Waking the Dreamer Within

I don't remember my dreams, mostly. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because the occasional recollections have convinced me that my dreams are highly detailed, richly colored expressions of nothing. They're three-dimensional in much the same way a computer-rendered object is three-dimensional, which is to say, not really.

But every once in a while my mind surprises me with a production worthy of the dream label. This is more likely to occur during the daytime, when I'm face down in the dirt because I hit my head after tripping on a piece of wood. That's pretty much what happened today, only it wasn't a piece of wood.

I was dreaming about being asleep, and someone was trying to wake me but I couldn't speak because I was asleep. Speaking is hard enough when I'm awake, but I'm even more mushmouthed when I'm not. All I could get out was "mumph," so the person who was trying to wake me had to ask me to repeat myself. Meanwhile, the part of me that was dreaming about the other dream had to sit there and watch, knowing full well how pointless it is to have conversations with someone who's already two layers down, dreamwise.

I finally woke up from the dream-within-a-dream. Not because I wanted to, but because the outer dream was beginning to lose patience, and wanted to wake up and drink coffee. It's a little bit foggy, but I'm pretty sure Dream #1 grabbed Dream #2 and shook it until it stopped the mumphing and came to.

Anyway, next time you're dreaming about being asleep and don't like the way things are going, wake up and smell the coffee.