what does the gun do?

[freckles_and_doubt]

I've been devastated to note, lately, that I don't remember as many of my dreams as I used to, and when I do they're not the over-the-top weirdnesses of symbols which used to haunt my nights to my very great enjoyment. I don't know if this is because I'm stressed, and therefore tired enough that I sleep deeply, or if curriculum advice is not productive of the same level of strangeness as is teaching science fiction and fairy tale. Either way, I am impoverished by the lack. Except last night seems to have been a return to form, possibly prompted by re-watching the first half of The Lost Room with jo&stv and the Evil Landlord, in company with a mad new experimental recipe for cidered lamb with dumplings. (Adjudged a howling success, now with added howling).

(Quick digression: man, I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed The Lost Room. It's a beautifully elegant concept, pursued intelligently through intelligent scripting with (and I cannot sufficiently stress how orgasmically happy this makes us) intelligent characters. The consensus last night was that the characters, particularly Detective Miller, operate like an experienced, thoughtful role-playing party¹: they assess, experiment, connect information, make leaps of intuition. Miller himself plans, anticipates, thinks - you don't doubt for an instant his commitment to getting his daughter back, but the emotion doesn't cloud his analytic ability. Many of his opponents are also quick to understand ("they're upstairs", said with world-weary certainty), and intelligently ruthless in pursuing their ends. The series is tense, surreal but above all logical, and the central concept, which really could have been screwed up by the usual Hollywoodoid hamfistedness, is actually well executed. It all makes you realise quite how low a level of intelligence we're used to in our movies and TV. Alas).

Anyway, I slept really badly last night - woke up every hour on the hour, pretty much, until about 3am. The second waking was bizarre. I drifted to the surface to realise that there was a man sitting next to my bed, behind a giant console or computer or control board of some sort. He was using it to do somethingorother to me, and to my bedroom, which bathed the whole room in a slightly baleful red light. I did a huge double-take as I realised he was there and catapulted myself to the upright position, shaking and gibbering, whereupon of course I realised, slowly and reluctantly, that I was dreaming and there was no-one there at all. Hello hypnogogic hallucinations, had forgotten all about you...

---

¹ i.e. not like ours at all. Or at least without the bickering.

Comments

Hypnogogic hallucinations

[schedule5.livejournal.com]

I remember, aged about 7, trying to explain to my parents that even though I was having nightmares, I wasn't asleep. I don't think they ever got it. I haven't had any for years, though.

Re: Hypnogogic hallucinations

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

They're particularly worrying precisely because you're not fully asleep, and the dream-world is hyper-real. A hypnogogically-hallucinated bedroom is exactly the same as one's actual bedroom, only more disturbing.

[(Anonymous)]

Karen's woken up on more than one occasion with me screaming in fear of her. Or rather, whatever I thought she was.

On one occasion, a xenomorph-style Alien.

Something tells me I should have told that one to my therapist...

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I sometimes think too much information's not good for therapists. Besides, that sort of dream always turns out to be trauma from childhood bullying, or an irrational fear of raspberries, or something. Dream logic is never straightforward.

When I was a child I once woke up screaming because I dreamed that my teddy bear on the pillow next to me was a giant, bloated, blue-green toad. I think last night's man-with-console was the dream-version of the heater next to my bed. Any object can and will be transformed.

[tngr-spacecadet.livejournal.com]

I used to have this thing where I dreamed about spiders lowering themselves from the ceiling towards my face. I cannot recall how many times I have woken up having apparently teleported myself out of bed to the light switch; at which point I would check the ceiling for spiders, switch off the light and go back to bed.