Am I awake or am I dreaming?

My father is not a violent man

2010-02-09T21:52:00.004-05:00

I was at home - at my parents' house, that is. While I was out of the house, apparently a bird had laid six eggs somewhere in the microwave in the kitchen, and the heat from the microwave incubated the eggs until one day they hatched.

The birds haphazardly flew around the house. It was chaotic. I was trying to figure out how to get them out when I walked into the room and saw my father with a rifle over his shoulder. Right as I walked in, he shot one of the birds. It stopped in mid flight and hung suspended in the air as all of it's feathers exploded in slow motion and left the flesh raw. I looked on in horror and started yelling at my dad. I later found out that he had shot all six, one over my bed so that a jumble of feathers and blood was left on the bedspread.

Not what I was expecting

2009-11-18T20:31:00.002-05:00

From November 7th:

I was standing in line at some fancy vegan pizza joint when someone came up to me and told me that someone was stealing my kitten. Of course, I didn't have a kitten (I'm actually slightly allergic to cats), but I had left my laptop outside the restaurant in the park where I had been hanging out, so I went over to the window to check on it. Sure enough, some girl was in the process of stealing my laptop, so I ran outside and started chasing her. She put my computer in the trunk of a station wagon, and closed the hatch. As she was about to pull off, I jumped up onto the roof of her car and held onto the roof rack as she drove away.

I started yelling at her through the open window of the car, and to my surprise, her response was neither violent nor angry. She countered my desperate pleas with a rational argument, and she drove safely so as not to dislodge me from the roof. We began to talk as friends might, and I realized that she was actually more sane--and easier to talk to--than everyone else I surrounded myself with on a daily basis. hmm.

Not quite apocalyptic

2009-09-16T08:14:00.003-04:00

I've been reading Don DeLillo's White Noise lately... probably not the best thing in light of my many apocalyptic dreams, but I'm really liking it. I have a feeling that traces of it seeped into my dream last night though...

I was back in college (again), and the school year was just starting. I had kind of a peculiar living situation, you might say. I lived in a dorm room with seven other people. Our beds were precariously lofted and all conjoined to create one strangely shaped sleeping area... and virtually no personal space. We had been getting situated (my seven roommates and I), and then we heard of some sort of dangerous toxic mass in the hallway on the way to the dining hall. Yeah, it was kind of creepy, but we had trains that ran on tracks through the hallways, so we didn't think it would be too big of a deal. We got on the train, and looked out the windows, curiously, from the safety of our airtight train cars. It looked almost like the scene below the now abandoned stop under the World Trade Centers. Eerie, suddenly abandoned but dusty and dirty. Then, to our horror, the train started slowing down in the middle of this disaster zone. Everyone shielded their faces in desperation to stop the harmful vapors from getting in, but the doors opened. We were all exposed. I struggled, trying not to breathe. Maybe if I didn't breathe, I wouldn't take in the fumes, and everything would be ok. The doors closed and the train rattled down the track. Later, when I went back to my room, no one else was there. But the school was trying to keep the whole thing a secret. Their reputation was already in question. They didn't want to rock the boat (especially after that embarrassing Swine Flu outbreak). I looked outside my window. Students seemed to be going about their business as usual, cavorting across the quad, unknowingly walking right toward the disaster zone...

You were there, playing in the surf and harboring a terrible secret

2009-07-07T23:40:00.004-04:00

She clutched the warm, freshly laundered sheets tightly against her chest as if embracing a lover after awakening from a terrible dream.

The specifics of the nightmare? Well, she'd rather not say this time.

Apocalypse by water take two

2009-06-24T07:57:00.006-04:00

For some reason, we all knew when the world would end, but no one knew how it would end. (It turns out we were actually one day off, and initially celebrated only to find out that it was really the next day).

