranger thing is they come back and pass in front of my window a couple more times and then come even closer and start circling my building as if scanning it. Last circle they slow down and come really close to my window, like less than a meter away and I realize they are tiny, no more than a meter wide, so they are actually unmanned drones and they seem to be very interested in me. Were they looking for me or did I attract their interest for being up staring at them while everyone else sleeps?
I then remember getting my phone to film, but it's too late, they are gone. Meanwhile my mom is awaking and I wanna tell her, she will freak out, but she is dressed up already and in a hurry to go somewhere for a few days for some conference. I feel worried, she never leaves abruptly like this.
Later on my father opens the door to a lady and her son. I don't like the woman, she is full of herself, but her son is actually a cool kid. They seem to be trying to fix us together, but there's no way, he is just a kid. Am I also a kid? Because I don't feel like it. I show him my room, the room from my teen years. He likes the furniture but dislikes the arrangement and gives me some advices on decoration. I'm like "seriously?".

I go to a museum with Riverstone and Nighthawk. At some point I split from them and go to the museum shop where something strange seems to be happening. There is some lady from a religious organization and a bishop and they are talking some fundamentalist shit to people. Clearly something is about to happen, and I decide to get out from there. But when I reach the door, a fat lady is locking it up with everybody inside. People seem confused and nonreactive, but I protest violently and even start crying making up that my mom is the hospital and I need to go see her. They don't care, they are doing a protest and basically taking everybody in the museum as hostages. They take us to an auditorium and force us to watch some kind of play, that I am sure is meant to brainwash us into their cause. But after offering resistance repeatedly and they reacting violently, I decide to resist by being a nuisance and making noise with some plastics I had in my bag and loud commentaries throughout their attempted play.

Non-dream stuff: Woke up at 8, with the usual alarms and auto radio. Could remember a dream fragment but tried too hard to remember it so decided instead to set another alarm for 9:30 and try to sleep more. Woke up at 9:30 and remembered a dream but was fading a little.

Non-lucid dream fragment, going backwards:

4: Starting from the end of the dream, I remember some frozen strips of pork. I know we were at some bigger and altered version of my partner's dad's house. I was going to cook them over a fire and I took a little strip off and ate it raw - very quickly I thought "Crap, you can't eat raw pork, what the hell am I doing? This is how you can get worms..." but then I also (conveniently...) remembered this was bacon, which in many cases can be eaten "raw" because of the process to make it. This is the last portion of the dream before I woke up.

3: I remember walking around the house before that, looking for my partner. It was strange, I was half-aware that this was a dream because I remember thinking that this was exactly like another time as I opened some doors and went through the crooked and narrow halls. I remember in the dream context there were some doors that unleashed swarms of spiders (dream memory someone had told me) but they were already open and my dream self knew which these were.

2: Before that, I can't remember if I was in a different place, but I think I was looking at a screen (but it feels like I wasn't) with my partner and there was a museum and a large limestone statue of someone like David the Thinker or Atlas, carrying the world. On the statue however, was an old friend of mine who I'd had a crush on in waking life; she was mostly naked apart from some (to me) weird leather laces around her limbs and pelvis; she was posing on or against the statue in a heroic pose, for a photo or something, as she was looking up and away, smiling.

1: And finally the earliest thing I can remember vaguely is that there was some sort of room. An office room maybe.

---

Some notes:

• My old school friend should have been a good cue of a dream sign; not only was she someone that is simply not present in my life at all anymore, she was in a very odd situation. The leather lace stuff might have been because in waking life I remember she told me that she self-harmed. As a kid I didn't think too much about that, actually.
• The pose my old school friend was taking, was a behaviour accurate to her real personality, when I knew her anyway.
• In my partner's dad's house, I was aware of my partner being there, and do vaguely remember seeing him at some point.
• The thing with the bacon should have made me do a RC because from one moment to another I decided it was fine, when I was almost panicking for doing something so stupid initially.
• Waking life note: Must remember to, after doing something stupid, even if it's fine afterwards, do a RC.
• The spider swarm releasing doors, though I wasn't afraid of them, I was wary of them, even open. I felt like the spiders were moving around but I carried on with walking through the house.
• I remember there was a skylight in one of the corridors in the dream; in reality there is no skylight at all in that house.

