sweet dreams are made of these
I had a strange dream last night. Well...it wasn't really strange compared to all the other dreams I have (actually this one's rather typical), but I thought I'd share it with all 2 of you because I haven't really blogged about my dreams before.
First off, I have really vivid dreams, and a tendency to lucid dream. Most of the time I think what I'm dreaming is actually what's going on but sometimes real me is going to fake dream me, "this is stupid. Let's go dream something else because whatever's going on here is getting lame." Or really scary. I dream horrible things all the time.
Tonight I dreamt that I was on vacation in Mexico. I boarded the plane with my mom but ended up skipping to a party bus with a bunch of my friends. I was aware that these friends weren't really my friends but complete strangers dream me thought were my friends but I did notice some of them looked like the cast of Clueless, the TV series. We ended up driving from our hotel to some dude's house where we were injected with a substance that knocked us out. When we woke up we were confined to this chamber where we were going to be experimented on to remove our emotions. Suddenly Julie was next to me and some guy that I assumed was on our party bus. The woman doing the experiments came by to ask for questions. I asked some but my mouth wouldn't move properly so I had to speak through clenched teeth. The point of the experiments was to create people who felt no pain but my argument was that people who can't feel emotions can still feel pain, which is a physical reaction.
Later on there was some sort of popularity contest and I was voted Queen of the test subjects. I lead a revolt against the experimenters and managed to escape where I got separated from everyone else and ended up shifting locations to a beach. Things always go back to beaches in my dream. Then for some reason I remembered I'd forgotten my backpack at the experimenter's house so I go back. I try the front door and it's unlocked but I discover that he's home so I wait for him to leave. For some reason he also looked like Gary Cole, the guy who plays the "yeeeaaaah" guy in Office Space. Also, he plays Will Ferrell's dad in Talladega Nights. I circle around the house as I seem him come out with a baseball bat but decide he knows I'm there and run for it. As I'm running I see a dozen other guys with baseball bats and start running faster. Like what happens in a lot of my dreams, one moment I'm running and the next I'm flying. I keep going until it's night time and instead of flying I'm driving. Except I'm driving terribly and I go over two dividers. I stop somewhere to go to an atm machine but the atm machine is in a dark dank basement and before I see the machine I know what happened. There's a guy behind him in line and a couple in front of me so I wait while they get their money. When the woman approaches the machine she sees that it's already open and when she pulls back the panel, there's a body hacked into pieces inside where the money should be. The body is Gary Cole.
Everyone starts screaming, including me, and even when I stop someone's still screaming. I look to find that it's the woman who is now being stabbed repeatedly but the man she was with. I decide this man must be the killer and me and the guy standing in line behind me start to run. The hallways are confusing and we run up several flights of stairs before reaching an elevator that works. It takes us up but instead of stopping on the first floor like we'd asked, it just keeps going up and up and up. I start freaking out, thinking it's going to send us into outer space, so I press the star 1 button until finally it comes to a stop and opens up to reveal the airport. But instead of a normal airport it's a gated field with a warehouse looking thing beyond. I go to the people at the gate and they check my passport and boarding pass. I warn the employees that there was a stabbing in the building and they smile and nod and send someone to investigate. For a second I panic that I forgot my passport at Gary Cole's house but then I find it. The guy who checks my boarding pass asks me to wait one secondand he leaves somewhere with my plane ticket and my passport. I'm worried that he thinks I'm the one that killed those people at the atm machine but before I can find out what happens real my dutifully reminds dream me I need to go to work and I wake myself up.
I've noticed that my dreams often feature a number of things found in this dream.
1. A gruesome murder
2. Running away from some threat
3. Flying
4. Aweful driving on my part
5. Friends that I would never recognize in real life
6. Strange locations I somehow recognize as familiar when I'm dream me
I think if anyone didn't know me they'd think I was some sort of paranoid schizophrenic, always dreaming about running away, unfamiliar places, and murder. I wonder if maybe it has to do with my overactive imagination and propensity for reading books featuring gruesome murders and grotesque violence. Just recently in Feast of Crows I read about a man being dismembered piece of by piece and being fed his own flesh. After reading Girl with the Dragon Tattoo I dreamt of a Buddhist temple of female worshippers who were all brutally raped and murdered. In that one I was a gifted witch who saved one of the girls and together we hunted down the rapists and killed him.
In fact I hardly ever have "normal" dreams, you know ones where you show up to work naked or just go through the course of your day until you wake up and actually live your day. I do often dream that I suddenly show up naked places but for some reason I'm hardly ever bothered by it. I mostly just shrug it off and dream clothes back on myself or go find something to wear within the dream. No one in my dreams ever notices I'm naked either.
I'm not sure what these sorts of dreams say about the kind of person I am and I'm a little afraid to ask. It shouldn't be a good thing, right, if you're always dreaming about killing someone or something getting killed? Or of serial killers and aliens and vampire hostile take overs and the like. I once dreamt that an alien race of vampires took over the planet and enslaved humanity and because I was the only one immune to their venom it was up to me to save the planet. Me and Gina Torres. I think Sarah Michelle Gellar was there at some point but then she disappeared after the time jump.
I also find my lucid dreaming strange. It's almost like I'm playing some sort of role playing game everytime I go to sleep but 50% of the time I'm aware of the game and can change the cartridge to a different setting and set of rules when things get too scary or boring. My lucid dreaming used to be better when I was younger. I could change specific things, replace one person with another, shift locations, etc... Now I feel like I know that I'm dreaming but most of the time I don't do much about it.
