web analytics

Who thinks up this shit?

sleepy

Happy Menopause Awareness Month! No, really. This is exactly the kind of thing that very few of us need to be aware of, and those that do need to, are. Future generations are going to be amazed at how up in each other’s business we were.

Forget that. I have a question. I took a nap this afternoon (as I often do) and I had a series of the most amazingly vivid dreams (as I often do when I nap in the afternoon).

I deconstructed them and realized I don’t actually do things in my dreams. I try to do things, but I am thwarted. Like trying to drive someplace and getting lost, or trying to find an office in an office building and finding the elevators closed and the stairs blocked off. I was trying to play music with my father, but I couldn’t find the instruments, then I did and the strings were missing.

I can’t remember if my dreams were always like this. I think so, honestly. I’ve often thought of keeping a dream diary, but I wake up in the most vile mood. By the time I’m able to face a pencil and paper, the dreams are gone.

Are yours like this? Can you remember?

Comments


Comment from Janna
Time: September 21, 2017, 11:08 pm

Hell, I can’t remember shit when I’m awake.


Comment from Ric Fan
Time: September 21, 2017, 11:10 pm

I use to remember by dreams but not anymore. Most of my dreams are pretty depressing. Anyway, I read the trick to remembering them is to force yourself to write them down as soon as you wake up. A better way in my opinion is to have a small recorder near your bed and do it orally.


Comment from Crabby Old Bat
Time: September 21, 2017, 11:27 pm

As a borderline sleepwalker, I often have dreams where my brain is attempting to make my body do what is being done in the dream, but with limited effect. If I am trying to scream in the dream but no sound (or very little sound) is coming out of my mouth, the inability to scream in the dream is my mind’s way of rationalizing the fact that my real-life body is not really screaming (although I have been reported to have made some pretty alarming sounds in the attempt). Ditto trying to run, but being unable to do so – at some level, my brain knows my legs are not really moving. Now that I am old, I have many dreams about needing to use the restroom but finding them always occupied, or closed down, or locked, or broken – because even though I need to pee badly enough for the need to have invaded my dreams, my sleeping body is not really allowed to pee until I wake up and move to a real bathroom. Your thwarted dreams could be your brain’s way of recognizing that you are not really walking around, or playing music, or whatever. (I tend to sleep through my alarms. A very common dream is the alarm that cannot be stopped, not even by unplugging it, or taking out the battery, or submerging it in water, or smashing it to bits – because in reality, the real alarm is beeping away, and I can hear it, even if it does not wake me up. Every now and then, my conscious brain recognizes the situation, invades the dream (Oh! I must be sleeping through my alarm!), and wakes me up to deal with it. Ditto the broken bathroom scenario – eventually, I catch on, and wake up, and take care of business in the real world.)


Comment from Niña
Time: September 21, 2017, 11:41 pm

Most of my dreams are me trying to escape a frightening situation or running away from something. Not surprisingly, given ten plus years of trying to escape cancer, but the dream situations are amazingly varied. I’m not overtly trying to beat cancer, specifically, just trying to get away.


Comment from Armybrat
Time: September 21, 2017, 11:51 pm

I think I dream. I’m not really sure. I head to bed about 8pm each evening. My husband tells me I’m usually asleep before my head hits the pillow. He knows this because he claims I snore. Me…I know I usually head to bed around 8pm. That’s about all I remember until my effing alarm jolts me awake at 6am on days I have to work. On days I don’t have to work, I’ve been known to emerge from the bed as late as 10am. Yes…you read that right. I get 10+ hours of sleep so deep I don’t recall a damn thing__and woe to all I meet If I don’t get my 10+ hours.


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: September 22, 2017, 12:14 am

One thing I believe is that although I might see a book, newspaper, or letter in a dream, I can’t actually read it.


Comment from Mitchell
Time: September 22, 2017, 12:41 am

Ooo, dream stuff! This is always fun. I have a few re-occurring themes:

The Apartment – I still have a hole-in-the-wall apartment in the city somewhere. It’s based on one I used to live in.

The Public Restroom – it’s almost always huge, dark, and indescribably filthy with usually no walls for the stalls or very short ones that might as well not be there. Of course I have to go really badly and I wander around trying to find one that’s acceptable.

