Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Moldova as Dream Drug

Either Moldova is a sink hole, metaphysically, for sub-concious thought (would account for the Baba Yaga stories which make Grimm look downright Dr. Spock) or I have just hit a plateau in mental development.

Either way, I dream more vividly here than I have at any other time.

Dreams have been a major stock of my mental life since I was about 12. Funny enough, that is also when I started reading the Bible in earnest. I started a dream journal, bought and received for Christmas no less that 4 different Dream Dictionaries. Theories of and experiments with past life regression, out of body experiences/astral projection, communicating with ghosts and fairy-like creatures, fairly rigid daily meditation, bullshit wiccan-type spells with candles and home made tinctures abounded.

That is, I'm pretty well informed. And though I genuinely believe very little in these things currently, I am thankful to this phase for other things: I have a mighty discipline of the mind. Literally, at the time, I could control my hiccups. Thought, this particular talent disappeared in December 2005, I still have an uncanny ability to tell the time and wake up exactly when I want, fall asleep when I want etc.

And I have never had dreams like I'm having dreams now, and in the past 6 months.

Almost every one features the ocean--either benign or about to swamp me and the whole world. Usually, my sisters are involved. Often I am pregnant, or spontaneously have a baby that is Mary-like mine. Sometimes my parents are around. Sometimes there is flying in planes. I never fly on my own, my teeth never fall out. I've died once.

This is all very run-of-the-mill.

What's not is how I've been waking up. Before I've woken up maybe twice before with real tears. Now it's at least twice a month. Twice I have literally laughed myself awake. My dreams are becoming more physical. If any one knows how gauge melatonin levels etc. I'm all ears.

And, about half the time, regardless of what else is going on, I look nothing like myself. I've been chinese men, white men, black women, super old, super young... But everyone else is who I, Erika the Blonde, know them as. Elise, Greta and Kelsie are always themselves. Stephanie is always herself. But, 50% of the time, I am not me.

What is that?

Is it all the natural, unpasteurized food? Is it the hive mind of a Moldovan Sat? I haven't yet dreamed in Romanian, so, I guess we all know what my language level is, but could the massive amount of life in a different language have other effects? Is it living so isolated? Is it the water? The amount of DayQuil and NyQuil I now take? If that were it, the dream level would have dropped off in the summer, so that can't be it--despite the amount consumed having been enough to start my own meth-lab.

I'm gonna keep blaming Moldova unless someone can posit a better theory.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

*Insert obligatory Hamlet quote*

Perhaps it is your displacement in the world. You have become accustomed (i love that that word shares roots with the word 'custom' which itself evokes the imagery of the foreign) to a place and people who are not your family nor is it your home. You are, perhaps, not entirely yourself in this place that is not yours?

Are the dreams the vast cinematic ventures of Hollywood, or are they the synesthetic sweeps through the human sub-conscious that we all experience dreaming as?

I sometimes dream that i'm running away from or after something (the objective is unimportant, only the running matters) and i fall to all fours and, like some feline-simian hybrid, tear across a blurring landscape of grass, brick, forest floor, etc. It's exhilarating.