I hear the secrets that you keep ...

There you go, Noddy:

"CALIBAN
Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises,
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again."

Act III, scene II, of my most loved play!

dlowan--

Blessings upon you.

Were you every annoyed with every fiber of your Double A bra that Shakespeare wrote so few roles for women on that evocative island?

I felt I had a choice between Miranda and Caliban--and I opted for Caliban.

Lol!!!! I suppose Miranda's role was her soleness.

Caliban's mum might have been pretty great!

Don't you love Rosalind, and Viola???

Aargh - hi-jacking thread!

dlowan--

We got senority--at least you do.

Furthermore, we got Jespah who will be reincarnated in the next life as a Woman Presiding Over Infinite Branchings.

Did you ever dabble in acting? The Tempest is Real Life--but how can Real Life exist with just one sweet little ingenue?

I ache for Caliban the same way I ache for the never-reason-why bovine in the bull ring.

I also ache for me.

Recently sighted bumper-sticker:

Reality is for those with no imagination

Not specifically ... just part of the bigger picture. Bigger picture surely was affectful.

Trippy thing is - you can probably tell by the wholly different ways in which I recounted the story those two times - that I'd forgotten about most of that bigger picture, apparently. When I recounted it first here in this thread, after all, it was as a sort of curious, quirky anecdote - because that's how I remembered it, mostly. Well, I remembered that it represented some further, deeper stuff I couldnt get into here as well, but purely as an event, that's more or less (almost) all I remembered. Then I went looking in my files and I found those notes I wrote about it a year and a half ago that I posted subsequently, with all the story of the night before and much more detail - which totally put it in a different light, a much harsher light I guess. But I'd truly forgotten all of that - or that is, had forgotten the connection between the events (eg I still remembered the scene from the night before but not that it had been the night before).

It's totally trippy how quickly your mind pulverizes your memories, first into disjointed little bones, then dust. Kinda scary. Should have written down much more.

I also seem to have lost my sense of what is normal or done or not. I havent got a clue whether I crossed a line by posting that second post. It was originally meant for a separate, more anonymous thread, but since I'd already recounted the anecdote here I couldnt go that road anymore.

Also:

Reality is for those who can't cope with drugs

I find the "falling" dream very frightening and wakefulness / awareness it was only a dream to be a huge relief.

I absolutely don't like sleeping during the day. Even when sick, I fight taking a nap due to the disorientation of time that takes place. If I wake up after it has started to get dark I feel like it is really the next morning and just starting to get light.

The other night I went in to kiss my daughter goodnight, realizing she had gone up to read and had evidently fallen asleep without our "goodnights." It was around 10 pm. I leaned down to kiss her and whispered "Goodnight, Sweety."

She shot upright, barely missing busting my nose and said, "It's the brumbles."

"The brumbles?"

"Yes, you know it and so do I so why?"

"Why what?"

"Oh, I gotta get ready for school, right?"

"No, I just came in to kiss you goodnight."

"Goodnight." (smile)

I walk out still wondering what the brumbles are and what they are doing...

(When are you going to write that book, nimh? Lovely reading here, thanks.)

These are great, very vivid, very evocative.

There are dreams, and then there's this halfway state, and I think both are, well, interesting. There's just something about these levels of consciousness. We can kind of experience different things without having to go through the pain or the bother or the danger. So we get to jump or fall or fight demons or whatever but all that happens is we wake up when it's all done.

What I always find interesting is the amnesia that seems to go along with all of it. Like I'll be dreaming along, then I'll wake briefly, e. g. to hit the snooze button or whatever, and I'll continue dreaming although it's more consciously directed. Then I hit snooze again, and I'm more awake, and the cycle continues. And then eventually I'm completely awake and I end up not knowing wtf I was dreaming before.

Then there are other dreams that I've remembered for years.

The night before I started third grade, I dreamed they did not have a chair for me. Of course that was anxiety, I was afraid of not fitting in.

I also, earlier this year, dreamed I was eating a mix of iceberg lettuce and scallions, all finely chopped. Very mild tasting. So any time I've eaten that combination (such as at a Mexican restaurant), I've thought of that dream. So there I've got a reinforcement going on.

There's also a dream of a million lights popping and flying at me at the same time, I wrote about that, it's in the Original Writing section, I built a Sci-Fi story around it, called "The End". But that one moment is from a dream.

And so it goes.

Does anyone else have long-term remembered dreams?

