Oneironaut

January 19, 2005 - Wednesday

Oneironaut

In the midst of a conversation with a co-worker last week, it came out that I am what they call a "lucid dreamer". In short, lucid dreaming is "consciously perceiving and recognizing that one is in a dream while one is sleeping, and having control over the "dreamscape", or the faux-reality dream world within a dream. Stephen LaBerge, a published author and expert on the subject, has defined it as simply realizing that one is dreaming while in a dream. Other authorities contend that in order for the state of a dreaming person to be lucid, that person must have control over his or her dreamscape (because simply having the mental idea "I am lucid" could be a creation of the subconscious itself and not a real "rational" thought)." (court. of Wikipedia.com)

Lucid dreamers are called - you guessed it - oneironauts. I may have to use that word in a story someday, just on general principle. But I digress.

As I understand it, this is a big deal to those who study the field of dreaming. Fascinating stuff, he said in a nasally British accent. People practice trying to enter a lucid dream state; it's incredibly hard to do on purpose, as I read more on it.

The kicker is this: I'm used to it. I never thought it was a big deal, at all. I've done it all my life, and to be honest I always thought this is how dreams were. Sure I have regular dreams, but as a child I had many, many recurring dreams, dreams that stuck with me in detail. I had one dream in particular that played out innumerable times; as a very young child I'd have the dream at least once a week, and I very strongly recall some elements of the dream even now. It took place in my childhood room in Detroit, and involved geometrical shapes as, well...spirits. Entities. I really don't know what else to call them. They were my dream versions of invisible friends, I guess. Two in particular I recall: a spiky one who, for some reason, hated me and was always trying to get me, and a sphere who was my friend and I'd named, appropriately enough, Casper. I had that dream, with lessening frequency, up until I was around 15 or 16 years old. By then, I hadn't had the dream for a couple of years so I was pleasantly surprised to have it again. It was like seeing an old friend for the very last time.

I've had night terrors, I've sleepwalked, I've been told I've carried on conversations in my sleep. And I could control my dreams at times. Easily so. I can recall another dream where I jumped through different sci-fi adventures in my dream, all of my own creation. There was, admittedly, a girl I had a crush on (who, ironically enough, I don't remember); in my dream she was the prototypical Damsel in Distress and I was the hero who had to save her. The monsters/aliens/demons/villains snatched her from a park and I got to run from horror movie to space battle to jungle cliff hanger (literally!) to save her from them.

I guess, in hindsight, I'd been a waking study (pun intended) in dream analysis. But to me it was par for the course. Not so much anymore, but for years I enjoyed my dreams as a form of entertainment.

Take last night. I had several dreams, one of which kept restarting. There was nothing overly fantastic about it, to me anyway, except that I was in my usual disenchanted state from the actual dream events. It was like the so-called out of body experience they say you have when you die; I was a metaphysical presence hovering in the corner of a room, watching events unfold - fully aware of what was happening, and frankly enjoying the show. William Shatner was playing "me", or what I understood to be my role. Which is a little freaky.

But then the dream changed, and got all nightmarish. I was in a bed, just rising from sleep; something woke me up. At first I thought I was in my own bed, but after actually waking up in the real world I realized it wasn't my bed. In the dream I was being tied down; two guys, black or hispanic in their late teens (their faces were shadowed, i couldn't see too much detail) were strapping me to my bed with bungee cords. They were wearing wool caps, I remember that much; one had a dark bubble coat on. I tried to scream, my throat closed up when I tried. One of them - or both, I'm not sure - looked at me, lunged at me with a knife...and I woke up. That was roughly 5am, give or take a few minutes.

So what do I make of it? Nothing, or at least I hope nothing. I've had dreams like that all my life, and to be honest I'm deathly afraid to read anything even remotely supernatural into it.

It was just a dream. Right?