Many are the tricks the mind can play when
you are in a dream condition and many are the tricks you can play if you have a
photo programme on your computer to mislead the reader. I was walking along the
street and there was a traffic jam, so I took a photo. In my garden a butterfly
rested on a flower so I pounced and clicked with the camera. There was a lonely
blue scooter parked on the pavement – a chance for a prize winning photo. I
decided to take an ant’s eye view of a corn field. The cauldron was ready, I
boiled up a few ideas (mixed with wing of bat and eye of toad) cooked it all
together on the computer in photoshop and a photo was born. Do not believe
everything you see. Sometimes dreams are made to confuse.
My dreams rarely confuse, as I usually forget them after I have dreamt them. Today is a typical example. There I was relaxing and enjoying a golden oldie sleep after lunch. My mind was in another hemisphere, it was drifting and there were pictures of people with names. I was probably in a REM state of mind according to the experts. My brain waves were reacting and I was living in another world. This was exciting; I met someone in my sleep. However it was a short meeting and he disappeared and my eyes opened: everything gone and just a Tabby cat sitting and wiping his wet nose on my hand. Tabby was not in my dream, she was real, and so was my wet hand.
This happens to me all the time. The dream arrives, I wonder what happens next and then something makes “pop” and it goes and I am left with a cat who decides to leave me for something more interesting.
There are, of course, the other sort of dreams, probably REM stage five, where it would be better when I did not dream. I am minding my own business, eyes closed and softly snoring. I snore? No, of course not, although others have another opinion. So I relax peacefully and there is a figure in my dream. I would like to say at this moment that Mr. Swiss is also sleeping, or perhaps watching a TV film in another room, so he is completely innocent of anything that happens further.
An arm wraps itself around my neck, I can feel it squeezing, I make a movement to escape. There is no escape from this arm; it is powered by an unknown force. Once again remember Mr. Swiss is in another room or in a deep sleep. No, wait a minute. Mr. Swiss is with me, shaking me and being concerned. He asks what is wrong? By now my moans of fright have developed into a crescendo similar scream and the worry is “what will the neighbours think” if they hear me, and they probably do. Remember in normal non-REM sleeping hours I have a loud voice. When I sleep there are no holds barred, the volume is not under control.
So by now I am screaming something incoherent like “let me go, let me go” and I awake. I had a bad dream, no problem. I am alive, the strangling arm has disappeared and I am being shaken by my rescuer. It is a shame that good old Sigmund Freud never had the chance to analyse my dreams. I am sure he would have become even more well-known and my dreams would have been famous throughout the world or he would have reached the limits of his psychological knowhow and probably taken another job, like blogger. I am sure he would have written interesting blogs, but now I am digressing.
“Look there is Mrs. Angloswiss, the lady who gets strangled in her dreams”.
“Who strangles her?”
“She will not say, an arm appears from nowhere.”
“Must be her man.”
And so Mr. Swiss hides from the public, being under suspicion of trying to strangle his wife in sleep but he is my rescuer, the person that returns me to the reality of life. If only Sigmund was still around, he would tell the people it is all in my imagination. Probably a memory from my childhood when I nearly choked on a spaghetti dinner, the spaghetti tangled with my tongue and it was stuck. I could not breathe. I was experiencing a stressful event from the past, this now being represented by the arm tightening around my neck. You see Mr. Swiss did not want to strangle me, it is just a matter of interpretation.
Just a normal night in the life of Mrs. Angloswiss.
My dreams rarely confuse, as I usually forget them after I have dreamt them. Today is a typical example. There I was relaxing and enjoying a golden oldie sleep after lunch. My mind was in another hemisphere, it was drifting and there were pictures of people with names. I was probably in a REM state of mind according to the experts. My brain waves were reacting and I was living in another world. This was exciting; I met someone in my sleep. However it was a short meeting and he disappeared and my eyes opened: everything gone and just a Tabby cat sitting and wiping his wet nose on my hand. Tabby was not in my dream, she was real, and so was my wet hand.
This happens to me all the time. The dream arrives, I wonder what happens next and then something makes “pop” and it goes and I am left with a cat who decides to leave me for something more interesting.
There are, of course, the other sort of dreams, probably REM stage five, where it would be better when I did not dream. I am minding my own business, eyes closed and softly snoring. I snore? No, of course not, although others have another opinion. So I relax peacefully and there is a figure in my dream. I would like to say at this moment that Mr. Swiss is also sleeping, or perhaps watching a TV film in another room, so he is completely innocent of anything that happens further.
An arm wraps itself around my neck, I can feel it squeezing, I make a movement to escape. There is no escape from this arm; it is powered by an unknown force. Once again remember Mr. Swiss is in another room or in a deep sleep. No, wait a minute. Mr. Swiss is with me, shaking me and being concerned. He asks what is wrong? By now my moans of fright have developed into a crescendo similar scream and the worry is “what will the neighbours think” if they hear me, and they probably do. Remember in normal non-REM sleeping hours I have a loud voice. When I sleep there are no holds barred, the volume is not under control.
So by now I am screaming something incoherent like “let me go, let me go” and I awake. I had a bad dream, no problem. I am alive, the strangling arm has disappeared and I am being shaken by my rescuer. It is a shame that good old Sigmund Freud never had the chance to analyse my dreams. I am sure he would have become even more well-known and my dreams would have been famous throughout the world or he would have reached the limits of his psychological knowhow and probably taken another job, like blogger. I am sure he would have written interesting blogs, but now I am digressing.
“Look there is Mrs. Angloswiss, the lady who gets strangled in her dreams”.
“Who strangles her?”
“She will not say, an arm appears from nowhere.”
“Must be her man.”
And so Mr. Swiss hides from the public, being under suspicion of trying to strangle his wife in sleep but he is my rescuer, the person that returns me to the reality of life. If only Sigmund was still around, he would tell the people it is all in my imagination. Probably a memory from my childhood when I nearly choked on a spaghetti dinner, the spaghetti tangled with my tongue and it was stuck. I could not breathe. I was experiencing a stressful event from the past, this now being represented by the arm tightening around my neck. You see Mr. Swiss did not want to strangle me, it is just a matter of interpretation.
Just a normal night in the life of Mrs. Angloswiss.
I rarely remember dreams these days, but when I was a child I had a recurring dream. I had this dream regularly, from as early as I can remember up to about 10 years old, after which it faded away. The dream was that I travelling along a long tunnel, each side lined with a large metallic rail, moving towards a blinding light in the distance. There was also a regular repetitive sound that accompanied it. I was discussing it with someone many years later, and they asked me an odd question. When I was born, was it a forceps birth? I didn't know, so I asked my mom, who said yes, it was. I relayed that info to the person I had been discussing it with, who said that the dream was most likely a 'birth memory dream'. The metallic rails being the forceps, the regular sound being my mother's heartbeat. I'm not sure if that's what it was, but it sounds plausible!!
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