Subconscious Spelunking

February 11, 2018February 16, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky

inside our hearts

The first tendrils of the sunset crept across the sky. Orange fingers of clouds, set on fire by the dying sun, sunk lower in the oncoming gloom. Alli put her paddle in on one side and then on the other, kayaking down the slow river.

The water was clear in this part of the river, whereas, where she had started out was muddy. She had almost capsized then but had righted herself.

The river had started out a backwoods stream, tangled up in the mangrove forest, before widening out and cutting, like a scythe, through the landscape. Bushes on the banks gave way to trees. Houses dotted the shores.

Nothing escaped the sun’s rays, before it was enveloped in darkness. Water birds, restless, took off from their perches. Distant crows cawed, out of sight. Frogs burped and bellowed in the tall marsh grasses.

Alli paddled on, bright yellow kayak headed for the rushing mouth of the river, where the silt delta met the sea. The air was warm, and the occasional blue dragonfly darted by, zooming away into the humid night.

The dock materialized out of the stale air, and the mists of heat rising from the river. Alli got out and tied the boat to the dock, stowing the oar. The sun was well on its way down by now. The sky blazed a painful red and Alli knew it would rain tomorrow.

Inside the riverside cabin, Alli powered up the gas stove. Outside, the fiery blue mosquito light singed and zapped bugs in its cage. Alli put beans from the can on the burner in a tin cup and broke an egg on top of the beans. She ate the meal, and a slice of bread, with a pat of butter scraped across it.

When it was about to rain, Alli’s hamstring acted up. Nealy had sewn it back together a year ago, dabbing away the warm blood and calming down a hysterical Kaan. A year ago. Alli had worked her way back to full health then. But every time it rained, there was that old twinge.

The river carried old logs and tree branches by the house. The debris caught the posts of the dock and was diverted momentarily, tumbling and spinning in the water. Alli made some thin soup from a ham bone, before putting out the fire and going to sleep.

In the dream, ants flowed in between her toes. Alli chased after the boar in the wilderness. During the night, in the jungle, Alli cornered the red-eyed pig and speared it, the tear-shaped blade sinking into a roll of fat on the beast’s neck.

Yet, in its death throes, the spirit beast, of shadow and smoke, lunged and struck Alli, again on her hamstring, with its serrated tusk. The animal collapsed, crumbling into dust and ashes. Cicadas screamed in the underbrush. Cataracts vaulted into their basins. Every drop of moisture in the forest resonated. Alli’s skin grew cold and she sat down heavily on the ground.

Then, in that Hades, the goddess Artemis appeared, and held the wounded hunter. Light filled the woods. Wind battered the trees. Alli fainted and the gash healed, leaving no scar behind. Fountains of water gushed up from the earth, cleansing the blood away.

“Where were you, when I needed you the most?”

psychic thunder

Songs:

豊平区民TOYOHIRAKUMIN – 夕暮れsunset

Eagles – I Can’t Tell You Why

Wham! – Careless Whisper

Utada Hikaru – Simple and Clean

Sleeping and Memory

January 3, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky

the dream of life The brain doesn’t forget the reams of information it has stored for every moment of every day, for years; it simply removes it from your short-term memory. The storage of information is still there and can be drawn upon in dreams. Dreams are memory storage.

Dreams are a cobbling together of random real-life experiences you thought were forgotten but are still in your long-term memory. You never forget anything.

Most of a dream you don’t remember. You only remember the bits where the veil or mist in the dream clears and you can suddenly see the clear, vivid, often bizarre, details of the dream. The dream is just mashed up memories, or strange things distilled in a world upside down.

You can dream things you haven’t seen in real life. However, it seems that a change in the ordinary items from real life are what alert you that you’re not in the real world.

Even though most people don’t remember it when they wake up, the dream world has its own order. You have another memory keeping track of what happens to you in the dream world, like a memory card for a game console or video game system. We remember, in the real world, continuing dreams as re-occurring dreams in our real-world, overworld, memory, but it seems like dreams have their own internal memory. You have your own separate narrative in your dream world, with memories built up in that dream life.

The parallel dream world is generated by the electric firing of certain brain areas in our heads, like our perception of the real world.

There is much more to the dreams than one can remember. One can feel it. Your memory can tell you that you’ve experienced it, but you can’t recall it – simply because you didn’t have real-world awareness within the dream – so you can’t remember it in the real world, only in the dream world.

The trick to becoming a lucid dreamer is bringing a gradual wave of real-world awareness to the entire dream, like having it “on” beforehand, like a shining light on a hidden, shadow world or a wielding a camcorder and recording the entire dream, in detail, in your real-world memory, not just your dream world memory, so that you can bring this “footage” back to the real world, not just the snippets of dreams that people normally remember.