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Sunday, August 28, 2005

what dreams may come when you've shuffled off to bed
This morning, the song-in-my-head selection of the day is "Let It Ride" by Ryan Adams, I have a sore spot on my finger where I accidentally stabbed myself with a pointy bit of sterling wire (jewelry making is dangerous work, kids), and I'm thinking about dreams. Not any one dream in particular, because I don't remember any dreams from last night, so just in general. Dreams.

It's a strange activity, dreaming, and when I remember in the morning what images went through my brain at night, I usually end up wondering what the hell kind of place my head is anyway. My theory is that it's a very weird place, and I don't know of anyone who would disagree. Anyway, I have some recurring dreams, in the sense that some of the same themes continually pop up in my dreaming life. There are five of them, and they are, in no particular order: The Pregnant Dream, The Getting Married Dream, The Naked Dream, The Lost and Searching Dream and The Scariest Dream Ever. I'm going t discuss them in as much depth as I ever discuss anything here, and so, yeah. Ta-da!

The Pregnant Dream
Ladies, back me up here. The Pregnant Dream is always horrifying, and when you wake up, your hands are on your belly and you're thinking "No. No. Okay." Always hyper-realistic, I've been having variations of The Pregnant Dream since I was 16 or so, usually at times when there's a lot of stuff going on in my life. In my particular version of The Pregnant Dream, I'm always alone and I usually have a phone in my hand. I turn around, and it's then that I see that not only am I pregnant, I'm GINORMOUSLY pregnant. Somehow, the fact that I'm simply huge has managed to escape my attention until that very moment, when I look down at myself and notice that hey, I am great with child. It is at this point where the dream diverges and becomes its own individual thing, the most memorable of which is the one where I said "that bastard" and got in my car, making sure that my gun was in the glove compartment.

The Getting Married Dream
I probably have this dream (in one form or another) more often than any other dream. I don't know if it's because people ask me all the time when I'm going to take the plunge because I'm not getting any younger you know, or if it just highlights my fear of commitment. In any case, sometimes I don't know that I'm getting married and sometimes I'm preparing for the wedding, but the dream always takes place on the big day and I either don't want to get married or something happens to keep me from doing it. In this dream, I have hidden in the bathroom to avoid the wedding, I have considered running away with someone else other than my intended, and more than once, my dress has gone missing. Sometimes it freaks me out, sometimes it's funny, and sometimes it's a combination of both, but in this dream I never ever get around to getting married, and I don't know if that means anything or not.

The Naked Dream
Pretty self-explanatory, that. Because in this dream, I'm naked, or partially naked, or something. And it's never in a place where I would typically be naked, like, say, the shower (though there was the one time I dreamt I was taking a bath backstage at a play I was in, and then I didn't have time to dry off and put my costume on before I had to go out and do a big scene with some crying). Often, I'm in a public bathroom (which is bad enough), changing my clothes, and I discover that everything is missing, or one important article of clothing is missing, like my shirt or my pants and I have to fashion an outfit out of toilet paper. Or sometimes I'm just naked and walking around. It depends. Perhaps this is a sign that I'm weird (like you needed another one), but I always kind of like these dreams.

The Lost and Searching Dream
This dream usually involves me being in a place with a lot of books. Like a library. Or just a room with many shelves. I'm reading (Shakespeare, always, because hooray for pretentiousness in dreaming) and then I realize that I have to be somewhere else. So I set out, and it starts off easy enough, but then everything looks the same and I can't tell if I'm going in circles or if I'm making progress and I get really frustrated and upset. If these dreams ever involve another person, it's always a guy I think I'm in love with at the time, and he's way ahead of me. I try to follow him because I think he knows where he's going, but I keep losing sight of him. That's ripe with meaning, I'm sure, but whatever, I'm just going to move right along to...

The Scariest Dream Ever
This one is about teeth. I am weird about teeth, but then, I'm sure that's a side-effect of enduring years of orthodontic torture. In this dream, my teeth are all very loose or they have fallen out or they are in the process of falling out. I can't talk about it anymore because it freaks me out that much.

So there you have it.





posted by jamelah
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