I come into the lab once again at 8am, sleep deprived. Olivia is sick, so it is just Cagatay setting up. I am tired as hell, but this is not a one-person job, so I do not get to sleep until 10am. By now, I have lost most of my fatigue, but somehow I still manage to get to sleep.
I enter REM and I am standing in a strange palace or temple, looking at an ornate wooden cabinet, with Cagatay at my side. We are the only two characters in the whole dream who are sentient, but automaton-like figures dart about the corridors of the temple, sticking to themselves and irrelevant to the dream plot.
I start magically transforming the cabinet with my mind, extending and reshaping it like a carpenter would, over many days and weeks, but in seconds. I am having a lot of fun doing this, and I am talking to Cagatay while I am doing so, explaining to him my creative process.
The idea hits me. I have a task to do. I do not really understand that I am dreaming per se, and this was not an 'aha' like lucidity moment as such. At some level, I am aware the entire time that I am in a simulation with a job to do. The only difference is that there was no beguiling or engaging dream plot from which to be pulled away from, and as such, the phenomenon of insight attainment (and the sweet sweet emotions that come with that) were not on the menu in this dream. In a strange sense, it was like I was born into a dream that was already lucid to begin with, and the rest was just business.
I perform my saccades, much slower this time (remembering that I rushed them during the last pilot) and I wonder whether these are not indeed "too slow". I perform an LRLR, conduct my task, punctuate this with an LR, perform the second task, and punctuate this again with an LR, some number of times (I believe 8-12). Finally, I finish off with an LRLR to indicate that I am done.
Back to the dream, re-shaping the wooden cabinet. I get bored of doing this, and send up some more random LRLR sequences, just for fun. More than fun; for the irony of 'so casually' leaving an empirical signature for a phenomenon that was considered a scientific 'myth' only a few decades ago. That entertains me greatly. I do this again. And again. Back to the cabinet, I get lost in the dream, and at some point wonder whether I am even dreaming at all, or have been awake the whole time. By now, what little insight-lucidity that had underpinned this dream has well and truly vanished.
I wake up, and remember being lucid. I wonder whether it even happened, and whether I am indeed awake or in a dream right now. A minute passes, and I conclude that I am indeed awake, and that I probably was in a lucid dream previously. I think of it some more, and I become certain.
"Cagatay, I think I did it again..." I call out.
The Intercom crackles to life.
"My man....." he says.
But I am till sleep deprived; and minus the euphoria of the insight of the last dream, emotionally, I feel like shit. It was like waking up and knowing that you have a funeral to attend. The feeling takes a few hours to fade.
This was not a fun dream at all, looking back.
Perhaps I simply pushed myself too hard.
No comments:
Post a Comment