| Fate of a Dreamer |
[Jun. 9th, 2006|07:59 am]
Scott
|
A few weeks ago, I mentioned I was trying to learn to lucid dream out of a text from WikiBooks. Their procedure is pretty easy. You get into the habit of performing certain lucid dreaming checks they teach you. These let you know whether you're dreaming or not. Eventually you discover that you are and become conscious of it. I've been doing this pretty dilligently. But it just hasn't been working out.
Take my dream experience a few nights ago: I developed a horrible case of leprosy. This was an unusual enough event that I suspected I was dreaming, especially when my doctor decided to amputate my fingers with a pair of kitchen scissors (this hurts). So I did the usual lucid dreaming checks. They all came out negative, telling me this was all completely real. It seemed unlikely, but the alternative - information from a Wiki being wrong - was unthinkable. "Darn," I thought, as my doctor snipped off another few fingers. Then I woke up.
The other night I had an even worse lucid-dream related experience: I decided to go hiking in a nearby canyon at 4 AM in the morning. I got in the car and checked the gas gauge: it read that I still had half a tank of gas left, and I was satisfied. So I drove over to the canyon, which really wasn't that far, and about three-quarters of the way there, the "very low fuel!" light started flashing, the gas had all magically disappeared. One of my random little fears has always been running out of gas in the middle of nowhere, so I suspected it was a dream and did a few lucid dreaming checks. They all came out negative again.
So now I had a problem: I was in the middle of nowhere at 4 AM and quickly running out of gas. I decided to go the rest of the way to the trailhead because there would be somewhere to park there, and I could figure out what to do next without having to worry about running out of gas in the middle of the road. So I made it to the canyon with a couple of drops of gas left in the tank, and right across from the trailhead was...what else?...a giant shopping center. So I parked in the shopping center and looked around for a gas station. There was none. I figured I would wait until the people who worked at the stores showed up and see if any of them would help me, but it was still only around 5. So I hiked the canyon for a couple of hours and came back around 8:30.
[at this point, I just want to mention that I'm writing this on my bed with my laptop in my lap. I caught site of my desk, saw that my laptop was missing, got worried, and started looking around my room for it without even bothering to stop typing this entry while I was doing so. I would say it took me a good ten seconds to realize what I was doing. Anyway...]
At 8:30, there were a couple of people around, and I asked one of them if there were any gas stations nearby. "Sure," she told me, "just walk down San Joaquin Hill until you reach the bottom, and there will be a gas station on the right." I see the sign for San Joaquin Hill right there, so I figure this will be easy. I'll go down the hill, borrow a can of gas from the station, come back up, refill my car, and drive it down and get it filled up.
So I start walking down San Joaquin Hill. And I walk. And I walk. And an hour and a half later, I come to the ocean, because apparently this is the World's Biggest Hill and goes all the way down to Newport Beach. There, on my right, is a gas station, and I go in and ask for a can of gas. Surprise! Their cans of gas are in the garage, and the garage is locked today because it's the mechanic's day off! There is no other gas station for miles around.
So I start walking back up San Joaquin Hill. It's about ninety degrees out, I just walked a whole canyon and then down a gigantic hill, I have no gas, and I'm starting to feel pretty miserable. Then I realize: forget what the checks had to say, this must be a dream! Why else would my gas be all gone when it was half-full when I checked the tank? Why else would there be a huge shopping center at the entrance to a canyon trail? I try all of the checks again. I still can't get them to check out, but I do notice that things seem a little unreal and that my consciousness is less clear than usual. By the time I make it back up to the shopping center and my car, I am pretty sure that I am, indeed, dreaming.
Emboldened by this revelation, I get a plan. My car probably has like two drops of gas left. So I can use one of those drops to get to the top of San Joaquin Hill, then just coast down the hill for a few miles without using up any fuel, and then use the other drop to get into the gas station. I am a little worried by this plan because if I run out of gas on the hill I'm likely to be in a very, very bad position, but what the heck, it's just a stupid dream anyway.
I turn on the car, drive to the top of the hill, coast down, turn into the gas station, and successfully fill up my car. Victory for Scott! With a full tank of gas, I drive home and make it back by 11 or so. I spend the rest of the day reading, playing Civilization IV, and doing a lot of other activities that conspicuously do not involve waking up and realizing that I was dreaming all along.
From this experience I have learned the following things:
1. On my car, the gas gauge always hovers around half-full until you turn the car on, at which point it slowly goes to whatever the real level is.
2. This is Orange County. Of course there's a giant shopping center near the entrance to a pristine canyon.
3. It is sort of to be expected that things seem a little unreal and that my consciousness is less clear than usual when I wake up at 4 AM and hike for five hours in ninety degree heat.
4. Lucid dreaming checks may return false negatives, but (luckily!) they will never return false positives.
5. Find a better time at which to go hiking. |
|
|
confused