Sunday, June 13, 2004
Dreams
Once I heard a comedian say that if other people were supposed to know what you dreamed, your dreams would be projected on a big movie screen so everyone could watch.
But some people like to tell you about their dreams. I don't talk about mine too often, because I rarely remember them well enough and because they, as so many other things, defy my ability to describe them in a way that would make them interesting to other people (you can stop reading anytime you want to). This is partly due to my own limitations and partly due to the dreams' unreal quality. "I was in my grandmother's house, in Hamlet, North Carolina, only it didn't look like her house, and you were there, only you didn't look like you," etc. A handful of themes crop up frequently in my dreams: the most common one is giant ocean waves, sometimes tidal waves. It's been a while since I've had the dream where I'm in public and I realize I'm not wearing anything but a bra and panties, or the one where it's the night before the final exam and I realize I haven't attended a single class all semester, or read one page of the textbook.
A friend told me that his recurring dream about flunking out of college was so powerful that he hung his diploma on the wall at the foot of his bed, so he could see it when he woke up and know that yes, he DID graduate.
The Sopranos recently featured one of Tony's dream sequences. I watched the show with some friends and after it was over we agreed that although the dream sequence captured that disjointed quality of dreams, it went on way too long. We didn't have dreams that lasted that long, or if we did we didn't remember them. I thought the sequence, like all cinematic depictions of dreams, was unrealistic because it was filmed like, well, a TV show or a movie, with different camera angles in each scene, and with the dreamer, Tony, appearing as an actor in the dream. Was Tony supposed to be observing himself from the camera's perspective in this dream? I mean, when I dream, it's always from my point of view, and the action takes place as if I'm watching it through my own eyes - I don't see myself in the third person, so to speak. But one of my friends said he had dreams in which he "saw" himself. Maybe my inability to see myself in dreams means that I don't realize how others perceive me. My the fact that my friend "sees" himself in his dreams means that he's a narcissist. Of course, he's not the one with the blog. But I digress . . .
Last week I had a particularly demented dream, one that I hope doesn't become a recurring one. This dream could be a product of my dark and tormented subconscious, or it could be a product of the fact that the night before I had it, I watched Psycho on the Turner Classic Movie channel. Also that day I had gotten my car insurance policy renewal papers in the mail. My dreams are hardly ever violent but in this dream I was a serial killer. My parents had a vacation beach house in Connecticut, and sometimes I went there with them. One summer while we were on vacation I killed a whole family. Then a couple of summers later, we were there again and I killed a man. I knew that by killing again, in this town where my family had a house and spent vacations, I was greatly increasing the odds that I would get caught, but I was a serial killer, I couldn't stop myself, the compulsion to kill was irresistible. Either I don't remember the details of the killings, or the dream didn't include them, but I apparently killed these people and then went back to the beach house and cleaned up and no one suspected a thing.
So, in the dream one day I'm back home, opening my mail, and there was a renewal notice from my insurance company. The notice said that the company was adding a serial-killer risk rider to my policy in the amount of $6257.00. That was the coverage amount, not the premium. I don't remember checking the premium because I was so freaked out that this serial killer rider had appeared on my policy. Obviously, my insurance company had somehow found out that brutal murders had happened in this Connecticut beach town two years apart, on dates when I was there! They had deemed me to be at risk for being a serial killer! If my insurance company knew about this, then it was only a matter of time before the police put two and two together and started questioning me! Why, WHY, had I killed a second time?! How could I get out of this? The police couldn't prove it, could they? My family was in Connecticut both times, my mother could just as easily have been the serial killer, or my father or sister! But what if I left a strand of hair or a broken fingernail at the scene? DNA evidence would point to me! Oh, God, if only you let me get out of this I swear I'll never kill again!
Then I woke up, panting, my heart racing. After I moment I realized it was only a dream, I was not a serial killer, the police were not looking for me, I wasn't going to go to jail. Thank Bejus!*
Dreams don't have to make sense, but I couldn't help thinking of the many ways in this particular dream was unrealistic: I would never kill anyone, insurance companies don't write serial killer insurance, even if they did $6000.00 wouldn't be enough coverage - it would have to be at least a million, don't you think? - no one from South Carolina would go to Connecticut to go to the beach, etc.
Although my own peculiar dreams fascinate me, I assume most other people would be as bored by them as I am by theirs. However, a friend's brother-in-law, J, had a terrific weird dream. I laugh just thinking about it What makes this dream so funny to me is that J is one of the nicest, most decent, likeable people I have ever met. He doesn't seem like the kind of person who would have twisted dreams. He could be a character on the old Andy Griffith show. He's from Darlington and is a complete Southern gentleman. J never cusses and this amazes some people. Sometimes J comes to the beach and plays golf with some mutual friends. They fill the air with expletives when they miss a putt or shank a drive (or whatever you call it), but when J does the same thing he just utters some mild exclamation the likes of which you usually hear only from your great-grandmother or Donald Rumsfeld. "Oh, my." "Great day."
Once the guys asked J if he ever even thought cuss words - you know, did he ever just silently say a cuss word to himself - and he said no. For all his goodness, J is not the least bit sanctimonious.
So that's J. Here's his dream: He's driving in the Indy 500. His car starts going slower and slower. It's as if something is dragging it down. He can't figure out what it could be. Some kind of mechanical problem? He pulls into the pit area and gets out of his car and looks at it. Elizabeth Taylor is strapped to the roof of the car.
And that's your reward for reading to the end of this post.
