walking thoughts

Tags

autumn, dreaming, Friedrich Nietzsche, photography, photos, planning, quotes, walking, wondering

All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking

Friedrich Nietzsche

Dublin is a great place to walk around. The inner city is small enough to allow you to wander from a to b quite easily and it is really quite flat. So when I left my afternoon appointment yesterday I decided to let my feet do the walking and my mind wander.

My brogue clad feet tapped on the path as I walked, a steady tattoo of sound my  companion as I walked down the leafy streets of a south side Georgian terrace. For the first time in months I had to shrug a jacket on to stop the wind from chilling my bones and  maybe it was my imagination playing tricks on me but I thought that the air smelt colder, announcing that Autumn had truly arrived.

Unlike so many others I quite enjoy this time of year: the riot of colours in the parks and lining the streets; the comfy cardigans; hot plates of soup and the first lit fires of the season I sit next too while I knit.

As I walked my thoughts changed, plans made way to dreams and I allowed myself to be excited by possibilities, no matter how unsure or far away they seemed. So, while I know the rain and winds that this time of year brings may dampen my mood at times, I am quite looking forward to the next few months, and I hope that for me autumn won’t just be the end of something but also the beginning. And if not – well at least it also means Christmas isn’t too far anymore.

leaves changing colours

long days, short nights

Tags

desk day, dreaming, long day, sleepless, working

After a day at the desk yesterday I have a  long day ahead of me today: first five hours of teaching (no break), a meeting about some magazine design work and then supporting a friend at her film screening. Somewhere in-between meeting, teaching and viewing I’m going to have to find the time to eat.

As the day stretches long in front of me my mind wanders back to my sleepless night. For some reason I ended up working until early this morning and when I finally did get to bed i couldn’t sleep.

I hate that feeling when you’re lying in bed, knowing that you have to be up early in the morning and dreamland just won’t open up it’s doors and admit you. As I tossed and turned and watched as the minutes slipped by my mind just wouldn’t shut down and give me peace.

So today I am stuck with an overtired feeling and some rings under my eyes, I just hope that I can get to bed early tonight and that sleep will come. After all even if it is only a four day week for most I have to work this weekend.

So I will trudge through the day and hopefully I will find restful dreams at the end of it.

 

deep dreams

Tags

Calvin S. Hall, dreaming, dreams, Oscar Wilde, psychology, psychology of dreams, quote, REM atonia, REM sleep, sleep, sleep paralysis

I didn’t want to wake up this morning. I was so comfy in my bed and a wonderfully vivid dream captured my attention, luring me away from the day, holding me  captive to the night.

It wasn’t any special kind of dream, but it felt like being inside a novel, a story I would enjoy to read. I could feel my feet as they ran barefoot over grass, I even believe I could smell the sun on the flowers.

As I curled up in my bed, my eyes tightly shut my thoughts thoroughly occupied, sounds from outside drifted in through my window, pulling me away from my imagination, into reality. And as I slowly let go of my dream and turned towards the day I felt a little sad, knowing that world I was just in would be lost forever.

Dreams are wonderful things and we all have them, even those who claim not too. But they are funny things as we don’t really know all to much about them.

An average dream can be anywhere between 5-20 minutes long which means we spend about six years of our lives dreaming. So why can’t we seem to hold on to them, remember them? Well, for one thing brain scans taken while people were asleep show that the frontal lobes, the area that plays a key role in memory formation, are inactive during our REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, our deep sleep.

Another interesting fact about REM sleep is that we are sort of paralyzed while we dream. This phenomenon is knows as REM atonia and prevents us from acting out our dreams, this just really means that our motor neurons aren’t stimulated, ensuring our body doesn’t move, protecting us.

The freaky thing is that this paralyzes can carry over into our waking state. For as  long as ten minutes someone who has awakened from a dream can feel unable to move, this condition is know as sleep paralysis, and can be frightening but should soon pass.

An American psychologist called Calvin S. Hall did research over a period of more than forty years and collected over 50,000 dream accounts from students. The surprising result of these dream accounts is that people tend to experience more negative emotions than positive ones. Why this is, is a little unclear but many researchers believe that this helps us tackle stress.

But the most interesting dreams are the lucid ones, dreams that we can influence and that we are aware of. These are dreams we direct and often remember, but only half of all people can recall at least one instants where they were able to control their dream and only few experience them quite frequently. I seem to be one of these lucky ones.

But for now I am awake and will make the best of the day, maybe wander down to an antiques fair in a little while, or take a stroll on the beach, happy in the knowledge that dreams don’t seem to run out and await us all when we close our eyes at night.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

Oscar Wilde