fragments, 1/10/03

[novapsyche]

12:15 a.m.

Dreams are memory-poems.

Comments

[waxphallusophic.livejournal.com]

...then what would you say if I told you I recall dreaming,
at most, maybe once every six months?

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

You dream, even if you do not recall it.

Re:

[waxphallusophic.livejournal.com]

Neurologically, yes.

I wouldn't ever, conceive of trying to argue that point! [what cognitive scientist worth their salt would?]

Perhaps I should rephrase -
...the trend is that I tend to remember them less as my progression of existence gets longer [in a linear time-wise conceptualization] and I wonder if you thought there might be any inherent significance in that?

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure. My father says that he dreams every few weeks. Supposedly women dream more vividly and can recall their dreams more readily than men. Maybe there's a sex difference. (All I can say is, the older I get, the stranger my dreams get. More surreal, yet more believable when I'm in them.)

Re:

[waxphallusophic.livejournal.com]

True to the strange.

Mine have always been unruly, perhaps that's why I rarely remember them. Contextual overload of oddity my conscious mind is unwilling to accept or such.

[bi-sex-ualcat.livejournal.com]

It's with age my dreams are becoming more 'normal'. When I was little my dreams were so completely surreal so as to weird out the average LSD fiend, but as I get busier with the more mundane tasks of my life, my dreams in turn reflect that. In a sense I need it that way - at least for the moment - since it can be hard to function the day after an intense ride through the land of gellatinous triangle surgeons (a few are circles and rectangles), wading through muppet body parts as the Count attempts to kill me with lightning bolts in the shape of numbers.

They key to remembering dreams is expecting to, and taking the time to reflect upon them when you wake up. When I was younger I had the time to do this, so my dream recall was so detailed that it made me waking life seem the inferior. Now I have to jump up as soon as my eyes open, leaving the majority of my dreams fading so fast I completely forgot I had them, save the occasional time I managed to jot down a few words - to read them later and have the shocking recall. So shocking since without those words my conscious mind had absolutely no recollection of the dream, for it to _all_ come flooding back. It's almost like dream worship - the more you pay respect and heed to them, the more they give back. And then lucid dreaming! Oh my.

Re:

[waxphallusophic.livejournal.com]

Lucid dreaming is something -
that did happen to me quite often when I was younger, and still does under certain circumstances.
However, the manner in which they manifest disturbs me greatly enough to avoid them.

Re:

[bi-sex-ualcat.livejournal.com]

How do they manifest?

Some of them can be disturbing for me, but then they're so amazing and fascinating that the masochist/fool in me enjoys them anyhow. But like intense dreaming of the non-lucid sort, I can only take so much of it. Though, it would be nice to be able to retain lucidity and fully explore dream land - no matter how terrifying it gets. Which I know can be quite a great deal - one of my most terrifying ones was when I decided to try to gauge how 'conscious' the people in my dream were. Expecting to engage in a whole bunch of weird looks as I attempted to explain them they weren't real, instead they made me question how real I was.

[mylastsigh.livejournal.com]

I like this concept. Now to take those dreams and fashion them into words.

Re:

[waxphallusophic.livejournal.com]

Around age five or so. It would happen that I'd be asleep, and I would wake up to full cognition - except that my body wouldn't. Sometimes accompanied by the sensation that: the best way I can describe this is - as though my neurons were firing haywire, some kind of internal shaking [i had always wondered if they were seizures or something, until i was sleeping next to my ex girlfriend and she said i hadn't moved at all.]

But the really disturbing part was always that I couldn't feel whether or not I was breathing, or if my heart was beating. That combined with the fact that I couldn't move my body either, unless I concentrated for minutes to make a leg kick and 'wake' myself up. Usually, I'd go into lucid dreams, walk around the house - do my thing, and then realize I hadn't actually gotten up. Could happen over and over again - sometimes when I'd actually wake up, I'd be suspicious of whether or not I was just dreaming again.

Other times, it would be the quaintly surreal dream land - but most times it was too real.
These days it doesn't happen unless I nap in the afternoon, or fall asleep on my stomach or back [for some reason it always happens if i do that]

Alrighty, I think I've used up enough of Novapsyche's space with storytime ;)

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

That doesn't sound like dreaming--that sounds like a full-blown out-of-body experience.

Re:

[waxphallusophic.livejournal.com]

Yes. I've been told that quite a number of times. I'm was willing to entertain the idea, however, I'm also [i'm loaded with contradiction] very skeptical about such things [despite my zenarchist tendency].

Someone once tried to get me to exploit it - however, when I say it disturbs me, it's an understatement. It's more like life or death panic.