It's ten minutes of eight in the morning here, and having been ill most of the night and not having gone to sleep until nearly 5:00 AM, and now being awake and unable/unwilling to sleep again, I've been engaging in one of my favorite insomniac pastimes...musing.

I have two musings to share today, the first of which is related to dreams. I'll split them into two separate posts to make following up easier.

Keep in mind that I'm quite ill, severely medicated, and bleary of sight and mind at the moment, so if I don't make sense...well, that's why.

#1: Dream Knowledge

Have any of you ever experienced a sudden insight or moment of enlightenment in the middle of a dream that you wanted to cling to upon waking, but just couldn't hang onto? I'm not talking about anything profound like the Ultimate Truth or a sudden full understanding of the opposite sex. I'm talking about little stuff...trivial knowledge, tantalizing tidbits of info that would have been lovely to keep.

Say, for example, one of your hobbies is 20s and 30s mob stuff. Memorabilia, movies, trivia, and so forth. You have a dream one night where a bit of info you'd never really even thought about suddenly just came to you, but upon waking, you lost it. You're pretty sure it was factual info, and you wish you could remember it, but it's just not there anymore.

In my case, I had a sudden insight into cultural and linguistic labels applied to complex extended family structures in Japanese culture (translation: what you'd call the in-laws and cousins and steps), but upon waking it all dissolved into a jumble of confused, meaningless syllables and decomposed thoughts. It was extremely frustrating, because the one thing I hate more than anything else is forgetting something I know I should be able to remember.

So, anyone have a similar experience?

-Trunks