So in my continual mission to make the English language clearer, I hereby ban the use of the word "dream" to mean anything but the moronic narratives that your dumb brain spins when you're trying to get some rest. (I actually have a whole list of English words that have several contradictory meanings, thus making communication more cumbersome, forcing you to write a long boring introductory paragraph just to clarify your terms -- but that's fodder for another post.)
Cuz my dreams, especially lately, have been nothing but annoying. Nothing good ever seems to happen in them anymore. I'm always relieved to wake up and discover that I'm happily married, no longer in high school, and fully clothed. I would much prefer if my dreams just acted as a VCR on an endless loop, replaying the day's events. As boring as that would be, it would be much more pleasant than dredging up conflicts that I resolved long ago (or never actually needed to resolve, as in the nudity-in-public scenario).
Before you put in on your Freud glasses and skullcap and say "Well, maybe those conflicts aren't truly resolved!," I should probably lay out the basic themes of all of my dreams lately:
1. I have to spend another year in high school. I've already gone through college and grad school and everything, but for some reason the law is that after all that you have to spend one more year in the soul-impaling world of floor-to-ceiling lockers and cruel social hierarchies based on people's relative ability to pretend they're not miserable. Usually my dream brain manages to squeeze in the old theme of having a class that you're terribly late to but can't find the room, or a class that you forgot to attend all year and now you have a test ... yadda yadda.
I think you'll agree that, while these problems once may have weighed on my mind, they are no longer terribly relevant. And I don't really think they're a metaphor for current insecurities (what, that I'm worried that I'm going to forget to go to work for several months? Or that I suddenly can't find the building?) I think this is just a case of some insecurities being so pervasive during my high school years that they etched themselves in my brain and won't go away.
I general I should mention that I'm not really a fan of trying to interpret dreams. I don't think they're some sort of outlet for deeply repressed feelings -- I think they're just a attempt at piecing together a jumble of brain activity that my bored brain is chucking at me.
See, the brain is a ravenous information hog. That's why you spend all your waking hours running around like a madman stuffing information into it: Every day, you read and watch TV and talk to people and travel and pierce things and hit balls with objects and generally pile on the experiences until you collapse. Your brain is like a shark strapped to your head, who has to keep consuming information or it's going to bite you with a vicious bout of boredom.
But when you're asleep, your eyes are closed, your ears aren't picking up anything, and your information-starved brain panics. It starts just randomly firing whatever is already in there -- memories, fears, pleasures, what you had for lunch, whatever. Then the executive functions take all these random firings and try desperately to piece it together into a narrative. Doesn't need to make sense, as long as it feeds the shark.
Of course, that doesn't exactly explain why the same themes keep coming up -- it should be more random than that. Maybe it's firing off the parts of the brain that have been well-established but aren't getting exercised during the day. Whatever. Anyway, let's get back to the main themes:
2. I have to move my collection of Star Wars figures from one place to another and I keep losing parts of them. This is an odd one, but very pervasive in my dreams. See, my childhood was little besides Star Wars figures. I think there were some sisters involved somewhere, and some taller people we called "parents." Mostly, it was about Star Wars Figures.
Star Wars figures are cruel little things, though, in that each comes with a tiny little weapon, often dark-colored and no more than an inch in length, that is just begging to get lost in the carpet and then vacuumed up. Because I worshipped these little blobs of plastic, the thought of losing a weapon was a little like the Pope misplacing his shards of the True Cross. Imagine if the Pope was in his room playing with his Jesusania when his mom calls him to dinner. Afterwards he gets back into his room and "Wait, what happened to Jesus' true toenail clipping?" Then a frenzied search ensues.
That's what my dreams are like. Last night I had to fly (I can also fly in my dreams) from one area to another while holding my Speeder Bikes, and I dropped one of the tiny little removable handlebars in the snow. Then I wheeled around and furiously scoured each inch of ground.
So Freud, interpret that one, beeatch. Am I holding on to my childhood or afraid of losing my memories or things that are important to me or some shit? Fuck that, I think it's just that the fear of losing these shitty little pieces of plastic was so ingrained in my head as a kid that now it comes out every night for an encore.
3. I'm trying to find a girlfriend. You know, each of these terrors covers the dominant insecurity of a different era of my life. Before meeting my lovely wife, I spent about 18 years doing little besides trying and miserably failing to establish a functional and comfortable romantic relationship with a woman. I dated a few women briefly, had a whole host of all-consuming and painful infatuations, but never experienced a single moment of genuine requited love. That kind of thing leaves scars. And being the ever-helpful fuckface that it is, my unconscious mind is happy to reopen those wounds when I'm trying to sleep.
