"Houston, we have ferns..."

[alexr_rwx]

In part of my dream, things were pretty normal; I was talking to my mother and telling her about how I wanted to have a good program to show Kurt, the next time we were going to meet...

... and I think there was some other stuff...

... but then I was in Houston meaning to visit Esther eponis, and I was walking along these semi-suburban but very green, almost tropically grown streets, like with ferns overhanging the edges, and my shoes were loose, and I could do sort of a shuffling tap-dance that I realized that I didn't know how to do before... and this Chinese woman (who seemed just familiar enough to be talking about this with me) was talking to me, and telling me about how next time I was in Houston, I should go with her family to see all the Chinese culture-y things there were in the city... and I thought, "eh, maybe I'll be here again soon", but she'd gone around a corner with her family (somehow on a tricycle? ...) and I realized that maybe she was only inviting me to be polite...

And there was a guy who looked confused, and he bumped into me, and asked "New Orleans?", and I realized that he meant "does this one go to New Orleans?", and there was a trolley, and there was one young man, looking surly, getting pushed onto the train by his friends... but he didn't want to go. And I was hanging around, looking at my watch in my dream, thinking, "in an hour, I'll know exactly how rough the math test is going to be"... because, like, in my dream I was in Dream-Houston, but I still knew that in an hour I'd be taking a test.

This means that I failed to make a very easy reality-consistency check, and I missed an opportunity to realize that I was dreaming...

Today, though: after I get through with this test, hackety hack hack for Ashok's class, because prj2 is due on Friday!! And there are much less-interesting Other Classes that are going to try to get in the way, but I'll likely just ignore them (although I'll probably go to physics because that's generally a good idea)...

Comments

[eponis.livejournal.com]

Oooooh. I wish Houston actually looked like that . . . .

Good luck on your test and project!

[reality-calls.livejournal.com]

   So you mean the presence of ferns and abundant greenery in Houston wasn't an easy reality-consistency check?  I seem to recall driving through northeast Houston at night once and being reminded of the opening shot of "Blade Runner".

   So I'm curious:  Have you ever actually realized you were dreaming and stayed asleep?  Because it seems like every time I consciously acknowledge the fact that I'm dreaming, I wake up.  It's almost like my subconscious says, "Well, if you've got the presence of mind to see that this is a dream, then you've got the presence of mind to be going about your day.  My work here is through."  Do you find anything similar?

      "Live from the People's Republic"

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

Well, as I understand it, people who're really good at dreaming (it takes practice, and both Lloydus and Lisa pyrona are into this, as I understand it) can do just that -- it's called lucid dreaming... and when you know you're dreaming, you can take conscious control over your dream while remaining asleep... and do whatever you want... there's a lot of art to this, and I've heard that it helps if you can be asking yourself "am I dreaming now?" throughout the day. So you remember to do it while asleep.

Mind, I very rarely remember my dreams clearly enough to recall instances where I realized that I was dreaming...

[reality-calls.livejournal.com]

I've gotten rather good at remembering my dreams.(at least, those I can recall having when I awake) I've also gotten rather good at realizing that I'm dreaming, actually. There's a certain feel to things when I'm dreaming that never occurs when I'm awake, and I often recognize it while I'm dreaming. The problem is, if I actually try to influence my dream while I'm dreaming it in any way, I wake up. Often I realize that I'm dreaming and try doing strange things with my character's behavior in the dream, but the moment I try to influence any other aspect of the dream or even certain aspects of my character's actions, I wake up.(I refer to the person I'm experiencing the dream as as "my character" since it's not always "me," at least physically speaking) If I try to consciously interfere with my dream to too great an extent, it jerks me out of sleeping. How do I prevent that from happening?

I suppose this question would be better asked of Lloydus or Lisa...

      "Live from the People's Republic"