Arctangential

I was awakened from a dream at 1:30 this afternoon by the dulcet tones of my cell phone attempting to play Tool’s Sober, so I don’t really remember much of it. I know it ended with my father arriving at my place very late, like 3am. He said something like, “I’m here.” And I said something like, “I didn’t know when you were going to get here.” Then he said, “You can ask me now.” And I did. And he said, “About now.” It wasn’t really a joke or anything, more like an explanation. Then he went out to his car to get his bags. It was at this point that my phone rang.

I used my workbench last night, to glue some pieces of wood together. It’s not entirely perfect, as I don’t have anything to sit on while I’m working at it. That will have to be my next purchase.

Either that or some pie.

People always say that you can’t read in dreams. I forget exactly what the rationalization of this is, usually something about how the left brain isn’t involved in dreaming, and the right brain can only interpret the written language as shape, but not as meaning. Well, for me at least, it’s not the case.

I clearly remember the dream I just had — we were all on a big spaceship, on our way to fight some evil aliens. Someone had discovered that I you got a certain tattoo on your forehead, then the aliens would be fooled into thinking you were one of them. Henry Rollins, who was along with us, I guess, discovered that one could translate this tattoo, which looked kind of like a stylized flower, by treating it as if it were an example of ancient Chinese dot-code: apparently this was a simplistic written language used by farmers in China before the advent of the more complicated written form of their language. When translated, it formed a typically abstruse Chinese poem.

And I read it! I remember very clearly reading this poem, from the piece of paper Mr. Rollins wrote it on. I even remember pointing out to him that there seeed to be an extra “the” at one point in his translation, and his taking it out on my suggestion. So clearly, I can read in my dreams. I’m not sure why some people think that we can’t, or maybe I’m just special (although that seems unlikely).

I’d also like to refute the claim that we dream in black & write — Daffy Duck was a very vivid shade of green in my dream — at least until the aliens turned him back into the cartoon dog.

I think I will start using this as a dream journal, as nothing interesting ever happens in my for-real life.

First, as some background… I had to get up at 5:30 this morning for work, so in order to accomplish that, I took some NyQuil around 8:30 last night. Fell asleep around 9-ish, as expected. I woke up around midnight, which is very odd — I usually sleep at least 8 hours from NyQuil, but I guess I just wasn’t that tired. Hoping that I could get some more rest, I lay back down and tried to fall asleep again.

A bit later, I woke up, still rather bleary. Look up; it’s 4am. Ok, still kind of early, but not too bad, and this way I’ll have time to work out a little before I leave for el jobbo. I stumble out of bed, wander blearily to the kitchen to get some OJ, but when I flick the light switch, nothing happens. The light bulb must be burned out, I guess… didn’t I just change the kitchen light bulb last week? Maybe my power’s out… No, the exhaust fan is working fine.

Lurch into the living room, try the light in there; also a no-go. But again, I have power, as a little green light on my wall is going on and off as I flick the light switch. Two light bulbs burned out overnight? I start to get worried, and then I remember that I don’t have a little green light on that wall; and I don’t have an exhaust fan in my kitchen!

I realize that I must be dreaming, and so immediately wake up, and find the time to be around 1am — guess I am not getting to sleep that much tonight. It’s 9 now, and I’m knackered.

Yay me.