The narrator has detailed coherent dreams. (My son-in-law used to.) We now read a description of an "...intense, crayon-brilliant..." (p. 227) countryside:
a lane with low hedges;
green hills;
emerald or siver coppices;
grazing cows and galloping horses seen across miles;
flitting, sparkling birds - robin, chickadee, hummingbird, mockingbird;
the mockingbird's trills;
bumblebees;
butterflies;
dragonflies;
honeysuckle;
odors of growth, fragrance and animals;
clouds wandering in an enormous blue.
(Three senses.)
The scene has the unreality of a dream:
crayon-like colors;
scents to drown in;
gigantic birds, bees etc;
cattle and horses impossibly far away;
clouds shaped like castles and ships;
a feeling of infinite welcome.
I cannot dream like that and have no sense of smell in dreams - but all my thought processes are abstract. When discussing a dream sequence in a film, I commented that it was inauthentic because the dreamer saw himself as if from outside. My friends asked in surprise, "Do you never see yourself from outside in dreams?"
In Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, members of Morpheus' staff paint the sky and arrange the scenery in dreams. On this occasion, he must have been looking the other way because they lost all sense of restraint.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I can't really say I often have intensely detailed dreams of the kind your son-in-law used to have. But I occasionally have very CLEAR dreams. One of these rare dreams I had was so striking I discussed it with Poul Anderson in one of my letters to him. We were discussing the Roman Emperor Honorius and I mentioned to PA how I dreamed of the Emperor traveling thru time to OUR century. I dreamed as well of how Honorius, overwhelmed by anxiety visited my old college to attempt finding ways of how better to grapple with the problems and crises of his reign.
Sean
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