Writing-Induced Weird Nap-Dream

Awhile ago while I was struggling through the last 200 or so words of my last Essays.ph assignment, I decided to rest my eyes for 5 minutes. As a result of three more self-snoozing, I fell asleep.

I awoke in a dream. I knew I was in class but my classmates and I were sitting on a bed - my bed. It wasn't my room though. We were all chatting casually and I did not realize that our professor was in our midst until he let himself be known. Lo and behold, it was none other than Robert Pattinson in full Edward Cullen regala!

First off, I would like to emphasize the fact that I am not a fan of his. Well, okay, I did like him as Cedric. Just that. Okay, back to the dream.

So we were talking about something important and it turned out to be instructions for our

final project. It was a research paper. The topic, as Prof. Cullen articulated, was "Why Vampires are Awesome."

We were asked to research everything about vampires, from the iconic Dracula to the cult favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer. From there we were to choose figures that uphold the good vampire name and argue why they deserve to represent the whole, uh, species. We were also tasked to criticize ones that tarnish the image of these cunning creatures like the character of Leslie Nielsen in Dracula: Dead and Loving It. 

It was overall an extremely biased assignment, but we had to do it to graduate or something. After one last glittering glimpse of our disco-ball-turned-undead instructor, I woke up.

This is by far the weirdest dream I had in the midst of finishing an Essays.ph assignment. There was one involving Gerard Butler, a fishing boat, and clingy mollusks, but the details are too foggy to remember now. Writing for them really does squeeze out my creative juices, even while I am unconscious.

What Do They Mean?

When I was having dinner with my friends the other night, we got to talking about dreams and their interpretations. In ancient times, they believed that dreams are prophetic. I think that's still true these days, but only rarely. My psych prof provided us with a Freudian explanation: that dreams are manifestations of our subconscious. They are a form of issue resolution and/or wish fulfillment.

When my friends and I decided to hang out here at home after dinner, we clicked on a couple of dream interpretation sites to get some idea what the elements of our dreams mean. Some explanations are believable while others are quite medieval in nature that I can actually picture a Professor Trelawney-type figure saying them.

So how do I know what my dreams mean? If they're supposed to be prophetic or mere wish fulfillment? Can dreams actually influence my waking hours? My feelings during my waking hours?

Because I feel like one of them did, and if, maybe, probably, that lone dream has resulted in all these crappy feelings and subsequent confusion... and if that was one of my wish fulfillment dreams... ARGH. Then all this is based on complete sleep BS.

It was said in one of the sites I visited that for dream recall, one must follow several steps: relaxing, sleeping for at least 8 hours, and waking up naturally (without an alarm clock or anyone/anything else to wake you). There might be another step which I forgot but whatever. It's weird because I remember almost every dream I have and I don't even follow these steps. Is there something wrong with my brain then? Or is it like, a superpower?

I'm going with superpower. :)

Morning Terrors

I've always considered it a gift, my ability to remember almost every dream I have (in detail). I generally like my "head movies" (stolen from Tropic Thunder. Heehee.) However, there are times when I wish I didn't. It's not about nightmares. As far as those go, I have them at least once a week. The night before last, I had a dream that I was in my high school classroom with people (some of them former classmates) and it was nighttime. I don't know why, but everybody just got up and danced the Macarena. WTF right? Afterwards, we settled down for some film viewing. It was a film called "DV from Underground". I have no idea what DV stands for. Like, in mini DV maybe? I got the feeling (in the dream) that DV was some sort of virus. Death Virus maybe. Haha. Anyway, there. And then the movie opens with a shot of a huge room filled with hospital beds, like some sort of evacuation center or hospital for soldiers in a war. There. And then the shot zoomed in on this one bed where a soldier was lying dead and a cheerleader (wearing a uniform much too much like Claire's from Heroes) was on top of him taking a bite out of his face. Hmm. Zombie movies. Even in dreams, huh?

So anyway, there. That wasn't exactly a nightmare but I do have those often so I'm not very bothered by them (there are some exceptions though). But the kind of dreams that I truly detest are the ones that scream "YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS IS SCREWING WITH YOU!!!" They're the obviously the wish-fulfilling execution of that part of your head. You know it will NEVER happen so your brain thinks, hey, let's make it happen in dreamland. At least it would seem real for awhile. Give her a little taste of what it can never be. It won't hurt.

Shut up, brain.

