What Dreams May Come

Dreams. Boy, do I ever have ‘em. I’m talking now about the ones that visit when you are asleep. It’s amazing to me how many people have told me that they either hardly ever dream or, even, NEVER dream. I must be getting all of their dreams, then.

Sometimes, I will have one extremely long dream that seems to last the entire time I’m asleep; even if I wake up and then fall back to sleep, the dream will pick up. Other times, I have a slew of seemingly random dreams, one after another after another. If I were to think about each one (assuming I could remember them all), I might be able to piece together a theme of sorts but usually there are a few that go by the wayside once I’ve regained consciousness and I can barely remember snippets (if that).

I have had dreams that I’ve never forgotten. I, like many people, have dreams of the reoccurring variety. I dream in color and my dreams have sound (e.g., I can hear people talking, music, birds chirping, water running, etc.) For the most part, my dreams are filled with people and places that I know/am familiar with, however, at times, I’ll dream of people I’ve never met in places I’ve never been. These are always fascinating to me; how did my mind make them up? Although, I did read once that your mind remembers every single person you’ve ever encountered in your life, whether that encounter be real (e.g., someone you passed walking down the street or a person standing behind you in a checkout line that you may have glimpsed if you turned your head around to look behind you) or through some sort of media (a secondary character in a movie or a guest star in a TV show). As for the places you dream of to which you’ve never actually been, I suppose that could be just good old fashioned imagination (or, scenes and/or sets from movies or T.V. shows).

I know that dreams can sometimes be nothing more than data dumps of things actually going on (if represented in an odder way than reality) in one’s life. Also, of course, there are symbolic dreams (these are the ones that are sometimes a challenge to figure out while other times, it’s pretty darn obvious).

My favorite dreams are when Nigel and Clyde “visit” me. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen so much now; I suppose it’s mostly because I don’t need their visits as often as I did when they first passed away.

Anyway, to illustrate, here is a synopsis of the dreams (those that I can remember) from last night (which happened to be one of the “slew of dreams” evenings) and my attempt at analysis (in bold):

1. I’m standing in a barber shop watching a tall, pale extremely handsome (in a Nordic way) blond man getting his hair cut. At the moment, his hair is longish and somewhat shapeless. He is telling the barber that he wants it cut off just so (he illustrates by gather up his hair at the nape of his neck). Someone else in the shop says to him, “Are you really sure you want to….” just as the barber lops of the hank of hair. I say, “Well, I certainly hope that is what you wanted; too late now!” He laughs and I realize it’s the character of Eric from the HBO show “True Blood”. This one’s easy. Mr. B and I watched an episode of “True Blood” last night. The character of Eric has been figuring prominently the last few episodes.

2. We get the check for the rent of our townhouse minus $61.00. Enclosed with the check is an invoice for shelves built out on the back deck. The invoice indicates that the tenants had the work done and paid for it but wanted the amount they’d paid deducted from their monthly rent. I hit the roof and call the management company. They say, “Oh, we’re happy that you called because the tenants are doing some landscaping, which means they’ll have to increase the watering time and they want you to donate some money to the cause”. I fume. This dream probably because a) we’re in the midst of arranging to have new flooring installed in the upstairs bathroom in the townhouse and b) we recently had a run-around with the PMC for not doing more due diligence when the tenant wanted something done.

3. I’m with my (ex) husband in a big meeting hall. He keeps asking me if I will go do “something” that I think he should be doing, not me. We sit down and he starts counting the number of people in the room, as well as everyone’s gender, race, age group, etc. I have no idea why he’s doing this and it’s irritating me. He counts the people in our row, including us, and says to me, “Remember your number!” He assigns 16 to him and 17 to me and then goes on counting down the row. When he’s done, he says, “What is your number?” and I tell him. He gets mad at me and says, “No! You are 22!” We argue a bit but I realize he’s an idiot so I give up and stop paying attention to him. For whatever reason, I occasionally dream that I am still married to my ex husband. Almost always, the situations we are in are irritating and/or upsetting. I haven’t quite been able to figure out why these dreams occur, especially since it’s been over 10 years since we were divorced/I’ve seen him. The only possibility I can arrive at is he may pop up in my dreams after Mr. B and I have had a disagreement.

4. I am at some sort of cocktail reception. It is outside. There are many people I know there; many that I do not. I get a glass of dry rose from the cash bar. Someone tells me that this is an excellent rose. I walk away and arrive at a table full of people I know; my friend Peri, a few ex co-workers from TRW, and a few that I don’t. Someone is asking someone else how they ever managed the change of climate from city A to city B. I want to chime in about how different the weather in Colorado Springs was from Los Angeles. But, no one will let me get a word in edgewise. At one point, I’ve set my glass of wine on the ground. Peri accidentally knocks it over. I say, “Peri, you knocked over my wine!” She sort of shrugs at me (she’s in the midst of the conversation). I wander back over to the cash bar to get another glass of the dry rose. When I get there, the bottle they’d poured my first glass from is nowhere in sight. I ask about it; the person behind the bar looks like she has no clue what I’m talking about. I look behind her and see a different variety of dry rose. Pointing at it, I say, “I’ll take a glass of that”. She nods. I look around me while she’s getting my glass of wine, taking in all of the people milling around and talking to one another. When I turn back, there is a man there opening up a bottle of white wine; it’s actually one of those cheap “jug o’ wine” types. I’m not sure who would want that wine. As I’m watching him, he pushes it towards me and says, “That’ll be $45”. I stare at him. “For what?” “For this bottle of wine you ordered”. “I didn’t want that”, I say. “I told her”, I look behind him and see the original bar person and point at her, “I told her that I wanted dry rose”. He looks perplexed. “Well, I opened up this bottle so you have to take it”. I am getting mad and say with no little irritation, “That is NOT a bottle of wine; that is a jug of cheap crap. I would never have asked for that, and, anyway, no way is it worth $45!” The woman sidles up next to him and says to him in a lowered voice, “She’s lying! She drank her other glass of wine so fast that she’s decided she wants a jug of it now. She’s lying!” I shriek at her some exploitative and lunge at her in a threatening way. I have absolutely no idea what this one means, other than I am perhaps angry about something so had to find an outlet (yelling/lunging at the woman bar tender). I’ve been talking to Peri rather frequently of late, which is probably why she makes a cameo.

5. I’m in a car driving through a parking garage. It’s quite dark and I can barely see where I am going. For whatever reason, I start to back up but then find that I cannot stop. Then, the car starts spinning around in circles and all I can do is sit there and hope I don’t hit something. This is one of my reoccurring dreams and I know damn well what it means; that there is something going on in my life that I cannot control and I’m helpless to do anything about it.

6. I’m sitting in a dentist’s chair. I am explaining to the dentist, who happens to be someone I’ve never seen before in my life, which doesn’t help with my anxiety, that one particular tooth , my far back right bottom molar, has a huge, old filling in it that is about to come out. I’m telling him so that he won’t use that damn scraping tool on it. He leans close to my face, I think so that he can look at it, but instead of looking at it, he kisses me. As he’s kissing me, I wake up to find it’s morning; and Mr. B is leaning over me to give me a kiss before he gets out of bed. Easy one. I had to go to the dentist and I was worried about that tooth being prodded. Added bonus, though, of having the end of the dream morph into reality!

By the way, I do keep a dream journal; or, at least, a record of some of the more interesting dreams I’ve had. I keep thinking one of these days, they may be fodder for a story, or a series of short stories, or, a scene in a story. Who knows? They say dream are a vehicle for your subconscious mind to tell you conscious mind something important.

Hmmm.

Mrs. B