dreams, lost and found

images from dark passage, explorations of abandoned buildings

so, i've long been interested in dreams, what they mean, etc. but i don't subscribe to the literal translation of dreams; that is, i don't own a 'dream journal,' or any books that purport to 'interpret' your dreams for you. instead i think that what you feel when you are having them, and the emotions you have as you awaken from them are the most important thing, not, 'you dreamed of an oven--that represents you mother.' or 'an open umbrella is a woman.'

not buying it. it isn't that simple, i don't think. if dreams are your subconscious mind playing around with images, thoughts, and emotions that you experience in your waking life--that is, images, thoughts and emotions that you normally process with your conscious mind--then there is no real way for your conscious mind to logically deal with them. they are pure creations of the subconscious, a place that, by definition, we cannot get to consciously. therefore, any attempt to fence them in with conscious thought is worse than useless--it alters the pictures and feelings by forcing them to fit into categories for which they are simply not meant.

one of my favorite authors, william burroughs wrote an interesting and strange (believe it or not :) book about dreams late in his life, called 'my education.' in it he posits that the dream world we sometimes get to see in our sleep is the real world, and what we are living in from day to day in our waking hours is fake, a construct designed to confuse and hinder us, to prevent us from understanding 'reality.' he refers to something he calls the 'dream-wiper,' who comes along in the morning to wipe away your tiny glimpses of reality, and place you squarely back into your fake, grey, unimaginative world.

i'm not sure i agree with all that, but i think he is onto something with the notion that there is a world in there that is separate from this one, and that it is one we cannot fathom consciously. and, the book is especially interesting in that, as a writer who wrote so eloquently of strange, almost mocking worlds that mirror our own, burroughs has seen some bizarre and powerful images--whether they were in his head, or the result of heroin withdrawal is really immaterial--that have populated his books throughout his career, and which somehow resonate even more than so-called reality.

so, i admit it: i do like to write down dreams, when they are clear and when they seem to be particularly disturbing/resonant/emotional. i use some of the images and feelings in stories; in particular i seem to always have dreams in which i am trying to get somewhere that i really need to be, usually through some large and unpopulated building, perhaps somewhat crumbling, with many twists and turns. (that might be why i like that dark passage site so much; the images almost seem to have come from my dreams.) interestingly, there is almost always a door or passage i go through which is the wrong way to go, and through which i cannot go back, like a one-way door.

analyze that, mr. freud. :)

anyway, here's one from last night. don't ask what me what it means, and please don't try to have me committed:

12.4.07

two very distinct and sharp dreams, the first of which I recall better. There is a conference of some kind, a work retreat, and I am in a strange town with a bunch of people from work, only I don’t know a lot of them. There are some people from coop’s, sandi, specifically, but I don’t recognize most of them.

We are at some large and sprawling complex, many low-lying buildings with almost a military air about them, or at least with that cheap, government feel, like old state universities used to have. At first we are all hanging out in a common area, talking casually about what we are here for and what is going to happen. It seems there is to be a restructuring of the way we do business, whatever business it is (although there are coop’s people here, the workplace we all share in the dream isn’t the restaurant.)

Soon we are called to the meeting, and everyone takes off. For some reason, I have to go elsewhere before I go to the meeting, and I am separated from the group. Naturally, this leads to me being unable to find the room where this big ol’ important meeting is taking place. I search through this desolate and broken-down compound, and often the doors are unavailable to me, so I end up crawling through windows. at one point I see a car that is jammed up against and part-way into a building’s window, so I crawl into the car, and attempt to get through its safety glass which has been replaced with a plastic board of some kind. Every room I get into is desolate, unlit, and dusty, and has no egress into other areas of the building.

At one point I do encounter a sort of reception area, where busy people are running around and there is a front desk type of situation, but I don’t ask anyone for directions. I am walking down a hallway, thinking I am making progress toward my goal, when it suddenly occurs to me that I can use my cell phone. I call Nikki, and as I am asking her directions, the phone cuts out. I try in vain to get her on the phone again, but to no avail. Then I hear her voice on the intercom saying, ‘Kurt? Can you hear me? You want to go down the hall to the left…’ etc.

I follow the instructions as best I can, and end up on a lawn with all the people from before, who were attending this meeting. They are on a break of sorts. I ask sandi what’s going on, and she says that they didn’t want to start without me. Apparently darth vader is leading this meeting, and he just stood at the front of the room shuffling through papers, waiting for me. The other thing sandi informs me of is that it looks like I might have been chosen to lead in the new configuration of the organization that is being announced today, because everyone else attending got only a thin folder with a form paper inside, whereas they held back a crystal orb of some kind that it seemed like darth was waiting to give to me.