Thinking About: Dreams

Most of the dreams I remember have involved combat of one sort or another. This is hardly surprising considering the books I read, the games I play and the movies I enjoy. In my dream life I have fought in conflicts all over the world and throughout time. When people tell you that if you die in your dream you die in real life (sounds a bit like The Matrix doesn’t it?) I can tell you for a fact that they’re wrong. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve died in dreams. The one I remember most vividly is being shot by a German soldier whilst crashing through a roadblock in an old truck. From the make of the vehicle and the clothes we were wearing I suspect it was during the German Occupation of France. I can tell you it felt very real indeed.

Not all of my dreams involve warfare though. Another vivid dream – or at least part of one – had me literally wading through a river of blood (and body parts) carrying a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. From the look of absolute devastation around me I took it to be Hades. One of my favourite dreams – which I related to a therapist – was more Sci-Fi than Horror. I was a member of an expeditionary mining team on an alien world. Everything seemed ordinary at first until we started noticing things going missing – particularly our equipment. One by one things either vanished or simple stopped working. Before we were trapped on the planet most of the team attempted to escape but the planet seemed to come alive and destroyed all of the ships both on the ground as well as in orbit. Slowly the survivors – except for myself – vanished until only I remained, alone and naked. It was only then that I met a survivor of a previous expedition previously unknown to us. It was he who taught me to stop fighting the world and to become one with it – twinning twigs and mosses in my hair and painting my body in various shades of green and brown. It was a very strange experience.

Recently I had what was possibly an even stranger one. At this stage I can only remember fragments so it probably won’t make a whole lot of sense. I remember that weird ability of being able to see through my own eyes and from an exterior vantage point at the same time as if I was watching myself. At some point the Universe literally came alive and reached out to touch me. For the briefest of moments I knew, with the utmost clarity, everything there is to know. I cried out with the joyful pain of ultimate knowledge. But as quickly as the feeling had erupted in my head it subsided leaving a singular message: The Journey is not the Journey (or possibly The Path is not the Path). Don’t you just wish that the Universe could be a little less cryptic at times like these? It could have least given me next weeks lottery numbers so I’d know it was on the up and up!

Apart from the occasional nightmare – now thankfully rare – I do enjoy my dream-states. I have no idea what they mean (probably nothing) but they are normally rather entertaining. On more than one occasion I have woken up – without any memory of the dream I has having before waking – with a feeling an enormous joy that sometimes lasts for several days but, saying that, I have also woken up in tears before now with a feeling of endless bottomless sadness. I guess even in dreamland you have to take the rough with the silky smooth.