It's been 3/4 of a year since I stopped lucid dreaming, lately I've been making an effort to take it up since I can fit it into my life again. I've made no real attempts, just meditating and going to sleep earlier... But last night I got home late and had one heck of an experience.

Dream - I Died
I'm in a museum with someone else (a friend I think), it's no where I know IRL. I look up and see a huge dome shaped skylight and on either side of the room there are stairs spiraling up. Me and my friend move on to another room where there's a lot of clockwork items behind glass display cases. I look around a bit and see that they're really varied in purposes, I thought at first they were actual clocks but begin to see that they're actually ancient and steam-punk.

(gap in dream/memory)

I'm at my friends place in their living room, it's a small flat with simple furniture but the place has a lot of character (dark goth art and melted candles, looks like a witch's coven). My friend and his gf who live there together have gone somewhere and I'm sitting on the sofa, it's dark and wet outside. The front door bursts open and my friends GF's dad walks in and sees me - he thinks I'm a burglar. (IRL I know he's a gang member and he's the standard 'big dude with a motorbike and leather jacket' type). He's instantly mad and rushes up to me and pulls out a gun - I panic and put my hands up saying "No don't shoot I'm Daniels friend!" but he doesn't hear me. He just screams "What the F*** are you doing here and who the f*** are you!", but he doesn't wait for a reply - his gun fires and shudders my ears. I feel the hole it ripped in my chest, and the blood spilling from it. I'm breathless and in shock, I knew I was going to die. I wake up but I still feel like I'm dying, the memory of being shot was so vivid that I was confused about where I was - am I in hospital? No.. I'm okay. I had to physically check my chest was okay since it seemed so real, I think this is the 3rd death-by-gunshot dream I've had and it's the most vivid one too.

18th century. It was a late afternoon. I visited some woman in early thirties - she had dark hair and was wearing a gray coat - in a museum, she was a teacher leading a group of children. We started dancing to music played on a strange piano - whenever a girl playing on that piano pressed a button, one of huge lightbulbs on top of it went lit. We talked as we danced, children watching. We were talking about some ghost of a kid in some old orphanage. Everything went black. I woke up in my house on the floor, some woman in early twenties lying on top of me. She had long white hair and was wearing only green underwear. The girl that played on a piano slept in my bed. I said "Hell, DC wake up and let me stand." After a while she woke up and we both got up. The piano girl woke up too and asked "Aren't we late by now? We must go!" The woman stripped of her clothes and we both said "No, we've got something to do first." Then we had sex.

The dream is somewhat recurring - place is the same and events of previous dream that happened there are mentioned many times.

Fragment

I was in my house, it was a midnight already. I was working in my laptop.

Dream

I was in Rio de Janeiro, in some kind of underground museum complex. I had a strong feeling that I was there before and thought "Again in that city. Maybe this visit would be better than previous one. And I might take some photos this time too!", then I went down some wooden stairs and entered a hallway with exhibits. There were many Christian figures and many other stuff chiseled in a brown rock. In one of the halls there was a strange figurine of Jesus. It looked really creepy in half-darkness, looking at me with ominous smile. I took some photos though, and noticed some arcs of energy on them. I thought "That's strange. Reminds me of previous visit in here.". I wandered some more around the place, visiting places that I've seen before. There were stairways made of black oak, I moved cautiously on them as there were pools with magma and a waterfall to which one could easily fall.

I decided to leave the museum and took a walk, thinking "This city offers a lot of entertainment". There was a great festival, people were dancing and playing on instruments. I took some more photos of festival, huge waterfall and some bay in the moonlight. All the time I saw those arcs of energy on them and got scared of dark god's returning after it was defeated in my last visit. I ran into an abandoned house - place where dark god was defeated last time and wandered in darkness. Wraiths that were damned to haunt that place were aggressive all the time and openly attacked me. I decided to get back into the hotel near museum and find some help. I met pal from previous class there, he reminded me what happened when we last me there, though it didn't had anything to do with dark god. I showed him photos and movies from all around the city and from the haunted house. He believed me, then the dark god have risen and opened up volcanic chasms around the hotel.

