My dreams are boring. Mostly they're just regurgitations of everyday life, although there's a certain lucid quality to them that just isn't there during my waking hours. In my dreams no detail goes unnoticed, and I ponder minutia that simply wouldn't be worth contemplating if I were awake.
For example, a recent episode featured yours truly entering a café for lunch, and although the host's voice was perfectly clear and understandable when he asked whether I preferred a table or booth, I insisted on asking him to repeat the question anyway. Then, after I had shrugged off the choice completely, he led me to a table covered with jackets, which he unceremoniously brushed to the floor. With my enhanced dreaming-perception, I noticed the college student seated to my right was wearing shiny black ear buds, and that they were much longer than ordinary ear buds. I woke up before I had the chance to order my food, so I can't say anything about the texture or quality of the lunch.
Where mine are excruciatingly mundane, the dreams of My One True Love are rich in symbolism, and make for fine conversation over morning coffee. In one particularly symbolic installment of her mind's nocturnal handiwork, a leaf-green baby squirrel is accidentally dropped into a snake's lair—although it more closely resembles a rabbit hutch—and immediately clings to the snake, which is evidently the maternal sort since it has human breasts.
In another, slightly less symbolic but no less entertaining dream, she stars as a security guard armed with a remote control that causes the rabbits on the lawn of the office building she's guarding to hop on command, and also in the direction of her choosing. A dog approaches and sits on her foot, which she instantly recognizes as the behavior of an official Security Dog—not to be confused with an ordinary watchdog, of course.
Now if only there were some way to capture those dreams on video . . .
My favorite line here: "I woke up before I had the chance to order my food." I've had many similar dream experiences, in which the story arc of my dream gets cut off before the grand finale. I invariably feel disappointed at having missed out on the virtual experience. Missed meals and missed romances are frustrating, but you know what's been the worst? The incompletion of a dream novel I was writing. Not only could I not remember the details of my book upon waking, but I didn't even get the satisfaction of knowing I'd at least completed the project in the world of dreams! I guess that proves I'm a workaholic, for why else would I bemoan unfinished work even on an imaginary level?!
ReplyDeleteBy the way ... your dreams aren't actually boring. What makes a rabbit more interesting than a jacket? It's purely subjective, eh? Hey -- if you can just combine your dreams of outerwear with your love's dreams of animals, you'd have a clothes horse. ;-)
I can relate to bemoaning unfinished dreamworks. Mine so often end on a sour note due to a feeling of things left undone; there just aren't enough hours in the night.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for invoking the clothes-horse vision. Most excellent! I can already feel the inspiration kicking in . . .