December 1, 2005
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Dream Life
© The Author, 2005
A wicked, hideous bug is thrashing about inside my gut.
Yesterday my tummy bug hated me so much that I called in sick to work. I slept all day and dreamed of being a rock star.
Shaken to the core with chills and body aches, I went home early from work today. I went to sleep immediately upon my arrival home. I dreamed of getting an “I Tried” sticker from my boss—the same type of sticker you get when you try to donate blood but your piercings are too fresh, or you have visible track marks.
A far cry from rock star dreams.
Since I can’t seem to focus on reading and tonight’s television line up is to lame to even consider (a made for tv movie about Pope John Paul’s life?!?! Oh come on!!!), I thought it might prove entertaining to write about the primary thing that seems to be holding my interest this sickness-fouled week: dreams.
In the weeks before my mom married my step dad, a recurring dream that was to follow me throughout life was born. In the dream I am five years old and my step dad takes me to the place that the board game Candy Land was made after. We hold hands and walk in comfortable silence on the colored squares, shaded by lush trees bearing gummy fruits and skittles. Soon, the forest starts to grow thicker and brambles of licorice begin to knot our path. A shack in the distance comes into focus. “That is where the witch lives,” my step dad says in a playful whisper. I smile, not wanting to let on that I’m sort of scared and unsure as to if he is serious or not. The closer we get to her house, the more I notice that each window of it is radiating a different color. Once we are upon the house, blinding hues of orange, blue, yellow, and pink pour from the windows and bathe the forest in violent light. My step dad opens the door to the house and we step in. To my surprise, there is no color in the house at all—it is dark and drab and dreary. A slide projector whirs in the corner and is clicking through slide after slide of white light, aimed to land on the dingy wall across from it. “See?” He asks me. I shrug, not wanting to let him know that I don’t understand. Looking around at the drab, I am shamefully comforted that all the lights, all the fuss, was all nothing after all.
In the weeks after 9/11 I dreamed that the souls of those who had died were in a traffic jam on their way to Nirvana—too many deaths all at the same time and not enough staff in Nirvana to accommodate. The line spilled from the sky into my dorm room. I could have sworn I saw those who had died lined up, waiting irritated and confused along my cinderblock walls. I woke sobbing for them.
In the weeks before my marriage, I dreamed that I accidentally had sex with my gay best friend. For some reason the person I thought was Shaun had a changeable face—like a mask that morphed. It would start out as Shaun, and then it would turn into Derek and I would panic and throw my sheets off my bed in an angry panic, waking my roommate with stupid sleep talking gibberish. I was so appalled at the situation that I couldn’t even look at my friend the next day. He of course knew why and wouldn’t stop teasing me about it, which made the whole debacle worse.
In the weeks (okay—years) after encountering mutant cockroaches at work, I have dreams that there are exactly two roaches in the bed. I throw the covers off and it takes Shaun a considerably long time to wake me from my delusion and convince me that the bed is bug free.
Sometimes I dream that I am Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I invent my own plot lines to enact. I think I’ll go back to sleep now and see if I can wrangle up a dream where I’m Buffy and get to slay bad things. That always seems to make me feel better. This episode will be called “Buffy Slays the Tummy Bug.”
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What do you dream?
::Random Tangent::
Who read Alice Munro’s short in The New Yorker this week? Holy Moley! I like it when Munro takes a break from penning domestic tales and tackles a warped scenario! I totally dug it. You?
Comments (7)
interesting dream. I don’t dream, of course I’ve been told that everyone dreams, so I guess I just don’t remember my dreams. Peace out and take care. autumn
Dreams are so… weird! Love the subject, though. My favorite of yours is the Buffy dream, and my question is this: do you know it’s a dream while you’re enacting it? Or are you convinced it’s real?
I had a reoccuring dream all through college and high school that my teeth were falling out. Sometimes they would rot out, sometimes they would get knocked out, and sometimes I would lose one or two in a strange incident. But always I woke clutching at my teeth with immense relief that they were all in place. After years and years of having this dream, I started to realize it was a dream while I was still dreaming it. After that, I stopped having it as much until it has tapered off to nothing.
I also occasionally dream I’m driving and I drive off a cliff. Not on purpose, but sometimes the road will end unexpectedly, or I’ll not turn enough and drive off the edge accidentally. Always I’m in the car, gripping the wheel, and feeling that falling sensation in my stomach as I watch the ground approaching. I’m starting to be able to realize I’m dreaming as soon as that starts happening, so my hope is that I’ll soon stop having that one as well. Neither dream is pleasant.
Most of my dreams, in fact, are nightmares. All are vivid.
Good topic.
Mmm … gummy fruits and skittles. Very imaginative dream.
The real lingering dream I have is the one when I’m in college and it’s well into the semester and suddenly realize I have, say, a Thursday afternoon class but never attended. It lingered since undergrad, became a bit more prevalent during grad work, but even post-master’s still occurs once in a while. Although now that I’m on the other end of the equations, maybe now the dreams will be about discovering in the middle of the semester I’m supposed to be teaching a class.
Hi! I hope you are feeling better. I had that tummy thing three weeks ago and it turned into a cold. Weird. Now, I’m laid up with a three-day migraine (It’s better today, really). It was all my fault because I ingested something that gives me migraines, I should have known better, and now I’m stuck with the side effects. Never again. Why are we cursed with bad health? Cold weather always makes it worse and the change from pleasant (autumn) to abysmal (now) is really hard on my body.
I have that same dream Tim has about the lingering test or the course I never went to–and now it’s the final. It never goes away, no matter how old I get. Or I dream that I can’t get to the terminal to make the airplane for an an important trip. Long after I left the Sun-Times, I had lingering dreams that they were going to fire me. The dreams were so realistic that I had to sit for long minutes on my bed in the morning going through the actual events to realize that they never were going to fire me. And I was in a union, for heaven’s sake! Why do I only have bad dreams?
You ought to talk to http://www.xanga.com/TarotBabe She does dream interpretations.
New Yorker:Alice Munroe. I never read that magazine.
RYC: Oh, so funny. It’s true that I’ve rarely tasted a “home-baked” (read: from a mix) item that didn’t make me ill. My sister is the only one who can truly (ha,ha) cook and she doesn’t do sweet stuff. I feel so bad for your cousin’s boyfriend! How mean to make him sit there like that! Brad has a long ponytail and earring and one family member can’t stand him and it’s also heart-breaking to watch him be ignored by that person at present time.Everyone forgets my son’s birithday–which is Dec. 14!
Lynn
Another note:
“Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” is one of my favorite, chair-poundingly funny movies. Especially the part where John Candy realizes that soft place where he put his hand was “Not a pillow!”
Lynn
i dream, but like life i generally have no say in what’s going on. i’d really like to learn dream control or whatever it’s called. i have a dream totem by my bed too. if you haven’t checked out dream totems you should. give them a name and when your in trouble call them out and they’ll come help you.
You have some fairly detailed and imaginative dreams! I have a recurring nightmare about someone standing over my bed at night about to kill me. Then I ‘wake up,’ and I think I’m safe until I discover that the person is still there. This goes on through about 4 or 5 “waking up” episodes until I finally actually do wake up. Not my favorite dreams ever, let me tell you.