Some people thought the sun would suddenly become so overpoweringly hot and bright that it would melt our retinas and we’d all just somehow disappear in this blinding white light. This way wasn’t so bad really. For some reason, there was no melting involved, no worrying about the extreme heat that would inevitably accompany the sun. People ran around on the beach, wearing these huge, dark glasses, specially made for the occasion.

Other people had other theories.

At one point, we discussed that it was strange that no one really seemed to be espousing the religious apocalypse thing. There was no big deceiver and surprisingly, little panic about religion or about anything really.

I was at the ocean’s shore when I saw it—a strange site. So many ducks in the water, rolling towards us in a breaking wave. Mallards. In the ocean. It struck me as strange because of course mallards are fresh water ducks, but I didn’t have much time to think about this since I quickly realized that all those beautiful ducks, rolling towards us at a disturbingly fast pace… they were all dead. Every last one of them.

"Oh no!" someone shouted. Anyone. It didn’t matter who at that point. We were all thinking it silently in our own heads as he pronounced the words, ‘It’s not the sun at all. It’s the sea! It’s full of death, and it’s coming towards us to claim us, too.’ As he said those words, the odor hit us in the face. The odor of millions of dead animals, and the water started lapping impatiently at our ankles.

“Run!” someone shouted. We were on the beach front of Fripp Island where my grandparents lived for many years in South Carolina. We picked out the tallest beach house (as if that would make a difference) and took off. It was the one with the elevator in it. We bounded up to the top floor. (I remember being surprised that Leslee from the Strand could run so fast).

We could see the water rising. I asked if we should try to find higher ground, but this was struck down. The water was level with the windows now, and it was starting to leak in. There was another family next door on the roof of a house: a mom, dad, and little boy. The boy was sobbing, so I walked over to him (the roofs were connected) and tried to comfort him before I launched my own tirade of, “We’re all going to die. We’re all going to die.” Over and over.

Then I woke up.

(Note: This is pretty much what I wrote down in the middle of the night, but I left out the references to NPR people - interestingly, I was mostly surrounded by NPR people in my dream.)

Looking on the bright side

2009-05-06T21:18:00.003-04:00

Twice this week, I've had these odd, self-affirming/optimistic dreams. It's strange how my psyche seems to be trying to build me up. I appreciate it--though I'm not sure if it means I have low or high self-esteem at my core.

Dream #1:

Working my butt off at Savory Cafe (where I held a brief stint as a part-time barista on the weekends.) There was a long line of customers, and people were getting kind of pushy and annoyed with my slow service. Instead of allowing this to get me down, however, I focused on the song that was playing in the background, which had the horribly cheesy/elementary lyrics, "Isn't this so wonderful?" repeated over and over... and not in an ironic way.

Dream #2:

Stepping out of a bathtub in the middle of a large open room and taking my time getting dressed and drying off only to later realize that someone (actually a fellow NPR intern, and a female) was sitting in the window sill ledge, casually peering over her book at my naked figure. Once she admitted to this voyeurism, I remember trying to remember if I had done anything embarrassing, which is strange--trying to remember within a dream. Of course, I was pretty mortified that she had been there the whole time, but then, she said, "No reason to feel ashamed. You have a beautiful body."

The other day,

2009-04-07T23:04:00.007-04:00

I woke up with the last part of the Humpty Dumpty nursery ryhme in my head. You know, the part that goes:

"All the king's horses
and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty
together again."

Can't remember if the phrase actually pertained to my dream or not, but I thought the rhyme was pretty indicative of the current situation.

