The Importance Of Sleep

Readers who have been following me for a while know by now that I’m rather fascinated by dreams.

One evening this week, I watched a documentary on TV about sleep, dreams and sleep deprivation.

In the program, they followed a healthy young man who had volunteered for experiments involving sleep deprivation. Sleeping in a lab, with electrodes attached, scientists could follow exactly which stage of sleep he was in during different periods in the night, and decide when he should be disturbed or woken up.

For five nights in a row he was not allowed more than three hours of total sleep per night. After that, a series of tests were carried out. They showed clearly that sleep deprivation seriously affects physical health as well as the ability to concentrate mentally.

Sleep deprivation affects the levels of hormones which in turn affect things like appetite, insulin production, the cardiovascular system and the immune system. Had this young man gone on in the same way for some time longer, he would soon have been in the risk zone for diabetes, stroke and heart problems. He also showed very poor results in memory tests, and in driving tests.

In the driving tests, he was exposed to sudden events like a (mechanical) dog suddenly rushing out in front of the car. He hit it every time, unable to avoid it. In these tests too, the scientists were able to follow his brain activity, and lots of “micro sleeps” were registered. If I remember facts right, the driving test lasted for two or three hours, and during that time, this sleep deprived young man’s brain had actually been ‘asleep’ for a total of about 25 minutes.

Tests such as these prove that driving when not having had enough sleep is as dangerous as driving after taking drugs or alcohol. Lots of unexplained road accidents are likely to have been caused by tired drivers.

The good news is, when the young man was allowed normal sleep again, all of his hormone levels etc were also restored back to normal. This in turn proves that when the cause of tiredness is sleep deprivation, the answer is not to keep going with the help of drugs, but to find a way to get the proper amount of sleep.

Dreams were also mentioned. Scientists now believe that the function of dreams (or at least one of the functions) is to help the brain to store memories. Experiments showed that when people are woken up from their first round of dream sleep, in the late evening, the dreams are often not too difficult to relate directly to things that have happened during the day. Dreams that you dream towards morning are often a lot more complicated to sort out. The scientists interpret this as the brain then being further along in its sorting process, connecting the new memories with old ones.

Alice In Wonderland - The Film

Since I had been in Alice in Wonderland kind of mood for the last week or so anyway, I decided on Saturday that I might as well get the DVD and watch the Disney-Tim Burton-Johnny Depp version of it.

A Short Review:

It is not really the Alice in Wonderland we know from the book (i.e. if you’ve actually ever read it).  But that’s okay (and I’d say it’s especially okay if you’ve actually just recently reread the book).

In the book Alice keeps questioning whether she is the same person as she was.

Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I?

In the film, the Wonderland/ Underland creatures also keep questioning whether she is the “right” Alice. Just as in the book, she keeps shrinking and growing, and it takes some trials to find her right size. Both physically and in other respects. The Mad Hatter says to her:

“You’re not the same as you were before. You were much more muchier. You’ve lost your muchness.” 

So of course, before we get to the end, Alice must regain that muchness, by doing things she had not thought herself capable of. And so she does; but while the ending is on the one hand very predictable (since it is “foretold”), on the other hand it is still not quite traditional.

On the whole, I liked it better than I expected.

Now for the extended Review:

On the whole, I liked it better than I expected.

Actually, I sort of knew that I would, right from the start. Not before I bought it, but from moment I started watching.

The setting is made very clear. There is a short scene at the start where little Alice tells her father about having had a strange dream. Then suddenly Alice is 19 years old and obviously feeling very much trapped in the social conventions and expectations of her time (18th century Victorian setting). She is confronted with a choice, flees from it by following the rabbit, falls down the hole… and finds herself back in the dream from her childhood, where things are the same and yet different.

The characters in story are picked from both Alice books (the second entitled Through The Looking Glass). Some of them are also sort of mixed up with each other (like the Queen of Hearts from the first book and the Red Queen from the second). Since I have not reread the second book as recently as the first one, my memories of that one are less clear.

