These Dreams

[andrewducker]

Elsewhere, cleodhna said
I always have insane cinematic dreams, unless I'm fevered-- then I have dreams that are exquisitely, superlatively boring.
Which reminded me of an ages old fever dream I had.

Imagine an incredibly large chess board. I'm a pawn, standing and staring over towards the horizon whereI can see the tiny specks that are the opposing forces. To the left and right of me, pieces line up as far as I can see. Above me huge figures loom, translucent, making decisions as to how the figures should move. Every so often (hours or days) a piece is moved. This goes on for about three thousand years until I wake up, have a drink and fall asleep again. At which point it carries on. Until morning. Which feels about a week away.

Comments

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

My dreams have not a great deal to recommend them, but there are a few common themes with them all...

1) It is always dark/overcast or for some other reason I somehow can't see properly. I have had about 2 dreams ever where this was not the case (and then only briefly).
2) Most technology (which turns up far more rarely than it does in life) does not work. Not in a straight forward way, it seems to me more like I am bungling it, and only gradually do I realise that this is not the case and that the damn machines are not behaving. Typically this is cars. I always thought that my failure to get cars to do what i wanted in dreams was because I could not drive, but I can now and there has been NO change in dreamland.
3) I can rarely run fast (typical "running through treacle" scenario) and when I hit people it somehow turns out very weak and has no effect.
4) There are an average amount of sexual encounters in my dreams, but almost never with the person that I am actually with in real life. I always remember that I am (in the waking world) attached (and to whom) and 99.9% of the time this knowledge stops me from participating. On the rare occasions that my partner does turn up, i have no such inhibition.
5) I frequently have very very strange abstract programming related dreams which are too odd to even try to describe. (e.g. I once dreamt that I was a compiler for 3 nights running). I generally keep trying to drag myself out of these dreams, and sometimes succeed, but I always seem to fall straight back into them again.
6) If I have a really bad horrible nightmare, when I do wake up, I am lying on my back. I can't sleep on my back because I can't breathe in that position, so I assume the whole choking feeling is what causes the nightmare.

I do not think that dreams are at all significant in any way, I tend to think that it's just your brain frantically trying to make sense of what is basically static.