Open Thread WE 21 APR 21 ~ Dreams


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"Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages." Terry Pratchett

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Welcome to another fine spring day in C99 land!

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Seems dreams can be heard as a voice from the vast unconscious or when applied to the
conscious, a striving towards a better future. These are not mutually exclusive. Do you remember
your sleeping dreams? A quick flash when the head hits the pillow of the previous nights' voyage?
Used to keep a log upon awakening and would jot down scraps. Interesting stuff. Wonder where that ever went...

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“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt

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“Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today.”
– James Dean

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“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
– C.S. Lewis

As always, this thread is open to all your themes, dreams and schemes. Enjoy!

Credits
Anka Zhuravleva Still Dreaming

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several years ago through a mutual friend. He had kept a daily nightly diary of his dreams for decades! His commitment to this inner exploration was phenomenal. If a dream woke him in the middle of the night he would turn on the light, reach for his diary on the bedside table and record detailed notes before the ephemeral vacated the moment. There were no gaps in the daily entries. Dozens of diaries had been filled.

Do you remember your sleeping dreams?
A quick flash when the head hits the pillow of the previous nights' voyage?
Used to keep a log upon awakening and would jot down scraps. Interesting stuff. Wonder where that ever went...

Like my own dreams, I do not remember his name or the details of the diary entries he shared. But I came away with a sense that dreams could be mined for insights, not only of individual insight, but also of some larger mysteries and questions of a more universal nature. All of those present at his reading came away impressed with both his extreme dedication to his calling as well as a sense of a connection to a larger, and mostly ignored, universe of possibilities speaking to us in our dreams.

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

@ovals49

Had a recurring nightmare of getting in a car wreck. Very intense, same every time. So I sold my car (I was driving in the dream), switched to a bicycle and public transportation for about 3 years until the dream went away. I think you are right, a portion of the psyche is rehearsing upcoming events.

Cheers!

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@QMS
in a dream once, but inexplicably landed right side up. In my dream I contacted my wife to let her know I was ok. Perhaps this is why I do not trust my backup camera or mirror but continue to turn my head when backing up, in spite of that becoming more difficult each year as I age.

Flying dreams are the best, but I’ve been grounded recently on that score.

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

@ovals49

the flying dreams are some of the most liberating.
Used to have them quite regularly when in youthful years.

I'm also a bad backer-upper. Twisting the neck, putting eyes on
all of what is behind. Fortunately the falling dreams are rare now.

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@QMS my drug experimenting. Along time ago. Fondly remmembered.

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NYCVG

Shahryar's picture

@QMS

they're more like slow floating and I can move forward if I want to. In these dreams I'm aware that something unusual is happening and I know I can use this ability to break the world's record for the long jump....easily. I could just keep going, improving the mark for 29 ft+ to several miles if I wanted to but then everyone would be wise that I wasn't really jumping so my plan is to go maybe 32 feet at first.

I've had this dream so often that when it happens there's the thought that "this time it's real, it's not a dream!"

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@ovals49
I kept a notebook on my nightstand and would furiously copy the code when I woke until it faded from memory. Did my best work asleep.

Not any longer. now I only dream about sex. Great sex.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Lookout's picture

I typically don't remember my dreams, and never have tried to record them.

Some suggest our dreams happen as we store memories from the day. Perhaps our brains are re-arranging the files. We know the REM time is our most restful.

Dreams may be one way that the brain consolidates memories. The dream time could be a period when the brain can reorganize and review the day’s events and connect new experiences to older ones. Because the body is shut down, the brain can do this without additional input coming in or risking the body “acting out” the day’s memories.

Some researchers believe that dreams are more like a background “noise” that is interpreted and organized. This activation-synthesis theory suggests that dreams are merely the brain’s attempt to make sense of random signals occurring during sleep.5

Some people have more control over their dreams than others. For these people, the last thoughts before going to bed may influence the content of a dream.

https://www.verywellmind.com/understanding-dreams-2224258

So dream on...but beware of nightmares.

Thanks for the dreamy OT.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

@Lookout @Lookout

seems to be losing my vehicle, money and sense of place. (insecurities?)
Regularly, people from the past show up, in very odd circumstances usually.
It's a trip to awaken from some place in Florida or the mountains of Vermont
only to find I'm back in RI.

It's like taking a trip and never leaving the farm.

You have a good one!

