Any dream interpreters out there?
I usually don't remember my dreams after I wake up; in fact, usually my experience is of my dreams receding and evaporating into the ether as my waking memory grasps futilely at the dissolving mists.
But this one stuck in my memory this morning. Here it is, best as I can recall it.
- Scene 1: I am baking an apple pie and an apple cake. I am not doing this in my own kitchen; I am doing it in an old house which is in the downtown area of my town, near a train station
- Scene 2: I am driving my family to a downtown restaurant. The idea seems to be that we will dine on the pie and the cake. I drop them off at the restaurant, and let them know I will go pick up the baked goods and bring them back. We decide to eat the cake right away and ignore the pie. My wife reminds me to pick up our guests from the train station. I struggle with the decision of whether it is better to walk to the train station or if I should drive there.
- Scene 3: the apple cake is in the back seat of the car. I have picked up the guests. There are two of them. One of them is Arnold Schwarzenegger. The other one is John Denver. Arnold gets in the back seat. John takes the wheel. I am in the passenger seat. Arnold refuses to get all the way in the car; he leaves one leg hanging out the open door, and insists we start driving while the door is hanging open
- Scene 4: We start driving, but take a route which doesn't take us straight back to the restaurant. Arnold hops out of the car. As he exits the car, he exits the dream. John drives us down a street which I have never seen before - in fact, it seems more like a street in a different town I lived in at one time or another.
- Scene 5: We agree we are lost. I drive us back to the restaurant and park on the street. As John and I walk toward the restaurant, I ask him what it is like to write such great music - I think I use a term like "intergenerational hits". I fear he will not welcome the conversation topic, but in fact he smiles and seems more than willing to talk about it.
Somewhere around this time, the dream ends. Anything you can make of this?
Dreams are interesting, but I've about given up trying to interpret them. I know God spoke to people in dreams in Scripture, but none of mine involve angels or divine messages. My recurring one is the Goldilocks dream, where I absent-mindedly wander into someone's house when they're not home, and then they show up. And I am left to try and explain my way out of the situation.
ReplyDeleteThe spooky ones are death dreams. There was one eerie dream in which I dreamed that my mother had died. And she did pass away, under pretty much the exact circumstances in the dream. That's the only time one of those has come true. I had an anguished time when I dreamed that one of my sons died. I had to call him and make sure he was okay, but I didn't tell him about the dream. Just acted casual.
I think sometimes we send ourselves a message in dreams. How did your dream make you feel?
My take-away from the death dreams is to cherish people while they are here.
"How did your dream make you feel?"
DeleteThis one wasn't harrowing. The emotions I recall were: stress at trying to figure out whether it is better to walk to the train station and drive there; stress and anxiety that Arnold wouldn't get all the way in the car; a bit of anxiety and surprise that we had wandered into a part of town I hadn't seen before.
For me, the dreams that make me wake up in a cold sweat are the dreams where I walk into a college classroom in time for a final, and realize I hadn't been to the class all semester. Another one, which I've had a few times, is one in which I've started smoking again (I quit in my 20s). That one makes me feel disappointment, shame and disgust with myself.
Last night it seemed like my husband was having a troubled sleep, and I nudged him awake. He said he was dreaming that a bear was chasing him, and he was trying to shoo it away.
DeleteJim: For me, the dreams that make me wake up in a cold sweat are the dreams where I walk into a college classroom in time for a final, and realize I hadn't been to the class all semester.
DeleteLOL! I don't know how many times I've had that dream. My husband also.
It comes when I am anxious about something I should be doing but have not. I can be a terrible procrastinator. Right now I've put off doing income taxes since I got home - which was supposed to be the first priority.
But I actually lived that dream once when I was in grad school. I came into the class and was surprised when everyone took their term papers up to the professor's desk. I hadn't even started writing mine! I thought we had another week. I wrote it in a huge hurry, and got the grade that it deserved, minus a full grade. I had no grounds to dispute the grade.
