Awake, If Not Aware

I am awake today, but still in a fog. I didn't sleep well last night and am rather cross this morning. My sleep was interrupted by dreams, odd ones - fleeting glimpses of stories that haven't happened yet, a parade of maybes and couldbes and nerverweres, all of them tense or distressing or frustrating in some way. I didn't sleep for more than an hour at a time last night because of this rat-a-tat-tat in my mind.

In one, I was in some sort of prison...tiny, grey, concrete, dark, cold and damp, the room I was in was smaller than a closet, barely enough space for me to sit on the floor with my legs stretched in front of me. I was chained by my leg to a metal bar and the chain was as thick and heavy as an anchor chain, links thicker than my wrist. In the dream, I was resigned to my condition, and oddly hopeful...although there was nothing in the scene to indicate a reason for hope.

In another, I am on a sandy shore. The sand is coarse, and it's either a river or a lake. Behind me is wilderness and across the body of water is a city. The city is a dark place, a place of shadows and sorrow and danger, and is overhung with a pall of gloom. I am cowering under a blanket on the shore, and I don't want to be there - something is terribly wrong over in the city, and I am troubled by it and don't want to see what is about to happen. Someone with a video camera is filming me as I hide behind the blanket and weep, begging to go away from this place.

Then I am sitting on a bench, still on the beach, still staring at the city. There are ants around my feet, millions of them milling about. I am worried they'll be crushed by the people who will soon be walking here, so I tell them to go away...and they line up and march off into the wilderness in formation! There is a sound...I feel as much as hear it...and an airplane flies over. Flames and smoke pour from its engines, and I can hear people on board crying out. It sinks lower in the olive grey sky as it flies over the city, then drops into the heart of the metropolis and explodes. I hear and feel all those lives, all those souls bursting outward from the epicenter. They wash over me where I sit trembling and weeping. I am a prisoner, still, and would rather go back to my cell but am not permitted - the people with me want me to do something, something with my mind, and I don't want to. They are evil.

Another scene - this time I'm wandering in a liquor store that is in what used to be a house, small rooms connected by a hallway, each room empty of furnishing save the shelves that line the walls. The bottles are not placed with any sense of order - rum with tequila and vodka, different sizes, different brands, all placed randomly so I have to search the entire place for what I seek. The lighting is poor, the bottles glow, and the selection is sparse as well as scattered. No one seems to understand what I want, and I can't find it in the right size - the whole layout is confusing, disorganized and off-putting.

I am used to having dreams full of frustration and unexpressed anger - the mind unburdens itself while resting in ways it cannot, ways we don't permit, in our waking day. I don't have nightmares - even the worst dreams that roil about in there are simply dreams, and I know that. Even while dreaming, I know I'm dreaming...so they may be unpleasant, but they're not nightmares. Still....they stick with me, leave a thin film of emotion and "what the hell" on my day until I can shake them.

For the next few weeks I'll be cleaning my house again in preparation for...I dunno what...but I feel like cleaning it from top to bottom and ridding myself of unwanted, unneeded things, making room, making space. Some people do Spring cleaning...I do Fall. Maybe that's what my head is doing, purging old thoughts and feelings to make way for something better.

What have you been dreaming, lately?