Dream fragment - Bird of Paradise
I remember seeing a whole bunch of these flowers known as 'Bird of Paradise'. I thought to myself that I should tell my friend about them so he could come get one for his girlfriend.

Note: yesterday my friend told me he was looking to find a bird of paradise flower for his gf because they were her favourite, surprised this manifested in my dreams O_O

Dream - Museum
I'm in a museum with my friend Matt and a girl (I think it might be his ex gf?), there's some sort of god who resides here and owns the place. We head downstairs into a room with all these ancient greek mythology related artifacts, everything had a grey-black rock material that covered them. It was sleek and smooth, and fitted the form of each item perfectly and I think it was meant to 'freeze' them in time and preserve them. I remember I went off into a side room and knocked a Cupid angel (isn't this Roman?) statue by accident which cracked a little. Oops. I head out of the room, noting that there are special techniques and stuff in there too (like in little CDs that you somehow download into yourself?). I walk back to the downstairs room where Matt and the girl are perusing the artifacts on display. It was things like the Aegis shield, the head of Hercules which had an intensely ornate helmet on it, or the head of Medusa etc. Matt accidentally knocks another Cupid angel... It cracks. "Damn dude you broke it" . Suddenly I see something flesh-like beneath the rock layer of the statue which twitches and moves... "Hey it's moving" I say, and the grey-black layer coating the statue starts crumbling off. Oh shit. Me, Matt and the girl all run towards the side room. In this room an arrow is let loose at us, it's the other Cupid statue! It came to life as well. I quickly grabbed a handful of those CD techniques and we all scrambled back out and continued to run. I also remember some of the CDs having references to Star Wars. The pictures on the front of one had Luke Skywalker holding a lightsaber.

Felt too sleepy to bother remembering my dreams, and I got up earlier.

Non-dream
Non-lucid
Lucid

Had to write this in the afternoon after my exam so my brain is fried and I can't recall it too clearly anymore. On the upside: no more uni!

Dream - Museum expedition
This was quite a vivid dream, I was wandering around a museum with my friend John. He was off somewhere else while I was looking at some bronze weapons and jewellery. It transitions to a different museum now and I walk off to an area I was interested in looking at: more bronze jewellery and weapons. There were also plates and other bronze-age ancient look equipment. I saw everything in hyper detail, everything was displayed on a wall (all the walls were modern and white looking). A pretty blonde girl walks past which I notice, the dream world has been very realistic and mundane at this point but starts to take a more abnormal turn. John comes over and we turn to our right and go further into the museum. A huge mining equipment that looks more like ancient siege equipment is in front of us. It's in front of an old mine shaft that's absolutely huge (like 15m high?) so that the miner thing can get inside and, well, mine... The rock it was used to mine is malachite, a type of copper mineral that's distinctly blue-green. The outcrop is rough looking and I spot some pyrite ores in it too when I look at it close up (once again in intense detail). A professor at the museum shows up by chance and invites me and John to come check out the interior a bit and we end up on a mini expedition. I remember thinking how there could be treasure buried around here like rare items or something (is this an RPG?). The professor has 2 assistants, one is a guy and one is a girl. I get the impression that the guy has a crush on the girl. The girl is apparently somewhere getting us tools I think, so me, John, the professor and the guy assistant head off. In terms of the dreamscape we literally just walked next to the mine-siege-thing and turned left onto some stairs that seemed to circle around it. Then we climbed off the stairs next to the mine-siege-thing on to a dark mound that had a black-sludge pool in the centre. This is where the treasure is supposed to be it seems. We set to work trying to dig it up, I remember there being some kind of dish-shaped thing we used to scoop the sludge away. At one point the guy assistant got too close to the edge with his back turned while he was squatting and talking to the professor, I tried helped him but he fell in and seemed a little annoyed. The girl assistant comes back around and the guy assistant is a little flustered.

There were quite a few moments where there was a lot of detail, I think this relates to ADA making me pay more attention.

