Dreams

I just finished a Japanese lesson which involved me reading an article about dreams, and got my mind running. I've long had a lot of thoughts and opinions about dreams, and as it turns out, I've also had a lot of dreams as well, perhaps more than many others have. I should probably write as much as I can now while the thoughts are still there and before, like so many of the dreams I've had, all is forgotten.

Among the things mentioned in the article were a few I had heard before: we only dream at the "Rapid Eye Movement" (REM) State when we are in the deepest point of our sleep; it is not at all uncommon to have several dreams in one night; we remember very few of our dreams because, unless we awaken shortly after we have them (about 8 minutes after the dream concludes), we aren't likely to remember them. There were a few things I didn't know as well that I read in the article. One was that people who aren't very stressed out have a tendency to have more dreams, while those who don't worry quite as much don't tend to have them quite as much either. It makes a bit of sense when you think about it; the more stressing reality is to a person, the more likely they are to seek escapism, and in sleep I suppose that option is to dream.

It does strike me how often I have them. I suppose this all means that I'm a bit of a stressed out person when it comes down to it. I asked my language partner if she had many dreams and she said, "No, not really. I don't really worry about things much either, so I think that I generally just sleep easily and dreamlessly."

I'm left thinking of another quote from the book "Shantaram". In it, one of the characters said to another that we really don't feel sad when we're asleep; we might feel happy or even frightened, but never really sad. Though I cannot speak for others, I would have to say this is true for myself. At the saddest points in my life, I've often felt like wanting nothing more than for the day to end and simply to rest. I wonder sometimes if we have to be awake to be sad, if it takes consciousness or awareness to realize that things aren't going right for us in life and thus formulate the feelings of sorrow. I also sometimes wonder if sadness is linked to intelligence, that we have to be smart enough to know things are bad and that again our knowledge can sometimes only bring misery. For this reason I also wonder if animals, who are conscious only to a certain extent though perhaps not entirely aware of their existence and surroundings, can truly feel sad either (they certainly seem to have happiness, anger, and fear in them though I'm not sure about actual sadness).

I think that dreams are more or less your mind making vivdly real the random thoughts that swim around in our heads. Over the course of the day we find our minds wandering all over the place, thinking of other places and hypothetical situations. Even when we sleep we don't stop thinking. When we dream, we don't have our consciousness to ground ourselves in reality, and those hypothetical places and situations become real to us as we do so. The logic doesn't make sense, because people in dreams don't act as we do in real life, their actions are as random as any of us changing our minds or having a new thought enter our head. The scenery in a dream has us hopping from place to place, because no sooner do we think of a new one than we are transported there. Sometimes we dream of places we've been but the layout or geography is weird, slightly different than reality because our mind makes it imperfect. Sometimes in dreams, the way to get back where we came from disappears on us.

Though I've never felt sad in a dream, another conclusion I've recently to come to towards the ones I've had is that they tend to leave me feeling a little unsettled. I sometimes think that perhaps I ground my thoughts a bit much in logic or understanding while I am awake, and because I can never seem to understand what is going on or why things are happening as they do while in a dream, I think it leaves me a bit unnerved. I do think it's interesting to try and interpret your own dreams and try to use them figure out your own thought processes. While I certainly cannot disprove it, however, I don't know how much stock I put in the ideas that we can see the future in them or the people who say this.

I once lost my phone and spent half the night looking for it before getting too tired to continue and having to go to sleep. I dreamt I found it in certain a place I hadn't looked and the next day, when I did so was surprised to find it there. A situation like this, however, simply makes me think that I must've still been pondering where I could've lost it when I went to bed -especially after searching so extensively the night before and having it weigh so heavily on my thoughts- and that I simply remembered a place I might've left it while I was asleep rather than awake. Because I was asleep when I did so, I think that it simply became incorperated into my dream. The mind is a funny thing in the end, and I find it interesting the different ways it will manifest external factors into our dreams. I've heard music in my dreams only to wake up to that music playing in real life. I've heard voices calling me in my dreams only to find it was whoever was trying to awaken me. I've used the bathroom countless times in dreams only to be left wondering why I still have to go, until the realization hits me that I'm in a dream and need to wake up and make a visit to a real toilet. In trying to interpret our dreams we can understand more not only about the inner thought processes of our minds, but the external factors in our lives as well and how we feel deep down inside about them.

