Joan Harthan

The Sea of Lucidity

Computer graphic, September 2011

I’m in a house with other people. It’s all very normal, like waking reality. Then we all go down to a wide, open beach. It’s night and the sea is quite rough. A line of people at the water’s edge form a barrier between the beach and the sea. These people are otherworldly and without discernible facial features or clothing. Their bodies are quite dark but there is a beautiful golden glow around each of them. They are snatching at us, trying to pull us into the sea. The shadowy people with me are frightened but I’m just curious. I see the first person (a man) caught; they drag him through the line and into the sea. After that we all seemed to be pulled in very quickly.

I find myself in a completely different landscape. It’s breath-takingly beautiful. It’s daylight, strong sunlight. In the distance are tall white buildings, historical and important looking. The sky is a brilliant blue. I gasp as a mountain comes into view. Behind the tall buildings and piercing the sky, it’s two-thirds covered in snow and looks very high. It’s awesome. I look more closely at what is around me and when I look back, the buildings in front of the mountain have changed into white minarets. The mountain hasn’t changed. We set off to explore the town. I notice how unstable everything is. Faces and scenery change, even as I look. There are many shops and it’s whilst browsing them that I realise I’m dreaming. We pass a clothes shop called van Ghyll Ltd and a few doors down another called E. Ghyll. The streets are quite narrow and some are cobbled.

We walk down the street to a doctor’s house on the left. We are there to tell him he’s needed somewhere. His house is a modest stone cottage on the main thoroughfare. The doorways are quite low and he has to stoop to pass through. He’s smart, clean shaven, short brown hair and slim. He puts on his jacket and comes back down the street with us. He carries on to wherever he’s going and we go into one of the Ghyll shops. I can hardly believe the Ghyll shops are still there. Knowing I’m dreaming, I expected them to have disappeared. I ask the people with me if they realise this is a dream. They don’t believe me. I explain in great detail about how things change and morph in dreams and how this had happened at the beginning of the dream but now, the dreamscape was incredibly stable. I ask my friends, “Are you sure this seems completely real to you? Do you not have a vague feeling that you’re not really here? This has all the hallmarks of a lucid dream and I’m so excited and astounded by this stability.” I remember being amazed that I didn’t have to rub my hands together, or do anything to maintain the lucidity. It just was! I was moving so easily around this stable environment as if it really was real!

I seem to remember walking round outside, drinking in the amazingly real environment, but I must have been losing lucidity because I don’t remember anything else and woke up shortly afterwards remembering nothing of what I was doing/seeing immediately before waking, even though I seemed to consciously decide when to open my eyes and wake up properly – eager to record the experience. On waking I was thinking through an analogy about the whole experience: that waking thoughts are like tunnels being made in deep, compacted sand that’s relatively stable. Dreaming is like tidal water gently swirling about on the surface, constantly moving and changing, and that’s why they’re so hard to remember – because the mechanism that forms memories is in the sand, not on the surface.

Copyright 2011: All images contained herein are protected by copyright. Images may not be used, copied, transmitted or reproduced in whole or in part in any form nor may they or any part thereof be stored in a retrieval system of any nature without written permission of the artist.