I kind of stopped caring about getting lucid these past few days. And of course, lucid dreaming works in mysterious ways because just as I stopped caring, a flood of lucid dreams started to come. I can't remember what days these are from, except for the last one that I know for sure was last night.

-+-

I remember some dream involving being on a school bus that had broken down in my town. Manei and Marcus were there along with other dream characters. I became lucid upon recognizing my two dream characters were present. Marcus was talking to me about some new technology and, but I was distracted and wasn't listening. The little bit of hair on the right side of his head was sticking up funny. I kept trying to tell him but he kept talking for a few minutes. When he finally finished he asked me what I was trying to tell him, I told him his hair. He looked in the mirror above the drivers seat and laughed and flattened it out.

Manei then asked some question about the story that I was writing based off of lucid dreaming. (actually doing this) She told me that I shouldn't mis-potray the characters since doing so would be a disrespect to myself. I told her I had no such plans. Why would I use my dream characters for inspiration if I didn't like who they were and was going to change it? There is really no logic in that. Also for some reason in the dream she was wearing a schoolgirl outfit.

I can't remember but I think that the dream continued on for some time semi lucid. It was a school anime that DawnEye11 had animated and she was in it too. I don't remember any of the specifics about it but I didn't like the way she portrayed my character.

-+-

I remember I was at this museum, but some of the security guards had turned out to be evil and decided to trap us inside, and kill all the good security guards. It was some kind of hostage situation and they wanted the government to pay them a large sum of money to get us out. I recall the dream vaguely feeling like when my family visited the planetarium in chicago a few years back.

Me and some of the other people had found a way out. Though it was dangerous. We had to escape through this very large concrete room that was filled halfway with water. There were all of these large egg-shaped structures in the room made out of red bricks and held together with cement. Some of them were attached to large steel beams connecting them to the floor or ceiling. Others were hovering on helicopter propellers. It was only appropriate that I became semi lucid upon seeing this very dreamlike and unusual room.

People began making their way across the room to the other side. Most people just would swim, but this one guy said that a lot of people had cell phones and stuff that he would offer to carry over for them, and he would try to jump across the brick eggs. Also, the guy had a medical implant that he couldn't get wet, so he figured it only make sense that he do it. I remember the guy looked similar to my dad. Not identical, his voice was deeper and he was a little taller and fatter, but he gave me that same vibe.

I remember watching him make his way across. He made it about 1/3 across of the way then he slipped and started to slide down the brick egg toward one of the propellers. I remember hoping that the dream wouldn't start to become a nightmare with this guy falling into the propeller but sure enough, he fell into the propeller and was ripped apart in the most gruesome way right out of SAW or something. lots of blood went into the water and people all started swimming away because they were afraid that the blood would attract sharks. At first I was confused since the water in the room was a closed swimming pool and I could see there were no sharks or even a way for sharks to swim in. But, because dream, about two dozen little sharks appeared in the water and started attacking people.

The guys' head landed right next to me on the platform that I was standing on. The left half of his face was completely gone leaving only the skeleton. His head turned and started looking at me. The mouth opened and the head screamed at me.

Somehow or other I found myself in the water that was now all pigmented with blood. I was actually standing on the bottom and some of the sharks started to swim toward me when I realized I was not holding my breath and I realized that I was dreaming. I told myself that I was not scared of the situation and the dream would change to something better momentarily momentarily.

Instead, the dream decided to be a dick and get worse before it got better. The red water got darker and the floor went away and I was floating in a void of red energy/water. I could still see some of the sharks swimming around me slowly. I then saw Manei but she had been shredded up like the guy who fell into the propeller and half her face was a skeleton. Her body was stitched together in places. She said something to me but I can't recall what it was.

I tried to do something or say something, but I couldn't move, speak or influence the dream in any way. I was annoyed by this fact. I remember thinking. "Okay, either I wake up or I dream about something that's not this!"

Then metal spikes burst out of her chest, expanding and growing like branches all around me. Then all of the spikes started growing in as they would all hit me at once, but they all stopped right before they went into me and the dream faded away.

The dream shifted. I was in a futuristic looking white hallway. I felt like I was still in the planetarium. This girl in a catwoman-like costume that left nothing to the imagination had her hand on my body and was transmitting the dream to me.

