mymachinedream
Last night was such a dream. It happened twice now that I have dreamt of trains. I remember the last time it happened the train was in motion. Rolling alongside the freeway i was driving on. The train seemed to be frozen in space, and i was driving so fast. I remember looking over then and seeing the windows lit up from inside. People motionless, and yet keeping pace with me. This dream was a train, but nothing else was the same.
Everyplace my mind goes, i leave these trails behind me to follow back on day. Even these tiny thoughts seem to catch in my mind. They leave these memories that are like pathways to follow. Tiny lines between me and the dream. Each one seems to have a label hanging over it that can tell me when and where it goes. I know i can follow these thoughts back to the source.Continue reading
This morning i woke up and remembered dreams of pilings. Dreams of thick dark wood soaked in creosote and oil. Whole tree trunks, just sunk into the water. Green water streaming around the pilings and sunlight flashing through the water. I saw so much in the water that day. In my eyes i was above the water looking down, and In the water looking up. From above i saw the shafts of light flowing through the water, i could see the edges of the light and the ripples in the water. It almost seemed like you could cut a section of water directly. Even though it seemed so clear where the water cut into the light, the edges got darker the farther away i looked, and I could almost make out shapes in the distance. The water moved and flowed and was alive at the same time.
From below I saw so much more. The thing that stood out to me the most was that I could see the swimming shapes in the water. I saw shadows of fish floating and washing through the edges of the light. Smaller shapes of dust glowing as it drifted into and out of the beams. I remember being mystified about how the shapes seemed to loom so large and so small at the same time. How they almost seemed to grow as they approached. The distance seemed to almost be as fluid as the fish themselves. I couldn’t tell how large or small they were, but i was there with them and they were around me on all sides. I felt both a sense of fear, and a sense of deep peace. I knew that nothing there would approach me, or hurt me. I also knew that I wasn’t anywhere that I was born into, that I was a visitor in this world. Somewhere that the space of time never wanted me to go.
I remember the most vivid image that still stays with me. The water was dark, but still visible. The light was dim, but even on all sides. In the shape that i could see, dark fins and shapes like tear drops and glass, with tight fins on the top and bottom, and tails behind. They looked like curved glass and vases. But alive and moving. I remember 4 shapes in front of me, moving with the water, but at the same time static. They were working in the three dimensions of the water, and floating stationary where i could see them. I felt a sense of peace wash over me. I can see them now when i close my eyes. And the same sense of peace and stillness fills my mind. I see and feel warmth.
All things in this dreams seem so familiar. I know i have stood here, looking down into the water and seeing these shapes. I can’t imagine that I have made these thoughts up. But no matter how vivid my memories are and how deep i dream, how far i go into the thoughts i have I am still hear. I know that I haven’t moved an inch. How long have I been here? How many dreams have I had, how many have i forgotten to stay and remember. I will dream more and find my way to move.
I have archived all my memories. That must be it. The time i have spent in this room must be an interrupted restoration of some type of installation of my dreams. Like I was mid rewrite and something woke me up. Now i am coming into and out of these dreams. They are so peaceful and soothing, i dream of water and soil. Nothing but calm and cool air. I know this is a good sign that whatever I am recovering is a good thing, but it seems like the memories may not come back until I can carry the dreams into my waking life and move forward.
I am awake now, and i know that this is real. I can see the ceiling above me. I can remember painting the ceilings and walls, even though i can’t remember what holding a paint brush feels like. Did i use a paint brush? Did i use a roller. I don’t think that matters, but at the same time I can’t help but wonder if the details are actually all that do matter. I feel like i am making a record or a recording of all the things that happened. I know this isn’t right, but it is the closest i feel to what this feels like.
The other thing that seems more and more odd is the vividness of the dreams, and the clarity of what i remember. It is like someone zoomed into the moment and focused so clearly there is a blinding quality to what i am seeing. Like if my eyes could focus farther I could see the individual molecules of matter in the scene. I remember staring at water reflecting on a brown river. Even though the water was brown, the water seemed clear and fresh. I stared at the reflection for so long it seemed like my eyes would go blind from the light. I stood there and stared.
How can i remember standing if i can’t remember what it feels like to be anywhere than this bed. If i am here, and also i was there, where am i really? I know this seems odd, but it is one of the only things in my mind. Am I here now in this bed, staring at this ceiling, or am I standing by the river, or am I anywhere else.
It can’t be both can it? Can i be the sum of all those parts. It seems like maybe this isn’t all that there is, and I need to find a way to live in both places. Was i reflecting on this bed when i was at the waters edge? What did i stop when i was interrupted, and what memory was i in the middle of when my dreams were stopped. I know that can’t be good for anyone trapped in that moment. Are they stuck, repeating over and over in time. What would that look like. I don’t know if that means that they are waiting in that moment for everything to start back up while they stutter back and forth in that final moment before my memory stopped.
Cords that bind and tie[AMAZONPRODUCTS asin=”B00VH84L5E”]
It isn’t something that is coming normally, but I am now thinking that I need to move. I can’t be here much longer without something being strange. I can’t get past the feeling that there is someone or something moving over me. Something that is a feeling of someone looking over your shoulder from across a room. Which is strange, because i can’t remember being in a room. Or other people. I have memories of them all, i know so many things about so many people, but I can’t remember any of them really.
