I really wonder how you feel on these nights so alone

“if only you could see”

fly.

Apr 8, 2009 || 12:53 PM || comment?

oh dreams.

they are really strange things, bringing together aspects of one's life that would probably never be considered in normal waking life. it brings to surface people long forget, or people only seen once before. I wonder if the "dream people" as in, those you don't recognize as yourself or any friend you know in real life, are composed of the people you only see in passing? I guess it depends on the brain's storage of people's faces that you pass. If the brain isn't given any information to store along with that person's face, is the memory/visual feedback obliterated in order to save space for the people who you do know and have information to back up their form with? Or is it mere continual seeing of this person that you begin to ingrain them into your memory? I don't think so, because of the people I know, that don't /really/ know, have some quirk about them. There used to be this guy that worked at an arcade I went to, and on his days off, as in, the days I saw him in "normal clothing" he always more muscle shirts, and I guess he was kind of trying to get buff? And he always likes to go to the GNC and get muscle milk, or whatever. So I remember him as the guy who wears weird clothes and goes to GNC. Do I remember him because I saw him every time I went to the arcade, or because when I saw him I thought "now that's a strange guy who goes to GNC a lot"? I guess after all, it is a combination of both. Prolonged exposure to this person begins the process of storing them into your brain, and when you being this process, I think your brain says, "hey, I need to know what I can store along with this visual memory of this person." So I think, "Okay she's a mixed/light-skinned girl. She was the MC for the little model show that the pan-hellenic fraternities/sororities sponsored. Her hair is a kind of honey blonde, kind of like Beyoncé." I've only seen her twice. But the first time I saw her was for about one to two hours as she MCed that runway show. I saw her in passing the other day, she was talking to a friend. So I've decided that you don't remember people in passing because of the time elapsed and because of this your brain isn't given the chance to store information along with their face. There's a guy I've seen several times, he is tall, skinny, glasses, I think he's a Computer Science major, and I only remember him because I noticed he always wore either foot braces, or those feet weights you can velcro around your ankles AND one time he wore this shirt that resembled something like a Mexican/Hispanic poncho. Very colorful. But everytime I've seen him was in passing.

So maybe the dream thing works like this: I see a person, "Bob" as I walk across the street. The visual memory of him is stored/located somewheres in my brain, I assume whatever part the eyes connect to and light and stuff so that I can see what he looks like. Let's pretend he has brown hair and brown eyes. I go about the rest of my day, with no consequences of having seen "Bob" because I only maybe glanced at him, but not long enough for my brain to being picking out things I notice about him. I sleep that night, and in my dream one of the people is "Bob" (however, I don't recognize him as the person I passed at the crosswalk, in fact, I don't recognize him at all). So he is named "dream person". This is a consequence of two things, ONE, I saw a person, of brown hair and brown eyes, my brain stores this only, but nothing of note. TWO, my brain, while dreaming, displays images of whatever (seemingly) random things that it can access, INCLUDING the image of "Bob", but because my brain stored no information to support the image of "Bob", I don't "know" him.

But what about people you do know? Well that's easy enough (maybe), you just know a person, and in a dream they are there. It seems "less" random because you know this person, so what does this mean about the probability of seeing "Bob" or seeing a person you fully know and recognize?

OR, what about people you know/recognize in the dream, physically looking like one person, but in the dream, you recognize them as someone else. Example: (because that was a shitty sentence)

I have two friends, let's say...Mark and John. Mark has brown hair, brown eyes, tall, skinny, has glasses. John is blonde, with blue eyes, average height and average build. Now let's say I go to sleep, and have a dream with "Mark" in it, but he looks like "John". I'm saying that in my dream, I recognize this person, and probably address him (in my dream) as "Mark". But when I wake up a remember this, I realize that this person actually looked like "John", the way he does in real life.

So I wonder if dreams are composed of your brain randomly accessing each and every one of your memories, experiences, thoughts, feelings, and combines them. For what purpose? Or IS there any purpose at all? Maybe it can be explained like a drug experience? The hallucinations and things one might see because of taking drugs, that is due to certain chemicals being produced while they should or shouldn't be. Does the brain produce any chemicals during sleep? So maybe the effect is like that. But usually hallucinations can be classified different as dreams, I think. But probably because there are different things going on, since you're doing drugs while conscious, and you dream while you sleep.

So then, what about dreams people deem as "prophetic" such as, a dream with certain events happen, then those same events happen the next day (or perhaps, something happened today, then tonight you dream about the same thing). Is that still considered random?

http://xkcd.com/552/

Just because there was a direct spike of patients dying while a certain nurse was on duty, this does not specifically point to the truth being: nurse killed those patients. (I forget the name of the nurse or the case, but I learned about it in my Stat class last semester.)

But that's only assuming that dreams are found to actually be random strings of events, or however you might like to describe it.

and what about this:

If dreams are all of the things you've ever seen, experienced, felt, thought, then take this example.

A girl has a dream about flying in a plane when she has, in fact, never flown anywheres in her life. Maybe it comes from the knowledge of asking "what's it like to fly on a plane?" and the odds of her asking that are probably really high, since she herself has never experienced it, but is curious of it anyways.

Here's another thing I wonder.

They say you don't feel pain in your dreams, that's why someone might say, "pinch me, I must be dreaming." then they get pinched, it hurts, so I guess you're in waking life.

I've had a dream before where glass shards went into my arm, and so far, that statement is true, I didn't feel pain. But here's a thing, I've felt the opposite, which is pleasure (physical and mental). So why can you feel pleasure but not pain? Because you can have nightmares, and get the shit scared out of you. But why don't you feel physical pain? (also, if someone HAS felt physical pain, please tell me.)

Also sometimes your dreams prohibit you from doing certain things, like maybe you're trying to run away but you move extremely slowly, or maybe you're trying to break dishes, but as you bring your arms down to break the plate, you simply can't. Why does that happen? Dreams, that bring together things that you may have never thought about before, bringing together the impossible, sometimes makes it so it is impossible to do the simple, the mundane.

So...this is what I'm thinking about now as I'm sitting at work. What a lot of speculation. Any other thoughts or ideas?