Misread the thread title as “Onanierotic.” Nevermind!
Does Romania have unusual levels of lead in the environment?
I am still laughing! I couldn’t be bothered to do that much!
I’m used to that form, as well, but figured this post was about dreams mainly because I’m a fan of Gaiman’s Sandman series and the protagonist is called Oneiros a couple times. I just wonder why the OP used such an awkward term rather than “Dreams.”
Of men and their dreams.
Why throw around $5 phrases when 2-cent terms work just as well or better? You’re stealing my gimmick!
Well, his second post does mention. . .
“restless bodies that moaned, gasped, sobbed, spoke, screamed, sweated, jerked…”
. . . so maybe you weren’t so wrong. :dubious:
Well, yes. After all Delirium is Dream’s sister so he likes her and – ah, sorry. Wrong milieu. Carry on.
–G!
Well now they call me the breeze!
I just keep movin’ on.
…–J.J. Cale
…Lynrd Skynyrd
…Call me the Breeze
…Second Helping
I actually knew what it meant, but only because The Lathe of Heaven is one of my favourite books. I have a DVD of the original PBS adaptation of it, too.
A dream may also be about a daydream, an aspiration, or even some vain fancy.
Oneiric activity refers strictly to the dreams people have while sleeping.
It is not clear what causes dreams to occur and what purpose they serve (if any). Regarding their contents there seems to be a wild degree of randomness, but they’re not that random after all because people experience particular types of oneiric activity, which appears to change or evolve as one grows up and goes through certain life experiences.
I for one, for example, have always had dreams in which I fly. However, my oneiric flights were quite frequent when I was young whereas now they only occur sporadically. I can’t tell whether this is because I really dreamed these flights more frequently in the past or because I can remember almost no dreams these days.
Although I told myself early in my life that dreams were to be ignored due to their apparent inconsequential and residual nature, I did notice the influence that life events had on the dreams I might have. There is a vivid memory of a nightmare I had when I was five. I had different nightmares when I was little, but this one was unique. It happened after I watched an American movie – in a East European country, movies on TV could be British, French, German, Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Russian or even Chinese. My parents had insisted I should go to bed, but after pretending to fall asleep I snuck into the living room and watched it (probably) unnoticed from behind an armchair. The movie was about two brothers who played on their house roof after a heavy snowfall. One brother pushed the other, which caused the latter to slide down the roof and fall on the fence, where he died impaled on the metal spikes. I dreamed the exact roof, on which I was sliding down to get impaled just like the poor boy in the movie.
Something similar happened after a Halloween-like night when I was about ten. There’s no Halloween in Eastern Europe – actually, there is some now due to globalization and the fall of communism, but back then there was none. Children enjoyed long summer vacations and stayed out to play until very late because the country was unusually safe and peaceful during communism. There was no Internet and the contents of television programs were highly limited, which caused people of all ages to often interact at length and share a wide range of narratives. Story nights were frequent. Occasionally children enjoyed telling horror stories, which they may have heard or which they just made up on the spot. During such night, a child suddenly showed up and announced that someone had spotted the devil at the church. Of course it was weird, and we all ran there to investigate. I lived downtown and there was a big cathedral in the public gardens, where we didn’t play at night because it was dark and there were even stray dogs there. But we mustered our courage (we were about a dozen altogether) and went to the church, where we actually saw some kind of gigantic hand dropping little demons on the roof of the church. Whether it was just fleeting clouds on a windy night or mass hysteria, I don’t know. What I do know is that I had a nightmare later that night, where I was actually riding a demon. The devil had turned into a dog and it was taking me away fast. Where it was taking me I could only guess but I didn’t arrive at any destination because I woke up with a start, drenched in sweat. Why I didn’t just get off the fiend while it was galloping, I have no idea. But then again, I have never understood why Europa didn’t get off the bull Zeus had turned into either.
In recent years, I’ve had a few dreams in the daytime, dozing off, in which I could freeze-frame, and analyze the detail I was dreaming. It was amazing artistic detail, that I could never come anywhere near replicating in waking life. Ive also had a few in which the dream would gradually fade away, over about 15 seconds, with my eyes open, the dream content being replaced by the articles in the room.