This Thanksgiving we took a trip down to McCall, ID, near Boise. My parents love listening to book on tapes everywhere we go so for this trip they chose a new Dan Brown book called Inferno. The book is about a genius who discovers the global issue of overpopulation and how our natural resources and physical space for living are quickly decreasing. This man is already famous for discovering several patents that increase the lifespan of humans. Ironically enough, he quickly sees that he should not have done this because now he is simply aiding the overpopulation issue. He takes radical, and quite frankly insane, action to stop this growing problem by developing his own "plague." The man Professor Langdon, from Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons is tasked with deciphering this man's clues by using Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy to find the plague and stop it from spreading. The poem is a journey about Dante's vision of the path while descending into hell, the period of purgatory, and ascending into heaven. It gave people the first interpretation of the journey and Dante became extremely famous for his work.
Now that you have a little background on the subject matter, I will explain my "written dream." I got home very late on Tuesday night and we left early on Wednesday morning so needless to say I was pretty tired on Wednesday. I started falling asleep a little ways past Missoula, but it wasn't a very deep sleep. I realized that I was waking up and falling asleep intermittently, but still following along with the book. It took me awhile to realize what was going on. I figured out that my ears were hearing the words through the speakers, and directing my dream at the same time. The destination of the dream was already decided and the author was guiding me on a visual journey. Now, I understand that while we all read we develop our own mental pictures of characters, scenes, and other parts of the book. This was different though. It was as if I was watching the movie, while still reading the book. I was not in control of the plot, but had full control of the picture in my mind. I had total freedom to shape these characters and the scene around them, but I wasn't even aware of what was occurring.
I'm astounded at the bounds of the human mind and its capabilities. It's interesting to think that we could sleep through Spanish lessons for a year and somehow in the process become fully fluent in Spanish. Obviously, there are logistical issues with trying to remain out of REM cycle so maybe this is not entirely possible, yet still an interesting idea. The idea raises the question of if our mind's capabilities are greater while we are dreaming than while we are awake. And maybe it would be worthwhile trying to record these dreams to interpret what direction to go in this world. Although, maybe this is getting us too close to knowing all the answers and like it says in Arcadia we lose all meaning once we have all the answers. Yet, as lost as I am in this large world it might not hurt to have a few more answers and a little more guidance. It was an interesting experience and I'm excited to experiment with it again as we set off for Minnesota at Christmas!
