I wish to stop narrating “Mirror,” because it feels like describing someone else’s dream. The characters purposefully blend, father and sons are interchangeable, the mother and ex-wife are played by the same actress.

Strange discussions about whether the son should keep living with his mother or go with his father hit too close to home for me and remind me of all the talk when I was young about choosing who would raise me, as if I had any idea how to make that kind of decision.

Newsreel footage enters the movie — a long scene of the Spanish Civil War is included because of the vivid images of children at wartime it features. Then there’s this hot air balloon footage back in Russia. Why is it in the film? Tarkovsky just found it interesting and beautiful.

The boy, Alexi or Ignat, leaves through an art book, looking at renaissance paintings. Why? Because Tarkovsky wanted to remind viewers that while cinema is still a new artful, it has ancient roots, and perhaps to draw attention to the fact that he is creating artworks on celluloid with shadows.

And the conversations drift in and out. Ignat helps his mother pick up items that fell out of her purse and tells her he thinks he’s having a deja vu. She tells him to stop imagining.

I have a mild form of narcolepsy. It hits me whenever I’m in a completely relaxed position, so it often leads me to fall asleep while watching movies — or during certain moments of flights. I never stay asleep for more than a few minutes and am usually jolted away, but I enter REM sleep almost immediately, sometimes while still hanging on to consciousness.

This means that my day to day existence is filled with small episodes of lucid dreaming — or vivid hallucination. Because of this condition, there are certain things that are quite difficult for me, such as driving. I need to keep myself in a state of hyper vigilance while driving to remain alert and not drift into a dangerous state of hazy consciousness. But this level of alertness is also difficult for me to maintain. I experience regular high levels of anxiety on the road.

So too it is difficult for me to sit at a desk in an office and work. I work in frenzied bursts and have to get up and walk frequently. Working from home has always worked best for me because I can fit in a series of short naps and no one would ever know.

I have no idea if Tarkovsky shared my affliction, but there is something about “Mirror” that feels more like the type of consciousness I experience than most other types of stories. Dreams are constantly intruding on my life and Tarkovsky seems like he openly embraces his somnolent states.

“Mirror” makes you feel like you are dozing off throughout it and imagining digressions — only to discover you are still awake and just trying to make sense of the dream logic imagery.