Anyway, I found this to be rather okay too, because the context of it all being a dream – a fiction of Alice’s own imagination – is being kept throughout.

At a critical moment, Alice says:

“From the moment I fell down that rabbit hole, I’ve been told what I must do and who I must be. I’ve been shrunk, stretched, scratched and stuffed into a teapot. I’ve been accused of being Alice, and of not being Alice. But this is my dream. I’ll decide where it goes from here. I make the path.”

Now, if you’re in the mood to be critical, there are of course a few such points you could make as well.

For one thing, you might say it is a bit too much obviously Disney (displayed in faithful dogs and fairy tale castles and whatnot).

 

For another, you might also say it is a bit too much Tim Burton + Johnny Depp. Some review I read on the internet said for example that there is too little difference between Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka and Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. And there is something in that.

Yes. I think I’d say the Mad Hatter is Depps’s Willy Wonka with Depp’s Scottish accent of J.M. Barrie (from Finding Neverland, about the author of Peter Pan) and Depp’s walk from Benny and Joon (where his character imitates Buster Keaton). In short: It’s Johnny Depp… But that also means there is some depth to the character. (For one thing, we get to see the Hatter actually making hats.)

A third point of criticism might be that the story is a bit too much 21st century special effects dragon-slaying adventure. But – the ingredients are there in Carroll’s books, even if the film has made much of what was little in the books, and the other way round.

Some critics might find it a distortion of the story to have a 19 year old Alice. I think it works rather well, seen in relation to all the shrinking and growing and searching for identity. I must also say that I was very impressed with Mia Wasikowska’s performance as Alice.

 

The Red Queen is played by Helena Bonham Carter, not really easily recognizable with heavy makeup and some considerable digital distortion of her head. But good acting really makes the character.

 

 

 

 

Anne Hathaway’s portrayal of the White Queen is also interesting. She’s supposed to be the good one, but there is some darkness in her as well. 

 

 

 

All in all, I enjoyed it. Maybe one has to be a little bit mad to do so. But as Alice’s father said to her, and she in turn to the Mad Hatter: “All the best people are”…

Time And Time Again

On Tuesday afternoon I was told that dad would be moved on Thursday from the hospital to the nursing home; but they would phone me about the exact time. On Thursday by 2 pm I had heard nothing, so I called the hospital ward – and was told that no, it had been postponed until Friday. So today again I waited for that phone call; again I heard nothing, and when I called I was told that no, not today, but on Monday! (Remains to be seen what they say then.)

Since I had not been to see dad myself since Tuesday – partly because I kept thinking each day that I had better save my own energy for “tomorrow”! – I went up to the hospital again late this afternoon. He was more “awake” than he was last time, but not really very much more “aware”.

His sense of time and space has been out of order since before; but visiting him at the hospital now it strikes me even more forcefully how dependent we really are on Time for our sense of orientation in this world…

Every time I opened my mouth a time-related word seemed to popping out, and at the same time I realized that this probably conveyed very little to him now…

When I first came in, he said he was surprised to see me in the middle of the night. (It was 5.30 pm and the sun shining from a blue sky outside the window.) So automatically I tried to correct… Then I tried to get a grip of whether he remembered that I had been to visit earlier this week – or anything else that had happened earlier in the week (he didn’t). And then there was the task of trying to explain that my brother will be coming… next week? … on Monday? … in a few days? … soon? …  And so on… 

Dad in his turn tried to convey to me his own impressions: While I boringly tried to drag him into Reality and explain that he has been spending the last five days in a hospital bed, he tried to tell me that he had been away travelling and meeting relatives and friends and having quite an interesting time, only a couple of days ago! My sense of logic tells me this can only have been happening in his dreams… but to him those dreams seem more real than Reality now…

Thinking about it as I walked home in the warm summer evening… As long as his dreams are pleasant, perhaps we should just try to be glad for him that he is able to spend so much time in that “other world”…

But it is certainly not easy to make Communication “between worlds” work without reference to Time And Space! 

