Vivid dreams, and crisis management
Jul. 18th, 2012 08:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseStrangely vivid dreams last night. No real overarching narrative that I can remember (even a dream-logic one), but some very vivid images with lots of recurring themes: travel, loneliness, sudden bonds between near strangers, sexual tension, fear of betrayal, response to authority. It occurs to me that many of the images I recall would not be out of place in some kind of post-apocalyptic journey story a la The Road or Zombieland; there was that sense of continuous danger as well as that immediate bond between the few people I met that came from the sense of Hey, you survived this, too!.
For all of that, it wasn't a nightmare as such. There was only one moment that provoked a strong emotional response; I was driving a small car along a road that I had driven down just recently, and therefore wasn't paying a whole lot of attention (it wasn't like there was much traffic in this nearly-deserted world). Unfortunately, there had been a flood of some sort, and a spot in the road that had just been a small dip the last time had become a full-on wash, and a very deep one, at that. For whatever reason, I didn't notice it until it was too late to stop, and while I gunned the engine and almost made it over the dip, the rear wheels didn't catch and I was quickly sinking, back-end first, the car rapidly filling with water where I'd had the rear windows down slightly, the current tugging it under the ground.
Needless to say, I could feel my adrenal glands dumping epinephrine into my system. As came up in the post about the scorpion on my foot, adrenaline seems to kick my usual "face the problem and find a solution" approach into overdrive; I sort of turn into a Guy-Ritchie-style Holmes type, calmly outlining my plan of attack in my head and then putting it into action. In this case, even as the water came up over my face and I woke up (hoping, belatedly, that the choking sounds I realized I'd been making hadn't woken up Brian), I could actually hear myself thinking very calmly:
1.) Undo seatbelt.
2.) Take several deep breaths of what air you have remaining.
3.) When the water fills up the car, open the door. {Thank you, Mythbusters.}
4.) Swim out and against the current.
4a.) Flood waters are often polluted and filled with trash; keep your mouth and eyes shut.
5.) When the quality of light grows brighter, start kicking upwards.
I also remember thinking, also rather calmly, that there was a significant chance that this plan would fail and I would die. But, oddly, this didn't incite any additional fear; on some level I seemed to know that I could only do the best that I could and there was no point in wasting energy (and oxygen) panicking over it. Even when I woke up, choking with my system in overdrive, it didn't take me long to calm down. Though I did have to take some deep breaths to ground myself a bit and get over the attack of the shakes that always seems to follow high-adrenaline situations.
Particularly vivid dreams like this always make me wonder a little as to their provenance. I know most folks just figure dreams are randomly-activated neurons that your brain attempts to stitch together into a coherent story, but while last night's fragments didn't really hold together, they all felt very much of a piece - like they were from the same world, even after the waking-up-and-falling-back-asleep part. Maybe some dreams are a way of visiting alternate universes?
For all of that, it wasn't a nightmare as such. There was only one moment that provoked a strong emotional response; I was driving a small car along a road that I had driven down just recently, and therefore wasn't paying a whole lot of attention (it wasn't like there was much traffic in this nearly-deserted world). Unfortunately, there had been a flood of some sort, and a spot in the road that had just been a small dip the last time had become a full-on wash, and a very deep one, at that. For whatever reason, I didn't notice it until it was too late to stop, and while I gunned the engine and almost made it over the dip, the rear wheels didn't catch and I was quickly sinking, back-end first, the car rapidly filling with water where I'd had the rear windows down slightly, the current tugging it under the ground.
Needless to say, I could feel my adrenal glands dumping epinephrine into my system. As came up in the post about the scorpion on my foot, adrenaline seems to kick my usual "face the problem and find a solution" approach into overdrive; I sort of turn into a Guy-Ritchie-style Holmes type, calmly outlining my plan of attack in my head and then putting it into action. In this case, even as the water came up over my face and I woke up (hoping, belatedly, that the choking sounds I realized I'd been making hadn't woken up Brian), I could actually hear myself thinking very calmly:
1.) Undo seatbelt.
2.) Take several deep breaths of what air you have remaining.
3.) When the water fills up the car, open the door. {Thank you, Mythbusters.}
4.) Swim out and against the current.
4a.) Flood waters are often polluted and filled with trash; keep your mouth and eyes shut.
5.) When the quality of light grows brighter, start kicking upwards.
I also remember thinking, also rather calmly, that there was a significant chance that this plan would fail and I would die. But, oddly, this didn't incite any additional fear; on some level I seemed to know that I could only do the best that I could and there was no point in wasting energy (and oxygen) panicking over it. Even when I woke up, choking with my system in overdrive, it didn't take me long to calm down. Though I did have to take some deep breaths to ground myself a bit and get over the attack of the shakes that always seems to follow high-adrenaline situations.
Particularly vivid dreams like this always make me wonder a little as to their provenance. I know most folks just figure dreams are randomly-activated neurons that your brain attempts to stitch together into a coherent story, but while last night's fragments didn't really hold together, they all felt very much of a piece - like they were from the same world, even after the waking-up-and-falling-back-asleep part. Maybe some dreams are a way of visiting alternate universes?