"Stop! This nightmare! What does it represent?"

The dream switched into third person. She put her hand on my chin and made me look her in the eye.

"Oh, baby, wouldn't you like to know."

She then kicked me back and threw me to the floor. I tried to fight but I was in third person and couldn't control myself. 'I' got back up and she kicked me agian, then scratched me across the face. I then started to feel like I could control myself. I remember the scratches closed with wolverine-style healing and as I spit down to the side. I went back into first person view.

She tried to cartwheel toward me and kick me again, but I grabbed her foot and flipped her over my shoulder. She landed on her back and before she could get up and I stabbed her in the stomach with my hidden blade. She scratched me again and started to run away. I decided I would try something new. I shot my blade out on the end of a chain and it stuck into the exposed skin on her leg. I tried to crack the chain like a whip and pulled her up then slammed her into the floor. I then pulled her in and let go of the chain so she was flying toward me. The dream went back to third person but I was still in control. I jumped into the air and fire boosted toward her, then flipped around and kicked her with both legs.

After thoroughly kicking her mostly-exposed butt, the skimply-outfitted catwoman lady morphed into a small boy of about ten who was crying.

"Why weren't you scared? What are you?"

(Paraphrased.) "Because I knew that it was all a dream. Even now, it is all a dream. And the scarier it got, the more I knew what I was experiencing was not real. That, and the fear you created didn't represent anything in my life. Nightmares only have power if they represent something. Everything in dreams is like that. If it doesn't represent something important, it can be easily removed or defeated."

"That's no fair! Please don't kill me!"

"I'm not going to kill you. I'm going to do something much worse... (<- Joke) I'm going to let you live so that you can learn from this. (Paraphrased from here on out, I remember roughly what I said so.) So, stop going around causing nightmares or your going to get what is coming to you."

There was some story behind the boy that he told me. He tried to convince me that he was another dreamer who got bullied a lot during the day, so at night he would use shared dreaming to go into peoples dreams and make them have nightmares to make things fair. He thought that what he was doing did justice and was really angry because if made things fair. I remember posing the question of how this made him any better than the bullies.

The dream actually continued on semi-lucid for a very long time after that and the boy became a lucid dreamer and had his own dream guide and everything. Like the last lucid, I don't really recall the details.

-+-

I am on this steampunk airship where this quadrillionare makes his full-time residence. The airship is actually in the atmosphere of a gas planet, but the planets' atmosphere has oxygen like the earth. The airship had ion thrusters where the propellers should have been, mounted on gold nacelles. The body of the airship was a dark red fabric. There was a large inverted pagoda tower on the underside and the guy lived in the very bottom.

I remember we were flown in by this butler guy who flew this odd spacecraft. It was an octagonal frame with windows on every side, except the bottom. It was gold too, and had little maneuvering rockets on all sides. We docked with the big airship and the butler gestured us to go onboard and meet him. The airship was empty and quiet, but occasionally made creaking and buckling sounds..

We made our way down through each floor of the tower. I remember on one floor there were a whole bunch of boxes of legos. I thought it was kind of funny that this guy who was apparently so gentlemanly had so many kids toys. I figured he might have kids or something that come to play with them.

We finally got to the bottom level of the tower. It was like this big foyer styled room with stairs on either side and a big glass wall. The dream character was standing there looking out at the storms and swirling clouds. I remember he had a black suit coat and a top hat. He was looking out over the storms of the gas planet. I cleared my throat to get his attention and he turned around and walked over. He had a cane in one hand and walked with kind of a hobble. I could tell one of his legs was a prostetic by the way he walked and the clanking noise it made. I also remember knowing that this character was connected to Marcus somehow. Maybe his father.

I greeted him as he got close. Manei said hello as well and told him who we were and that we had been invited to see him.

"What is wrong with all your dreamers these days? Cut your hair and grow a pair, boy!" He proceeds to try to poke me in the nose with his cane I backed up. He then went over to Manei. He said something perverted to her, but I can't remember what it was. She gave him this really dirty look. He then proceeded to poke her in the stomach and say that she was too skinny anyway. He said he wasn't interested in talking to us anymore.

