[My overarching advice to you, even before you read this: never write a dream diary.]
Ever found yourself coming awake and realising that your nearest and dearest is about to do that thing you usually only see in movies ..... slap you about the face while crying; "Wake up! Wake up! It's only a dream!"?
Well, no, neither have I, but this came close. I want to write about it, if only to stop me thinking about it, perhaps.
I am 60, I sleep badly. I have developed various techniques to deal with this, none of which work reliably. Sleep, and the need for lots of it, or not, is another subject, but what I want to talk about is the borderline between sleep and waking, and what it can do to you.
Once, forty years ago, I had a nightmare so vivid that I threw myself out of bed. Actually, what I did was slew sideways and bang my head on the bookcase next to the bed. Much hilarity when I regaled friends with it.
But that's highly unusual. When you're asleep, something cuts in which effectively immobilises you, so that you DON'T usually react to what dreams may come. This is probably a hangover from the days when we lived in trees - if you jumped out of the way of a dream sabre tooth, you might find yourself plummeting to the jungle floor. (There is so much wrong with this paragraph, evolutionarily, historically, ethnographically, and probably typographically, that I will leave it to the class for an exercise in criticism.)
Sometimes, the immobilisation device fails to click off quickly enough as you are coming awake. As a result, you can feel paralysed, although you imagine you should be back in control of what we laughingly call our consciousness. Sleep paralysis is terrifying, luckily most people experience it rarely.
And sometimes, when you are coming awake, you incorporate real sounds into your dreams - the oncoming train which is actually the alarm clock going off is another cinematic cliche.
Right, prepare for a description of a real doozy, combining all these elements.
I was tired late last night, we were in bed with the lights out, I was listening to Radio Four very quietly. If you want to know, it had been Melvyn Bragg, talking with his clever buddies about strange things. I had been drifting in and out of sleep, but I remember the ten o'clock news starting. I heard the headlines. The next time I was awake was 10.04, (I checked, I am a science grad) so all these things happened in just one or two minutes, perhaps even less. Maybe time passes more slowly in a parallel universe.
I dreamed that I was at some kind of festival, to do with Green politics, and that I was far older than any of the participants, but they were being disarmingly tolerant of that fact, the patronising bastards, ..... and that my parents were alive and somewhere at the festival, but that I had to locate them and I also wasn't quite sure where our car was, or where the accommodation we were to stay at was ..... that went on and on. The restaurant I imagined was particularly strange.
You get the picture. It was amazingly detailed, with the usual elements of embarrassment and anxiety. If you want, I can describe the landscape, the weather, the lighting, the festival arena and what was going on in there [Hint to self; massed ranks of Green Men chanting, and the tourniquet incident, and the Aztec king] .... none of this is relevant. It was just mental chatter. My brain was busy filing things, although lord knows where all this stuff was coming from. It had just been a normal day. More normal than usual.
Then it changed.
I thought I was awake, still in bed, and that there was a creature in the room with us. I could hear it whining and snarling, I put my hand out of bed onto it, and it became a fox. We have urban foxes living around us, they regularly disturb us during the night with their strange yowlings.
I clearly heard my wife say; "I can't move, or it will bite me." I saw the fox, not exactly at her throat, but threatening. I tried to react, but I could not move. I could hear myself issuing cogent instructions for dealing with this, but at the same time I could hear that what I was saying was garbage - I could not articulate. I was on the borderline between two states of being, and both sets of visuals were extremely convincing. My perceptions were flashing between them, almost as though I was some hotshot indie movie director. The music soundtrack was frankly rubbish, though. And yes, I had time to perceive that; there's no time, when you're in altered states.
Meanwhile, my wife in the dream was trying to turn lights on, getting tangled in wires and saying things like; "Really, we should get this lighting sorted out."
Then, if possible, it all went even more weird. The door opened and two entities floated through, both female, both wearing ballet tutus and both with fairy wings (I feel I should tell you that I have just read 'Shepherd's Crown', in which it is revealed for the first time that the fairies of Discworld have wings ..... this should be a footnote, but once you start footnoting, you're addicted). One reached out an arm to touch me on the shoulder - on which, of course, I said, as any happily married man would; "What do you think you're doing!" ..... and the arm suddenly started to look normal and the whole thing dissolved into my wife trying to shake me awake. I had apparently punched her in the back, and then spent some time speaking in tongues, opening my eyes but not seeing her, and refusing to acknowledge her.
All over in moments, but very disturbing.
Right, if my wife had not intervened, I might soon be on a chat show, telling how I been visited by angels (or fairies), and possibly extrapolating that into alien visitation, abduction and who knows what. [Even as I type these very words, right now, 1:09 am Saturday 26th September 2015, there are foxes in the road outside screaming; I kid you not. Fucking hate those foxes.]
So make of that what you will. I could make a hat or a nice bracelet .....
I just wanted to get rid of this memory. Won't work.
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