* I stole "Bejus" from Acidman.
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Once I heard a comedian say that if other people were supposed to know what you dreamed, your dreams would be projected on a big movie screen so everyone could watch.
But some people like to tell you about their dreams. I don't talk about mine too often, because I rarely remember them well enough and because they, as so many other things, defy my ability to describe them in a way that would make them interesting to other people (you can stop reading anytime you want to). This is partly due to my own limitations and partly due to the dreams' unreal quality. "I was in my grandmother's house, in Hamlet, North Carolina, only it didn't look like her house, and you were there, only you didn't look like you," etc. A handful of themes crop up frequently in my dreams: the most common one is giant ocean waves, sometimes tidal waves. It's been a while since I've had the dream where I'm in public and I realize I'm not wearing anything but a bra and panties, or the one where it's the night before the final exam and I realize I haven't attended a single class all semester, or read one page of the textbook.
A friend told me that his recurring dream about flunking out of college was so powerful that he hung his diploma on the wall at the foot of his bed, so he could see it when he woke up and know that yes, he DID graduate.
The Sopranos recently featured one of Tony's dream sequences. I watched the show with some friends and after it was over we agreed that although the dream sequence captured that disjointed quality of dreams, it went on way too long. We didn't have dreams that lasted that long, or if we did we didn't remember them. I thought the sequence, like all cinematic depictions of dreams, was unrealistic because it was filmed like, well, a TV show or a movie, with different camera angles in each scene, and with the dreamer, Tony, appearing as an actor in the dream. Was Tony supposed to be observing himself from the camera's perspective in this dream? I mean, when I dream, it's always from my point of view, and the action takes place as if I'm watching it through my own eyes - I don't see myself in the third person, so to speak. But one of my friends said he had dreams in which he "saw" himself. Maybe my inability to see myself in dreams means that I don't realize how others perceive me. My the fact that my friend "sees" himself in his dreams means that he's a narcissist. Of course, he's not the one with the blog. But I digress . . .
Last week I had a particularly demented dream, one that I hope doesn't become a recurring one. This dream could be a product of my dark and tormented subconscious, or it could be a product of the fact that the night before I had it, I watched Psycho on the Turner Classic Movie channel. Also that day I had gotten my car insurance policy renewal papers in the mail. My dreams are hardly ever violent but in this dream I was a serial killer. My parents had a vacation beach house in Connecticut, and sometimes I went there with them. One summer while we were on vacation I killed a whole family. Then a couple of summers later, we were there again and I killed a man. I knew that by killing again, in this town where my family had a house and spent vacations, I was greatly increasing the odds that I would get caught, but I was a serial killer, I couldn't stop myself, the compulsion to kill was irresistible. Either I don't remember the details of the killings, or the dream didn't include them, but I apparently killed these people and then went back to the beach house and cleaned up and no one suspected a thing.
So, in the dream one day I'm back home, opening my mail, and there was a renewal notice from my insurance company. The notice said that the company was adding a serial-killer risk rider to my policy in the amount of $6257.00. That was the coverage amount, not the premium. I don't remember checking the premium because I was so freaked out that this serial killer rider had appeared on my policy. Obviously, my insurance company had somehow found out that brutal murders had happened in this Connecticut beach town two years apart, on dates when I was there! They had deemed me to be at risk for being a serial killer! If my insurance company knew about this, then it was only a matter of time before the police put two and two together and started questioning me! Why, WHY, had I killed a second time?! How could I get out of this? The police couldn't prove it, could they? My family was in Connecticut both times, my mother could just as easily have been the serial killer, or my father or sister! But what if I left a strand of hair or a broken fingernail at the scene? DNA evidence would point to me! Oh, God, if only you let me get out of this I swear I'll never kill again!
Then I woke up, panting, my heart racing. After I moment I realized it was only a dream, I was not a serial killer, the police were not looking for me, I wasn't going to go to jail. Thank Bejus!*
Dreams don't have to make sense, but I couldn't help thinking of the many ways in this particular dream was unrealistic: I would never kill anyone, insurance companies don't write serial killer insurance, even if they did $6000.00 wouldn't be enough coverage - it would have to be at least a million, don't you think? - no one from South Carolina would go to Connecticut to go to the beach, etc.
Although my own peculiar dreams fascinate me, I assume most other people would be as bored by them as I am by theirs. However, a friend's brother-in-law, J, had a terrific weird dream. I laugh just thinking about it What makes this dream so funny to me is that J is one of the nicest, most decent, likeable people I have ever met. He doesn't seem like the kind of person who would have twisted dreams. He could be a character on the old Andy Griffith show. He's from Darlington and is a complete Southern gentleman. J never cusses and this amazes some people. Sometimes J comes to the beach and plays golf with some mutual friends. They fill the air with expletives when they miss a putt or shank a drive (or whatever you call it), but when J does the same thing he just utters some mild exclamation the likes of which you usually hear only from your great-grandmother or Donald Rumsfeld. "Oh, my." "Great day."
Once the guys asked J if he ever even thought cuss words - you know, did he ever just silently say a cuss word to himself - and he said no. For all his goodness, J is not the least bit sanctimonious.
So that's J. Here's his dream: He's driving in the Indy 500. His car starts going slower and slower. It's as if something is dragging it down. He can't figure out what it could be. Some kind of mechanical problem? He pulls into the pit area and gets out of his car and looks at it. Elizabeth Taylor is strapped to the roof of the car.
And that's your reward for reading to the end of this post.
* I stole "Bejus" from Acidman.
