It may be this cold. It may be the medication (or the liberal consumption of hot toddies). But for some reason over this last week I have been visited by strange dreams.
Dreams, as such, don’t trouble me. I do not take them as prophecy or warnings. They can, however, stick with me, follow me in the fog of coughing and the trail of tissues as I shuffle through this truly definitive example of a bad cold.
I find that I spend a great deal of my waking life, even when healthy and breathing free, in somewhat of a dream state. So the strange dreams that come forth during my addled sleep are not entirely unwelcome.
Why is it that the flying dreams always take place in the cow pasture outside my childhood home? Why do the dreams where I’m naked and unprepared find me in the halls of my high school?
I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. These dreams don’t put me into a funk as they might have years ago. What they do now is make the writer ponder the strange echoes that pull at the threads and frayed edges of memories. They make me want to see what might be made of them.
These dreams resist interpretation. They are like set pieces, trotted out when the management is occupied with other matters. “Nothing scheduled for tonight. Let’s play this oldie but goodie tonight.” And here they are again. Familiar, not so strange, and not so mystical anymore. I leap, and for a moment, fly free of the ground, but soon I’m pulled back to that muddy field and my next leap won’t take me very far. It’s getting harder and harder to convince my dream-self that I’ve forgotten to attend that Algebra class.
Welcome back, old friends. Let’s let the worry and fear slide away and see what’s going on in the background.
Let’s find out what the waking writer can make of these strange, oft-returning friends.
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