I think dreams are a bit of a cheat for novelists, although I’ve availed myself of the technique at least once (By a Spider’s Thread). My own dreams are so obvious in their meanings that they bore me. For example, many of them center on impossible trips, where I simply cannot get where I’m going. Last night, for example, I dreamed that was I staying in a New York hotel, probably at Lexington and 50th, or thereabouts. I needed to change and make it across town for an important meeting at 5 p.m., then had another meeting at 6 p.m. The trick was, I couldn’t seem to get to my hotel room. Doors disappeared, elevator banks didn’t seem to go to my floor. At one point, I was stuck outside in a bright pink bathrobe and a pair of shoes that seemed to weigh thirty pounds apiece. Then Manhattan fell away, and I was suddenly in some soulless hotel complex in the middle of nowhere, and I could no longer find the front door to the hotel itself; I kept ending up at Starbucks. A kind older woman volunteered to drive me to the hotel, but refused to make the left turn into the parking lot. When I woke up, my elderly chauffeur was driving me farther and farther away from my destination. I have some variation of the “journey” dream almost every week. It’s not very restful.
But two nights ago, I had an atypical journey dream. I was riding a bike to the harbor, anxious to catch a water taxi. As I approached the long pier, I speeded up. I knew some of the people in line — not well, they were co-workers who I thought always vaguely disapproved of me. At some point, it became clear to me that I was going too fast. I could hit the brakes, but I probably would still skid off the pier. So I pedaled even faster, sailing off the edge of the pier and into the water, which felt clean and pure. (Something the harbor water definitely is not.) In fact, I seemed to float on the water, utterly exhilirated, laughing so hard that those on the pier seemed to assume I had done this crazy thing on purpose.
Ah, but then the dream degenerated into another version of the journey dream, in which there was a river I needed to cross and I couldn’t find a bridge.
Recurring dreams, lovely dreams, vivid nightmares, no dreams? Share them please.
Ah! <i>”no dreams?”</i>
That seems to be me. About once every couple of years I’ll awaken to a fleeting image of having been dreaming. But almost exclusively, I don’t remember having dreamt as I get up in the morning.
I had a lovely dream this morning — the dreams I remember always happen in the morning.
I met a friend I’ve never seen in person, who turned out to be a neighbor, living down the alley from me (in a neighborhood that looked like my old DC neighborhood of Glover Park). He had just published a new book under a pen name, and we threw a block party for it — I dreamed that I ran from one end of the alley to the other, inviting people to the party, and a splendid time was had by all.
Ages since I’ve had such a nice dream.
When I was working full time, I often dreamt I was at the wheel of my car, and could not (1) brake or (2) get into or out of reverse or (3) steer appropriately. Since those dreams have ceased in my retirement, I now conclude that some part of me felt overwhelmed and out of control and unable to do anything about it.
Glad to hear the packing-anxiety dream is universal–it takes on the level of nightmare for me.
Loveliest dream I ever had… In my 20s I was obsessed with Maria Callas. One night I dreamed I was transported to an ancient farmhouse in Tuscany. There was an old lady tending the most beautiful plot of vegetables. I could hear the sound of the young Maria Callas singing from the house. Callas was in the shower, getting ready for her birthday party, the old woman told me. As I bent to help her weed, a fancy car from the sixties slowly passed us on the driveway to the house. In the car was the older, slimmer, more glamorous Maria Callas. She waved to us and joined the young Maria inside, and together they sang a radiant duet–the old woman and I could hear it pouring through the open windows–the younger Callas’s voice–huge and emotional–and the older Callas’s voice–tattered, ghostly, ethereal–singing in harmony. I had that dream almost 20 years ago, and in the back of my brain I can sometimes hear the lingering echo of that unwritten duet.
I often have a dream where I am journeying through cavernous basements and underground caves in search of something. I am familiar with the landscape (probably because I’ve been there so much in dreams). Everything is quite putrid, dark and falling apart. I never find what I am looking for.
Someone told me this is a search for spirituality. I hope not because I’m not getting any closer.
You know Christopher Durang’s play THE ACTOR’S NIGHTMARE? I once had a pretty entertaining variation on that dream. I was in college, studying theatre, and it was rehearsal time. We were working in a rehearsal hall, someplace other than where the play was to be held, and the set was represented by tape on the floor. My scene was coming up, so I stood up and got ready to go to the tape on the floor that represented the door. Before I did, I thought it would be a good idea to fish my script out of my backpack and take one more look at my lines. The script was for a different play than the one I thought I was rehearsing. Panicking, I walked over to the stage manager and peered over her shoulder at her script. Her script was for a third play!
I have the “can’t get where I’m going” dream quite often.
I also have a recurring type of dream wherein I’ve gone back to school. Occasionally it’s college, but more often it’s high school. This usually morphs into the “oh my god, it’s the exam and I haven’t read the book or been to the class” nightmare.
Last night, I dreamed we had a pool. It was great, except someone kept pushing a lawnmower around the edge and getting grass in the nice clean water.
Packing. My recurrent dream — almost nightly lately — is that I am frantically packing to travel somewhere and everything is going wrong. Sometimes it is a plane I’m trying to catch, sometimes it’s prepartation for a move, or kids heading off to camp, but whatever the specifics, the general feeling is one of failing — the stuff wont fit in the suitcases, time is running out. I read somewhere that this means I am planning for change in my life. If so, I have been preparing for quite a while now and not much has changed as far as I can tell…
I dream that that I can’t find where I parked my car. In the parking dreams, I have a terrible fear that my car has been towed and the dread surounds how I will retrieve it.