My apocalyptic dream

2009-03-24T08:08:00.006-04:00

Two nights ago, I dreamt about the end of humanity. This is what I wrote in my notebook when I woke up:

Because I have seen how the world will end. Over time, water takes over the land--continents disappear, and the beasts of the sea start growing. It's kind of like that thing with goldfish. Sure, they stay small when kept in a tiny bowl, but give them space, and they'll soon swell to enormous proportions. Eventually, one mammoth fish assumes the role of leader of the whole world. He is huge and hulking. All the remaining people have long been subjected to the sea--they float around in a glass ship, watching the sea creatures swim by until one day, they see him--the beast of the sea. He swallows the whole ship... and with it, the rest of humanity.

a possible explanation
I recently was taken by a song called "Whale Belly" by a band called Autopilot is for Lovers. The lyrics were as follows:
"If they ask you tell them we got swallowed up by a whale. If they ask you tell them... tell them we wish they were here. If they ask you tell them that we found a city in his belly and a forest inside of his chest, and his heart is our grandfather clock that beats out the hours like the fist of God. If they ask you tell them we're not coming home. We are home."

Resurrection, take two

2009-02-04T21:36:00.001-05:00

Stuck in a cabin in a remote part of the woods with only the remnants left by the previous visitors to cook with, I flavored the soups/stews I made with the ink from scented markers, but I worried we would soon run out of flavors or that we would all surely begin to show signs of sickness from the toxic (but tastey) exposure.

It was a cellar this time instead of an attic

2008-08-13T08:30:00.004-04:00

So last night I had an epic Stephen King-esque kind of dream. I can't say it was entirely a nightmare since the first portion of it was more dramatic than horrific. I was living out in the country on this old semi-abandoned farm, and after realizing that my friends had been missing for a while, I saw that the door to the cellar was open--you know--one of those outside cellar doors that sits on top of the grass. So I decided to go in.

Almost immediately up walking down there, I fell deeper into the underground through a hole in the ground and soon got lost in the this underground, earthy labyrinth. I wasn't panicing though... not yet anyway. After a few hours of waundering around, I stumbled across my friends who had basically set up a camp in one of the unusually large and open caverns. They were just sitting around down there as if not much was wrong, so I decided to join them. In my first day down there, I managed to read a whole novel--a really long one that upon reflection, turned out to be a narrated account of my entire dream. In my dream I spent what seemed like hours reading the thing, and upon waking up, I wondered if I had really composed something resembling a novel or at least a short story or if I had just been remembering portions of something I had read or watched in the past.

Then we ate some food from their stash and went to bed. This is where the nightmare begins. We awake to three strangers running into our cavern, screaming. For a second, we all celebrate because we think we have been rescued, but those screams were not of the joyful variety. They quickly tell us they had been running from another member of their party who had gone crazy since they had gotten last in the passage and begun to run after people with the intent to kill them. So we take off, blindly running through the tunnels. We run into the crazy man and his devilish grin and unblinking, distant stare a few times, but we keep running and evade his attempts to make us his new victims, always wondering if we would not soon join him ourselves after losing our own minds.

Though I would like to say I just woke up now, the dream was actually not open-ended, and the old farmer, having seen the cellar door open, found us and was in the process of rescuing us when I woke up...

the little girl that I killed

2008-03-20T23:05:00.003-04:00

ok. I guess I should warn you... this dream is kind of intense. or at least I found it to be pretty disturbing, but then again, I guess dreams and nightmares specifically are always scarier when they are ocurring than when you are looking back at them later.

Right, so I was working at a summer camp... I'm not sure if it was the same summer camp I worked at for four summers or not. The majority of the dream took place indoors, so it was hard to tell. Anyway, for some reason, it was my task to think of something really scary to present to kids for a haunted house sort of deal, and the scariest thing I could think of was the truth. So I was in a big room with just this one girl. She was maybe 9 years old. So I just started telling her all these grusome tales about ways that people could die, and she was so scared that she literally died of fright. She was standing up, and she just froze and turned stiff--like she had been frozen solid. She quickly turned pale and he hair stuck out at odd and wild angles. I couldn't believe I had killed her.

I have thought of a few different possible interpretations for this dream. It could show peoples' inability to live with the truth or it could be related to my religious struggles as of late. I used to work at a Christian summer camp, you see, and I'm afraid that if I were to work with kids today in that kind of setting that I might kill them in more of a metaphorical way--in the sense that I would hinder their faith and spiritually kill them. heavy stuff. ... or perhaps I killed off a part of myself.

