I learned what dreams are made of, kind of?
For several years I've been aware that if I close my eyes and focus enough I can just barely make out what looks like images behind black clouds directly in the center of my vision and that if I just wake up the images are brighter and I can make them out more clearly. I believe term for such things is hypnagogic imagery.
Well last night, after waking up from a very odd dream, I managed to see them more distinctly than ever before. I clearly saw a scene in a restaurant, and it was like watching a slideshow moving at 2 or 3 frames per second. I could see people moving their arms and stuff, but it was all choppy. It wasn't at all related to the dream that I just had, by the way. The really weird part was as I started focusing on it my eyes started twitching back and forth at the rate that the images changed, just like they would in REM sleep. I only managed to observe this for 15 seconds or so before I started to wake up too much and everything faded.
It's a little disturbing in a way, like seeing behind the curtain and watching Oz flipping all his little levers. I'm not exactly sure how it goes from slideshow in front of your eyes to dreams, but it's just weird seeing the show from the side a little bit, like I'm at the theater, turned around watching the movie upside down in the projector.
Of course after experiencing something like that I'm wide awake now, and after laying there thinking about it for half and hour I decided I might as well get up and write it down so maybe I can fall back to sleep.