27 February, 2010

Dreaming

I had an amazing dream. I was back in grade school, but I had an unprecedented level of self-confidence. I confessed my feelings to the girl I had a crush on, and we had a deeply personal conversation (the details of which escape me). I stood up to the teacher who was treating us unfairly. And I fought back against the jealous bullies who got physical after realizing they couldn't break my confidence and self-esteem. One of them maliciously dumped coffee on my lap (lucky for me it wasn't hot), and I attacked him in a rage. For a moment, I imagined that I was Wolverine, and I smashed his skull between my clawed fists. (That'll teach him to make a fool of me).

Shortly after, I found myself alone and in nature, returning to a scene that I feel is from a previous dream (though that could have been an illusion), where I fought a bear in the clearing of a large wood. I flew in with some personal flying device (some sort of jetpack/hang-glider thing) and was looking for myself to rescue. I saw a signal flare (and, strangely, also had the sensation of firing it off) and followed it to its source - a clearing on the bank of a stream. I recognized the place. There was a bear lying dead in the stream. At that moment, being out there in nature felt incredibly good, like as if it alone was intrinsically a feeling worth living for, and that nothing else that might get me down mattered in comparison. Then, it was getting dark, which made for some dangerous flying to get out of there. I disturbed a flock of birds on the ground to get them to fly up so I could follow their silhouettes against the sky (which was only barely lighter than the pitch black ground).

In an earlier dream, still in a school atmosphere, but not directly related to the other one, I had another encounter with a girl. I was outside, for some kind of recess or something, and the weather turned sour. She appeared out of nowhere and shared her umbrella with me. We weren't alone, but on the other hand, I was proud to be seen associating with this girl in this way. A big storm was called, and we were all brought inside and taken to the assembly hall. The girl sat down with her friends, but I was still holding onto her umbrella. With uncharacteristic confidence, I approached her to return it, hoping to engage her some more, but she just told me to keep it, and I got the feeling I was being shooed away. That's when I realized she was just the type of person who does nice things for others, but it doesn't necessarily mean anything personal. I was disappointed.

In yet another, even earlier, dream, there was [another] zombie invasion. I remember very little now, except furnishing a crawl space in an attic, accessible only by a small hole in the ceiling of a room, without any kind of ladder or anything to assist in getting up there. It was pretty cozy.

I get the feeling I had an extremely vivid dreaming night, which is not common for me (unless it happens without my notice), and I can't help wondering what, if anything, triggered it. Oh, to repeat the experience! Dreams are billions of times more fulfilling than life. Even the bad dreams, funnily enough.

6 comments:

  1. That sounds an awful lot like the kind of vivid dreaming I remember upon waking a few times a week. Straight-forward real life situations that play on the basic problems of our personalities, and often correcting them (to my utter fascination), and often focusing around interpersonal problems and interpersonal lessons.

    Recently I've been having... not a recurring dream but dreams with a recurring theme, each one like a simple skit of an identicle base, all displaying the same parable but with different characters. Let's just say... it regards romance, and it's really been messing with me.

    But I can't believe you didn't title this "Sweet Dreams" dig?

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  2. Oh my god, you commenting on my dreams entry just reminded me of a dream I had tonight. I was with you and LJ and we were outside, it might have been snowy. Anyway, LJ confessed her feelings for you, but you rejected her. I either said, or thought to myself, hey Doug, this is it, your chance of a lifetime, are you sure you want to do this? But you were like no, it's too late, LJ, that ship has sailed. And then you left her behind.

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  3. That's a pretty wild dream Z. Seems like I should be the one having it, doesn't it? By the way I wanted to ask you, what do you think these dreams you've described mean? I mean, my dreams usually seem like they have a "moral" of sorts. Do you find the same?

    As far as "romahnce" (as I call it) goes, if Elysia admitted feelings for me, I'd be all in. If LJ did it I would probably be okay with it for about five minutes until she continued to trample over every one of my feelings and neglect me to preposterous extents like she has ever since the start of summer 2007. I'm a rational man, I wouldn't hold our past against LJ in this circumstance, but if she's not willing to be severely less social, then no relationship between us could work.

    A few days ago I had a dream about Elysia that impressed me so much I've genuinely considered attempting to pursue a relationship with her. I have to keep reminding myself that the way she acted in the dream goes against some of the core attributes of her personality in real life.

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  4. I rarely dream about girls I know in real life, but then, I guess there aren't a lot of people in my life to dream about...

    On the other hand, it doesn't surprise me that I fall in love in my dreams with girls that don't exist. Although I'm pretty sure the girl in that one dream was modeled after the one (one of, actually) girl I actually had a crush on back then. Of course, it's kind of silly to have those feelings now, since it's a scene from the past... (Not that it isn't still entirely satisfying.)

    If there's a moral, I'm sure it's just to be more confident. But bollocks to that, I say.

    And in that other one, maybe the moral is that doing nice things for people isn't necessarily a good thing. As REO Speedwagon put it, being kind can hurt someone sometimes.

    Also, to satisfy your curiosity, I wrote this post before I started listening to Roy Buchanan that day. :p

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  5. Also you said even the bad dreams are more fulfilling than real life. Gotta agree 100%. Even my "nightmares" tend to be a lot of fun, like I had a bear nigthmare not long ago and it was still scary but I was so much more in control of myself and it made me feel like I had progressed a lot since I was a little kid.

    And as far as genuine nightmares go, I remember one where dad was just yelling at me to high heavens and he made me live in the attic and all this stuff, and it was absolutely dreadful but the dream world was still great because it was all conclusive and straight-forward. I knew what was going on, I knew what it meant, I knew how I should feel, there was no guesswork. Real life is all guesswork. I wish I could live just one day of real life without any guesswork.

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  6. Oh shit, by the way. Your LJ dream was a scene from Dawson's Creek. I understand how you feel 'cause that's how I reacted to that scene, too. But when it's ME I have to set different standards cuz I don't get to live in Dawson's Creek (tragically). But yeah Dawson's Creek knows everything about us and everybody.

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