Lucid dream and a map of LiveJournal

[vaneramos]

A reference to dreams in someone else's journal reminded me of two things I dreamt last night.

But first: I have finally discovered a simple way to get myself to bed earlier. I don't know why this didn't occur to me sooner. Remeron makes me drowsy, but not right away. I usually take it when I go to bed. This week I had the brainstorm to try taking it ahead of bedtime. Last night I popped the pill a few minutes after midnight. By 1:30 I couldn't keep my eyes open and toddled off to bed. That's significantly earlier than my habitual time. Now I just have to persuade myself to get up from this chair and head to the medicine cabinet a little earlier each night. That won't be easy as it sounds.

So my head hit the pillow and I immediately started lucid dreaming. By this I mean dreams in which I'm aware that I'm dreaming and can manipulate my experience accordingly. Soporific drugs seem to have that effect, which I've experienced only a handful of times in my life.

I remember something about a colouring book. The picture showed a woman's hair, long and flowing, with wide bands for different colours. I wanted to colour it in. I also wanted to arise and fetch my notebook from the other room and record the dream, but with that thought I lost consciousness. The sensation of remembering how and when I fell asleep is rare and uncanny for me.

This morning I woke from a dream about LiveJournal. It appeared as a diagram, in fact it resembled a city transit map, with thick lines stretching between terminals, representing users. The lines actually looked like hollow tubes or subway lines. The map I saw only contained three users with lines between them in a contorted triangle. ghostsandrobots and I were two of the terminals, and we needed to reach the third person quickly. He had caused some kind of disturbance in the community, perhaps by feigning suicide.

Comments

Dreams

[ciddyguy.livejournal.com]

Dreams hold a fascination for me as I often dream in color, with sound and sometimes they move in real time. Occasionaly, music is involved. Sometimes the tune is an actual tune, or it vaguelly resembles something I'm familiar with. I do have several themes that run through my dreams and have for years.

The second dream, the live journal one, Wow. Interesting how our brains process things. I'll often dream of something I read or did that day and sometimes it's the last thing I do or see before bed.

A week ago, I dreamt I was working in a recreation room of a house that had a wall of windows that we had to work around and part of what we were doing was refinishing the walls. And earlier that evening, I had read a journal from a guy in Sunnyvale CA who was discussing their new windows for their late 60's vintage Eichler home.

Re: Dreams

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Dreams are an intriguing source of ideas from our subconscious minds. I don't remember very many of mine, but I know all it requires is a little effort.

[avad.livejournal.com]

oooh love the map dream (course)....
this last line
"He had caused some kind of disturbance in the community, perhaps by feigning suicide."
echoes in my head like something out of my own dream...well, actually i think I know which one...eep.
but nonetheless, you might like this page and website
special maps
My art is often trying to express those connections (well, duh, in the connections pieces especially)ha. So important somehow that we recognize the structure a bit more....of our networks...

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's one of the (many) things that fascinates me about your work. Do you remember the NaNoWriMo novel I wrote last year? It was an Alice-through-the-Looking-Glass type fantasy about a 12-year-old girl who travels into cyberspace. Unfortunately I didn't have enough ideas or understanding about virtual spaces to construct the world satisfactorily. I need to do more research and absorb thoughts from people like you who have considered this in their art and writing. And have more dreams like this one. It's exciting the possibilities that snippet invokes.

[avad.livejournal.com]

van, I'm so sorry.I know that book is right up my alley...and I started reading it last year but I really have trouble reading novels online in segments like that. I want to read it in it's entirety, linearly..bookform, away from the web where I can concentrate differently. I'm unable to follow your new stuff too for the same reason! Also time-based I guess...I'm rushing through things these days...flicking through my friends page because i'm really supposed to be working and can't spend much time now. Like I said in my post, hopefully after all this coming up show craziness I can sit and really READ again.:(

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Of course you already new about Tendril et al. My memory is abyssmal.

No need to apologize, I understand the problems with time and concentration very well. Anyway, most of last year's NaNo isn't very good, and I wouldn't recommend to anyone reading the whole thing. Don't feel compelled to keep my fiction journal on your friends list if you don't expect to have the time or concentration to read it. Anything I publish would certainly be announced in vaneramos, anyway.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

P.S. That website is terrific!

[ghostsandrobots.livejournal.com]

Huh, I can sort of see cyberspace looking that way, conceptually.

It's also interesting how bits of reality and conversation get threaded in in new ways, like little scraps of yarn in a bird's nest.

Good idea, by the way. Sounds like it involves the same kind of small but concerted effort that will help with dreams as well.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's funny how some dreams come from the Outer Limits, but with others like this one I know exactly where they came from.

[ghostsandrobots.livejournal.com]

Same here! Even some of the dreams that probably seem the most non-sequitur, even. I like the different experiences of the ones I can sort of track that way and the ones whose origin I can't guess.

[detailbear.livejournal.com]

I wish I knew that I dreamed. Theoretically, I know everyone dreams, but I haven't remembered even having had a dream for years, and that includes setting clocks to wake myself up, thunderstorms, phone calls, etc. waking me up at odd hours. *sigh*

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I am rarely conscious of having dreamt. There are ways of learning to remember them. One simple technique I have used is to set a notebook and pen by my bed. I tell myself that I'll dream and remember it. Simply forming the intention sometimes helps me. Although it sounds like your case might be a relatively tough one to crack. There are books written on this topic, unfortunately I haven't read one since I was a boy.