lhexa | Trance-dreaming

To say that I have an awkward relationship with sleep would be accurate, though inadequate. I rarely remember what I dream, perhaps because I sleep so deeply. By deeply I mean I can sleep, and have slept, through nearby ambulances and gunshots, falling out of the bed, or being rained on. It takes an alarm five minutes or so to rouse me. However, I will occasionally experience a different kind of sleep, which I call "trance-dreaming." As far as I can tell, I must be tired, and feeling happy or accomplished, for it to happen; in addition, I have to go to sleep in an unusual location, like a University bench, a hollow in some rocks, or a pile of blankets. This variety of sleep is lighter, and significantly more restful, than regular sleep. But the best part of it is the dreaming, which is very unusual, and far more self-aware than usual. A couple of examples:

While dozing off on a UTD bench, hearing and watching the trees swaying and whispering far overhead, I dreamed that I was in a room with a woman who I cared deeply about (I don't know who), who was sick in bed. I was a stringed instrument of some kind, leaning against the wall, playing music, varying it as her reactions changed. I don't know what type of instrument I was, but my sound was somewhere between that of a classical guitar and that of a banjo. Now, as cool as it was to dream myself into such a strange body, the fantastic part, and what woke me up pretty quickly, was that the chordal music I was playing was beautiful, and something I had never heard before; I adjusted it to the woman's reactions, in fact. Apparently in a trance-dreaming state I can produce good music, despite having no musical talent when awake. And of course, I can't for the life of me remember the music, now. Suddenly hearing an unknown melody is fairly common while trance-dreaming, actually, but never before has it been this long or this good.

Another recent trance-dream happened before a Thanksgiving meal at an uncle's house; I was sleeping on a couch in a side room, since it was hours before my normal waking time. In one of the trance-dreams, I recieved a new (and rather large) videogame console as a gift, but was dismayed when I thought that it would play only a small portion of the games out there, and perhaps only some of the worse ones. So I altered the gift into a Great Console, capable of playing any videogame ever made. This gave me a very strong, very chemical rush of happiness, rushing out from somewhere around the area of my heart. I sure noticed this, and for the next ten minutes or so started sifting through dream-images, finding that every half-dozen or so I would find another one that gave me the same chemical rush. It was very strange, but I certainly enjoyed it, until I drifted back into wakefulness.

Those are two recent examples, and it's only recently that I realized that there are actually two very different types of sleep that I experience. Next semester I'm going to have an eyehole or tie sewn into a good down pillow, and carry it around hooked to my backpack.

Trance-dreaming

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