Closer to the Edge

"Can you imagine a time when the truth ran free
The birth of a song and the death of a dream"

Sleep Journal
June 26th, 2011

Woke up at about 4:30 AM, very abruptly, after approximately 5 – 5 ½ hours of sleep. Had not set alarm.

Had the residual image of my dream still in my head. Of course it was more than an image... In fact, there was an auditory component (as if one were hearing the sentence spoken), a visual component (as if one were seeing the sentence written on paper), and a meaning component (one's understanding of what the sentence actually meant.) For a short period, just after waking up, the three had a sense of unity – meaning, they felt the same, they felt as if they had the same meaning.

Only upon further waking did something (memory?) kick in which allowed the three elements to be parsed apart, which allowed for the recognition that in fact they weren't saying the same thing at all. The auditory element was roughly “The paycheck isn't coming back good.” The visual element was a sentence beginning with the word “It.” The meaning of both of these (which felt the same) was that my reference checks from previous employers were not coming back favorable.

The sense of unity these elements possessed was clearly not based on memory. But a sense of unity they had, and an unimpeachable one at that. Meaning, without memory to illuminate the subtle distinctions between the three elements of the seemingly-coherent experience, it might easily have been acted upon.

While waiting for memory to kick in – a process that always takes some time when I have been abruptly awakened, and a process of which I am aware – I desperately wanted to know the origin of that element of the dream. Was it a sign, or some indication of a subtle awareness on my part that there was (or was likely to be) a problem with one or more of my references? I remember waiting and waiting for memory to kick in, and when it finally showed up – which is to say, when the contents of episodic memory were finally available for conscious analysis – there was a distinct awareness of that information merging into the stream of consciousness. As if it were simply arriving late to the party, but mingling perfectly well with the throng once there.

After – not simultaneous with – the arrival of memory to the stream came the ability to imagine. To project and anticipate and visual completely hypothetical outcomes.

So distinct were these elements in there arrival to the stream of consciousness that it was as if I were seeing the 'waking up' of certain brain areas, or the removal of whatever obstacles had prevented them from feeding information into the dream state. What was clear was that I could not activate them immediately by will alone. I could query, but the response took time to arrive. For a time I simply had no access to the contents of episodic memory.

(end entry)

"Yet the human spirit is restless and nature forever compliant, willing to answer as yet undreamed questions, capable of opening up vast new vistas, revealing still undisclosed parts of her being."