Last night I dreamt that Jack Cassidy died. I'm not even that big of a Hot Tuna fan...so why did I dream about Jack Cassidy? True, my favorite Tee Shirt is one that has "If you don't know Jorma" on the front, and "You don't know Jack" on the back..but that doesn't mean I'm a huge fan. It's just a Tee Shirt. Why did I dream about Jack Cassidy at all?
Why do we dream about the things we dream about? It's a question that has intrigued me for most of my life.
One of my favorite Mark Twain quotes is "everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." It seems to me that a corollary could well be...we all have dreams...but we rarely talk about them.
What do you dream about? I'll share some of mine.
The strange thing about dreams is that they are so archetypal..and that they are so misunderstood. We have them. we forget them...yet why do we have them? And why do we remember the one that we do have? My wife has experienced a brain surgery almost 10 years ago...she suffered a AVM, and since then she can't remember a single dream.
I, on the contrary, remember each dream I have...And some of the dreams are amazingly narrative in quality, while others are merely montages of scenes, with nothing to connect them. My wife would be disappointed to learn that she does not populate my dreams. Perhaps that's why I don't share them with her.
But I've always been fascinated by dreams...I don't know what they are...let alone understand what purpose they serve. And I've noticed that, as a man of 55 years, the dreams have changed over the years...Have yours?
What do you dream about? What are the images that populate your twilight hours? Do you share them with anyone, in your waking hours, or do they remain secret dreams? Do they mean anything? Or are they just an unexplainable surrealism of the night? Why do we remember the troubling dreams, and forget the pleasant ones? Why do we remember dreams at all? What are they?
First...the archetypes
The most intriguing thing thing about dreams is hoe archetypichal they are. We all have them. There's the dreams about flying...or falling...or sex.
Me? I dream about being lost. It's so much of a regular of my Dreamland, that I have to start there...I have dreams of being on a journey...one that never ends...one that starts on a bus...turns into a journey on a train...then on foot...and I never find the place I have set out to find. It is a disturbing dream...I always wake up feeling exhausted.
I have this dream once a month, at least. Sometimes I start on the rail..then I end up on a bus...then I end up on foot. I'm always lost...and there is always some obstacle to me finding my way home. I have this dream often...it always leaves me feeling exhausted in the morning.
"animals*
I often have dreams about animals...and they are almost never good. Seemingly innocuous things turn into menacing animals. Rabbits...for some reason...have always been a dream plague for me. They start out cuddly...and end up rearing on their hind feet, and baring their teeth...What's that all about? And then there is the event from my youth...I was about 12, and my uncle had a farm pond. I was throwing rocks into the pond, when I saw what I thought was a small boulder on the edge of the shore. It was a snapping turtle. As I reached down to pick it up. it's head ejected from the shell...all open mouthed....and it was only the catlike reflexes of youth that kept me from loosing a finger...but that image has haunted my dreams over the years.
flying
I have often flied in me dreams...but never horizontally. I have always "flown" in my dreams the same way that that Jack Armstrong walked upon the moon...you just 'jump"..and float. I have floated many times in my dreams...but I've never actually flied.
falling
Yes....I have fallen many times in my dreams ...but I've never hit the ground. I remember the books I read from the 60's/early seventies that were early pop psychology on dreams...they were almost always Freudian...and they suggested that if you ever actually "fell" to the ground, in your dreams...you would die.
Nice theory...but try proving it.
I used to have very violent dreams, though...years ago. I would be shot with guns in my dreams...but I never died.
The R. Crumb Dreams
When I was a young teen...I used to think that I could control my dreams by focussing upon something as I fell asleep. It never worked. I usually wanted to dream about the girl down the street...Funny thing...why do males have wet dreams when they are going through puberty...and then grow out of them? I've had some seriously erotic dreams as an adult that never resulted in ejaculation...compared to some of the dreams I had at 13 that did...But there is a disturbing factor as well...as I've grown older, I've noticed that the purely sexual dreams are often accompanied by strangely amorphous imagery...I call it the R. Crumb effect.
You may be familiar with his cartoons...or not. But he often "objectified" women in his cartoons to the extent where they were walk Boobs and twat...soory for being so base...but it was the fact. I have noticed, in my older dreams...that some of them have that aspect, at least on those nights when the dreams turn to the erotic. I find it disturbing...but it is what it is.
My most prolific dreams are the ones where I am trying to get somewhere...and can't. The busline ends...the train never shows up...I'm let off in mid travel...and nobody knows me or where I'm heading to...I set off on foot, and the rest of the dream is just one obstacle after another. I have this dream quite often.
Another quite common dream I have is of a large house that I am inhabiting...a house that is similar to the Winchester House in California...rooms that let on into blank hallways...hallways that lead into walls...a maze. Last night I dreamt my bed was outside...(this was after Jack Cassidy died)...it was on the front yard, on a corner lot...I went to bed, and noticed that people where walking by on the street...and felt strangely uncomfortable and exposed...I got up to use the bathroom, around midnight, and suddenly, as can only happen in a dream, it was the light of day...I was naked and looking for a place to take a leak where nobody would notice me...but there was no such place to be found.
And all of this is just my why of asking...what in the hell do YOU dream about? And do you discuss your dreams? Or are they these sort of dark little mental things that come and go...and what's the use of sharing them?
I'm sure it is an archetypal dream...alon