Nidhi Mukherjee, 4/16 Week 15 - Surreal Colors
Flashing red lights. The smell of smoke and oil and machinery hangs in the air. An angry alarm blares, the words “Photon torpedo hit taken to the starboard helm. Oxygen supplies at a critical level” repeated out of a monotonous, robotic speaker as people in uniforms of red and blue and yellow scamper about. What’s this? I can’t possibly be aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise…
Running through a vivid field of flowers, the long hem of a dress drags through the rough stems, bare feet pressing against the plush, verdant grass. Where am I? The brilliant hues of the flora blur in what seems to be an endless continuation of red and blue and yellow and…
“Thus, using the properties of the area of a square, the Pythagorean Theorem is hence proved.” Red marker for the inside square. Blue for the outer. a2 + b2 = c2 highlighted in fluorescent yellow. There is no way she’s testing us on this unit next week…
“This is the captain speaking. I want all hands on deck! I repeat, all hands on deck!” Cheeks flushed a faint red from the heat and exhaustion. Sparks of white-yellow flying out of a broken console. Sparks that flames of hot yellow engulf.
The dress catches on a thorn. A knife-like cry of pain. Red roses. Like blood, like flower. Red smeared against the green of the grass. Red slowly drenching the yellow of the dress.
Blue marker fades out. Red takes over. Yellow highlighter.
Sparks of electricity.
Vivid flowers.
Markers.
Yellow.
Blue.
Red.
Silence.
Red Shed, Blue Pool by Aurelio Posada
An alarm blares through my subconscious consciousness, jerking me out of the surrealism. “6:00 am. Good morning. Windy with a low of 57℉” written in white atop the dark morning screen of my phone.
Ugh, what was I dreaming about again? Something about torpedoes, grass, and…a highlighter? Hm, can’t be right…
Actually, that was indeed correct, as I was, in fact, (debatably) dreaming about torpedoes, grass, and a highlighter–if I want to strip away all other details, of course. But how is it that I remember next to nothing?
Red. Blue. Yellow.
I wonder what that means…
“If we’re lucky, we can only remember the most fleeting glimpses in the cold light of day,” says featured correspondent Stephen Dowling from BBC (Dowling). Meaning, even the most vivid scenery gets compacted into something as unappealing and banal as grass or highlighters, for example.
Harvard Medical School sleep researcher Robert Stickgold relates nondescript dreams to “‘fall[ing] asleep too fast,’” “‘sleep[ing] too soundly,’” and “‘wak[ing] up with…[an] alarm clock,’” arguing that alarms startle us out of our sleep, “caus[ing] a spick in our nonadrenaline levels” and “making it harder for us to hang onto our dreams” (Dowling).
To have a clear recollection of your dreams, Stickgold suggests dreamers “lie still” and keep their eyes closed as they drift out of sleep while they try to “review” their dreams like they would any other memory (Dowling).
Time to practice.
Hi Nidhi, I literally hate it when I tell my friends that I had a super crazy dream that I had recollected early in the morning perfectly only to completely forget the details and only be able to spit out a lousy “recollection” that is usually more like an unorganized blurb of words. I really like your focus on dissecting and understanding the reason for this event to happen. I definitely feel like I’m a deep sleeper, so I guess I sleep very soundly, making my dreams hard to remember (and maybe also because I have a dream catcher near my bed). However, unlike you, I rarely ever wake up to the first ring of my alarm; after ten minutes I might start waking up a little simply to stop the alarm and then proceed to shamelessly go back to sleep until my mom wakes me up. During spring break, I was able to thoroughly practice the art of waking up naturally and drifting out of sleep in the mornings instead of being woken up by an alarm!
ReplyDeleteHi Nidhi please become an author and start publishing novels. Please. Everytime I read your blogs, I’m always shocked by your creative use of language and word choice. It almost feels like you're creating an artwork with your words. I wish I could write like you Nidhi!
ReplyDeleteSleeping is my number one hobby and priority. Not only does it make my body so happy afterwards but I’ve always enjoyed having fun dreams since I was a little kid. I even had a notebook where I wrote down what my dreams were about. But one thing that always saddens me about dreams is that they disappear so fast—the idea you depicted really well in your blog. I love how you used different text features to add emphasis along with the incorporation of different quotes from professionals!