Another lucid dreamer here, another that dies frequently (and gruesomely sometimes) in dreams, reads in dreams, etc. I dream of typing to my pals in IRC or AIM frequently, generally from my eyes being slightly open and pointed at my alarm clock - seems the numbers confuse my brain into thinking I’m at a computer and typing. I’ll actually be making the proper typing motions on my bedsheets, and wake up when the Enter key stops functioning (and I jab it really hard and jab myself in the ribs and the fibromyalgia tells me I just broke a rib or something else). Eheh. Other dreams have basically been similar to me, a book and a chair being the entire existence of …everything. There is nothing else. Not even a concept of empty space. And I read. What other things are humans not supposed to be able to dream about? The closest “you cannot do this” thing I can have is that I can’t disobey the laws of physics. Even when I know it’s a dream. No flying dreams thus.
Oh I had forgotten about the “typing in your sleep” dreams - I have had entire internet chat conversations in my dreams - usually a sign to give the PC a rest for a few days, I feel!
There is a “bandwidth” issue. The part of your mind that is “painting” the dream scenery in front of you is slower than the part of your mind that can read.
If I try to read a book, in a dream, at a normal reading speed, I get only gibberish.
But if I slow down and give the “picture” some time to “develop,” then I get semi-meaningful text.
I’ve also had the same experience as Dragonblink with comics pages in my dreams. But, again, the mind can “paint” a picture of, say, Popeye and Olive faster than it can “paint” the text in their word-balloons. The bandwidth of information is different, especially since Popeye and Olive can be “iconic” and hinted at from only a few “dream pixels,” whereas the dreaming mind doesn’t have any algorithm for compressing text.
(I once dreamed a comic strip where Olive was mad at Popeye and Bluto for looking at the girls in a “Men’s Magazine.” She complained, “What has Miss April got that I haven’t got?” Then she opened the fold-out, and said, “Contours!”)
Trinopus
That’s a good way to put it I guess.
So how about my other question? Has anyone ever had that dream to where they couldn’t see very well because the sun was too bright?
I’ve had several dreams where I was reading from one or more books, mostly nonfiction and on a variety of subjects, in libraries and elsewhere. Every time, the text was not only syntactically and grammatically correct, but was stylistically and content-wise perfectly o.k. or better – certainly publishable, or so it seemed in my dreams. Some of these books were histories or dealt with other such fields, and were apparently well-researched, footnotes and all. I’ve never been able to remember the supposed titles or authors, but none of these books seemed to be something I’d encountered in real life. Most of my dream-reading seems to be post-graduate or extracurricular (not many dreams about being back in school and preparing for tests or papers, thank goodness). One of my dreams was of being in a library and perusing about a half-dozen non-fiction books, and feeling a bit guilty that there were still a couple on the bottom of the pile that I just didn’t feel I had the time or energy to get into. (And then I woke up.)
I’ve also dreamed of composing music while sitting at a piano (piano lessons as a kid, but no piano for 20 years now) that was similarly good but unrecognizable as the work of any actual composer. What struck me about my dream music was that my left hand was balancing the right in vigor and tempo with perfect grace and ease, something that I always had to struggle with as a typically resentful (and right-handed) piano student.
I don’t believe I meet the definition of “lucid dreamer,” though. According to my rough understanding of that term, you’re a lucid d’er if you realize you’re dreaming in your dream and manage to continue dreaming anyway. Usually when I make that realization, I wake up.
And IRL, I haven’t written or composed a thing!
I have had many dreams like that. One in particular that I can remember is that I was being chased and stalked by a killer. When I was finally trapped by him, I looked at him and said,“This is really just a dream and you can’t hurt me so you may as well as leave.” He left in my dream and I kept on dreaming the same thing, but now I was like this hero of the dream.
I’ve dreamed in Spanish and had to look up words after I woke up that I don’t consciously remember the meaning of.
I also sometimes fall asleep while reading aloud or telling stories to my kids. And I keep going and they don’t even know it.