I will say this. I discovered a lot of plots for my novels through my dreams.
First off, I have really vivid dreams, and a tendency to lucid dream. Most of the time I think what I'm dreaming is actually what's going on but sometimes real me is going to fake dream me, "this is stupid. Let's go dream something else because whatever's going on here is getting lame." Or really scary. I dream horrible things all the time.
Tonight I dreamt that I was on vacation in Mexico. I boarded the plane with my mom but ended up skipping to a party bus with a bunch of my friends. I was aware that these friends weren't really my friends but complete strangers dream me thought were my friends but I did notice some of them looked like the cast of Clueless, the TV series. We ended up driving from our hotel to some dude's house where we were injected with a substance that knocked us out. When we woke up we were confined to this chamber where we were going to be experimented on to remove our emotions. Suddenly Julie was next to me and some guy that I assumed was on our party bus. The woman doing the experiments came by to ask for questions. I asked some but my mouth wouldn't move properly so I had to speak through clenched teeth. The point of the experiments was to create people who felt no pain but my argument was that people who can't feel emotions can still feel pain, which is a physical reaction.
Later on there was some sort of popularity contest and I was voted Queen of the test subjects. I lead a revolt against the experimenters and managed to escape where I got separated from everyone else and ended up shifting locations to a beach. Things always go back to beaches in my dream. Then for some reason I remembered I'd forgotten my backpack at the experimenter's house so I go back. I try the front door and it's unlocked but I discover that he's home so I wait for him to leave. For some reason he also looked like Gary Cole, the guy who plays the "yeeeaaaah" guy in Office Space. Also, he plays Will Ferrell's dad in Talladega Nights. I circle around the house as I seem him come out with a baseball bat but decide he knows I'm there and run for it. As I'm running I see a dozen other guys with baseball bats and start running faster. Like what happens in a lot of my dreams, one moment I'm running and the next I'm flying. I keep going until it's night time and instead of flying I'm driving. Except I'm driving terribly and I go over two dividers. I stop somewhere to go to an atm machine but the atm machine is in a dark dank basement and before I see the machine I know what happened. There's a guy behind him in line and a couple in front of me so I wait while they get their money. When the woman approaches the machine she sees that it's already open and when she pulls back the panel, there's a body hacked into pieces inside where the money should be. The body is Gary Cole.
Everyone starts screaming, including me, and even when I stop someone's still screaming. I look to find that it's the woman who is now being stabbed repeatedly but the man she was with. I decide this man must be the killer and me and the guy standing in line behind me start to run. The hallways are confusing and we run up several flights of stairs before reaching an elevator that works. It takes us up but instead of stopping on the first floor like we'd asked, it just keeps going up and up and up. I start freaking out, thinking it's going to send us into outer space, so I press the star 1 button until finally it comes to a stop and opens up to reveal the airport. But instead of a normal airport it's a gated field with a warehouse looking thing beyond. I go to the people at the gate and they check my passport and boarding pass. I warn the employees that there was a stabbing in the building and they smile and nod and send someone to investigate. For a second I panic that I forgot my passport at Gary Cole's house but then I find it. The guy who checks my boarding pass asks me to wait one secondand he leaves somewhere with my plane ticket and my passport. I'm worried that he thinks I'm the one that killed those people at the atm machine but before I can find out what happens real my dutifully reminds dream me I need to go to work and I wake myself up.
I've noticed that my dreams often feature a number of things found in this dream.
1. A gruesome murder
2. Running away from some threat
3. Flying
4. Aweful driving on my part
5. Friends that I would never recognize in real life
6. Strange locations I somehow recognize as familiar when I'm dream me
I think if anyone didn't know me they'd think I was some sort of paranoid schizophrenic, always dreaming about running away, unfamiliar places, and murder. I wonder if maybe it has to do with my overactive imagination and propensity for reading books featuring gruesome murders and grotesque violence. Just recently in Feast of Crows I read about a man being dismembered piece of by piece and being fed his own flesh. After reading Girl with the Dragon Tattoo I dreamt of a Buddhist temple of female worshippers who were all brutally raped and murdered. In that one I was a gifted witch who saved one of the girls and together we hunted down the rapists and killed him.
In fact I hardly ever have "normal" dreams, you know ones where you show up to work naked or just go through the course of your day until you wake up and actually live your day. I do often dream that I suddenly show up naked places but for some reason I'm hardly ever bothered by it. I mostly just shrug it off and dream clothes back on myself or go find something to wear within the dream. No one in my dreams ever notices I'm naked either.
I'm not sure what these sorts of dreams say about the kind of person I am and I'm a little afraid to ask. It shouldn't be a good thing, right, if you're always dreaming about killing someone or something getting killed? Or of serial killers and aliens and vampire hostile take overs and the like. I once dreamt that an alien race of vampires took over the planet and enslaved humanity and because I was the only one immune to their venom it was up to me to save the planet. Me and Gina Torres. I think Sarah Michelle Gellar was there at some point but then she disappeared after the time jump.
I also find my lucid dreaming strange. It's almost like I'm playing some sort of role playing game everytime I go to sleep but 50% of the time I'm aware of the game and can change the cartridge to a different setting and set of rules when things get too scary or boring. My lucid dreaming used to be better when I was younger. I could change specific things, replace one person with another, shift locations, etc... Now I feel like I know that I'm dreaming but most of the time I don't do much about it.
I will say this. I discovered a lot of plots for my novels through my dreams.