Not me, J. At least, not going back to the third grade! I DO have memories of some dreams, but generally no idea of when it was when I dreamt that. I seldom remember any details of my dreams for more than a few seconds after waking. The gist of it, maybe, but not the detail. (Btw, did you know that 'dreamt' is the only word in the English language that ends with '-mt'?)

Dreamt is a great word, like pled. Good, solid, single syllable with the only vowel being short.

I know the third grade dream has a lot to do with the circumstances surrounding it. I was skipping a grade, going into a whole new situation, and while I knew I could do the work, and I knew the kids in the class, I was still pretty terrified.

I think the food one was remembered because it was so odd. I mean, we dream about sights and sounds, but how many times do you get smell and taste in your dreams? And it's not like the scent was lingering in the air or anything while I was dreaming.

Wacky.

Yeh, that's a really interesting question -- do you ever taste or smell things in your dreams? I have, on rare occasions, and those are dreams that tend to stay with you because they are so vivid. But how about feel? Do you ever have dreams that evoke a tactile sensation, e.g. running your hand over a rough surface and actually feeling the roughness?

Lol - when I am really dieting I dream in great detail of food - it is just like the real thing - except no pounds!

I remember a lot of dreams - at least for a while.

Some really stick in my head - like the time I dreamed that a very old friend and I slept together (would NEVER happen in real life - he is the ex of one of my closest friends - and I was very shocked when he did, indeed, proposition me when they broke up - hands off yer friends' men is our motto!..anyway). It was lovely! Wasn't sure whether to feel guilty or not. Decided not.

I had an amazing dream as a kid - of some sort of magial land where I could literally bathe and swim in sunlight - and slide down rainbows - and there were flying horses!

And my toddler nightmare of the HUGE spider (as big as a horse) that attacked me in "Goldie's chair" (as we called the armchair that was the habitual seat of out golden cocker spaniel) - AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHH!

But - normally I best recall my recurrent dreams - like the one of an aircraft which is circling and in trouble and gradually coming down, which I just KNOW is going to crash on me - neurotic anxiety dream, of course; and my grief dreams, which I have already described; and the persistent (but less so now) nightmare that my father is still alive, and I have back the awful, crushing burden of his permanent depression and abusiveness and narcissism and increasing dependency.....
I have lots of fabulous ones, too - very rich and complex in plotting and perceived meaning - I usually only recall them in detail for a few hours.

My partner is beginning to reall his dreams now, too - because I do, and sometimes talk about them - his subconscious has obviously decided that he will too.

In some cultures it is normal for kids to be told to go back into bad dreams - and summon whatever quality or help they need to triumph in the feared situation.

Some people in our culture can do this, too - with traumatic nightmares - especially kids.

Reframing the nightmares as "mental house-cleaning" and raising the idea of being able to manipulate the dream and change it to one where they are stronger and able triumph can really make a difference to some children.

Very fascinating...

I am reading this thread for the first time this morning & thought the same thing. Wonderful to read, nimh.

My brother talks in his sleep.

One time when my family was camping, we walked in the camper while my brother was sleeping and all of the sudden we hear, "Like I'm a gorilla."

Other times we've heard him sing the alphabet in his sleep.

I remember having one dream in particular that was repetitive. It used to drive me crazy to have it.

It was during those teenage years, we were raised up riding dirt bikes and in my dream that was what I was doing. Riding this mountain top out, seeing the road in front of me...and all of a sudden I would fall off the side. I wouldn't fall off the bike, yet ride it through the air downward...seeing the ground rush up at me, for the front tire to hit the ground and I'd bounce back up...and do it all over again.

It took years for me to figure the meaning out. But at the time, there were some situations that we as a family were dealing with and they were out of our control. The meaning to the dream was the same. It was a situation that was out of my hands to control.....

Ouch!

THis is interesting. There aren't many sleep-talkers in this house... but one of my dogs yips and chases something at least once a week... in her sleep. She starts quiet with a few "Yip, yip, yips" but she gets louder and louder until she's barking and her legs are twitching and padding about as though she's racing across the countryside. If I try to wake her, she seems very disoriented.

My favorite dreams are of my house and of flying. I "have" a very strange but familiar house where in my dreams I find whole wings of new rooms all filled with beautiful furniture. In my flying dreams (which are much less frequent) I fly on my back, feet first. That makes it quite difficult to see, so I have to keep my heels together & point my toes out to the side and look between them to tell where I'm going. Sometimes I get caught up in trees. I don't think I talk about it though in my sleep.

xxrockerbunnyxx--

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