Racial Memory

"Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake" 

                                                                     Henry David Thoreau

The reason why I begin today's post with a quote is simple. Today I will write about dreams, and I thought, hey, a nice quote might be just what I need to introduce the subject. Mind you, to find a fitting quote was not that easy, since most of the ones mentioning dreams are more focused on aspirations and suchlike, instead of dreams that come to us when our minds rest at night (By the way, until I googled it up, I had no idea who H.D. Thoreau was, ignorant, ignorant me...).

So... I have one reoccurring dream. It's not the one when I'm falling, neither the one in which someone is chasing me and I'm trying to run away, but I can't, because my feet are too heavy.

It's not even one of the "flying" ones. I have enough dreams in which I can fly, which is great, since I can usually do it at will, but this dream is very different.

To begin with, it doesn't occur very often, but when it does, it feels almost as a memory, and not a dream at all. I can even smell fresh grass and moss, as strange as it sounds.

In this dream, I run, but not away from anything. Sometimes I run just for the pure joy it brings, sometimes I actually chase something; not anything in partucular, but a prey, nevertheless. You see, in this dream I run on all four.

I can feel the soft layer of moss and dead leaves underneath my, for lack of better word, feet (I don't want to write paws, I'm not a "Twillight" fan), the moment of impact when my front foot hits the ground, the recoil of muscles as they store the energy of my step while the momentum of chase keeps on pushing me onwards, and then, the spring that lifts me up and foreward, before I have to touch the ground again.

All of this is somewhat hard to explain in words, but you get the idea, I hope. To imagine the whole thing, multiply by four (four feet, right?) and you are almost there...

Anyway, it's a cool dream, but since it's rather strange, it got me thinking maybe it's some kind of racial memory (a quick definition here), especially since it's connected to the sense of smell. You know, some kind of echo coming from the early mammalian parts of my brain, since the mechanics of the run I experience are both very hard to imagine and feel very natural at the same time.

Does it seem rather unlikely? I don't know, it doesn't to me. Afterall, from our dreams we all know what it feels like to fall 100 feet, without actually experiencing a real fall from such height ever in our lives and where is that feeling coming from?

So, although I might try to find some more relevant neuro-psych research on the subject, for the time being I'm left with a dream that I enjoy and you are left with some food for thought ;)