Thursday 1 May 2008

R.E.M. (Rapid Eye Movement, Or Random Emo Moments)

And even now, weak as it sounds, I'm still reeling each time I ponder about how everything has turned out, each blow that has turned on itself, and wonder pointlessly whether I could or should have done anything differently. Points in two cases tell me it's no one-off coincidence.


I have the edgy, muffled sensation in my head telling me I had a dream with it's cheekily planted remnants of something that was there - a setting, some people, a vague notion of what might've happened - but as always I'm always one to rarely recall or know what I dream about. I think on average I am aware of 1 dream per 1 or 2 months. It's not that I don't dream - REM research has found that people on average have up to 7 dreams a night - it's just that my sleep's probably usually deep enough that what's from my subconscious stays hidden. And when it doesn't stay hidden, and a little information overflows and trickles out, the frustrating feeling of any attempt to recollect, mostly out of curiosity, the great unfolding of these little suddenly created mental storybooks (that seem to be as quickly eradicated into my conscious oblivion) can be likened to seeing the tail of a very big and fast monster slip past a corner. By the time you rush to that bend to see what it was, it's gone. All I have left is that fleeting notion of knowing something was there, and I attempt to rebuild a story based on what I think the monster would've looked like from an imagination founded on past experiences.

And even more queerly, as time passes and I do not exercise any thought to anchor the sight of the 'tail' down, I begin to rapidly forget the colour and shape of it; then the dream becomes yet another one that got away, like ghosts that revel and dance under the steal of darkness and dreadedly shun the accusatory glare of daylight.

Under psychology we learn that dreams are important as a form of reorganising of mental data - of stuff we talk about and see in the day, and those secondary judgments that our subconscious mind makes from peripheral experiences that we haven't consciously come to terms with yet. It's kinda like a library. In the day, books are taken off the shelves, their information required for many purposes. And then they're either placed back in the wrong shelves or left all over the place. After the library closes (and the dreaming starts), the books need to arranged back properly so that the next day's referencing and reading activities can go on as efficiently as possible. A person has REM (rapid eye movement) when he or she dreams, so it has been found that when a person's dreaming gets interrupted, the incidence of REM will increase the next time around. Whenever a person continually gets his or her access to dreaming denied, he or she will end up being forgetful or incoherent in thought when awake.

Since it's 1330 on a lazy Labour Day, let me write about some friend's dreams I have starred in. I might get some plots totally wrong but hey I'm the star; balls to the accuracy of unreality!

Jacq's Dream
I'm not sure what this dream was about, but I appeared in it as a big, old, sage-like talking tree, like in Lord of the Rings.

Sab's Superhero Dream
Apparently Sab was some superhero, and she was fighting terrorists and there were other supervillains and superheroes. And I happened to pledge allegiance to the dark side by being Grasshopperman. Basically, other than being green, I could 'teleport' long distances by turning into a grasshopper. I also ended up crawling under her skin.

Wendy's Psychology Class Gathering Dream
Wendy was having a NTU psychology class gathering when I appeared out of nowhere and pulled her with me and we starting running after a bus because it had something inside which I wanted to show her. When we caught the bus and got in, there were fishes inside, and I told her to look at them. Then the fishes died.


Til now nothing quite keeps me occupied in a fit of daydreaming as thinking about soccer. Sometimes, I can seriously spend up to 30mins straight just imagining moves, juggling sequences and dribbling patterns, and trying to conjure up some of my own in my head.

Soccer can be like chess sometimes. There are certain positions you and your opponent players can be in, and you'll find that they can never get the ball off you without committing a foul. And there are certain situations that occur which enable the team to get into an inspired, in-the-zone moment, and everyone will start playing like Arsenal or Real Madrid. It takes creativity and footballing genius to get into these situations, and arrange your opponents into positions that can be easily taken out.

And sometimes, I can achieve a state which I term 'mental vacuum'. It's a state of being totally awake and yet totally not consciously thinking about anything. And sometimes, in a sickening way, I can get stuck in it, 'refusing' to snap out of it (though refusing isn't quite the right word to use since it, in the sense of the word, is an activity that requires conscious effort), and on hindsight it can feel like I'm dead while alive for those few moments.


And then you reappear suddenly just as I've convinced myself that I'm through with these thoughts that only serve to poison when they linger, and honestly I might be taking it more affectedly than I guess I should. It sickens me of sorts that maybe I'm choosing to let it be this way, because I can't bear to let go or some other excuse along those silly lines. But then again, it's also different because now it's like I have whatever it is in my hands, at once observable and manipulable - a blasphemous marriage of the actor and spectator - and before long that smirk spreads itself across my lips once again.




If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

Audio Candy:
Melee - Built To Last

No comments: