Can't get it out of my head...

I had a dream that I was a fetus, developing in a womb. I had all of my adult faculties with me, and quickly deduced that I had died and was being reincarnated. I felt like I was dreaming for two months (I'm not sure if that's when a child develops a consciousness or not, but I was developed enough at the start of my dream to have an anatomically complete body), I was so bored it was driving me mad...Then, I was born, a relatively startling procedure, which was mostly because I was leaving feet first and had to be rotated. I learned upon my birth that, despite having the knowledge of an adult, I couldn't speak or move properly due to both anatomical differences between the adult body and an infant's, and the lack of experience I had in controlling my new body; my larynx had not yet properly formed, and my motor control was hindered due to never having used my limbs to support myself, plus my muscles were weak from being in a fetal position for that long. I had no idea who the people around me were, but felt I'd grow to know them very well in the following years. This was on thursday night. Haven't had an opportunity to talk about it, and I ended up staying awake all of last night. This was the longest dream I have ever had, and I'm frankly amazed that I was able to stretch a few hours of REM sleep into a dream that appeared to last over 8 weeks. Also, I was black.

 

You need to get over yourself.

 

Wayne, you must get the wrong impression about everything I post. Or, you're a dick. This was just a weird dream, it doesn't mean anything to me, and I don't expect it to mean something to other people. I suppose it's a roundabout way of asking how long other people's dreams have seemed to them. I know dream time can be vastly different from actual time passing during sleep, it's just that I've never perceived two months of time go by in a dark, cramped space. Are you suggesting I go to a jail that endorses long stays in solitary confinement?

 

I'm suggesting that you get a life that doesn't involve talking about yourself all the time.

 

But, is talking about a dream really talking about myself? Something like that would suggest I actually know how my subconscious mind works.
People come here to vent, the most telling examples being the jabs thrown at one another when something silly or stupid is said. I start topics that gradually inspire discussion, which, as you've demonstrated by trying to give me a reality check, works no matter what is being said. So, I still win.

 

I've always thought that when you die your life flashes before your eyes, but you don't realise it is flashing before your eyes because you are reliving everyone from the beginning. This of course makes me wonder if I am already dead and everything I do is predetermined because I am in fact just going through the motions of it again. The reason I brought this up is it would help explain why your dream felt like it went for so long, I remember reading somewhere that during sleep our minds can think so fast that we could literally live a lifetime in a dream.

 

That's what I felt had happened when I woke up. It's just never been that extreme before, and it surprised me. What you say about life is also interesting, because it brings up a very intriguing existential point; what if we're all dead? What if it doesn't matter what we really do, because it's all going to end the same way no matter how we play our deck, simply because it's already supposed to happen in a certain way? Hmmm...you know, I'm not sure if I misinterpreted what you said, but I'll definitely think to enjoy my life more.

 

Fractal eternal life. Gay.

 

It's not just that, if your body is wired on adrenaline, the way you perceive time can be drastically altered. The brain is capable of dilating our perceptions to allow us to process events that much quicker, but only at times of stress or during dreams. For insects, like the dragonfly, the speed at which they process events is so much faster than ours is at rest, they wouldn't be able to enjoy a movie. They wouldn't see continuous movement, they'd be able to actually see the individual frames as if they were shown a photo album with automatically turning pages. Plus, there are cognitive deficiencies inherent to being a dragonfly, so it's assumed the one in question was as intelligent as a human and capable of understanding a given story. Our brains can do the same thing, but normally such processing speed is reserved for situations in which death is a great possibility.

 

Notice how I said "felt" and didn't instantly claim something preposterous like having been simply asleep for 8 weeks. Though I probably misspoke by saying it was the longest dream I've ever had, since technically, people can enter hundreds of sleep patterns per night (dreams last anywhere from a few seconds to 45 minutes), and there's a good chance that this dream did not, in fact, take up most of my REM. There was a study done in around 1995 that said there were lucid dreams where the length of time perceived could be altered by the dreamer. This was a semi-lucid dream, but I was limited by the aspects of my "body" and didn't mind observing any of it, except for the mind-numbing darkness that was the majority of my dream.
However, since the man in your meme was eating, would you like to know of a recipe I've improvised?
All right...
you need enough pasta to serve 7 people.
Get 3 pounds of sausage
Marinara sauce
3 cloves of chopped garlic
1 hot pepper, chopped (not too hot, just a little hotter than a jalapeno)
1/2 teaspoon of salt
teaspoon of basil
1/4 teaspoon of minced onion
1/4 cup of shredded parmesan and cheddar
1/8 ounce fresh basil (or dried ground, if you can't get fresh)
Add oregano and crushed red pepper to taste

Boil some water. Add the salt.
coat a skillet with some olive oil, put it on medium heat.
cut a little more than a third of the sausage into pieces about 1/2 inch thick; you want it to cook at pace with the pasta.
When the water boils, put in the pasta. Add the sausage to the skillet. Turn the sausage as necessary until brown.
While the sausage is cooking, add the marinara to a third burner (in a pot, of course) on medium-low heat, with all of your chosen ingredients; so just dump in your garlic, basil, onion, cheese, oregano, red pepper, slightly hotter pepper, and mix. Make sure to stir it regularly.
After about 10 minutes, the pasta will be done. Drain it and return it to the pot with the heat off.
If your sausage isn't done yet, keep at it. No one likes food-poisoning.
When it IS done, add it to your sauce, stirring some more. Make sure to add the oils from the cooked sausage into the sauce. Unless you don't want to.
Then, simply put your pasta on a plate and dress it with your customized marinara and sausage sauce!
If you're into pasta and sausage, I feel the extra garlic and spice of this marinara really compliments the overall flavor of the meal.
You should have plenty of leftovers if you live alone, and a decent amount if you share your domicile.
I didn't improvise the recipe so much as I simply added extra stuff to boring marinara. So...I guess I could write a recipe on FoodNetwork.com!

 

I'm sorry Grossenschwamm, I don't mean to be a dick or anything, but that reply was easily the most jarringly amusing thing I've seen today.

Fascinating dream though.

 

I laughed too, really. I can understand where he's coming from, but my understanding of the similar complaint given to me before that, from Japes, was that I was essentially coming here with mental issues and asking everyone to solve my problems. I stopped doing that and decided if I did post something regarding me, I'd try to be entertaining or otherwise start a conversation. Still, I understand that the basis of most of my threads would be considered egocentric. I suppose it's a result of low self esteem, as opposed to an over-inflated ego, though the same thing can happen in either case. Also, the way my brain works, my gut instinct tells me people will respond to everything the exact same way I do, while observations tell me they'll either simply respond, or ignore me. However, what I say and do here isn't a grand example of what I do in the rest of my time. That would be like only ever seeing me when I drive a car or go grocery shopping, and then saying to me I need to get a life that doesn't involve me doing either of those things all the time.

 

Oh I don't have any issue with the original post or related posts, it was just funny because of how blunt it was after your lengthy post.

On the other hand, I actually think you add a lot of color to this forum. I'm sure I could fill it up with talking about how I fell in love with a girl 5 years ago after meeting her once, and despite never seeing her since I can't get over her. I could also talk about my White Knight syndrome which makes me desperate to solve 'problems' that I imagine my female friends have, and usually ends with me in an incredibly awkward position. However none of that is nearly as interesting as a two-month long dream about being a fetus.

The thoughts of a crazy person are the most interesting thoughts of all, I often find. :roll:

 

Eh?

 

Because I'm not crazy at all. No sir-ee.

 

Oh. Oh ho ho. I see what you did there.

 

I did that thing at school where you hold your breath and get someone to press heavily on your chest til you black out. I was only out for 10 seconds, apparently I started fitting uncontrollably with lots of dribble coming out of my mouth, but whilst I was out it felt like I'd spent hours thinking about random crap. So yeah I'd say the subconscious mind can distort time.

If there's another lesson here it's never try the thing where you hold your breath and someone presses on your chest til you black out!

 

I had a dream that Grakelin came over to my parents' house and we played ping pong.

(posted from a Nintendo DS)

 

I hope someone got my Inception reference. It would be a shame if the ten minutes I spent on browsing Google Images and GIMPing were to be wasted altogether.

You should watch Inception, by the way, it's a great movie.