I seldom remember my dreams. But I have come to realize that they reflect whatever anxieties I have at the time, or perhaps reflect people or memories from when I was much younger.
I think your dream is hilarious. Would love to talk with John Denver and I would be happy with both the cake and the pie. ;)
When I was young I made a decision not to try to remember or interpret my dreams. My brain does a lot of work during my conscious hours and so I think it deserves the night off to play without me trying to harness its activity. Maybe that is why I have good sleeping habits. I almost always fall asleep almost instantly. In fact, my brain usually begins to shut down about a hour before bed time.
ReplyDeleteFor the last few years, I have developed the "ability" (perhaps it is a disability) to drop off if I am warm, relaxed, and not especially stimulated by what is going on around me. (Think, dull work meetings; or, sorry to say, some homilies!). When this happens, I frequently lapse immediately into intense dreaming.
ReplyDeleteDon't remember my dreams much any more. I've had recurring dreams some of which I understand are common. Finding myself without pants at the front of an audience, that's one I used to have but not for a while. The one you mentioned, Jim, unprepared at the end of a college course, I've had that one but no more. The only bad recurring dream I've had lately is parking my car in the city and forgetting where I left it. One dream I used to have was finding I had psychokinetic power. For me, a nightmare, because I was afraid I would injure someone with a stray thought.
ReplyDeleteI dream fairly often of having to play an organ accompaniment at church, and finding that my music is just..gone. The director is signaling me to start the intro, and I have no clue. There are people who are good improvisers and would just wing it. I'm not one of those people. The music has to be there in front of me.
ReplyDeleteI've read somewhere that the "source material" of dreams typically are things which worry and stress us; and/or things which happened to us during the previous day.
DeleteIn the case of the dream I described in the post, I tried to think of why John Denver and Arnold Schwarzenegger, of all people, should have been in my dream, but failed to come up with anything. I hadn't heard their names invoked, nor thought about them, in quite some time. (In Schwarzenegger's case, I've hardly ever thought about him at all.) I wondered if there was a Freudian angle to the dream, but I don't know enough about Freud's theories to know how that interpretation would go.
It is difficult to believe dreams aren't deeply meaningful, but the more time I have spent on the subject, the less meaningful dreams (including my own, which I often remember in great detail) appear to be. I used to be very interested in Freudian interpretation, but over the years my interest has waned.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first move into my apartment (1972), someone in the apartment that shared a wall with mine used to play two records over and over again, and rather loudly. One was a Frank Sinatra record that included "Luck Be a Lady Tonight," and the other was excerpts from "Carmen." Sinatra has never been my favorite, but I grew accustomed to the music, and the neighbor always turned it off (or way down) by 11:00, so I didn't complain. I also thought anyone with only two records in his collection must be rather deprived and deserved whatever enjoyment he got from them.
Anyway, one night I dreamed that I had a visitor and we heard strange noises coming from my apartment walls. My visitor suggested the noise was caused by cockroaches. I replied, "If so, they're putting on a production of Carmen"! I woke up laughing.
David that is pretty funny (and, in the case of that Frank Sinatra record being played over and over, a bit nightmarish).
DeleteExternal stimuli can affect our dreams. The recent death of civil rights activist Vernon Jordan reminded me of a dream. In 1980, Jordan was the head of the National Urban League. At that time, I was a college student living in a dorm. My alarm clock was a radio with an alarm setting which turned on the radio each morning in time for a news broadcast. That morning, the assassination attempt was the lead story on the news. The alarm failed to wake me (a common occurrence, unfortunately for my academic career), but some part of my consciousness heard the story, and it fed a dream, in which I was shot in an assassination attempt.
I don't remember my dreams much but I have had some weird sleep to waking transitions. One night I fell asleep lying on my side facing outward on my living room couch. At some point, in dream state, I opened a closet door. The back of the closet looked strange, a different color. Suddenly the back of the closet rotated 90 degrees and expanded to fill my visual field. I was awake and looking at my living room.
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