"Oh, great. He's annoying. He's perverted. and he invites us over just so he can decide he doesn't like us. Why does every dream character other than you or Marcus have to be a dick?"

I guess he didn't like me calling him a dick, because he threw his cane at me but I caught it. I told him I was going to break it if he didn't shape up. He said it was made of unbreakable [something]wood from the planet [i forgot]. I took that as a challenge and broke the cane partially over my knee. It was still held together by a little bit of flexible wood but it was more or less useless. The man got mad and said that the cane was worth more than me.

He sent a his bodyguard out. He was this huge, 8 foot tall man who looked like alex armstrong from Fullmetal Alchemist but had four eyes in two rows. He had an eye-patch over his top left eye. He told the guard to attack me. He charged at me, and I threw him over my shoulder and he went through the wall.

The guard started to get back up and the dream suddenly ended and I woke up.

-+-

Though the dream that moved me the most, or was the most profound in my opinion was a conversation that I had with Manei. The dream had started out with me being on vacation with my parents at this mountain lodge location. I became lucid when I saw that I had my bracers and my dad told me to stop lucid dreaming because it was bad. My mom and dad got into a fight about whether or not lucid dreaming was bad or not. I acknowledged that this was probably a message about lucid dreaming, but moved on to manifest Manei.

We started walking and talking about something in the mountains. I remember saying something to her like this.

"Don't be offended by this, but you're everything I never wanted when I started lucid dreaming. I find it kind of funny. So many dreamers want to find their guides so badly, but get nowhere. I was that one in a million who was more than happy happy to go alone. Yet you have been right here all this time."

We were now in the soccer field in a park across from my house. There were some kids flying very odd dream kites in the breeze. I remember Manei had a kite too. She seemed to be thinking of what to say.

"Often, those who want to be alone are those who need a friend most badly."

The dream was hazy and my lucidity wasn't clear. The dream carried on semi-lucid for a few more minutes after that.

Ritual: WTB 12am, WBTB 4–5:30am (working), woke 6:15am with dream.

I dreamed I was working in a museum and I had assembled a collection of objects to show people. I had left a bunch of things lying outdoors on a forest path and wanted to bring them in, so I grabbed an armful of tall leather boots (there were least six pairs in different styles) and walked back to the museum. By the time I reached my destination I was only carrying one pair, and thought I must have dropped the others along the way. I wasn't sure where to store the boots I had brought back, but I looked around and decided to lock them up in a tall armoire of Japanese design. I opened up the doors and there was another set of doors behind the first, and another set behind that, three in all before I reached the interior.

I decided to take my car to go back and get the rest of the stuff since I had left a lot of things lying on the path and I wasn't doing a good job of bringing them back by hand. I have a third-person impression of watching my car wind its way through a narrow gorge: at times I was afraid the rocks were too close together for the car to fit, but I found it easy to lift the car off the ground and twist it as needed to avoid the rocky outcroppings. After getting safely through the narrow rocks I felt very pleased with my success, and decided that I should spend more time driving like this, using the wind as propulsion. This jogged my memory: wind! Wasn't that one of this month's TOTMs? At that moment I became lucid and decided to attempt the task.

I raised my arms and called out in a loud voice, "Wind!" I remembered that the task required not using any active power to fly, but letting the wind pick me up and carry me wherever it might be going. So after summoning the wind, I waited passively but invited it to lift my body in the air. The air picked me right up like I was as weightless as a feather, and I relaxed into it. It was wonderfully pleasant and enjoyable to be buoyed up in this way. Curiously I looked around me, wondering where we might be going. I have the impression of thick flocks of birds darkening in the air in what seemed like abstract geometric patterns.

I recalled that the bonus task also involved mastering the elements, and wondered if I could use this same wind to knock things down on the land below without getting buffeted too much while I was floating in it. I peered down at the trees, which appeared to be somewhere between 50 to 100 feet below me (I'm terrible at estimating vertical distances). They were in full green leaf and showed no sign of being blown about excessively by the wind at its current strength. I thought it would be a shame to knock down such beautiful trees, and before I could convince myself otherwise, I felt the air around me destabilizing and woke up.

