Weird little thing...

[eregyrn]

I had a weird dream experience this morning. I'm not going to bore you with long descriptions of dreams, I promise. But here's the deal: I was dreaming, and in the dream I heard a loud electronic BEEP. Soon after that, I heard the BEEP again. Somehow, I didn't incorporate this into the dream I was actually having -- I backed out of that dream, to a point where I knew I had been dreaming... and heard the BEEP a third time. At which point, I woke up entirely, and realized that I'd still been dreaming for a moment there (after the first two beeps).

Being aware of having woken up, my first thought was to wonder if what I'd heard was my clock-radio alarm going off (I have it set to "radio", but perhaps I'd set it wrong and it was on "alarm", although I was immediately aware that the beeps I'd heard sounded nothing like what my radio's alarm sounds like). I rolled over to see that it was 7:19 -- too early, my alarm goes off at 7:29. So I laid there thinking that, well, I'd heard the BEEP repeat itself in the dream/s at regular intervals, so it should happen again soon and I'd be able to pinpoint where it was from.

The odd part is: it didn't happen again. As I laid there thinking about what it might have been (it didn't really sound like the beep of a fire-alarm for which the battery is low; it sounded a little like the beep my cellphone makes when *its* battery is low, although a bit more crisp than that; it sounded very close and very loud), it didn't repeat itself. I didn't hear anything for 10 more minutes until my alarm went off as normal.

I pretty much *never* do that thing where you think you've woken up but you're still dreaming. (Yes, I sometimes wake up disoriented, thinking that the details of my room that I can see in the dark are "wrong" somehow, but that's different.) And I can't for the life of me figure out why I would have dreamed this "three electronic beeps waking me up" if they didn't actually *exist*. So I'm a little weirded out by it.

Comments

[troyswann.livejournal.com]

Brains are weird. I'm against them.

That is very interesting and a little spooky. Maybe some memory sound getting hooked and dragged along by something else?


(I had that waking up but not really thing, too, when I thought there was someone standing in my room, woke up, saw someone was actually in my room and woke up again. See? Brains? Out to get you. Don't take your eye off of them for a second)

[lynxreign.livejournal.com]

Could it have been a truck backing up outside? Some of them have beeps with a second or two interval. If your brain was racing during the interval, it may have seemed like much more. If the truck was only backing up for a few seconds, it'd only beep 3 times. The the Ride vans at the Mobile and in that other parking lot beep like that frequently.

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

I suppose it's possible, in theory. We don't get a lot of that near me, though. It's hard to figure out where such a truck might have been. (Since it wasn't trash day.)

There's also something annoyingly coincidental about the idea of something that can beep just long enough to wake you up, and then stop as soon as you *have* woken up enough to listen for it and make sense of it. I *hate* that. (I mean, I know it's possible, whatever the noise is; but what a pain...)

(I take your meaning, though, about how the actual seeming intervals between the beeps may have been quite different than what they seemed to be in the dream/s.)

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

The Beep aliens just have beeping parties in your apartment while you sleep. And when you wake up they get back under the bed. No biggie.

[okojosan.livejournal.com]

I have dreamed that my alarm was going off several minutes before it actually goes off. Quite annoying!

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

That is intriguing. As if it were an alarm clock from another universe.

And I love how the dreaming and waking experience becomes tangled together sometimes.

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

Well, we already knew that YOUR brain was evil. But yeah, I'm definitely coming around to that conclusion.

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Thanks a lot.

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

I dunno. It always seems kind of scary, to me.

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

I can't remember if I've done that before or not. What was weird about this was that I definitely *didn't* incorporate the sound into the original dream; I had to have a dream about waking up because of the sound, instead. Seems odd.

[jenlev.livejournal.com]

That makes sense too. I'm rather discombobulated when it comes to this kind of thing. Hard to articulate, next time we chat remind me to clarify? :)