127. Time in dreams

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Space & time in dreams

I had an interesting dream this morning that might be related to a new Crash Course series I'm watching on Myth. Or at least my writing about the dream is related to that. 

They started, exactly where I would have started, with Creation Stories. They're not finished with the topic -- they've only covered some stories from the Fertile Crescent and the Americas, nothing so far from South Asia or the Far East. These stories tend to start with chaos or water or, in one case mud, and then a god shows up to convert the chaos into Earth. The Greek versions are a bit more metaphysical but in general these myths exist not so much to explain "existence" as the place where they lived. And this includes the Genesis story. Since this sense of "creation" is rather more limited than what I'm interested in, I guess we have to go easy on them for not explaining where the gods came from, or the seas or mud or chaos.

I was impressed that they ended the episode with The Big Bang story. In many ways this secular creation myth is very similar, and not any more satisfying from a metaphysical perspective, than the other stories. How that plasma suddenly came to be is as much of a mystery as what the Jewish god was doing before "Creation."

Anyway, my dream. I was listening to the radio news until the radio shut off less than 10 minutes after the hour (I have a new morning routine I'm still testing, with my radio coming on just in time for the better national news episode, and then shutting off, a bit after an hour, when I should get out of bed. Or that's the plan.) Less than ten minutes after that I woke up needing to pee -- my true morning alarm. So I know that the dream I had took less than 10 minutes in awake time. 

I was walking down the street shopping or window shopping, can't actually remember the details, but then ended up going into a cafe for a meal and sitting at a counter. I was sitting at the corner with a prissy little man to my right facing perpendicular to me. As I was finishing up my meal -- again I don't recall much of the meal itself -- a large man carrying a burger on a plate and a glass of beer sat to my left. As he was sitting down, a waiter came up behind him with another glass of beer and I thought that doesn't look promising, and was glad that I was about to leave. Oddly, the waiter leaned over me to give the beer to the guy on my right. I don't recall paying, but as I was about to leave I decided I should use the bathroom (I did need to pee) and walked to the back of the cafe just in time to see someone enter the only restroom. I stood awkwardly near a couple of busy tables waiting my turn. As I waited, the rear door would occasionally open for a minute and I could see out into the hotel -- the cafe was in a hotel, it seems -- and I had a perfect view up the hotel's grand staircase, which doesn't make much sense if you try to draw a floor-plan. I glimpsed a handsome and well-dressed woman, flanked by two exemplary children, approach and then ascend the stairs. I recall being impressed by her perfect form in quite high heels.

I then got access to the bathroom but don't recall actually using it (possibly a good thing) and then I walked through the cafe again and was about to exit through the front door onto the street when I realized I didn't have my backpack (I almost always carry one) and I couldn't recall if I had it when I came in or not. I walked over to the counter and the entire area had been cleared, but there was a black bag on the floor under the counter. I picked it up, but it clearly wasn't mine. I then noticed that it was only one of about four black bags, some quite large, all sitting where the prissy little man had been. I wondered if he could have walked away without them (they blended in very well) and I wondered if someone had noticed my backpack, so I stood where he had been sitting waiting for a waiter to come by. Instead the prissy little man, irate looking, came walking toward me -- but behind the counter? -- obviously thinking I was messing with his stuff. I ignored this and asked if anyone had noticed my backpack... no one had, so I left. And that's when I woke up.

In our dreams we create space and time. We then build a set for our stage and populate that set with a cast of characters playing elaborate roles. We create small or grand plays and we do it not in "real" time but outside time or possibly in the interstices of time. In any case it happens faster than anyone could describe it.

If we are indeed gods as we sleep, is it any wonder so many people can't help prolonging and augmenting that state with opiates and the like? (At least that's my understanding of what taking opiates is like, and also the reason I've been so determined to avoid them. Not out of strength but from acknowledged weakness.) 

Next - 128. Well, Everything Is Well