The image of the little girl is still implanted in my head.

Another example of when I just can’t tell

2008-02-17T20:12:00.003-05:00

I was sleeping just now, and I suddenly woke up, thinking someone had knocked on my door, so I got up to check, but no one was there. Now I'm not sure if someone did in fact just knock on my door in real life or if a similar noise in my dream was so loud and convincing that it woke me up.

I would stay out of the attic if I were you

2008-02-01T17:58:00.000-05:00

Lately if I've dreamt at all, I've dreamt only in fragments. Little flashes here and there. A quick peek at a scene from a bigger story.

In life and in my dreams, however, I've noticed that certain motifs keep appearing. The latest one is an attic. An attic has been in a few of my dreams lately. Sometimes I'm exploring it, sometimes I'm just getting lost in the dimly lit, labyrinthine corridors.

In this particular dream, I found myself walking through a hedge maze. Sure, I was trying to get out, but I was rather passive about it, just calmly and slowly walking around the twists and turns. Eventually, the hedge maze opened up into an attic. I kept walking, still trying to find my way out (this time there was a bit more desperation). After walking around for a while, I decided that I should go back to the hedge maze to get out since it seemed like the attic wasn't opening any doors for me, but I couldn't find where the hedge maze started, so I began to wish myself in a different location since I was sick of traipsing around the attic. It worked in that I was no longer in the attic, but in manipulating space, I also manipulated time and found that I was suddenly quite younger than I had been before.

This time, there were ghosts

2008-01-03T13:58:00.000-05:00

I've had a few dreams since I've been back, but mostly they have not been complex or interesting enough to note. In general, many of them seem to follow the motif of being lost or not knowing where things are going, which of course makes sense.

The other night, I had kind of a curious dream. I was on a class field trip of sorts, so I was surrounded by other students. We took the bus to this old abandoned house, and we all piled out. It was of course night, so it was dark, but it was not stormy. I guess I at least avoided that cliché.

We started to enter the old, delapidated house only it wasn't house-like on the interior. It instead resembled a mine of sorts... a gold mine or something... or maybe it was just a cave. finally, after walking through long winding underground passages, we came to a door. Behind the door was a room that resembled what I picture to be the stereotypical "formal parlor" that you see in posh Victorian-style houses. It was old-fashioned, and there was a really neat gramophone in the corner on a table. Anyway, a few of us sit down, though we are a bit freaked out and uneasy.

Then, in strolls a butler... only instead of opening the door and walking in, he glides effortlessly through the door. At this point, my classmates are really starting to get worried. The butler sits down, and all of the sudden, I realize that as long as we do not treat him as a ghost, he will not act out as a ghost, so I start to converse with him as usual, thus averting that crisis. From then on, I become the intermediary between the students and the ghosts, and that, unfortunately, is all I can remember.

Recurring themes?

2007-12-09T04:59:00.000-05:00

[Blogger's note: I would just like to ask you this: Does the first word in the title for this post look odd to you? Up until yesterday, I had always thought the word was 're-occurring,' but then I saw 'recurring' in print somewhere and started to doubt. OK, I admit it, first I doubted the publisher of the book, but since it was a rather reputable-looking book, I then turned the doubt onto myself. Dictionary.com claims there is no such word as re-occurring.]

OK, so this dream was rather brief, but it touched on same of the same themes again that I mentioned in the previous dream and even on another topic I have been encountering lately, so I'd say it is pretty relevant.

