WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

I awoke this morning with a vivid dream still playing itself out in my mind. I experienced that brief interval that occurs when you first wake up and are overcome with some tenacious dream residue so powerful that it sticks to your brain for a few extra seconds. It is a wonderful place, a space between two worlds joined momentarily.

For a few seconds I lamented a profound personal loss, only to experience the dawning awareness that it was all a dream and that everything was in it's rightful order. The elation that follows this awareness is itself intoxicating. It is a temporary high, where the emotional content of the dream persists in tandem with the competing facts of an emerging consciousness. A little magic to start the day.

Recently, an old friend told me about a dream where she and I were at our high school prom together, and she was wearing a very ugly dress. She also noted that despite this being a high school dream we were both at our present age, among a group of people who were not all congruent with that particular setting.

This is something I have experienced as well, and whenever my dreams occur in familiar childhood or adolescent landscapes I am almost always my present age. I wonder if there is something in our psychological makeup that makes it hard to dream as if we were children again, as if our minds are filled with too much experience and input to allow us to go back so easily?

I also appreciated that my friend felt compelled to tell me about this dream, and it reinforces my belief that (with a few exceptions perhaps) it is always good form to tell people when they have permeated your dream landscape. I figure if someone has made it so deeply into my subconscious there must be something significant there, regardless of how subtle it may be.

I think if we told others when they inhabit our dreams some fascinating patterns might emerge over time, and perhaps we would see more of that elusive web of connectedness between ourselves and even those we thought were only bit players in our lives. Perhaps a few walls might come down in the process.