the eye movements of sleepers relate to the dreams they are having.
It seems unlikely that the eye movements indicate 'watching' or I tracking," because sleep researchers see a lot of it even in dreams test subjects later describe as fairly static-dreams of conversations, for instance, like the one we're having now. Similarly, no one really knows why there seems to be a clear relationship between lucid, coherent dreams and overall mental health: the more dreams of thit sort a person has, the better off he seems to be, the less he has, the worse.
There's a real scale there."
"Mental health's a pretty general phrase", Ralph said skeptically.
"Yeah," Wyzer grinned. "Makes me think of a bumper sticker I saw a few years back-SupPORT MENTAL HEALTH OR I'll KILL YOU.
Anyway, we're talking about some basic, measurable components: cognitive ability, problem-solving ability, by both inductive and deductive methods, ability to grasp relationships, memory-I, "My memory is lousy these days," Ralph said. He was thinking of his inability to remember the number of the cinema complex and his long hunt through the kitchen cabinet for the last Cup-A-Soup envelope.
"Yeah, you're probably suffering some short-term memory loss, but your fly is zipped, your shirt is on right-side out, and I bet if I asked you what your middle name is, you could tell me. I'm not belittling your problem-I'd be the last person in the world to do that-but I am asking you to change your point of view for a minute or two. To think of all the areas in your life where you're still perfectly functional."
how well you're functioning, like a gas gauge in a car, or do they "All right. These lucid and coherent dreams-do they just indicate actually help you function?"
"No one knows for sure, but the most likely answer is a little of both. In the late fifties, around the time the doctors were phasing out the barbiturates-the last really popular one was a fun drug called Thalidomide-a few scientists even tried to suggest that the good steep we've been beating our gums about and dreams aren't related."
"And?"
"The tests don't support the hypothesis. People who stop dreaming e)r suffer from constant dream interruptions have all sorts of problems, including loss of cognitive ability and emotional stability.
They also start to suffer perceptual problems like hyper-reality."
Beyond Wyzer, at the far end of the counter, sat a fellow reading a copy of the Derry News. Only his hands and the top of his head were visible. He was wearing a rather ostentatious pinky-ring on his left hand. The headline at the top of the front page read ABORTION RIGHTS ADVOCATE AGREESTO SPEAK IN DERRY NEXT MONTH. Below it, in slightly smaller type, was a subhead: Pro-Life Groups Promise Organized Protests.
In the center of the page was a color picture of Susan Day, one that did her much more justice than the flat photographs on the poster he had seen in the window of Secondhand Rose, Secondhand Clothes. In those she had looked ordinary, perhaps even a bit sinister; in this one she was radiant. Her long, honey-blonde hair had been pulled back from her face. Her eyes were dark, intelligent, arresting. Hamilton Davenport's pessimism had been misplaced, it seemed. Susan Day was coming after all.
Then Ralph saw something which made him forget all about Ham Davenport and Susan Day.
A gray-blue aura had begun to gather around the hands of the man reading the newspaper, and around the Just-visible crown of his head.
It seemed particularly bright around the onyx pinky-ring he wore.
It did not obscure but seemed to clarify, turning the ringstone into something that looked like an asteroid in a really realistic science-fiction movie "What did you say, Ralph?"
"Hmm?" Ralph drew his gaze away from the newspaper reader's pinky-ring
???? with an effort. "I don't know was talking? I guess I asked you what
"Oh," Ralph said, watching as the bright gray-blue aura began to form complicated runic patterns on the nail of the finger Wyzer was using to mash up crumbs. At first they looked like letters written in frost... then sentences written in fog... then odd, gasping faces.
He blinked and they were gone.
"Ralph? You still there?" remedies don't work "Sure, you bet.
But listen, Joe-if the folk drugs and the stuff in Aisle 3 doesn't work and the prescription could actually make things worse instead of better, what does that leave? Nothing, right?"