Milquetoast

I've been trying very hard to remember my dreams, without much luck. I have the journal/pen next to my bed, I reread past dreams before I go to bed, and I ask myself every night to please remember my dreams. These are the basic steps for any dream recall theory, and yet I am met with no dreams that I can remember.
The other day I got so close...When I woke up I didn't move, kept my eyes closed, and tried to bring back anything that entered my mind in the previous 7 hours. I had it, slowly pieces of dreams started to seep back into my mind...and BAM, the front door slams. Suddenly I realized that my boyfriend left for work without saying good bye (he left a note), so I ran to the window and yelled for him to come back inside. About a half hour later I remembered what I was doing when I heard him leaving, and as hard as I sat trying to remember all I could retain was the feeling of having remembered something...

I have had quite a past with JANE EYRE...We were first introduced in 10th grade English, but the teacher found that the book would be too long for the class to read, so she assigned groups to sections of the book. I didn't read a word of the novel, but for some reason the teacher was impressed with my test on the book so she gave me WIDE SARGASSO SEA to read over the summer...didn't look at that one either. A couple of years ago a friend gave me a copy of Jane Eyre for my birthday...I got about 50 pages through. Then last summer I made it a goal of mine to finally get through this book that literary students and femenists are always praising, and I gave up because I was bored. Then it was assigned...I brought it on a month long roadtrip and somehow between New York and California I managed to put an end to my 6 year battle with Jane Eyre.

Two nights in a row I had a dream of a family gathering at my parents house, with family from all over the US. I can only remember two scenes, one from each party, or night, but I do know that both of them took place in my Mom's backyard, which was way bigger than it actually is, but exactly the same in both dreams.
In the first dream my boyfriends family was also at the gathering. His four year old niece was smoking a cigarette with her parents and my stepfather walked outside and saw her and ripped it out of her hand.
The next night I got bored of the party so I left with my boyfriend to go get a beer at a bar next door to the house. My cousin who lives in California followed us and as the drinks are getting placed on the table she pulled up a seat. In her hand was a purple copy of this book that has somehow shown up in my apartment...an overview of philosophical texts from Descartes to Nietzsche. Only hers is a schoolbook and has highlighter and black pen scribbled throughout. She tells me that I have to help her understand this passage, its short, covering 3 pages blocked off from the rest of the text with a thick black line.
I begin to read the said passage, but I can not focus on the words, they keep coming in and out of focus. I then decide that I will read it once, really quickly and then worry about reading it 'to get it.' However, I never get to the second reading because I can't get to the end of it for the first time. Frustration..

What do dogs dream about?? Is it just for memory storage, like babies? Or is it more for pleasure?
I have noticed that when my dog and I have an active day her dreams become very much animated when she drifts off to sleep at night. Since dogs sleep so damn much it has been rather easy for me to watch the sleep patterns of my dog, which resemble very much that of a human. Just as our bodies are more active during Short Wave Sleep so is the dog's. A little while later she enters REM where her eyes are visibly active, which looks pretty disgusting from my point of view, but her body is 'off,' you could actually roll her over without her knowing anything has changed.
It seems that during the SWS stage of sleeping it is easy to influence her dreams. I have been able to tell her to speak while she is asleep and gotten a muffled soft dream bark as a response. I have also put food in front of her nose while she is asleep and watched her sniff through her dream world looking for the source.
Although we will never know what dogs dream about it is easy to tell that their dream lives are as closely related to their waking lives as humans' dreams are. And it's just plain fun to watch how they run miles and miles in the wild while tucked away safely on the livingroom couch.

The artwork we saw in class by Fred Tomaselli struck me. His art is like perfections of the inclass doodlings of infintie patterns surrounding a central figure, which I often indugle in during boring lectures. His work is definitely drug related, which gives it it's dream-like quality. I would like to strongly consider using Tomaselli in my project, but I am apprehensive about using artwork because I have never done so.
I particularly like the piece that I posted above because it reminds me of a dream like concert. It seems like the human like figure is 'croud surfing' and when he is in the air he is so caught up in the moment that everything from within comes to the surface and explodes outwards.
I like learning where Tomaselli came from (Southern California) because it sheds light on his work. Tomaselli grew up in the middle of the takeover of the counterculture, during the 1960s. I'm sure this had some impact on his work, (although he was only a child) because his art can be seen as the embodiment of what Kesey and his Merry Pranksters could never put into words..."The Unspoken Thing" as they called it. It represents a kind of letting-go of conventional thinking, an indulgence in pictures created in our minds/dreams.

