Dream Weaver

I conclude that there are many different levels of dreams. Some are wacky insights to the inner self, some are reflections of one's recent experiences or thought topics, and some aren't dreams so much as they are experiences beyond what we have given readily accepted labels. The latter are my favorite and I have a few that are as precious to me as any waking moment I've experienced.

I just spent the last twenty minutes researching the meaning of my dream from last night. That doesn't seem to work- ever, but I continue to try and match up my dreams to professional interpretation. Never can I find a specific match between my dream and the one-word examples I find online. Car. And then the site lists what it means when you see a street car in a dream. What I fail to find is what it indicates when I am in the back of a navy SUV that is soaring off a pier and into the turquoise, clear water on a sunny afternoon complete with blue skies and cumulus clouds. I shouldn't expect to have some outside source tell me about my subconscious. I have a better chance of doing that myself, with just a little introspection.

Last night's dream wasn't close to being the wildest. I remember being one of four girls in the back of the SUV. We were all brunette, if that matters at all. And the other three were taller than me, which simply shows that my sleeping projections are realistic. We have left a place of business, or shopping/dining experience and the driver says she's going to pick up some fish from the fisherman by the pier. The girl who is familiar with the area keeps saying, "They won't be open. Don't bother going. He won't be there." The driver rebuts, "Well, he told me he would be, so I'm going to see anyway." She doesn't understand why she can't go try to pick up her fish without permission or even resistance. I am observing from the back right side of the vehicle. I sort of think this back and forth is amusing and completely normal for these two and their relationship. I don't know who the third girl is either, the one beside me, but I keep trying to insert my sister into the back seat with me, and my brain corrects this by telling me this is impossible, she doesn't live near me. All of a sudden, the car accelerates, we zoom past the fisherman's hut, which is on the left, near the end of a pier. It looked to be closed, but I kept that to myself. I remember that the pier was nice; it had recently poured concrete that led to sturdy wooden planks. We were going so fast and I thought this was actually quite fun. It was thrilling, except we all realized the brakes weren't going to have time to slow our car down before the last wooden plank. The driver tried. It was as if she had accelerated only out of frustration in the first place. We went flying off the pier and I vaguely remember having a smile on my face. I remember being watched from land. We went flying and landed, boom! We went down quickly, too quickly, and this is when I thought, oh, I can't open the door and I didn't have time to put down the window in mid air. Never did it even occur to me in this dream that I wouldn't find a way out. So, I woke, of course. I needed a solution for this timing issue, so I tried to go back to sleep and force a new ending. Ha! That never works either.

One dream that is more interesting came a few weeks ago. It was quite violent. It packed a punch and swirled around in my mind for a couple of days, so I sent it to mom in an email, just to give it an exit. Here's that email:
My dream the other night- crazy.
I was an observer only, but we were in a futuristic building that was large and white and it was clear research was going on in the center and it was open floor to ceiling. The staircases were concrete, but they led to balconies with clear Plexiglas walls and so everyone and everything was exposed. My point of view was here, on one of the many floor's balconies with three people. We watched as this crazy man somehow dangled himself from one of the floors and kept stabbing himself to throw off the 'enemy' that was capturing all these people. Blood was everywhere. It seemed he was fighting his own demons completely, because he kept hurting himself with an odd satisfaction and then surviving and so he was doing it over and over for show. Then, two of the three people who were seeing all that this man was doing; and they seemed like okay, decent people; began racing up and down flights of stairs looking for their little boy. They couldn't find him no matter what and it was like they were captured and had to leave the building and if they didn't the walls would fall in, but they couldn't leave without their boy. The other girl who was with them tried to help, but was not able to. At the very end when they realized the child was not at the top nor the bottom, they froze on the staircase and one said, panting, "Is this hell, and we just keep trying to get out?" It was a realization that all of the panic was invented and continuing, never ending, but not a reality. That's when I woke up.
Pretty nuts right?
I'm sure my mom appreciated the transference of that ugliness.

I've always had dreams like this; it's nothing new. When I was young I dreamed Adolf Hitler came to our neighborhood and we all had to line up in two parallel, single file lines that led toward the stop sign at the end of my street. We had to go either right or left depending on the line we were in and do forward rolls on a curved, balloon type surface. If we fell off we had to gather in one crowd and if we made it we were gathered behind him in a crowd, presumably the safe one. This dream, no doubt, came from my attempt to read Mein Kampf in seventh grade.

I have been abducted and escaped from a white van by unhinging the floor panels. The kidnappers were men dressed and masked in head to toe black. I ran back to a palace that was set in a long ago time, holding a long ago political and cultural ball, but I was still present time and knew my way around the palace easily. I ran up the grand staircase to the right. It was a wooden staircase and there were lots of red upholstered walls. I got to the second floor, ran right to the second door on the left, turned in it and ran around the four poster bed. Everything was extravagantly decorated. This bad man in black came in and faced me and we had a moment of a stand off. I had nowhere to go. Trapped. So, I grabbed a bedpost, pulled it up out of the foot board and speared him with it! Nice job, huh? That was survival instinct, I guess. I never go down in the dream. That's good to know. But, that dream was as real as they get when I was dreaming it and I remember it in vivid detail to this day. I must have been 18 when I had that dream.

Once, Joey from NKOTB died my hair lime green. He tricked me.
I dreamed Nick and Obama were on the floor doing crunches and discussing their very strong political views, which is probably the most far fetched of all these scenarios.
I've had butterflies squeeze my finger so hard it has woken me up.
These are all funny and colorful. I find relief in knowing I dream in color.

The ones that intrigue me most are the ones that I don't fit in the category of dream. I break them up in two ways. The images I have before I fall to sleep, when I'm floating in a sleepy limbo. I see faces mostly, only long enough for me to think "who the hell is that?" And I've seen a whole scene unravel once. It involved this girl that I assume was from the 1970's based on apparel. That one is rather interesting. I may write about that one later. Then, there are the dreams that are not dreams and instead, soulful moments taking place in a realm that connects those that are physically here and those who have left us already. Say bogus. I care not. I feel what I feel. Today's worldly logic plays a minor role. That's the best part about dreaming. One of the most meaningful of these was back in 2006 when Nick's uncle died. It was magnificent and I'll tell of it later I suppose. Too much to say. And the communication that goes on in these sleeping sequences is beyond words on a page anyway.

But, I guess my point is, writing dreams down or thinking about them at length is gratifying. Who knows what you may find. Looking back at them can be startling sometimes. They are as much a part of us as what we do while awake. The subconscious and the magic of the brain is surely overwhelming. It is endless. It belongs solely to us. It is our ticket for instant escape. It is worth a waking moment. I think so anyway.