Dementia of Dreams Author: Dr. K. S. Kang

 

Dementia of Dreams

Author: Dr. K. S. Kang

Dementia is a considerably serious state caused by malfunctioning or injury of brain. It affects the ability to think and remember the things and recollect them after a given time period correctly and clearly. Lately I discerned that I too was forgetting the dreams of my sleep the moment I leave my bed in the morning very much like the celebrated nineteenth century romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This malady became the cause of the famous poem Kubla Khan as Coleridge himself had declared it as to be a fragment or unfinished poem. As Coleridge suffered from arthritis, so doctor advised him to take some opium to get relief from the pain so as to get some sleep during the night. This habit of taking opium affected his memory and he was unable to recollect his dreams. Coleridge was confident that day that he could have composed a long poem of about thousand lines on the dream that he had during his sleep at night. After waking up he started writing about his dream but hardly he had written hundred lines that somebody came to meet him that detained him with the guest for about three quarters of an hour. After the guest departed Coleridge returned back to finish his task of translating his dream into words. But he was surprised to find that the dream has simply evaporated from his mind just like fumes of fire or cloud. However hard he tried to recollect his dream but all his efforts to recollect it were futile. And that reduced the Kubla Khan to be a fragment or unfinished poem. As the poet himself had declared this poem to be a fragment so that became a chief USP to make it popular leaving a number of critics guessing what Coleridge would have written in this poem if he had remembered the entire dream or if the guest would not have disturbed him.

Lately I have also discerned that I feel in the sleep that my dreams could become an apt subject matter for a memoir, essay or a short story. But to my dismay I find that I am unable to recollect anything about the dream clearly the moment I leave my bed in the morning. Medicos generally hold this opinion that dementia is one of the feature of the old age. As men advances in life he starts forgetting about his immediate past but remembers everything about his childhood activities that kept him busy in his house in a town or village where he had spent his childhood.