Escaping Nightmares

My dream self seems to be coming up with more and more creative ways of getting out of nightmare situations. Last night, as I was about to drift over the edge of what appeared to be an impossibly high waterfall, I realized that I only had a few plywood boards to work with. I concluded that the best thing to do was to flap them hard enough to try and fly and guide myself to a safe landing. Anyone with any knowledge of aerodynamics could say this probably wouldn't work, especially considering that the pieces of wood I had were fairly clunky. Fortunately, this turned out to be unnecessary. After cresting the edge of the waterfall, I started dropping, only to find myself on a slightly inclined shelf in a huge supermarket. The waterfall turned out to be a huge display piece in a giant, Walmart-like store.

If only I had been this mentally nimble several weeks ago, when I dreamed that a friend of mine wanted me to go see a movie he had enjoyed. After he finally convinced me to go see the movie, six (6) people broke into the room we were in and commenced trying to kill me (guns, explosions, etc.). It turned out that the movie was some sort of create-your-own-adventure experience, in which as soon as you decided to see the movie, people started trying to kill you. I had to have my friend, who was incidentally caught in the crossfire, explain this to me, but once he did, it made sense.  The best part of the whole dream (except the part where I killed or evaded six (6) would be assassins) was after he explained how the movie worked, he told me "It's not as good the second time you see it." 

I Mess Up While Dreaming vol. III

So I woke up in a bit of a panic this morning. I had a dream where I was about to get married. I'm a bit hazy about some crucial details (i.e. who the bride was, what she looked like, how she felt about sandals and socks, etc.), but I know that I was pretty excited to tie the knot. More excited than my awake self has been about anything I can remember in recent times, so that was a kind of funny feeling.

Still, I woke up nervous for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the whole dream seemed uncharacteristic of me; I'm afraid of commitment to the point where I wouldn't like to keep a may-fly as a pet for fear that it would tie me down to one place (this fear of commitment also manifests itself in not talking to girls just in case I ended up liking one). Furthermore, the fact that I was as excited as I was to get married to someone I may or may not have known is something I find troublesome. I leave this one open to interpretation.

What really concerned me most were the ramifications of my dream self getting married; I became concerned with all sorts of hypothetical questions that had me really worried about the well-being of my dream self. Would my wife become a recurring character in my dreams?  Would I have to remember anniversaries? Do chores? All of this had me worried.

Of all things, the most irrational was the guilt I felt. Like I said, in my dream, I was about to get married to a girl I felt strongly about (for whatever reasons). Before the actual event took place, I woke up, jilting my betrothed. Not to mention all the wedding guests who would have been angry that the reception wasn't actually going to take place. Poor breeding on my part, to say the least.

I Mess Up While Dreaming II

I'm a firm believer that dreams can be manifestations of things that concern you. Last night, I had that confirmed in an amusing, but unpleasant way. 

Dream-Self is walking through Central Park. As I walked, I saw a bill of money flitting past me. I stopped to pick it up, and looked at it. It was a fifty dollar bill! Or at least, it was what I imagine a fifty dollar bill would look like. "Cool," Dream-self says, and pockets it. Then I noticed that there was more money whisking its way across the ground. "Ah. Money," Dream-self realizes. "This is very strange. Why is this happening?" I picked another bill up, and saw that it was a fresh twenty dollar bill. It was around then that I noticed a few people running around stuffing their pockets with the bills that were floating everywhere. "This is a socially acceptable practice," Dream-self notices. Still, I didn't follow suit and grab money by the fistful like everyone else was doing. I left the park, re-entered from another entrance. I casually stooped to pick up another twenty.  "No big deal, here. Act natural, not like there's money flying around or anything" Dream-self  thinks.

So out of thousands of dollars floating around, I grabbed 90.  "This is super-duper! Maybe I could grab a few more, and get a lot of money. Like, $250." Make it rain, Dream-self.

Anyway, it turned out it wasn't that big of a deal. Somehow or other, Dream-self found out that all of the money was counterfeit, and in a cunning (i.e. incomprehensible plan), the counterfeiters planned to get it into circulation without exchanging it for real money. So at the end of the dream, I had 90 fake dollars. I wasn't even that disappointed with this for some reason. I briefly wondered if it would be possible to spend it anyway, but then decided that it would be immoral.

This is about when I got a phone call that woke me up, but let's recap.

1) Wealth is out there for the taking. My reaction is curiosity more than interest or greed.

2) Everyone is grabbing money. I'd rather not be seen with such bourgeois interests as free money, so I wander around and act as if large quantities of money flying around are something I see often.

3) $90 sounds fantastic to me. Untold wealth is mine!

4) The money is fake. My cool indifference seems justified now, but I still don't have money.

I fear that I will never have anything nice.

Expect a flurry of blog activity soon. I'm on vacation and won't have much to do. If you have ideas for fun, break activities, please let me know!
Hope all is well!

I Mess Up While Dreaming

I've been busy these past few days with remarkably mind-numbing, soul-crushingly boring stuff. One of the real downsides of this is that I haven't been able to do anything fun during the day, which means that I can only have fun at night. So yeah, the most excitement I've had recently has been in bed. I wish this had any of the implications you might be thinking of. What it actually means is that what little excitement I've been having recently has all been in my dreams. This will also have an adverse affect on my posting. Sorry.

A while ago, I got really interested in dreams (mine, in particular). I went so far as to think about keeping a dream journal. I never started one, but I often bored my breakfast friends by trying to tell them what had happened in my dreams. This, of course, never worked well, first off because my breakfast friends were all imaginary. Furthermore, my dreams, like most people's, rarely made sense, so there I was explaining that 'I didn't know how I ended up in a room that looked sort of like this place we had been to, but different' to myself. Yeah.... 

Anyway, one of the things that really interested me was lucid dreaming. The idea is that, mid-dream, you can recognize that you are actually in a dream, and then take control of your dream. The trick to do this is apparently to pay attention to minute details at all times. Then, in the middle of a dream, if you notice some detail that doesn't make sense, you can say, "Aha! I'm dreaming!" and instantly start flying, or in my case, make more friends. This is dangerous, because if you find yourself often saying "that doesn't make sense" in the middle of the day, like I do, you might think you're always in a dream. I'm not sure what affect this would have on your life, other than to make you a bit more philosophical.

So no shit, there I was, asleep in my bed, dreaming. I dreamed I was camping on a trail. I wandered down the trail to look around, and I saw a pond that had the most amazing fish in it, bright blue with white stripes, yellow dots like eyes on its tail, 6 feet tall, swimming around gazing at me. The woods were amazingly beautiful, there was some furry creature wandering around, all sorts of things that I would want to take a picture of. So I dreamed to myself, "I should get my camera so I can take a picture of this!" That was exactly when the lucid dreaming started: "Wait. There's no fish that looks like that, and what's more, I think he's floating above the water. This doesn't make sense. This is totally a dream." Now, this is when I should have fulfilled my wildest dreams. I had recognized I was dreaming. For a few minutes, I could have had anything I wanted. Wealth. Fame. Popularity. A pet dog. Any useful skill at all. Instead, I thought to myself, "Huh. But I'll bet if I could get my camera, I could take pictures of these, and then they'd be on my camera when I wake up! That'd be sweet." Then I got distracted on my way back to the tent and never even took pictures.

Good job, dream Brendan. You're an idiot.