Dreams

I realize that more and more of my posts are becoming more and more internal and less and less external. I also realize that almost none of my readers (and they are fast becoming fewer and fewer) are at all interested in what I have to say about myself. But, hey, here I am, less and less connected with the external world. So, please forgive me, whoever you are, if I once again tell you about my dreams.

In looking back at some of my journal entries, I keep bumping into things I’ve said about dreams and the dream state, nuggets of dreams that seem to recur over the course of time, motifs that psychologists would just scrub their hands in anticipation of saying what they might mean, like exclaiming what a sicko this guy is. What follows is a summary of those entries, so they may seem a bit disconnected and repetitive.

For the past three weeks, I’ve dreamed strange, lengthy, disturbing dreams about golf and my past youth and teaching and retiring.  I wake up nearly as tired as when I went to bed.  I guess the word disturbing isn’t really accurate since none of the dreams are frightening or nightmarish.  They’re just so damned odd.  In some of them I’m on one of those familiar dream golf courses where I’m usually playing in a tournament with really ugly and unfair course conditions—fairways hemmed in with trees and bushes and water hazards.  Sometimes I can’t find my clubs.  Sometimes we’re teeing off inside buildings and hitting out through doorways or windows. In other dreams I’m back in school teaching either wildly unruly students or honor students.  In some of them I’m unprepared and in others I teach brilliantly designed lessons.  Often I’m on the verge of retirement and I have only one or two days to go.  The dreams aren’t continuous but they seem to go on all night long.  Often, after one episode, I’ll open my eyes and the clock shows I’ve been in bed only an hour.

Some of my recurring motifs: stolen cars, levitation, going home on foot from east to west (always east to west) and having to go through connected apartments one after another, traveling dreams in which I’m visiting a town or city (usually my dream version of New York) and I either get lost in my car or I’m on foot trying to get to a bus or subway to make it west (always west) and back to where I’m staying, houses with secret rooms usually on the top floor or in the attic. I keep parking a car on a side street and when I return, it’s never there. I think I’ve lost at least a dozen cars over the years. I can lift myself by pushing my palms toward the ground and levitating for a while but only a few feet up.

I’m now dreaming in extended stories, some of which I can recall, some no longer with me.  My short story, “The Hand,” came to me in a dream, the entire plot but none of the details, and the next day I got up and wrote it from what I remembered from my dream. Last night I dreamed I was in a bar drinking beer with someone (a male friend from my past?) and then I had to leave to get ready for some kind of family socializing.  One of the waitresses came up to me to say goodbye and she was barefoot, standing on my shoes with her arms around my neck.  We kissed, and then kissed again, and I looked at her and said, “Damn!  You’re about the only one in town tall enough for me,” and her eyes were right there at my eye level, and she smiled at me and kissed me again. There were more pieces of dream but they’ve fled like wisps of smoke in a breeze

I was writing in my sleep again last night.  There was more to it than this, but this was so vivid I thought I should get it down: I created a transient of some kind who kept his toiletries in a glass jar, about a 12-ouncer, and in it he kept a small comb, a foldup toothbrush, a sliver of soap, and a washcloth.  Now why would I dream such a thing and why would it be in writing?  I mean, as I was dreaming I was putting those words down somewhere.  I think lately I haven’t been sleeping very deeply and sometimes I think in a semi-sleep state and the thoughts seem to be dreams but aren’t really.  I think that floating state between sleep and wakefulness is probably very creative, with the thought process even clearer than it is in an awake state.  Or maybe I’m just full of crap.

I had an extended dream about a story idea.  Some man (husband, father, brother?) wanted me to tutor a pregnant girl until she gave birth, about half a year.  And she would live with me through that period.  The story idea is that the two of them (us?) would not get along at all well but as the delivery day grew near they (we?) began to bond through birthing classes and assorted other traumas until an intimate love develops.  Not carnal intimacy, just two people making a connection that allowed no secrets or embarrassments.  I think it would be a good idea for a novel or play or film.  I’ve never tried a play, but this would be easy, a two-person series of confrontations.  Probably just another thing I’ll never get around to actually doing.  I’m really good at that.  I should have been a corporate idea-man, you know, someone who thinks up good ideas but never has to bring them to fruition.