Posts Tagged ‘hypnagogic’
Tales from Hypnagogia
February 21st, 2010 Posted 12:51 am
Hypnagogia
noun
a term for the transitional state between wakefulness and sleep, characterized by dreamlike auditory, visual, or tactile sensations when half-awake.
Many years ago, I remember waking up one morning, checking the time on my phone, and being surprised to see six weird, random words on the screen which I must have written as a note while I was asleep: “I need to talk to Gentor.”
What on earth…? It made no sense at all. I didn’t know anyone or anything called Gentor and I certainly didn’t want to speak to him/her/it. Eventually I summoned a vague memory of hearing this sentence in my head as I was trying to fall asleep the previous night, and for whatever reason I obviously must have woken up and recorded the words onto my phone.
Over the following few weeks I did some research and found that this was caused by a phenomenon known as the hypnagogic state. This is the watery, dreamlike state of consciousness your mind turns to as you are in the process of falling asleep, but not quite fully asleep just yet. During this process you may experience the randomest of images, shapes, colours, sounds, sensastions, hallucinations, or seemingly in my case, words, filtering through into the half-conscious eye of your mind – not quite with the “fullness” experienced from an actual dream, but moreso in brief bursts, and often more lucid and memorable.
Anyway, recently I’ve noticed these hypnagogic words have been coming to me two or three times a week, so over the past two months I’ve written down every one that my mind has graced me with! I’ve literally been going to bed at night, closing my eyes, drifting off, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere I’ll be hit by this short, whacked-out, extremely random sentence or question that makes barely any sense at all, sometimes even including completely made-up words that have no meaning whatsoever. I wake up and write them down as soon as this happens – and now, for your enoyment, transcribed below is this unpredictable and peculiar insight into my subconscious night-time mentality:
I first had a chicken when I was twelve.
They get all desperate to find out.
You don’t want to suit me up to be a bear?
In the process of renewing and travelling, did you go travelling?
Red guppy beach steps.
Were you a better king for Jack Thompson?
It might just be a soaked up point of water but he’s not ready to justify his actions.
Just put it with my pride and strike the wall.
Broad beans and bomb shells don’t do what they do.
There’s enough memory in this biscuit to keep the silly climber alive.
I have olive oil, but how can a product which is a mild apleasiastic help you? I can’t keep my finger on the zero.
Elevation can’t stand the personal justice of our bleeding yacht.
I love the shadow that they want.
After three nights on the same row, everyone was asking them: why did they move the traffic?
We don’t want you stoppers running into sand, come on, leave it!
What are your secrets, what did you say to them twice?
Draw the line on the strawberry glace pot.
Slipping out junk and the Rockerfeller’s procedure.
The story is of Sarssche.
Turning into a rabbit bagoon egg.
Café Piara D’ombardo.
One noodle he met her and nobody fetched her.
Heritage farm listed like a Chinese letter rip.
Quickly, you’re up the tree.
We had a faisty elephant come in to see us at number two.
There are the shortly’s, these are the nowhere else.
Don’t give coffee a break as you did at the Mandatee.
Nothing represents an actor more than a box of charred bananas.
Err….. crazy hey?! Feel free to leave a comment if you’ve experienced anything like this yourself. I’m off to bed now to compose more tales from hypnagogia…
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