Thursday, March 22, 2012

Of Dreams and Rubber Bands

I don't own a dream dictionary, and I don't hold with any particular significance to anything I see as I sleep. Still, dreams are funny things, and I believe they do hold funny, twisted, mysterious keys to what happens as we wake up.


I've had some really cool dreams. One was done completely as a comic book. I had to turn the pages and read what came next. In another, I looked through the viewfinder of a camera. Images blurred and sharpened as I manipulated the lens.


A friend of mine had a recurring nightmare. She was on a large rubber band, and she was bounced up and down by some mysterious force. As she got flung about, the band began to narrow until she knew she would fall off. And at that point, naturally, she would wake up with one of those dreadful Oh my gosh I'm falling! jerks.


After years of this, one night within the dream she suddenly realized, with perfect dream logic,  All I have to do is jump over the fence! She did that and escaped the rubber band. 


And she never had that dream again.


I have a recurring dream too. It comes in different iterations. I'm always in a house, and we are always just about to move. Everything lies around in messy piles, and there are no more boxes. Outside, the lawn is straggly and overgrown. Strange creatures lurk in the treetops.


There is a barn in the back (my friends will recognize this site as a house I lived in growing up) and there is a hidden treasure in the barn. I have to get to the barn, past the loathsome, icky things that hide in the trees.


Sometimes I make it to the barn, only to find something worse there. I've never made it to the treasure.


Is there some deep psychological meaning to all this? I think it's simple enough - we moved a lot while I was a kid, and perhaps the old Id is still sorting through those experiences. That's rather mundane, when I put it like that. The mysterious garden and the hidden treasure are much more interesting and seductive.


I don't feel the need to take this to a psychiatrist or a dream interpreter. I would like to know what is in that treasure, though.



5 comments:

Kimberly @ Caffeinated Reviewer said...

Lovely post. I want to know what was in the box too!

T. Anderson said...

Love sharing dreams...as you may have noticed on my own blog. I too, have had some page turning book dreams...and I'm SURE the story was a bestseller, if I could only remember it now to tell it.....haha! Thanks for this post, Alison!

Molly Greene said...

Thanks for this, Alison! I've had some amazing dreams in my life, so good in fact I just had to write them down. Now where is that old dream journal?

Eden Mabee said...

You had me when you started talking about recurring dreams. And you made it necessary to comment when you mentioned that you didn't want your dream interpreted, just wanted to know what was in the box.

YES!

For so many years I dreamed about an old church (it's since been torn down *very sad face*) and the dreams always involved wandering along a yellowish/white/black/brown landscape where this church was, but was underground, and there were services being held there.

I never "understood" the dream, but I wanted to know what the church was, where, who... When I found those things out, the dreams stopped.

Sometimes we don't need need more meaning than just curiosity. LOVED this and the fond memories you brought up. Thank you!

Alison DeLuca said...

Exactly, Eden! And those evocative images are more important than any other meaning or future import, sometimes.

I love having strange, beautiful dreams.