Recent moments:
-- Making the return trip home on the Metro from the city center two nights ago, the train blessedly less crammed with tired travelers/commuters than usual. Next to me stood a 30ish male, normal looking at first glance, neither unpleasant nor memorable. The kind of individual who would blend into a crowd easily. If, that is, he hadn't been so restless, so anxious, with something clearly eating at him. Fidgeting and biting his nails in a way that became hard to ignore (being right next to me and all). And that's how the entire trip went -- fidgeting and nail-biting. Except for the moments when fingers began probing nostrils in an open, not wildly attractive show of behavior one really should limit to (a) home or (b) the office of one's therapist. A person apparently so deeply submerged in whatever state of mind he had going that he was 100% unaware of the strange display he was putting on.
-- Waking up pre-dawn, as the sky began getting light, to the sound of birds producing music that could only come from joyful hearts. Dawn comes late here, given Spain's strange time-zone configuration, so the burst of song doesn't happen at an hour that could get cranky individuals feeling the impulse to open a window and toss footwear at the noisemakers. Instead, I can feel a sleepy smile take form on my face as happy music registers. Then I burrow deeper into the sheets and drift off.
-- And speaking of drifting off, the topic of the language spoken in one's dreams continues coming up in conversation, and after devoting far too much mental hooha to pondering my nighttime adventures it feels like it's been a long while since I've had dreams with dialogue -- talkies, if you will. Or at very least I have no memory of verbal communication in my dreams -- not for a years. Most of what returns with me to waking life in is more like impressions than real memories -- images, feelings. I have to stop, quiet down and think about it before I experience anything more. And it's all stories sans talking.
Until recent conversations got me to turn my attention to dream activity, I had no idea this might be the case. But there it is. My dreams: silent movies. At least looking at them from a superficial perspective (and I can be as superficial as the next person). I get the feeling that there's no lack of communication happening -- just like there's no lack of dream activity, no matter how little of it returns to waking life with me -- it's just happening in a different mode from the five-senses model. I think.
My question: if my dreams are dialogue free, what is up with the recent tendency to wake up with music streaming through my teeny brain? More often than not in recent days, coming to consciousness happens with a soundtrack -- not an extensive one. One tune, on a repeating loop. And as often as not, not a tune I would consciously choose to start the day off with.
Getting out of bed and stumbling off into the day's first activity mostly seems to flush it out of my system, so we're not talking about any kind of real inconvenience. Just a quirky, transitory minor mystery.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the barrio of Chueca, Madrid:
España, te amo.
rws 8:08 AM [+]
Comments:
Post a Comment