A friend of mine has a dream book which she always whips out when I tell her about a dream I've had. The experience winds up being like herding a bunch of cats with search engines strapped to their backs:


Dreamer: "There was this guy with a mask on..."

Amateur Dream Interpreter: "Wait, what kind of mask? Carnival mask? Superhero eye mask? Avocado mask?"

D: "Uh, no. Actually, he got hit by a truck and then these balloons
flew out."

ADI: "WAS HE A MIME?!"

D: "No, why?"

ADI: "Because mimes mean you ARE HAVING COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS THAT YOU DON'T VALUE!"

D: "Forget it."


Anyway, I get her point, though. Sort of. It's as much about the process of interpreting the dream as it is about the dream elements itself. You think about the details, and they either coalesce or not. And then things might occur to you if you're lucky.

Maybe dreams aren't really there. Maybe it's the recollection of them that makes them real. (There's a whole other essay here, about how being remembered makes you real. Some other tribe, maybe.)

I don't dream (or recall my dreams, if that's more accurate) very often. Most of them are pretty mundane, like the one where I wake up, brush my teeth, take a shower, and dress for work, and then snap awake to realize that I'm still in bed. Love that one. Very Groundhog Day.

There have also been times in life when I've been stressed out, and the dreams never came -- it was almost like I didn't want to recall them because they were distasteful.

But once in a while, I get a really fantastic dream that really makes me wonder. Ones where I travel around the world, or perform some superhuman feat of strength or dexterity, or even *gasp* meet someone. Those, for some reason, seem to be the ones that slip away the fastest upon reentry. Not to be too poetic about it, but it's really like trying to hold onto water by squeezing it in your hands. Whoops, all gone, fading away into the pavement. Can't get them back...

If you get all biochemical about it, maybe it's what's to be accepted as your body turns off all its inputs, and lets the post-production crew go nuts: you wind up with this pastiche of the day's experiences, or half-thoughts, or emotional reactions. Switches and circuits misconnecting and misfiring, all to hallucinogenic effect. But the thoughts and feelings that power that machine -- those were real, weren't they? And won't they drive you to do something new and different the next day?