Dreams. Dreams are something I find to be this wonderful enigma of the subconscious. The theater of the mind that knows where all the bodies are buried, where the shadows dwell, and the emotional browser history of your life.
Dreams. The surreal playground where I can fly (but I do it like a tornado for some reason, which makes me think there is some kind of subconscious jab about destruction and emotional turmoil).
Dreams. Where my best friend visits me and somehow I forget he has passed. Somehow he is able to respawn in the primordial soup of my lizard brain—only for me to awaken to the crushing guilt and reality of his absence. That’s my least favorite one. It lingers on the tip of my tongue like a burn. Tender, annoying, and oh so very raw.
I try not to dwell too much on my dreams—’cause there really isn’t any context. You can’t create order out of a dream. There’s no definitive interpretation. (Although you can buy books, books on tape, and very expensive self-help programs that will make you a bona fide shaman if you complete their 14-week, 72-step program.) I think dreams are the mental plaque that gets scraped off existence, and somehow your subconscious has to sort through it like Grandma did while looking for that one coupon that fell into the trash—but now it’s of utmost importance because the sale ends tomorrow. Your brain fires all these synapses at the same time during REM sleep just to watch the fireworks. What if dreams are just the collaboration of failing synapses that get together, start drinking, and see who hooks up?
I think I like that. I believe the setup would be something like, “Hey, me and that eighth-grade trauma you had are gonna go hook up with that acid experience you indulged in at 25 and your weird obsession with Swiss cheese. I heard they’re really gonna throw a banger in the prefrontal cortex tonight.”
Yep. Definitely something from the dreamscape.
As I’m aging, I find myself searching for dreams—peaceful ones. I’ve spent the past 20 or so years of my life filling my head with projects, lists, schematics, schedules—and a fair or excessive amount of single-malt Scotch. My nights are now spent lying in bed until one or two in the morning, watching the replaying images of my day. I overanalyze to a fault. I have an internal clock tracking where I spent my time (’cause you never get it back), and I critique myself over situations. I think about my words…my feelings…my decisions…my faults.
I don’t sleep a lot anymore. My nights of slipping into a decent rest while listening to the wind in the pines of the Utah backcountry are now gone. Now it’s a constant tally of what happened, what is, and what will be.
When sleep does come, it’s a shared experience. I sleep with two dogs, and the peace at the end of the day balances the scales against the discomfort of the experience. Dogs are love. But at 2:30 at night, the love needs to stay on their side of the bed.
I have a very comfortable bed—large, king-size—but I have been given a fiefdom of about six inches on the left side that serves as my barony. The rest is the realm of the canine. And, believe it or not, they have dreams of their own.
I envy the simplicity of their dreams—bark, run, growl. Pretty much sums it up. The one thing I’m not accustomed to is the physical interaction they have in their dreams. The actual leaping…jumping…dancing? I dunno.
Perhaps dogs don’t question their dreams, carry guilt from them, or try to interpret them as we oh-so-intelligent human beings do.
Once again—dogs are love.
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