Reality vs illusion.

Just saw this interesting thread. I like some similar cinema (independent, experimental, world cinema, cult), but also can't watch violence, war or very depressing subjects any more. I also hardly, if ever, cook, and eat a lot of sandwiches. I have been intrigued by wakeful consciousness versus dream consciousness (and states between the two). I have a fuzzy idea that dream reality and waking reality are intertwined throughout our days. I feel dreams are dismissed too easily and that our 'society' tends to give too much credence to conscious thinking as the only way to go. At the same time, I do this myself without being aware of it. Also interested in dreams as a kind of 'pure metaphor', offering multiple interpretative possibilities that will never be the complete story, just like a good poem. I find that dreams also offer a source of free entertainment during sleeping hours. My life would feel far poorer without dreams. Sometimes I wake and don't remember them, which is fine, don't like to get too grasping about holding on to them. Sometimes they leave me with just a mood or feeling. Yum, dreams.

Hi @Mazarita@utopia

I find cooking for one boring and this has gone on for so long I find I have forgotten how to cook much more than frozen vegetables and anything I can heat in the microwave

I eat what I can grow in pots in the back court yard - mainly salads - I eat salads as long as the vegies last - right now it's a bit bleak and time to plant more beets for the winter

Some people live to eat others eat to live - I eat to live and that God for prepared healty snacks like yoghurt and nut bars - and of course - fruit. Bananas have the best biodegradable packaging - just open and eat and ditch the skin into the green bin

I am becoming a specialist eater - picky - oh yeah - my raw fruit and vegies have to be the bes availble because I live on them

Dec

Hi @Owlunar, good to see you this morning. Salads sound like a great way to go. And I'm with you on bananas. Great meal replacement or between-meals snack. Lately I've started making the bus excursion to the big fruit shop at the mall to get ingredients for green smoothie juices made in the blender. All the fibre and all the deliciousness of celery, spinach, lime, kiwi fruit, apple, banana and coconut water. I feel very holy eating this and have to admit it makes me feel healthier. I triggered a chronic gut disease in myself by eating maccas almost exclusively for about 9 months when I was 17. I was a chocoholic aside from that. Sandwiches and smoothies seem like a vast improvement and I can only manage chocolate one square per session now. 37 years later.

I don't ever remember eating in a dream.

Hi @Mazarita

I see I am not alone in the specialist eating endangered species continuum - I eat a lot of sammies too - I can get a good chicken, cheese and salad sandwich very cheaply at the local shops - thank heavens for Lord Sandwich who has invented the piece of meat between two slices of bread meal - so easy to prepare, transport and eat and clean up after preparation.

I have not yet got around to getting a blender and making smoothies - you never know when it might just strike me as a good idea. I have never eating maccas much - though I like the double beef pattie etc on a sesame seed bun - but then chockies - I love chocolate covered caramels. I try not to buy them - they are safe when I don't have any - I think my body could do without them but still - if I have them I seem to need one whenever I walk into a little glitch in my life -

I used to be a social smoker which meant I rarely had any smokes in the house - but I had a dream one morning where I was just about tearing the house apart looking for one. I woke up and thought - ah good - I can go to the shops and get one - then realised I had quit and that had been the case for years -

I have not smoked for 12+ years - finding a mobile phone far more interesting as an expense. Sometimes I still get the urge - which is different from craving.

Sandwiches and smoothies seems an okay diet to me - I have a cook chook most weekends - they are small and I can eat one in three days - and that is just about enough protein for a week - luv dimsims

Dec

All praise to Lord Sandwich, @Owlunar. That one gave me a laugh. I do get some cooked meat meals too when my companion cooks and shares with me about two nights a week. Other times we get take away dinner at our other friend's place: that would usually be japanese or old-style fish-shop burgers, occasional Thai or Indian. Now that I add it up, it doesn't sound too bad at all. And yet I feel like I've had people screaming at me to change my diet all my life. Get a gut disease and the whole world becomes an expert on how you must be eating wrong, lol.

How intriguing, your smoking dream. An unlikely coincidence: I once made a short video about a dream woman who smokes.

I would love to know more about the video about the dream woman who smokes @Mazarita - it sounds unique - a woman being the dream - not the smokes

btw - I have never regretted smoking - esp when I get off plane and everyone lights up at once outside the airport - imagine the suffering on a long flight - I never thought of that before

I don't go out to eat much - I ate toasties and fish and chips when I was away - gollee - that seems like ages ago and it was on the Labour Day week - I like pasta and chinese - I went to a Chinese New Year banquet once - I forget how many courses - I think about 14 - very small dishes with spaces for entertainment between

But when I cook myself a meal it is usually chops and frozen vegetables and I find it easy to forget the griller and need to wash it before I cook more chops - puts me off a bit

Dec

@Owlunar,

The video is based on a poem about the dual identity of the woman. It goes further than that but in a poetic way that I can't adequately describe without simply giving you the poem (anonymity prevents). The poem asks, who is the dreamer? Is it the sleeping woman or the woman in the dream? There are other plays on paradox in it. The images are taken from a noir-style ad that is a historical piece in itself from the 1960s. It, in turn, depicts an earlier historical time, the 1940s.

The Chinese New Year banquet sounds great! Reminds me that I very much like Chinese dumplings, especially the ones I once ate one at a place in Little Bourke Street, Melbourne. Bit far from home to get them these days (only about 2000 kms).

Hi @Mazarita

I really love movies like that - things that make me question my place in the universe - I mean - where are we really - when things can so tiny to nano-nanobites or massive interstellar quasars etc - and somewhere in the middle of all of it - here we are?

It's a a metaphysical argument and I love this - people question my belief that I am sure that there is other life in the universe but unlikely that it will be anything humanoid. I read to much and think a lot but boy - that movie sounds right up my line of interests

The Chinese New Year banquet I went to was a few years back now - they had a dragon come in and there were fire-crackers inside - and entertainment between courses - which I said before - it was a fantastic night

Back to that movie - when we are dreaming - who is the dreamer - maybe the world we enter when we dream is a real world to someone else - seeing as I have dreamed of Queen Victoria and Superman and heroes and villians of all kinds - how do I affect them? Do I affect them? Can I affect them?

And I often wonder when I wake up in the morning - how do I know that I am awake and know this is my life - and no one else's? It is an interesting thing to think about but somehow we know the sleeping from the waking

Great stuff to talk about Maz

Dec

Hi @Owlunar,

Yes, I think you and I share some cosmic interests really. I have wondered about the alien life too, thinking it may be unlikely to be humanoid. I could imagine gaseous life forms, for example, though I have no idea what form they might take. Another thing I sometimes muse on is about how there may be some kind of humanoid alien life but we may not all be existing in the same time frame from planet to planet. As in, the martians may have gone extinct eons ago, or could be a species that develop after humans are gone. Time seems about as infinite as the vast or microscopic proportions of the cosmos. In that sense, it may not seem so unlikely that we haven't heard from outer space (aside from what may be hidden from our knowledge by powers that be).

Dreams, yes, I've had regular dreams with famous actors in them. Odd ones like Jeff Goldblum, who has been the most frequent visitor over the years. Earlier on I had a memorable dream with Eric Stoltz. Aside from that, there's been English royalty several times. I also see people rather intensely in the space between wake and sleep sometimes. Lots of faces of people I don't know. I don't know if we affect them in return. Fun to speculate!