[Just a note: I had a very substantive post idea all ready, but don't have the energy/time to tackle that one. So I'm doing this one on the fly.]
Due to some recent issues (without going into details), I have begun to take some medication. For a short time, while trying to find the right "med balance," I was taking a relatively large dosage. While on this dosage, one of the side-effects was very vivid, strange dreams. I was only on this dosage for a couple of days. But it did get me thinking about things like dreams and reality. It also got me thinking about reality being what we perceive, and things like: Does reality differ from person to person? Is there such a thing as "objective reality"? Etc. Now, among other recent things, I suffer from something called delayed onset sleep disorder. Meaning, I'm a night person. It is very hard for me to go to sleep at night when I want to. In the past, this was never a problem, as I had jobs with late hours that allowed me to stay up until I would naturally fall asleep, which is not necessarily an unreasonable hour, but now that I work an 8-5 job and have to get up no later than 7am, I can't go to sleep early enough to get a decent amount of sleep. So for the past couple of years I've been taking over-the-counter sleep-aid. Anyone who has taken this stuff knows that it's really just an antihistamine, with the side-effect of sedation making its use for a sleep-aid. I've always hated the fact that I had to take this stuff to sleep at night during the week. Now that I've began taking a different prescription medication, I decided to find an alternative to the over-the-counter antihistamine sleep-aid (I was concerned about any interactions, etc.). I wanted to get a prescription to Rozarem, but due to my general doctor's gross misdiagnosis (she likely won't be my doctor for much longer!), I didn't get one. When I discovered that the main ingredient in Rozarem is just melatonin, I went down to the natural food store and got some melatonin supplements. It worked very well, making me sleepy but not the "artificial" sleepy, a more natural feeling sleepy. However, I got a kind that you drop into your drink in a little dropper, and was likely using too much-- the result being, very realistic and vivid dreams that I easily remembered. This morning, for example, I had a couple of "false awakenings," which is where I woke up, looked at the clock and realized that I was running late, decided to eat my cereal anyway, and then started to get ready to shower- only to wake up when my alarm went off. Due to this unintended but not unwelcome side-effect, I decided to keep a dream journal, and things such as lucid dreaming, etc. have taken my interest. All of this rambling on is leading into a few things to choose from to talk about under the general topic of: dreams.
When I was little, I used to be afraid to go to sleep because I was afraid to dream. The dreams seemed real, and while I never recall having nightmares, I always had extremely fucking weird dreams, and this scared me when I was little. So I used to sneak into my parents room at night to sleep, because it made me feel safe (I was like 3 or 4 at the time), and my pediatrician told my parents to turn the lock on my bedroom door around and lock me in my room if I started to do it again. So they locked me in and I got over my fear of nightmares. After that, I was always fascinated with dreams. I found that I often explored things in my dreams that upset me in real life. When I stayed at a friends house and his parents scared the living shit out of me with stories from the Book of Revelation (rivers of blood, red moon, stars falling from the sky, etc.), I had dreams of the end of the world for weeks. When in grade school a classmate told me that "if you die in a dream, you will die in real life," I got killed in my dreams (and, to this day, every once in a while, I will randomly get killed in a dream). I've always been fascinated with dreams, and there are times (I'm not sure if everyone has experienced this) where a dream has been so real, it sticks with me for days. I can remember something or someone that makes me feel something or brings up old feelings, good and bad, or something will happen in a dream that sticks with me, whether it be an image or a feeling, etc. And there are times when, in reality, I feel depersonalized, or I get a very surreal feeling, and wonder if I am dreaming. Supposedly, people can have lucid dreams, in which you realize within the dream that you are dreaming, in which case you may be able to control things, bring your "real world" identity into "dream world," etc.
So everyone can talk about dreams and dreaming, the nature of dreams and reality, etc.
Lastly, I want to ask a question: some of my favorite movies/books/music etc. concern the blurring of the real and the unreal. It also occurs to me that, if I lie to you about something that impacts you, I have altered your reality. But if you experience it as reality, is it any less real? I want to compare two movies that are largely given very bad reviews, and the very mention of their titles (at least one of their titles) will likely elicit groans: Vanilla Sky and Solaris. Now, both movies have their flaws: Vanilla Sky is largely a piece of crap, especially the nature of the reveal of the twist at the end; Solaris is actually pretty great (I'm talking about the new version, not the extremely long older Russian version). But I bring them up for this reason: (if you haven't seen one or both of the films, you're likely not ever going to see them- but I'm going to spoil the twists of both if you haven't seen them, so there's a fair warning) Vanilla Sky ends with the main character realizing that he has been cryogenically frozen and has been experiencing a lucid dream- unfortunately, his dream has been infiltrated by subconscious guilt etc. and turned into a nightmare. However, upon realizing this, he is told that he can erase all of this and start over with the dream, where he can basically have whatever he wants, including the girl of his dreams- or he can wake up, it's 150 years in the future, the girl of his dreams is obviously long dead, and his wealth will not last. He opts to wake up to reality.
