Just before you wake, when you are in that semi-lucid state, three parts sleeping and one part awake. There is a swelling sense of reality that can throw you into confusion, leaving you questioning whether this is real or if it is all an illusion. You are trying to grasp how you got to this place in time—to this place in space. Where everything seems so real, the sounds you perceive, the people you see, and the person you are or aren’t supposed to be? This is the semi-lucid state, when you are three parts sleeping and one part awake.

Moving deeper into the semi-lucid state, when you are two parts sleeping and two parts awake, there is a looming sense reality of where you have been that begins to take shape. The awake part of you steps forward, getting a grasp on this dream like state. Trying to take back control of this journey through time—this journey through space. As reality begins to set in, and the outside world’s effect on this unfamiliar dimension sends you careening towards a familiar existence—the existence that dreams like to escape. In this semi-lucid state of being two parts sleeping and two parts awake.

Real world sounds begin to take place when you are one part sleeping and three parts awake. The most memorable phase of this lucid dream-like state is when your unconscious mind is begging you to break. There are promises of love, promises of lust, promises of riches, but I promise you, the promises of this dream-like state are things you cannot take.

In this coalesced state of asleep and awake you get a sense there is an end. The ground is rapidly getting closer—the footsteps are approaching the door. The siren song is singing, pulling you in for more. The conscious part of you understands this is only a dream, but the sleeping part of you is curious to see and wants to know what exactly it could possibly be. The siren song is singing in this semi-lucid state when you are one part sleeping and three parts awake.

Then there is this moment in a cold wet haze, when your eyes are wide open and you are left in a daze. “Is this real?” you ask, or “is this a fake?” Is this just a part of the lucid dream-like state? The sirens are still singing, as the fleeting dreams begin to escape when you are zero parts sleeping and four parts awake. The siren song singing lured you in, but not for riches, not for love, not for lust—the siren song was singing simply to wake you up.