dream memory
I still need to do actual research on this, but something weird happens in my dreams and I'm curious if it happens to many others also. Basically, when I'm dreaming, I often experience persistent places and structures, and memories from these dreams persist from one night to the next as well.
This isn't too unusual, but the weird thing is that...well, take this example: I keep dreaming of a distinct series of roads and turns that I can take to get to restaurants or other areas. The dream world has a superficial physical appearance of the area around my parents' house, but when I'm awake, I don't confuse the directions I take in the dream with the directions I take in real life. Part of this is because the destinations in the dream--bookstores, restaurants, etc--don't actually exist irl, but in the dream I'm convinced they're real, so I'm surprised I don't get
confused. It's like I can simultaneously exist in both worlds at different times, with each world being a legitimate physical place with its own rules.
Here are a few examples of locations in the dream world that I've visited multiple times:
- A hotel with 50 floors, the upper ones of which are only accessible using a particular service elevator (i get chased by people often in this place and have to go to the maintenance areas)
- A sprawling mall with one or two shabby arcades and an import game goods shop (I get lost here sometimes)
- A cross-state drive that takes me to Delaware via peaceful, wandering country roads (this might actually be real, I forget, it's been years since i drove to DE)
- A huge house that I live in with my parents and some other people. It has lots of rooms but is structured really oddly, almost like a cat tower--it has floors without stairs that you have to climb up to, and bathrooms connected to bedrooms in all kinds of disparate styles. It also has a basement sewer entrance and a secret attic that I sometimes hide in.