In Solaris, the main character is confronted with a strange planet that brings back people from people's pasts- this planet brings back his dead wife, who committed suicide (if you haven't seen the movie- watch it, it will make sense). His mind being haunted by his dead wife, the planet brings her back from his memories, and basically the end of the movie is, he can choose to leave her behind, her being a fake construct of his flawed memories and desires, or submit to the dream- he chooses to enter the dream, where his wife is still alive, though it is not real and is a construct of the strange planet. Both characters were faced with a similar choice: Dream or reality? Both chose differently: In Vanilla Sky, the character chose reality, as flawed, unfamiliar and possibly bad as it may have been. In Solaris, the character chose the dream- to stay with his dead wife in a fantasy, including his flawed fantasy of how he remembers his wife and wishes her to be. The question is: Which would you choose? Not necessarily as the characters in these movies, but if you were faced with similar circumstances?
Many people would say that life is a dream. I've read many different things: that dreams are a gateway into another world, like "astral projection." At the very least, dreams are interesting and can tell us things about ourselves. Hopefully you all can make something out of this topic.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
Most of my dreams are weird, even unintelligible. But when I have good dreams, in which I get something I want (when I was a kid it would be a cool toy helicopter, or a drawer full of candy; now it might be intimacy with an attractive woman, or whatever), I always wake up right before I get to the best part. Like I'll be dreaming that I'm opening the drawer full of candy, and I'll know that it's all mine and that I can eat it whenever I want, and then I'll wake up. Sometimes I'll even know that I'm going to wake up, just from that feeling of excitement and gratification.
I haven't seen Solaris, but I think I'd rather choose reality over my own flawed fantasy, because I think genuine hope (even tragic hope) is preferrable to narcissistic wish-fulfillment. But some "fantasies," like Tolkien's Middle Earth, are more a kind of subjunctive reality created by imaginative fiat than a pathological fantasy formed by consciousness turning away from reality towards its own imaginative ego gratification. So if Glenn would rather be a poet or a janitor or a sex ed. teacher on the Starship Enterprise than a master's student at Texas State, then that's just a matter of taste. But if he specifically wants Kirk's job, without having to do all that crap like the Kobayashi Maru first, then that's sick, or at least flawed. I guess.
I think I could handle being the starship enterprise's resident poet. That'd be sweet.
I'll save my specific thoughts on this topic for my post. But I want to say that Solaris is an example of a time when both the original and the remake are good for different reasons. I really like both. I think there's a lot more emotion in the remake, but the original is more thoughtful and artistic. I saw the remake in Lake City. Did not go over well with the audience.
Also, Nick, I think you should have mentioned the dream you had where I appeared as a ghost. That was a cool cameo.
Glenn, I don't remember that dream.
Using Solaris/Vanilla Sky as examples was only to set up the question: Think of it as if it were you. If you lost someone you loved, and it haunted you, and you found you could have one last experience with them, you wouldn't take it? Even a fantasy is still an experience, in the pure sense of the word. And really, look at the world around you- look at people you pass on the street, people you see on TV, etc.- so many people are living in a fantasy! I mean, what's reality? The reality of someone who thinks they can sing on American Idol is going to be quite different from my reality. It's just interesting to think about. And it's also interesting to consider that we spend a third of our lives asleep- I figure, now that I am remembering my dreams more clearly, why not take advantage of that.
I wasn't really talking about things like Lord of the Rings fantasy- that's imagination and storytelling. What I'm trying to get at is much more personal.
I would take the dream/fantasy. My favorite part of the day is after I get into bed and start falling asleep. I believe that sleeping is just as legitimate of an activity as many of the things we do while we are awake (and more legitimate than other things, like watching lifetime). This reminds me of The Matrix, a movie I hated BTW. I think that the main thing that I didn't get about the Matrix was WHY it would be so bad to live in the Matrix. People kept saying things like "then your not realllllly living." And I kept countering with "your not really living now -- what have you done today?" I think that I am different than other people though because I also have no desire to live forever; I'm happy with the one life I've been allotted.
