Wednesday 9 August 2006

Sweet dreams are made of these

A dream in turmoil

I can remember quite vividly two films I watched on television probably some 20 years ago, I cannot really recall the exact time, but they have made a marked difference to my life in what might have been unintended consequences.

I am not sure which one I saw first, I would deal with the first concerning dreams in this blog, it involved elements of remote sensing, science fiction horror where certain gifted people, probably psychics, were hooked up into Matrix-like devices to enter into dreams of other people.

In the experimental stages, they entered people’s nightmares to chase away the horror and help cure unsettled sleep, but every new technology is always accompanied with some evil machination, they found out that stabbing the dream-subject in their dreams induced a physical response as a heart attack which killed the subject in their sleep.

The dream weapon

So, it became a political weapon where some of those gifted people were employed in a murderous enterprise that left no forensic evidence, so others then engaged in preventing evil, such two or more gifted people occupy a subject-dream battling to kill or save the person.

In one instance a horrendously horrific and scary dragon was slain to rid a child of a nightmare; the president engaged that service to deal with a nightmare about a disaster of burning vulnerable people, some then tried to kill the president, thankfully, they were unsuccessful.

My dreams are my dreams

What I however took away from that film was the knowledge that I could control my dreams; not that it is perfected, but I can now sense when there is going to be violence I cannot handle and avoid, in some cases, my body is triggered to wake up than experience that nightmare.

Since, I sleep with my lights on, when I enter a room in my dreams and switch on the lights, interestingly, they do not come in, sub-consciously, in my dream, I reckon it is a dream and I have been in situations where I have been in a dream, which is in another dream, which is again in another dream and I have to come out of each dream to the point where I finally wake up to light.

Those are areas I can control, the ones I still have not yet resolved are where extreme brain activity creates complex mathematical equations based on straight lines – I tried to deduce formulas and equations that allow parallel lines to meet or worse still, straight lines to meet in more than one place.

The second, I think I can resolve by putting the straight lines on a sphere, that way, they can meet twice, I would not go into how they can meet thrice or n times – that would surely make anyone mad.

A mosquito of a dream

I first had these mathematical dreams when I had to switch from Nivaquine – the malarial drug – to Fansidar, a sulphur-based drug, because the side effects of itchy palms and soles which Nivaquine induced were less so with Fansidar.

However, I still had to take additional anti-histamine, analgesic and soporific drugs with Fansidar to deal with the itch, the headaches and the sleeplessness. Now, when I am seriously restless, I could have these mathematical monsters which could create skull-cracking migraines.

That I do not have to use anti-malarial drugs is more than a blessing, you cannot wish worse on your enemy for the rotten side-effects – if these drugs were already tested on animals and they created such mental mayhem, I wonder what would happen without animal testing.

Dream a little dream for me

Now, I believe that even when you are asleep, you can “consciously” determine what you want in your dreams. In my case, I usually sleep with some sound in the background; however, I now choose that carefully, when at one time, Radio 4 began reading Steven King’s Pet Sematary at night.

That was no bedtime story, tame as the book title sounds, it could take your sleep away for ages, especially if you have a crazy imagination as mine, the more reason, and it needs to be curtailed within the limits of background sounds.

Besides control, there is also authority, you have to exercise authority in the domain of your dreams, refuse to allow uninvited or unintended situations that you think you might not be capable of handling – but then in dreams one can be extremely resourceful in dealing with all sorts of situations.

The worst I would accept is a draw in my dreams, if I have to run away, I wake up, never in cold sweat though.

Postscript

After searching for “film about entering dreams of others” in Google, I have now found out that the film was Dreamscape (1984), amazing what you get when you purpose to write about something.

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