I remember watching a movie called "Unsung Heroes" when I was younger where one of the main characters was telling the child in the story about his dreams. He was showing him a book, which he said was a record of the dreams he'd had. Kind of a quirky character, he had realized how fast and easily we forget our dreams and so, he said, that every time he woke up from a dream he would quickly run to write it down or draw a picture of it so he wouldn't forget. There are very few of my own which I can remember, but I thought I'd write a few down, some of the more vivid ones just for the hell of it. I woke up very shortly after each of them leaving a fresh impression in my head, though I remember each for very different reasons as well.

I only heard the term "lucid dream" recently while talking with some friends, though I realize I've had several over the course my life. It simply means a dream in which you realize that you are in one, change your behavior, and sometimes even are able to control it to some extent or other. I had one once where I was falling to the bottom a very large canyon. It looked a lot like the Grand Canyon -which I had seen when I was very young- and I think it was my memory of that place which inspired it all. Midway through falling, however, I somehow came to the realization that I was dreaming. Something about the whole thing just felt off, unreal, and for whatever reason I just sort of understood that I was still asleep. I was able to control it somewhat then, to keep myself from falling; the wind blew heavily and it was as if I was now falling forward instead of down. Gradually I drifted away and eventually out of sleep, only to find myself dangling halfway off the top bunk of the bed I was then sharing with my little brother at that point in my childhood.

I haven't had many nightmares at all when I think about it. My parents did their best to keep horror movies away from me and my brother and sister when we were younger which might have played a part in all of this. The worst nightmare I ever had actually occurred when I was just a year into high school. I had a friend at that time who was in a gang and constantly telling exaggerated stories about things he and his friends had done, though nothing to the extent which I saw that night. I think that a few mafia movies and extremely violent video games I'd watched recently -and the fact that I'd also gotten stoned pretty recently leaving my mind wide open to a childlike imagination- probably had more to do with it all. In the nightmare I had, my friend killed a person who mouthed off to him. I remeber that I felt very shocked and horrified, and then for some reason, everything around me just melted away and I was in a warehouse full of body parts stuffed into garbage bags and steel oil drums, a killing factory of sorts. I was surrounded by the carnage, and I don't know why, but I just somehow understood that a bunch of gangsters had done this, human beings mutilating other human beings. I remember shivering not simply from fear, but also because the air around me felt unnaturally cold, damp, and clammy. I awoke so shaken that I couldn't fall back to sleep, couldn't move out of my bed for fear, and so just lay awake there until, after some time had passed, I finally calmed down. It's strange how when we first regain consciousness, there's a lull between, where we're half asleep and sometimes don't realize it was all just a dream and still believe it to be real. Though I'd seen characters in movies and TV shows waking up in cold sweats scared out their wits from nightmares, I'd never actually understood this feeling until then, and to some extent had thought it was simply theatrics. Can only imagine what it must be like for those who really live through wars and true horrors to dream about it later.

The last dream I can really remember vividly was one where I was more or less living out a pulp noir western of sorts. My brother and I went looking for some people (can't remember why exactly) and we found them in some abandoned village in steep, rocky canyon. I remember it looking a lot like an old western ghost town, except the buildings where made of stone like ancient ruins. When we got there, we found the people we were looking for, only to find they weren't willing to come with us. We argued with them briefly before one of them looked out the window and simply said something like: "They've come for us." I remember looking out the window to see a group of men wearing hats and long, gray dusters just arriving into the town. One of them had on a long black coat and a black hat instead as well as a long, dark rifle slung over his back and seemed to be leading them. It felt a lot like being in a movie. I think I remember this dream mostly because it was right at this moment, just as it was getting interesting, that I was awakened by an alarm and reminded that I needed to get up and go to school. I also remember quickly making a futile attempt to go back to sleep, wanting to see what would happen. There was no such luck, though, apparently you can't exactly return to your dreams like a scene on a DVD whenever you want to once you've woken up. I've never had a recurring dream, but if ever there was one I wish I could have this would've been it. How disappointing, it's like never getting to see the conclusion to something you started watching but were very intereted in. Then again though, they are just dreams. Most are destined to be forgotten and each time it happens, it's almost like a small miracle that some even get remembered at all...