Dreams

I'm fascinated by dreams. I do love hearing about other people’s dreams, because it seems we all dream in ways that are peculiar to the individual, but I'm also fascinated with the process of analyzing my own dreams, particularly when I can remember them well. This post is going to be a random analysis of a dream I had years ago that I still remember very well in part because I documented it in detail after I woke up. I most definitely dream in color Reading the description of the dream actually won’t be necessary for this post, I think, as it's all pretty abstract anyway, but it will probably make it make a bit more sense.

So, one of the things about my dreams I find interesting is backstory. The dream described was only about ten minutes long, I'd say, but there is definitely more than ten minutes of understanding packed into it, and it's interesting how it can be both detailed and patchy at the same time. I'm in a room that's my bedroom, and while the room has no analogue in my waking life, I know the room intimately, not just the furniture, but what's concealed behind the furniture, what can be found outside its two doors, one leading into the rest of the house and one leading into the back yard. I know I live here with my “family” yet somehow, I'm unclear on what the word “family" entails. I know the personality, mannerisms, and recent actions of my three roommates (even the one who never makes an appearance in the dream), but I don't know any of their names. It's interesting that in the dream, there is acceptance of the bizarre fact (in what I sometimes call “dream logic" as in something that makes perfect sense in the context of the dream somehow) that one can travel from the United States to China by simply crawling over the fence in the backyard, and my roommate has access to military-grade weaponry. All of this is simply accepted as established in the course of the first minute of the dream.

The glass shards, while taking up just a small part of the story, are very unsettling. They are cutting my hands, mouth, and feet, and there is actually a lot of blood and pain involved, although I just take it in stride (literally, at the end of this portion) and continue the Sisyphean task of cleaning them up as they never seem to get better. I feel like I hear a lot of people talking about nightmares like this, where there is something unpleasant that they need to do, but can't make progress concerning.

When I leave the bedroom, something markedly different happens. I walk into a room, and while I know the room (despite once again the room having no real world analogue) I have no idea what's going on in the room. There are many people who I don't know, and most of the people I do know are there for unknown reasons. There's actually a rather surprising sheer number of people for such a small room; it's not a particlularly large living room, but there's at least 20 people here, along with two very large objects that nobody is standing close to. The almost indescribable mass on the coffee table is also a complete surprise, although given its level of bizarre, perhaps my muted response is a bit of “dream logic” as it's perhaps not unheard of that something like that would appear in the living room. When my mom says it's a “school project”, I immediately understand it's something she made for one of my younger siblings. (I don't have any younger siblings in real life, and while I was unclear as to the complete family structure I have in the dream, having younger siblings is somehow understood.) It's interesting what will and won’t surprise you in dreams.

I guess it's a bit of “dream logic” that I don't question my mother going to get a vacuum cleaner to clean up what is largely a liquid mess, and one that would surely be beyond the capacity of the vacuum, as it covered the whole of the coffee table over a foot in thickness. However, the buffalo carcass, in contrast to the people, is not a surprise to me. Of course I hunted a buffalo for dinner and dragged the whole thing home myself and butchered it in the living room, because I recall doing this, and it's a perfectly normal thing for me to do! Also, of course, after taking meat for dinner for a handful of people (all these people in the living room weren't here for dinner) we're just going to toss the rest in the garbage! Peak “dream logic”!

So then the dream shifts to another surprise, and one that I once again react to in a rather subdued manner given its bizarreness, the thing under the kitchen counter, and what following it reveals. There's this entire ecosystem of plants, animals, and fungi, none of which I have ever seen before (in the dream or out), some of which is bioluminescent enough to allow me to observe it in that small space. And here comes the “dream logic”: it's obviously all about faulty plumbing, right? It's just a leak, and our lack of thoroughly cleaning up after it! But once I get the flashlight, I realize it's more than just a leak, as there is somehow water in a large puddle (or even a lake?) that stetches, via a crack in the wall, well beyond the confines of the kitchen into unknown space past the wall.

So the dream concludes (although it's not much of an ending narrative-wise) with this mystery door. Of course I remember the conversation with the landlord over it from years ago (backstory again) , but now I'm not satisfied with ignoring it anymore. For the sake of what I saw under the kitchen counter, I have to know what is behind it, because I suspect it's more than just a crawlspace. Is it strange in the dream that I can break down a door so easily? How sturdy is this door supposed to be anyway? It's clearly in a state of disrepair, that's clear enough, so maybe it’s not so dreamlike. And then the dream just ends. Not many of my dreams have a satisfying narrative structure, starting out of nowhere (which I understand is common for dreams) following a plot that barely deserves to be called that, and then simply ending. Whatever I saw beyond the door was so shocking and indescribable that I just woke up. A lot of dreams end this way for me. And so does this post.

Thoughts?