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@QMS
In almost all of the dreams that I remember those also are pervasive features, but not so much the money. I’ve parked the car someplace but when I return to the place it is nowhere to be found. I turn to look in another direction and I’m in a completely different place, look back to where I just was and it too is now a place I have never seen before. Ironically, in the so called “real” world I have an uncanny sense of direction, but I married a woman who is invariably 180 degrees off in which way we should turn. Like a prankster’s sense of humor is at work somehow.

I think that when we think we are lost and when we think we know where we are, we are perhaps wrong on both counts. Life in time (and dreams) are much bigger mysteries than my linear thinking can grasp.

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8 users have voted.

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

@ovals49
23andme recently sent an e-mail to my wife saying she had two copies of a Neanderthal gene associated with a bad sense of direction. (Maybe the Neanderthals were looking for the equatorial region and wound up in northern Europe?) I felt bad. I had been blaming her for not paying attention.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@Lookout
The nightmares come with the morning news.

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6 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

usefewersyllables's picture

They certainly can be liberating, and the flying dreams are by far the best.

I've got several recurring dreams, and one particular recurring nightmare that I've had for 50+ years. It happened a lot less frequently for a while, but it's back full force now 2 or 3 times a week, and that is the white-flash nuclear war nightmare. It starts out with something mundane, and ends up with the white flash. Sometimes there is warning and buildup, sometimes there's not. I usually wake up in a cold sweat with the flash, but sometimes here lately I sleep through it. What follows the white flash when I sleep through it is nothing at all. It is basically dead air for some period, and then another dream will start up after some time. I'd really like to see my EEG waveforms during that period, because I didn't think that dead air during REM sleep was a thing...

But just to show that I'm not simply a cold war one-trick-pony, over the last few years I've also developed a recurring swimming nightmare. In that one I end up jumping into some water to do something necessary, like trying to help a swimmer or an animal, or get away from a flood, or just to bob in the ocean swells with a drink with an umbrella in it, or whatever. And after a few minutes of swimming (which I really do enjoy during awake time) I come to the realization that my phone is in my pocket.

Ouch.

We have indeed become slaves to our appliances. It's to the point now that when I dream of water, I also try to dream of taking my phone out of my pocket, which just converts the nightmare into an inoffensive swimming dream. Now, if I could just figure out a similar in-dream technique for defusing the white flash, I'd be in fat city...

Everybody have a good one!

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Twice bitten, permanently shy.

@usefewersyllables

followed by dead air
nightmare city

good luck wrestling that beast!

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usefewersyllables's picture

@QMS

"Duck and Cover" yearly in grade school. Good ol' Bert the Turtle... I think that my school district kept showing it for quite a while in the early 60s after it had been discontinued for its original purpose everywhere else. That was simply because it was useful to teach assuming the position for the tornado drills, and we were in tornado alley. "They're young enough that this won't bother them...".

At least it had cheerful music. Fine sense of humor those guys had.

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9 users have voted.

Twice bitten, permanently shy.

@usefewersyllables
We boys used to joke, "Get under the desk, pull your pants down, bend over and kiss your ass good-bye".
We knew that if we saw the flash, it was all over. Didn't scare us, though. Kids. They adapt to anything.

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

usefewersyllables's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness

but it didn't work out as well for some of us as it did for others. They'd show the movie and say "This is going to happen: when you hear the civil defense siren outside, or hear the bells ring 5 times quickly in a row, duck and cover!".

Living where I grew up, we'd have tornado warnings (not just drills, actual warnings that needed to be acted upon) several times a year. Initially we'd all do the desk thing, before they finally figured out that we'd do better in the interior hallways away from the glass windows- about when I was in 3rd or 4th grade. But somehow they never got around to telling us whether it was just a garden-variety tornado coming, or really the end of the world. We'd just have to wait and see with our heads between our knees, and we'd eventually figure it out for ourselves when they'd honk or ring the all-clear. Not this time, I guess. Maybe next time.

By the time we got to junior high, nobody would bat an eye. Young kids may adapt all right, but it can still leave a mark. I'd like to have several thousand nights' sleep back again, thanks very much. It's funny how, in my dream, the all-clear never comes.

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8 users have voted.

