Mental static ...

[Priestess]

More odd dreams ...

I was in a city, which city I don't know. Most of the sidewalks were enclosed with dark tinted glass, between sections of sidewalk there were short breaks where I could see that the sky seemed much too bright. In a place that looked designed to be an open plaza, there was what would have been an outdoors marketplace, except that most of it was shaded by greenish-black tarps. Across the plaza I could see a couple of very tall skyscrapers in the distance.

In that market place, I stopped for a few minutes to look at a radio. It looked very modern to me but was in the kind of condition that an antique would be in. The brand said "Grundig-Sirius", and it was priced at 5 of something. The money symbol looked unfamiliar to me. Someone had left a piece of masking tape on it with the words "old" and then a scribble. On the sidewalk by the far side of the plaza, I could see a sign for an atm, so I made my way there. But it was just an empty abandoned storefront.

There were strangers all around me, people going about their daily lives. And I decided to make my way back to the place where the dream had started. Along the way, someone approached me who seemed to know me. They were somewhat ambiguous, either a metrosexual guy or a fairly butch woman. They said "you need to be sent back to your own place and time", and we walked together a short while before s/he showed me a pencil sketched picture of myself. And that's all I remember before waking up.

Apparently I overslept by quite a lot, and the phone had been ringing and my mother had been trying to wake me up, but I'd been out cold through all of that.

[Priestess]

Last night's mental static started out as a programming dream, with me looking through a printout of some vaguely C-ish code. Someone who seemed to resemble a character from Csi approached me and started lecturing me on how bad my program was, demonstrating on a touch-screen how it completely missed and/or misprocessed blocks of my data. I didn't know quite what to say, considering that I had no recollection of writing it :rolleye13 I stepped back from them, and was about to wander away when I noticed a projection screen on the wall, which in true Csi fashion was mirroring what was on the touch screen. And seeing the larger picture, I recognized that the data blocks looked just like the way the sequencing in DNA strands is represented on transparent films. Strange (cue the Outer Limits announcer ...)

[Andre]

By any chance, did you have the TV on while you were sleeping ?

[Priestess]

Actually, I'm seldom ever able to fall asleep with the television running. I suppose the obvious Csi-related content could be delayed effect, though in the past I've had dreams of non-descript lab techs writing down dna results the old-fashioned way. Ignoring the details, the generalized theme probably has some internal significance. My subconcious is odd, maybe. I've had memories of pre- surgery in baltimore times bubble up, unlikely experiences I wasn't able to fit into my personal timeline.

[Andre]

Do you read into your dreams or just lay it out there ?

There are many theories about dreams, some advocate that the dreams are ourselves giving an answer to life long questions, some say that an external force is controlling our dreams and others say that it is a bunch of images that the brain is yet to figure out.

What do you think ?

[Priestess]

Do you read into your dreams or just lay it out there ?

There are many theories about dreams, some advocate that the dreams are ourselves giving an answer to life long questions, some say that an external force is controlling our dreams and others say that it is a bunch of images that the brain is yet to figure out.

What do you think ?

I try not to read into dreams, because very often the experience without the key to understanding it, is completely different from how I might interpet it. I had one dream that a psychologist told me was just meaningless mental images, but it turned out to be a literal recording of a very old experience.

Sometimes I think that certain dreams are the result of my pre-surgical unconcious awareness trying to awaken itself, and that dreams like dna lab techs are it thinking to itself.

[Andre]

Interesting.

So in laying out your dreams here, what do you hope to accomplish, may I ask ?

Please don't read more into the question as it is posed as such. (again, a disclaimer).

[Andre]

You will notice that I tread lightly on subjects, seems that folks who lay it all out are sensitive to remarks or questions that can be easily be turned into something else. That is definately not my intention.

[Priestess]

Interesting.

So in laying out your dreams here, what do you hope to accomplish, may I ask ?

Please don't read more into the question as it is posed as such. (again, a disclaimer).

Trying to avoid a completely silent forum. Mostly I resorted to posting dreams when no one else was posting much of anything. It's better than posting parts of the thrilling adventure novel I'd once been trying to write, which happened to have one IS character who was supposed to be a composite of everyone's concerns. Though unlike Middlesex, the story didn't revolve around IS.

[Andre]

Oh, I see.

Alrighty then, with every new person comes new ideas. I will do my best to scrounge up some new topics to discuss but not just to keep anything active, for learning as well. I don't do anything for nothing, it's got to have a purpose.

:gulp: Sorry, I just like this smiley. I must say, y'all have interesting smilies here.

[Priestess]

Well, I did restart a thread with the question you'd asked about intersex and gender. And then there's the other discussions you wanted to have. Of course, you could reply to some of the preexisting threads :2in1: The greener grass thread was fun for a while.

[Andre]

Well, I am somewhat turned off that some threads have an expiry date. I am not quite sure where to go from there, open another with the same topic and refer to that one or just go on as there never was a topic to that discussion.

Could you please clarify.

And I certainly do not want to dominate dicussions, other opinions to the subjects are very important.

[Priestess]

Well, I am somewhat turned off that some threads have an expiry date. I am not quite sure where to go from there, open another with the same topic and refer to that one or just go on as there never was a topic to that discussion.

Could you please clarify.

And I certainly do not want to dominate dicussions, other opinions to the subjects are very important.

That is a bit off putting about the expirations, isn't it. I suppose if you started a new one and then both started it with your own new contribution to the subject as well as mentioning the previous thread, that might do the trick.

Aww, everyone gets to dominate once in a while. If the other members get enthusiastic enough about the subject, they might even take the lead :roll:

[Priestess]

In the end, I think our subconcious minds can be much wiser than our conciousness, and dreams can sometimes have a power that we underestimate.

Last night, my subconcious showed me a what-if of my life. What if the events of my infant journey to baltimore had gone differently. It's amazing what our inner minds can do, spinning memories of sorrows and joys of a life extrapolated from a question.

I suppose it was triggered. I was watching a SF/horror movie last night, which went on-site for some scenes from a particular university. Which I recognized from young memories. Though no one's ever left any notes saying that I'd been taken to Yale.

But the gist of the dream was that with baltimore having a different outcome, my mother could no longer stand having me as a child, and my parents were prepared to give me up for adoption if need be, though I ended up being raised by my father's uncle's family in Virginia. And never welcome to come home. Adding sadness and a complex on top of trauma.
Though oddly, the child shrink I ended up going to was the same one they had me seeing in Massachusetts in the real world. So maybe my dreams aren't all that clever.

Strange how the subconcious can create so much from the one time I ever visited them in Annandale in the real world, which was shortly after baltimore.

But somehow dreams have their power over us. When I mentioned to my mother a very watered-down description, stripped of details which I know make her feel guilty, still the way she looked ... I guess we can all be haunted by might have beens.