A dream I had last night...

There's this myth out there that if you die in your dreams, you die in reality. Well, I can officially attest to the fact that this is untrue...I think. Whether or not I died in my dream is technically up for debate, and you'll see why once I've recanted my tale....

I was sitting in the ABC-30 newsroom [this is where I work, for those who don't know] with the usual weekend crew, just hanging out. Randomly, in walks Miss P, the leadership/student council teacher from when I was in high school, complaining, "I left Edison High School so I could get away from a-holes like these idiots." I said, "Miss P, what are you talking about?" She replied, "Shut the f--- up, loser" and stamped away angrily. I was confused. I was even more confused when Miss Carey, who I had for freshman biology back in high school entered the room, talking about the Pope to our weather guy, Angelo. I didn't know what was going on, so I left.

When I walked out of the room I was somehow in some nondescript department store, in search of a gray sweatshirt. I located the area where they should have been and walked over there. En route, I passed a group of 3 loitering teenage boys. One of them turned to me as I walked by and said in aggressive tone, "If you wanna do something, make a move son." I paid him no mind and continued my search for the desired article of clothing.

This clown followed me and said "Hey, I said something to you." I foolishly remark, snidely, "I know, I chose to ignore you." He says "Naw, f--- that, I don't play that sh--." He advanced toward me with a knife. I kept looking for sweatshirts, hardly taking notice of this kid. He finally ends up standing right next to me and says "Ignore this motherf------" and he proceeds to stab me in the stomach and chest. I hit him and run away, but both of the guys he was with pull out guns and shoot me in the chest. I fall to floor, blood and water pouring out of my wounds (I believe this makes me a heretic). I was dying. I was dead. But I was watching myself die, I wasn't actually lying on the floor. Well, I was, but I was also watching me. As if I were participating and watching at the same time.

Then, as if it had been a dream within a dream, I woke up in a laboratory, with myself as the doctor presiding over myself the patient with various apparatuses (apparatti?) attached to me, and I (as doctor) asked myself (as patient), "Did you die?" I reply to myself, "Yes."
I, as the doctor, exclaim, "Eureka! It Worked!" and run gleefully out the room, and a large crowd of people who are sitting in bleachers in the laboratory erupt into applause.


Then I woke up for real....so I died, but I didn't die, because I died in a dream in a dream, and not in the dream itself, if that makes sense.

Go ahead and wager and explanation of that one.

The other day while I was in the shower I posed to myself the question of whether my dreams were in the 1st person or the 3rd person POV (don't ask why, my mind is at times a strange place to be).

Anyhow, I'm pretty sure all of my dreams are in the 1st person POV, but then again in this dream I recited above, I moved to the 3rd person when I died, and then I was both 1st and 3rd person when I was myself as the 'patient' and 'doctor'.
Perhaps I transitioned to avoid dying in the dream because subconsciously I believed that I would die if I died in my dream, and I somehow removed myself to avoid such, and then concocted the laboratory situation as extra safety precaution.

Controlling your dreams in a state of dreaming while knowing your dreaming, is I believe called lucid dreaming, a process discussed cursorily in Cameron Crowe's movie, Vanilla Sky (2001).

Does it matter if we dream in 1st or 3rd POV? Does 1st person mean you can't see your true self and exist in a construct you've created for yourself, while 3rd person means you can see yourself as you are and objectively understand yourself better? Or could be the other way around...1st person meaning you understand exactly who you are and embody your true self, while 3rd person means you don't know who you are and are trying to get an understanding of who you are. Does it have to do with ability to control your dream? I definitely felt more in 'control' of what happened in the 3rd person, while in the 1st person I was more in the moment and it was more 'real'. Does it even matter? Where does the content come from and how do we interpret that, particularly in the context of POV?
(^complete stream-of-consciousness-ness)

I don't have any of the answers, obviously, but I think it's worth thinking about. Dreaming is something we all do, and no one has ever convincingly proven what it all means, and honestly I hope no one ever does. The mystery of the dream is part of what makes it an interesting and integral part of life. It serves as a constant reminder that we don't have all the answers and never will when it comes to ourselves and our world.

For more movies suffused with dreaming and/or ideas about dreaming check out:
Waking Life (2001), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), 8 1/2 (1963, and probably most of Fellini's oeuvre), Lost Highway (1997, and probably more of Lynch's films), and Wild Strawberries (1957) to name a few.

Well, that was definitely an infomercial-ish/Reading Rainbow-esque kinda ending.....meh.

Oh yeah, welcome to October :)