chelsea cookAfter a long morning and a very intense book sorting, organizing and shelving, which including sending boxes of books back to the warehouse and lifting several boxes too heavy for me, I was tired. So after lunch I lay back in my wonderful chair and proceeded to rest. The phone rand six times in a very short space of time and I could have contributed to charities I had never heard of, one I know they do not give the money to the “official” listing and I could get a $100 + refund from some India dude who could not understand me. Somehow I don’t think I would have ever gotten the $100+ as, now I am only guessing here, I think it may have been a scam.
Then, to my amazement, I went to sleep. But, I did not know I was asleep until the phone rang again. This time I was in the middle of a very real dream which seemed to connect me to another life. Nothing about it was familiar during the dreaming process and then, as the phone rang, the whole thing shattered. Not shattered as you see in the movies or cartoons, but a sudden dark place which grew instantly and dissolved the dream world/life as I became conscious of real life. This, as you can imagine, was a totally new experience for me.
Scientific American describes dreams thusly: “Almost by definition, a dream is something you are aware of at some level. It may be fragmentary, disconnected, and illogical, but if you aren’t aware of it during sleep then it isn’t a dream. Many people will protest, “I never remember my dreams!,” but that is a different matter entirely. Failing to remember a dream later on when you’re awake doesn’t mean you weren’t aware of it when it occurred. It just means the experience was never really carved into your memory, has decayed in storage, or isn’t accessible for easy call back.” Now, having said that, I would like to know how many of you remember your dreams or even ONE dream.
I won’t say this was a frightening experience, but it was disturbing in that I was about to do something important and the dad-gummed telephone interrupted. Before going to sleep I was thinking of a book I am attempting to write. The “hero” starts as a 14 year old boy and i have gotten him a good deal older than that. As near as I can figure, I had him back on the riverboat getting ready to hand something to someone important and the “heckydern” telephone rang so I could then yell at some scam artist from India. My theory is that you and I dream often but do not remember. The reason I remember the small bit is because I was between sleep and conscious. Your theory on this would be welcomed.
Now, I hope this tickles your intellectual palette, but this happened many years ago. Believe it or don’t but at one time I was young. In fact, this happened when I was very young and I wish it would happen again. This was before I had gotten into the formal study of music, actually, several years before. I woke up one night from a most unusual dream. In my sleep I had composed either an the overture to a symphony or a complete composition. I can remember going around for days trying to remember the piece without any success. Before anyone says it was something I had heard, it wasn’t. It was original and fresh. At that age I had not heard much classical music at all and, of course, had absolutely no knowledge of the organization of a symphony, tone poem or overture. As an aside, a couple of my music theory teachers may have thought I was in the same condition when I left their class. If it didn’t directly deal with band, then I couldn’t give it my full attention. Oh well, that part is over.
Again, The Scientific American: “There is little evidence that people actually learn during their dreams. ... but dreams themselves don’t appear to be a good forum for imprinting new information into the hippocampus (after all, we don’t even remember our dreams most of the time).” In my case, IF I could have learned while dreaming, I may have become a composer. The music piece I heard in my dream was long and complex. Now, where did it come from and where did it go? And what happened to the dream person? Did the telephone murder him as he is in the early 1800’s and the telephone wasn't invented yet.
Seriously, I would really like your thoughts on this type phenomena, please write to:  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.