On the threshold of a dream

I cannot read the fiery letters . . .

When I read Kevin McCall's post "Tolkien and Psychedelics," it reminded me of how, when I was very young, dreams, and visions induced while waking, used to begin with kaleidoscopic patterns which only gradually resolved themselves into recognizable figures.

Since remembering that, I've been trying to observe how my dreams begin now that I am an adult, but it's been difficult to do so because, well, dreams generally begin when one is in an impaired state of consciousness and not really able to take notes!

This morning, though, I was able to pull it off. I set my alarm an hour early, woke up, and then let myself slip back into REM, deep enough for dreaming but shallow enough for observation.

My dream did indeed begin with a kaleidoscopic pattern, and I was surprised to notice that it appeared to be a kaleidoscope of written language -- not that I could actually read it, but there was a very strong sense that it was a swirling radial pattern of letters in some script that I could almost understand. I have tried to approximate the effect with the illustration above, but it is only an extremely rough approximation, limited both by my skillz and by the inherent impossibility of translating a dream into an image on a computer screen. The letter-like forms were more radially oriented than in my illustration, with a clear sense that the "bottom" of each letterform was towards the center of the wheel. The forms were moving, too -- expanding out from the center and also rotating. There was something complicated about this rotation -- perhaps different parts were rotating in different directions -- suggesting clockwork or Ezekiel's "wheels within wheels." Also, the whole thing was both more and less colorful than the illustration. I had the impression that if I had snapped a photo of it, it would have come out all gray, and yet at the same time it was positively glowing and pulsating with a sort of para-color that made it impossible not to think of a rainbow.

This "alphabetic" kaleidoscope then began to resolve itself into something blotchier, less intricate, less radiant and jewel-like, a bit (only a bit!) like the second illustration, below.

The view gradually lost all radiality and shifted to amorphous blobs of para-color, a bit like a highly "colorful" version of army camouflage. I found it odd that the shapes were becoming less clearly defined as the dream unfolded, just the opposite of what I would have expected.

Then, with an abruptness that startled me, everything snapped into focus just like that, as if someone had flipped a switch. The vague blobs of "color" immediately transformed into a "photorealistic" scene. (Not the sort of thing that could be captured in a photo, of course. I refer to the level of clarity, detail, and definition.) I saw rolling farmland in what I felt was perhaps Ohio or Kentucky, a couple of small houses with white aluminum siding, and in the distance what were unmistakably two giraffes picking their way across the fields on their spindle legs. Actually, the giraffes looked somewhat less real than the surrounding countryside, as if they might have been some sort of holographic projection. They were just-perceptibly shimmering, and the ratio of para-color to ordinary spectral color was higher than in the surrounding scene.

Is this similar to the way a hallucinogenic trip begins? I've never taken hallucinogens, so I don't know. (I was offered peyote once, as a precondition to talking religion with members of the Native American Church, but Mormon missionaries always Just Say No.) I'll have to dig out my Aldous Huxley and Carlos Castaneda books and see if anything in their descriptions sounds familiar.