I was at home again, and I had heard that our church diocese was holding a lock-in about an hour away. For those of you who don't know, a 'lock-in' is this event where a bunch of people get together at one location (a location that you would not normally associate with sleeping at), and they have 'fun' and can't leave. Typically, little sleep occurs during such events, and they are major headaches to the adult facilitators. Right, so I guess I should also point out to those who don't know me that I was über involved in church-related activities in middle school/high school.

ok, so I decided that I didn't have anything better to do, so I agreed to go, though I will say I was a bit hesitant. So my mother and I get in the car. Right before we're pulling up to the church where the lock-in is to take place, I look over at her and say, "That's funny. I guess I could have driven myself." My mom agrees. Then we pull into the actual parking lot, and all I can see are these 11-13 year old kids everywhere. They're eagerly carrying their pillows and bags, laughing, running around, etc. Then I have this sinking feeling in my stomach, and I'm on the verge of asking my mom to just turn around and take me home... when I wake up.

I think the implications here are quite obvious.

[Blogger's note #2: I hope the seriousness of these recent postings has not made you uncomfortable. I guess I'm sort of going through a strange time in my life right now--ie I'm leaving Denmark in 11 days and going back to my old life... and it sometimes seems like a regression to me. It will be interesting to see when my dreams revert back to their crazy/random/comical selves.]

ok, so this one is a few weeks old now, but it's ok because I recorded myself telling it as soon as I woke up

2007-12-08T14:06:00.000-05:00

Yeah, so I woke up on the morning of November 23rd in a bit of a panic considering... well I guess I won't tell you just yet. I almost just told you the startling climax of my dream. (Actually, one of the first things I say in the recording is: "I don't know if I should start at the end or start at the beginning or what.")

Yes, so my journal was not nearby when I awoke, and I didn't feel like getting out of my nice warm bed (you know how that is), so I decided to grab my camera off my nightstand and record my dream before I forgot it.

Here is more or less the result of this recording session (I wish I could just attach an audio file!):

I have it my head that I know how I'm going to die... or at least, like in the game Clue that I used to play as a kid, I knew what the murder weapon would be. The instrument of my death is going to be a Wizard of Oz pen. You know, it's one of those pens that you tilt one way, and something floats across the surface of the pen because there's water inside this tube thing. So yeah, the particular scene in this situation was munchkins or something skipping down the yellow brick road. Of course, this bit of information was something I had just always known and it seemed rather ridiculous, so I just sort of never thought about it. Really though, knowing what weapon will kill you won't exactly stop it from happening anyway, right? Yeah, so that is just some background information for you. It doesn't factor into the dream here... not yet anyway.

So yeah, it so happened that I was at home with my family in Moncks Corner. It was strange because I was at least a bit older than I am now, but my brother seemed to be younger. (I guess that's because I feel like I've 'changed' a lot since I've been here in Denmark... or something is different. I'm not sure if I have 'changed' or if I have just become more myself... but that's the subject of another post. perhaps something I will post on my other blog. Then of course, my brother was probably younger because that's how I rememer him best since I haven't lived at home for 4 years now.)
Yep, so my dad found this stray dog, so we took it in. A few days later, we learned that it belonged to this family, so they came to pick it up. So there's this happy little reunion going on in the front of the house, out in the yard. Everyone in the family is very excited about getting their dog back, etc, and I am just sort of standing off to the side and observing their happiness.

Then all of the sudden and without warning, we all hear this little clicking noise... it's the sound a gun makes before you shoot it. I'm not sure what it's called, but you know what I mean. It's one of those gun noises that you just don't want to hear, so we all look towards the house, and there's this huge man standing there to the side of our front door (which is ajar). The man is wearing camoflage and is just standing there calmly with a rifle sort of in the verticle resting position, but the funny thing is, the noise didn't come from this man. Then we see through a window to the house (actually the window to my old bedroom--the one I moved out of when I was 14), and there is another guy in there. This guy is going through my belongings in a hasty manner (because it was my bedroom in the dream even though it currently isn't in real life). This second guy was carrying a pistol, and it was from that gun that we heard the ominous click.

