dreams, and stuff.

I am reading the Sapolsky article on dreams now and suddenly remembering one of the many dreams I had last night (sleep dep usually means a ton of dreams very early on): I was aware that I was dreaming and decided to explore how much I could see, smell, hear, taste, and feel inside the dream itself.

Some things I tried: cranking up the volume on music that was mysteriously playing in the background, noting the complexity of the music and the fact that I could distinguish it very clearly - down to every lyric of the song; noticing the vast array of colors and the distinct sharpness of all the objects and of my surroundings (and thinking to myself - "hey, this almost looks like I'm not dreaming, except I am because it's daytime here but it would be the middle of the night if I were awake").

I also distinctly recall a couple other things: thinking that I should write down the various dreams I was having at the time (something I do quite often - the thinking, that is, not the writing), and also at various points of different dreams, checking to see if I was still dreaming.

Then I tried to make a lot of cool stuff happen and to create things inside my dream (apparate a cute girl! (who likes me!)), though without much success. Apparently, being inside a dream and becoming aware of it doesn't automatically grant you special powers. ;( Then at that point, I decided, "Well, maybe I should try to discover something in this dream that I wouldn't be able to discover in real life. Time to go exploring!"

But clearly, we know where my priorities are. =D