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2002-05-22 - 1:20 p.m.

Lately, my bedroom has been a lively place.

My once quiet boudoir has rocked me. Instead of a serene place for sleep, the room has become a rollicking dream palace. Over the last few weeks, I've awakened from dreams that could make Stephen King green with envy. Sweet dreams. Bitter dreams. Night terrors. My mind, minus a leash to yank it back to reality, has been freewheeling through some pretty strange places.

Not long ago I awoke from a dream about a person I've never seen. I know her only as typed words on a computer screen. Yet, in my dream, she was three-dimensional and very real. A few nights later I jerked myself awake screaming. The vision on my night screen was all too real. All too horrible. I had run down and killed my own dog. Another night I came screaming and shaking back to reality after a night terror like none I'd experienced since childhood. In my dream, someone-a mere shadow in the dream-- had gained access to my home and was caressing me with the carcass of a cat. A gray cat with one paw extended. Using the stiffened tail as a handle, the shadow gently raked the paw through my hair. I awakened trembling and sweating; my heart thudded in my chest. I finally had to leave the bedroom and sit in the family room where monsters appeared in the starlight and every leaf rustling in the night breeze was a menacing apparition. I've never been frightened to be alone in the dark wilderness at night. That night I was badly shaken and frightened.

Whenever I've awakened and remembered a dream (a tough task considering my Can't Remember Shit condition) and tried to write it down, I realize how nutty it is. It might contain something from my normal (a stretch) waking experience or memory, and it might make perfect sense as it's playing through my night time theater, but it's all slapped together wrong, and, when fully awake, I see how bizarre it is.

Even though we often say we don't dream, or we didn't dream on a particular night, we do. We dream every night, but we seem to remember only those dreams we are having at the point we awaken. These recent dreams are the ones I remember, and it makes me wonder again where this stuff is coming from.

Psychological theory is loaded with explanations, interpretations and dream hocus-pocus. Freud, the granddaddy of all dream analysts, would have us believe dreams are the royal road to our unconscious and somehow mixed up with wish fulfillment. Bull! Although I have long wanted to put a real-life face to the person I've teased and tormented on Web message boards, I don't have a death wish for my loyal buddy and companion, nor do I want some ghoul coming into my home to stroke my head with a dead cat! Of course, recent evidence points to the doctor's heavy cocaine addiction, so maybe Freud's thinking-and dreaming--was addled by blow.

Where Freud was gung-ho for dreams, Hobsonian theory denies they have any significant meaning. Hobson may be right, yet some of my dreams are based in fact, and some have been stimulated and tainted by conflict in my everyday life. Leave it to shrinks to battle out their beliefs using our poor dream-fuddled psyches. Maybe it's best to believe in the old wives tale: Dreams are a result of what we eat! Maybe, if I don't want a return visit from the cat, I'd best stay away from pickles and spicy foods as bedtime snacks!

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