Wandering with the Wind...

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Gosh I had another dream just now during my nap and a lot of crazy shit happened, so I'm just gonna record everything while it's still fresh in my mind.

First things first, I had another OOBE incident just that this time round when I left, I somehow managed to sit through all the strange pressures, which usually got so uncomfortable for me that I would jerk awake during the process, and remain fully conscious right to the point where I could leave. The symptoms were a little different this time round in the sense that it wasn't so much of tingling or vibration as pressure, applied in waves as if someone was rolling something heavy over my torso, and there was a ringing sound (might be interesting to note that since yesterday night there has been a persistent louder than usual ringing in my ears) accompanied by loud whooshing noises as if I were on the seashore listening to the waves right beside my head. These noises were pretty much synchronised with the pressure. The weird thing was, unlike most of my previous experiences, when I was out I couldn't see much at all; the impression I got was just darkness and a kind of grayish zone where my body didn't appear to be composed of a light-like substance, but was rather a shadowy silhouette that seemed bereft of almost all colors while retaining extremely low density and weightlessness. I also couldn't seem to right myself - my head felt as if it was "stuck" and I was left dangling by my feet again for a good few seconds. I remember seeing my blanket even though I didn't open my eyes in real life...but it was the same as everything else: grayish, desaturated, dark and colorless.

And then there was one rather frightening part where I felt as if someone had wrapped his hand around my throat and was strangling or suffocating me. In my mind's eye I really had the impression of a shadowy arm and hand and it felt as if I couldn't breathe for a quite a while. It didn't help that, while I was conscious, I was stuck in a half sleep paralysis state that made it extremely difficult to move my limbs at will. So yeah, that was something really quite strange - in a morbidly fascinating way - and frightening. Can't say this was the best OOBE yet, though some of the changes were rather interesting, like the different symptoms and the state of consciousness as well as the plane I was in during the experience...the grayish zone kind of reminded me of another dead plane I once entered for a few seconds at night, where everything was dark except for a bluish light that filtered through the windows and it was raining like nuts (though when I checked the next morning the ground was completely dry and it never did rain)...as if nothing was alive on the plane except for me. Sigh. I'd like to find the answers to all these questions I'm getting.

Right. So after that OOBE I went into normal dreamscape and this time I dreamt that it was war and I was pretty much the only female member of my section. It was actually a really nice place with a large pool and gardens full of lush greenery and flowers and all, and I had the impression that the battlefield was not very far away from where the contingent was stationed to wait, though I never really got to catch a glimpse of it. The illogical thing was that everyone had to go out to war in "sections", almost as if there was a time limit for each, somewhere around thirty minutes, and whoever survived would return and wait for another round. My section was supposed to be one of the last few to go, though for some strange reason we never did reach the battlefield in the end. I just remember watching the friends I had made and treasured (yes, some of them were my real life buddies) in other sections move out to meet their uncertain fates, and wishing very badly that everything could just end that very moment, that there didn't have to be war, that these people I loved could come back safe and sound and we could enjoy life together as if nothing ever happened. It was difficult to reconcile that scenic and picturesque place with the ghastly reality of death and destruction occurring just a short distance away from it. It's just too morbid a prospect to entertain, and in the face of an unpromising fate, everything beautiful about the place - and subsequently life - imposed upon me in an unbearably disconcerting and haunting manner.

During the wait, for some reason we were allowed to go off on our own and do our own stuff, so I occupied myself with small things around the place. I found terrapins in the pond, played with a particularly large one, ran up and down the little knolls full of rain-slicked grass, fooled around the flower bushes and muddy ponds and rushed down the long dim-lit corridors opening the doors to my friends' rooms (it was almost like a hotel, just not). Oh on a side note I found Jonat and Yue lying on their stomachs on the top of a hill drawing, which absolutely didn't make any fucking sense in both the dream and reality; in reality because nothing like that would happen during wartime, and in the dream because the thought of snipers came to my mind and I thought they were being freaking stupid lying in clear view of the enemy quarters. So I crawled up the hill while lying low to the ground and hissed at them to lie down and move back down the hill. I remember Jonat was being nonchalant and saying something like "there're no snipers", though he got disproved like a couple of seconds later when a sniper rifle shot rang out in the distance. Nobody on our side died, though, at least not the two who were beside me at that point in time. We made it safely down the hill back to our base.

In those moments I almost lost myself in all the fun I was having, but near the end of the dream, my section leader suddenly announced that we were next to move out. I just recall the feeling of extreme distress and a familiar overwhelming desire to just turn tail and run, but I couldn't, because there was just no way out of it. I remember seeing one of my most cherished friends returning from his round at that point in time, alive and mostly unscathed, and how I almost doubled over from the revolting mixture of joy at his safe return and the horrible dread of my own pressing fate that churned in my stomach.

As I moved down the line with my platoon mates, I told him I didn't want to go. He was passing by me so he just told me in a few brief words to go, to take it as a "test", and the glance he cast me...well, how can I describe it? It was inexplicably chilling at that point in time. I don't know why. It was most probably because I wasn't expecting that sort of detachment he exhibited, as if the reality of managing to stay alive was so massive a feat that, for a good while, nothing would be on his mind save for a numbing weariness accentuated by a subconscious but desperate appreciation of life, after having been so close to losing it. I knew then that the significance of my life would have appeared diminished compared to the pulsating reality of his own. He wouldn't have cared about me. He couldn't have even if, in normal situations, he would have had anyway.

The fervent praying...the irrationality that comes with the exhibition of the most primal and animalistic aspects of human nature...the desperation as you wish constantly for luck to be with you the next second...we knew, we all knew that luck was the only thing we could dump all our hopes on in the battlefield. This total surrender of control over to such an indefinite and fickle thing as luck reduces all of us into the most basic and wretched form of human existence - living in the present and only in the present, where every instinct is sharpened and focused upon what is happening at the moment, and reason is blocked out by the endless rush of adrenaline, desperation, intense hope and dread that brings together the extreme polarities of human nature into one colossal mesh of insanity. In the worst moments, we would not be able to bring ourselves to care for our friends. To some degree we might even wish that death could deliver its blow to the person next to us and not ourselves. We could count on no one, and we all knew it. This knowledge broke minds.

At some level, it probably did something horrible to his. I understood. I could empathise. I felt happy for him, for the fact that luck had been on his side and he had made it through. And yet it hurt all the same.

After all, who could guarantee that we'd ever meet again? Does it not matter to you?

What would happen when you realised, but too late?

***

~~~Waited for the Winds at 5.37pm*~~~

Aurinya blogged at 5:37 PM

Roaming the Winds