You see, that's what's totally wrong with it. They say that dreams are supposed to help resolve unresolved or unrealized issues during conscious hours. In my case, the dreams are what cause the issues. I mean, for example, don't let me dream that we were given a free cut in a class where a torturous long test was scheduled because when I wake up, I'd still be feeling what I felt in the dream (ecstatic and super relieved) and I'd be in that mood so when the day doesn't (obviously) go as the dream did, I'd be more upset than if I didn't dream that dream because it would've given me hope.

Am I making sense here?

How many times my mood was influenced by my dream, I don't know. Well I mean, not directly influenced but a teeny tiny factor to my cheeriness or grumpiness or depressed state or whatever. Have you ever heard of "nadala lang ng panaginip"? I bet not. That might be unique to me. I don't know if this is possible, but could my interests (and other stuff) be influenced by what I dream about? Usually it's the other way around. But recent reflections show that the first option may in fact be true.

Hmm.

TV Show Dreams

As the first day of my second semester draws nearer, I bum around more and more. I sleep for like, twelve hours a day, I think. I just want to sleep all my sleepiness away because my schedule for this semester is just horrible. My mom and my brother said that as I move up a year level, my schedule would clear up. It's exactly the opposite. I have classes the whole day on Mondays and Fridays 9:30-4:30pm. Tuesdays and Thursdays are bearable from 7:30am(which sucks, 'coz I'm NOT a morning person) to 1:30pm. Wednesdays are the best because I only have classes from 9:30-12:30pm. That's a kind of rest day, in the middle of the week. We still have NSTP on Saturdays so it pretty much sucks in general.

Anyway, I've been watching a lot of TV shows (which I'm watching on this computer, so should I call them computer shows? Okay, scratch that. It's too stupid.) As a result, I've been dreaming of these shows. They're happening to me, like a show salad. The most recent one I watched was Weeds, and I dreamt of that Andy guy there who was being chased by the convicts of Prison Break. It's all crazy!

I'm trying to remember the other details. I'm pretty sure there's a bit of Desperate Housewives and Lost there, and definitely Supernatural, and maybe Ghost Hunters.

Happy Wednesday!

I Missed the Full Moon

Last night, the moon was bright and full in the evening sky...so as my brother said. I missed it. I didn't get to go out. I just slept through the whole day and tweaked my blog. (See the flickr flash over there?)

I love full moons. They're so romantic and halloween-y. I love just staring at it.

It is poetic on its own. It's so melancholic against the darkness of the night sky. It's as if it's so alone...

The stars are there to shine with it at night, but they're so far away, and they're not exactly the same. Some people may think it useless to have a moon. One, it doesn't have its own light (it just borrows from the sun, which is a star). Two, it doesn't provide heat or moon-energy or whatever.

Still, it is most humble. Though it needs to admit subordination and borrow from the sun, it does, just to give us light when everything is dark, when the sun can't and all the other stars are too far away to give.

Once a month-yes, only once-it gets to dominate the sky in all its glory. And those days, I love. It's weird, actually. On those days, I tend to wonder. About things...About life...what's going on, what's going to happen, what I want and if I'm ever gonna get to them. My imagination runs amuck. I start to visualize what might be, what I wish might be.

And then all things just...falls away. I get really sad...I think of him and get really sad... I think of why my life's going this way...why I'm loveless...

Most of the time, it's just general sadness that settles in. I can't explain it. It just does.

On rare occasions, I get hopeful. Like when Halloween or Christmas approaches. The full moon brings me endless possibilities. Yes, the imagination is there, but this time, on an optimistic note. I get the feeling that yes, it might be possible, it could really happen, I can make it to. I think this is the more dangerous one because I soar high with all idealism...and I'd crash hard. No, a white Christmas isn't possible over here afterall. I won't be spending it with my special someone, because I'm not special to that someone, or any other someones. I will grow up to be another Bridget Jones without the Mark Darcy part, singing "All by Myself" over and over during holidays, watch sappy movies, climb on the weighing scale while munching on a donut, and hate myself for being fat, then rant about it in my private diary, and probably on this blog, if it's still working.

However, all this negativity sums up to a hopeful thought. Wherever I am, whatever might be, there will always be the lone moon, revolving around the earth, bringing light, maybe love, and it will be that same moon that'll hover over us. It'll be that same moon we'll look at and ponder on.

Um, I don't know

I just woke up. It's 10am, and I'm still kinda drowsy... My normal waking time is around 12 noon. Heeheehee.

So, I'm supposed to be making "pulboron" right now. Wala lang, just wanna make something. After my "Mrs. Fields" cookies turned out to not taste like Mrs. Field's at all, well, I need to make something. I'm also thinking about making Yema Balls and Macaroons and Pastillas de Leche and Leche Flan. Sweets galore!!! Merry Christmas to one and all!