I was in a museum with group of classmates. There was a swing standing close to some kind of a statue. We all sat on the swing. It was made of wood and chains. I climbed up the wooden construction, and just sat on it. After a while a security officer appeared, and told us to go away from the statue. He looked at us again, and told that we can sit on the swing. I jumped down, and saw some money lying on the floor. I took it all, and climbed up again.

I'm with my parents and a smattering of other family members in Shrewsbury, visiting grandparents. We're going on a day trip in the car to Ypres. I say to Dad, isn't Ypres in Belgium of something, and he says no, it's just down the road. Who knew? Apparently it's a giant war museum these days because it was all but destroyed in the second world war.

In the way we stop at some traffic lights and Dad hops out to pee in a bush (world's smallest bladder) and the lights go through several changes but it's not our turn for a while, but when it gets to our turn I'm shooting out the window for dad to stop faffing about (by this time he's standing in the middle of the road looking at clouds or something. There are several cars behind us waiting for us to get on with it!

Eventually, we pull up at the end of an inauspicious country land onto a grassy parking area. There's a massive, grandiose but partially ruined Gothic edifice that appears to be the official entrance, it's somewhat reminiscent of the hollow shell of Coventry's old cathedral but made of a very blackened limestone.

We go inside and look at the entrance fee and rules. It's only a couple of quid, but we're only allowed to spend two hours there which we all agree is a stupid rule. We go in and are on a coach driving through abandoned houses and other buildings, most have bricked up windows presumably to preserve them. I think that the rule about only spending 2 hours here sends even sillier given the obvious size of the place.

The coach stops and we all pile out into a slightly fake looking street full of period shops with mannequins depicting typical historical activities. There's a tour guide who starts telling stories about the various buildings and other features. Somehow we've ended up with a Dutch speaking group so u don't understand much of the tour guide's stories, only catching that apparently the rule for washing was that you must use exactly 37 wipes of your flannel.

I investigate a couple of the shops, the signage is all in English and I furrow my Bros trying to decide whether that is surprising or not. One of the shops seems to be a working but historically themes gift shop with the people behind the counter in character as people of a bygone era. Another is apparently undergoing some kind of fitting out and is essentially empty but for a woman moving boxes and such around.

To one side of the street is a broad stream which on closer inspection turns out to have large alligators in it. There's a boy standing right by the edge of the water and I'm concerned that he might get attacked by an alligator. As I'm trying to decide if I should do sobering about that, I realise he's now walking along the back of one of the alligators and reaches down to rub the back of its head! The alligator seems to be happy enough with that and even rolls over for a belly rub! As I look closer, I realise that all the alligators have badly deformed snouts, most of them look like they've suffered some kind of fairly severe and partially healed crush injury. I figure with some confusion that these crocs have been selected (or maybe even deliberately inured) in order to be "safe" in this place.

Harriet is here and reaches up to hold my hand, which I accept with a smile and we walk off into a gentle waking up...

I worked in a very fancy pastry shop. The walls were sort of a pastel red and there was lots of gold trim. Lots of sunlight streamed through the large front windows. The shop was owned by a guy I know. He had a big hole in his forehead, about the size of a lemon. It went all the way down to his brain. There was a Wes Anderson museum a few doors down to the left of the shop, and I was excited about getting off work and visiting it.

I don't remember much from the first dream I can remember from last night. I do remember being at a museum where supposedly the first "selfie" from the year 1010 could be found. It wasn't taken with a camera, of course, and it was actually a complete accident. Apparently a family had gone skydiving and the imprint from where their faces had hit the ground became fossilized, so this "selfie" was just a fossilized impression of people's faces. I was disappointed when I saw it, though. It was just a chalk outline of where the people had fallen, and someone had actually drawn these people on the piece of rock, which I thought was kind of wrong because it was in a cartoonish style and therefore inaccurate.

After that, I recall talking with some guy about Cruisin' USA (an old N64 racing game I used to have; I eventually traded it in a few years ago because, every time nostalgia told me to play that game, I was let down by the awful graphics and the cars' terrible handling). We then heard music from that game coming from somewhere nearby, so we started wandering around the floor of my residence hall trying to figure out which room someone was playing it in.

