Hurled by dreams...

That title is from a very short, two-line poem by Robert Herrick:

Here we are all, by day; by night, we're hurled
By dreams, each one into a several world.

I’ve always had a tendency to have strange dreams. Dreams that usually make absolutely no sense and defy explanation. Oh, I suppose every now and then I can glean some sort of meaningful wisdom from those nocturnal pictures in my head. Like when I dream about being chased by a tornado – I’ve had tornado dreams several times. Usually I’m outside, and I see the tornado approaching, and I try to run, only to discover my feet are as heavy as lead. Every step I take causes me to stumble, and I can see a house not a hundred yards away from me – but the harder I try to get to that house, the more I stumble, and the heavier my feet start to feel, and the closer the tornado gets. This dream seems to be filled with all sorts of symbolism. I mean, sure, the tornado could just be a tornado (I do have a rather large fear of tornadoes), but it could also represent just about anything else I’m afraid of. Or perhaps it’s just a general fear of failure – I’m supposed to get to that house, but I can’t seem to do it. Oh, and I always wake up before the tornado hits, by the way…

When I was young, I used to have a recurring dream – I was probably about ten years old the last time I dreamt it, but I can still remember parts of it. It always began in what looked like a factory, with a conveyor belt over on the left side of the building. The conveyor belt had little cars on it, and it was climbing up like a roller coaster. I would jump on the conveyor belt, and suddenly I’d be in an office building, where – again, on the left side – there was an escalator climbing upward, just as the conveyor belt had been climbing upward. And on the right side, there was a mattress on the floor. And when I’d jump onto the escalator (as I always inevitably would) I’d suddenly fall backwards towards the mattress. Except by now, the mattress would disappear and I’d be falling into a hole in the floor. This was the point where I’d wake up – and no matter how many times I had this dream, it always felt like I’d fallen onto my OWN mattress, and that’s what woke me up. I’ve always wondered what that dream meant – especially since it recurred so often. Was I afraid of falling when I was a child? I wonder what all the “climbing upward” imagery meant? What sorts of things were floating through my elementary-school mind to generate this dream with such frequency?

And then there are the totally nonsensical dreams that seem to fill most of my nights these days. A few days ago I had a dream that I was having some sort of sleepover at Nick and Cindy’s house. I was sleeping in a bed in the middle of a big room filled with all kinds of different beds. And here’s the really crazy part – in my dream, I actually fell asleep. I was already asleep, dreaming about falling asleep. And THEN, to make it even crazier, I had a DREAM while I was sleeping in my dream. I had a dream within a dream. An embedded dream. A dream surrounded by another dream. And in this second dream, Cindy came over and sat on my bed, and said that she’d been talking to God, and then she said, “God told me you’d be more comfortable in the bed in the corner.” At that point, I “woke up” from the dream-within-a-dream and realized that Cindy was NOT actually sitting on my bed, and I didn’t even know if there WAS a bed in the corner of the room. I then woke up (for real), and realized that the entire thing had been one big dream emulsion. And the first thing that came to mind was, “what was THAT?” I also wondered why, if God was going to speak to someone, he would focus on something as trivial as the comfort (or comfortability – I’ll throw that in for Faisal…) of a bed. Couldn’t he clue us in on some of those big mysteries of life? Maybe explain a thing or two? But no… it’s just, “hey, go sleep in THAT bed…”

This wasn’t the first time I’d had a dream about falling asleep. But even worse than “falling asleep” dreams are “I feel really tired” dreams. These are the most frustrating dreams I have – I’ll actually dream that I’m tired, and I wish I could fall asleep, but for some reason I can’t. And then at some point I’ll wake up, realize that I’d already BEEN asleep, but feel less-than-rested because of my dream. I always feel cheated out of a good night’s sleep when I have a dream like that.

I wonder why I can’t just dream about eating lots of chocolate? All of the chocolate, none of the calories… now THAT would be a great dream. :)

The moon shining through my kitchen window...