there is nothing more boring than other people's dreams

Due to synecdochic's potential for reality-bending dreams (and becoming an SCP herself), I started thinking about how that would work out if I didn't get to dream up the existence of a sharkopus (you know you would love life lived like a sci-fi original movie, don't lie), and one of my more vaguely realistic and less surrealist ones.

The thing is, this is where I explain I don't understand people who say they don't dream in plotlines, or at least, don't seem to think of them that way. I dream like I'm living a novel that I have the ability to revise, so half of any dream I spend trying to fix scenes I don't like--most tend to be surrealist after school special lessons on if you change things, they get worse, not fucking with you, I dream in goddamn platitudes--and some are sequels to earlier dreams, or at least, a related episode. They have their own memory sets, in fact, that come with them. The only ones that actually bother me a little, however, are the ones that create memories for me later that it takes me a while--and I do mean a while--to realize are dream-related, because they're both breathtakingly normal and background enough that I don't think about them deeply at first and are just off enough that when I finally recognize them, there's this holy shit moment.



There is one kind of dream that I both look forward to and freak me the fuck out. They're the ones that work on a period of time something less than forever, but when I wake up, it literally takes me time to remember that's not actually my life. I'm there that long, so long than I can be hours readjusting and days getting over it. It doesn't actually matter how impossible it is, or ridic, or completely wrong, none of those things matter; I'm there so long those things are internalized. The longest I can remember where I could track it, or the dream let me track it, I think was close to sixty years relative time, and the other reason these freak me out is that these are the only dreams in which time, time passing by, is a factor I recognize in-dream.

Mostly theyr'e just weird real life combined with dream logic and shenanigans (and me spending quality time re-writing my own dreams retroactively in-dream because I don't like how this is going), but one of them, and I suppressed a lot of the details, was this hugely mundane dream in which ships appeared in the sky and--to explain, I lucid dream only when I'm half-awake, never in full REM sleep. This time, I stopped long enough to hope, hope desperately, that this wasn't real, because something truly terrible was about to happen before I forget everything after that. When I still remembered it, I remember waking up in utter, breathtaking relief and horror and I had to go check and make sure, but for Reasons I don't remember now, thank God, if that was real, everything was really, really over. Dream logic was in effect for several hours after that. It's not that I couldn't tell the difference between reality and dreams; it's that unlike normal waking up times, I couldn't get out of functional dream-logic and anything could happen, including alien ships in the sky hovering beign something that was happening right now.

I don't think anything on earth scared me as badly as being unable to get out of dream-logic in the real world. You lose faith in pretty much the fabric of reality at that point. I admit now, the way I couldn't until I watched Inception a few times, that a lot of my problems with that movie was there wasn't nearly enough surrealism for me to discard how fucking desperately close that is to the very few times I can't navigate the overlap and the transition is a conscious effort that I jsut have to wait out until reality asserts itself.

The other reason I still think of this one in a lifetime of strange surrealist dreams of time passing--and these aren't uncommon, just how much I remember of them is, that one I try to rememeber sometimes when I'm half-awake and I can lucidly sort of think about these things without the accompanying emotional reaction--I have no idea what about that dream was so wrong that it broke my reality filter on waking that badly. Every time I try, with this particular one, I get hit with enough adrenaline to wipe out a city block. Most recently, exhausted and half-asleep, I thought about what the ship looked like and had just gotten the shape of it and something seemed to--it was the weirdest sound, like metal being bent but in a human voice--and hello adrenaline and all of it was gone again. This happened, by the way, a few days ago, right before I read syn's entry, so it's been on my mind.

When I'm awake and recall some of the details, this just doesn't happen, but in that space between, I can't figure out what is going on there. Granted, I don't remember most of my dreams more than an hour, and a lot I never remember at all, but so many of them are related, fit together in dream, but this one has never been continued later and it isn't part of any dream memories in my continuing sagas, and I wonder if it's because there was nothing left by the time I woke up to go back to, but I know I felt time passing in there. I was there far too long, I think. It wasn't forever, but I think the difference between forever and something just short of that isn't really any difference at all.

