Thursday, March 13, 2003

Lately I’ve been reading some

Lately I’ve been reading some great blogs about dreams.  People are having some weird ones, fun ones, provocative ones… I’ve started feeling left out.  Lately I’ve not been recalling much about my dreams.  I get flashes of recollection of terror (I’ve been selected for death by an incorporeal evil), of titillation (some improbable relationship with a stranger or passing acquaintence that’s on the verge of raunchy impropriety but never seems to get there).... But apart from these very stimulating flashes, I don’t recall much of many of my dreams.  Not long ago I found a notebook from several years back in which I described to myself several scenes of an eerie dream that straddled the line between eroticism and horror.  But I don’t recall many more recent dreams well at all.

Back in the day, before I got scared to go to sleep (when I was 6), I recall at least two incidents when I not only dreamed a whole story, but I was able to control it.  One time I dreamed I was on a PT boat (yes, I knew my WWII warships at an early age), being chased by bad guys.  I had to jump off the boat to make my escape, but I realized once I was in mid-air that I’d jumped off the stern and the propellor would chew me to pieces once I hit the water.  Thinking fast - in my dream - I reversed course, flew back on board, and jumped again - this time off the side of the boat.  I hit the water safely and eventually everything in the dream worked out just fine. 

But the really cool one was the dream that started out with an olde-fashioned parchment scroll that slowly unfurled before my dreaming eyes.  With rubricated capitals and elaborate calligraphy, the scroll crawled like the credits to an old movie, but instead of the names of directors and producers, it was a list of dreams available to me that night.  I read them as they went past and when I saw one I liked I picked it and it started up like TiVo.  As I remember it had something to do with the middle ages and sword fighting.  I was, naturally, a hero.

But I don’t remember getting such a choice again since then, and I don’t seem to have much control to “re-do” the mistakes I make in my dreams.  It’s like I lost the remote.  Meantime I’m not having many very memorable dreams.  I wake up refreshed but rather bored.  Frankly, I’m feeling ripped off by my own subconscious.  I’ll update these ruminations once I get my special super sleeping powers back.