Fragile visions between sleep and waking

Recently I was coming back from Budapest in the train and being tired, having not slept much over a few days, I fell again into a state of being on the edge of an unclear dream, or a state of semi-slumber in the haze near the unguarded gate of sleep. It was as if I had fallen into the state that is the background of dream, the white, warm matrix of the sleeper´s world, though at first there was not much there I noticed in the form of imagery. There were thoughts, a muffled murmur of processes, things I find hard to define. I don't maybe remeber it in all that great detail. Then, though, I begin to see pictures in my mind, against the white vibrating substrate of my mind or, at least, of the visual system. They were clear, relatively abstract pictures. This capacity is something I have only developed recently, or at least recently noticed or began to make use of. This state I found quite pleasant, with a strange warmth in my body and wrapped in the comfort of sleep's borderlands, my power to keep from slumber´s edge coming and going, the tide of night lapping on my disappearing body. Yet was I still in contact with the outside world, though sinking into some other landscape or character of state. And I did not struggle against it. It had a feeling of soft cotton wool to it.

Considering these pictures, I came to the conclusion that I could observe three stages of this kind of imagination, at least at this time and in this instance. Maybe in the future and in other contexts it could be different. I tried to describe or categorise them and made the following system:  the first stage I really noticed was when I observed these pictures in this woolly, warm half-dream state. Since I am used to thinking about collecting things from what I see to use in my painting, I also was quite eager to see if these could serve this purpose to some extent. When I concentrated on them, or intended to use them for this purpose, they seemed to some extent to disintegrate. I perceived it as maybe being that some of the “filling” between the lines feel out. Then it was hard to reconstruct the original complete form, though much of the feeling associated with it was still present,. Then when I thought about painting it, and considered the problems associated with this, and considered how it would look on canvas, the image was transformed in some way again, and had less of the original concept in it, though not all had gone out of it.

Here are rough sketches of what I observed. I think they looked something like this, but of course the differences, considering the state or inner environment they were couched in, considering the way of access, makes it difficult to know what exactly the drawings retain of them, though when I look at them, I seem to remember the images I observed then. They are more like an echo, an echo obeying the rules of paper and pen, not necessary those of this state near to sleep. They are like fragments, like flotsam and jetsam of the mind, both the sketches and the images that made me make them, but that is quite interesting. It makes them exotic, like something seen where one did not expect it.

The top image at first seemed like vertical structure of peculiarly shaped flecks with grey-scale graduated colour but either immediately or after a little while was associated with the idea of a cliff or rock formation with a big light colored circle, maybe a sun or moon or planet emerging from behind it.

In the second was a flag very much like the flag of Bretagne, and in the background a dome reminiscent of the parliament in Budapest.