"Have you ever confused life with a dream?"

[Guest]

In the movie, "Girl, Interrupted", this question was uttered by Winona Ryder as she was being prepared to be committed. I was enthralled with the movie and found it to be very sensitive and yet at the same time, it was so difficult to watch because of the pain I felt for the characters.

In regard to the quote above, have you ever confused life with a dream? Or for that matter, have you ever read a book that you felt so strongly about that you actually became part of the words you were reading? Maybe you could identify with the character so much that you became that character?

Have you ever awoken in the middle of the night and were not sure that what you were feeling was from a dream or from the reality that you are a part of?

Movies have the same effect, also. There have been times while I was watching a movie and have become so engrossed in what I was watching and hearing that I felt I was one with the character, that her words were coming from my mind and not from a script that had been written by an unknown person.

Please share……have you ever had these feelings at any time in your life? How did you feel while it was happening?

 

[LemonDroppe]

There are many books that I've read in my life where I've become so completely engrossed that in my daydreams I belong to them. Like the Harry Potter books... I would have such vivid daydreams as I puttered around the house, semi-convinced that I could make the toys fly to their shelves rather than pick them up!

As far as dreams... there are so many times that I wake up and stare at my room, confused. Why is this man sleeping next to me? Why is there a child crying? *I'm* not married, *I'm* not a mother.

Then reality sets in. This happens very often and always leaves me with a sense of disorientation and sadness.

 

[Guest]

LemonDroppe quoted:

Then reality sets in. This happens very often and always leaves me with a sense of disorientation and sadness.

Yes, LemonDroppe, I can identify with what you wrote so very much. I was reading a book called "The Ladder of Years" and the main character runs away from home without any warning at all. She starts living her life and becomes a new person. As I was reading the book, I could feel her many conficts and became part of her emotional upheavals. It was emotionally draining for me to read this book, yet, when I would leave my home to go to work or to the store that thought crossed my mind many times. I was almost wanting to leave home to see how I would become, to live her life and see things from her point of view. It was a bit scary for me to have these thoughts. I felt like I was her.

Thank you for sharing.

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

There is a film out now dedicated to this theme called "The Waking Life". It's fantastic...a sureal animated (R rated) feature film about a boy who can't figure out if he's awake or asleep.

The film was "filmed" first with live actors (like Ethan Hawke) and then run through a computer to give it a jiggly, psychedellic animated look...the crossing of "Reality" with animation works in juxtaposition with the theme of crossing "real life" with the dream world.

Click here: http://www.wakinglifemovie.com/ for their web site, and you MUST run some of the clips from the film to see how strange and beautiful it is (there's practically no download time).

I'd love to know if anyone has seen the film yet.

 

[Guest]

Dixon Carter Lee,

I'm going to check now. Thank you for the link.

No, I've never heard of such a movie, but now I'm so intrigued that I'll need to find it. This sounds so very interesting. The concept is exactly what I'm infatuated with.

 

[miles]

Don't tell me..

..***** isn't a dream?

 

[Guest]

Re: Don't tell me..

..***** isn't a dream?

Miles,

It might not be a dream....but it can be dreamy....

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Hmm. I couldn't get pat their splash page today (though it was working fine yesterday).

Well,if you do a search for "Waking life clips" you'll find other spots on the net that have them. But if you can get onto their site, do so -- it's pretty cool.

You might be interested in Roger Ebert's review of the film: Waking Life Review - Four Stars

 

[Shy Tall Guy]

Not so much confused as let "dreams" intrude into my real life.

For me, my dreams are almost all about emotional release, and very little about anything rational. So after a particularly emotional dream I often experience the same emotions for a while in my waking life. I sometimes do not know I am dreaming, but I always know when I am awake as the difference is like night and day. My dreams are all jumbled up, often moving from one issue to another, rarely making much sense except in the most abstract sense.

As for books and movies (and sometimes music) - I often feel similar effects there. Yes I often cry at movies (no not blubbering) if it is a good movie, or a book, and yes it embaresses me (cultural conditioning) - and it takes me a while sometimes to come down from whatever emotional state I was in.

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Enchanted, the site is fine (I was on a computer that didn't have a Flash player earlier -- you need Flash to view the site.)

Here it is again. It's beautiful. Watch a clip or two: The Waking Life

 

[Saturn Return]

I don't see the difference between either/all possible, interchangable realities.

It's all one in the same..in the aether we swim.

 

[horny_giraffe]

I suspect that many, here, have vivid dreams. I am one of those people.

I used to work as a loader at UPS. Boxes roll down a conveyor belt and into a long semi trailer, where you stack the boxes in tiers from the front of the trailer to the back. Although the pay is good, one works at an ungodly pace, loading as much as a two or three trailers in a four hour period on a busy night. I would go home feeling exhausted. My arms sore and swollen, I would fall asleep in my apartment near the train tracks. I would feel the familiar rumble of the train, the distant sound of sirens, and continuing sounds of traffic.

A vacation to the quiet town where my parents live generally felt like a welcome relief. No work, just quiet rest. But one night, I had this nightmare that I was at work, trapped in a semi trailer behind a truckload of boxes. The boxes were stacked to the ceiling all the way to the rear of the trailer. I was terrified, feeling suffocated and knowing that it would take hours to get me out even if they knew that I was there. I screamed for help in the pitch darkness, hammering the boxes with my fists ...

I woke to my own terrified scream, aware only of a strange and deathly quiet around me. In the nearly complete darkness, my eyes felt like little more than empty sockets in my skull. My heart pounded in my throat as I hammered my fists against the plywood. Desperately, I ran my hands along the plywood, searching for a crack, a way out ... I felt a pipe ... a hot water radiator.

