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Working Dreams

arfie
arfie
I had a night of working dreams. Woke up more tired than if I had simply stayed awake. In this night-long labor, my father-in-law was carpeting the world beneath high pressure sodium lights. The el cheapo variety that hiss constantly. My eyes are still burning from the glare.

"Working dreams" is my term which I coined during the period I was becoming fluent in Spanish. My Spanish professor told me it is a consistent indicator of gaining fluency in an acquired language. Here is a discussion on that slice of the dream pie

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/books/review/Erard-t.html?_r=0

Just fishing. Not quite sure what I am fishing for...

All thoughts welcome.
arfie
arfie
I passed through the linguistic fluency dream series around 2K. Shortly after my last hospital level breakdown. Many, many linguists have told me they are typical. My personal favorite theory is that the neural net is breaking the newly independent language out of the miscellaneous file and creating a separate file for it. All linguists seem to agree it is an exhausting dream series.

I have felt a correlation I have yet to find words for between the linguistic fluency dreams and other dreams that seem to ultimately lead to resolution of mental health issues.

Still fishing.

Should I have put "Nerd Alert" in the subject line?
Community Leadermujicaptsd
mujicaptsd
arfie, since I'm bilingual from growing up in Uruguay, I dream in Spanish, too. But never work. It's always back to home sweet home for me when I dream in Spanish. English is for the working dream, I'm afraid.

Sweet dreams!
deleted_user
deleted_user
Carpetting the world under hissing lights! Interesting. Of course I can't know what yours means. but it reminds me of dreams I used to have when I worked 12 hours a day in a grocery store. One dream was that I was trying to ring out a 25 lb bag of dog food and couldn't get it to slide down the conveyer belt at the side of the cash register. I woke up trying to push my pillow down the side of the bed! Now that was exhausting.
arfie
arfie
The fluency dream sequences happen during the transition to fluency to a foreign language.. Whatever your first language, the "working dreams?" happen as you gain fluency in whatever "foreign" language you are learning. In the case of children raised bi or multi-lingual, it is hard to know. However gifted a child's speech, they still conceptualize as children. A conversation of this depth would be quite beyond a young child, in any language. I suspect their neural pathways develop in multiple languages as easily as they develop in multiple social environments. Adult brains have to work considerably harder to forge new neural pathways.

I find no mystery in the dream language of my FIL carpeting the world beneath bright, noisy lights. I see him as a man of many cover-ups who always needs to be the most brilliant bulb on the block. He is a gas and oil executive, after all. He can dominate any conversation, even at 85. Especially at 85?

The wonder I am wandering through here is the exhausting and contiguous nature of the dream. I dreamt the same dream all night and woke more tired than when I fell asleep. That is no mystery to me with nightmares, but this was not a nightmare. I have been through several dream series like this through my PTSD recovery. They seem to lead to... Resolutions? Paradigm shifts? Healing? Babbling internet blurbs? Aka BIBs?

Thanks for letting me babble.
Community Leadermujicaptsd
mujicaptsd
arfie, I love the language learning process you describe so much that when I retire in 10 years in Uruguay I'm going to do it on the Uruguay-Brazil border.

The plan: to get fluent and dream in Brazilian Portuguese!

I'm an intermediate Brazilian Portuguese speaker now, but I hope in my old age to dream fluently in the language of the samba and the bossa nova.

Aaaaaahhhhhhhh...... :-)

Nutty, but fun to look forward to just for the hell of it. Being in Uruguay will be great for my PTSD, too, as a country that dealt with PTSD as a whole nation.

The book A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers tells the story of what we went through to start our healing process. I was there. Plan to go back to visit this summer, and then to live there in retirement for my PTSD health--and to dream in Portuguese.......

http://www.georgescialabba.net/mtgs/1990/05/a-miracle-a-universe-settling.html
arfie
arfie
The last time I tried to study Portuguese, the profie kept slapping my desk and shouting, "No estamos estudando espanhol!" Intimidating lady... I fled her class in tears.

My most helpful profie in Ecuador was a Brazilian physics professor. He helped me understand allot of the side baggage I was dealing with at La UDA. I still hear echoes of him encouraging me to try again with learning Portuguese. Might be time... Still have the books and CDs.

Still haven't tracked down the Serenity Prayer in Portuguese.
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