My dreams are nagging me
I did not sleep well at all last night. I kept having very vivid dreams and then waking up from them. I dreamed I was fleeing from the Chinese Mafia, who were all young guys I knew. First I was a girl they wounded in crossfire, then I was the guy who loved her and saved her by killing all the mafia men. I found their leader's secret stash of cheap Chinese fabric coin purses covered in "rhinestones" that were actually diamonds, and I took them to start our new life in Mendocino.
In another dream, we were playing "human bumper cars" (link arms with a partner and run into other couples) with our friends at a rink specially set up for that purpose, but Jason didn't want to play. Then we found a place where you could learn to "fly" by having a giant car attached to you (somehow it worked), and we tried that out. I was surprised I was good at it, because I'm never good at anything new that involves using your body!
Later, I dreamed Shra and I were trying out as fashion models, for a label we'd heard was primarily interested in personality and not looks (i.e., skinniness). We got along well with the other guys and girls who were trying out, but I kept having to poo. One of the guys was someone from my childhood, and later I found out he'd died of a heart attack.
Sometimes my dreams are very sensation-driven, and when I wake up I strongly remember the feeling of doing whatever it was I did in my dream world. But from time to time I go through a period of having lots and lots of intense narrative-driven dreams like the ones I've been having lately. They really are narrative dreams because I actually make them up as I go along. They're not lucid dreams exactly; what will happen is that in some portion of my unconscious mind I sort of decide what will happen next, but I'm never aware that I'm dreaming, and I'm only half aware that I'm changing the course of events at all. For example, in the Chinese Mafia dream, I had defeated the mafia, but then I didn't know what was going to happen to my girl and me -- because I knew there'd be other mafia guys out to get us and we'd have to start new lives, and we didn't have any money -- so that's when I found those diamond-studded change purses. I actually make plot decisions as I go, but I don't totally know that I'm doing it... and yet on some level I do, because often in these dreams I think to myself, "That's cool that I can come up with these things." But that understanding is very, very deep below the level of consciousness within the dream... if that makes any sense at all. It's like there are two versions of me floating in the subconscious ether: the part of me that's in the dream, living it, and the part of me that's guiding it along. And these two parts aren't aware of the other's existence until I wake up and put them together.
I have a theory that I get these kinds of dreams when I'm not expressing myself enough in a narrative-based way. I'm not writing stories right now, I'm not plotting them, I'm not describing my life in anecdotal fashion on my blog. I haven't done any of these things in a long time, and I think my brain needs that outlet as a way of processing what it takes in every day. I also suspect that what my brain gets exposed to during my waking hours, when I experience these periods of vivid narrative dreaming, has a lot to do with whether I get these dreams, but I haven't figured that part out yet. Have I been watching a lot of movies lately? Doing a lot of new activities or learning a lot of new things? Reading a lot of books? Meeting a lot of people? I have no idea.
I have been thinking for months that I need to be writing more, but I've been focusing on learning to express my thoughts visually instead, which is very cool and exciting but doesn't provide that same kind of outlet. My brain has been so locked in image-making mode that I have not been able to tap into my writing self at all. It may be a flat-out left-brain/right-brain divide, though I don't think so; all I know is I don't seem to be very good at making both visual and verbal art during the same period of time. I hope this will reconcile over time, and these dreams -- which are vivid both narratively and visually -- seem to indicate that it can. But it's funny because whatever part of me is served by writing seems to have rebelled at its forced suppression and is now manifesting itself through these dreams... and lo and behold, the first thing I do when I get up this morning is haul myself over to the computer and start hacking out this entry. It's the first time in weeks that I have felt really compelled to write, and I guess I have my night of fitful sleeping to thank for it!
And there really is a lot I have been wanting to write about lately, so I'll get to that in other entries. I'm also thinking of attending a writing workshop at a meditation center later this summer. It's called "A Daylong Writing and Meditation Retreat for People of Color," which strikes me as very specific and PC-precious, but the silly name doesn't mean the retreat won't be beneficial to me. The concept resonates, and that matters.
In another dream, we were playing "human bumper cars" (link arms with a partner and run into other couples) with our friends at a rink specially set up for that purpose, but Jason didn't want to play. Then we found a place where you could learn to "fly" by having a giant car attached to you (somehow it worked), and we tried that out. I was surprised I was good at it, because I'm never good at anything new that involves using your body!
Later, I dreamed Shra and I were trying out as fashion models, for a label we'd heard was primarily interested in personality and not looks (i.e., skinniness). We got along well with the other guys and girls who were trying out, but I kept having to poo. One of the guys was someone from my childhood, and later I found out he'd died of a heart attack.
Sometimes my dreams are very sensation-driven, and when I wake up I strongly remember the feeling of doing whatever it was I did in my dream world. But from time to time I go through a period of having lots and lots of intense narrative-driven dreams like the ones I've been having lately. They really are narrative dreams because I actually make them up as I go along. They're not lucid dreams exactly; what will happen is that in some portion of my unconscious mind I sort of decide what will happen next, but I'm never aware that I'm dreaming, and I'm only half aware that I'm changing the course of events at all. For example, in the Chinese Mafia dream, I had defeated the mafia, but then I didn't know what was going to happen to my girl and me -- because I knew there'd be other mafia guys out to get us and we'd have to start new lives, and we didn't have any money -- so that's when I found those diamond-studded change purses. I actually make plot decisions as I go, but I don't totally know that I'm doing it... and yet on some level I do, because often in these dreams I think to myself, "That's cool that I can come up with these things." But that understanding is very, very deep below the level of consciousness within the dream... if that makes any sense at all. It's like there are two versions of me floating in the subconscious ether: the part of me that's in the dream, living it, and the part of me that's guiding it along. And these two parts aren't aware of the other's existence until I wake up and put them together.
I have a theory that I get these kinds of dreams when I'm not expressing myself enough in a narrative-based way. I'm not writing stories right now, I'm not plotting them, I'm not describing my life in anecdotal fashion on my blog. I haven't done any of these things in a long time, and I think my brain needs that outlet as a way of processing what it takes in every day. I also suspect that what my brain gets exposed to during my waking hours, when I experience these periods of vivid narrative dreaming, has a lot to do with whether I get these dreams, but I haven't figured that part out yet. Have I been watching a lot of movies lately? Doing a lot of new activities or learning a lot of new things? Reading a lot of books? Meeting a lot of people? I have no idea.
I have been thinking for months that I need to be writing more, but I've been focusing on learning to express my thoughts visually instead, which is very cool and exciting but doesn't provide that same kind of outlet. My brain has been so locked in image-making mode that I have not been able to tap into my writing self at all. It may be a flat-out left-brain/right-brain divide, though I don't think so; all I know is I don't seem to be very good at making both visual and verbal art during the same period of time. I hope this will reconcile over time, and these dreams -- which are vivid both narratively and visually -- seem to indicate that it can. But it's funny because whatever part of me is served by writing seems to have rebelled at its forced suppression and is now manifesting itself through these dreams... and lo and behold, the first thing I do when I get up this morning is haul myself over to the computer and start hacking out this entry. It's the first time in weeks that I have felt really compelled to write, and I guess I have my night of fitful sleeping to thank for it!
And there really is a lot I have been wanting to write about lately, so I'll get to that in other entries. I'm also thinking of attending a writing workshop at a meditation center later this summer. It's called "A Daylong Writing and Meditation Retreat for People of Color," which strikes me as very specific and PC-precious, but the silly name doesn't mean the retreat won't be beneficial to me. The concept resonates, and that matters.