Of course, it's always wonderful to wake up and realize that that stage of my life is dead and buried, and that I love my wife dearly and would likely be a wreck without her. But did I really need to relive those years all night to do that? I feel grateful for my wife every day -- I really don't need help with that, dreams, thanks though!
4. I'm naked and am completely incapable of putting on pants. I try to put on pants and for some reason can't. Actually, I'm usually not entirely naked, but am wearing tighty-whiteys. And I'm running around town, doing all sorts of stuff. And sometimes I forget about my situation, but then suddenly think, "Oh crap, I have no pants!" It's a pain in the ass.
So maybe that means I'm afraid that people will discover the true me and etc. Probably true. I dunno. I'm tired now. But I'm not going to go to sleep, because I might perchance to dream, and dreams suck! (Worst ending for a post ever. Oh well.)
6 comments:
What do you make of the fact that I have almost the exact set of dreams? Well, not exactly, but I do have the first one to a T. I'm me now, but for some reason I have to return to high school to finish some classes. And then I can't find the room, or forgot to go to Calculus for 3 months of whatever nonsense. I also have dreams that involve secret rooms or elaborate houses, which I know you also have but didn't mention. I clearly don't have the Star Wars dream but I do have a recurring theme of lost cats. And for the third dream, I think have a boyfriend, but I can't ever get him alone so I'm not really sure if he's my boyfriend, and there is a lot of frustration involved. I also have the last dream a lot, except about my shirt, not my pants. Like you, this has never happened to me in real life, nor do I ever worry that I will show up somewhere without a shirt on, and then feel really awkward. And that's pretty much it for my recurring dreams. They are really stupid.
Yeah, I forgot about the Endless House Theme -- usually Aunt Gerry's house, but not always. That is strange that we have the same dreams. Must be genetic predispositon plus living in the same house during childhood. That and the fact that you're ALWAYS copying me! Geez! I'm telling mom!
maybe if you played with me more, I wouldn't have had to steal your dreams.
do you think something happened to us as children that makes us subconsciously afraid that we won't dress ourselves properly?
I love my dreams. I dream a lot, or at least I'm aware of a lot of my dreaming, and nearly all the time it's some interesting story or situation. It's not quite like watching a movie, because I'm usually in the scene, if not actively participating. But I'm always engrossed in whatever's going on. It's hardly ever violent, or scary, or gross - just a bunch of people I know or sometimes famous people being part of a neat story.
Never had much in the way of recurring dreams, either. After I passed the bar exam, I had maybe half a dozen or so dreams where I was taking the exam and something interrupted me partway through, so that when I got back to the test I was a little worried. But there was never a sense of dread, and they were always set in different places - on a paddlewheel boat, in a high school football stadium.
As far as meaning, I've had pretty good success in analyzing my dreams. I don't know if there's anything inherent in a dream that's actually attached to your subconsciousness or not, but I think you can definitely use dreams to examine relevant current issues in your life. They might also, as Ed suggests, be relics of earlier mental states that were particularly strongly felt. I don't know about that. All I know is that I like mine.
Also - do you all dream in color? I don't think that I dream in color or in black & white; my dreams have a feeling of being non-colored. Kind of like twilight, or when's there's a full moon, and you can see things clearly, but without color.
I think it's remarkable that we all have the same sorts of dreams. I have had the can't-get-to-class-forgot-to-go-all-year-have-a-test dreams periodically since I was a teenager, too. And the naked dreams, though less so. Never the Star Wars dream, though. Ed, I think that one may be special to you.
But regarding the rest of the dreams, does it just show that we're all basically the same kinds of conscientious people? What do sociopaths dream?
Al posed the theory today (not his own - he thinks he may have read it in some trashy sci-fi novel) that the falling dreams that many people have come from our days of swinging through the trees as apes. Both of us remember having those dreams as kids, but neither of us have them now. I posed that it stemmed from being a kid carried around and being afraid of being dropped.
I discovered that I have death dreams when I am sad about something. I'll dream the dreams a few nights, then realize that it's because of whatever I'm sad about, and then they stop. It's fascinating.
I actually never have falling dreams. I think that means that I wasn't descended from apes. Evolution is a sham!
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