I am a nonsense lit crit generator
May. 31st, 2006 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I think in words, you know. I mean actual words, each neatly typed out. Whenever I hear a new word, I have to know how it is spelled; otherwise I cannot call it up again. I confuse titles when they look visually similar, such as Requiem for a Dream and Remains of the Day. Or Return of the Dead.
My dreams are as confused a jumble of images and actions as anyone else's, but once in a while they are also reading material. I distinctly remember a dream I had back in high school: I was trapped inside a building, and the building collapsed in a cloud of dust and noise. My view zoomed out as the building fell. Somewhere above and to the right of the debris, in neatly typewritten text, the narration concluded: "…and then she died."
Dead and therefore purposeless, I floated above the dream-landscape in vague puzzlement until my alarm clock beeped me awake.
Anyway. I bring this up because I dreamt book reviews today.
See, I take the Book World section of the Washington Post to work every Monday and read it over lunch. (It's a fun change from the other stuff I have to read all day.) I only read for as long as it takes me to eat, which is why one issue can last me all week. I then nap for the remainder of the lunch hour, partly because I perpetually get too little sleep and partly because my stomach is full and comfortable. This afternoon my brain apparently hadn't had enough Book World; I dreamt in book reviews, text scrolling across the surface of my mind. Nameless critics praised the flowing prose of equally nameless authors, calling out several illustrative sentences. Characters and plot points were dissected, the accuracy of historical details debated. When I woke, I was unsure of whether or not I had slept at all.
It's not real, though. The dream-reviews of the dream-books are nothing more than nonsense text, in this case strung together in the language of book critics. Sometimes while dreaming I've tried to concentrate harder on what I'm reading, on the actual words, trying to commit them to memory; upon close inspection, the words never make any sense.
Still. It's an odd feeling, waking with fading ghosts of words in my head. I know that they're meaningless, but I still want to keep them.
My dreams are as confused a jumble of images and actions as anyone else's, but once in a while they are also reading material. I distinctly remember a dream I had back in high school: I was trapped inside a building, and the building collapsed in a cloud of dust and noise. My view zoomed out as the building fell. Somewhere above and to the right of the debris, in neatly typewritten text, the narration concluded: "…and then she died."
Dead and therefore purposeless, I floated above the dream-landscape in vague puzzlement until my alarm clock beeped me awake.
Anyway. I bring this up because I dreamt book reviews today.
See, I take the Book World section of the Washington Post to work every Monday and read it over lunch. (It's a fun change from the other stuff I have to read all day.) I only read for as long as it takes me to eat, which is why one issue can last me all week. I then nap for the remainder of the lunch hour, partly because I perpetually get too little sleep and partly because my stomach is full and comfortable. This afternoon my brain apparently hadn't had enough Book World; I dreamt in book reviews, text scrolling across the surface of my mind. Nameless critics praised the flowing prose of equally nameless authors, calling out several illustrative sentences. Characters and plot points were dissected, the accuracy of historical details debated. When I woke, I was unsure of whether or not I had slept at all.
It's not real, though. The dream-reviews of the dream-books are nothing more than nonsense text, in this case strung together in the language of book critics. Sometimes while dreaming I've tried to concentrate harder on what I'm reading, on the actual words, trying to commit them to memory; upon close inspection, the words never make any sense.
Still. It's an odd feeling, waking with fading ghosts of words in my head. I know that they're meaningless, but I still want to keep them.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 11:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-01 11:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-06 01:41 am (UTC)Various comments
Date: 2006-06-01 09:30 pm (UTC)2) You can sleep at work? Where? And are there any job openings?
3) I read a study once in a psuedo-scientific magazine (Discover? I'm not sure which one) where they studied people reading, and then studied people sleeping. The part of the brain that lights up on their instruments when you read never light up when you sleep. This means that you can't read in a dream, or that the part of your brain that lights up when you read is connected to your eyeballs/sensory input, which you would never use during a dream. I'm not sure its important either way, unless you're trapped in a dream world for some long period of time and you're pissed that you can't get a real job within your dream world.
4) I felt as you did for a long time - the desire to hold onto your unconscious thoughts is very powerful. So I started keeping a dream journal, which I wrote in every morning (or in the middle of the night) as soon as I woke up for any reason. I ended up writing down a lot of freaky stuff, interspersed by various sexual fantasies. After a couple of weeks, I realized that your mind thinks about that sorta stuff while you're asleep for a reason. Let it go Indiana. Just let it go.
-DC
Re: Various comments
Date: 2006-06-26 01:53 am (UTC)I think it's awesome to know how other people think, and to figure out how similar or different it is to one's own. Thinking is such an automatic process - like breathing - that it's neat to pay attention to it.
2) You can sleep at work? Where? And are there any job openings?
In my cubicle, natch. :) I generally sleep during lunch, though sometimes when I'm really tired, I just put my head back and close my eyes... they don't have any requirements as to when you show up or how long you stay, so long as you get your work done on time.
The part of the brain that lights up on their instruments when you read never light up when you sleep.
But what part lights up when you think you're reading?
I don't read in all of my dreams... you'd have to catch me in the ones that I am reading in, and that would be difficult... I still think I read in some of my dreams. Just not all of them.
4) I felt as you did for a long time - the desire to hold onto your unconscious thoughts is very powerful. So I started keeping a dream journal...
I did too, for a while. It was pretty neat. The ones that didn't involve anyone I actually knew in real life were a whole heck of a lot more interesting -- goldfish adopting shark babies, political figures, that sort of thing. The ones that did involve people I knew were a little too Freudian for me.
struggles
Date: 2006-06-02 01:41 pm (UTC)rebecca
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