The Science of Sleep

Last week I went to see Michel Gondry’s latest film, ‘The Science of Sleep’.

 

I really loved it. Full of quirky, scattered ideas and images. Just like the best dreams. Very funny. Different to Eternal Sunshine, not as profound or conceptually sewn-up. But a brilliant and entertaining illustration of the cross-over between dreams and reality.

I’ve been having vivid dreams lately. Some are the kind you don’t immediately remember then something during the day triggers them. I hear a song or see a certain person and it stirs strange fragments of memory that I can only put down to having dreamed them. Others I remember well and the images stay with me all day. In one recent dream I was at the beach. I wanted to run into the sea but something was stopping me. Suddenly loads of different groups of animals appeared on the beach, first zebras running, then massive, shimmering dolphins swimming through the air towards me.  That was pretty cool.

Last night I dreamt I was in prison. That’s not so surprising when you know that I am spending about 4 days a week in prisons at the moment. I was with a bunch of close friends and we were all arrested and taken down a dingy corridor to a room and locked in together. The room was more like a large bedroom, carpeted with bookshelves and cushions. Though we were scared about being in prison and there was a slightly ominous atmosphere, the scene was actually quite intimate. I could imagine the weeks going by reading, talking, sharing the experience together. It was a familiar feeling: being thrown together with people and making the best of it. I also remember having a fight with a guy there. I didn’t know him and I felt he was against me. I started to hit him violently. Then he held me down, I resisited, struggling and shouting for help. Nobody in the room responded and none of the prison staff came to check what was going on. I had the feeling that nobody noticed or realised that I needed help.

I am reading a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami. They are mostly character studies that involve loss, grief, relationships and all of them share his characteristically dreamy, anything could happen style. Though entertaining, I am left after each one somehow unsatisfied. I get to the end and I’m trying to piece together what happened and work out what it means. It’s as if there is a meaning but it’s not accessible. Something felt, hidden in the subtext. Just like remembering a dream.

In the past I would have found all of this much more frustrating: a film that plays with ideas it can’t explain, dreams I can’t interpret or resolve, stories without lesson or meaning. A part of me still demands an explanation- what does it all mean? But I’m enjoying the question much more these days.

I have just arrived home after 4 days of challenging and glorious simplicity. I went to Llannerchwen, a beautiful retreat centre in the Brecon Beacons and stayed in my own little hermitage in the woods:

The sun shone. There were snowdrops. I was blessed.
This poem by Wendell Berry sums it up:

Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.

Within the ongoing havoc
the woods this morning is
almost unnaturally still.
Through stalled air, unshadowed
light, a few leaves fall
of their own weight.

                                   The sky
is gray. It begins in mist
almost at the ground
and rises forever. The trees
rise in silence almost
natural, but not quite,
almost eternal, but
not quite.

                    What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
what has always been.
Here is what will always
be. Even in me,
the Maker of all this
returns in rest , even
to the slightest of His works,
a yellow leaf slowly
fallling, and is pleased.

Back to work

As the exhaustion of being back at work has well and truly set in, I thought I’d post some light relief. This is a message from Justin Timberlake to us all - one of the funniest things I was given for Christmas this year (thank you McSwedes):

Near Toe-Death Experience

Today I had my first surf of 2007!

Porthcawl was dressed up in its finest shades of grey, set off by sheets of bleak, welsh rain. I wore my new hooded vest which kept me snug on top, but sadly my feet suffered a more traumatic initiation into the New Year.

 * These are not actually my feet

I knew it would be cold as as I skipped my way down the beach to the shore. But I wasn’t ready for the lethal numbness that spread into my toes at speed. After ignoring this for 40 mins to play in the waves, (sorry feet) my anxieties began to rise. No amount of running up and down on the spot or squeezing my toes regained their feeling or function. Standing up on the board, a rare experience on a good day, was becoming an impossibility.

Finally I stumbled back up the beach doing a funny dance between my toes and heels. Next to the car, fumbling around in the cold and wet, I finally got my boots off. To my horror my toes were perfectly white. Completely drained of blood. How long would frost bite take to set in January water? Had I lost them forever? Would I ever walk again? In the hour it took to warm my poor feet back to consciousness, these were thoughts of my anguished mind.

Aside from a brush with toe death, the surf was exhilerating. Being out in the elements was brilliant for blowing away the winter blues.

I want to be outside more this year.

Festive food

I think I love roast chestnuts. 

I mean really, love them. I get butterflies in my tummy preparing them. Slitting their skins, placing them in a little dish. I open the oven door several times while they’re cooking, just to look at them.

I’m becoming strangely addicted to peeling them. I don’t even mind when the sharp bits get stuck in my nails. Or when a bit of the furry skin is left on the nut as I pop it into my mouth. The weird texture, the buttery caramel flavour.. there’s so much more to them than a mere nut. They’re truly lovely. If you haven’t already, try them yourself.

