Dreamy Debate

Perhaps it’s the month of idle time to blame
Perhaps it’s all the extra sleep
And then again, maybe it’s just how things are… I seem to obsess over the same things over and over again in almost a cyclic manner.

Dreams, humor, death, religion, time, patterns and design… definitely the strangest combination of interest areas.

This time its back to dreams. And in particular I’m obsessing over the ‘brim’. The crazy time between sleep and wake. The transition time when one is ‘half asleep’. It’s like between two worlds. A world of collective reality (awake) and the world of personal reality ( asleep).

While going to sleep its interesting how one tries to let go and just sleep… the funny feeling of KNOWING that one is drifting into sleep…

And then while waking up, the funny feeling of trying to remember a good dream, and the harder one tries, every last memory of it escapes leaving only a good feeling, but no trace of the reason…

I have often wondered using Darwin’s theory of evolution, what could be the evolutionary reason for dreams… and bad dreams? Is it just an error?... maybe not… dreams are perhaps a means of remaining in a semi-conscious state, keeping the mind alive, so that it is easier to spring to action if needed… the opposite of dreaming is the ‘dead sleep’ which is so much more difficult to snap out of…
The dead sleep. Now, away from the world of wild predators out to get us, a good sleep is meant to be a dead sleep. A complete write off of that time… and amusingly it’s always the people who don’t like ‘wasting time’ that prefer the ‘dead sleep’. Perhaps being completely in control ( after all its ALL your creation) and even so, not in control is a terrible feeling for the busy ‘doers’ of the world!

So are dreams a defense mechanism? A way to rest in way that still allows for an alert mind? If so, then the plot thickens!
So we derive that dreams are a means to attempt at a longer life.
And yet I’ve died so often in my dream, except the amazing bit is that death in a dream ENTAILS waking up. No dream allows for the experience of death… Death is ALWAYS about waking up…
And there again I’m back to religion! So does religion too take cues from dreams? Is this experience of ‘waking up’ upon death in a dream the origin of the concept of ‘afterlife’ or the concept of a ‘nirwana’ ?

SO not only have dreams given us longer lives, they have unwittingly instilled in us a concept of death as an awakening, stretching our existence into eternity!

Being 8

Quickly quickly before i forget this moment.

Its new years, and even though i have all the space i could ask for i am just not able to wrap up last year in my head.
maybe a post could do it for me...

high points?

a water fight

standing on a table and singing the birthday song

standing in Namsang tower watching the roads turn red as the night set in along with its traffic bottlenecks

taking pictures of myself holding wine after finding out that i got into ID, and then realising that i couldn't open it!

riding a bicycle on the coast of Korea

giving the Tata scholarship interview sitting next to an Alsatian dog

my best friend feeding me cake in Barrista after i put mehendi on both hands

seeing a train pass by from so so close

reading Jahajn

spending the night in JFK, surrounded by the happiest people in the world

the moment it was announced that i was about to land in Chicago

cooking an omelet in a pressure cooker on my first day in my own apartment

seeing snow...

dancing salsa in my apartment at 3 in the mornin cause me and roommate couldn't sleep

lows...

saying bye to dadaji

sitting in a car outside Big Chill with my Best friend after she didn't get something she should have got

walking on the streets on Christmas day

its been such a long year.
i was discussing years with somebody, and they explained that years seem shorter now because when we are young, a year is a bigger proportion of ones life - an age 8, one year is one eighth of ones life, at 25 one year is one twenty-fifth... so perhaps at 25, three years equate the one year when we were eight...

but this year broke that rule! this year felt like i was eight again.

closure.
goodbye2007.

and here's hoping i can keep being 8 for as long as i can.