One a side note, psychologists are learning more all the time about how our perceptions affect real physical symptoms. It is clearer than ever that not only is there a space where reality and make believe meet, but that we spend most of our lives in that space.
Here's one thing that I do NOT understand. Why would people send their REAL money to Second Life to buy FAKE things? The people I've talked to about Second Life and similar games tell me that the thigns are not "fake" but rather "virtual." Yeah, that's fake. I can almost understand it given my acceptance of self-created reality, but when you start sending your hard earned money, that's when you lose me!
Melissa
I *love* the first Matrix movie. It was on TV last night, and I watched it for the umpteenth time. I'd actually had this theory for a long time that I was living in a computer with some sadistic programmer throwing shit at me just to see how I'd react.... Then I saw the Matrix (after not having seen a single preview for it and therefore being totally unprepared - I was overseas at the time) and thought OH MY GOD - that's *my* theory!
But I agree with Melissa - why can't I live in the Matrix? Can I please live in the Matrix? Hook me up. And can I actually live in the "perfect" Matrix instead of the "real life" version?
Also, we all know I have been wishing for the fantasy world consistently for years now. WD40 anyone?
One more thing: On facebook, you can pay money to buy someone a "virtual gift" - why oh why? Ok, so it's only a dollar, but I'd rather you gave me the dollar than a virtual cupcake or whatever.
Sorry. Brain-o-tron got stuck on the “pontificate about literature” setting. Happens all the time. This is much more personal:
A woman I loved very much, was crushed under a truck last May. There were a lot of things that I wanted to say to her (and hear from her, I’ll admit) that I never got to. I sometimes use psychedelics and the occult for divinatory purposes (Glenn, don't tell mom), and I turned all such means at my disposal towards creating the kind of experience you wrote about. The kind of pathetic, laughable “spiritualism” that one finds in books from the late 1800’s, really, but I was pretty desperate. What I got instead was a very stern, impersonal and unequivocal message from God, or The Universe, or my subconscious, or who/whatever owns that weird eye that can see through all my bullshit, that disturbing the dead is a very stupid, disrespectful and wrong thing for a decent human being to do.
But then a couple of months later she showed up in a dream, playfully poking fun at me for being such a big crybaby. She had a bag of oranges that she said were for someone else, but I didn’t care. Hearing her laugh again was enough.
So I guess if I had the chance to see her again by virtue of a generous universe, then I’d say “hells yeah.” But if this opportunity stank like my own sickness and delusion, then I’d say “no way, Jose.”
Second Life is totally crazy! Has anybody ever tried to go into that place? I swear you walk one step and immediately the opportunity to spend $5 on a penis for your avatar pops up.
Also, it's weird because if you come up with a way to make money in Second Life, (be it whore yourself or sell poems to furries), you can convert those second life dollars into real American spend-o-bucks. I mean, USD.
Some people actually make a decent living in Second Life. Additionally, real stores like American Apparel and The Gap have opened up branches in Second Life, so you can buy actual Gap brand fake clothes for your avatar. It's crazy!
What the hell is Second Life?
Cthuhlu, your experience was extremely interesting. I've always held an interest in things such as lucid dreaming and whatnot, but never acted upon it. I've recently become very interested in it and am going to see what happens. But it occurs to me that life itself may be just a big fantasy- that "consensus reality," if you look at things like quantum physics a certain way, where reality is a construct of our observations, then reality is very much a fantasy- especially if one thinks of "God" as basically the universe as its own observer- I mean, as the superposition of consciousness observing everything- then we are just objects in God's (and I suppose everyone else's) fantasies. I think my brain just melted.
But beyond just talking about whether one would choose a fantasy over reality, and if that choice is even possible given the possible tenuous nature of reality (depending on how you look at it), I wanted to know what everyone thought of dreams in general. There are obviously several ways of approaching dreams: some claim that dreams are only a manifestation of desires, or fears, or a collage of random thoughts etc.; the other end of that spectrum would say that in dreams your "soul" (which I would interpret to mean your consciousness) actually moves to a different plane of existence. Some claim that you can do extraordinary things through dreams, such as heal yourself, move through time, etc. Some even think that you can share a dream with another dreaming person. All interesting ideas. I've never given much thought to my dreams or deciphering them, but recent events have brought this into my mind, so I thought I'd explore it.
Post a Comment