Two nights ago, by some spectacular alignment of the stars and planets, I made it to bed before 10 o'clock. Since I had to get up for work at 5, that meant I actually got 7 solid hours of uninterrupted sleep.
But you know what the crazy thing is? My body rejected it. As The Matrix would say, my "primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up": I woke up at 2 in the morning, startled because I thought I'd slept in. After that, I woke up every hour on the hour until 5. I was delirious with sleep, I was entombed in sleep.
I dreamt. It was the first remembered dream I've had for a long while. I haven't remembered a dream for months, even years. I used to. I mean, I used to keep a dream journal and write down all of my dreams - sometimes up to 6 in one night. I don't know why. I'm not a Jungian or anything, though I don't discount the possibility of a personal symbology in my dreams (Freud). But that's not why I kept the journal. I mean, I don't think my subconscious mind is any more intelligent than my conscious mind...more observant maybe...more problem-solving perhaps...but not more intelligent.
So I don't try and interpret my dreams. I don't try and parse them up or dissect them. I enjoy them the way I enjoy a painting or a poem. I love their nonsensical nature, their mixture of fact and fantasy, and their lack of inhibitions. I even love the fact that I can die in my dream and wake up without a scratch. It's like my own VR environment and it's right there inside of my head.
I even like nightmares. There's something raw and unrefined about them--as if I'm tapping directly into the core of my brain, seeing what it is I truly fear.
Most of my nightmares deal with snakes, which I'm sure has something to do with my religious upbringing. They're fairly simple dreams as well, usually consisting of me holding a snake by its head but it keeps twisting in my grasp and my hands are getting sweaty.
My next most inherent nightmare is of tidal waves. I'll be standing on a blustery sea shore. It stretches for miles in both directions. The shore is steep and inhospitable, with hard-packed crumbly sand. Despite this there are crowds of beachgoers. Behind us there are sullen beach houses, uninhabited. Before us come the tidal waves, one after another, each rising higher than the next. Sometimes I start out in the water, swimming, trying to breach the top of each cresting wave. Other times I begin on the shore itself, and I turn to scramble up the embankment but the hill keeps rising higher above me and I eventually turn to meet my fate as (ultimately) one massive wave comes rolling in--standing hundreds of feet above my head.
Thirdly, I dream about whales or sharks. Most often, I'm near a giant expanse of frigid water topped with sheets of ice and razor-sharp icebergs. In these dreams I have to travel somewhere, either swimming beneath the ice or on a boat through the icefields, as impregnable as mines. The whales and sharks are beneath the water with me, sometimes helping, sometimes hurting me. If there's a boat then it's sinking. These types of dreams don't disturb me as much as the first two -- at least, if I wake up during them I'm not disoriented or frightened. Yesternight's dream was about whales.
My favorite dreams to have are about sex. I love the inhibition I have in these dreams. The more sordid the better. The first sexual dream I ever remember having was back in 6th grade and what's funny is that it didn't even have sex in it. In the dream I'm skiing with this girl I knew...only when I woke up it was as if we had had sex. I had the same excitement, the same guilt as if I had actually done the deed. It was amazing.
Since then, my sex dreams have become more vivid and less innocent. But I experience them less frequently as well. Being married, my superego steps in whenever my dreams proceed in that direction and I usually stop any such encounters from happening...or wake up.
"Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every
night of our lives." -- William Dement
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