I had a really amazing lucid dream early this morning. I actually
thought it might be real while it was happening. I seemed to be
watching a news report about a new experimental aircraft and they
showed a video of it taking off. Like a vertical take-off-and-landing
vehicle, it didn't need a runway. All you could see was an empty
football field at first.
You know how stingrays bury themselves in the sandy sea bed so they
can't be seen and then flap their "wings" to rise up majestically?
Well, in my dream a huge crablike aircraft struggled to rise out of
the floor of the football field on vertical jets, first one leg of
its score of legs rising then another. It resembled a steam punk
monster that Jules Verne might have imagined, and must have been
controlled by scores of programmed servo-mechanisms desperately
avoiding feedback loops. It slowly struggled up into the air, each leg
rising and falling, almost crashing into the ground. It flapped
upwards and then almost crashed, recovered again and almost crashed
again, drifting back and forth like an unstable pendulum. It displayed
the aerodynamic instabilities of a dying jellyfish struggling to stay
aloft. It was so exciting that I almost thought I was seeing it in
person and, therefore, in danger.
For some reason, science fiction authors have always liked to
assume that the technology of anti-gravity was immanent. Pulp magazine
covers routinely show aircraft hovering in the clouds without any
means of support. Flying saucers always slow down and stop in mid-air
without any visible propulsion mechanism keeping them afloat. The idea
is thrilling and very appealing, even though we've had billions of
years to get used to being bound by "up" and "down". I dream about
anti-grav airships a lot.
The reason I'm calling this a lucid dream is because, like most of
my dreams, I experienced it in as much detail and vividness as I do
the real world. I've come to believe that the difference between my
dreams and my reality is not so much that dreams are blurry,
two-dimensional, black and white hazy snapshots as are usually
thought, but only remembered that way because the brain
has learned over millions of years that they are not reality and
therefore not worth remembering. They also suffer from "change
blindness" — when your focus shifts and you look back again, don't
count on what you were looking at being exactly the same as it was a
second ago!
Maybe in a hundred years or so, if we ever get to an age of useful
and safe psychedelics, we'll also figure out how to remember our
dreams better, as a new form of recreation. There might be a whole new
world to explore inside of us just as exciting and absorbing as Gothic
novels used to be or as blockbuster movies are now, and probably more
so.
I regularly have dreams. Dreams are not shy about violating the logic of time or the logic of place, and sometimes invoke strong wrenching emotions that wake me up before I have forgotten the storyline. Sometimes they just seem emblematic of my life's meaning and purpose. Sometimes I write them down
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