¹ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

² Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

³ And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. ⁴ God saw that the light was good, and He separated the light from the darkness. ⁵ God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.

---

¹⁴ And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, ¹⁵ and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so.

About the photos in this post:

1. Gulls over the river. See more photos from the same occasion in my Thursday post at Soaring Through the World.

2. For more of these glass birds, see today’s post in my Picture Book. They’re hovering over the hospital foyer. I have been thinking for months that I should take photos of them, but usually when I’m at the hospital I don’t have the camera with me + in the daytime the foyer is always a busy place full of people. But on Tuesday after I had been to visit dad, it was after “business hours”… few people around… and I did have the camera with me. So I took the opportunity.

A Dog May Look At A Frog

 

“A cat may look at a king”

This English proverb dates back to the 16th century and indicates an impertinent remark by an inferior or upstart. It means that an inferior isn't completely restricted in what they may do in the presence of a superior.

The distorted version came to mind for me when contemplating some pictures that I took in our town park earlier in the week.

The town is having a sculpture festival this summer, and preparations have begun. We had some borrowed statues last year too, some of which I quite enjoyed. But the ones I’ve seen so far this year… Hmm…

Okay. We are approaching the end of the school year. High school students are looking forward to their proms. Girls will be dreaming of fancy dresses of a kind they would never wear on any other occasion. They might even be dreaming of that frog of a boyfriend turning into a prince…

 

Did you think the decorations on that red dress were pretty bows?

On closer look, you can kiss that idea goodbye!

The froggy dress is not just standing there on its own, either.

It’s accompanied by giant watchdogs.

Red poodle, the size of a horse.

 

Blue scary dog, don’t ask me its name.

Red twin of the blue one – having caught sight of something…

A small blue human frog trying to use the red ones as climbing wall!

Turned out (as so often) that climbing up was much easier than getting down again. Didn’t get a picture of that, but mummy had to come to the rescue…!

The sculptures work as magnets on little children. What do you mean, just look?! Obviously anything this colourful is meant to be climbed…! 

I probably take a boring grown-up view on this, but I hope the Town does not get ideas about keeping these ones permanently - at least not in the spot where they are now.

I like our town park. It’s got beautiful trees and flowerbeds. There are also sculptures in it since before which I actually like.

This one had to move to give room for the new ones. I have no complaints about that, though - I think they found a good spot for it.

But the red and blue ones… make me think of “the stuff nightmares are made of”…!

‘Fly, fly! About with your ship and fly! Row, row for your lives away from this accursed shore. --- This is the Island where Dreams come true --- Not daydreams: dreams.'

C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
(Chapter 12: The Dark Island)

Dreams

Many people have told stories about waking up from a nightmare with a sigh of relief that it was not real. Did you ever wake up from one thinking: “Oh no, I have to go back to sleep and try to finish that!” ???

I did, one morning this week. In that dream, I was trying to sort out some accounts, and knew that unless I got all the figures right, neither I nor anyone else was going to get home. I’m not sure exactly where I was, I only know it had been my first day on the job, and I wasn’t even employed, just doing some kind of internship, but they still laid this huge responsibility on me. And every time I was on the verge of getting it right, something happened to interrupt me, and I had to start over…

So my very first thought when waking up was that I had to return to the dream and straighten things out, or those “other people”, whoever they were, would still be in trouble...

Readers who have been following me for a while know that I’m fascinated by dreams and dream interpretation. (You will find earlier posts on the theme if you click the label “dreams”.) So later in the day, while out walking, I kept thinking about this.

First of all, I never really felt comfortable with figures and math. This week I’ve had to check income tax return forms for myself, for my father, and for my mother’s estate (almost a year after her death), so I guess that pretty much “accounts for the accounts” - and the feeling of being responsible for getting things sorted out not only for myself but for others as well.

