became less and less afraid, and in fact I found the process of waking up rather thrilling--something like a roller coaster: After a while you're not so
scared, and you begin to enjoy it a little bit.
You might like to know how this process of observing my dreams stopped (which it has for the most part; it's happened just a few times since).
I'm dreaming one night as usual,
making observations, and I see on the wall in front of me a pennant. I answer for the twenty-fifth time, "Yes, I'm
dreaming in color," and then I realize that I've been sleeping with the back of my head against a brass rod. I put my hand behind my head and I feel
that the back of my head is
soft
. I think, "Aha!
That's
why I've been able to make all these observations in my dreams: the brass rod has disturbed my
visual cortex. All I have to do is sleep with a brass rod under my head, and I can make these observations any time I want. So I think I'll stop making
observations on this one, and go into deeper sleep."
When
I woke up later, there was no brass rod, nor was the back of my head soft. Somehow I had become tired of making these observations, and
my brain had invented some false reasons as to why I shouldn't do it any more.
As a result of these observations I began to get a little theory. One of the reasons that I liked to look at dreams was that I was curious as to how
you can see an image, of a person, for example, when your eyes are closed, and nothing's coming in.
You say it might be random, irregular nerve
discharges, but you can't get the nerves to discharge in exactly the same delicate patterns when you are sleeping as when you are awake, looking at
something. Well then, how could I "see" in color, and in better detail, when I was asleep?
I decided there must be an "interpretation department." When you are actually looking at something--a man, a lamp, or a wall--you don't just see
blotches of color.
Something tells you what it is; it has to be interpreted. When you're dreaming, this interpretation department is still operating, but
it's all slopped up. It's telling you that you're seeing a human hair in the greatest detail, when it isn't true. It's interpreting the random junk entering the
brain as a clear image.
One other thing about dreams. I had a friend named Deutsch, whose wife was from a family of psychoanalysts in Vienna. One evening, during a
long
discussion about dreams, he told me that dreams have significance: there are symbols in dreams that can be interpreted psychoanalytically. I
didn't believe most of this stuff, but that night I had an interesting dream: We're playing a game on a billiard table with three balls--a white ball, a
green ball, and a gray ball--and the name of the game is "titsies." There was something about trying to get the balls into the pocket: the white ball and
the green ball are easy to sink into the pocket, but the gray one, I can't get to it.
I wake up, and the dream is very easy to interpret: the name of the game gives it away, of course-them's girls! The white ball was easy to figure
out, because I was going out, sneakily, with a married woman who worked at the time as a cashier in a cafeteria and wore a white uniform.
The green
one was also easy, because I had gone out about two nights before to a drive-in movie with a girl in a green dress. But the gray one-what the hell was
the gray one? I knew it
had
to be
somebody
; I
felt
it. It's like when you're trying to remember a name, and it's on the tip of your tongue, hut you can't
get it.
It took me half a day before I remembered that I had said goodbye to a girl I liked very much, who had gone to Italy about two or three months
before.
She was a very nice girl, and I had decided that when she came back I was going to see her again. I don't know if she wore a gray suit, but it
was perfectly clear, as soon as I thought of her, that she was the gray one.
I went back to my friend Deutsch, and I told him he must be right--there
is
something to analyzing dreams. But when he heard about my
interesting dream, he said, "No, that one was too perfect--too cut and dried. Usually you have to do a bit more analysis."
