You can have vivid dreams if you leave a nicotine patch on, but since I put my last Nicoderm patch on seven years ago, I can't attribute these very stirring dreams to that. Per The Cosby Show, I have also seen that eating a hoagie before bed can make the creatures from HR Puffingstuff appear, but my diet hasn't been all that bad lately, notwithstanding my periodically eating like I, too, am pregnant with twins. What resonates with me, though, and what logically makes the most sense is that our dreams become particularly vivid when we are operating in times of stress.
Ah, yes, stress. There are a lot of demons right now - work, family, etc. Furthermore, with the twins arrival just in time for the holidays, we have been HUFFING to get their room ready, laundry cleaned and packed away, and all the other crap that just needs to get done DONE.
As such, Gracie is being pushed pretty hard: new room, sleeping in a bed, new school, oh yeah, and potty training because obviously we haven't been putting enough on her. Accordingly, she's much more attached to Becky - and her new teacher, interestingly - and is much more likely to LOSE IT over seemingly meaningless things. Of course, as two Jews who like to blame everything on ourselves on a good day, Becky and I are beside ourselves with guilt. But, Gracie has always been a trooper and is delivering once more, taking it in stride as much as two-year-old is capable. What I'm stuck on is that a two-year-old shouldn't have to take anything in stride. As when she was a newborn, this too will pass. Then, the twins will be here. Rinse and repeat.
Is it any surprise that with all this pent up angst that my subconscious mind is on overdrive?
So, the dreams. Last week, I had a dream that I was in Georgetown Hospital. Nevermind that I've never been there and this wasn't Georgetown Hospital based on the building - which I have seen - and the vista wasn't consistent with that of the actual hospital. On the southwest horizon, over the Potomac - which wasn't the Potomac - was an enormous white tornado forming; a billowing, white, upside-down triangle, narrowing as it approached the ground. I suddenly got this feeling that I needed to dig in and brace myself. The sky darkened, the rain and wind started, the power went out. I looked out of the window and down in Georgetown - which wasn't Georgetown - I saw two tornadoes, baby tornadoes, maybe 100 feet high and so thin so that you could see through them, playfully skipping up the north shore of the Potomac. Despite the power being out, I got a sense of relief; a "that wasn't so bad" feeling. This one is easy: the big tornado is the feat we are taking on and how we see it; the power going out is our actual hurdle(s); and the two tornadoes are the twins, more bark than bite, skipping through the newborn phase before you know it.
But, last night, I had a really weird one. So weird, it prompted me to write this. I was on a beach in Mexico being held captive by a drug cartel that looked like members of the Powhatan tribe. They were going to kill me. No one said it, I just knew. The leader looked like Wes Studi - of Magua and "Geronimo" fame - and then transformed into Bob from "La Bamba", played by Esai Morales. If you remember "La Bamba", Bob was manic and intense and this guy was no less of either. I got the sense when Druglord Wes Studi was there that my life might be spared. But, when Druglord Bob from "La Bamba" appeared, I knew I was going to die. He screamed, showed his teeth at me, and turned black as coal. All of a sudden, I found myself in a jungle with the cartel/Native Americans. The end was coming. The feeling began to overpower me that I was going to die. But then, nothing. I just walked away. Literally, walked away. Despite this feeling that death by their hands was eminent, I nonchalantly took leave of these people. And I did so completely unmolested. I walked up a very steep hill, about 50 feet high, covered with mid-Atlantic deciduous trees and Virginia pines - remember, I was in a jungle - that reminded me of such a hill in First Landing State Park in Virginia Beach.
Upon reaching the summit, I ensconced myself in the brush. I lifted my hands as if I were holding a sniper rifle. I found myself looking through a scope - I now had a scope - and had the leader, who had now taken the face of a woman I see at a bus stop I pass on my way home from work, in my cross hairs. He/she is holding a rope and pulling very strenuously. I jerk my hands up as if I have taken a shot and the leader's body goes limp and is pulled along by the rope he/she had been holding. I felt a sudden burst of liberation. I no longer feared for my life. I got up, turned around, and ran.
Suddenly, I was running up the Mexican beach. For some reason, I knew this was a Pacific-facing beach and the water was on my left, so I knew I was running up the beach. I turned inland and was running on a street. I saw an old Amtrak train - with the red, white, and blue stripes - lumbering into a station. I heard the bell clanging - ding, ding, ding, ding - and a conductor's voice announcing the arrival in this nondescript Mexican beach town. I knew I had to get on that train. The closer I got to it, the freer I felt. I knew this feeling from other dreams. This what Billy Hayes or Andy Dufrane must have felt. The air was different. The world around me was completely immaterial. I was free. I ran faster, despite being exhausted from the distance I had already run. I never turned around, but I knew the cartel members/Native Americans were not far behind.
I suddenly found myself at home with Becky, Grace, and a bunch of people who I supposedly knew well in my dream, but knew even in the dream I didn't know in real life. The house looked different. I looked outside and saw two SUV's speed up my driveway. I knew it was the cartel. I picked up the phone and called the FBI - I knew their number. I rationally, but emotionally, explained what was happening. It was like talking to a 911 operator. The man at the other end wanted to stay on the phone with me until the FBI agents arrived. Then, nothing happened. No one entered the house, knocked on the door. Nothing.
I found myself in a car with another person. I looked outside the car and it looked like the setting from the Roman Polanski movie "Chinatown". We crept past a two-story building and the cartel leader - who was Wes Studi again, this time in a zoot suite and hair slicked back into a tight pony-tail - stepped out onto the stoop and suspiciously looked around. "Oh shit!" I whisper-screamed. But, his gaze went right over the car I was in. I knew then that the cartel never came to my house. I had lost them, yet hear I was right in snakepit tempting them to bite. What a fool I was to tempt fate.
The dream trailed off at this point and eventually a woke up. What the hell was that about, I thought. I never remember dreams. As I poured over this, I realized something: there's no sense in trying to interpret the details. They are immaterial. That's why we don't usually remember our dreams. When our dreams, however, produce profound, powerful emotions, that is when we remember them. A feeling being overwhelmed and subsequent relief; that something terrible is inevitable and then sweet deliverance; the realization that you are being an idiot when you should leave well enough alone. Feelings like this stay with us. Our minds want us be intimate with these emotions. It's how we cope with stress and fortify ourselves to be able to absorb it.
I have no doubts that I will continue to have weird dreams for the time-being. I only hope they're weird enough to get me to write about them here.
Bon weekend.
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