coffee cup, monitor man
posted Oct 27, 2006, 09:07 PM | 2 Comments
i was chatting with Rusty in irc yesterday, as i do most every weekday now (for good reasons explained later) when he mentioned that he'd had a dream about drinking a cup of coffee. not doing anything, just standing there drinking a cup ofcoffee. not a thrilling dream, but not surprising if rusty still drinks coffee like he did in high school.
and i'm thinking: naturally one would dream about things one does all day, for what feeds a dream? then it occurred to me that i spend every day staring at computers for hours, and i never dream about computers. i never dream about using computers. or watching tv or movies for that matter. rusty suggested that maybe these experiences get written directly to memory, don't need to be reviewed and o'erhashed. as if data fed straight to the mind sublimates symbolism. i thought perhaps our dreaming mind evolved within this physical and social world could only assemble narrative based on tangible people, places, objects. movie stars always become people in the room.
but what if it's just that screens have nothing to offer your dreams? maybe computer interaction is just as dreamformation-dense as staring at a bare white stucco wall. and that night, when you fall asleep after working too long a day, all there is to REM refrag is one single image of the coffee mug you held in your hand during a long workday.
Sip. Sip. Stand. Sip.