dreamscape

My favourite time of the day is when my alarm has just woke me up and I fritter away an hour hitting the snooze button. In each of the ten minute segments before my snooze button goes off again I experience what seems like an eternity that I never want to leave. Time becomes stretched and warped, it is no longer a matter of 8am to 8:10am but there is a universe in which I can experience a whole life time of possibilities. I often don't remember what I've experienced, but I know that I've had amazing adventures, and sometimes terrifying experiences that are far more exciting than a day spent type type typing away at my computer.

Perhaps it could be called a truly surrealist state. I'm never awake, but I'm never entirely asleep so I am completely aware of what is happening in my dreams and can move about at will. I remember one amusing experience of being chased by zombies red-necks. They wants to stick a red hot poker in my nose and then I realised that I could fly so off I went into the atmosphere, the zombie red-necks shaking their fists at me. Ha ha, zombie red-necks! This is one girlie you won't be sticking needles into. Taking off into the air is a frequent feature of my dreams. I sometimes wake up and still feel as though I'm flying. This can occasionally infringe on my waking state. I remember sitting in the National Theatre in Prague. I was sitting on the top balcony, looking over at all the tiny heads below and was overwhelmed with the feeling that I could most definitely fly. Fortunately rationality tends to kick in so the papers never read 'Tragedy at Don Giovanni as crazed red-head dives to her death with pseudo-flight delusions.' However the feeling of reason struggling with unreason is sublime. I know at that moment I can fly, I have that feeling once again of taking off over the world but reason tugs me back down. Beautiful.

The most striking dreams that I had recently occurred last year when I had quit smoking (I later quit quitting). I was on a course of 24 hour nicotine patches and didn't think that it would be a problem to wear them while I was asleep. I should have realised that I don't smoke for the entire time that I'm sleeping and constant nicotine can do crazed things to a sleeping mind. The worst nightmare (for they were mostly nightmares) happened when I woke up in the middle of the night. I wandered about my house in an insomniac state for a while and decided to play with the cat. The cat was her usual playful self and then she went for my throat. I woke up in a state of panic, I was sweating and upset so I went to get a glass of water. Something was scratching at the back door, I looked out of the window and it was a crazed man staring at me. I woke up again. This time when I woke up I knew I was still asleep, I wanted to wake up properly but I couldn't. I thought that I might be trapped there forever. I went upstairs to my friends house to try to tell her that I was asleep and couldn't wake up and was trapped in my dream. At the top of the stairs I could hear my friends upstairs whispering on the next floor. The floorboards of the stairs started to creak so I turned and bolted. I woke up again, still stuck in my dream. This time I ran for the back door and headed out into the alley. I ran for a long time through the back streets of Newcastle. I was dreaming and I knew I was dreaming but I couldn't wake up so I thought that if I ran I would wake up eventually. It all got hazy after that, I remember having a gun and George Clooney being my sidekick. When I finally woke up properly I was so relieved. I never wore nicotine patches while I was sleeping again. (Although I'm sure I will do it again; I can recommend it to anyone who wants seriously intense dreams. Maybe not to non-smokers though, might be too crazy).

But despite the (very) occasional nightmare I love dreaming. I even love nightmares. Nightmares offer an intense feeling of fear that destroys all rationality and that lingers on after you've woken. I don't think that it's a feeling you could ever attain so safely. The same with the feeling of flying that would be impossible without dreams.

I dream so frequently that its a good place to harvest some inspiration for when I'm writing glue. I like that they twist time and space so much. When writing about a dream I try not to narrate as I've done above but to write about it as I've experienced it; jilted, fragmented, folded and stretched. There is an entire world inside our heads, a million other lives and destinies. I feel that it's important to pay attention to them, not in the Freudian sense but just to experience the breadth of weird and wonderful emotions that aren't possible in a waking state.

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