What's "the word I'm thinking of"? Today it's....
HYPNOPOMPIC [hip-noh-POMP-ic] (adjective)
Associated with the period between sleep and wakefulness
"....knowledge of Mrs. Finch's balloon ascent had been acquired supernormally by Mrs. Thompson… and had lain dormant in her subconsciousness until awakened by a natural association of ideas set in motion on her reading about the accident to the airship, and not even then emerging into her full consciousness, but emerging only in a hypnopompic dream."
--J. G. Piddington, "Phenomena in Mrs. Thompson's Trance," Proceedings of the Society of Psychical Research (1904)
This word brings to mind the hypnopompic period I experience most mornings between tumbling out of bed and gulping down my first cup of coffee. While I'm staggering around like Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, I'm often brooding over some bizarre or disturbing event--until I realize that "oh...that was just a dream." (TWITO, page 69)
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