I dreamt of Mark Wahlberg. He's hot. And it was weird. The dream, I mean. He was sitting in our dining room where there's a TV, and he was watching Four Brothers, his latest movie!!! Which was weird, because it's already showing, and then he got up and said that he's gotta go because he needed to meet someone and make some editing and cuts and stuff. I asked him if me and my friends could have a pic with him, but he said he's really got to go, but will be back in an hour so we can take the pic then. He's really hot. And for the duration of the dream, which took place in our dining room and living room and part of the kitchen, no one really talked to him. Because he's such a big star.

Yihee!

And that guy in Scrubs, John Dorian, I think that's his character's name, he was also in my dream. I beat him up to a pulp. I don't know why. I think because he's such an ass in the dream. But he's cute.

So anyway, that's all there is this time. Still no story!

Dawn

It's almost dawn, and I'm still awake. Yeah, I've got some sort of sleeping problem.

I used to really like staying up 'til the wee hours of the day, just like now. There's nothing to watch on tv, but nothing stops me from watching anyway. I like it because in these hours, there's total silence. There are no cars driving by the street below. There are no people passing by noisily. Everybody in the house is asleep. I feel like I've got the world to myself. It feels great. There's no one to disturb me. It's just me and the tv, or me and my journal. I love writing on my journal during this time of day. It's like, I can meditate better on my life's happenings. It's so peaceful, so tranquil. And there's like a different side of me that comes out, one that is more meditative, one that is more reflective.

Five months ago, everything changed. I just want to spend all my time sleeping now. People say that I already have a sleep disorder. Trust me, I don't. I just like to sleep a lot. Sleep helps me escape from this world. If it brings me to fairy tale land or nightmare kingdom, I don't care, as long as it's somewhere else.

It was fun having a month of bumming. And now that month is almost over, I wonder where it has gone. I can't believe that a month has already passed by, yet nothing has happened, nothing has changed. A month is a long time, yet everything's the same. I'm still fat, I still am here, and I'm still missing high school. And I have no story whatsoever yet. So much for Nanowrimo.

Is time getting faster? Are the days getting shorter as the years go by? Is it just me, or do you feel it too? I mean, I had a month's break, and it felt like I just closed by eyes for a minute, and I wake up and a month's gone by already. I had a to do list for this break, and I don't think I accomplished even a single task. Why is a month so quick? Days were longer when I was younger. Was it because I was not yet aware of the time? I had so much time back then. Now I just want to stop time, just pause everything, and look around. See where my life is going. What everything means. What all these are for.

There's always the future that I worry about.

It's so hard to keep up with things, especially with people. I came from a very secluded school, and now I'm thrown into this huge hole where everyone is so...different. I've come across vocal people back in SJ, but now, vocal takes on a whole new meaning. I loved working with people back then. I admit, I'm a very lazy person, but I liked staying after school. It's like extra time for me to chat with friends, hang out, do some pranks, have a laugh, and actually accomplish something. I admit I want to get back home right after school back then, but today, I don't even want to leave the house. I look forward to going home. And when I'm home, I only think about the time that I'll be home the next day.

Don't worry, college is different for everybody. I see some of my batchmates are actually having the time of their lives, like they finally found home. Well, it's just them. I'm a quiet person. I do get chatty, but I'm a thoroughly quiet person. I value very much my alone time. I'm not a party person, and I'm terrified of public speaking. I'm not very opinionated, and I tend to just blend with the background. I don't really like being in the limelight. I just want to get through without being noticed. But someday, I also want to be famous. I mean, celebrities have it easy for them. Yeah, I know they say it's hard, blah, because they don't have privacy and blah, but they have it easy for them. First of all, they've got truckloads of cash. If they grow fat, they can just go have liposuction. If they get tired of the world, they could just hop on a plane to Tahiti or somewhere to relax. They don't have to save months and months of allowance just to have enough money to buy Christmas gifts. They don't have to worry about what's going to happen in their lives. I mean, if they get tired of acting, they can just sing (even if they can't) and vice versa. Or maybe have their own perfumes or clothing lines or record companies. They can just hang out. No need to study. Yeah, stars do study too, but they don't exactly need to finish anything. Take the Olsen twins for example. They have their own firm, or company, or whatever. And they had that when? When they were 15 or 16? I'm 18 and I do not have a penny to my name.

