LimpidDream-colored with all ghosts and their shadows mumbling in some corner or the hallway, and the photo is the same. The "clearness" implied in the word is so flexible - limp in a way. Yes, it is clear, almost see through and that clarity as it comes in waves is exactly what gives it it's ghostlike quality. It's snowing! We're inside, and have a roof, but it's snowing. Crystalline, another pretty synonym for the same adjective, gives the transparency a form and shape - a tangibility. Crystals are clear sometimes when found in nature, and are often used in certain shamanistic rituals having to do with sleep. Dreams woven and caught: one crystal reflects, another absorbs, that one there radiates. So there's that clarity, the clearness implied limpidly inside the word itself: it is see through and that implies that it has to be seen. Those are the waves, the dream comes in between them (the see through and the seen) in bursts and the precipitation of sleep takes hold and instantly the closing of the eyes reveals a seeing of the invisible. Dream-colored with ghosts and some shadows, probably sounds prettier in French, but all the same: the things of the night eventually do gather and pounce and before the body knows it (with a tremble or jolt- fremir with some accent) the blanket is wrapped and the head is sunken until all at once the feet land and some scene begins.
Lucid dreams are when the dreamer is in control of his dream and imagination and can manipulate his gauzy slumber-experiences. One wonders: "If I am in control if I can dream lucidly, who's got it if I can't?" It is a function of the body, based on metabolism and the rapid-eye-motion of sleep, and not entirely uncommon. Children, just before drifting off to sleep on Christmas Eve, must all know the feeling of focussing hard on a single pin-prick of light, with eyes closed: the perfect present. That shiny wrapped object, grabbed by the lids of the eyes just before they close for the last time before that wondrous morning. They fall asleep hoping to dream the best dream ever, somehow transferring themselves into that sleep-world with complete consciousness - to somehow experience it so deeply in dream as to still savour it upon waking. The child goes to bed focussing on forcing this dream, steering it in the right direction. And, the adult - dreading the dream, hoping before bed not to be ripped apart by the dull claws of another mundane dream-trip to the office only this time it is somehow a very late 2:30 in the afternoon and the office is actually transformed into a college campus (comprised of a wonderful blending of the dreamer's actual alma matter mixed with bits and pieces of ones seen on television and in the movies) and somehow, just somehow, the semi-self living out the dream is made aware that though today is graduation he has not once attended this or that class and a pulsating wave of terror that leaves streaks on the morning's pillow. Even grown ups fall asleep trying to shove themselves off in the right direction: no stress dreams, no memory stained tear drenched dreams, no ghosts, and no snow.
The control over consciousness, or the attempt at it (more fitting) is a strange battle of ownership. If I don't control them, who does? And, much worse: If I don't control them, who am I to claim my self as my self? How is it that a person is capable of suspending from himself a happy ending and go on allowing that hazy self-specter walking amidst the dream-world to endure some six or seven hours of sweaty, torturous mistreatment (some dreams are, sadly) when he could simply supply himself with a whisper of "it'll be okay, you'll wake up soon enough" at the first sign of panic? There is a disconnect: the person's mind does not care that the person is endangered. Oh that control, the lucid, limpid control over sleep-consciousness. Poor Dion McGregor had none though was gifted with a different sort of torture: his mouth carried out narration (and dialog, miraculously) from the ethereal world of dreams to our waking one and we are left with several recordings of his "sleep talks".
If any scientists were worth their test-tubes and sterility, they would invent a sort of tape recorder for the mind. A way to copy to magnetic tape the various voices that bellow and howl just before sleep, capturing the conversations reenacted in the mind from throughout the day (the mispronounced word or poorly expressed thought only amplified much louder than in real life and repeated several times over and over so as to make the almost-sleeper most annoyed with him or herself) and worse - the opportunities missed, those infinite gaps in the day left for some potential something that were inevitably snubbed. The scientists would then find their patients* and feed them pills which would extend this awake-asleep state, stretching it out for an agonizing hour or two, while the mind can still turn it off though it chooses to dwell in it instead, just before the dream has fully gripped and grabbed and the poor person has no real limbs left to hold on. The tapes would probably reveal little about the people (the babblings of most mundane minds don't yield much in the way of worthwhile, honest-to-god epiphany) and the scientists would see no merit in archiving the reels properly. In time, they'd dissolve and isn't that a nice metaphor, lah dee dah. Evidence of nothing in particular (a person's mind), rotted by some years and a bug or two. Conclusively concluded.
*Worse if the poor dreamer fancies himself a writer! Then, that small sliver between awake-asleep is actually recorded, written, and saved, and (if the sad sap happens to have fallen into luck) published. Those little minutes are mined: he lets them swim and bubble and drowns his inkwell the next messy dawn trying to recall what he was allowing to happen in his head the night before, just before rolling over to sleep (dormir). Like working with a little pick ax in a mine, he chips away at the dark walls of last-night's thoughts and fills the page with a dense black layer. It's clear! Lucid and limpid - clarity, crystalline and clean, clearness is in its very heart.