Now, it's at this point that we start to freak out--or I in particular start to freak out because I know my brother and some of his friends are in the house, and there are just people everywhere, you know? So I say to my mom, quietly, "Mom, you have to call the police. You have to do something. This guy has a gun!" But my mom just sort of stands there, paralyzed. She just mutters something like, "ummm I don't know. I don't know what to do," and she has this strange distant look in her eyes. So it's at this point that I decide to take charge. Now, if you know me well, you will know that I am not good with keeping up with my cell phone. My family, of course is much worse... ie no one has a cell phone but me, and I don't happen to have mine on me, so I set off across the yard to the neighbor's house to call the police since I obviously don't want to try crossing army-fatigues-man.

It's when I'm about half way to the neighbor's house that I hear a commotion, and I turn in time to see the second guy (the one with the pistol) running out of the door to our house. He is carrying a few things that he has stolen from my room, but it is quite a strange collection he has, really. The most rememberable thing he had was the sheet off my bed because it sort of billowed behind him as he ran. So yeah, I'm thinking, ok good. The guy is leaving, he hasn't hurt anyone, and he hasn't really stolen too much. We can call the police, and they can come and investigate and look for finger prints or whatever. But then he stops a little ways off and just sort of hesitates, and I see my mother start to walk towards him, and I think, oh no. He is going to hurt my mother.

So I start to walk over towards them, too, to try to talk some sense into my mom and get her out of the situation. Then, when I'm about five paces away, I hear the guy say to my mom, "Hey all I need is one thing. Do you have one those glippen pens?" And since I had no idea what a 'glippen' pen was, I just sort of stood there, contemplating what the heck he was talking about. But then, my mom, always eager to help, starts to pull something out of her pocket. I think it was right at this moment, that I realized what was going to happen, so I turn around and just start sprinting away from the scene. Presumably, my mother hands the guy the pen, and the guy starts chasing me. I can hear his footsteps pounding on the asphalt behind me. and I wonder, oh my gosh. Is this going to hurt? Am I going to feel this? and before I have much time to think about it, I just sort of feel this strange warmth that's sort of coming from the area of my neck.

and then I woke up.

Yes, as you might have guessed, I had been stabbed in the neck by a Wizard of Oz pen.

So have you heard that claim that if you die in your dream, you die in real life? I am living proof that that is untrue.

I think there are many interesting implications in this dream. I think that this entry is long enough though, so I might add some theories in a comment.

dreams as transcendent

2007-11-25T08:04:00.000-05:00

"I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay"
-Bob Dylan

(Yesterday, I saw the new Dylan movie--I'm Not There. They did many interesting things with the different personas of Dylan, choosing a different actor to portray each facet.)

Nudity

2007-11-25T07:55:00.000-05:00

Ok, ok, so I know it's not exactly unique to have a dream in which you are naked, but it wasn't one of those usual ones where you're walking down the street and everyone is pointing at you and laughing, and it's only when you look down that you realize you are naked.

Nope. The odd thing was in my naked dream (from the eve of Nov. 20th), I was not ashamed to be naked... which is strange because it goes against the normal naked dream motif and because I am not really very comfortable with (my own) nudity.

So it was a brief dream. Basically, I was swimming naked in a pool. There were other people there in the pool with me though. I wasn't alone. I believe they were also naked. So yeah the interesting part is while I was technically naked, I was still covered by something... even if that something happened to be clear. I mean the ripples in the water serve to distort what is beneath the surface to some extent. So yeah... was I truly confident with my nudity or was I still using the water as a cover-up? and what does it say that my 'cover-up' doesn't do a whole lot of covering up?

why I can't eat meat

2007-11-18T06:43:00.000-05:00

It may be relatively 'trendy' to be a vegetarian in some communities today (more so in some parts of the States... not Denmark), but I had a dream two nights ago that I think really gives you a glimpse of the extreme feelings I have about meat.

Warning: upon typing this dream out, I realize how grotesque it is.

