Tag: nightmares

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Mango Nightmares!

OK so I don’t know if I’m alone in this.  Maybe I am, or maybe somewhere out there in my readership is another person who also gets Mango Nightmares.  How do you tell if you have Mango Nightmares?  It is not, in fact, having nightmares about mangos, but the other way, where you get nightmares after eating mangos.

So here’s the thing.  Every year, usually in the summer, I go crazy over one type of fruit.  It changes from year to year, but whatever fruit it is that year, I eat dozens and dozens of pounds of it until my thirst for that particular fruit is slaked.  One year I had dozens of pineapples.  Another, golden kiwis (far superior to regular kiwis, try them!).

…Side note, why are we calling Pineapples Pineapples?! ?

Anyway! So one year, my glut of fruit was mangoes. And not the red and green kind like I thought were mangos. I mean, they are mangoes, but they are not the best mangoes.

I’ve gotta say, Haden mangoes have got nothing on Ataulfo mangoes!

Once I discovered how good these were I bought them by the bagfull. I learned a quick way to peel them using a glass:

And from there I was processing them and freezing them, then bagging them up in individual portions for smoothies! But always I was eating them straight up, sometimes having four or five for a meal.

…That’s when the nightmares started. I noticed a dramatic shift in my dreams on nights where I’d had a ton of mangoes during the day. I began having vivid and distressing nightmares. I did some experiments and found that they were directly correlated to having a bunch of mangoes.

So, the Year Of Mangoes ended and I eventually went back to a sane equilibrium with them, having one every now and then when they looked good. Then, at a games night at a friend’s last week, a bunch of fresh, ripe mangoes were brought out. I gleefully showed them the glass-hack and prepped them in no time. We feasted on the delicious golden flesh. One of my friends joked that it probably wasn’t enough to bring on The Mango Nightmares. I laughed. That time it wasn’t. But now…

A couple of days ago, I only had one mango. And that night: vivid nightmares. It could have just been regular nightmares. I like to have more data before I make a hypothesis…

Yesterday I only had one mango, I swear. It was good as hell. But my nightmares last night… Lordy lordy! Awful! Here’s what my sleep looked like (I use Sleep Cycle to track my sleep quality!):

I didn’t wait for the alarm to rise me and I alighted right quick to try and shake the dream of an old Asian lady coming for me with an AK while I ran upstairs (NO YOU FOOL! What are you thinking, UPstairs!!! Your friends are in the basement and she’s going to KILL THEM AHHHHHH). So yeah I got up.

And I will try another experiment. One mango today. I’ll see how I fare.

So, dear readers, am I alone? Are Mango Nightmares a thing of my own personal physiology? Or do I have friends out there who know the struggle between choosing to taste the delicious golden sweet honey flesh of a glorious Drupe, or having a peaceful sleep?

I will keep you posted!

Heidi out.

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Warning: Ceasing Production of Short Stories Will Result in Vivid Nightmares

I haven’t had this many vivid dreams for quite some time.

I’m wondering if it isn’t a byproduct of ceasing to write short stories, after a year of fervent crafting.

When I finished my first book, I found that I had a ton of creative energy to let loose, and I channeled it into the best sketch book I’ve ever produced.  It was interesting to ‘come down’ from writing a book, and I ended up with some excellent drawings from it.

But now; I’m not certain if the dreams are a direct result of my lack of writing.  If so, I’m not entirely opposed.  Certainly it would be an interesting side effect.

I will keep my descriptions of dreams to a minimum, I think.  Several of my previous posts note them, because those ones were notable.  I used to keep a dream journal; for a whole year I wrote down every single dream as soon as I awoke.  It led to noticing some interesting patterns.  For instance, I dream of bears more than any other animal, and I find myself shopping and choosing between items a surprising amount.

‘Weapons’ and ‘being shot’ is at the top of a list of extremely rare occurrences.  So is ‘fictional characters’.  So you see, the past few entries are of some note, having documented a whole year’s worth of dreams.

We’ll see what hounds of hell my mind lets loose this night.  As for just now (I just woke up), seeing London under twenty feet of water was most distressing.  I’m glad Scully was there though, we managed to get eachother out alive.

Your confused and shaken writer,

H.G.

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So I was shot in the back with an arrow last night…

So I was shot in the middle of my back with an arrow last night…

Movies don’t effect my dreams, not at all…  Agent Barton, I didn’t even have the pleasure of seeing you- that is, if it was you who let lose the arrow that stuck me right in the middle of my back.

It didn’t hurt, at least, not right away.  As I was telling my friends that maybe we should call an ambulance, I fell to my hands and knees as the poison started to kick in.

I had the most vivid sensation of it spreading, starting at my hands, all the way up my arms, through my chest, and down into my legs.  It totally messed with my equilibrium; as I tensed up on the ground, everything started going all tilty.

If you’ve ever had vertigo, which I have, you’l know that it’s very, very disconcerting to have the world feel like it’s on an angle, and moving.  To top it off, I had the feeling like I was going to fly up away from the earth.  I hung on for dear life.

It started hurting, and then the screaming started.  I’ve never screamed so loud in a dream before, but it was the weirdest thing- I don’t think I make a damn sound.  To everyone around me, I was silent, mouth agape.

So there I was, clutching the ground, mouth wide in agonized terror, with an arrow sticking out of the middle of my back.

Finally they got me into the back of an ambulance.  The paramedic pulled the arrow out of my back; but it’d had a special arrowhead, and it took a bunch of me with it.  There was a clump of weird spongy flesh, which was apparently inconsequential back tissue, but also, to my horror, the paramedic showed my a chunk of my stomach.  Again, screaming.

I finally managed to wake myself.  It had felt completely real, and the relief I felt upon realizing that it was only a dream was like plunging hands covered in acid into a neutralizing bath.  I almost cried, but managed to calm myself, enough even to go back to sleep.

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Pleased but also terrified

That moment when you wake up from a nightmare you were having and realize you were dreaming about something you wrote- oh gosh.

I was hunting a Trook, the Big Bad from my two-books-completed young adult fantasy series.  Holy smokes it was scary.  I was Bazzil, hunting it through a house, with people, who may or may not have been Bazzil’s entourage from me second book, backing me up as I stalked through dark hallways.

Around a corner: a Trook!  Only it was more like a Ring Wraith.  It wielded a sword I recognized- Bilbo’s Sting, and stabbed me quite deeply.  I fought back, though my own sword, Rending, was strangely long and bendy.  I stabbed a few times to fight off my attacker, but my sword was too bendy and wonky.  Sting was hard and exacting as it thrust towards me…

Wow, I don’t read much into dreams, but it’s very rare I dream of weapons and violence.  And the collision of Tolkien’s work and my own in the dream world was quite interesting to experience.

I quite enjoyed my read through of my first book.  It stood up well to the test of time.  Now onto my second, and we’ll see how it flows from one to the next.

But for now, I must finished my “Werewolves be bad, yo” short story.  Deadline looms.

Thanks for reading.

Heidi out.