The Dream-Wakefulness Threshold

[yellowish haze]

It occurred to me that we stopped discussing dreams. In the hope of reviving some discussion I will write about two rather puzzling events which are not transcripts of dreams themselves but seem to be relevant to anything Ligottian.

To tell the truth, you will be the first ones to hear this story. In the past, I thought it sounded rather naive and I didn’t want to make a fool of myself, but recently the memories came flooding back, convincing me that the whole occurrence + my weird thoughts are ridiculous in a very fascinating way and now I simply can’t resist sharing this with TLO.

It started as a series of recurring dreams I had some 3 years ago. In all of them I’m on a beach. It’s either early morning or late chiaroscuro evening as the colours seem to indicate. I walk along the see-shore when I suddenly come face to face with a lonely figure standing in a near-off distance. It’s a fisherman – he stands there leaning against his boat (embedded in the sand right in the middle the beach) and stairs at me. As I approach him I realize he is selling things – most of them are somehow related to his profession. Here you can get all sorts of nets, fishing rods, ropes, small souvenirs - all of them are neatly arranged on the shining sand. The fisherman assures me that so far he hasn’t met person who would go away from him without buying an item. Then we argue for hours and hours, me bargaining for one object then another…

Later, usually, the situation becomes boring – simply because we can’t reach consensus - and I loose track of the plot.
Of course each time the dream pattern is different and many times the fisherman would unexpectedly appear interrupting a completely different dream plot, but the way I described it above is the version I remember the most.

It was sometime when I had this series of similar dreams, that I discovered I had my first wisdom tooth growing. As the whole process started to become quite painful I decided to consult a dentist who immediately sent me further to have my jaw x-rayed. The nice lady had to make three samples of x-ray charts - the first two ones she discarded claiming that either I moved my head while being x-rayed or simply there was something wrong with the machine. She quite couldn’t believe her eyes. The third time, she held the chart against the light, her eyes staring unblinkingly and admitted (somehow disappointed):

-So, it IS true! Your tooth looks like a small anchor!

What? First I thought she really took me for an idiot, but the next second, when I had a look at the x-ray image, I regretted not being taken for an idiot after all. My wisdom tooth had three roots, each of which was utterly twisted and distorted – the purpose of the tooth's indescribable angles and aspects no one seemed to comprehend.

Yes maybe it is absurd to connect this little incident with the dreams I had at that time, but I have to confess it still crosses my mind from time to time. One is for sure, after discovering this horrible dental deformity I never saw the fisherman anymore. It’s as if:

a) In one of the dreams I have simply decided to buy that bloody anchor
Or
b) have been punished for not being a good customer (by being forced to accept an unwanted gift),

which was a good punishment, indeed. If you can imagine how painful it is to have such an anchor-like tooth extracted then you must have a very good imagination.

As I now look at that warped molar of mine, it still makes me shudder. I cannot quite understand the fisherman’s intentions. You see, it is difficult to deal with situations when fictional characters manage get hold of our real world or when uninvited thoughts and dreams become substance – or, as in my case, even a part of yourself. Fisherman’s souvenir was certainly designed so that not to be removed and if it weren’t, it might have become an eternal curse.

P. S. I could attach a photo of that tentacled product of my dreams, but I’m afraid it might revolt some of you - It is a disgusting little beast.

So, has any of you had any disturbing dream-come-true experiences?

[unknown]

wow, slawek, that is too weird. The interesting correlation between the mental and the physical...the line between the two often becomes blurred. Coincidence that your tooth resembled an anchor? Who knows. Perhaps your body was trying to tell you something.

I'd like to see a picture of the tooth

[yellowish haze]

Unknown, thanks for your thoughts. Actually, if it weren't for that cthulhoid tooth and the interesting concepts it inspires, I would never come up with that dream as it was nothing but pure nonsense per se. Now, to continue with my childish (or simply child-like) thoughts, I would rather think of this molar as a bridge between dream and reality worlds (it is a perfect example of parthenogenesis of thoughts). The very fact that it looks like an anchor (or a triple hook) implies many things. If that anchor came with an imaginary chain, as the real ones usually do, then it could mean two things:

a) that the fisherman has managed to moor to the real world by the means of my body and is now trying to get off his boat. ;)

or

b) that he has decided to catch me so that whenever he wanted he could start pulling at the chain to draw me back to... yeah, exactly, where would I end up? ;)

Funny stuff (at least IMHO)!

I will take under consideration including a photo sometime in the future.

[barrywood]

Thanks for sharing your dream, Slawek. I too would like to see a photo of the tooth.

[Nemonymous]

Yes, great post, Slawek.
I deal with a related theme, 'dream sickness', inter alios, in 'The Hawler'.
A pleasure pier is a half-a-bridge.
des

[yellowish haze]

Dream Sickness!

