Entry: Dreams

Ever have a horror dream? And no...I'm not referring to a nightmare. I'm talking about a dream that wasn't really something that scared you, but had a real horror genre about it. Kinda weird but also kinda cool at the same time. (This is about the time that everyone reading this starts to wonder about just how much of a freak I am). I had one of my first last night. Maybe that's what I get for sleeping on a hardwood floor. :)

WARNING: The following is extremely abstract and subjective content. Feel free to enjoy or ignore. :)

Seriously though...physicians and PhDs often scoff at the academics who devote their lives to the study of dreams. I'm hardly a dream expert but I can definately appreciate their dynamics by what I observe through experience. I started paying attention to things like these a few years ago when I suddenly realized how to tell when I was about to fall asleep. For most people, they lie there (in whatever state of fatigue) and wait to wake up the next morning. The next morning when they wake up, the last thing they remember was lying there in bed waiting for the sandman to take them. Suddenly...BLAM....it's morning and time to wakeup! "When the heck did I fall asleep??" There are actually ways to tell that you're about to doze off and I'm glad that I was able to notice it. It makes life simpler. For instance, if I'm at work and I am feeling a bit fatigued or drowsy, if I notice the signs, I'll immediately get up and go for a walk. However, if I'm feeling fatigued and drowsy and the signs aren't there, then I'll be fine. Weird how that works.

Being a computer nerd, I also tend to observe the dream mechanism through the eyes of a programmer. Sound weird? Of course it does! :) But seriously...have you ever woken up from a dream and remembered it quite lucidly but, as the day progressed, you could remember less and less of it until it gets to the point that you remember that you HAD a dream but really have no idea what it was about? Happens to me all the time. Have you also noticed that, even though that dream has been forgotten, that it could be repeated later in another dream? Or better yet.....when you wake up one morning and you're still in that weird delirious state, that you find that you not only are very lucid about the dream that you just had but also of some previous dreams that you've been unable to recall? Or even have the ability to remember dreams that you don't even remember ever having? Again...weird. To me, it seems like there are parts of the brain that are randomly accessible (analogy to RAM) during a dream state but, after awakening, become more and more inaccessible until they reside completely in protected memory which is completely unaccessable to the conscious mind. I think that those protective barriers are broken-down and re-created every time that we dream.

There are also those few golden minutes after you often awake that your mind is stuck between reality and the dream state. I read a study a few years ago that suggested that that particular state is analogous to substance intoxication. It's weird how you can dream of flying pink elephants and, if you wake up at just the right moment, you can spend the next minute thinking that there are flying pink elephants outside your window even though you're awake. Then again...I don't know if this applies to everybody, but I find it weird at times. I've even gone so far as to ask people weird things right after waking up only to be quite embarassed a few minutes later after I'm completely lucid.

If it weren't for mysteries like these, life would be a lot more boring....dont'cha think? :) Personally, I think that mysteries like dreams, Nessie, the origin of the universe, what's in a black hole, UFOs, and whatnot, are a healthy component of life. Without them, so much would be lost. What fun would there be if we could explain EVERYTHING? Then again...that's simply the gospel according to Miller. ;)