Hans Baeker

For what it's worth, a work of fiction is often more like a travel guide to me than anything else in giving me, hopefully, something of an idea about what it would be like to live in that area at that time.  To me, the story itself is secondary.

Would a "cure" really cure anything?I have noticed that my thought tends to be far more abstract than most people's thought. I don't know if it is or not, but being in math, I wouldn't want to take a chance on losing my apparently enhanced ability to engage in abstract thought.

I dream pretty good with decent imagery. My most common dream for years has been that of floating. Sometimes only a few inches above the ground -- take a step and glide for dozens of feet before the next step -- and sometimes for several tens of feet but rarely above the height of trees or surrounding buildings. However, on rare occasions, the floating can be up in the clouds. It's kind of fun stepping out of the window of a building several floors up and sink slowly down to the ground. I have noticed that if it is cold and I have a heavy comforter on, I cannot float at all in my dreams. I'm heavily tied to the ground instead and it is a struggle to move much. In all this, though, I have decent imagery. What is strange is when having something read in a dream. A sign, a storefront window, a newspaper, a book, a menu, or pretty much anything. In a dream years ago, I was reading something that made perfect sense but for some reason I tried to read it again. The second time, it was pure gibberish. My mind took notice of this and since then, whenever I read something in a dream, I usually end up rereading it with the same results. One other thing that might be interesting, for a period of about ten years I was working far too much and got to where I slept about two hours a night. At first, I would crash for six to eight hours every week or two, but it got to where I didn't do that. I loved all the extra time that I had but my dreams cut back to maybe one every six months and I really hated it. Nearly twenty years ago my sleep pattern became more normal (about five to nine hours per night) and I seem to dream far more readily than I ever did before. Now I often have dreams in even a half hour nap. Sometimes I even feel like I start dreaming as I fall asleep.

This may be rather off topic, but for years I've heard people refer to "undressing with your eyes", usually in reference to a woman. I always wondered how that made any difference, but now realize that I just can't do it at all. I can't imagine anyone I'm looking at as being dreassed any differently than they are at the moment. By the way, I think that I'm pretty much demisexual, too. Without an emotional connection with a woman, I really don't feel interested in having sex with them.

I read some time ago, possibly on this site, that one possibility is to measure someone's brain waves and ask them whether the green of trees is darker or lighter than the green of trees. Someone who can form images in their mind will apparently form an image of grass next to trees and compare them that way.Being color blind, that's a tough question for me. When I read that, I said to myself that obviously it was the green of the grass that was brighter, but then I realized that I was thinking about the bark of trees which I already know is often pretty dark (with some exceptions).