Thread: Hello, world!

My name is Maciej and I'm 16. I was born in 1995 in Republic of Poland, a year where, strangely, nothing of really much importance happened (unlike, say, 1994). I can only assume that the universe didn't want to compete with an event of utmost importance that certainly is my birthday

[meaningless random thoughts]My dad was born in People's Republic of Poland in 1953, the same year Stalin died. My mom was born in 1958, the same year Mao's Great Leap Forward started, Alaska was admitted as 49th state and spectacularly failful United Arab Republic was created.

I'm probably sounding pretentious. But for a long time I had somewhat of an obsession with dates, history and different socioeconomic environments that members of mankind have found themselves living in throughout the times. History is a great passion of mine (when I find a subject that really fascinates me, I can spend weeks googling and reading about it - most recently, I read a lot about Mao's China and social breakdown during Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, but I can also, for example, burn through 800-page monography on ancient Fiji in one week).

I often like to think about how would I turn out if instead of 1990s postcommunist Poland I was born in, say, 1910s Germany (would I be member of some sort of anti-Hitler resistance? probably no; would I have my part in Hitler's genocide? probably yes, I'm not that good when it comes to peer pressure) or Victorian-era England (how would I cope with my homosexuality in extremely conservative social environment? I like to think I'd join some anarchist group advocating 'free love' before hippies made it mainstream, but I'd just probably end up being sexually repressed and frustrated female-oppressing patriarch).[/meaningless random thoughts]

But I digress, as I tend to do I registered here because I think I already often have lucid (not to mention very interesting) dreams on my own, and wanted to have a nice and public place to write them down. My dreams often feature highly abstract, irrational environments that nevertheless make sense (not in a way that I accept everything as "true" because I think irrationally in a dream; rather, I think completely rationally, and accept irrationality only because it's part of a greater, rational in-dream universe). I'll explain: for example, a lot of my dreams feature computer gaming, with games often being very surreal and somewhat aimless; but they are not the dream itself, they are just part of in-dream universe. So, I'm playing a game inside dream universe, all while being aware that I'm just dreaming about all this. I don't know if that makes any sense to you

I often achieve spontaneous LD, mostly by some object from actual world appearing in my dream (for example, I once had a very long dream about playing some weird version of Minecraft - and I was conscious for its entirety). I also often have in-dream thoughts about real items not appearing in my dream (for example, I am faced with a certain situation, and I think about how much that situation reminds me of Alice meeting the cat in 'Alice in Wonderland'). I don't know if anyone else here has this, though I can't change content of a dream, though. Not that I want - the things my mind prepares for me are far more interesting that whatever I can come up with consciously, anyway.

Also, I TOTALLY CAN READ WHILE DREAMING. I rarely have opportunity to see any written text inside a dream, but on all occasions I recall, I was able to at least get the basic idea of the text. Dates appearing out of context feature prominently in my dreams (most recently, I often see "1936" appearing out of nowhere, a date/number I have no personal connection with whatsoever). I don't know why I apparently bypass everything we know about human brain, but it may help that I learned reading and speaking at a very young age (I could mostly write and read when I was three).

Also my interests: reading (although I tend to procrastinate with my reading), physics, gaming, music, art film (I also tend to procrastinate with watching films, srsly), sociology and politics. I have many weird ideas (like i sometimes tend to write in small caps only because i half-consciously think that capitalizing "i" and starting letters is unequal and unjust to rest of letters, srsly). I hope we'll get along