Hypnagogic Musings

There are times when one has had a hard day and wishes to switch everything off. Something similar happened to me yesterday. After the exam, I had coffee at CCD and went to the station. The day being a Saturday, the crush dense load was missing and I happened to get a place to sit at Charni Road. The train happened to be the 'illenium Rake'. I haven't named it so; The M has actually fallen/stolen from the coach. The interiors might be shiny and open, a refreshing change form the old shit coloured coaches, but the seats suck. Firstly the place between seats is too small, and with my long legs, it hard not to hit the facing co-passenger in the groin. Secondly the distance between the back of your head and the wall behind it is about 4 inches, so its very hard to sleep.(ok I'm digressing)

Thankfully I had got a window seat and I had nothing better to do, so I started snoozing. I was sitting in an awkward position and had just had black coffee, so its no wonder that I found myself drifting from consciousness to alertness and back again. This continued till I made myself at home in the Hypnagogic state.

This is a state in which one is not quite dreaming, but neither is he fully awaking. You might be vaguely aware of what's happening around you, but its a weird state to be in. The curious thing about all this was that I was aware of all this and did a very Feynman'isque thing. I started to observe that there were times when I was not aware of my Hypnagogic state. Everytime I came back, I knew time had passed but couldn't tell how much or how I knew.

I remember having had experiences like this before and now that I try to analyze, I can see that the common thing to all of them is that I have been in this stage right after I stopped doing mental tasks which were excruciatingly exhausting. Today's task being keeping all those equations and theories in my memory. What I think happened was that after this hard works, the brain cells to protect themselves switched off or something. I realize that I am not being very lucid or even articulate here, but bear with me.

As the exam was over, I no longer had to remember all that stuff, so it was like my brain was formatting itself. I don't know if what happens at the neuron level can be compared to the hard disk, but that's the best way I can put it right now.

As I reached Borivali, the sun had set and darkness had fallen. Then this deep gloom came over me, which I have recognize whenever my body/or my unconscious gets confused. I know its night but I am not quite sure that its time for nightfall. In my gloom i felt that it was quite dark. To check I looked at the streetlamps, and many of them were infact off. I am not implying that in some mysterious way my mental state affected the halogens and switched some of them off. All I am just saying is that since I was in a particular state of mind,I remembers the darkness. It affected me, because I was partial in that mood. If I had been cheerful or something, I would not have noticed the partial darkness.

As I trudged back home, I remembers that Homes had once remarked to Watson that the 'nothingness after a case' was a funny experience (or something to that effect) I think he was referring to this very feeling.