Optimus2g

I've always dreamed of seeing the world one day. I'm close to someone who has been a friend of my family from when I was a little boy. He's been to over 50 countries in his lifetime. I've dreamed of seeing these places up close and personal ever since I was a kid. My dreams were nothing more than me walking up and down the streets of countries in Western & Eastern Europe, East Asia, and Latin America. I've always wanted to briefly visit historical sites, but mostly wanted to see how the common people lived from day to day, in these countries. While not vivid, these dreams certainly felt lucid, because I would consciously think about how I would go from place to place and would picture making stopovers in France and walking around the countryside and taking in the atmosphere of a people whose lifestyle wasn't as chaotic and restless as ours is here in the USA. I've often doen this when I needed a break from the "rush" that we experience here during the course of our everyday lives here in NYC.

One of the scenes that stood out to me from the first 151 pages of this novel by Kazuo Ishiguro was when the civic leaders at Brodsky's table pretended to display how grief stricken they were at the Memorial for Brodsky's dog, Bruno; to paraphrase a little (bottom of p. 139-top of p. 140): "...in their anxiety to set good examples, they adopted ludicrously exaggereated postures of grief. One of them, for instance, was clutching his forehead in both hands" I just could care less about how people like this could fawn at this drunkard's feet over the loss of his dog. The novel just seems to be a little "Twlight Zone-ish" to me, yet makes you want to read on to see what happens next, almost out of a sense of wanting to see where this discombobulated atmosphere that Ishiguro has created is ultimately leading up to. For this, I have to really give him credit. There is, it seems, "a method to his madness," so to speak. I don't quite see it yet, but it is certainly unique and I understand how a book such as this is part of the reading for a seminar on Dreams.

I got a lot out of my oral presentation last class. I think that this was the case because I went into it with the idea of seeking advice from Prof. Tougaw and the class. As a result of this I feel MUCH better due to the following: I've formulated a research question to develop my project on, which is, "Why does this experience of Sleep Paralysis occur and what is so compelling about it? The answer for this would be because it evokes a feeling of TERROR, that resonates within us.

I'll also discuss the hallucinations that often accompany sleep paralysis and discuss different accounts of sleep paralysis as they occur cross-cullturally. Examples of some of the different names that the experience of sleep paralysis is knows as include "The Old Hag syndrome," in Newfoundland (see the picture below); "Kanashibari" in Japan; "subida del muerto," (the dead climbing on top) in Mexico; "karasbasan," (dark presser) in Turkey; and "Hexendrucken," (witch pressing) in Germany.

"The Old Hag"

I plan on tying together the scientific explanation of this phenomenon with personal accounts & cross-cultural explanations of sleep paralysis that all evoke a shared, common thread that is evocative of a sense of terror and displacement from reality. By using examples from literature including chapter 4 of Moby-Dick, by H. Melville; & E. Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro", as literary starting points, I plan to link together the terror and "otherworldliness" of this experience to the human psyche using examples from art and literature (see artist Henry Fuseli's 1781 painting titled "The Nightmare" also below) in order to demonstrate its resonance within people from all over the world who have documented it within their respectie cultures.

This is a funny dream of mine that is based on actual events that occurred this past summer. I was playing a pick-up soccer game by Bayside High School with my brother and some friends of his, and in this dream I am recalling some of the funnier things that happened: After we finished playing the official pick-up game, a smaller group of us started playing another game, right before nightfall. This unofficial game consisted of people playing while smoking cigarettes though, reminiscent of that "Don't smoke" commercial with the chimp who tosses away a cig in his hand out of fear and disgust.

I couldn't help myself from laughing when this occurred in waking life and the same held true during my dream. The picture of 3 or 4 of these idiots playing while smoking didn't leave my mind---mind you now, I don't smoke, making this all the more funnier to me. I laughed while playing & watching them then as well as in my dream. I don't consider this to be an example of lucid dreaming but it was certainly based on recent events that remained embedded in my mind (Jungian classification?) out of the hilarity of the scene, which made me happy because I'm much happier when I can recall dreams that are funny and pleasant as opposed to dark and fearful (I usually experience more of the latter). I'm still laughing at the scene while I'm writing this. It's a shame I don't have a camera phone otherwise I could have posted this surrealisitc/ghetto scene!!

I'm just waking up now to write this, because recently I've had dreams that I could recall upon waking, only to have them escape my memory only a few moments later. I woke up several times this past night after having repeatedly been "shocked" by driving on the L.I.E., and crashing into the car that I'm trailing. This happened several times last night and I had a hard time distinguishing if it was real or not, because it certainly felt as if it was happening. I hope this isn't a premonition, since I'm on the L.I.E. for an extenisve period of time, 4 days a week. I felt a sense of helplessness as this was happening, almost like those "Final Destination" movies. I woke up multiple times last night, just as I was about to crash into the car ahead of me. I'm not sure what this dream stems from: I'm guessing that maybe it's the stress setting in from Finals week, which started for me yesterday. Whenver I'm preoccupied with stressful thoughts, my mind tends to "vent", and as a result, dreams like this occur. Could this be Jungian? Whatever the case may be, I did not have fun last night. This is the last thing I need to be experiencing before I get onto the L.I.E. again in a few short hours!

P.S. I felt like the screamer in Edvard Munch's "The Scream"

The point was made during our discussion in class tonight that absurdity and surrealism are quite normal in dreams. In this novel by Ishiguro, as was also discussed tonight, the condensation of the mundane and the fantastic are integrated into realism. We see examples of this throughout the novel. Ryder is too preoccupied with himself and his selfish need to have his parents watch him perform, rather than focusing on his wife and son. Boris is always entertaining himself, no matter what! Christoff is a "Has been,” Hoffman is a "Never was," & Brodsky is a "Never will be." Sophie can't find a new house. Yadda, Yadda, Yadda… I think you get the picture here why these characters aren't very endearing. Yet, this characteristic of endearment—or lack thereof, better put, was not the point of the novel. It is his "dream-like" hazy style which is the central focus.

We see the circular nature of dreams echoed in Ishiguro's writing style, just as we discussed tonight with the long 5 page paragraph, starting on page 429, which in essence echoes the formula of a dream, in that it is a single thought. Although not always coherent, Ishiguro established a meandering tone throughout the story. While its climax is not as fulfilling as the majority of people may want (I can understand why—there isn't any closure with the performance), we, in this Dream seminar class, can appreciate how he wrote this novel from a stylistic perspective that echoes the incoherent tone of dreams—that's a "Shout out" to you Mr. Gordon Harvey (inside joke there)!!