Mar 7, 2007

i dream of sleeping...?

when i opened google this morng, my quote for the day said "dream in a pragmatic way".
honestly, i don't know what that means. but it set me thinking on why i never remember my dreams. of course, "never" is used very generically here. i DO sometimes remember vague snippets of what i dreamt of while asleep. but i'm such a sound sleeper, that when i wake up, i feel i slept almost dream-free. and yet, i know that's not true. i believe we all live parallel lives. lives which wake up when we fall asleep in this reality. that's one of the reasons why "sleep" is so very important to me. i wonder what i'm gonna be doing in that parallel life/lives while i wake up the next day, blissfully unaware. i remember snippets sometimes. i remember having been to places i've never seen before. with people i don't know. there're sometimes recollections of familiar faces, places, streets. on rare occasions, i recall places from my past - like my school or my old house or my dog or cat - but these occasions are very rare.
i remember that once, long back, after my cat died, i dreamt for almost an enitre month, that he would come & curl up next to me while i slept. something that he was never allowed to do while we lived together. ma had some rules, which sed "no pets on bed" also, coz if the cat came into bed, the doggie insisted too. and it's really not hygienic to sleep with a german shepherd & a persian/siamese cat, no matter how clean they may be! but for a month after he died, my cat curled up in bed with me and slept. it felt very real, and when i woke every morning, i recalled him purring next to me. it did psych me out a bit. but strangely felt very calm.

besides that, i recall a time when i had dreamt that i was a cat. and when i woke up, i no longer knew whether i was a human who had a dream that she was a cat, or a cat who was dreaming that she was human.

besides these, in abt 3 minutes after i wake up, i forget everything t
hat happened in my sleep. it's like this "human factor" erases everything i experienced in my parallel life! and i'm left with a clean slate to face the day. it's a safely guarded secret - what i see in my dreams - even from me. and the lesser i know, the more curious i become. it could be as uninteresting as me sleeping in my dreams. and knowing my fondness for sleeping, that sure can't be ruled out as an option!

i have, at times, entertained the thought that maybe i don't dream that much. and hence, don't remember. but i don't want to believe it.

somehow, the thought of leading a parallel life or more is infinitely more exciting than a dreamless sleep!

3 comments:

Dino Sevia said...

You should get some share from my nightly does. God I have a lot of them. Some good. Some not so good. I've woken up many a time horrified, which is pretty much the same number of times, I've woken up with a smile for which I cant even seem to remember the reason anymore. I like to believe that the dream world is actually the real world, and this one right here is the is the one which is made-up.

Am I asleep right now? I have no idea. :->

Sarfraaz Ahmed said...

nice article :) good to read .. especially this one :D

when i woke up, i no longer knew whether i was a human who had a dream that she was a cat, or a cat who was dreaming that she was human.

On second thoughts, I guess life is all about perception...

rayshma said...

heyy taureau -
cud be. i get confused quite often. but not remembering anything in the "other" life, really dsnt help!
FYI - m spending my spring break in ur town! :)

hi sarfraaz,
yup... 'perception' & 'subjective' are the two key words!