Reconditioned Nightmares.

For some reason I've been having far more nightmares in the last three years than I've had in the entire previous 40 years of my life. One of the things I've been working on to help me deal with them and not let them ruin my night (and my sleep) is to try and wake up immediately when a dream turns bad. Then I think about how the dream wouldn't be a nightmare if I wasn't helpless in it, and try to get back into the same dream, but in a lucid state.

I've been trying this for some time, and last night, for the first time ever, it worked. I was dreaming that I had been kidnapped by machine-gun wielding terrorists in Tibet while exploring the four gorges dam (WTF?). I was only awake for a few seconds, but I decided that if I was some strange Tibetan god, then they would have far more to fear from me than I from them. When I fell back asleep the dream continued from where it left off, but now I was a god, and the dream very quickly ceased to be scary as I suddenly had complete power over the situation.

The dream then veered down another track entirely as I wandered off, exploring my powers, and I managed to have a full night's restful sleep.

Brain Hack.

The series of Brain Hack articles are about a parent's attempt to help cure his son of his neurological disorders, using a simple new non-invasive therapy. I found the series fascinating.

Massive Journal Deletion on LJ.

It seems that Six Apart is currently deleting thousands of journals and communities on LJ, due to 'questionable content'. It seems that they've been receiving pressure to deal with journals dealing with pedophilia and other topics, and have decided to mount an unannounced purge.

More info can be found in liz_marcs's journal.

Poetry.

Long, long ago, for an English course, I was required to buy a copy of The Norton Anthology of Poetry. It was a thick and expensive book and I seem to recall that we only ever read a handful of poems from it during the course. Being a lover of poetry, I decided to read its thirteen-hundred pages cover to cover to see what I liked. At some point, as I read, I started sticking pieces of paper into the book to mark the ones I liked the most.

Well, yesterday I found that book still on its shelf, covered with dust, the markers still in its pages, and since I have a place on my site where I've been recording my favorite poems, it seemed apt to go through the book and record the poems that I had marked. It wasn't always easy. Sometimes it wasn't clear to me what poem on a given page had caused me to think it worth marking. I'm clearly not the same person now as I was then.

Still, it was a rewarding job, which I just finished. You can follow that link above to read my favorite poems, should you care too. As for me, I'm thinking that maybe its time to reread that poetry book, and put in new markers to record what my tastes are now.