Waking up in a strange place
Did you ever wake up convinced you were in one place, and then look around and realize you’re in another?
Maybe you’re on vacation and you think you’re at home, until you look around the room and everything is unfamiliar. And then you remember—oh, I’m in Rome.
Sometimes it’s the other way around. You’ve been staying with friends for a week, and you wake up imagining you’re still there, and you discover that you’re home.
Usually you adjust almost instantaneously. But a couple of days ago I returned from a trip to New York, where I’d stayed for a few nights. I came home in the evening, and the next day I woke up knowing I was at home in my own bed. Strangely, it was the morning after that when I felt the dislocation.
And I felt it more powerfully than ever before. I was so convinced that I was not in my own room, even though everything in my line of sight told me that’s exactly where I was, that I looked around for a full minute or two before I could accept it. All the familiar items—the art on the walls, the mobile hanging from the ceiling, the paint, the rug, the location of the door—everything screamed “home” to me.
And yet it seemed a Potemkin mock-up of my bedroom, and that I was really somewhere else. The feeling was so powerful that for hours I had trouble shaking it entirely, even though I was well aware that I was home.
Had I been dreaming I was somewhere else? Was that the cause of the strange disquiet? If so, I don’t remember. For much of my life I remembered my dreams vividly and in great detail, night after night after night. Sometimes my dreams would linger throughout the day as a mood.
But for twenty years or so now it’s been rare for me to remember a dream, and even when I do it’s usually just a fragment.
…These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Ye all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
I was born in 1946. I grew up on a farm in South Dakota.
Now, every day, I wake up thinking I’m in a strange place.
All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. (Isaiah 40:6, ESV)
It’s unusual for the illusion to last much of the day. Perhaps it’s just as well you don’t remember the dream.
not since my ill spent youth…
though one memorable moment was after Floor Show and wandering as creatures in the night, all going to a friends apt. we all crashed and i was up against the wall… interesting morning to wake up face near the wall, only to not see wall, but the sun… and your over 25 stories up… fearing you slept on a roof ledge… for a moment…
i ended up in lots of book worthy places waking up…
ranging from above village carousing, to the time at a commune, or marcus dairy (which i think has been closed long time and hints my age)
The feeling never lingers for me the way you described, Neo, but, yes, I do this occasionally. However, it isn’t something that happens to me when I travel or when I have returned home. It mostly seems to be that I am dreaming I am somewhere else, then awake and am startled to find it was a dream. The most common for me is dreaming of being in my room from when I was a teenager- I vividly remember all the details of that room even 31 years after I had last been in it.
For this is all a dream we dreamed
One afternoon long ago
–Grateful Dead, “Box of Rain”
I don’t remember my dreams but occasionally — not like I used to. I wonder why that is.
Given that dreams seem to reflect the brain reorganizing one’s experiences into more useful forms, my guess is that as one’s personality stabilizes with age, one doesn’t need to make the larger adjustments of younger years.
Per chance to dream ? I have a feeling that like you we ALL love our dreams and whether they bode fantasy, good, or ill we reflect on them upon our awakenings. Nowadays we just awaken too quickly maybe. I wanted to tell you that I really admire your writings and thoughts on the blog and have for a long time, so I am a lurker of sorts I suppose. Be well and have a great weekend. Oh, eat a pizza before bed, that always used to make my night visions a lot more memorable !
When my husband traveled extensively, always staying in a room in the same hotel chain, he occasionally woke up in the middle of the night and called the front desk to ask what city he was in.
For 38 years I traveled extensively. In fact, I was in strange rooms in far away places much more than I was at home. The only time I had dreams that convinced me I was someplace else was when at sea aboard an aircraft carrier. The dreams were always of home and my wife. Awakening in a bunk in a tiny steel encased room rolling with the motion of waves, it didn’t take long to accept where I was, But the dream of home and my wife gave me a warm feeling that helped propel me through the difficult days. Thankfully, I never woke up at home and thought I might be aboard an aircraft carrier.
If the sensation were to prove to be both permanent and powerful — which it __almost certainly will not __ — then my best guess would be stroke-induced damage to the part of the brain that’s responsible for your emotional connection to those particular surroundings (but not for your memory of the _appearance_ of those surroundings):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusional_misidentification_syndrome
I feel sorry for all these homeless folks in SF and LA who really do sleep in strange locations nearly every night. They are trying these tiny cabins for them in Oakland, but the city cannot afford to help everyone. I talked to a RN who goes down there to drop off people who have been hospitalized—if they are sick or comatose or seizing they do take them to the ER—and she said that none of those homeless people ever sleep at night. They are too scared: mostly of thefts and rats. They sleep during the day. The dilemma is once you give them shelter, what do you do next? They are all mentally ill or drug users. Some do work, but they soon become ill from post traumatic stress and street trauma, violence, influenza and skin infections. Just going to the bathroom is a difficult process. Sad…
I feel sorry for all these homeless folks in SF and LA who really do sleep in strange locations nearly every night.