Gradually, I realized that I was in the dark and quiet basement of my parents home and I fumbled around in the strange surrounding until I found what was probably a light switch. Finally, in the circle of light from the lamp, I sat for more than a few minutes until my heartbeat began to slow, and the panic started to subside.

Look, I'm a grown man--I'm not generally afraid of the dark. But for the rest of my vacation there, you'd better believe that I was using a nightlight.

 

[batter]

yes i have

i got things mixed up for about 4 days.
the dreams were so vivid, i could not tell if i were awake or dreaming. it started when i was on the patch to stop smoking. the doctor warned me about vivid dreams, but i was not expecting anything like i experienced. needless to say, i quit the patch after 5 days.
the worst one was probably the last dream i had in which my mother called in my room and woke me and told me supper was ready. the alarm clock read 5:00 pm. i was working midnights that week.
i came downstairs, and my wife asked me why i was up and when i told her my mother woke me and told me supper was ready, my wife started laughing. my mother was not over at all and it was only 10:00 am.
i should have known it was a dream because i dont eat when i get up from midnight shift. i eat at work only that week.

 

[juicylips]

There have been dreams I never wanted to wake up from.

I lay there and try to go back to sleep to capture what if fleeing away. It never works. It is like gathering the wind and trying to hold it so close it envelopes you.

Cassidy

 

[Guest]

There is a film out now dedicated to this theme called "The Waking Life". It's fantastic...a sureal animated (R rated) feature film about a boy who can't figure out if he's awake or asleep.

The film was "filmed" first with live actors (like Ethan Hawke) and then run through a computer to give it a jiggly, psychedellic animated look...the crossing of "Reality" with animation works in juxtaposition with the theme of crossing "real life" with the dream world.

Click here: http://www.wakinglifemovie.com/ for their web site, and you MUST run some of the clips from the film to see how strange and beautiful it is (there's practically no download time).

I'd love to know if anyone has seen the film yet.

Dixon Carter Lee,

I was finally able to download the necessary files to watch the clips. Oh my gosh....the trailer they use in the movie theaters was just amazing. I've never seen anything quite like this before.

Watching the characters and their surroundings was like looking in a mirror of their minds. I don't know if I can explain what I mean by that statement, but I have a feeling you'll understand. I can see where they used specific people to mimic their movements as that enabled them to be so life-like.

What amazed me the most about seeing this develop was that they knew they were dreaming in life, about life, it was life dreaming about dreaming. No, I'm not going crazy, it's just that that was the scenario, that was what was happening.

The only movie theater in my area that is showing this movie is on the East Side of Cleveland. But, it will be well worth the trip to watch this wonderful work of art.

Thank you so very much for sharing that with me. I appreciate it very much.

 

[seXieleXie]

a little poetry for you all, courtest of Edgar Allan Poe

A Dream Within A Dream
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow --
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand --
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,

While I weep -- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?.
-----

i often have very vivid dreams, so vivid that when i'm recalling them (usually in the shower immediatly after wakening) i'm sometimes ebarassed or upset by what i've "done."

 

[RoamingSpirit]

No, but I've confused a dream with real life. Got me in a lot of trouble with the wife too!

 

[Guest]

Shy Tall Guy replied:

I often experience the same emotions for a while in my waking life.

That is exactly what I'm referring to, STG. You've become a part of your dream during your waking hours. It was so real and vivid to you that you couldn't let it escape you. Sometimes I have been like this, too. I have actually done things because I thought the dreams I had were so real. I believe Batter said the same thing, too. It's quite interesting how our mind works, isn't it?

When a book or a movie is so enthralling that we actually become one with a character, it's so difficult to break away and let go. I have often times slowed my reading so the end takes much longer to reach. lol


Saturn Return quoted:

I don't see the difference between either/all possible, interchangable realities.

Not too long ago, a group of friends and I were speaking about the same statement you made. For everything we believe in, there is another "almost belief" following right behind. I have often wondered myself whether our dreams are really our waking life and vice versa. It surely gives us something to think about.

Thank you for your comments.

 

[Guest]

horny_giraffe,

If it makes you feel any better, I, too, am afraid of the dark. I always leave a light on in the downstairs hallway when it's time to go to sleep.

Our visions are so real we tend to make concessions in our everyday life just so we can make it through the night. Thank you for sharing yourself with us. I know it's not always easy to admit certain things, but that's how we all learn to accept each other for what we are.


batter,

I can remember reading a book about a woman and man who were going through a terrible divorce. As I would read a new page in that book, I would react to situations just as the woman would have reacted, too. I remember having to step back and realize my life was not the book I was reading. I was not the woman in the book, nor would I ever be.

juicylips

There have been dreams I never wanted to wake up from.

Those dreams are the ones I would love to dream over and over again, too. Have you ever tried to go back to sleep just so that you could continue that most delicious dream? It's just not the same, is it? Sometimes, I even try to continue it myself as I'm lying in my bed, only to realize it can't be done.

RoamingSpirit,

Next time, you'll have to find someone with the same name as your wife. LOL! That was so funny. Thank you.

seXieleXie,

I had completely forgotten that Edgar Allan Poe had another side to him. That particular poem is quite thought-provoking. "All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream." Those words can make us wonder just what is real and what is the fantasy? Is there really a fine line between the two?

Thank you to all who replied. You have given us a glimpse into your dream world which is a most private place.

My wish for all of you on this night and the rest to follow are beautiful dreams that will carry you over into your days and leave you with a sense of utter bliss.

 

[Guest]

Quite often, unfortunately.
My mother passed on her dreams to me. We dream of the future; deaths, mostly. So, my dreams feel very real to me. The line is blurred.

Nice thread, Enchanted.