Comments

[ratcreature]

I once had a really vivid flashback to a dream while I was awake. That was horrible, because the dream was a nightmare, and somehow looking in the mirror triggered the horrible visual and for a moment I was seeing things that weren't there. And it wasn't right after waking, when there is still confusion but much later.

[seperis]

Jesus. I've had vague flashbacks, but nothing like that at all. That must have been beyond freaky. I'm so sorry.

If you dont' mind my asking, what kind of nightmare? Mine are--I have a--I guess fear reaction after I wake up (not in dream), but it's not like, horror movie and I don't have it while in the dream, only in retrospect. Or like the ship one I described, which is in itself really it's own entire category.

[ratcreature]

It was particularly horrible because it was a freaky eye nightmare, one of my major fears (not entirely unrelated to the state of my retinas, also probably connected to a lot of eye background exams I had ever since birth). I blogged about it at the time. The flashback was triggered by looking in the mirror in the same way I had looked in the mirror in the dream. It didn't last long, but for a moment that dream image from my memory was more vivid than reality, and it was disorienting because I had forgotten the dream after waking.

Actually this theme that I look into a mirror an my eyes are weird or changed or injured is a recurrent nightmare for me. A more recent, and more detailed and gross example of the same I this post, though thankfully I had no flashbacks to that one once I was oriented, but was only freaked out after waking from it. (the second link is flocked, but you should have access)

[aivilo_18]

I get cracktastic anxiety dreams when I'm getting ready to travel via planes. For example, in preparing for my trip to Europe next week, Dream Me's answer to the zombie apocalypse is apparently to cover herself in peanut butter and hide in a mattress warehouse. True fax. I can't even make this subconscious shit up.

[ratcreature]

Does the peanut butter prevent the zombies from smelling your tasty brain?

[seperis]

That is amazing. Peanut butter? I had no idea zombies were repelled by peanut butter. I am so putting that on my survival list.

[aivilo_18]

I had no idea they were repelled by mattress warehouses as well! You learn something new everyday I guess.

[seperis]

I don't know, the mattress prices alone scare me to death.

[aivilo_18]

Truth.

[green_grrl]

My first thought is that Inception and the Limbo thing must have freaked you the fuck out.

I get immersed in really vividly constructed plot line dreams, especially around the full moon. And I often revise, or rewind and redo, too. I don't think I've ever passed more than a few weeks in a dream, though.

[seperis]

Not on first viewing; it just made me super uneasy, but the entire plotline was so convoluted that the implications didn't register. Second or third, I think, when I wasn't distracted by trying to follow the plot, I realized what limbo really was and cue WTF THE HELL WHAT. This is why I don't actually have any desire to lucid dream at all. Let's just keep dreamscape in dreamscape, thanks.

I get immersed in really vividly constructed plot line dreams, especially around the full moon. And I often revise, or rewind and redo, too. I don't think I've ever passed more than a few weeks in a dream, though.

Oh, thank GOD. I was wondering if other people did that.

[green_grrl]

A lot of times I'll decide, "this is really not going where I want it to," and I abandon the WIP, as it were, and take off on a different dream entirely!

[beadattitude.livejournal.com]

Oh lord, now I'm wondering if you've accessed a virtual reality.

I realize this doesn't help.

I hate dream hangovers where I'm angry at someone, or deeply, deeply hurt and they did nothing wrong in reality.

The ability to rewrite in progress is awesome. I've rewritten some nightmares like that.

About the novel thing; I dream I'm reading a book and the pages get closer and closer and then I'm part of the action. So, yeah, I pre-dated Thursday Next and Inkheart.

[spaceanjl.livejournal.com]

Waking up with my mouth tasting like an ashtray, because I dreamt I was in a sidewalk cafe in Chicago, despite being a British non-smoker? Or finding myself absent-mindedly doing everything with my left hand, including some legible writing? It's a bit 'Being John Malkovich', but I'm other people in my dreams, or at least, looking out of their eyes. Too much Bradbury in early childhood? I'm glad it isn't just me that dreams in epic technicolour and SFX.

[lunefin.livejournal.com]

Oddly enough...this is the second time I've come across "sharktopuss" this week.
http://www.verameat.com/products/sharktopus