Dreams

I'm reading Solaris, a 1961 science fiction novel. It is set in the distant future and has a good attempt to predict computer technology except they have to wait for the valves to warm up - and yet they still use tape recorders!

So, maybe because I went to sleep after reading about these weird humanoid manifestations, I dreamt that the door to my bedroom was opening (I was sleeping alone, Ali having been visiting her mum - which may be why my blog-posting has been above par recently). I instantly woke up, quite alert, and thankfully was able to verify that in fact the door was firmly closed.

Which says something about dream vs. reality time-lines. Experience confirms that long dreams can sometimes occupy very little real time space. And yet this one was synchronised to the second.

I can also verify that dreams can definitely be in vivid colour and that I can both hear and be heard and be understood. A recurrent dream-theme I have mentioned before is my ability to "fly". Odd perhaps but not unique although you get some pretty weird stuff if you Google it. In these dreams I sort of push inside (a little bit like the pushing one does to defecate only located much higher up) and if I push hard enough sometimes, but only sometimes, is it enough to raise me off terra-firma. Once levitated then I can soar more freely, though usually I am limited in height and duration. Whilst flying I remain approximately upright - never zooming horizontally like Superman. In that other realm, reality, I have often tried this pushing but sadly with no effect (yet).

The experience sometimes includes the ability to jump unusual distances. Typically I can be at the top of a high stairwell and jump down ridiculous numbers of steps and yet land gracefully. And in my dreams I try to be surreptitious as I get embarrassed about what other people must think of my antics.

I mention my flying ability here (how I wish I could do it for real) because of the amazing scenery in these dreams - I am awed by the rapid changes of perspective and panorama as I navigate. On a recent occasion I was impressed by the richness and complexity of the tapestry of landscapes - it seemed as if I was aware that I was in a dream and yet everything looked so real and the thought occurred to me - how could my paltry imagination come up with such splendour?

Sci-fi writers, and more recently Physicists, have played with the idea that what we think of as reality may be little more than a dream. One wonders who is doing the sleeping? The cornflakes I ate just now seemed pretty real and I can still feel them rummaging around inside me but soon, come a few hours, they will be little more than a memory. All our reality is but an instant in time that evaporates rapidly into ephemeral memory. And neither is our future secure: at best it is only hope: hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.

Which is, I suppose, why man builds edifices, like the many standing stones here in the British Isles, many with ogham inscriptions. Whilst distance may lends enchantment and memories may dull with time, a stone pillar with obviously man-made markings is visible proof that folk really existed and lived their lives all those years ago. I wonder if, in my life, I have made any permanent marks...