dreams

are probably something I can't imagine I'll often talk about, for a start they don't have much to do with my skewed and twisted cynic PoV of living in a big european city vision of a blog (where I gets to moan a lot), but they are nevertheless quite an interesting subject matter in the general sense. Especially how the process differs between individuals.

When I dream (relatively frequently), I tend to do so quite intensely. We won't get into the weirdness factor. I know, everyone thinks their dreams are weird, but I thus far I remain pretty underwhelmed by the craziness of other peoples dreams. Except my Mum. She has the sort of dreams that make me suspect my father of slipping something into her tea.

I can remember a few snippets of last nights adventure (something like a Dali vision of Barcelona through the architecture of Gaudi, in case you're interested). They say you should have a dream journal and scribble stuff down as soon as you wake up, if you want to remember (based, of course, on the theory that you should afterward be able to read and understand whatever nonsense made it onto the page). But I am generally fighting the wake-up demons at this time and have levels of coherency somewhat akin to 'shoot the pink poodle, where are my pants?, give me coffee', so controlling a pencil and cataloguing some random weird images is pretty much beyond me.

Anyway, the other day I was having a conversation with my boyfriend about a bizarro nighttime experience, which I assume is normal by virtue of the fact that it happens (applaud my logic), where I wake up during the night with no recollection of where I am, or even who I am. This ego-less state lasts for a few seconds until my brain catches up with my change in sonambulous circumstance, and I'll drift off again. It is, granted, a rare event, but judging by the 'did you just grow another head?' look I got from my monsieur, it doesn't happen to everyone equally. In trying to explain that it wasn't really that odd, I actually had to come up with some reasons why (that's the standard system I believe).

So I argued that, when we dream, we generally do so with very little self awareness. The reality of our life enters into our dreams and we recognise it and 'react' to scenes that vary from the mundane to the insane in a variety of ways, but one generally doesn't wander through one's dreams thinking 'I am me, I like blue and cats and I work with Bob' (that's called lucid dreaming, which is a whole other matter).
Sometimes I am aware of my entire body (swimming running walking, flying if I'm lucky) though sometimes I feel as if I exist only as a pair of eyes that never blink, ego-less, absorbed and observing. If I wake suddenly from that state, my brain has to scramble to catch up, so the result is that I stare at the window puzzled for a while till my brain points its finger frantically on the 'you are here' of my reality map.