Twice bitten, permanently shy.

enhydra lutris's picture

@usefewersyllables

major target and were all certain that if it started everything within 60 or 70 miles would be glass, no point in doing anything at all. Most of us figured that there was only a 50% chancd we'd live to adulthood.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

enhydra lutris's picture

Don't forgetTa daaaaa

The American Dream

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

@enhydra lutris

I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours...
As Dylan describes dreams. Wink

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Maybe a gender thing. Women dream in color and most men don't dream from what I read.

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@MrWebster
And I've always dreamed in full color, sound, touch, and smell. But no pain.

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4 users have voted.

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

what I am actually feeling during the day, but haven't brought to consciousness yet. A long time ago, during my very young first unhappy marriage, I had repeated dreams about various people invading my home and I couldn't get rid of them.

Divorce ended those dreams forever.

Now my recurring dream is of being someplace from which I cannot get home. example: on an island and I missed the last ferry. Top of a skyscraper and waiting for helo rescue. In a highrise staircase and every exit door won't open.

This was a wonderful thread, QMS and I thank you for the music also which got me going!

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11 users have voted.

NYCVG

mimi's picture

don|t remember them. Who is right? I just dream when I am awake. Mostly those dreams are completely off anything realistic.

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on dreams.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
(Hamlet, Hamlet)

"To die, to sleep – to sleep – perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause."
(Hamlet, Hamlet)

"I have heard my daughter say, she hath often dreamed of unhappiness and waked herself with laughing."
(Leontes, Much Ado About Nothing)

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4 users have voted.

tune on dreams;

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travelerxxx's picture

I've always gotten a laugh from watching both cats and dogs dreaming. Seems it's more rare in cats, or maybe they're just quicker about it ...like everything else.

The dog dreams I've seen almost always seem to involve running and biting. Usually the dreaming canine is resting on their side, legs and feet sticking out. Those paws will start "paddling," sometimes quite rapidly. Often the jowls will pull up, revealing teeth. Occasionally, you might even hear a slight "grrr!," but I haven't heard sounds all that often. Breathing doesn't seem to change all that much.

Cat dreams seem more subtle, which seems fitting since cats tend to hold their cards rather tightly compared to dogs. Still, they are similar to the dreams of dogs in that the feet get involved. I've never heard sounds from a dreaming cat, and hardly ever seen bared teeth. As a cat's tail has a language of its own, I've seen reactions from that ...usually a few hard slaps.

One thing I never do - I don't wake a dreaming dog or cat by touching them. Vocal only. Probaby lessens the chances of needing medical attention.

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dystopian's picture

I have heard to remember the dream we have to partially wake up during it, like change sleep level or somesuch for the conscience to record it. We can have many in a night but are lucky to remember one.

One of my favorite Dreams:

kinda funny with the A-4 Skyhawks...

The Carlos Castaneda "Teachings of Don Juan" series had a great bit regarding the Yaqui practices on dreaming, and even using suggestion to dream about what you want to. Which involved thinking/mind-focus exercises right before you went to sleep. Which for me worked sometimes that I know, I used to keep a dream list, of birds I dreamt about. Black-throated Blue Warbler, Whip-poor-will, I have had some great ones.
So the quote above in LO's comment hit home...

Some people have more control over their dreams than others. For these people, the last thoughts before going to bed may influence the content of a dream.

I always loved this classic from the Electric Prunes too...

not many front men with autoharps any more...

Have sweet dreams all! Another great dreamy tune which I'll let someone else dig up...

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

@dystopian great van Halen music

on Earth Day.

The images of climate destruction singing about getting high because "that's what dreams are made of." different kind of high. obviously

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NYCVG

smiley7's picture

flying dreams, too, decades of lifting off the ground and like a bird using currents, hovering
magic.

Cool beans QMS, thank you for this lede.

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Pricknick's picture

A Dream Within a Dream
BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

smiley7's picture

@Pricknick

YOU will come one day in a waver of love,
Tender as dew, impetuous as rain,
The tan of the sun will be on your skin,
The purr of the breeze in your murmuring speech,
You will pose with a hill-flower grace.

You will come, with your slim, expressive arms,
A poise of the head no sculptor has caught
And nuances spoken with shoulder and neck,
Your face in a pass-and-repass of moods
As many as skies in delicate change
Of cloud and blue and flimmering sun.

Yet,

You may not come, O girl of a dream,
We may but pass as the world goes by
And take from a look of eyes into eyes,
A film of hope and a memoried day.

~ Carl Sandburg

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