The lifelong dream of recording dreams for replay may soon become reality predicts "How It's Made," a British monthly magazine devoted to explaining working details of the world we live in.
Apparently the nano technology/brain scanning techniques are now such that translating neural impulses from brain neurons and retina imaging to
recording and screen instrumentation is almost a fete accompli. (Nightmares anyone?)
Question: Are the dreams of gay persons significantly different than those of straights in that there are marked differences in respective brain hemispheres? Recording dreams would likely provide answers.
I once kept a dream journal. I recorded over 50 dreams over a six month period, which is pretty good considering that dreams are like exotic butterflies – occasionally darksome moths – unless netted quickly they flutter back into the twilight zone, vanishing forever in minutes.
(Everyone dreams – cats, dogs, parrots, even Sarah Palin – tea-bagging scenarios. Dreams occur usually every 90 minutes, and are evidenced by REMs, Rapid Eye Movements, and up-and-down fluttering behind the eyelids.)
The secret to keeping a dream journal is to tell yourself at bedtime that you will remember your dreams upon awakening, and to have pencil and paper at hand to jot down details while they are vivid and fresh. You may not get back to sleep, but you've got something to show for time spent as that once-popular comic book favorite, Little Nemo in Dreamland.
I reread my dream journal, neglected over the years. It was fascinating. Embarrassing. Shock theater. And, to be expected of an eccentric artist like myself, wacky. No wonder psychoanalysts find their couch such fun. (My appointment's next week. Pillow and nightshirt in hand.)
Here's a sample, dated July 19, 2001. Feel free to free associate. Your couch. Or mine. "I'm riding in a cab with two other passengers wearing wigs, none of whom speak English. We are in a foreign country at night. I get off at the stop light. The cab driver rolls down his window. "You left your beaded bag, Monsignor!" I wake up. No tip.
Modesty precludes further of my dream journal entries. (One including an erotic encounter with two movie stars, an acrobat, three outfielders, and a blind piano tuner.)
Although dreams can be crazy – the second half of the last entry – they keep us from going temporarily insane. If you go without sleep for more than 48 hours (say at a weekend circuit party) you can expect to experience hallucinations or psychosis, without taking drugs.
The world's record for going without zzzzs is 264 hours and 11 minutes, held by a straight but really bent DJ, who never fully recovered from nonstop lack of REMs.
Of all the sweet dreams I've had none compares to a Lucid Dream. It's a real mind trip, and for 60 seconds or so that it lasts it's life (and sometimes love) in the 4th Dimension. No question about it: the mind has a mind of its own. (Lucid Dreams, like dreaming in color, are said by psychologists to be indices of reasonably high intelligence. Smile.)
You can fly, touch your "solid" surroundings, ask questions of dream people (like being awake, you may not get intelligent answers), and have a sexual fling. I encountered one dream partner – no, not the piano tuner – who, when refusing to fling, was told he had no choice but to be flung. It was my dream. Get with it. He did. It was mind blowing, though we haven't spoke since.
It's a fact. More lesbians dream of U-Hauls than do gay men. More gay men dream of basket weaving. Neither dream of elephants in their bedroom. And, as Freud might have said, "Sometimes a cucumber is just a cucumber." Happy REMS!
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