Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Dreaming

How's your dream world treating you?

I've read some writers say that a dream gave them an idea for a book. I could never put anything I dream into a book. Not only are my dreams vivid, in color, but they are also weird.

After I quit smoking, for years I dreamed I was still smoking.

I dream about the house I grew up in--though I'm an adult in the dreams and the house was demolished for a freeway.

The house we had in Oxnard is often the setting for my dreams. We remodeled that house several times, and I've dreamed about it in all the different stage s of remodeling. The neighborhood around the house doesn't resemble the true neighborhood at all. The houses are huge, three and four stories and in stages of disrepair. I don't think I've ever seen any houses like that, yet I've dreamed about them many times. I'm usually trying to get somewhere.

One night recently I dreamed about a lady who goes to our church. She offered to take me home and we drove on a narrow mountain road (no, you don't have to take a mountain road to get to my house) and all of a sudden she drove down another steep road that went right into a huge lake. She couldn't stop and there we were. She couldn't swim so it was up to me to save her. I woke up and have no idea how that ended. I've turned the woman down a couple of times when she's offered to drive me home, just in case, but I finally rode with her and she managed to get me to my house without driving into the drink.

I've had a recurrent dream about driving high into the mountains and finding the road impassable because of snow and getting out and trying to hike to the place I needed to go. (I would never drive into the mountains on my own--and I'm not all that fond of snow so I'd never get out and hike in it.)

My most frequent dream is being in most any place: camping, a large hotel, someone's house and trying to find a bathroom. If I do find one, there's no door, or long lines waiting for only one bathroom, or a bathroom with no toilet. When I wake, of course I need to make a trek to my own bathroom.

I've dreamed that I could fly several times. All I had to do was stand in a corner, raise my hands over my head and off I went--and I could actually go right through the ceiling and up into the sky. (Sounds more like astral projection than flying.)

I dream a lot about writing conferences and not being able to find my way to where I'm supposed to be going. If I'm presenting in my dream, I can't find my materials, or they are all jumbled up.

Though I can certainly figure what sparked a lot of these dreams, others are a puzzle. Many of them border on nightmares, but I kind of enjoy them.

So what kind of dreams do you have? Do you dream in color or black and white? Can you figure out what your dreams mean?

Marilyn
http://fictionforyou.com/

2 comments:

  1. I love this post. In high school, I did a science fair project all four years on some aspect of dream research. It's how I got my scholarship to college. Unfortunately, I don't know how to interpret dreams. But I have variants of many of the ones you listed... the flying, not being able to find things, not being able to find a bathroom. Funny. The worst recurring dream I have is the one where I suddenly realize I never took a final exam in high school. Therefore, I never truly graduated, and I don't really have college degrees then either. This makes me panic every time.

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  2. I have weird in-color dreams, too, Marilyn! And often I'm in a house I used to live in (rarely, if ever, in our house now).

    Rachel, what is it with the not being able to find a bathroom dreams? Sometimes in my dreams, the only toilet is in the middle of a room full of people or outside where people can see. So I have to decide whether to pee in public or hold it. Too freaky! And I have the dream about not graduating, too. Often I'm back in high school, and I'm telling my mother, "But I know I graduated from college, so why am I back here going to class?" Must be an anxiety thing, huh?

    I never dream scenes from my books, but I do wake up fairly frequently knowing the answer to how a scene should unfold. I have to groggily drag myself from bed to jot down notes, or I know I'll forget. My husband insists he doesn't remember his dreams. I sometimes recall bits and pieces of two or three. I'd venture to say he sleeps more soundly than I do!

    Fun topic, Marilyn!

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