I too have had dreams to where I was speaking in another language that I have no idea how to speak. Of course I never could remember any of the words enough to know if it was actually a real language or just one made up in my dream.
Wow, over 17 years later and I still haven’t had a night sleep without dreaming. Since then, I have had dreams where I was laughing so hard that I ended up waking myself laughing and continued to laugh while awake not even knowing what I was laughing about. Also, the same thing with crying. I think a person who studies dreams and sleep would have a field day with me.
Moved to IMHO from General Questions, 18 years later.
Please note this thread is old enough to vote.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I read in my dreams and I’m a regular lucid dreamer. I had one dream where I couldn’t read and it freaked me out so hard that I woke up in a panic. Reading is fundamental to self-identity. Ever since then, I’ve always noticed when I’m able to read in a dream and I point it out to myself, all smug about it.
Even if reading is in a different part of the brain - it’s still all one brain. Your subconscious sees everything, even the stuff it doesn’t tell you about.
I can read a paragraph or so in a dream. They rarely make much sense. (They may seem to at the time but once I wake up I realize they are not coherent.) But the odd thing is, while dreaming of reading, as soon as I look away from the page and then look back, the page is totally different; the paragraph I read is something else now. Sometimes words change WHILE I’m reading them - I’m on the next word or phrase and I notice the previous one(s) mutating :).
I’m a lucid dreamer generally.
Not sure if this is better asked in General Questions … but I’m not sure there is a firm scientific answer for this either. And there are a lot of people in the thread who dream at night, so I’ll go ahead and ask for opinions:
What does the dreaming community say it means if someone never, ever recalls their dreams? Is there a firm scientific explanation? Or is it something that may not even need explaining – meaning that perhaps it’s just an idiosyncratic thing and nothing to be concerned about?
I know someone who never knows their dreams. She was a chronic opiate user for several years. She thinks that did it. She remembers dreaming as a child.
I dream lucid dreams about books all the time. Sometimes there are understandable sentences sometimes blank pages that I know should say things.
My weirdest one was, My long deceased Mother pointing out something in a book I should see. I never could read it. Kinda freaked me out alittle.
It wouldn’t exist even if it weren’t a zombie (at least, unless at some time during the past 18 years Podkayne’s written it); but now I want to read that story.
Not in my dreams, though. I don’t think I can read in my dreams; and it does indeed feel to me as if the part of me that’s dreaming can’t read. That part knows that reading is important to me, and I’ve had dreams in which I’ve been lucky enough to find rare things that I really want to read – but something, in the dream, always keeps interfering so that I never quite get the chance to actually read them.
I started lucid dreaming about 5 years ago, I could freeze-frame dreams of art objects and analyze their detail, and be amazed that the best I can create in real life is stick figures. If I would doze off in the daytime, it would fascinate me for maybe 15 seconds for real objects in the room to gradually replace those in the dream scene.
I’m blind, with very narrow field of view, and I also dream without peripheral vision, I have to scan right or left to see peripheral dream details.
Dream lucidity has become better after having a stroke. I once awoke partially and described about a minute of a dream to my wife as I was watching it play.
I’ve experienced the same thing. I’ve always assumed that it’s not so much that the reading centers of our brains aren’t active while dreaming, but that reading requires pre-written content.
Think about it, how can you read something that hasn’t been written yet? So, when you’re trying to read in your dream, your brain is simultaneously trying to come up with the content, causing ever-shifting words and phrases with minimal coherence (if any at all).
My recent experience with reading in my dreams.
But Batman was wrong. I know, he’s supposed to be this genius.
Still, I couldn’t defeat the Scarecrow, let alone Ra’s al Ghul, so I’ll shut up now.
I have no idea where this “can’t read in dreams” thing comes from. I can read in my dreams. However, the brakes on my cars in my dreams never seem to quite properly work.
Probably from those of us who can’t, mistakenly thinking that our own experience applies to everybody.
People’s minds vary a whole lot more than many people seem to realize.