After the ritual roasting of chestnuts today, I made Purple Soup. I was in a suitably pre-Christmas pottering mood.

This is how it started…

then this happened…

 

and it tasted like this…

Good and purple.

Neological Insights

I discovered a new word today:

neologism\nee-OLL-uh-jiz-um\, noun:

It comes from the French word neologisme, from which the English is borrowed,  and is made up of the elements neo-, “new” + log-, “word” + -isme, -ism (all of which are derived from Greek).

Like all good words it has a myriad of different meanings:

1. A new word or expression.
2. A new use of a word or expression.
3. The use or creation of new words or expressions.
4. (Psychiatry) An invented, meaningless word used by a person with a psychiatric disorder.
5. (Theology) A new view or interpretation of a scripture.

I find point 4 particularly interesting. What is the difference between someone who is mentally well using a meaningless word and someone who is mentally unwell? Intriguing that we should distinguish or dismiss this as ‘mad behaviour’ by some people when it appears to happen all the time. Isn’t the English language in constant flux? Hence the neological process. For example, how did the word ‘weblog’ come along? Someone must have coined it first by blurting it out one day in front of one or two appreciative people, who then used it in front of others and so on.

So I would like to put forward a 6th definition my own.

6. A gift possessed by people with a certain genius for creating new words, sometimes by mistake, which may be coupled with a laissez-faire attitude towards the English language.

I would like to introduce my husband as one such genius. He is living proof that dyslexia can bring forth great gifts to human kind. His ability to mix metaphors and start new vocab trends keeps me highly entertained and more importantly, keeps me from disappearing up my own linguistically correct arse. I will from now on attempt to document his work (the greatness of which he is often oblivious to) under the tag ‘Dylan’s dictionary’.

Dylan’s dictionary

whizzling \WHIZ-uhl-ing\, verb:

The movement of icons on a computer screen, (eg. egg timer, funny coloured circle) indicating that the computer is processing or downloading something. 

For example:“The computer is going to whizzle for a minute then you’ll be able to select your option.”
or                     “Oh no, it’s whizzling. That’s not a good sign!”

Incarnate words

The incarnate Word is with us,
is still speaking, is present
always, yet leaves no sign
but everything that is.

Wendell Berry

Life on Royal York Crescent

12 dead pheasants hanging on the wall*
12 dead pheasants hanging on the wall
And if one dead pheasant should accidentally fall…

The downstairs neighbour will write immediately to the council and get a court injunction on health and safety grounds.

 *Actually they are hanging on the balcony but clearly this doesn’t rhyme as well. They are real pheasants though. Just dead and hanging.

Fact or fiction?

I once tried to argue that facts don’t exist. Maybe they’ve just gone out of fashion.

Did you know there are now only 8 planets in the solar system? But this new fact doesn’t change anything about the planets or our distance from them.

Someone I was speaking to recently to put it like this:

“Facts can be useful but they are abstract. Truth is the relationship between things.”

I read this a while ago and it made me think and smile:

“Life may sometimes legitimately appear as a book of science. Life may sometimes appear, and with a much greater legitimacy as a book of metaphysics.  But life is always a novel.Our existence may cease to be a song; it may cease even to be a beautiful lament.  Our existence may not be an intelligible justice, or even a recognizable wrong. But our existence is still a story.  In the fiery alphabet of every sunset is written, “to be continued in our next.”

If we have sufficient intellect, we can finish a philosophical and exact deduction, and be certain that we are finishing it right. With the adequate brain-power we could finish any scientific discovery, and be certain that we were finishing it right. But not with the most gigantic intellect could we finish the simplest or silliest story, and be certain that we were finishing it right. That is because a story has behind it, not merely intellect which is partly mechanical, but will, which is in its essence divine.

But in order that life should be a story or romance to us, it is necessary that a great part of it, at any rate, should be settled for us without our permission.  If we wish life to be a system, this may be a nuisance; but if we wish it to be a drama, it is an essential. It may often happen, no doubt, that a drama may be written by somebody else which we like very little. But we should like it still less if the author came before the curtain every hour or so, and forced on us the whole trouble of inventing the next act.

A man has control over many things in his life; he has control over enough things to be the hero of a novel. And the reason why the lives of the rich are at bottom so tame and uneventful is simply that they can choose the events.  They are dull because they are omnipotent. They fail to feel adventures because they can make the adventures. The thing which keeps life romantic and full of fiery possibilities is the existence of these great plain limitations which force all of us to meet the things we do not like or do not expect.”

GK Chesterton (1905)

Working from home

tea in a pot
the guardian
itunes
the view from my lounge window
homemade soup

A day for spreading my papers across the table in messy contentedness.