dreams and gender

[lapsedmodernist]

So, yesterday I was at a doctor's office, and in the waiting room there was a copy of Jane on the table. On the cover there was a reference to an article, "15 men you will date and dump before 30." I didn't read the article, but in my dream last night I WAS reading the article.

I only got through four of the fifteen men I was supposed to date and dump by the time I was thirty. (Also this further disproves my ex-boyfriend who was always trying to convince me that people can't read or tell time in dreams).

So,

1. The guy who sits on a bench as if it were a chair. I know this is kind of incoherent as a description, but in the dream the accompanying photograph showed a guy sitting on the back on the bench, with his feet resting on the bench itself. The sidebar talked about, "see how his legs are bent at RIGHT angles"--and for some reason this was bad.

2. The guy who has a good time, as if at a kegger, at a Habitat for Humanity Event. The picture showed a guy making a frat guy face and bonding with can of beer that he was about to smash against his forehead at an event for the cleanup of the tsunami.

3. The Boy With No Television. I was puzzled at this one, in the dream, and remember thinking--but this seems like someone I WOULD want to date, but theophile pointed out that this probably referred to a very specific type of "no TV guy" who talks incessantly about how he doesn't have a TV, and how any time anyone says anything about TV he starts talking about how he USED to have a TV and DOESN'T anymore, because he got sick of his mind being polluted by corporate garbage. Yes, I said, like a humorless vegan! Then I added, like a humorless TVegan!

4. It just said in big pink(!) letters, WEIRDASSFREAKYGUY. Dunno what that one is about.

Then theophile woke up and asked me what I was doing (I was scribbling furiously), I said, "writing down a dream." He said "were there lollipops in it?" I said "no." He said "that sucks." A+++ <3<3<3 for inadvertent half-asleep puns.

Comments

[yanatonage.livejournal.com]

"(Also this further disproves my ex-boyfriend who was always trying to convince me that people can't read or tell time in dreams)."

I feel like he got that from an episode of Batman:The Animated Series.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

I have never seen it, but that is entirely possible.

[yanatonage.livejournal.com]

There was an episode called "Perchance to Dream" in which Bruce Wayne wakes up in a world where he never became Batman, is married to Selina Kyle, and his parents are still alive. He is lead to believe that his life as Batman was just a dream and this wish-fulfilment world he's woken up in is his real life, which he is just having trouble remembering. He realizes it's not real when he sits down to read a book and sees that all the words are gibberish--he also looks at a digital clock and none of the numbers are coherent, and his detective skills kick in: aparently dreams are a right-brain activity and math/literacy is left brain. What's weird is that Bruce states this as a fact but I've never read anything that corroborates with it, so I don't know who the screenwriters were quoting. I have had dreams where I knew I was dreaming and then I read something, and in my dream thought "but what about that episode of Batman??!"

Anyway, I think that's where he got it from because it's the most prominent pop culture reference that concept can be attributed to, and because I've never heard it anywhere else.

[teragram22.livejournal.com]

Doesn't every superhero/sci-fi show have one of those episodes?

[theophile.livejournal.com]

all of the best Batman detective stories (in the animated series or otherwise) depend on extraordinarily iffy science. it's what keeps them from being boring like Agatha Christie-- they work with the structure of a detective story, but the particulars of a superhero comic.

the truth behind the "no reading in a dream" thing, though, is that you can't, usually at least, really read in a dream, because there's nothing there for you to read. some people explain this by asserting that you're able to look at a source of information and have your mind construct "words" for you to "read" that fit with the narrative of the dream, but this assertion strikes me as a bit too Chuang-Tzu-and-the-butterfly to be useful.

still, one recommended form of reality testing for dreamers is to, after reading something, go back and read the same thing again. this doesn't work so well with signs, where your short term chunking memory kicks in, but if you've read a passage from a book in a dream, on rereading it you'll usually find that the information you've already read has changed. from personal experience, this is a lot of fun. the more you reread a passager, the curiouser it seems to get-- your brain keeps trying to match the new experience to your past experience, but imperfectly. (and this presumably doesn't work when, in the dream, you're "reading" something that you have memorized in your waking life.)

also, some people simply can't read in dreams. maybe Batman's just one of them, and knows it. although I don't like the idea of there being anything that I can do that Batman can't. it feels dirty.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

That is a good reality testing exercise. I always mean to incorporate it into my "conditioned" exercises when I go through phases where I am actively into lucid dreaming, but I don't read/"read" in dreams often enough for it to be really useful to trigger lucidity, so I always use my old standbys of the color red and the general little surreal triggers. But also the whole thing of you can't read in a dream because there is nothing for you there to read--isn't that true for EVERYTHING you do in a dream? Can you walk in a dream? There is no ground for you to walk on. Can you make love in a dream? There is no other body for you to do it with, any more than there is a book with letters. That argument is way too matrix for me, more so than butterfly dream.

[theophile.livejournal.com]

it is true for everything in a dream, which is why I think it's important to reintroduce it in discussions like this. the short answer is, to anyone who claims to be able to read in dreams: no, you can't. you can dream about reading, which is a fundamentally-if-subtly different thing. since we colloquially discuss dreams in the sense that they are locales in which we act, it makes sense to say things like "in my dream, I read," or "in my dream, I flew," or "in my dream, I was a butterfly," but we're speaking metaphorically in all of these cases-- and I think a more concrete language becomes necessary if the discussion is what we can or what we can't "do" "in" dreams.

also, in case you didn't pick up on it, the Matrix was, to more than a small degree, based on the philosophical observation embodied in Chuang Tzu's famous quote, so trying to say that something's more-Matrix-than-butterfly is just weird.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

whoops, ignore my last reply, I meant to post it to theophile and now corrected it.

[nunofthat.livejournal.com]

Excellent use of TVegan!

[subjective.livejournal.com]

that dream is a winner. i love dreams with so many tiny, weirdo details.

[sardonos.livejournal.com]

I am impressed, My dreams are never like that, I dream of boring and mundane tings.
Maybe these were archetypes that you are aware of some level, but don't like for some reaseon and you were just assimilating them into your dream to help you avoid them, but siting with legs at right angles? Maybe somone you don't like does that and you subconsiously transfer it into the dream magazines number 1.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

possibly, although with the legs/right angles thing there seemed to be some dream semiotic nuance going on about right being correct and also something about being immature....The weird thing is, *I* like sitting on benches like that. So who knows...