But then there is this other dimension... 
The fact of still not being ‘done’ sorting out the affairs of someone who left this life a year ago. A visit from a friend the other day, who just recently lost another friend of hers to cancer. Talk of funerals. Thinking of other friends – some who died, some who survived. Having to tell people about my own recent troubles. Still waiting for the results of my biopsy last week. (That in itself a strange mix of trying to forget, be positive, and prepare for new trials all at the same time.)

And in nature, outside, things slowly coming back to life after the long sleep of winter…

I had another dream earlier in the week.
In that dream, I was invited to a wedding, or rather a renewal of vows for a couple married since many years back. It was a huge event, and I had the feeling almost everyone I’ve known in my whole life was at that party. The couple inviting us was a married couple whom in real life I haven’t seen for years, but who do “connect” a lot of my other friends, because they are known to people where I live now as well as also to friends back where I lived before. They are also an international couple: one of them comes from Sweden, the other from an English-speaking country across the earth.

 

The celebration they had invited us to was a much bigger event than any I’ve ever been to. It was not all festivities; it also involved really tough challenges, like mysteries and riddles to be worked out, and finding hidden ways and keys to get out of seemingly impossible situations. For the scenery, imagine a mix of the Colosseum and some of the more impressive scenery from The Lord of the Ring…

The whole adventure began with wonder,  continued with struggles, and ended in celebration.

       

From that dream I woke up with a sense of “wow” rather than anything else. I can’t recall ever having had a dream quite like it before.

To get back to the more recent “accounts” dream. As I said, my first feeling when I woke up from that one was that I had to go back to sleep to finish what I had left behind. But then as I grew more aware of things, it dawned on me that I was home, and awake, and that I did not have to go back and finish those impossible accounts. (Phew!)

Thinking about this later, during my walk, a parallel to the message of Christian faith (as it has been written into my heart) struck me. No matter how many years we live, none of us will really be able to “finish all the accounts”. Every one of us will be leaving some unfinished business behind one day, however much we strive not to. (And of course we should strive not to.) But when we wake up on that final morning, we shall realize that we are at home, and that we will not have to go back to sort things out. It has all been taken care of.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelations 21:1-4)

Dreaming in English

One morning last week I woke up from a sequence of nightmare-ish dreams, and since I wasn't in a hurry to get up I took the time to jot down some notes about it in a note-pad I keep beside my bed. I did this still in a kind of half-asleep state of mind.

I did not look at the dream notes again until last night, when writing an email to a friend in the English-speaking world. Nothing particular struck me about it until after I had already sent that email off. Then I glanced at the notes again before returning the notebook to its place by the bed... and it hit me:

My original notes about the dream were all in English. Moreover, they contained certain puns and phrases that were quite essential to my understanding of the dream, but that I would have difficulties finding good translations for in Swedish. I can only conclude that the dream itself must have been in English, too, even though I'm pretty sure it very much had its background in my present Swedish life!

Getting curious what the dream was about? Well, part of it had to do with being told (in the dream) to take a course in management, to be able to deal with a new job that people wanted me to take on, but which I myself didn't want and didn't consider myself the right person for. I'm pretty sure this feeling of mine has to do with certain "jobs" that have landed on me after my dad's health started to rapidly deteriorate and mum died. It's all been too much (still is), and I'm not really managing very well at all. In the Swedish language however, we don't have one word that covers the whole span of the English word manage...

Why We Dream

A couple of days ago I watched a TV documentary about sleep and dreaming. I've written about dreams before - If you want to find those posts, I suggest clicking that label, below or in the list in the margin.

During the night we go through different stages of sleep. Early dream research showed that people dreamed during so called REM-sleep. So called because during this kind of sleep Rapid Eye Movements occur. Otherwise, however, during this stage of sleep, the body is usually very much relaxed. Later research has shown that we also dream during non-REM sleep. But apparently - and this was the thing I can't remember really having heard much about before - the dreams we have during the different stages of sleep are also of different kind. That is why for example medication can affect our dreams (because they can affect what kind of sleep we have). (Or at least that is one reason why etc.)

