Dreamland

Perchance to Dream

A while back, I started adding "Dreamland" entries to my weblog. If I had a particularly vivid dream, I would grab a notepad and write down in outline form as much as I could remember of it, and go back later to type it up.

Recently I decided to keep a notepad and pen on my nightstand, so I won't have to search for one if I wanted to record a dream. I've found that writing down my dreams is causing me to remember more of them. There are some dreams and parts of dreams of a more personal and erotic nature that I will not be transcribing for public reading (hey, I like to have some privacy), but for the most part I’ll record whatever I remember in the morning here.

I'm finding common themes and objects are recurring in some of my dreams. Old coins, corrugated steel, climbing down from high places... (I wonder what it all means?) Although I feel that I'm still "me" in Dreamland, I often end up in some strange places, and sometimes do things that are way out of character, but such is the nature of dreams.

In Dreamland my age fluctuates, I'm often 15 or 20 years younger than my current 45 (wishful thinking?). There, I still smoke occasionally, although in real life I quit about 13 years ago. In Dreamland, I usually drive a rusty second-hand car or pickup truck, and live in an aging wood-framed house that badly needs paint. When I work, it's usually a manual labor kind of job. Sometimes my wife and son are with me, sometimes I'm single. At any rate, although my dreams rarely have what could be called happy endings, for the most part I'm pretty comfortable with who I am there.

If you're curious about your dreams, put a pad and pen on your nightstand and make the effort to write them down when you wake up, you might be surprised at what you find out about yourself. Do it as soon as you wake up though, dreams fade away pretty quickly once you get out of bed.