The_Poor_Man's_LSD
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I first controlled my dreams when I was six years old. I summoned a tornado in my back yard.
I didn't control them again until I was a teenager, at which point I made it a habit. I have memories, as clear if not clearer than things that "really" happened, of wandering planets with two moons and three suns in the sky. I remember watching every nighttime star collapse into a twilight whirlpool, coalescing into a single burning diamond as big as the moon. I remember being very, very perturbed the few times I was off my game, and couldn't make myself fly.
In retrospect, I was rather well prepared for the hallucinations when I was sixteen. I was in boarding school, and one afternoon a wave of exhaustion swept over me like high tide. I crawled into bed and lay flat on my back, drifting off into supposed oblivion.
I remember the sound of children playing in light traffic. I remember the sensation of my hands, running along the sharp, ninety degree outline of a vinyl countertop. And I remember watching my vision flutter into existence like a flag in a strong breeze, until I found myself staring face-to-face with a smiling black man in a spotless white apron and a simple chef's hat. He grinned a foot wide, told me I was early, and if I would just wait a minute, the rest of my subconscious would be with me shortly. For the next hour, I was given what was claimed to be a guided tour of my own head. Strangers who felt like old friends huddled me into cherry red sports cars and drove me along city streets while I rode shotgun, listening quietly as imaginary tour guides advised me how to survive the life I would live, and love the people I would meet.
I woke up very, very confused, and very, very enthused.
Neurologists call these things hypnagogia: a sort of middle-ground between sleep and wakefulness. Your brain waves say you are sleeping, but you would definitely claim otherwise, blazing hallucinations notwithstanding. You also find yourself paralyzed, firmly in the throes of what's called sleep paralysis. Hynagogia has been offered up as an explanation for alien abductions, ghostly apparitions, and visions of angels, demons, or both.
I seized upon it as a beloved past time.
From then on, at least once a week, I would settle down into bed, and my mind would slowly inch into my hypnagogic groove. With my head and body finally buzzing like a beehive, I would consciously change my sensory perception: the texture of the cotton sheets would suddenly be replaced with the sensation of running water, or of rose petals and polished glass.
One day, I drifted off to sleep while listening to the sound of my heartbeat drumming in my ear. Slowly, imperceptibly, the drumming in my ear trickled out from the side of my head and down my neck, creeping out into all of my extremities. And soon enough I lay there, at two in the morning, feeling every ounce of blood pumping through my body, as if my body had become a mosaic of microscopic mountain streams. I remember admiring how my blood actually moved two steps forward, one tiny step back, as every time the vessels of my heart closed up and prepared for another beat. And I felt the presence of every single artery and most far-flung capillary as if they had been carved out of virgin marble and polished with golden fleece.
When I finally left for university, I would sneak naps on the library floor in some neglected corner of the Dewey Decimal System. Hypnagogic states would creep up on me from in between the stacks, and with open eyes I would watch the world tweak itself out of alignment, and saturate itself with color and light. Once, I felt two phantom arms, fully mobile, grow out of my chest, while my day-to-day pair lay quietly by my sides, paralyzed. They all felt as real as the next, and I lay there quietly contemplating a career as a competitive juggler.
Every now and again I would find myself unable to breath, my rib cage frozen solid - sleep paralysis to die for. Every time, I would lay there, and wonder with only moderate panic if I'd really lived my life well enough to justify such an early death. Years later, I would come across a painting titled The Nightmare, by Henry Fuseli, of a goblin perched stoutly on an unconscious woman's chest, the head of a black horse peeking out from behind the curtains.
I remember a dream during this time in which I walked into my childhood home, which had suddenly been woven out of bamboo and silk, and watching as a dolphin slowly swam through the air past our living room window. It was clad in glimmering golden scales like a Japanese shogun, and the right half of its face was composed entirely of moving, mechanical parts, a steam-engine cerebrum churning along like a Renaissance cyborg. Behind him, a herd of dinosaurs skeletons made purely of rebar and I-beams lumbered gracefully down the road.
My hypnagogia has dwindled with age - I manage maybe twice a year, at best. But I still dream every night, although I don't often remember what about. And I still very much like to fly.
