still dazed

[dubdobdee]

when i woke up yesterday i didn't know where i was

that is, i knew i was in my bed-in-the-sky and therefore (presumably) my own bedroom and house, and i knew i recognised what i could see out of the window -- but i didn't know where any of these were

the light outside this rather beautiful late summer seemed impossibly french somehow -- southern rather than northern -- and for a couple of minutes i couldn't work out the relationship between where i was and anything else

i had to reconstruct my mental map of london -- oh, that's it, london! -- by imagining walking out of my front door, down the stairs and looking out into the, oh yes, the square, and walk a bit further and remember hackney, and which way north is and how wehere i live fits into the world

obviously i was quite tired still and half-asleep, but mentally alert enoughh to find this absence of connection fascinating, as long as it lasted -- nothing like it ever happened to me before (except when i had petit mal black-outs as a kid, when consciousness returns gradually) (but quicker than this was)

what's weird is that, waking in strange (ie hotel) beds for the last two weeks, in towns no one has ever heard of (ie eu!), i never once got this sensation -- i assume bcz i always had my head in a map

Comments

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I can't remember having that level of disorientation - I get 10-15 seconds of it sometimes, and almost always if I'm sleeping alone so I wonder if the presence of a partner helps me connect more to placed reality.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

yes, one of the weird things about the view from my bedroom window is that it's often (and was yesterday) strangely unpeopled and very quiet (given that i live in london and overlook several apartment blocks and their gardens and carparks!)

in a hotel yr generally woken by the bustle of strangers in nearby rooms, which is instantly orientating

but i think it's also very much to do with the fact that hackney is nowhere in MY "AA 2007 BIG EASY READ FRANCE" -- that i had gone off the map

i don't suppose this was longer than 10 seconds, if that, but it was such an extreme and present disjunction -- very like a feeling you get in a dream, where something is simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

There's too much horizon in France! It really freaked me out when I went to visit Grace for the first time. Miles and miles of vinyards and nothing else... V discombobulating. Not frightening exactly, just unsettling because I'm so used to being surrounded by buildings crammed together with usually 3 or more storeys.

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

man, yr gonna have a great time in kernow, eh?

[koganbot]

You should visit the Great Plains of North America.