The Disaster – some huge natural(ish) disaster destroys Las Vegas. So far it’s been a volcano, meteor strike, a string of super tornadoes, and at least three alien invasions.


Comment from Deborah HH
Time: September 22, 2017, 1:09 am

I mostly remember my dreams, and they are happy or pleasant, usually. I’ve had a recurring dream for 30+ years, and it’s lovely: I live in a house on one side of a shallow lagoon, and every morning I swim across the lagoon to drink coffee with someone (I don’t know who it is) who lives on the other side, and then I swim home. The water is warm and I can feel the hot sun on my back, and see my shadow on the sandy bottom. The water is crystal-clear and I can see all the way to the sea, wherever that is, but it’s tropical. When I wake up I feel refreshed and contented.


Comment from AliceH
Time: September 22, 2017, 1:17 am

I used to have those thwarted goal dreams often, but at some point I must have gotten fed up with the scenario, because instead of continuing to search for that classroom on campus, or retracing my steps from the big office building to my car in a distant lot, I started (still in my dream) just refusing to play along. I’d give up my quest and hang out with a book or kick back in the coffee shop or call a cab and let the driver figure it out. Now I don’t have those dreams anymore.


Comment from Durnedyankee
Time: September 22, 2017, 2:35 am

Yes, constantly thwarted in ways like you describe.
Or having to repair shit carpentry work I know I was the one who did on my house, usually the roof, usually leaking.

In addition to cars turning into bicycles, turning into walking, across bridges that end up being one plank wide.

Or up roads on hills that are at 50+ degree angles.

Ah, but the flying dreams… those are sweet, and I’m getting better at it.


Comment from bds
Time: September 22, 2017, 2:57 am

I occasionally have one where I’m in a large house, huge and rambling and usually a bit ramshackle (varies from modern style architecture to old Victorian or even a castle/manor house). I know it’s mine, and know my way around in the dream. Then I find an new area of it, as much as a 1/3 of the whole rambling house, that I had not known was there before. At some point later I try to get back to this area, but even though I know exactly where it is I can’t seem to get there.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 22, 2017, 7:33 am

Mitchell, the filthy bathroom dream is because you have to pee IRL! Your brain is trying to shake you awake to get up and drain the vermicelli, but the bathroom in your dream is too awful to use so you don’t piss the bed. HTH!


Comment from peacelovewoodstock
Time: September 22, 2017, 11:10 am

I have recurring frustration with electronics dreams.

None of the buttons or icons on my phone or computer work properly, I’m trying to do something simple like place a call and nothing is working and random stuff is happening, like a computer virus has taken over.

Makes me appreciate how well the damn things actually do work.


Comment from Wolfus Aurelius
Time: September 22, 2017, 1:13 pm

Now and then I wake from a dream so strong that I remember it, and if it’s that good, I might use it as fodder for a story. Once I dreamed my ex-wife, No. 2, the sociopath, came back to town. At this point I can’t recall what she did that was so scary, except that it involved us collaborating on something.

I ended up turning it into a story about a New York couple who entertained themselves in the ’80s kidnapping and killing hookers. They meet again in 2008, and realize — well, you can kind of see where this is going, right?

I had another dream about a house where turning off the radio would unleash Something, a la Chthulhu. By the time I finished the tale I based on that, it had morphed into another story entirely, but the radio was still in it.


Comment from Durnedyankee
Time: September 22, 2017, 3:50 pm

Now, seeing others with “like” dreams –

Makes you wonder – What did, say, Romans dream about (-10 points if you say “conquering the known world”)

And for you pet owners – wouldn’t you pay at least once to see what your dog(s) or cat(s) are dreaming?


Comment from Malcolm Kirkpatrick
Time: September 22, 2017, 10:31 pm

Depends on the drugs.


Comment from S. Weasel
Time: September 22, 2017, 11:37 pm

Oh, do you get the one where you try to fire a handgun, and you squeeze and squeeze and squeeze and the hammer never falls?

Write a comment

(as if I cared)

(yeah. I'm going to write)

(oooo! you have a website?)


Beware: more than one link in a comment is apt to earn you a trip to the spam filter, where you will remain -- cold, frightened and alone -- until I remember to clean the trap. But, hey, without Akismet, we'd be up to our asses in...well, ass porn, mostly.


<< carry me back to ol' virginny