I first controlled my dreams when I was six years old. I summoned a tornado in my back yard.
I didn't control them again until I was a teenager, at which point I made it a habit. I have memories, as clear if not clearer than things that "really" happened, of wandering planets with two moons and three suns in the sky. I remember watching every nighttime star collapse into a twilight whirlpool, coalescing into a single burning diamond as big as the moon. I remember being very, very perturbed the few times I was off my game, and couldn't make myself fly.
In retrospect, I was rather well prepared for the hallucinations when I was sixteen. I was in boarding school, and one afternoon a wave of exhaustion swept over me like high tide. I crawled into bed and lay flat on my back, drifting off into supposed oblivion.
I remember the sound of children playing in light traffic. I remember the sensation of my hands, running along the sharp, ninety degree outline of a vinyl countertop. And I remember watching my vision flutter into existence like a flag in a strong breeze, until I found myself staring face-to-face with a smiling black man in a spotless white apron and a simple chef's hat. He grinned a foot wide, told me I was early, and if I would just wait a minute, the rest of my subconscious would be with me shortly. For the next hour, I was given what was claimed to be a guided tour of my own head. Strangers who felt like old friends huddled me into cherry red sports cars and drove me along city streets while I rode shotgun, listening quietly as imaginary tour guides advised me how to survive the life I would live, and love the people I would meet.
I woke up very, very confused, and very, very enthused.
Neurologists call these things hypnagogia: a sort of middle-ground between sleep and wakefulness. Your brain waves say you are sleeping, but you would definitely claim otherwise, blazing hallucinations notwithstanding. You also find yourself paralyzed, firmly in the throes of what's called sleep paralysis. Hynagogia has been offered up as an explanation for alien abductions, ghostly apparitions, and visions of angels, demons, or both.
I seized upon it as a beloved past time.
From then on, at least once a week, I would settle down into bed, and my mind would slowly inch into my hypnagogic groove. With my head and body finally buzzing like a beehive, I would consciously change my sensory perception: the texture of the cotton sheets would suddenly be replaced with the sensation of running water, or of rose petals and polished glass.
One day, I drifted off to sleep while listening to the sound of my heartbeat drumming in my ear. Slowly, imperceptibly, the drumming in my ear trickled out from the side of my head and down my neck, creeping out into all of my extremities. And soon enough I lay there, at two in the morning, feeling every ounce of blood pumping through my body, as if my body had become a mosaic of microscopic mountain streams. I remember admiring how my blood actually moved two steps forward, one tiny step back, as every time the vessels of my heart closed up and prepared for another beat. And I felt the presence of every single artery and most far-flung capillary as if they had been carved out of virgin marble and polished with golden fleece.
When I finally left for university, I would sneak naps on the library floor in some neglected corner of the Dewey Decimal System. Hypnagogic states would creep up on me from in between the stacks, and with open eyes I would watch the world tweak itself out of alignment, and saturate itself with color and light. Once, I felt two phantom arms, fully mobile, grow out of my chest, while my day-to-day pair lay quietly by my sides, paralyzed. They all felt as real as the next, and I lay there quietly contemplating a career as a competitive juggler.
Every now and again I would find myself unable to breath, my rib cage frozen solid - sleep paralysis to die for. Every time, I would lay there, and wonder with only moderate panic if I'd really lived my life well enough to justify such an early death. Years later, I would come across a painting titled The Nightmare, by Henry Fuseli, of a goblin perched stoutly on an unconscious woman's chest, the head of a black horse peeking out from behind the curtains.
I remember a dream during this time in which I walked into my childhood home, which had suddenly been woven out of bamboo and silk, and watching as a dolphin slowly swam through the air past our living room window. It was clad in glimmering golden scales like a Japanese shogun, and the right half of its face was composed entirely of moving, mechanical parts, a steam-engine cerebrum churning along like a Renaissance cyborg. Behind him, a herd of dinosaurs skeletons made purely of rebar and I-beams lumbered gracefully down the road.
My hypnagogia has dwindled with age - I manage maybe twice a year, at best. But I still dream every night, although I don't often remember what about. And I still very much like to fly.