How strange is it, to be quizzed by a group of sixth graders about the idea of lucid dreaming? They didn’t remember the terminology, so the first several minutes of discussion required them explaining it to me, with their imperfect English. In and of itself, that was interesting, too – a lucid-dreaming-style sort of coming-to-awareness of the fact that the topic that we were attempting to discuss was, in fact, lucid dreaming. Hmm… I’m making it sound a little bit eerie, and it wasn’t.
It was just an interesting and engaging discussion such as rarely happens with my students, but that is deeply pleasing when it does.
And then I came home and I somewhat spontaneously (but perhaps prompted at some subconscious level?) decided to watch a movie I saw when it first came out, and that I’d recently re-downloaded: “Waking Life.” Which is all about lucid dreaming. Among other existential and vaguely gnostic themes. And don’t forget Pedro Páramo.
“We are asleep. Our life is a dream. But we wake up, sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.”- Ludwig Wittgenstein