I often dream about flipping out on people, either yelling or violently throwing myself towards them.
Recently I parted ways with two friends that I had since high school. In waking life we never had an actual fight...but in my dreams I am constantly brought to a place, usually high school, where I am looking for them and eventually end up yelling and throwing somewhat of a fit.
I remember having similar dreams of fighting with my mother when I lived with her...dreams where I would just scream and scream until I woke up. I can actually go back as far as around age 5, when I used to have a recurring dream of finding my father in a scary dark bar with characters from horror films, and I would scream and cry and throw myself onto the floor, which was always covered in wood shavings.
Perhaps since I never open my mouth in my waking life, I am forced to let out my anger in my dream life...

In the past three months I have lost two cars...one flipped over, and the other...well, the other was just old. I just saw my car off to the junk yard today...and had this dream upon returning home..
My boyfriend and I are trying to get to my mom's house, like it is a car lot, to pick which car I am going to use to get to school. It is dark out and we are walking along Main St. close to my mother's house. He is on the phone with his parents trying to borrow some money to get a car. Suddenly I realize that the dog is missing, but I don't have enough time to panick because I can see a really long black leash and I know that she is on the other end of it. He is still on the phone with his Mom and I am pulling his arms telling him the dog is missing and we have to hurry up.
I look to my left and there is an old man walking with my dog, like he is trying to kidnap her---This is really really weird because just about 10 mintues ago at 711 I walked outside and this old drunk was undoing my dog's leash from the newspaper rack saying "Oh no, this is a beautiful dog someone left here," obviously I didn't relate it to the dream then, because I was more worried about getting my dog away from the drunk, but now it seems uncanny...I just had this dream 2 hours ago.
So back to the dream...I get the dog away from the old man and she just starts running. We are about a block away from my Mom's house and my walking feet turn to skates and I am letting the dog pull me towards the house. Which has now become my childhood neighborhood.
Behind me my boyfriend is ranting loudly about the conversation he had with his parents. I see that he is far away, but when I look to the dog and back to the boyfriend he is right next to me.
"So what'd they say?" I ask him.
"They said every car is $1500, and I mean thats just crap, where are they that every car is $1500...it's impossible...when we bought that car in the summer it wasn't $1500...but now it is? They're just lying to me...they said they saw it though...." and on and on and on.

Dali at age six
1950
Oil on canvas
Private collection

What we have looked into regarding lucid dreaming has intrigued me. I have never had an experience where I know I am dreaming, aside from Freud's censor- which I think just maintains a sense of safety in the unknown 'dream world.' However, a friend of mine, about ten years ago, used to tell me of fantastic journies she embarked upon during the hours she lay in bed...and she always had control over the situation and made conscious decisions...or so she said.
LaBerge sets up an analogy that says that dreaming is to lucid dreaming as waking life is to enlightenment. Hobson states that hallucinogenic drugs are like dreaming while one can still play an active role in the 'real world'..or dreaming while awake. I was wondering if perhaps lucid dreaming, having control over your dreams, could also be like hallucinations, (or life altering hallucinations like those of Ken Kesey or Aldous Huxley) where you still have some control of your environment, but you are able to transcend it and reach...I guess what some would call enlightenment, or better an 'understanding' different than you had previously. It is like the Tomaselli picture that I posted...taking everything from the inside and turning it out...facing it all, I guess what LaBerge calls overcoming the ego...but not in a dream, in reality. Alhough in one instance (lucid dreaming) one is gaining control, and in the other (hallucinating) one is giving up control...either way the mind is able to overcome its usual boundaries and indulge in an altered state where control isn't even an issue....
Or is this all just really confusing nothingness???