It seems that during non-REM sleep, we tend to dream happy dreams. During REM-sleep, negative ones, even nightmares. There is also something called REM sleep disorder - some dysfunction in the brain which disturbs this usually relaxed phase of sleep, and causes people to act out in violent action, like punching, kicking, jumping out of bed etc.

The documentary also dealt with the question why we dream. I don't really have a problem with that - I have long believed from my own experience that it is a way to deal with reality, trying to solve problems etc. During a period of intense dreaming years ago, I came to regard even nightmares as "friends" rather than enemies (helping me to understand myself). Scientific research seems to agree.

Scientists now also add the theory that the function of nightmares is sort of preventive: Their job is to train us in our sleep to contend with the dangers of the day. (Experiments have been carried out on animals which seem to support this idea - forcing them into a kind of REM sleep disorder which makes them act out instead of remaining relaxed.) The idea is that our ancestors, having to deal with a more physically cruel reality than most of us today, needed this nightly mental training to survive. But we seem to be able to adapt even our dreams to modern society - modern adult dreamers seem to adjust their nightmares to be related to modern kind of stress rather than fighting wild animals etc. While children often seem to have the more primitive kind of nightmares.

And even today - if I got it right what someone in this documentary said - it seems that the nightmares may fill an odd function, because it seems that people who are bereaved of REM sleep (the nightmare kind of sleep) actually tend to easier fall into depression than those who do have to fight (a normal amount of) nightmares in their sleep!

(Written down from memory the day after I watched the TV documentary.)
(Photo: My own, from the zoo.)

Nightmare and Dayscare

I woke up this morning from a rather confused and bizarre dream. Since I had just recently been discussing such things with blogfriend GB, I decided to try and catch this one before it withered away. I might have done it anyway, dreams interest me and over the years I think I have become rather good at analyzing my own. (With those of others, one can only sometimes make a suggestion. But I believe each person holds the keys to his or her own dreamworld. It just may take some work to "learn the language", so to say.)

Here's mine:

First I was at some kind of school with a lot of different buildnings. I was searching the school library at night for an audio tape. I also started listening to it, but when the tape ran out, I could not find the next one. At some point, I was also having a discussion with some teacher or professor, or maybe more than one.

Then, suddenly, I was in a hospital instead, going around the corridors in a hospital bed on wheels, with raised back support. Somehow, I was supposed to manoeuvre this bed like a wheelchair on my own, without help. I tell you, getting in and out of lifts/elevators was not easy! People kept sending me round from one ward to another, and I had no idea what treatment I was there for.

Finally I arrived at a desk where they told me that I was 20 minutes late, but they would try to fit me in. Fit me in for what? I wondered, and found them very hesitant to answer. They seemed to be avoiding telling me.

I saw a sign with a strange word that I could read, but not understand, and I saw that they were giving people injections. I demanded to know what it was all about. So they told me. It was an injection that might relieve pain, although it had not been properly tested yet, so they really could not say what effect it might have. I was very sceptical, but I was in pain, so I decided I'd try it. While I waited though, I felt I really needed to find a toilet. I was directed down some stairs into the basement. Fortunately, I could now walk. I went down, found the ladies room - and woke up.

The last part of it was the easy one. I very often find myself in search of a bathroom at the end of my dreams. Thankfully, I still always wake up in time to go find my own...

So what's behind the rest?
Yesterday, I was thinking back on my days at school, long ago. This will show up in blogpost(s) to come.
Shortly before I went to bed, I was thinking about one of my English professors at university. Libraries and old audio tapes had also been on my mind - and as usual, I had been listening to an audio book just before I went to sleep. I think that pretty much covers the school part of the dream.

The previous night, my friend G's wheelchair had been parked in my hall. (For real. She and husband B were staying the night.) G has been in and out of hospitals all her life; she's a 'fighter' but becoming more and more dependent on her wheelchair(s) lately. I also have some experiences of hospital myself. And I have pain problems. Right now, every day the newspapers have big black headlines like "We will not have time to vaccinate everybody" (against swine flu). Last time I had flu was a very bad experience; since then I've had vaccinations every autumn, and I really don't want to catch swine flu if I can avoid it. On top of that, the last thing I watched on TV before I went to bed was the first part of a mini crime series, in which two little boys were kidnapped and kept sedated by injections in hospitallike environment. The only clue the police had, was that on the pictures that were sent to them of the sleeping boys, there was a mysterious word printed on the sheets...

