My first dream in a long time

Mon, 05 Dec 2005 21:00:19 GMT

I'm writing this here mostly because I have nowhere else to write it. A few preliminaries, first.

When I was little my dreams were almost lucid. While dreaming I was oddly aware of the fact that I was dreaming, but whenever I tried to act on that fact I would immediately wake up. I can still remember at least a dozen dreams from my childhood as a result. By the time I came to college, however, I had stopped dreaming except for the occasional random vision in my head at night. If I dreamt it was no longer coherent and I was no longer aware of the fact that I was dreaming.

However, last night I had my first semi-lucid dream in a long time. I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what it means. It revolves around my parents' dog, a French bulldog. Nature quite obviously had no hand in building this breed. They are small and stocky with big barrel chests, which means they can't swim without sinking and can't run except in this strange half-jumping sort of way. It is dangerous for water to get in their ears because there is no easy way for it to get out: it's a sure-fire way for an ear infection. They have very little self-control and if presented with more food than they can eat, well, they'll eat it and then bloat up like a dog-shaped balloon. Basically, imagine the most absurd looking and neurotic dog you can, give it the face of a wombat, and you have a French bulldog. Oh, her name is Hannah.

Our neighbors used to have this old lab-mix called Susie. She and Hannah were best friends, but Susie was much older and had hip problems resulting from old age so she couldn't always keep up with Hannah. Eventually Susie had to be put under because she just had too many joint problems -- it had basically become impossible for her to walk. Susie was the other star of my dream.

The dream part of my dream, if that makes any sense, was simple, albeit a little twisted. I was sitting on our back porch in Michigan, facing my neighbors house, when Susie came over to greet me. I didn't find this odd at all, given that she was dead, so either this was in the past or, well, who knows? I was petting Susie for a while and then decided to let her into the house to see her friend, Hannah. They played at first, but while in our kitchen Susie bit down on Hannah's midsection, gave her a quick flip, and dropped her to the ground. My dream-mother simply commented, "Hannah is dead." I then went over to Hannah and took her pulse to confirm the tragedy. For some reason I took her pulse as I would a person's, by placing my fingers at her neck, rather than on her inner thigh, the correct way to take a dog's pulse.

This next part of my dream is perhaps even more strange. Rather than wreaking some terrible revenge on Susie, in my dream which I realized was a dream, I contemplated the various courses of actions which I could take. Should I lash out in revenge at this old undead dog? Should I go inform their owners that Susie had just killed Hannah? What sort of legal recourse would my parents have? As I thought each of these things they actually took place in my dream, or I should say, a sort of dream within a dream. Thinking what the neighbors would say, my dream-self visualized (dreamt?) what might happen, and as he did it was reflected in my actual dream.

My dream-self then remembered that it has been a long time since I've had this sort of dream, and that I told myself again if I ever did I should write them all down so I could look back and maybe discover something new in my old dreams. And so here I am, transcribing the late-night demons that occupy my psyche.

This is how my dream ended, in an infinitude of worlds each with an infinitude of possibilities. It felt like some sort of Borges short story, the real meat of the action left as an implication of the otherwise short exposition.

What the heck?

Sun, 28 Aug 2005 21:51:55 GMT

This account is mostly for posting in the various math communities on LiveJournal, e.g., mathematics.

Favorite theorem: Riesz Representation Theorem

bewlay_brother

My first dream in a long time

What the heck?