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April 1, 2003

No More Lucky Charms Before Bed

Last night I dreamed I went blind.

Rather than being unable to see anything at all, I discovered that my brain had somehow preserved a snapshot of everything in my house before I lost my sight. So for the duration of the dream (I woke up twice, and returned to the dream each time until the alarm went off this morning), I was able to walk around the house and name things, or describe where something was before touching it. I couldn't see anybody around me, they were just voices coming from the space the person would have occupied in my line of vision if I had been able to see anything besides the snapshot, but I could see everything as it had last been left. So I'd pick up a book or a CD case from a stack and be able to describe the title or the illustration on the cover. One of the voices explained it was a stress-related last gasp of my brain, struggling to protect me from the darkness.

As the dream progressed, color began to fade from the things I could "see" in my mind's eye until everything was a washed out monochrome, with only hints of rusty red among the gray and charcoal. Once the color had bled out of the things I could "see," books and other objects began to become generic ... I couldn't read titles or describe the covers anymore, I could just anticipate their general shapes before handling them. The dream ended just before I lost the ability to remember the shapes, or where anything was. I was beginning to realize that I'd have to take up a new career, so I had my friends take me to a comedy club so I could get ideas for my new standup routine.