Dream: Walking with the Tree-Man LUCID

Dream 20031001, 6:00 AM:

This is a rare happening among lucid dreams for me – it got to be so long, that I don’t remember a lot of the first part. At several points in the dream, I remark to myself that it’s going particularly strong.

I’m pretty sure this started out as a WILD. I remember being in a void, and then starting to feel tingly sensation in my skin, and light and color begin to flood in and I find myself in the living room of the Kingwood house. It seems exceptionally real. There is some conversation there, I think with Mom and Dad and Richard, but I don’t recall what we said or did. It seems so real that I am momentarily unsure if I’m dreaming – I go into the dining room and look at the calendar, and when I catch words changing as I look at them and look away, I’m sure. I go back into the living room and decide that in order to get out of the house, I’m going to have to employ some kind of dream-changing strategy. I think about ways that I could change things, and decide that rather than spin or something like that, I’ll try stepping through something. I look around, and see a carpet-bag like overnight bag with handles. I open it, and put both my feet in the bottom, and pull it upward until the handles are over my head, and close them. It does seem to change the dream scene, but I find I’m still in the house.

I tell Richard something, I think explaining that I’m trying to alter the dream fabric. I go outside, and begin to run toward the back corner of the yard. Nowadays, it’s mostly developed, but when I was a child it was a huge woods. I close my eyes as I’m hurtling forward, and find myself beneath the cover of giant spreading trees.

The trees are much more like something out of a fantasy movie, than anything that ever really grew in those woods. There is no underbrush, and the trees are beautiful and very old-looking oaks. I walk along, remarking that this is more like what I was wanting to see. I reach out and brush a couple of the trees with my hand in passing. I touch one for a longer moment, and close my eyes to feel its energies. A hand covers mine, and I open my eyes, momentarily startled, but when I see that the tree has a face in it, and the hand belongs to the tree, I feel comforted and reassured. The tree-man looks something like an Ent from the LOTR movies, but a little less craggy and slightly more human-scale.

We walk along together through the woods. The path twists and turns, and we walk along companionably talking. I don’t remember what we talk about. We get to a place where the path curves up into a small cave, and it seems pink, like the inside of a mouth. I look, and there is only a small hole at the back leading downward; I’m not sure if I want to go through that, because it looks grungy, and seems like it’s something’s mouth.

We turn a little different way, and I find that I’m walking through a mall. I still have my dream companion, but now he is a young-looking blond man with short hair. We walk along, still talking. I remark that I wish the people in the mall were more festively dressed. As we round each corner, the costume on the surrounding people changes some, but while I was aiming for something like RenFaire, they keep ending up more like a low-key Mardi Gras. One man in a sequined and beaded red top is dancing with a very fast shimmy that makes all the beads shake, and I grab one red bugle bead as I walk by, pinching it between my finger and thumbnail. It feels more like plastic than glass.

I remark that I can change things, and I kind of want to feel my long hair again. It’s been several years since I cut it. I take off my hat, and shake my head, and it falls down onto my shoulders. My companion seems a little startled by it. I am momentarily annoyed that it’s only shoulder-length, and shake my head again, and it unfolds all the way down my back to my waist. He remarks that it’s amazing how differently people react just based on this one physical thing.

We keep walking. Now, the mall seems more like one of those big antique malls; the part we’re walking through is kind of boxy and warehouse-like. There is a blue sign high up on the wall that says “Sex!” and has an arrow pointing one direction. I remark that I’m actually not quite in the mood for sex, I’m enjoying this dream too much, and sex tends to make them end. I see another sign, also says “Sex!” and has an arrow pointing in the only other available direction. I laugh, and tell my companion, “Well, then I guess it’s time for sex after all!”

We keep walking, and I’m talking about how long and sturdy the dream has been. I look in through a doorway, and there is a huge shop with all kinds of different stuff; it’s kind of like Elliott’s Hardware, but with food too. The perspective I’ve got is slightly above the stock floor, like looking into the back door of Asel Art. My companion says something about a mechanism to change the dream scene, and reaches in and pushes one of many light switches on the wall beside the door. A light goes off in the store. I push it again, and the same light switches. I decide that the entire store should be going dark, but as I push the switch it just turns off one or another small light. I hold the switch down, and repeat, “All.” I watch as one light after another goes dark. The last thing that I remember is all the way across the store, there is a bakery, and I’m watching the people inside working on bread. There are ceiling fans there as well as lights. The switch eventually turns them all off, and once it is all dark, I wake up.