I woke up from that and had another strange dream when I went back to sleep. My parents were both visiting me at college, and I recommended that they see the Rocky Horror Show (my school's theater production this semester). I haven't seen it yet, but I've heard it's awesome. At some point, I remember noticing that my parents had left, so I started looking for them to see if they were still around. I ran out through the back door (I was in my house now for some reason - technically my old house, but my family just moved this summer, and I've hardly spent any time in the new house because I left for college a few days after we moved and have only been home for one weekend since). When I didn't see my parents there, I ran out the front door and saw my mom's car still in the driveway... packed full of my fraternity Brothers. That was confusing at first, but then they all shouted, "Thank you for helping your mother!" It turned out my mom was in the car too and had recruited them all to say that for some reason.

I woke up again but went back to sleep again. In this next dream, there was a floor event in my residence hall. I saw Jackie, one of my fraternity Brothers (we refer to everyone as a Brother regardless of gender), which surprised me because I didn't know she lived on my floor or even in my building (in reality, she does not). Anyway, the "event" was that everyone would be given a big crossword puzzle to take with them and do throughout the day, and whoever finished it first could return it to get a prize.

For some reason, at some point, we ended up outside by a road intersection off-campus. I decided to leave early and return to campus, which is when things started getting strange. By the time I was back on campus, I found it really hard to walk forward. There was some slight wind at the time, so I thought that could be attributed to the wind, but the wind didn't seem strong enough to interfere with walking. I thought it was strange, but I saw that everyone else was affected in the same way, so I figured it was probably just the wind after all.

When I got back to my dorm, I realized I'd forgotten to take a crossword puzzle from the event, so I decided to text Jackie to ask her if she could bring one back for me, but I didn't have her number, and I didn't know who else I could ask. I also remember getting a bunch of texts from my boyfriend throughout this dream and the last that I felt kind of bad about not having the time to reply to.

The dream suddenly because a Sims 3 game, and, since time can be sped up in the game, I accidentally fast-forwarded time (on the fastest setting) to a couple hours later before finally pausing it. I knew for sure now that I wouldn't be able to ask Jackie to get me a crossword puzzle because there's no way that "event" would still be going on. I also felt bad about not replying to my boyfriend's texts now that even more time had passed.

I realized after awhile that something didn't look quite right about the game interface, though I couldn't quite pinpoint what it was that was different. I did an RC when I noticed that and counted six fingers. I was dreaming! I counted again just to make sure. Seven fingers. Definitely dreaming! Instead of being all clueless as usual when I become lucid, I said out loud, "Now, this is where the fun begins."

Since I had no plan for the dream, I ran around, looking for something fun to do in a dream (I was no longer playing Sims anymore). I found a buffet table. I could eat! No, no, that's something I can do while I'm awake. Then, I spotted an empty glass and an empty silver pitcher on the table and decided now it was time to learn to exert some control over the dream. I decided that, if I poured the "empty" pitcher into the cup, I'd be pouring a drink out of it instead of nothing. I decided it'd be "something like eggnog" (the first thing that came to mind), but not quite the same, because why drink something in a dream I can drink in real life? The drink that came out was white and a little thick, but it didn't taste at all like eggnog. It was creamy, though, and kind of sweet, and... fizzy? I was actually surprised when I tasted something that was slightly fizzy because I wasn't expecting that.

I realized while I was drinking it that I was wearing my retainer, and my reaction to that was my one fatal mistake. I decided I should take my retainer out, but, instead of doing something quick like tossing it on the floor (who cares what happens to it if it's a dream and not real life?), I decided to find the case for it and put it back in its case. That was my big mistake because everything went dark, so I realized I was waking up because this had torn me away from what was keeping me occupied. Once I started to feel myself lying in bed, I knew that was it. I opened my eyes, disappointed I'd caused myself to wake up because of something so silly but also proud of myself for having had some control over not just myself but the dream environment itself.

I did one final RC just to ensure I was awake. Five fingers. I counted again. Five fingers again. Yep, definitely awake this time.