Des, how would you define 'Dream Sickness' as presented in your fiction?
It is a very interested concept.
There are two things which immediately come to my mind. Dream sickness reminds me of Grabiński's The Black Hamlet, a short story about a contagious disease spreading through our dreams and of Alfred Kubin's Epidemie :
http://www.gnosis.art.pl/iluminatornia/sztuka_o_inspiracji/alfred_kubin/kubin_epidemia.jpg

I'm not sure whether this has anything to do with 'Dream Sickness' as envisioned in the Hawler, though. :?

Oh, I was also going to tell you about yet another, rather unsettling, experience I went through very recently. During the last night of my four-day stay in the Carpathian Mountains some three weeks ago, I had a series of three interconnected dreams. In the first, very short one, I found myself putting off fire which was gradually destroying my house. Then, I woke up only to fall asleep and to dream about I-have-no-idea-what! Apparently, no memories have been stored in my brain (pure nothingness), but... surprise, surprise: the third dream, which followed immediately after, gives us some clues which may help to retrieve the missing data! In it I'm in the little motel we stationed at and I knock on my friend's door. When she lets me in, we have a very illogical, incoherent conversation during which I say something like this (more or less, of course):

- Wow, I just had this funny dream in which I was telling you about the house that burned down...

I don't know if you have noticed the hidden pattern. If we assume that the words ‘I just had this funny dream’ refer to the second dream, then it might mean that the second dream was about me narrating the first dream, right? This also implies that in the third dream for a short time we conversed about the second dream…
If you got lost, let me explain it this way:

DREAM ONE: I dream about my house burning down
DREAM TWO: (presumably) I tell my friend about the first dream about my house burning down
DREAM THREE: I talk with my friend and I mention the second dream, in which I (presumably) narrated the first dream about my house burning down


This solution occurred to me when, the following morning, I still lay in bed with a really bad hangover. I think I spent a few hours pondering this fascinating chain of dreams, when my friend (yes, the one from the dream) came rushing into my room hurrying me to pack up as we were about to depart for Warsaw. At some point, she asked me: ‘Sleep well?’. In fact, she was simply being very sarcastic (she knew a night, in a state of such horrible alcohol intoxication as I was in, might result quite difficult), but for me, at that time, there was something very catchy in that question– it was as if she was urging me to relate the dreams I had… and to follow the pattern. Paralyzed with angst, I immediately changed the subject.

[Nemonymous]

Fascinating post, Slawek, which I'm still absorbing.

Dream sickness in The Hawler - is, briefly, confusion between dream and reality, to the extent of the city authorities needing to provide specific locations where this confusion is not confusing. And people go there for holidays.
des

[darrick]

confusion between dream and reality

hmm. sounds like Oneiroid Psychosis (also the name of a great and dark band).

Those dreams sound like they'd make a good short story.

is the Hawler a book or a story? if it's a story, where is it housed? and will it burn me?

D

some of my latest stories: http://blog.myspace.com/vengersatanis

[The Silent One]

Hypnogogia when waking, hypnopompia when drifting off. Nasty hallucinations, I can say that much. Surreal, sometimes lucid breaches of reality. Eep.

[Nemonymous]

Darrick,
THE HAWLER is a novel. Free navigation: http://www.weirdmonger.com

I've always wondered whether aujtors generally incorporate memories of dreams when writing fiction? Are they like memories or rather shadowy imprints that have a life of their own? Are forgotten dreams somehow incorporated and, if so, how would you know? If you have a weak bladder, do you dream more or is that an illusion - because if your sleep is broken at any point during the dream, you seem to be able to remember it better?

Perhaps we forget a dream as part of a dream that later we call deja vu.
Are there dreams within dreams, therefore?
Or even dreams without a dreamer?

And is there such a thing as dream sickness where we no longer know whether we are dreaming or awake.

La Vida Es Sueno.


Are there any stories etc. that actaully create dreams for you - ideas or images that you can't shake off & that continue to haunt your sleeping hours?

Also, are there such things as waking dreams? Fantasies you sleepily configurate before you get up or before you go to sleep? I have a friend who has had 'waking dreams' for years and he has populated a whole world with constructed configurations of geography, travelled across it, drawn up maps and peoples, had adventures there, all serialised from pre- and post-sleep (while in bed) over, say, his whole remembered lifetime.

Also fiction 'informing' dreams, rather than vice versa, is something I'm very interested in.

And what about dreaming properly but somehow in control of that dream - like a god or, rather, the dreamer somehow knowing that he is aware within the dream that it is a dream? Perhaps that's a definition of a god?? Dreaming with control. Of course, these godlike propensities may be dreamed, too.
Personally, I think this is relevant to the "dream sickness'' I mentioned earlier and perhaps there should be specified areas of the world where the exact differentiation between dream and waking is assured - & paid holidays to this surety of real existence being something for which I'm drawing up brochures even as I speak.

