Chased and Cornered

I know there’s a field of psychology for analyzing dreams. Not aspirations but images and sounds you somehow perceive while being asleep. But has anyone studied how the dreamer, who is defenseless, can control images and sounds in dreams?

These days, I have trouble sleeping. I need the aid of alcohol to push myself into sleep. And alcohol doesn’t help me as though it can usher me to sleep quickly, it doesn’t seem to give me quality of sleep.  Possibly, partly because I’ve been rather busy with work and also partly because I’ve reading much (who am I if I stop reading?), I, while asleep, see mostly nonsensical strings of English words in black against a white background as if looking at the computer screen. Similar things have happened before when I was busy. I may be just following the strings or I may be trying to translate them into Japanese. (More than half, or maybe much, of my work consists of Japanese-to-English translation.)

And the past several days, while following them and dreaming, I, supposedly unconscious, am also thinking. Thinking hard. Often, I hear real, clear noises coming from outside.

Being asleep and looking at nonsense word strings, I sometimes see, or I think I see, phrases like “chased and cornered,” definitely in English, probably a reflection of the situation wherein I find myself now.