dreaming again

i told someone last week that i didn't dream.  it has been years since i stopped.  i went from vivid, colorful, lucid dreams i could control and later remember, to no dreams at all.  the stop was sudden, and tied to other events in my life.  i have always understood the correlation, and have just come to accept the fact that my dreams had left me years ago and that i was now simply living during the day.

my former night-times where not an alternative life, but they were an enjoyable piece of who i was.  i can clearly remember dreams which i had as a child.  i remember when my dreams switched from black and white to color.  i remember when i began to control my dreams, changing their flow if i did not like the direction in which they were headed.  i had pleasant recurring dreams, the nocturnal version of re-watching favorite movies.

i have mentioned that i do not dream, and people have told me that i was but i was not aware that i was.  this sounds like a zen question concerning a tree falling in the woods.  with the tree, it fell even if no one heard it.  with the dream, if its not experienced it doesn't exist.  you can't find the dream laying on the floor of your subconscious rotting away covered with moss and insects.

one of my friends in the US just told me about the new drug she is on to improve daytime balance.  the side-effect is a decreased night time balance in the form of nightmares.  being as strong as she is, she is keeping a journal of the negative images.  if i know her at all, she will embrace the nightmares and understand them before she allows them to scare her away.

so i have been living with the acceptance of life without dreams.  i missed falling asleep to images of random video as i drifted off to sleep.  my compensation was to fall asleep on the couch, dvds left running.  the downside was waking up hours later, and realizing i had not rested because i had been listening to the sound of the dvd menu looping over and over every 17 seconds.  my own form of auditory induced apnea.

but i have dreamt for the past 6 nights.  vivid, wonderful and comforting dreams.  it is like an old friend returning and giving you a hug.  you welcome them back and want to hear all the stories they have to tell.  i am waking up with new memories that haven't happened in the real world.  it doesn't change the fact that i am happy to have them.

someone told me that dreaming is the process of forgetting.  others think that dreaming is the process of cementing long term memories so they can be retrieved later though association.  both theories work for me, the former is a garbage collection routine, the latter an offline update of a non-clustered index.  the software engineer in me is fine if its either or both.

i am just glad those night time cycles are again being put to good use.  i am not speculating on the deeper meaning of dreams returning after the absence, but i am happy to have the garbage collected and to have my indexes updated.