I had a lucid dream last night.
I’m fairly certain that this was a first for me, though I’ve tried to have lucidity on and off for years. Basically, a lucid dream is one that, while you’re having it, you know that you’re dreaming. The theory goes that, if you’re aware that you’re dreaming while you’re dreaming, then you can make just about anything happen in your dream. You can try to solve problems or experience things that you want to experience (like flying, etc)….or you can tell yourself to knock it off.
I was able to do the last two things on that list last night, and I’ve got to admit that it was pretty cool. Here’s what happened:
I went to bed fairly early last night and woke up at about 1:00 this morning. Had a pee and watched a bit of television before attempting to go back to sleep around 2:00. At some point between then and 6:00, I began dreaming that I was house-sitting for Cy and “T” at their large Victorian house. I was also charged with taking care of their dog, a black lab named Snots.
Please note that Cy and “T” have neither a black lab nor a large Victorian house. Those two facts figure into things later.
In my dream, I awoke from napping at their house and realized that I had no idea where Snots was. I couldn’t remember having seen him for a week, and Cy and “T” were due home the following day. Alarmed by this, I got out of bed (in my dream) and attempted to find my way from one end of the house to the other, but got hopelessly lost and kept winding up back in the bed where I had been sleeping. So I went back to sleep (in my dream) and – some time later – woke up (still in the dream) and once again tried to find my way to the other end of the house. This happened several times and I got more agitated each time, but I finally ended up outside the house and I began frantically to look for Snots. It was drizzly and cold outside and the ground was slick. This didn’t feel good at all, as I was dressed only in a bathrobe – no shoes.
I’m not entirely sure how it happened, but I ended up standing on the top of a curved metal building (think of a knight’s helmet the size of a conference center) and I was having a great deal of trouble getting down, which is not surprising because the only way down was along a curved strip of metal, much like a slide on a playground; and did I mention that I was now carrying a large silver sousaphone? Don’t ask me where THAT came from – probably from the same place that the shirt, pants, and shoes that I was now wearing did. In the drizzle, all of the clothes were soaking wet.
But I had to find the dog, and I knew that I couldn’t drop the sousaphone, and the only way off of this building was to slide down the slide (standing up), so I very carefully did so. And I made it all the way to the ground and started walking back towards the house. Unfortunately, there was a lot of water on the ground between the house and me, and footing was treacherous.
And at just about that point in the dream, I thought to myself, “Wait a minute. Where’d this sousaphone come from? And where’d these clothes come from? And since when do Cy and “T” live in a house like that and have a black lab named Snots? This has got to be a dream. I’m freaking dreaming here!”
Right on the heels of that thought, I came up with two more: If I were dreaming, I could change the color of the sousaphone from silver to red; and I should be able to just sort of water-ski back to the house if I wanted to.
Guess what? The formerly silver sousaphone turned into a red fiberglass one, and I managed to propel my way along the stream in front of me with no effort at all. It was fun.
I was still relatively frazzled, however. Sort of a dream-hangover from the previous attempts to find Snots and not knowing how to get out of the house and being stuck on the roof, I guess. So I told myself to wake up and determined that the best way to do that would be to shake my head – which I did, and which I was doing when I woke up in my own bed.
I took a few minutes for me to realize what had happened. Basically, I was in disbelief that I’d actually been consciously aware of my subconscious; but when I came to terms with it, I thought it was SO cool.
I still do.
Hope I can do it again soon.
TWD