Friday, January 15, 2010

What do Dreams Mean?

I rarely wake up dreaming. I rarely remember dreams. Not so in the last week when I've awakened to some of the most bizarre scenarios in memory. Like today....the alarm went off, I stumbled out of bed with a migraine, made my way down the stairs to the coffee pot, poured a cup, started guzzling and on the way back up the stairs the dream hit me like a ton of bricks upside the head.

Oh my God....these dreams have themes. Chaos. Disorganization. Disappointments. Miscommunications. Late. I'm rushing to get something done and can't accomplish the goal because I'm at the mercy of events and people who get in the way. Late. Late. Late.

The dream last night bordered on nightmarish; no one chasing me with a knife, no blood and guts, no fearing for my life but frustration after frustration had me spinning in circles, repeating the same tasks and getting no where fast. Anyone who knows me well will tell you this is a nightmare scenario for me.

In this dream I had to catch a train and I had lots of "things". Instead of getting properly organized I found myself in the midst of family and friends (an odd conglomeration of people with notable absence of some) who were "helping" but obviously hindering my forward progress in many different ways. Why we decided to hire a limo to carry us the half mile to the train station (why did they all have to go with me to the damn train?) I'll never know. The limo, the size of a small bus, arrived on time to pick us up but then just parked at the curb; no forward movement, lots of cell phone calls from the driver to someone and no amount of haggling would make her step on the gas. Long story short, we arrived at the train station with five minutes to spare, the limo disgorging all these people and all these things. By the time I tried to buy a ticket, they were sold out and the next train didn't leave for my obscure destination (in western Canada) until the next day. Meantime, everyone is milling about losing all my things, talking and carrying on in their own ways. My son's laptop gets wet in the rain and I try to dry it off but the cloth won't absorb the moisture. My necklace that's lying out on a chair gets stolen and someone in my extended party of well wishers ends up buying it from a guy (the one who stole it) who is selling jewelry laid out on a blanket in the train station. He presents it to me as a "gift", saying "thought you'd like this" not knowing that it was mine to begin with. Someone claims a large white trunk which had arrived on an earlier train and starts going through the contents; sheets, tablecloths and is oohing and ahhing over all the nice things while I'm running around trying to find all my lost stuff which seems to be spread from end to end of the terminal. My purse is lost and then found with cash still in place but drivers license and checkbook missing. Go figure. I see my mother hobbling around, without her walker, bent over so far that her face is literally parallel to the floor. She tells me that my dad got mad and went back to the hotel and isn't that "just like him."

Nothing is going right. Nothing. I'm in the middle of chaos. A scene from a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, minus all the sexual innuendos.

Whatever does this dream mean?

3 comments:

  1. I used to have a friend who was brilliant at interpreting dreams...but she's gone now :-(

    Maybe there is something in the air - I had a strange dream last night too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I believe our dreams are the way our minds deal with what we really want, worry about, or fear. The dream you described has too much going on at once to keep track of, to control, to understand. Ring a bell? Better to work things out in a dream than to have all the chaos take over our daily lives.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I don't know what it means but I feel your pain! I have similar dreams, so when you said those who know me could tell you this is a night mare for me I completely resonated.

    I rarely dream or remember them. I'm sure we both know folks who are REALLY into recording dreams, interpreting them, and even suggesting before they go to sleep that they will remember their dreams. When they encourage me to try it, I want to run screaming from the room (well, not exactly, but...). Since I have had trouble going to sleep and staying asleep all my life, the last thing I want to do is try to stay conscious in some way if I DO drift off, or wake up to jot something down. That'd wake me up just enough from that to toss and turn for the next 2 hours in the dark with my mind racing. Now that I'm old and tired enough to actually sleep OK, the last thing I want to do is dream... ha.

    Hope this cools down and you get a great sleep tonight.

    ReplyDelete

Leave a comment!