The dream was pretty brief. I'm not even sure what the exact context was since it seems kind of random and far-fetched. Basically, the dream was this:
For some reason (I still don't know how or why), someone was forcing me to eat a burger. (as in it wasn't an option to not do it.) So I was eating this burger and sobbing at the same time because it was causing me serious grief. Then, finally, there is only one bite left. I hold it in my hand, contemplating what I am doing, and it just strikes me that I am eating flesh. As I go to take the last bite, I quickly realize as I start to chew, that inside that last, menacing bite of burger is a pocket of liquid blood, and I gag on it, blood seaping out of my lips and onto my hands.

...

I do not think I need to point out the potential (obvious) religious imagery and implications at play here in detail, but I will say that I think this highlites the fact that not eating meat for me is a strong conviction. It's not just some whim that I am trying out for kicks.

I used to think I could perhaps go back to eating meat--just white meat of course--but sometime in the last year or so, I have started to seriously doubt that this is even an option for me. It has ceased being meat and is now flesh... and living flesh at that.

"A Space Boy Dream"

2007-11-16T15:54:00.000-05:00

I dreamt I had to go to mars.

Im always kidding on about going to mars for the day
But faced with the reality of it, in a dream, I was terrified.

And it wasnt going to be like a moon trip
There was three of us going, but we couldnt all go on the same ship
We had to go one at a time with a day between us.

I had to go first, and it was the thought of passing through all that black space
All the darkness with nothing in it, and then being the first one to land there, all alone... I knew it was supposed to be all dark around, with just a red surface
But what if I got there and it was light, all civilised and populated and stuff?

So I made a plan.
The other astronauts were going to be my dad and my sister
And my dad would come first after me
So I decided when I landed I would just stay in my seat until he got there
And then we could get out together and have a look around
And see what sort of things were there.

And when I woke up and I was lying in the darkness, I thought I had landed.
And I just lay still for a while, waiting for my dad to get there too.

-Belle & Sebastian

a realization fashioned by my waking self

2007-11-13T12:07:00.000-05:00

(this is not a dream as much as it is a realization. it was one of those thoughts that just strikes you and interupts everything you're doing, demanding to be heard... as if my dream world was thrusting itself into my waking world.)

You know how people are always asking you: If you could pick any superpower, what would you pick?
Yeah, well I've never really been quite satisfied with my response. I typically just went with the easy 'being invisible' answer. I mean it certainly has it's appeal. To be able to just eavesdrop on anyone and sneak around would be great... but I really already do those things anyway... and half of the fun is the knowing that you could potentially be caught.

Then today it hit me. I think I know what power I wish to have. I wish I could see things in the darkness. Let me clarify some things about this power though. When I see I want to "see things in the darkness" I mean the complete and utter darkness. This is not a wish for something like seeing through night vision goggles. I don't want the things I look up to light up for me. That wouldn't really be seeing in the dark, would it? I want it remain pitch black and still have the ability to see things and to just know intuitively exactly what they look at. OK, so it's not so much of a 'super' power really, and it sounds boring... at first, but I assure you, it would be great. The first thing that comes to mind is the ability to read in the dark. Really. How many times have you wanted to read (especially in bed), but you are just completely fed up with the light? It just gets so taxing after a while... but if you could read and write in the utter darkness... yeah.

Of course, then I got to thinking that this is probably also a metaphor. Everything becomes a metaphor if you're not careful... or is it if you are careful? I don't know... but yeah... my longing to see in the darkness I guess sort of relates to my longing to make sense of everything--this strange, unsettling way of thinking that I have lately found myself sinking into... or this 'nausea' if you will. Darn it. I was going to try to keep Sartre out of this, but there it is. Or you know... maybe the darkness is just the confusion that I am feeling now. My life seems so unclear now--my future, etc. and all I want to do is just see through the darkness. The interesting thing of course is that I don't want light to play into it...

stuck in limbo

2007-10-07T04:17:00.000-04:00

ok, so I have a dream to report from last week that I haven't entered yet, but first, I want to talk about what happened last night.