That's it.
No more nighttime scary crime series on TV for me!!!
And certainly no TV news...

Recycling Dreams

Marc Chagall (1887-1985)

Le temps n'a point de rives

(time has no shores)

I picked up the following question from a post about dreams over at Pan's Island:

"What are your thoughts on why we dream the things we do and why some dreams just stay with us?"

The way I see it, dreams are the poetry of our subconscious or semiconscious mind. The dreams that stay with us are the ones that really made a deep impression – just like with quotes and moods that sometimes remain with us long after we have read certain books. They may have been wonderful, or scary, or just thought-provoking or mysterious - but somehow they touched us and left a mark.

When I sort through my bookcase sometimes, or look at the reading list I've been keeping on my computer over the last few years, I usually discover some books that I can't remember at all from their titles, even though I know I read them. With others, I may have forgotten most of the details of the plot, but I can still recall the mood they put me in, or "pictures" they made me paint in my mind.

At other times, sorting through deskdrawers and notebooks, I have come across old notes that I made about dreams in the past. Sometimes the dream comes back to me quite vividly, just from a glance at these notes. Sometimes I keep staring at them and wonder: Whenever did I dream this?! I have no recollection of it at all…

With dreams, I suspect that the ones we have managed to work through and understand – to lift, so to say, from the subconscious to our conscious mind - are less likely to keep coming back to us in the night; unless our subconscious finds them worth recycling again to remind us of something. Dreams that keep recurring usually do so either because there is still something lacking in our understanding of them, or because we need the feeling of recognition they may be able to provide.

Pan's Island also mentions the Harry Potter books by J.K. Rowling. These books are full of dreams – Harry has a lot of them, and I get the feeling that Rowling must have done some pondering about the nature of dreams, too.

In the first chapter of the first book (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone), Hagrid comes riding on a flying motorbike, bringing baby Harry safely to the Dursley's house. Between the first and second chapter there is a time gap of nearly ten years; we then meet Harry as a boy of nearly eleven:

He rolled on to his back and tried to remember the dream he had been having. It had been a good one. There had been a flying motorbike in it. He had a funny feeling he'd had the same dream before.

If my memory serves me right, after Harry met and got to know Hagrid (the friendly giant comes again to his rescue, on his 11th birthday, to introduce him to the Wizarding World), this particular dream about the motorbike is not mentioned again. But other dreams, less pleasant, do keep haunting him – until Harry is "through" with whatever was or is behind them…

Annual Book Sale

The last week in February means start of the annual nation-wide Book Sale in Sweden, as far back as I can remember. It is not quite what it used to be - the last chance to get cheap left-over copies of books that were going out of print. These days, cheap editions of some books are even printed especially for the sale. But it's still an Event for all booklovers. And a Temptation...

However, I'm not all that fond of crowds and queueing (I wonder if there's any chance I got the spelling of that word right...), and that sometimes keeps me from venturing into the bookshop on the first day of the sale. Besides, my bookcases are all full...

Nevertheless, I found myself joining the crowd (and queueing) again this year, even though I wasn't really looking for any particular book. And now I have to make room in my bookcases for three more books on mythology, and one about dreams. As if I didn't have any of those before...

But who can resist titles like these? (Not I, obviously...!)
(All books in Swedish, the titles translated into English by me.)

• World Religions (seems to contain readable summaries of the Big Ones... and pictures)
• Gods and Goddesses in Classical Mythology (very neat, with charts and pictures...)
• Classical Symbols, an Encyclopedia (lots of useful trivia, and again, pictures...)
• Dragons and Demons of our Dreams (fascinating/scary cover picture, and the book was really, really cheap...)