When I was younger, I always wondered what it was like being 18. It must be so cool, I thought. I can drive, I can drink. It's the legal age! I can even get married if I wanted to. I've always thought of 18 as the ultimate age. It's like, the year when my life changes, where something big will happen to me, like in the movies or something. In movies like Chasing Liberty, American Pie, etc, the characters turned 18 and they started doing all these stuff, like escaping to a foreign country or go on a vacation somewhere cool with no parent supervision. They party. And eventually end up with the cute guy. And have lots of fun. I've been 18 for almost 4 months and yet nothing remotely close to that has happened to me.

There's gotta be something out there.

I can't wait to get out of here. I wanna go someplace else. And yet, I wanna stay home forever. Isn't that weird? I wanna be in another country, but I want to just stay here in my room as well. Oh my twisted twisted mind.

And so the time has come for the cars to start clambering around the street below. The peace has gone. Hay. That's why I don't like not being able to sleep during this time of day. My brain won't shut up. Thoughts, mostly really sad thoughts, come dancing around my mind.

I can't wait when all this is over.

Dreams Vol II

This is actually my desktop wallpaper... Look at the stars... This is like the sky explosion thing I was talking about in the previous post, only the sky was more colorful and the stars more beautiful...

Now, onto the next part.

Have you ever had a dream that wasn't quite done and you wanted to continue it but can't go back to sleep 'coz it's time to wake up?

I had a couple of dreams like that. It was getting to the good part when someone woke me up 'coz it's time for school. ARGH! I was hoping I'd continue it that night but no...

And recurring dreams. Do you have one? I have several. They're really weird... There's always someone wanting to kill me! There was one when I was running somewhere, I can't really figure out where the exact place was. Then there were cars, like gangsta cars, and then the people in the car just started chasing me and shooting me! They had machine guns!

So yeah, weird. But I was Superman! Bullets bounced off me! Nah... kidding!

And have you ever dreamt in black and white? I haven't... and I'm really curious about it...

So I have to go sleep now, heeheehee.

I was thinking of keeping a dream journal...hmm...

That guy in Scrubs is really cute...

Dreams

As promised!

As you all know, I spend most of my time sleeping. (Although stats says that we spend 1/6 of our life asleep, I think I spent 1/2 of mine) In the rare ocassion that I'm awake, I did a little research about the world I where I trudge around in my sleep.

Dreamland. (corny!)

I'm often in dreamland. And historically, dreams are thought of as some kind of clue to the future. Remember David from the Bible? Or was that someone else? Anyway, whoever that was, his dreams were "prophetic", like, he foresaw the future while he was asleep.

Another thing is, it is said that dreams are manifestations of our deep deep deepest desires, maybe we don't even know of them. So dreams are like tools for us to better know ourselves.

That's why dreams are really fascinating.

We dream every night. We may not always remember them, because we go through 4 stages of sleep, but we do dream each and every night when we sleep.

The 1st stage of sleep is the REM stage. This is where the dreams occur. The next 3 levels are NREM stages, where we go from light sleep to deep sleep. And then we go back to the first one. It's a cycle. To know more about dreams, visit THIS wonderful website where I got these infos from.

So anyway, why I'm so interested with dreams is because I can remember most of my dreams. It's said that we dream an average of 4-7 times a night, and I remember most of those. Not really the complete dream, but most of it, or sometimes only snippets, but later into the day, I'll see something that'll trigger my memory to remember the dream.

Like awhile ago, I knew I had a dream, but I can't remember what. And then I picked my brother's cellpgone up, and I remembered. I dreamt that I was somewhere where there are mountains everywhere and a lake in the middle of the land. And it was nighttime. Because I'm so fascinated with the night sky, the moon and stars especially, I dreamt that there was some kind of silent explosion in the sky that made the stars from lightyears away very very clear even with the naked eye. So I took my brother's cellphone and photographed the sky.

So there. The cellphone. I won't tell the whole dream because it's really crazy and jumbled up! My friend even gave me a dreamcatcher which i hung by my headboard. I used to have these horrible dreams about dinosaurs, dead people, psycho killers and all that creepy stuff. I've become accustomed to them, but they creep the heck out of my friends when I tell my dreams to them. So one of them gave me the dreamcatcher. It kinda worked; my dreams became senseless. It's like, the scary stuff are strained out of the dream that the remaining parts were just nonesense.But that's okay! :)

I'm trying to find meaning in my dreams. The other day I dreamt about me and my friend running around, really anxious because we're supposed to be looking for something for the contest we joined. When I woke up, I looked in a dream dictionary and it said that when you see a friend in your dream distressed, it means that s/he has some kind of problem or something. Later that day, that friend I dreamt of IMed me and told me she's got a prob. Not really a serious one...but still...

So, I gotta go now, more later! :)