The Tent in My Garage

Okay, so I've gotten comfortable and my blog has returned to long meandering rants about the state of the economy. Perhaps though this as Dr. House M.D. would say is just another data point.

I have had a few non-wet dream incidents living in my tent over the past week.

The first was I thought I lost my mind. I woke up and heard a voice in my head that wasn't my own. Thing is I still can't figure out what the fuck it was saying. But it seemed to mindlessly be repeating something in my head. I was alarmed to say the least that I was hearing a voice in my head.

My breathing sped up, I simply thought how much earlier schizophrenia was manifesting in my head than it did for my aunt whom I understand was around 30 before she had her first hallucinations.

So I told myself 'okay tohm you have schizophrenia, calm down and figure out what is real' it was then that I became conscious of how hard I was breathing and how high my heart rate was. Within a few minutes everything had calmed down and although I was jacked up on adrenalin everything was normal oh so normal.

It occurred to me the next day that I was sleeping on my back which was unusual for me and furthermore this incident took place exactly on the onset of my hay fever. The whole thing could have been my body panicking and waking up because I just plain old couldn't breathe.

The fact that I have had no such incident since backs up this theory. It also could have been though a 'panic attack'

The next incident was Sunday morning, where I was having a particularly vivid dreams. The thing about vivid dreams is that anything you feel in life can feel real in a dream with one particular exception which I'll get too later.

Anyway in this dream... or perhaps I should phrase it:

Dear Dream Journal,

This morning I had the most amazing dream. I was on some camp, I guess like RYLA or something, I don't really know no explanation was forthcoming. Anyway there were lots of young people there and lots of young ladies.
Anyway also for reasons I don't know I was the center of attention. Anyway I said some maybe witty things and got some laughs or something and then I was jogging back through the scrub to my cabin where I presumably had forgot something and I hear this voice with maybe a slight Latino accent "Say you'll be mine" and it repeats this a couple of times and then I say "Okay I'm yours" and then I'm tackled to the ground by this pretty attractive girl that in a cutie pie act is trying to extract all these promises from me "and say you'll take me out on dates, and you'll cook me meals, and I can live at your house..." and so forth and I was being charmingly cute by saying back to her "okay 'you'll take me out on dates' and 'you'll cook me meals' and 'I can live at your house'" you know taking her implicit instructions and turning them literal.
Anyway we were then interrupted by someone who ran off jealous and then we sort of skipped forward and I was cooking something and she was aksing me some questions and again being cute I was saying 'look all I really can offer you is criticism. It's just what I'm good at.' and then she asks me what I do.

And dream journal, I found myself flustered and trying to justify what I was doing with my life to this "dream girl" who wasn't nicki webster and I actually don't know how I felt about my description. I didn't really feel ashamed but I also didn't want to leave this girl so I just talked about the findings of the report I was working on and she seemed to buy it.
And then I woke up and I had forgotten about daylight savings and I groaned a bit and then had to get up and go for a run with friends as preparations for the half marathon this weekend.
I love you dream journal,

tohm.

So then you know that was a pretty nice dream because I wasn't conscious of the fact that my new 'girlfriend' didn't exist so I sort of got the emotional payload until I became conscious of my waking life were it was hastily taken away from me.

I don't begrudge dreams this quality because half the time I wake up from dreams where I'm paraplegic and am immensely relieved at the outcome.

Anyway nor do I expect to just live in dream fantasy world. You can't really force dreams to happen.

but the dream I had this morning was alltogether briefer and one thing I've found dreams never truly replicate is the sensation of running.

These come across as frustrating lurching dreams where my legs simply won't work. This I presume is because a person is paralyzed during REM.

Anyway, I was having a dream that I was out doing a warm-up jog for my impending half marathon and I came across a female runner on my course.

Now intellectually I know the world has plenty of female runners faster than me, but this girl just didn't look it. So I began trying to catch and bury her in my wake on the circuit we were running.

I was doing everything shaving corners, jumping over shrubs and bushes and anything else to catch her and she just stayed in front of me. I then tried the desperate tactic of talking to her and informally becoming a sort of 'running partner' at least until I had the opportunity to overtake her and run off into the sunset.

Anyway it never comes but eventually we come to a set of traffic lights and she looks tired.

Seeing my chance I bolt as soon as we get the green man. The path is open before me but my legs frustratingly don't work and that is where I think I became conscious that it was a dream.

But I went on like this self congratulatory spiel 'your legs are working, your lungs are working, everythings working. You are back! You are back tohm!' then I woke up feeling exhausted.

So weather it's spring fever, hay fever or just plain old performance anxiety, my waking life is half as interesting as my REM life. But one things for sure, my dreams are pretty vivid right now.