Current mood:	what is wrong with my mind
Entry tags:	dreams

Clear head
I keep saying that I don't think I'll ever be able to have a lucid dream because every now and then I'll already be aware that I'm dreaming, and that idea always just fits in smoothly. And because my subconscious pulls some bizarre stuff with the "fourth wall" sometimes. I mentioned some entries back a dream with some dialogue that made direct reference to it all being a dream; I mentioned a while before that the time I woke up just to end a dream character's existence out of spite; I didn't post regarding the more recent dream I had that was actively trying to trick me into waking up early which I only foiled by figuring out that I must still be asleep. Which I realize makes no sense, but that's what happened.

So my dreams have a weird relationship with reality.

It's possible that I overestimated myself, or underestimated myself, because I've had a couple dreams now that I certainly thought were lucid at the time. ...The problem is that I really wouldn't put a normal dream about lucid dreaming past myself, so it's hard to be sure. In terms of lucidity, neither of them were very good; I had a hard time getting away from dream logic, and also getting the dream to actually do what I wanted.

The first time, one of my first thoughts was along the lines of "Ha, and I thought I'd never lucid dream."

I forget the context leading up to it, but I ended up on the bus, heading back to high school, which I didn't want to do any more than I ever had in real life, and I kinda went "Oh godammit this is lame, even in dreams haven't I graduated by now? ...Oh HEY, that's TRUE, this is totally all wrong." (Note again the casual reference to it being a dream before the actual realization. Sigh.) I then proceeded to feel very, very weird. The awareness was quite difficult to hold onto, though, and I had to remind myself a few times of the train of thought that had led me to it. Thus, things stayed vague and dreamlike and weird. So here's what I accomplished with my newfound power:

• As mentioned, I was on a bus when I realized I was dreaming, and either I was too lazy to go to the door or there wasn't one, or something. My first idea was to trace a circle on the window with my finger and have it cut the glass. It didn't work. :(
  
  
• I tried flying some because that's what people do when they lucid dream, right? Also, I've observed in the past that whenever flying comes up in dreams, I tend to be pretty bad at it, so I figured I may as well experiment a bit. It was particularly hard this time, however. As I've found that it tends to work better when I have a prop, I turned some random object into a broomstick for comparison, which was pretty cool; but that only helped a little. Maybe I really rely on the role, more than any prop or not.
  
  
• Later, I grew a tail. I like tails, but that's still kind of weird, me. I guess I was thinking it would be interesting to feel something like that, more convincingly physically than I ever could in real life for obvious reasons. But in practice I just tended to forget about it.
  
  
• Then I got bored and decided to wake up. I'm pretty sure that, instead, I actually just went back to normal dreaming.

The second time I don't remember any particular circumstances leading up to it, which is good. And my initial thought was "Oh good, I'm lucid again, I can make a better run of it this time." However, I had even fewer ideas this time around... so I once again ended up flying because that's just what you do. I figured that using something to launch myself upwards could help, which it did, but I still ended up having to generate a broom out of nowhere. I really need to stop defaulting to those; these days they're apt to turn my dreams into fanfiction, or at least cosplay. If I can remember, I'd like to try a carpet.

Anyway, I then realized that I also didn't have anywhere to fly to, and also steering was being annoying, so I ended up just sort of heading out into the Illinois countryside indefinitely. Yay. That one was a nap, though, so I didn't have time to do much anyway. In fact, just before waking up I managed to dream a realistic simulation of being gradually woken up, which was what inspired me to wake up. That was very confusing, by the way. I guess my brain had to remind me that it can still completely screw with me.

In conclusion: subconscious 5 or so, conscious 0.