Monday, September 12, 2005

what dreams may come


Ben asked people to leave their weird & wonderful dreams as comments on his blog yesterday, but I felt that I should devote an entire post to this.

Because if anyone knows about weird dreams, it's me.

I suspect it might be genetic, actually. I remember my grandmother once saying she dreamt she was surfing down Brickmakers Kloof (a really steep road in Port Elizabeth) on her ironing board.
Go, Grandma!!!

But let me tell you: Gran's dream has NOTHIN' on mine!

Apparently some people have dreams that make sense - like a story, perhaps. Hubby's dreams, for example, are as easy to read as a book:
He and I (and/or various close family members) will be in some situation where we are in danger, and he is running around like a lunatic trying to protect us using whatever means are at his disposal.
No prizes for guessing what that one means, huh?

But when it comes to my own dreams I just give up. Occasionally they're nice dreams. For example, not so long ago I dreamt I was swimming with dolphins and it was awesome! I woke up feeling wonderfully relaxed, happy and tranquil because it was extremely realistic and vivid in my my mind.


More often than not, though, I wake up feeling far from happy after one of these vivid dreams. Like the one where I went to work having completely forgotten to put on a stitch of make-up - no foundation, nothing! (This is a big deal for me - you'd have to know what I look like sans make-up to understand. It's scary.)
I only noticed because the guy who got in the elevator with me looked at me strangely and asked if I'd had a long way to walk to get to work. Confused, I said no, it was only about 5 minutes from the train station. Then I went to the ladies' room and almost screamed in fright when I saw my own reflection in the mirror.
Oh wait, that wasn't a dream. Yikes! So okay, maybe some nightmares do come true, hehe.

I also remember dreaming not so long ago that I was with Friends. The sitcom Friends I mean. A little odd but not too far off - I put it down to the fact that I remind myself so much of Monica. Not in looks, mind you, but the neurotic, over-achieving perfectionist Monica. Only, I don't like cooking so much. Not so scary, that one, just a little weird - and the weirdness was how very real it felt.

So I suppose you want to hear the scary and disturbed ones too, don't you? Well, since I have resolved to pretend that Nobody who reads this blog actually knows me, why the hell not.

I often dream about the same place, or places. The funny thing is, I have never actually been to these places. In fact, it starts off as if I'm looking at a map, and then voila! I'll suddenly zoom in and find myself in this place. It's an island, or a group of islands, in the middle of a really calm blue sea - the kind you see in posters advertising Carribbean cruises and such. I'll waft between an island and a big cruise ship, but when I finally settle on the ship, things become unpleasant, and suddenly it's not all pretty and white and spick-&-span, but dark and dusty with rusted railings. And I'll be deep inside the ship, on a steep spiral metal staircase, and trying to get out. Normally at this point Hubby suddenly joins me, and then we'll start running, like it's a race against time. Or sometimes, someone is chasing us - these looming shadowy faceless men, dressed in dark trousers and thick polo-neck jerseys, with caps on, like you see in old Cold War movies - you know, the guys running guns on an old abandoned oil tanker. And then I wake up, normally with my heart pounding and sweating like mad.

Many of my other dreams involve spiders falling on me, or sometimes scorpions. Strange, since I'm not particularly bothered by either creature in real life (except those horrible rain-spiders we get in SA, but that's another story altogether). I woke up really angry with hubby a couple of weeks ago because in my dream we'd been swimming in the sea on an island much like Santorini, and the side of the pool was like a giant rock. He climbed out first and then turned to help me out, and when he grabbed my hand he threw a scorpion on my leg - as a joke. Needless to say I was not amused! And then we got on our horses and rode away into the West.

But also, there are the utterly pointless dreams - like the one where I was talking to my mom about my big toe for a good 20 minutes. WTF???

