ecib, you brought my attention to this conversation. It made me want to have a lucid dream, though I didn't follow up. An hour ago I awoke from my first lucid dream and took the following notes.

Last night I had two beers, a coffee and a glass of wine. I was trying to read Embassytown in the lounge, but was distracted with thoughts of the Drake Equation after conversation the previous night with Barış. He had suggested a technique to approach Project Euler problem 101 so I was trying to learn how to invert a 3x3 matrix by looking up references on my phone.

Once I had my phone out, I started chatting with Barış about lucid dreaming and read about techniques for checking for the dream state.

The advice was to get in the habit when awake of checking, so hopefully it would happen in a dream. Look at your hands, one site said, usually you will have some number other than five fingers. Or look at a mirror, mirrors are funny. (Just bought a copy of Ficciones yesterday.)

Went to bed around 1.

Was having a typically crazy, meandering (but internally sensible) dream.

Walking around the upper level of an open parking garage, looking for an exit but each one was fenced off or locked. Talking with some concern about my car (nearby but unseen) how someone, a mechanic maybe, had messed with it.

Came down somehow. Then a weird episode with my rarely-remembered childhood friend Travis, now adult, and some other guy. We wanted to bother somebody, so Travis pooped out a ball of poop and we were going to throw it into another backyard. It was a rubbery bluish ball, like playdoh, and not sticky but still gross.

Not sure about sequence here. Was experiencing an arty drama film, in which some historical background was portrayed with a series of office rooms which would pan off to the left while Kevin Spacey or similar narrated. It was a police/CIA modern noir set in the Cold War era, and the office rooms were meticulously arranged with evocative props: file cabinets, markers, scribbled folders. Had read on Hubski (KB) that the director was known for these intensely detailed scenes, and he had a trademark of including handguns. Indeed, saw some laying on desks, and wanted to photograph the scenes but didn't have my camera (a subject of waking discussion on current vacation).

Back outside the parking garage, walking and looking for some fast food place. Went in and saw someone I knew (in dream only) who had received a paper bag of unacceptable (for some reason) food. She was complaining and I wanted to help, but someone else helped her, and it was resolved somehow. On my way out, a large, southern, blues man entered and we passed awkwardly close through the tight doorway. As the door closed it pinched on the soft case of a large item he was carrying. It had a banjo inside, I knew. I un-caught the door and made some unspoken apology.

A scene from another movie. The hero needed revenge on someone upriver in some tropical southern locale. He had strung together a dozen water cooler bottles and attached propellers to them. They were buzzing and going upriver on their mission. I followed.

The hero was marching ahead on the marshy river. It was really just thick, matted down grass, with some wet openings and channels of water. The river was enclosed in a tunnel-like fence, making an outdoor hallway with dense jungle on the outside. It was known in this movie you could only go a short way upriver.

I followed the hero. Then there was a shot of a bright green snake rapidly snaking out of the matted grass and crossing the river and diving back in. Then more snakes.

I was barefoot and afraid of the snakes, so I continued forward by "walking" with my hands on the sides of the passageway and holding my feet above the ground, where snakes occasionally emerged and passed.

Here I first thought this might be a dream. I thought I should do some test to see if something impossible would happen. So I continued "walking" on the walls but now with only my right hand. Impossible! Then I looked at my left hand. It was horrible.

I had three and a half fingers. At the end of each finger was another little hand, articulated with fingers and perhaps further bifurcations. I made a fist and a vow to never look at my hands in dreams. I wanted to look at a mirror but there was none.

I decided to fly. I flew! It was almost fantastic, but I couldn't get very far off the ground, so I soared at some speed over the ground toward some university, roaring at the top of my lungs. I alighted outside a building, then had another idea. "Let's have sex!"

Then I woke up.

It seemed to take time to wake up, as if returning from far away. I was lying on my back and my body felt heavy and leaden, like I couldn't move. It was dark and I could hear sleepy breathing nearby. I concluded that I was awake in bed, but wanted to be sure. I tried to look at my hand, but it took some effort before I could start moving my hand. I knew I was awake, and had just had a lucid dream. I began replaying the scenes from the dream in my mind, hoping I would remember them. I thought I should make some notes on my phone, but also wanted to go back and dream more. I picked up my phone, saw that it was 4:17 a.m. in Istanbul. I took these notes.