Having moved our things from Arizona to Missouri, and
having setup internet service, I'm reading to hopefully
resume gopher activity. I've been keeping up somewhat using
DiggieDog for Android, but no client is quite as streamlined
as vf1[1]. It's nice to have a proper setup again.
Perhaps I'll get a domain setup here at home as well. I used
to have jozhaus.com pointed at an old acer laptop running
motsognir[2]. I'm attempting to participate on several
gopher servers already, so it might be redundant... but, it
might be fun as well.
Last night I had a lucid dream[3]. Actually, my whole dream
experience last night was notable and very odd feeling. I
think it was one of the oddest nights of dreams that I've
ever had. I've had lucid dreams before, but not frequently
and not recently. It seems like any time I attempt to
describe a dream, it comes across as exactly mundane. Still,
it felt interesting, and so I'll try to convey that.
First, a bit of background: I have a son who sometimes has
difficultly sleeping. His mind is constantly active, and
sometimes he wakes up at 3am and is too wired to go back to
sleep. Frequently, his imagination gets the better of him,
and he'll come into our bedroom to let us know he's having a
hard time. As a result, I sometimes get into a sleep pattern
where my mind and body are expecting to wake up at 3am and
then fall back asleep. It's not pleasant. It does seem to
increase dreaming in general.
This past week has been a semi-interrupted one. To mix
things up, I flopped down on my bed yesterday afternoon,
exhausted from moving, and took a three hour nap. I went to
bed at the same time as usual that evening.
The stage was set. My body and mind were going to be ready
to wake up at 3am, and I'd have the right amount of sleep
already, so getting back to sleep would be difficult or
impossible. I was prepared, and my son did wake up, but
instead of coming in and interrupting us, he just sat up
reading a Brandon Mull book.
At around 3am this morning my sleep became fitful. I was,
in the balance of things, oversleeping. Oversleeping, for
me at least, also increases dreaming.
(as an aside, my Swedish grandmother, who we called
"Mormor," always used to tell me to eat cheese before bed if
I wanted to have dreams. I don't know if it works, but she
must have planted the idea in my mind at just the right age,
because I can't help believing it is true. I love cheese, so
I like to test the theory from time to time. I always forget
to remember if it worked by morning.)
I began to dream that I was sleeping in bed fitfully, and
that I was waking up repeatedly. It was a dream bedroom,
nothing like my own, but the bed itself was exactly like the
one I was actually sleeping in. I'd wake up, it would be
dark out, and I'd try to go back to sleep.
Eventually, after falling back asleep in my dream, I began
to dream that I was at a rest area[4] on a highway
somewhere. There were high mountains all around me. The rest
area was beautiful, and it was "crepuscule"[5]. I like that
word better than "twilight," but I like the actual time of
day better than both words.
I woke up from this dream in the dream bedroom, frustrated
that I was waking up so much. I tossed about and fell back
asleep, in my dream.
I was on some kind of hill, above the rest area. There was a
rocky circular outcropping, with a metal grating deck built
up and a fire pit in the middle. The flames and coals were
more colorful, with a lot more pinks, than usual. Some kind
of building was attached to the outcropping, as if it were a
deck of some kind. Over the rocks I could see the rest area
below. The sun was almost set.
And then I realized that I was dreaming. I told myself that
I was dreaming. Often, right at this point of realizing that
I'm dreaming, I drag myself out of my sleep involuntarily.
It's a specific feeling, like I'm dragging myself back from
a brink or over a great distance all at once. I told myself
again, expecting that I'd wake up from the realization, but
I did not.
I walked into the building through sliding glass doors. It
was poorly lit. Inside, there was a man who wanted to talk
to me. He had short blonde hair, and was wearing dark
clothes; but I wouldn't let him talk. Instead- even though I
was afraid of how he would react- I told him that this was a
dream, that I was dreaming. He seemed put off by this. I
can't recall if he said anything. I think he did, but I
don't know what. I turned and walked out of the door and
onto a path in the woods.
The woods were like the woods in northeastern Arizona. They
were dry, without much undergrowth, with ponderosa pines
all around on both sides. After walking a very short way, I
saw a wolf in front of me on the right. It was stopped, and
it was looking at me. It was a sickly, emaciated, crippled
looking wolf, with light brown, almost tan fur. It was not
at all threatening.
The wolf scampered on ahead of me as I walked, and I thought
to myself "that is a sick wolf, I'm going to heal it." I
knew that this was my dream, and I felt like I could do what
I wanted to a degree. The wolf healed, and ran off to the
left, into the trees. I could see it rejoin its family. It
wasn't a pack, it was a mother and children.
I then turned toward the trail, and in front of me a ways I
could see a pack of wolves running. Their fur looked like a
matte of dried ponderosa needles. If you've never seen
ponderosa needles, they are long and brown and come in
clumps, almost like the old bristles they would use on
brooms. They had a fascinating color and texture.
I turned around to walk back to the building, and I saw a
gnarled old tree. As I followed it upward with my eyes, I
thought that I would fly- this was my dream, and it sounded
fun. I climbed up the gnarled tree a ways and considered how
I would start flying. I have flown plenty of times in
dreams, and when I do it just happens. It feels natural and
just happens, I don't ever recall thinking about how it's
done. But this time, I was thinking about how I could fly,
and I really couldn't figure it out.
At that point, I decided that I would wake myself up from
this dream. But, I didn't wake up in my room, I woke up
again into my dream bedroom. My bed was there, but my room
was wrong. And then it hit me that I was still actually
dreaming, and I dragged myself into real consciousness.
If it had just been a dream about wolves and rest areas and
pink fires, I don't think I would have shared the dream. But
the dream-inside-a-dream aspect was new for me. I've seen
Inception[6] of course, and I actually relate with some of
the dream patterns that they describe in there (in a less
melodramatic way), but I've never had any sort of nested
dreams.
I mentioned the "feeling" of the dream, and this is where my
experience is wholly different from "Inception." In the
movie, the main character is increasingly incapable of
distinguishing between dream and reality. He is so fearful
that he carries a "totem" to test whether he is awake or
asleep, and is ready to shoot himself in the head to end a
dream that he is not in control of.
For me, dreams feel real enough when I'm in them, but upon
waking there is such a pure difference between life and
imagination that I can't fathom how anyone could ever accept
the counterfeit. Being that last night's dream was, in part,
a lucid one- and more lucid and lengthy than I've had
before- I thought that perhaps I would have a more vivid
memory of it, or that it would have a more appealing
residual memory. It didn't. It was, in the end, just a dream
that I was in partial control of.
Some people pursue lucid dreaming, but I'm not sure I see
the appeal. As I dream frequently (non-lucid), I am curious
about dreams, and I would love to hear what gopherspace has
to say on the subject.
[1]
gopher://circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/files/vf1.py
[2]
gopher://gopher.viste-family.net:70/1/projects/motsognir/
[3]
gopher://gopherpedia.com:70/0/Lucid dream
[4]
gopher://gopherpedia.com:70/0/Rest area
[5]
gopher://gopherpedia.com:70/0/Crépuscule
[6]
gopher://gopherpedia.com:70/0/Inception
