silent partner

When we started this blog, I was one of the people that said I hardly remember my dreams. Then, through taking the class, and trying to remember them I did manage to gather quite a few for the blogs. Something strange has happened since school and this class has finished. Now I am remembering much more of my dreams and also they are getting more detailed and disturbing... meanwhile I have no school, life is good, summer is here etc..... It seems the brain has now been trained to remember and perhaps with no studying, the imagination is getting busier...? What do others think? Have your dreams changed over the summer ?

Here is one. The thunder and lightning woke me around 6.30 am this morning. Around 7 am I fell back asleep and had this one....

Continue reading "Summer Dreams?" »

Fred Tomaselli : Dermal Delivery or How I Quit Smoking

Doing the blogs in this type of class worked really well. One's own dreams are often strange, personal, funny etc. and I think this forum is perfect for "exposing" them for a number of reasons. 1) The anonymity (which lasted for some of the time) was really helpful to get us writing honestly. 2) I think it worked better to have each other comment and review our dreams and writing instead of just handing them in (as in regular classes) which I think would have prompted the more standard question of "am I doing this right?" . Viewing everyone's blogs showed me clearly that there was no 'one way' to write about dreams and the main thing was to make a good effort. 3) Working with integrating visuals on the blog and the website was great - a new experience in an english class. (Looks like Tomaselli got some new fans) 4) Writing about dreams at all was a new experience and learning about how authors use dreams and create a dreamlike atmosphere in their writing made me more interested in how writers do what they do. I hope I can use some of it in my own writing in the future.

Apart from that I just want to say that this was the most stimulating class I've been in at QC - due to all the class discussion and hearing others ideas - it really was the type of environment where you were encouraged and wanted to participate. Many thanks to Professor Tougaw!!
And to all my classmates - it's been great. Hope to see y' all on the 30th for the celebrations!

I dreamt we were all in a classroom at desks and Prof. Tougaw was at the top of the classroom standing at the blackboard teaching. We seemed to be working on our web projects and talking about the conference, so sometimes I was looking at a computer screen on my desk and other times that was gone and there were papers in front of me. I was complaining to someone near me about what we were supposed to do. The person is vague now but it seemed the class was a mixture of you guys and girls that were in my high school class. Prof. Tougaw made an announcement that two extra people may be called upon at the conference to present their papers during the actual event. I was protesting loudly that it wasn't fair and he said lets try it now and I was up. At first I was still giving out but then I calmed down when I figured out I could do the piece I had already written and fudge in some extra bits, which I said and Prof Tougaw said that was fine. I was up the top of the class also at this stage and there were a group of people in the middle of the classroom all talking amoung themselves. I said "they are deciding to change the class to Sundays" and Prof. Tougaw just laughed. A female professor in her thirties, serious looking (no-one I know) came into the class room and brushed past myself and Prof. at the top of the glass so that we got pushed forward and she stood at the podium in the corner of the classroom and didn't say anything. We all seemed to take it as normal enough and that it was time to leave so everyone started leaving the classroom to go somewhere else. I was back at my desk with the computer on it and I was trying to finish something, so then I was the last one out.

Continue reading "From Classroom to Outhouse" »

I have to say I love looking at them! The colors, the presentation, seeing the differences between them, even down to the 'about me' pages. It's strange but surprising to see my own writing 'visually'. I want to read all the rest of them now, but it will most likely be when the semester is over.

I dreamt about helping one of the secretaries in work with her printer (which happened in real life a few days before) but then it shifted and her work area was in the middle of the warehouse, with people going through the garments and choosing samples. Also at one point the bosses families arrived and there was a new level of politeness when they were around. Myself and the secretary were alone again, talking about marriage (and she is going to be married soon) but again there was a shift from reality because she was complaining about the marriage and the boyfriend, which I really don't hear her doing in reality. I remember during the dream I was questioning what was happening, but never to the level of knowing that it was a dream.

Check out this link on IASD website to Dream Videophile which lists many movies that have dream content : http://www.asdreams.org/videofil.htm

One of my favorites on the list is Donnie Darko (image above). It stars a young Jake Gyllenhall and has become something of a cult movie.The suspense builds. The music is great. I love it's portrayal of teenage life and angst by showing Donnie's daily 'normal' life, which is in contrast with his inner life and the disturbing dreams he can't figure out. Don't want to give too much away by saying more, but I do recommend it... even if, like me, you are long past being a teenager :)

At times it has driven me crazy - because it can take a lot of time and messing around in the beginning to change colors or figure out why images don't sit right. However, I have to say it's nice to 'see' all our work up there. I am tempted all the time to just read other peoples sites (similar to the blogs) when I should be working on my own one. What I am still finding hard is actually re-reading what I have written when it is in this format. When I do a paper, I do print and re-read after major changes etc. so see how it sounds, check for mistakes etc. I think, with the nature of the web, I only want to skim my content all the time instead of really reading every line carefully. Am thinking the Prof. knows this can happen and that's why we did last class about good sentences! So I reckon when it's finally all up there and it "looks the part", I'll still have to print it all off to really read it properly just to make sure it does make sense too...

I am actually having more dreams lately but not being awake enough when I come out of them to write them down immediately. And if I don't... poof.... completely gone out of my head. This would support the argument that the content of most dreams are nonsense and we really don't need to remember them to function in the world. Perhaps our computer brains are smart enough to know which ones are meaningless and they go into the recycle bin but the ones we remember naturally ARE the ones that make some sense, and should be looked at and analyzed. I really don't know. I honestly think some people have better memories than others and I would be interested in learning how to improve mine...!... and that may mean I'd automatically remember more dreams. Sometimes the techniques we talked about in the beginning on the course worked for me - like setting my mind just before sleep to remember dreams - so it's probably time to try again - just to record a few more before the blogs close.

A member of government from my country is going to give an important speech. At first I am watching people following him on TV but then I am closer to the action and am observing the situation at a closer range- he is going up stairs with a group of reporters following him. The room he goes into is very modern, an almost triangular shaped room with one part of the room "higher" than the other, and it all sits at the top of the curving staircase. Everything is a light colored wood and there is a podium for him to speak from, about peace and political agreements being made in the country. A female american ambassador asks him some questions. I could be back to watching this on TV because in the dream I am explaining to someone else that "this all looks small , but it isn't as small as it looks".

Continue reading "News and celebs - mixed up in this dream" »

Following on from my previous entry, here is another of my mother's dreams, but she had it when she was a young girl and she said it was re-occuring and she still remembers it well.
There is a knock on the front door of the house she grew up in. She goes out to answer it and "something" brushes past her and it goes "thump thump" around the house. The sound seems to be what really gets to her in the dream as the sound of the "thump" gets louder and louder. It seems like she knows she is dreaming because she "wants to wake up, but can't".
This seems to be a lucid nightmare, where she knows she is dreaming but cannot wake up or change the events. She gets more and more scared in the dream until eventually she does wake up, in a sweat.