Dreaming

I don't really dream that much. Enough I guess. But I don't think I like dreaming. They are also barely coherant, weird snips of life and images. The only that do make sense, have a plot I guess, are scary, unsettling. Dreaming has never stopped my from sleeping.



I used to have the same dream over and over. Then it just stopped one day. I think I out grew it. If you can outgrow dreams. I used to dream that all my teeth were falling out. Not falling out like I'd been punched or anything, but falling out the way baby-teeth fall out. Slowly. Root by root. But they were all coming out at the same time. And they were my adult teeth, so I'd never get new ones. It freaked my out. I'd run around in my dream trying to hold them in my mouth, forcing them back into my gums. I would try to scream for a dentist, but I couldn't or I'd lose my teeth. I'd try to bit down on them carefully, so they would hold each other in. But that never worked.


I'm a firm believer that dreams relate to what's going on in your life. That the are your unconcious brain trying to work out something that your conscious brain can't really understand. Don't get me wrong, I think Freud's work is outdated and currently irrelevent, but I think a lot of new research about brain activity while sleeping points to the fact that we do "think" while sleeping.

I think my teeth dream was connected to the fact that I grind my teeth at night. Also that I'm way too uptight. But mostly the grinding.


There are very few other dreams that I remember. Mostly more like photographs of dreams of a few frames of film from some lost movie reel. These dr eams are never significant events. Chatting with a friend and a few lines of dialogue, or an image of a location I' ve never been too. But they photo frames also stick in my mind. I might not be able to call them all up at will, but they stick. Maybe deep in the semiconscious. But the stranger part of these dream pieces is that they always cause deja-vu. Always. The dream comes first and the deja-vu later. There isn't any set period of time between the dream and when it happens. They just creep up on my randomly. And my brain flashes to another place, maybe caught up in the firing of its own synapses. Who knows? But sadly these pieces are never important parts of my life. Usually they are quiet moments. Peaceful.

Except one. One that hasn't happened yet. And maybe because I remember it so consciously it never will and I hope that it never will. But it scares my a little everytime the deja-vu sneaks up on me. I see myself in a car, in the passenger's seat and my siser is in back. And boy, or man, he's not much other than I am, but I'm not really sure hold old I am in this moment. The three of us are winging down the free, across a raised over pass, connecting us between two freeways. The road sweeps up and curves to the left, but he doesn't turn the wheel. We keep drive start ahead and over the edge and we sail through the air and then there is nothing. The dream is over. And it scares me to get in cars with my sister and a guy.

It makes me wonder if other people ever see themselves old in their dreams. Or if they are always their current age. I'm never old in my dreams.