All the same, everything feels like i am being watched all the time. Like someone is seeing every part of my body, and yet, i know i am alone here in this room. There has to be something here where I can find a mirror or look at something other than the ceiling and the walls. I can’t keep my head still can I? Can i even move my head. How can i know so many things, and see so many thoughts without moving at all. Everything seems locked in my head, and I know i have a body, and all things around me seem to log into me and register a impact. At the same time, i know i haven’t moved my head in years. At least it seems so.
This day seems more disjointed than most. I can’t seem to remember my dreams, I can’t seem to remember much of anything useful today. I have so many thoughts of heat and movement. Wind that I remember, and can seem to remember the feeling of my hairs moving in the wind. I can’t understand though why my thoughts are so scattered today. I came to remember smells that I can’t smell any more. I can remember how flowers felt in my fingers and smelled in my nose, and yet, i can’t remember the last flower i saw. And were the flowers real? Were they from a store with added scent to make sure that we knew that they were flowers? Is there a job where someone raises flowers, and can’t smell them any more. There must be millions of workers growing flowers that they will never have in their house. Would you even see the colors after a while. Are they reduced to numbers and tasks. Do you just end up seeing propagation figures that tell them how many cuttings they can grow from each leaf. would we buy flowers if we saw how they were grown, how they were divided and how they were made to be machines of life. Why have we reduced everything to machines. Why are we turning living systems into machines, or is this what we are at this point. Is that something that I am at this point? A machine for remembering flowers, and how they smell and how the wind blows. Maybe that is what I have been reduced to as well. A memory machine, a storage device for things that have already happened and passing those thoughts on to someone who is still moving.
Grey Staircase Up or Down?
So I have to ask myself, if I am pulling away filters from each step as I wake up, what do I start with? What is the first filter you need to move? What would that look like, is it pulling a rod attached to blinds? Pulling a cloth across a window? Is it slipping lens before your eyes and losing the color blue. I always imagine our filters are woven fabric used to filter water. Giant black tendrels weaving in and out of each other. Small enough, and you could live on the threads, and grow your whole life on one section of the filter. Large enough and you are forced into the weave. You push up against the cloth and are pinned as everything flows around you. How many smaller things are flowing around the obstruction in the way, and do they notice anything different in the way they see the world? Do they seem faster than those next to them? Do they rush forward towards something, away from something? Filters are odd things to think about.
So does my day start out with me remembering nothing? Or everything. Am I removing all of the filters I’ve learned how to remove or add to make my life what it seems to be about. Or is the day started like a saved game or started movie, taken off pause or reloaded. I’ve gone off track, as I tend to do. I’m sure I was going somewhere with that thought, but I don’t know exactly where it was going.
One thing that I know that I am in love with is the feeling of stretching out my legs when I wake up. Something about that intense first feeling of everything pulling out. It is like potential, something building. They are often sore, and weary from the day before, but always energized for that first moment. I’ve started the day with so many stretches, they are all blending together. What goes into the thought that remembers that my body needs to move? Is it just basic biology. Is my body just knowing that moving the legs first thing is the best way to keep myself safe? Like baby deer or giraffe that are born and start walking. You know the first thing your day may call for is to run. Or to jump or dance. Or just to lay in peace and happiness and just rest and stretch. What if we are pulling our legs out to pull the vessels in our legs longer so that the negative pressure caused blood to pull faster into the extremities. What if this life was that much of a machine. What if it is all pressure gradients and volumes. What if we are a math problem, what is the equation that we would write out to explain each movement in our day. How would we wrap our mind around the variables? Can we take each moment and wake each portion of our body and mind at such a speed that we can see each letter and number etched out to pull the equation together. Another day is beginning, and I think I could lay here a few more minutes if I need to.
I’ve noticed that every morning I seem to be waking up with new pieces. I notice new things. So many thoughts that up until now I must have turned a blind eye to. Was i noticing them at all? Were they there in any form, or was I seeing them and looking through them. That is a bad path to start your brain off with first thing in the morning. If I never noticed or thought about something before that moment, was it always there and I just never noticed it? I am sure that must be the case. However, that means that we have perceptive filters on our awareness. Only when we start removing those filters to we start noticing new things. But, there must be a mechanism for doing this, for removing these filters.
Filters seem like the right word for them as well. We use filters for only one thing, to block out one thing from going to another location. We filter out light with cloth or solids, stop the waves of light from passing through, or being altered in some way to dim them. What would the anti-filter for a light wave be? If we assume that the light is already being filtered. Would it be moving beyond our atmosphere? The vacuum of space though has a large volume of molecules blocking some amount of the light. What would happen if those were pushed to one side or another in the same way blinds are parted in my bedroom when i wake up?
What would someone see looking through that vacancy? What would raw unfiltered sunlight look like? But in the same way the more interesting idea is that of ideas themselves. What is the filter we have in place of a new idea. When you are a child and first think of a novel idea, one you have never been exposed to, what was the filter in that idea’s way? The filter exists in some form since the idea you thought of has already been thought of before. (Most likely) But you have never thought of the idea before this very moment, so what was in it’s way. Since I’ve already thought about it before you, it existed, but not for you. You found the idea, and realized it existed, but the idea itself existed before now. So is the source of idea’s the person who tells you the idea? In that case, to find new ideas, we have to go to the people who are telling things to us that no one has ever said. Those people are the ones with ideas. Maybe they are right, maybe they are wrong, but they are new. New to you and new to other people as well. Removing a filter (right or wrong) is still a filter moved out of the way. It still brings us closer to the raw sunlight.