Introduction Well, things haven't been going well for me on the dreaming front. I often wake many times in the night without an inkling of what my subconscious self had been doing moments prior, and even when I remember bits of my dreams they are fleeting and insubstantial. I am hoping keeping a consistent dream journal will help alleviate this dreamy dry spell.
For the last few nights, I have attempted autosuggestion, meditation and hypnosis to both soothe myself to sleep and encourage my brain to remember my dreams. Unfortunately, after an hour and a half of talking to myself, lying still in bed, I become bored and exhausted and give up, helplessly submitting to a restless sleep that will yield no memories. Falling asleep at all has been a problem ever since I came here to Arizona.
Last night things got a bit better. I remember a single fragment of what I believe were three different dreams -- certainly not satisfactory, but undoubtedly an improvement. I can only hope circumstances will continue to improve. And so, with these three fragments, I open SQUIRREL DREAMS, my personal Dream Journal.
1. Night of October 7th, 2008
Dream Fragment #1
I sit uneasily upon the electric clothes washer in our small, narrow kitchen-slash-laundry-area, a pale room with beige cabinets and stubborn drawers unwilling to open. Staring into the open refrigerator, it dawns on me that there is no food in the house (though, for some odd reason, there seemed to be food visible in the refrigerator). I feel anger suggestive of Benjamin's step mother Kimberly (not present). Memory ends.
Dream Fragment #2
In this dream, I am human. I walk up a concrete ramp bound with dirty brass railings in some sort of cement courtyard... Ben's grandmother (who lives in California) drives up in her gold Lexus. Ben's sister is in the passenger seat. The backseat swings open, and Grammy's voice says "Go get your piano book!" Cassie (Ben's sister) adds: "Yeah, I want to play it!" I remember feeling like that would be a very amusing waste of time. Then I proceed into the gray stone building the ramp leads up to and emerge with a taco. I reach over the railing and place the taco next to an identical one in a manila folder in the back seat of the car. I remember admiring with fondness how perfectly symmetrical and miraculous those two tacos looked.
... I have the strangest feeling that I was actually Ben in that last dream, but I can't be sure.
Dream Fragment #3
I only remember a single detail of this dream. I am looking at a sheet of paper--a checklist, but an exceedingly elementary one, such as those they hand out on a preschool treasure hunt. However, I know in my mind that this is a list of military training objectives. The first item involves something very exciting... bombing a harmless village in Tokyo, I think. The list then degenerated into a collection of dull household chores and mundane military exercises...
And that's all I remember from last night. Before bedtime, I practiced a meditation exercise to calm my mind, yet still it swam with labyrinthine thoughts and feelings as I tossed and turned into sleep, desperately trying to hold onto the words "I will vividly remember all of my dreams... I will wake up after every dream period and will remember my dreams..." I did eat some peanut butter before bed (delicious but SO hard to get out of one's fur... or off of one's tongue), which contains niacin (Vitamin B3) and is supposed to promote vivid dreaming, so maybe that helped me remember these fragments.
...I need help. I feel like I'm beating myself up over this. I remain diligent throughout the day, performing reality checks every time the feeling strikes me or when I enter a doorway, telling myself that tonight, if I can just hang on, tonight I will remember my dreams. I feel so helpless... Of course, I haven't tried waking to an alarm yet. I'll perhaps try that tonight, and report my experiences tomorrow. Are there any techniques for falling asleep faster or encouraging vivid dream recall that would work for me? I'd really like to stay away from medication if possible.
Thanks for reading!
More up soon!
~tamias
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