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the dreaming life

the dreaming life

I just woke up from another one of those dreams which is nothing more than a conglomeration of all my other recurring dreams.

It's not so much that the dreams repeat themselves. It's the scenarios. Or the particular settings.

When I was very young, I used to dream of plane crashes frequently. It was always the same - a 747 or some other jumbo type jet would crash into our street, crushing homes and killing almost everyone I knew.

When I was in junior high school, the water dreams started. Often, the dream would take place at my aunt's house. I would be walking through a hallway and suddenly the water would come rushing in. I would swim the murky water, trying to find my way to fresh air. I would eventually surface, but always in the same place. As my head came up out of the water, I would find myself in the middle of a wide, angry ocean. Alone.

There were other water dreams that came more frequently and still persist today. I am either on a roller coaster or a highway. I realize, too late, that part of the track or the road is submerged underwater. Most of the dream is a slow motion nightmare as I approach the water. Sucking in my breath, trying not to cry, trying not to let my fear show to whoever is with me. There are always people with me, and they are always oblivious to the fact that we are about to drown.

Then there are the school dreams. Almost everyone has them. You have forgotten that you have a test today. You can't find your schedule, your classroom, your locker. Or it's the end of the semester and you realize you haven't gone to class yet. For me, these dreams always take place in the same school. It's not a school I ever attended in waking life, nor is any part of it familar in any way. But I have memorized the building. So now, when I have a school dream, I am able to use my past dreams to remember where things are. I know teachers names and locker combinations and room numbers. I even know where the bathrooms are. The scenery never changes from dream to dream. The only thing that changes is the plot.

I have a lot of dreams that take place in a huge hotel. Again, the basis of the dream is different each time, but the hotel itself never changes. Sometimes, in one of the hotel dreams, I will greet the desk clerk by name and ask how he has been since the last time I dreamed him.

There is a stairwell in this hotel, and in many of these dreams I am running away from someone or something. I find myself crawling up the stairs, trying to find the right door to escape out of. After all the years of having this place show up in my dreams, I know. I know that the door on the first floor leads to a fire and the door on the seventh floor leads to water and the door on the tenth floor leads to a bar not unlike the one in The Shining.

Sometimes in my dreams I will come across the same people from other dreams. These aren't people I know in real life. I have no name for them. But they are there often enough so that I recognize the one guy by his hunting coat and the other guy by his oversized head and the little girl by her party dress. There's that one guy - with the green, slimy hair - that's always trying to give me advice. And there's the motherly type figure who tries to offer me cookies as I pass her on the road.

Oh, the road. There's this dirt road that is in almost every dream I have. The road passes through some woods, at the end of which there is a beautiful farmhouse. I've never gone in the house. Never even approached it. I just stare at it and wait for someone to come out and invite me in. After a few minutes, when no such person materializes, I head back out for the road, on my way to another dream.

Sometimes, when I do have the same exact dream twice, I feel as if I've been given another chance to fix whatever went wrong the last time. I can manipulate what happens, take different roads, say different things, avoid certain pitfalls. Sometimes, the man with the big head will come out and congratulate me if I avoid a previous nightmare by changing the dream.

I wonder what makes these strange characters appear again and again. I wonder what the farmhouse means and if I ever will open up every door on that stairwell.

I wonder what dreams really are. Sometimes I think they are another existence, another life of ours. And then sometimes the practical side of me says that dreams are just our brain dumping out excess thoughts from the day.

I'd like to believe there is something mystical about the life I lead in the middle of the night.

Comments

This is quite odd considering I've had many of the same dreams - but unfortunately, am having them now :) I guess that is what therapy is for ;)

We've recently had a lot of conversations about this (my girl and I). We do think they are another existance, a soul traveling experience. I can't say if always, but I believe that your soul can leave your body (when it rests). We are wondering if that has to do with deja vu's. You remember something (deja vu), because your soul has been there before. Dreams are so interesting.

I always thought that deja vu wasn't really the feeling that I had done this very thing before, but that I did it in a dream.

Not wanting to believe in reincarnation (oh me god, not back to crazy planet Earth again), I agree - that's probably what deja vu's are about! For the longest time I thought they were past life memories, but not anymore.

I wonder what the general opinion on this is?

You still have lucid dreams?
I just found out yesterday that hubby has lucid dreams where he is able to control everything and i mean EVERYTHING in his dreams.I am soooo jealous!!!
I want to learn how to have lucid dreams too...i wanna dream about that olive skinned guy from Bomfunk MCs.......(hehehehe)

Ok, so im not sure how all this works either, thats why im here looking for answers. I think there are two types of dreams, fiction and non-fiction, You can either be playing around or paying attention. The only time you can pay attention in your dreams is when you are not doing any thing else but watching. Like you said about reacuring dreams. I'm not doing the same thing, im just at my house as always, but the situation is so odd that it grabs my attention, so i to try and figure it out. But you weren't paying attention when it mattered, and you missed out on whats really going on. so all you got from that dream was "strange" at the least. You wake up confused, b/c you can't fathum what the hell that was all about! So strange you dismiss it as a silly dream. You pay it no more attention until it actually happens. Then the instant you call it out as a "dejavu" it stops. You just changed what you had watched happen before, there for you changed the "future" as you saw it. Like i said. You can only pay attention if you aren't doing any thing. Ok we need clearity here. I had a dream about my cat flying past my face, on to the couch, bounced up and into the wall, then my friend comes in the door quite dramatically, whereing ever costum he has had for halloween since he was 12. Thats when i woke up. I knew this was at my house, that was my cat that just got tossed into the wall, and my dorky ass friend, But what just happend, i don't know. I thaught that dream to be strange and dissmissed it. Then when it happend:
I was sitting in that point of view from the dream, my room mate just found that my cat had pooped on the rest room floor for the 3rd time. and tossed her to the couch, but didn't mean for her to fly up into the wall. and right then i remembered the dream, as it was happening in front of me. And i know some thing else strange was about to happen, but i couldn't call it out, then here comes austin in the door dressed like a moronic school girl in her little sisters play close. Thats when i freaked and said out loud that this is dejavu, i have dreamed this like last week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God damnit!!!!!!! i have seen the future and i don't know how or why. Damnit god damnit. this has happend 7 times now. And the trick is, just go with the flow. If you can pull it off: its not ez. but if you just understand that you are having a dejavu, with out any reaction!!! nothing. don't change a thing. You can just sit there and watch it go on and on and on. Im not quite finished but im am out of time. respond ill be back later. till then p's