Quotation of the Week 9/09

I'm still reading Wuthering Heights. Here is another quotation from it that caught my eye (with the recent dream discussion in mind).

I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.

Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 9
(the first Catherine speaking)

Dream come true...?

Two of my very first readers here have both commented on "the island of dreams". (See initial post, and interview.) In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, the island where dreams (not daydreams, but the nightly kind) come true is called the Dark Island; it is surrounded by darkness, and the man who managed to escape from it calls it a horrible place.

As I have already hinted, I find dreams and dream analysis interesting. Just recently, I had a very odd experience of déjà vu connected to a dream I dreamt many, many years ago.

Not so long ago, I moved to a new neighbourhood. Not completely new to me, and not very far from where I lived before. But new enough to make a change. One day, while walking along a road that I have walked along quite often before, I was suddenly hit by this déjà vu feeling connecting back to a dream which I hadn't thought about for quite a long time. But I did work with that dream quite a lot around the time I dreamt it, and I also used it as inspiration for a poem. What I never did before, however, was to connect the scenery in the dream to a real place. Now, suddenly, out of the blue (or maybe the grey), it struck me that I was walking along the road from my dream.

Here is a translation of my poem based on the dream (originally written in Swedish):

rain is streaming down
someone offers me a lift
no thanks, or yes please
if it's not out of your way
why can't I make up my mind


let me off here, please
not far from the town centre
I know the way now
I have seen this place before
I know where I am going


but took a wrong turn
lost again, not the first time
made the same mistake
before, in another dream
but I can correct myself


stone wall on the right
encloses the old churchyard
half an avenue
with trees on only one side
empty field on the other


darkness is falling
but now I'm on the right track
right here in between
the things buried in the past
and the future awaiting


The thing is - the place where I live now is right across "the empty field" of the dream...

Coincidence? Or did my subconscious remember the dream when I chose my new home?

Just for fun, I looked up "churchyard" in The Wordsworth Dictionary of Dreams. ("Gustavus Hindman Miller's Dictionary of Dreams first appeared in 1909, ten years after Sigmund Freuds pioneering work The Interpretation of Dreams", they note on the back of the cover.) I don't really put much trust in standard interpretations - I believe each person carries their own keys to their own dreams - but this definition did actually connect rather well to my own thoughts:

To dream of walking in a churchyard, if in winter, denotes that you are to have a long and bitter struggle with poverty, and you will reside far from the home of your childhood, and friends will be separated from you; but if you see the signs of springtime, you will walk up in into pleasant places and enjoy the society of friends.

I don't really recall the time of year in my dream, only that it was raining. Also, in my dream I was not walking in the churchyard, but alongside of it. But the dream/poem does sort of contain both winter and spring, in the sense that it contains both a sense of separation, and at the same time ends in hope.

Interview from one island to another

As promised in an earlier post, I have continued to randomly explore the Sea of Blogs. One of the places I enjoyed coming across (jumping from one blog to another) was another brand new island - Pan's Island - started the very same day as mine. What's the odds of that, I wonder?

So when on that blog I found a challenge to be interviewed, I accepted, and here is the result. Question's by Pan's Island, answers by me:


1) If you could take a one night trip to the island of dreams and nightmares in C.S. Lewis's Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and be guaranteed that you would only be there for one night - would you go and why? if not, why?
For just one night at a time, we all go there, every night - don't we?!

During one period of my life, I actually grew quite friendly with my dreams, nightmares included. The trick is bringing them out from under the bed at dawn before they disappear, and then getting them to repeat the message in broad daylight.

Write down what you remember, save the notes, and go back and compare them when you've gathered a few. If you have a literary mind, use the same kind of analysis as you do with poetry, and you will probably be amazed at your own mind's skills in coming up with images and parallells and wordgames.

Dream interpretation does involve quite a lot of active work, though, so often it seems easier when you wake up to just let the dreams slither away…


2) What is your favourite childhood memory?Some people seem to have their childhood all sorted out in a series of stories. For me it's more like scattered snapshot images and I think they often involve something that seemed a bit unusual or new to me at the time. Quite a few early images are connected with visits to other people's houses.