Robert Aickman, Oliver Onions, Sarban, Salman Rushdie, Thomas Ligotti are just a few masters of this technique.

Levels of shadow gradually peeled away to reveal the naked silhouette.

des

[yellowish haze]

Des,
Wow, that was interesting!
Coincidentally, today I have read The Hawler part 34, in which you say a lot about dream sicknesses and other fascinating things.

Perhaps we forget a dream as part of a dream that later we call deja vu.
Are there dreams within dreams, therefore?
Or even dreams without a dreamer?

You ask a lot of such questions and leave them unanswered- up to the point where it really starts to confuse the reader! Great stuff! Today I stumbled across this:
"That begs a question, however, where exactly are you when you are asleep and not dreaming?"

Now, this is VERY disturbing. It reminds me of an idea I had a year ago (just when I started to read TL’s stories). I was thinking about the relationship between reality and dreamland and about how we are transferred from one to the other. When we go to sleep there is usually a moment when we are still not dreaming but we are neither awake. A lot of people would describe this state/experience in different ways: blackness, whiteness, temporal suspension in the void etc. etc. I usually associated it with dark nothingness (or perhaps some void somethingness?:)). Nevertheless, at some point, something occurred to me: and what if that brief gap between reality and dreamland is nothing more but all there really is? - a force which is the only true thing, an insubstantial matter which constantly flings us back and forth between two artificial (un)realities only to confuse us more and more. When we are falling asleep, it is the only time when we can detect this deceitful force: being still half conscious we are being slowly disconnect from our (un)real selves, only to find a place where we really come from. However, since instantly afterwards we are thrown into our dreamlands or, disconnected from consciousness, our minds become paralyzed with total oblivion, we do not pay much attention to that gap and we do not recognize its importance… leaving it behind - unnoticed.

Wow, I guess I went a little bit too far with this. Oneiroid Psychosis? Don’t scare me, Darrick.

[Nemonymous]

Fascinating, Slawek. I think you've hit some nail on the head. The gap between dream and reality being more 'crucial' than the dream or the reality themselves! I'm off now to think about it.

(Thanks for reading ' The Hawler'. A reader sent me a wonderful and beutiful printed edition of this yesterday, complete with artwork.)

des

[unknown]

I don't know if anybody here has seen the movie "Waking Life", but it's basically an animated philosophical movie which deals largely with lucid dreaming, the dream state, consciousness, etc...

There's one conversation between Ethan Hawke and some chick, and Ethan basically says something along these lines:

You know when you look at the clock and close your eyes and doze off, and then wake up again thinking you've been asleep for like an hour, and you see that only one minute has passed. Well, scientists and doctors say that after we die, there's 8 minutes of brain activity still going on. Neurons still firing and whatnot. So what if what we're really experiencing is that 8 minutes of brain activity before we die?

[Dr. Zirk]

Waking Life is definitely an impressive movie - a bold attempt to use animation as a mirror for philosophical ideas. A friend of mine is convinced that the film follows the journey described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, but apparently Richard Linklater (the director of Waking Life) has denied that connection.

By the way, Linklater's next film (coming out in July) is a film treatment of Philip K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly, one of my all-time favorite novels. It will feature the same rotoscoping animation technique used in Waking Life:

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/02/21/a_scanner_darkly_tra.html

Just thinking about a Linklater film treatment of A Scanner Darkly is causing my cup to runneth over something fierce...

[yellowish haze]

Unknown, Dr. Zirk,
I haven’t seen Waking Life. I will have to catch up with you and locate this flick – sounds cool.

Are there dreams within dreams, therefore?

Now, how about this idea (with a strong Ligottian flavor):

And what if we never wake up? Every night we fall asleep (even if we believe, we don’t) and the dream fools us into thinking that in the morning we wake up? Maybe, from day to day at night, we are submerged in new deeper and deeper dreams leaving our (already dreamed) bodies behind. Every new day would then become a copy of the previous one, being itself a copied copy… of a copy of something that one day was real, but ceased to exist because of the very fact that there happened to be someone who started to dream (and spread this contagious disease all around the world). What we still don’t realize is that all we have is already so utterly distorted that what awaits us is but a world, which we were not meant to see – a nightmare-ridden kingdom of deformities.

Now, imagine that somehow, one night the situation changes: you are the only one to succeed in fooling the dream – the sole in the world. You don’t fall asleep and so are stuck between dream’s different layers. The next morning you walk out your door and roam the empty streets, find your relatives and friends who did not wait for you and have thus become some eternally dreaming corpses. The only thing you have left is to live in a deserted world which is gradually being forgotten.


I know it may sound like nothing new for us – Ligottians - but I think this concept is worth being included in this thread.

[unknown]

that last paragraph kind of reminds me of Dark City