Such typical anxiety dreams. Mine are about either high school or college. In high school I put my stuff in my locker on the first day and then never go back. All of a sudden it’s exam time and I can’t open the locker to get my stuff out…..
In college I sign up for a math class and then don’t go all semester and then all of a sudden it’s exam time….
Di: You should write that as a story…I know it would sell! I’d read it!
Now, about dreams….strangely enough, most of my dreams end up coming true, or I fight hard for them NOT to come true. I dreamed before my son was born that I would “lose” him someday…not to death, but to something amorphous. Actually, I guess what my mind was trying to tell me was my son was on temporary loan until he grew up and I “lost” my baby to adulthood. It’s happened. He starts Basic Training for Marine Reserves tomorrow morning around 4 am when they pick him up from his home in NC and take him to Parris Island, SC, recruit base. I know, I tried to talk him out of it, but I’ve prayed about it, and I think he’s supposed to do this. He’s going in for Reserves, and they’re paying for his college degree in whatever he wants….probably computer something or other, or perhaps music. He’s a wonderful trumpet player. I’m not the only one that thinks so, actually <G>.
Now, my main dreams lately seem to end up turning into stories, or at least informing a plot point or character that jumps into the middle of my stories and hijacks them. That’s how my newest work in progress began: I started a novel about 10 years ago, as a rehearsal project, in fact, for a real novel I had in the back of my mind. Playing with characters, putting them in dire peril, etc. etc. with no clear path to where I was going. Well, a Florida panther (the live kind, not the hockey kind) kept popping up in the novel, and pulling the plot, such as it was, completely off course. That’s when I finally figured out: I was writing the wrong book! So I scrapped it into a side file on my computer, bought a new laptop with some house sale money, and started over. That’s when it started pouring out of my mind and onto the keyboard. It probably won’t see the light of day for at least another year…after rewrites…but it’s the best thing I’ve ever written..and I’m afraid to let it go. It’s taken over my life.
And it really started with a nightmare…the golden eyes of a panther, Kowechobee (Seminole for panther), staring at me in the darkness of an Everglades night…snarling…and turning into a human being with a very strange plan….that included killing, and maiming, and bombing…and I woke up sweating…sat down at the computer and started.
I have no idea what will finally come out…but it’s called “Path of the Setting Sun”, and I’ve found out more things about Florida’s past than I knew was out there…and I hope and pray the little 8th grade English teacher editor that lives in the back of my mind keeps quiet..and let’s me finish, errors and all. When I finally write THE END on the final rewrite….I’ll dedicate the book to my grandmother, who always knew I could do it…and thank a nightmare that woke me up.
Anxiety dreams are so common, it’s weird. I too have had the “I didn’t go to class all semester” dreams more than once. To the point that i once had to get the damn diploma out of the damn drawer and look at it to get the image to leave me.
Most of the dreams i remember are hotel dreams, not surprisingly. Can’t find the room, the room is so far away from the lobby I need to take a special tram to get there, floors and floors of lobbies, check-ins, confusing hallways. oy. I’m guessing its decades of convention going and a mobility impairment – not too deep, is it?
but OH do I REALLY DISLIKE dreams as a fictional construc and I really am glad you’ve avoided using them for the most part. It’s trite and for me, not very believable since getting the clue from a pun or image in a dream seems so massively unlikely. It seems like a lazy way to work toward the solution – oh, i’ll have him DREAM IT, yeah – and when you remember as few as I do and they seem so either obvious or outlandish, it seems fake.
Though last night’s dream of attending a huge (charity?) performance where I think my guys The Flying Karamazov Brothers (ho!) were on stage and Cheech and Chong were interrupting so much that a bunch of us in the audience starting chanting “Cheech and Chong SUCK! Cheech and Chong SUCK!” would probably not give me a clue to…well um, anything, now would it?
I’ve been on this one particular muscle relaxer for months now for TMJ. When I started with it, I began to have incredible, vivid dreams with actual plots. I’d never dreamed like this before. During one of my monthly visits to the oral surgeon, he asked, “So how are those dreams?” I hadn’t mentioned anything about them to him, but he said it’s a very common side effect of the drug I’m on. I try to remember them, write them down, but usually forget.
Karen — I guess I should be glad my TMJ is only bad enough to have a tylenol w/codeine now and then.
My first journey dream was, I think, in 6th grade, when I dreamed I couldn’t seem to get to the school Christmas concert (it was still the Christmas concert in the 80s though we certainly had multicultural songs). The event had passed–it was now summer, yet I was wearing the too-warm white dress I’d coveted and was trying to get there, ducking under sprinklers and wandering through maze-like buildings, never able to get out.
The most remarkable variations on the theme are a) the building is an Escher-like trap; b) I’m driving or riding my bike or riding a bus to the destination and the vehicle will.not.stop. Rarely the variation is that I can’t get home from a far-off place that I really don’t want to be in any longer (read: Kentucky).
These dreams generally don’t leave me as discombobulated as the ones where I’ve betrayed someone I love, or they’ve betrayed me.