Dnaxy: I was a homeless for about a year in my twenties. I lived in a Ford Econoline van with two other guys. You develop routines. Unless the police are rousting you, you stick with what worked the night before.
My job used to take me on the road so much that I had to keep my itinerary on the night stand so that when I woke up in the morning I would know what city I was in. And if I forgot to check off yesterday’s travels I would think I was in a different city than I was!
Also, I had to write the rental car’s plate number on the itinerary so that I wouldn’t try to open the wrong car (this was before the days when car keys had the little beeper to flash your car’s headlights). I did that once and considered myself lucky that the owner of the car I was trying to get into didn’t shoot me.
Strangely enough, despite being in a different city, or even time zone, it felt like the same place most days.
I have dreams where I wake up but in reality I am still dreaming. In a lot of these dreams I am on a trip and wake up in a hotel when I am in reality sleeping in my bed. I also have dreams where I wake up a house different from my real one, but I remember as my house. Sometimes it’s the same house in multiple dreams making it confusing.
I’ve also had lucid dreaming and have developed tricks to tell if I’m dreaming. I jump into the air and can will myself to fly I know that I’m dreaming. I’ve never tried the jumping thing when I really am awake though, I just know I’m not dreaming. Another trick is to see if I can feel the carpet with my feet in a dream. Since you have little or no sense of touch in a dream if I can figure out it’s a dream.
I was born in 1952. Many times I wake up remembering vivid dreams that seem to represent how things might have turned out had different decisions been made or different interests pursued. I have read several short stories which seem to have taken this idea and turned it into a plot, so probably this happens to other people as well.
I have always believed that you lived in New York!
I just had the experience of waking up thinking I was someplace else a few days ago, on our first night at home after a week in a vacation beach house — blinking at the familiar but unfamiliar doors and walls and furniture in the early morning dimness, trying to square them with the different doors and walls I was certain should be there. It only lasted a few minutes, but while it lasted it really was as if I was back at the beach with a day of sand and sunshine ahead.
I have been dreaming rich and complicated dreams lately, but I only know that’s true because of the feelings and a few fragmentary images that carry over into the waking world — powerful and compelling enough that I want to be back there, but already beyond the reach of my rational conscious mind. I have always dreamed vividly and used to be able to remember my dreams — I could still tell you about a few intense dreams I had as a small child that seemed to overlap so much into reality that I still think about the dreams sometimes. I wish I could get that back. As long as it’s not a nightmare, and unfortunately I have my share of those, I really like dreaming.
Some spiritual teacher, forgotten, once said that moment when you first awaken and don’t know where you are is very close to enlightenment.
That moment is a bit scary but also delicious.
Goodness! You all have much more interesting dreams than me.
The only ‘real’ place I ever dream about is the home and the town I grew up in 50 years ago. Mine are just GIGO.
One exception was when I was pregnant and breastfeeding. Then my dreams made complete sense and were long stories with a dramatic arch.
Sometimes I dream the kids are in danger and I have to jump into the water to save them and my fur coat drags me down, knowing I’m dreaming helps but I usually wake up with an adrenaline rush anyway.
I always know I am dreaming, but I never try to ‘guide’ my dreams.
I’m just one woman – I can’t do EVERYTHING!
this is all a dream inside a dream, don’t expect it to make sense
Sleeping pill ?
Three neurologists attended a meeting in Europe a few years ago. On returning, to avoid jet lag (always worse west bound), they each took a sleeping pill. I can no longer remember which but it was one we used very commonly. On arriving home all three had complete amnesia for the medical meeting.
“You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That’s the signpost up ahead–your next stop, the Twilight Zone.”
Before I was diagnosed with sleep apnea, I had noticed I never dreamed or just never remembered having dreams. You may want to have that checked out.
I wake up in Cleveland every day.
Cappy:
Or Philadelphia.
See this. Read to the end, and you’ll understand. Or watch this.
charles on August 31, 2019 at 5:21 pm said:
My job used to take me on the road so much that I had to keep my itinerary on the night stand so that when I woke up in the morning I would know what city I was in. And if I forgot to check off yesterday’s travels I would think I was in a different city than I was!
* * *
If it’s Tuesday, it must be Belgium.
I always know I am dreaming, but I never try to ‘guide’ my dreams.
Molly Brown: Then you have a rare gift and there may even be researchers who would pay to study you. I’ve had three such dreams in my life.
It’s called “lucid dreaming” and it’s become an academic subfield and a new age cottage industry. I once had a book titled “14 Days to Lucid Dreaming” or something like that. I can’t find the book in my collection or on the web, but there are now several dozen current titles to the same effect.
“Everything in your home has been removed and replaced with an exact replica.”
Gerard vanderleun on September 1, 2019 at 10:06 pm said:
“Everything in your home has been removed and replaced with an exact replica.”
* * *
I hope the new stuff is cleaner!
NO, it was replaced right down to exact replicas of dust and smudges and ring around the collar.
LOL – then what’s the point?
Happy Labor Day – lots of labor involved in replacing everything in the house!
Just be glad you wake up… sort of