Perchance to Dream

I have strange dreams.

Well...we all do, don't we? I mean...is there such thing as "normal" dreams?

I like best the dreams that play like stories or movies in my mind, the ones I sit back and watch even as I'm part of them. Sometimes I wish I had popcorn in there - I love popcorn and a good flick.

I don't have nightmares - while I do have bad dreams, intense dreams, dreams where I am angry, and (rarely) frightened, I am always aware that I am dreaming. I am never so lost in the moment, in the visions or sounds or experiences, that I am unaware it's just a dream...and that takes away some of the power. It's less...visceral.

If I don't care for what I'm feeling in a dream, I can change it. I just say "Oh, it's just a dream, let's change the channel" and whatever I was dreaming goes away and something new takes its place. Like a mental clicker. I don't do it often, though...somehow, I just don't think it's healthy or wise.

Sometimes I shout at people in my dreams. Most often, my grandmother. More recently, my ex-husband. I shout angry words, things I left unsaid or unresolved in the waking world.

Once, I yelled "Bitch!!" at my grandmother in a dream...and woke to hear the word still echoing from the walls. I'd said it aloud and woken myself.

Sometimes I dream in another language. French (which I spoke fluently as a child, and can muddle through a sentence or two of now), German, Italian, and once or twice Latin. I speak smatterings of a few tongues...but int the dreams, I am fluent. Of course, my mind thinks it all makes perfect sense.

Sometimes I talk in my sleep, in other languages. I'm told I once said "Meep" repeatedly. I have no idea what it meant.

Once, I dreamed I was a French physicist...and when I woke, I knew in English what I'd been saying in french, so I looked it up and it was...well...physics! I don't know physics...I dabble in quantum physics because it's fun, but that's a different critter entirely. The dreams that follow a day of reading about quantum physics are especially interesting and peculiar - nothing is ever really certain what it is and often changes in the middle of itself because it is suddenly convinced its something else. I love the reality wobble.

I have waking dreams. I dream of my house, the one I would love to build. I dream of being a published author, of getting an agent's reply in the mail - they like my work well enough to represent me. I dream of hearing my music on the radio. I daydream about playing games with my son, about the life he may one day live. I have prolonged reveries about driving around the country in an RV with the people I love, seeing the beauty of the land we live in, learning its history, making memories.

Lately, I have more waking dreams than sleeping, since I don't sleep much.

I think that's why I'm so scattered all day, and why my dreams are deeper, more intense, and more deeply weird than usual, even for me. All day long, I am woolgathering...and at night, when I can finally sleep, I drop like a stone to the murky depths of my imagination and am surrounded by the strange fish that swim there.

What plays in the cinema of your mind at night?