Tag: Dreams

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…no time to dream by Mike Fainzilber

basic training
the sleepless nights
of a dolphin mother

by Mike Fainzilber

This haiku deals with unique modes of sleep and sleep deprivation and relates to a study that showed that newborn dolphins and their mothers do not sleep at all for the first month of the newborn’s life.

The newborns require constant support and vigilance during this period, otherwise they may sink in the water and drown, hence no sleep at all for the dolphin mother! Human mothers with offspring in basic training in the military can probably relate to this…

This haiku is the second in a pair of poems on unique modes of sleep and sleep deprivation, the first being inspired by nesting penguins: ‘To sleep…’

Further reading:

‘Continuous activity in cetaceans after birth’, 2005, Lyamin, O., Pryaslova, J., Lance, V. & Siegel, J., Nature, available: https://doi.org/10.1038/4351177a

‘Newborn dolphins go a month without sleep’, 2005, Coghlan, A., New Scientist, available: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7606-newborn-dolphins-go-a-month-without-sleep/

Author bio:

Mike Fainzilber’s day job is a biologist. He began writing haiku and senryu during the pandemic, and this side effect of COVID-19 has not worn off yet. Editors in his two spheres of activity have been known to suggest that he should best restrict his efforts to the other sphere. Find out more about Mike’s research via his lab’s website and connect with him on Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/mfainzilber.bsky.social .

Read more sciku by Mike: ‘The deepest shade’, ‘Jellyfish’, and ‘In the Deep’, ‘The Blood and the Run’, and ‘To sleep…’.

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Particles/Waves by John Hawkhead

particles or waves?
moving from a dream state
to awakening…

by John Hawkhead

Fundamental particles such as photons and electrons display the characteristics of particles AND waves depending on the experiments we use to measure them. Particles have momentum and position so we can identify the effect when they interact with other particles. On the other hand, a wave can pass over, around or through physical objects. They are oscillations that transfer energy from one location to another.

So matter can be considered to be waves and particles depending on the method of measurement (see The Copenhagen Interpretation of Bohr and Heisenberg). Other theories have competed for our understanding of how subatomic matter behaves, such as the Many Worlds interpretation, but the duality of the Copenhagen Interpretation is still a strong contender for explaining how the subatomic world works.

Dreams can seem very real, sometimes involving all of our senses. They often involve people we know, sometimes in bizarre events that nevertheless can leave us strongly impacted upon awakening from sleep. Some dreams can be very closely related to current events in one’s life and so seem to take on a significance that we may try to rationalise in relation to our waking lives.

Two great thinkers on this subject, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, both considered dreams as important in understanding the human psyche, whether as repressed desires or as messages from the unconscious that inform our waking lives. So are dreams real? Are they as much a part of our existence as the waking world? Is there a duality of existence in waking and dreaming? Perhaps we go somewhere else when we dream that is just as real as in the conscious world.

Further reading:

‘Elementary particle’, Wikipedia article, available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_particle

‘Copenhagen interpretation’, Wikipedia article, available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation

‘Many-worlds interpretation’, Wikipedia article, available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

‘Sigmund Freud’, Wikipedia article, available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmund_Freud

‘Carl Jung’, Wikipedia article, available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung

Author bio:

John Hawkhead (@haikuhawk.bsky.social) has been writing haiku and illustrating for over 25 years. His work has been published all over the world and he has won a number of haiku competitions. John’s books of haiku and senryu, ‘Small Shadows’ and ‘Bone Moon’, are now available from Alba Publishing (http://www.albapublishing.com/).

Read more of John’s sciku here!

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My dreams escape me

My dreams escape me.

Vitamin B6 could help

my recollection.

 

It’s often hard to remember the details of dreams when we wake – some people even keep notebooks by their beds to scribble their dreams down whilst they are fresh in their memories.

A study by Aspy et al (2018) has now found evidence to suggest that taking vitamin B6 before bed for 5 days increased dream recall ability (although not dream vividness, bizarreness or colour). Interestingly taking a range of B vitamins did not affect dream recall and even resulted in participants having a lower sleep quality and feeling more tired.

Original research: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0031512518770326