The surroundings where my maternal grandparents lived changed dramatically while I was growing up. When I was little, their house was one of just two in an otherwise rural surrounding, with a view overlooking fields with cows and haystacks. As I grew older, the town kept coming closer and closer - blocks of flats towering up in the late 60's and early 70's, shopping centres and villas added, until the house my grandfather built back in the 30's was just one among many other houses in a suburban street.

Other people own that house now since many years back. But whenever I am in that neighbourhood, a series of memory snapshots from the late 50's or very early 60's pop up in my head. Me walking with my grandfather over the fields on a sunny summer day, with an old-fashioned metal milk can, to fetch milk directly from a farm in the neighbourhood - "straight from the cows". (This was unusual to me, because in town, the milk in those days came in brown glass bottles with soft metal caps on top.) Opening wooden gates and shutting them. Stopping to pick wild strawberries. On the farm, two huge carthorses inside the stable (I see them from behind, standing in their boxes, towering up high above me - it's dark inside the stable with just some light coming in through the open door). My grandmother (who died when I was six) in their big kitchen, skimming the cream off the milk in a bowl on the workbench by the window overlooking the front garden. Tasting the luke warm milk - I didn't much like it. Grandma making small pancakes in a special iron on the stove - no one else I knew made those. (My parents are not in the picture, I guess they had gone on a short summer holiday on their own and left me with Grandma and Grandpa.)



3) If you found the one ring would you take up the quest yourself or wait to find someone better suited and aid them? And why?
I'm not sure it is always just a matter of choice. Often it seems (in the stories) that it is the ring that finds the bearer, as much as the other way round. Another point of a heroic tale is usually that the true hero does not think of himself as one, at least not from the start. Even Moses reacted with a "Who? You can't seriously mean me!" attitude when God spoke to him out of the burning bush. ("Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh? Who shall I say sent me? I've never been a man of words! Please send someone else!") King Arthur, Frodo, Harry Potter - the sword, the ring, the wand... The essence of the story is the same: They were chosen; in a way you could question whether they even had a choice; and yet their personal choice was of utmost importance…

Myself I'm not the kind of person who goes around looking for rings of power and I don't see myself as a hero(ine). Judging from the stories, that seems to be a very dangerous position! I think I'll just go into my wardrobe and hide - oh, wait - perhaps that's not the safest place either...


4) If you found a portal into another world what would you do? Would you take the risk and go through by yourself? Would you ask someone to go through with you? Would you tell the world or keep it a secret?
I actually didn't have to think very long about this one because it hit me that I'd already "been there, done that"…! I went through by myself, and told people afterwards, and my experience was much like Lucy's after coming back out of the wardrobe: Those who hadn't seen the other world for themselves were very reluctant to believe! I was 16, and my "portal" a simple prayer, no other people present at the time. Neither was I thinking of Narnia back then, because I never read those books until years later. Still, a door was opened to new thoughts, new adventures and new friends.

With Celtic-inspired fantasy now in mind, I'd still say that the thing about otherworldly portals is that if you happen to find one, you can never be quite sure how long it will remain open, or if anyone else will be able to see it. So if you hesitate and go ask someone else first, you might miss the opportunity.


5) If you had a choice between being alone for all of time or never being alone for all of time, which would you choose and why?
Even God started talking to himself after a while and decided he wanted company! ("Let us make man in our image, in our likeness..." Genesis 1:26)

I can often spend quite a lot of time by myself without getting too bored, but total independence of the rest of humanity is always an illusion. Even Defoe's Robinson Crusoe on his island only survived because of things made by other people that he salvaged from the wreck. Books, pens and ink among them…! ;-)

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Thanks to Pan's Island for the questions, I quite enjoyed answering them!

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If anyone who reads this would like to be interviewed by me in turn, let me know in a comment where to send the questions.