I was sort of having a fitful time falling asleep (due to some coffee I had had too close to bed), so I was having a number of short snippets of dreams divided by a time of semi-awareness/awakeness. Well anyway, one of these dreams was relatively insignificant and not worth relaying to you due to its boring content... except for the fact that it led to a strange condition. I will now try to describe it.

So as I said, the dream itself was rather boring. I dreamed I was in an airplane that had just taken off, and I was a bit apprehensive about it since the plane was shakier than it should be. (I think this represents all the stress I've had lately with booking hostels, flights, trains, and buses for my travel break coming up.) Anyway, I look out the window of the plane and notice that there are those green highway signs up in the sky... just sort of suspended in the air. The signs themselves are pretty conventional--they tell you how far away cities are--but what is not normal is the fact that nothing is really holding them up. I checked to see if there was some long pole beneath it or a string tied above it that suspended from something (not that that would make a whole lot of sense), but there were no supports.

It was at this point that I became aware that I was dreaming because I knew that it was impossible for these signs to just float up there. I think I was only able to recognize this as a dream and not to just go along with it as usual because something in the real world started making noise and that noise pulled me back into the more counscious and waking state. I decided that this noise--since it didn't correspond with my dream--must be happening in the real world, and I began to think that perhaps someone was stealing the bike that was parked directly under my slight ajar bathroom window! But the thing was, I found myself stuck in the dream world... there was a span of time in which I had decided to get up to investigate, but I physically couldn't! It was the strangest sensation. I literally couldn't bring myself to get out of bed even though I wanted to. It felt like I was paralyzed. Then I realized that perhaps I should start small, and first willed my toes to wiggle (because that's how they check to see if you're paralyzed, right?) . So yeah... after a few seconds of really working at it, I finally was aware that my toes were moving, and I started to leave the dream world. Little by little, I regained control over my body--first the toes, then my feet, then my legs, and finally my arms. I then was fully in the waking world and was able to get up and go to look out the window. (Luckily, I did not see anyone there because I'm not sure what I would have done if I had.)

Yeah, so what the heck was that all about?? What a strange transition period it is between waking and dreaming! In my experience, it was a rather helpless state in which at least part of my normal consciousness had returned, but my brain had not yet woken up and taken control of my CNS and my body. This if anything seems to be evidence that your counsciousness is not necessarily directly affiliated with your brain... or at least not with the normal, everyday-functioning part. The two seem to be able to act independently of each other. Interesting. I think I will able to take this somewhere and develop this upon further reflection.

Dreaming 101

2007-10-01T12:08:00.001-04:00

The concept of the dream is fascinating.
Some people argue that dreams exhibit your innermost desires,
some go all psycho-analytical and would argue that dreams delve into and reveal the subcounscious,
some people consider a dream to be associated with a big goal or an innovation,
some people think dreams are completely random,
some beleive dreams are prophetic,
some believe dreams are just plain crazy
some people don't think they dream at all.

I read somewhere that the inability to distinguish dreams from reality is a sign of madness. If so, what does this say about dreaming? Should the world of dreams be separated and segregated from the 'real world' or the waking world? That seems like a dangerous thing to me.

Of course it's fun to think about the idea that our dreaming and waking lives are possibly mixed up or not what they seem. For instance, are you dreaming now as you read this or am I dreaming now as I type this? Is life all just one big dream? Why do even the most far-fetched and ridiculous dreams seem to make sense at the time and only gradually become laughable when relayed to a third party? Why is it that sometimes I have dreams within my dreams? Why is it ok to dream at night but not during the day?

What is lost between sleeping and waking and how can we explain this loss?

hmm well I started this blog to examine these questions and hopefully to give me a place to post both my dreams and different ideas and quotes associated with dreaming. Perhaps I'll even post some art every now and then... or pictures of my dream world. If you have something to contribute, please do.