I found Arlen's post (in response to Rachel's post) on dreams quite interesting. I was surprised that he thought he didn't have dreams because he slept on a regular schedule and didn't eat spicy food. I have never heard of either of those effecting dreaming, and for me they don't seem to have an influence. I sleep a good eight to nine hours every night and eat spicy food occasionally, but not every day. I do, however, have vivid dreams nearly every night.
Just this morning I woke up a little rattled by my dreams. I dreamed that I was someone else, and I was observing from outside, kind of like I was in a movie, watching myself, but I thought that it was real. This is very common for my dreams, but sometimes I even realize that it's a dream, though I still have problems disconnecting. In this dream, there was a plague of insects that had been genetically modified by someone (I don't remember who) to be beneficial, but they ended up causing the death of anyone who came into contact with them. My character was the one who discovered the deadly insect, but somehow remained unaffected. All of us survivors grouped together indoors to stay away from the bugs, and were eventually rescued from the plague.
Just when I thought everything was going to resolve it self, I/my character realized that there was a bug on her/me. After some consideration I/she leaped from the rescue vehicle (so as not to infect anyone else) and dove into the ocean, and to sure death. But, instead of dying, I/she found a whole group of people under the sea (but there was air, go figure) who had survived because they were wearing shorts at the time of the "invasion." Yep, shorts. I have no idea why, but I happily discovered that I/she had been wearing shorts the whole time, so I/she was safe.
I have no clue what all this means, but I thought I'd share it with all of you. Both Rachel and Arlen wonder what significance our dreams have in our lives. For me, because my dreams are so frequent and so vivid, they become part of memory and my history. I often have flashbacks to scenes in my dreams and they blend in with my "real" life. My dreams are important, and I often work out elements of my life, perhaps in metaphorical ways, in my dreamworld. I think that this alternate frame for my life is just as "real" as what we consider our real lives.
3 comments:
After reading your post, I thought it was quiet interesting to know about your dream life. I also sleep about 7 to 8 hours almost every night, but I do not have vivid dreams. Sometimes I cannot remember my dreams even I dreamt few nights. I don’t know whether dreams are true or not. Your response to Arlen's post reminds me of sigmund freud's interpretation of dreams that I learned in high school and my friends also has a dream interpretation book that you might be interested to read about it?
Thinking about dreams hurts my head; yet I kind of like to think about dreams. Arisa is right to recommend Freud; Richard Linklater's film "Waking Life" is good, too. I also tend to find dream journals interesting, like Jack Kerouac's "Book of Dreams." We don't know enough about dreams, and probably for good reason, if they are an obverse reality, as you suggest toward the end of your post. I don't know if humans can function that well with multiple realities. In fact, don't we label that a disorder? Nevertheless, dreams are fascinating to think (and write) about, and you have done nicely here following the trajectories of Rachel and Arlen. Dreams really are unsettling because they have the ability to unloosen the most secure seeming things in our lives—and then we wake up. Your dream in this post, by the way, sounds a bit like that Charlize Theron movie about the plague of the bugs that came out maybe last spring. I never saw it, but the preview looked like your dream. Maybe your dream was just a preview!
Arisa, I would love to read more about dreams interpretation, what was the name of the book your friend has? Or were you talking about Freud's?
Chris, I'll have to look at "Waking Life." I like the title, that counts for something, right?
I don't remember the Charlize Theron movie, but I just remembered there was a horror flick that came out earlyy last year with a similar idea. I watched abroad, so I can't remember the title in English. But I think that it's entirely possible that I pulled images from a movie. I hope the dream wasn't just a preview though. It was pretty creepy, I don't want to revisit it.
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