I'm not sure if I'm not interrupting some digression - I'm relatively new to the forum and I've just read only the
first few pages of the topic... Anyway, my contribution.
I also feel like it's some half-myth about dreaming in black and white. And I've read too that people reported such dreams when they watched TV in black and white, but this argument doesn't really convince me. Anyway, people without ophthalmological problems see everyday life in color and why should people's brains consider dreams something similar to films rather than something similar to "reality"? Anyway, dreams usually contain some scraps of our everyday life and people usually don't feel like watching a movie when they are dreaming, usually when dreaming they don't realize they are dreaming and only later think things like "Oh, so that was a dream... I just KNEW it was too absurd to be real".
Plus, in what colors did people dream before TV and cinema became a part of our culture? Did nobody ask about the color aspect of dreams before that?
I find the area of dreams a bit annoying - mostly because I strongly believe in multiple layers of reality (no, it's not because of Submachine, it's the opposite: that's why Submachine appeals to me) and yet I usually can't even recall my dreams. And when I do, they are usually rather silly and banal. The most common theme is relatively simple: well, often in dreams we travel, even when it's just walking to visit someone and so in most of my dreams I seem to recognize a place as something I had visited and in the waking state I know "of course granny's apartment / Pulawska street / that park doesn't look like this".
Apart from that very general theme, there are two recurring topics in my dreams:
1. Ski jumping hills. No, I'm NOT a fan of Adam Malysz, I'm a fighter for women's ski jumping, but I also love ski jumping hills just as aesthetic and architectural objects. I just fell in love with them and so I climb them - 244 hills so far, from tinies to four of the world's five ski flying hills. (If asked what I love most about ski jumping hills, I'd say: diversity. Each jumping hill is unique.)
This lovely lady (yeah, jumping hills are female - and what did you think?
) was Skarpa, the biggest of probably 4 jumping hills in the history of Warsaw (and "my" jumping hill no. 101):
Yes, in her final years she had only half of her inrun. Unfortunately she died two years ago... Anyway, more than ten times I've had dreams about new jumping hills somewhere in Warsaw - from Szczęśliwice park to a green area outside my window (which is actually almost flat and therefore couldn't support a jumping hill).
2. Taking a psychedelic. This has been my dreams for many years - my fascination began when I was less than 13 years old, yet 18 years and 10 days passed before I first tried a psychedelic. From time to time I even had some effects in my dreams... Yet those dreams were to some degree depressing - simply because when I woke up, I realized it was just a dream and I felt even worse over total lack of opportunity and "contacts". The even more annoying thing was the contrast between the diversity of substances I tried in dreams and total lack of experience in "the real life" - in my dreams I had opportunities to try several psychedelics such as magic mushrooms, LSD, even "exotic" (hardly available) things like synthetic psilocybin, peyote or DMT. After the dream about trying DMT I wrote in my diary: "This contrast between my psychonautic experience in dreams ans its total lack in the waking state is becoming just pathetic".
I continue having such dreams from time to time now, but anyway now they don't depress me as reminders of something inaccessible.
Btw, I hardly ever have nightmares, my dreams are mostly just rather boring, the opposite of the extreme way of thoughtfeeling (no typo; Polish version:
myśloczucie) in believe in. However, one such dream is remarkable because it shows how desperately I wanted to try, how desperate I felt over this lack of opportunity. In late 2011, a few months before my first magic mushroom experience, I had a nightmare about being killed in an accident. From its diary report:
"(...) at some point grandpa, deeply in conversation, lost control over the car; wheels at the right side moved outside the road and viaduct. I screamed yet
What have you done?!!!!, but then I actually didn't scream, but I thought in silence, terror and despair of two things: first, that at least I will know if it's true that after hitting the ground with such force the victim doesn't have time to feel anything (...) - and about that which had sneaked from the waking world: that the chance is lost forever, I won't try a psychedelic, this is the end of all hopes."
To end on a more positive note... I have diverse interests, so maybe an example of this strange intertwining of two passions - two very similar situations. In 2004 I had a dream of being a trial jumper in Vikersund (a trial jumper is someone who "tests" the hill without being included in the results - some local jumpers in the World Cup, older jumpers in kids' competitions, guys in ladies' competitions...) - this is really something since this was Vikersund's flying hill - and in "real life" I was too scared to jump from a K-9... I was just putting on my skis and at that moment my mum woke me up with a telephone call. (No, I didn't really feel that angry, I was too fascinated with this dream despite not having made my jump.) In 2006 I had a dream of having taken LSD - and my mum woke me up with a telephone call when I was just wondering if it was starting...