And finally, this one is for Anne :
Possibly one of the most vivid and definitely the icky-est dream I ever had was the one where I had to climb inside a real (albeit very large) chicken skin. It was plucked, and cleaned - much like when you take the skin off a chicken to cook it, and... well I'm sure you can imagine how it felt. EEUW!!! I had to do this for a job that I was going to be doing, working for a drive-thru fast-food place. Which is a little odd because I have never had such a job, but then, who ever said dreams have to make sense? Especially considering my, er, uniform for that one!

So make of this lot what you will. And Anne, you decide - idiosyncrasy, or not?

10 comments:

LiVEwiRe said...

Holy crap you're weird...lol - kidding! Kidding! Well, not entirely, this is weird, I'd just never say it in that way especially since I identify with some of it. =) Except the chicken skin - that was just full out nasty. I will say that I think I got some of your grandma's genes as I had a dream years ago that I was flying around town on a giant candy cane, steering it and everything. Amazing how some people's dreams get so involved and detailed with twists and turns yet some people have more non-descript dreams. It doesn't surprise me that you are a vivid dreamer - matches your waking personality. Again, sans the chicken skin... (And what are rain spiders? Do I even want to know given my hatred for the buggers?) I'm afraid to tell Ben my dreams! =)

njfssh - perhaps fish from new jersey...

anne said...

I tend to think that dreams are idiosyncratic by nature. (I love that sentence, I can tell I'm gonna use it a lot...) But you do seem to have a lot of those! So yes. ;)

DelBoy said...

What really amazes me is how vividly you remember your dreams - I hardly remember any of mine anymore! When I was a wee lad, yes, I did remember them, but now that I'm old...

vjpcer=very japanese certainty

Framesby 86 said...

I'm with Delboy on this one. I actually prefer not to remember some of the things I dream. Especially those ones where you dream that you are falling and you wake up clutching the bedpost or hubby's leg.

Bosbefok said...

Now you all know what I have to put up with..... Its just a new adventure every day !! Its when I get into trouble because of something I did in a DREAM that I draw the line !! :-) In Fairness like when i was a kid, i cant grumble too much cos I probably deserved a Bollocking for something else that I had actually got away with - so it all evens itself out eventually.

Terri said...

LiVEwiRe I can so picture you on that candy cane... tell me, did it have rocket launchers on the side, or was that a non-pms week? ;-)
Oh, and rain spiders... no, I'll leave that for another post.
Anne That's a great line - you should use that at parties to impress intellectuals.
Del It all has to do with the ol' Alzheimers thing...
Undr Do they have a website? Perhaps www.russianchickjumping.rus?
Buddess My falling dreams are normally set in an elevator. Hubby told me once that they can't fall anymore though, cos the new lifts have these little metal 'feet' that automatically kick in once it goes over a certain speed, to stop it falling. The next time I had one of those dreams, these 'feet' that he'd told me about kicked in & I haven't had one since.
Bosbefok All's fair in love & sleep :-)

ChittyChittyBangBang! said...

Weirdest dream I ever had was when I woke up after a particularly bad one, went back to sleep and continued to go back to dreaming right from the point where I left off.
And the sequel was more gruesome than the "original", kid you not!
[wohoq: world of hoqs(?)]

LiVEwiRe said...

Terri, it was a non-PMS week! At least Bosbefok seems to be taking this all rather well - it's all payback from when he was 9 or something! And Chitty - that always happens to me when I'm sick (bronchitis or something) and it can do that like, six times... maddening!

ikqugkl - Eskimo for 'chicken skin'...

kyknoord said...

Fond of cheese and pickles just before bed-time, are we? No reason – just asking.
[rowido - A woman whose husband died on a canoe]

Terri said...

Chitty & LiVEwiRe: Dreams in installments? Never happens with me. That would be far too orderly. Maybe it's to counteract my pedantic organizedness (I just made that up - u like?) when I'm awake.
KN: Some would blame my 10-cup-a-day coffee habit, too.

lgpoxxtd - How I feel in the morning after one of my vivid dreams