Observations placeholder
Hustvedt, Siri - My pre-sleep cinema of ghouls and monsters
Identifier
001621
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Migraine is caused by brain damage and Siri suffers from migraine, but here the vision is not a migraine related one
A description of the experience
http://migraine.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/lifting-lights-and-little-people/
Another ordinary form of spontaneous mental images are hypnogogic hallucinations, which appear on the threshold between sleeping and waking.
I had always believed that the brilliant mutating images I see as I drift off every night are universal, but I have since discovered that while common, not everyone falls asleep to visions.
I am deeply attached to my pre-sleep cinema of ghouls and monsters, shifting faces and bodies that grow and shrink, to my own nameless cartoon characters who flee over mountain tops or jump into lakes, to the brilliant colors that explode or bleed into gorgeous geometries, to the gyrating dancers and erotic performers that entertain me while I am still conscious but falling toward Morpheus.
Except as a spectator, I play no role in this lunatic borderland.
It is a world distinct from that of my dreams, in which I am always an actor, and therefore it is more closely allied to my Lilliputian experience. I watched them, but I felt no need to interact with them.
They were simply there for my viewing pleasure.