#ROW80 1ST QTR POST 20 – I’M DREAMING ABOUT WHAT EXACTLY?

For as far back as people have put chisel to rock and even earlier I’d wager, we’ve wondered about dreams and what they mean. For millennia, people have spent lots and lots of time and brain power analyzing and trying to interpret the meaning of dreams. The meanings vary from time, civilizations and continents and I wonder if there isn’t just a lot of wheel-spinning going on.

This was before the psychologists got involved and I’m sure there we also have the neuro-psycho spin, guaranteed to be verbose, obtuse and farther removed from day to day conversation, as we get closer to the ivy-covered towers of academia, before losing contact with the every day common sense approach altogether and just call it horse shit.

Of course, everyone now, thinks it’s as easy as looking it up on www.dreammoods.com, and for what it’s worth, maybe that’s just as well. The last I heard, our U.S. Congress wasn’t into slaughtering fatted calves or reading entrails, although our current economic policies, or at least the HuffPo headlines argue against that.

No, I’m talking about these everyday dreams. Of late, I’ve had a few memorable ones, and I’m sure they mean something. Just what that something is, though is arguable. I don’t usually remember my dreams, but earlier in the week, my med was changed and after a few nights of very vivid, incoherent, almost psychedelic and very beautiful dreams, I started having dreams like this:

I am on a beach, in Mexico. How I know this, I do not know, I just do. Several people have been warning me that I must be sure and remember to do this one thing and I must not fail. It is a very complicated task. It involves me going from place to place and making sure my secret assignations are met. There is surreptitious dialing of phones. Men and women in dark glasses and trench coats watch up and down streets, as I complete each not-completely-understood task, complete with coded message (“I am a ham”) at each stop.

There is a growing sense of urgency as this mission progresses and time grows short. The feeling of being watched. I fumble with the phone. It is a cheaply made Soviet-era model phone and plays the old pre-WWII Anthem “The Internationale” when it rings (this odd specificity is something always featured in my dreams.) Anyway, it rings like, every 10 minutes, or so, and it’s horrid. I keep trying to dial out on it, but the numbers are hard to punch and they jump around.  As I miss more and more of my assigned tasks, which I still have no idea of what they are supposed to really be, just pawn-type stuff (“Go to the statue of Zapata. There is a pooping pigeon and a newspaper in a trashcan. Talk to the leetle boy with the kite.) The leetle boy with the kite says (“Bite me, ya got the wrong kid, and that’s not Zapata, that’s Lindbergh. Go across the lago, you old bat.”)

So, I’ve messed that up. Eventually, after getting these phone calls, I keep passing this guy who is sort of Salvador Dali-ish, but not really. He is sitting in one of these chairs that lifeguards sit in. He’s got on his little Dali beret, with his stupid Dali mustache, and he’s laughing up a storm. I’m feeling this horrific sense of dread, one I’ve been feeling throughout this whole thing. Why am I here? I think I recognize some of these people, but am really not sure, but there’s a familiarity about this that is haunting me; the phone dialing for one thing. 

I’ve had that frustrating recurring dream for years, where nothing will sit where it’s supposed to be, coupled with the dread that I've forgotten to do something, or study. Not very long ago, I had that horrible dream where I was supposed to take a test in some kind of higher mathematics. I've forgotten to study, and not just for one night, but the whole semester. Sickest feeling. Ever. The fact that I NEVER did that in real life makes not one bit of difference.

An aside. Interestingly, since dealing with “Parkinson’s Disease or non-Parkinson’s Disease, that is the question,” this kind of thing does not frustrate me in real life any more. Well, for the most part. Dialing the phone, no. Trying to type? A whole ‘nother animal. I can get royally pissed if I have to correct. Typically in Chats and that includes Facebook and Twitter it’s stet.

The other frustrating, no, downright terrifying thing in this dream? I wasn’t able to complete this task. Faux-Dali was happy to tell me so. “You’re a failure. You should have just made the Payment when you had the chance. It’s too late now. What will happen if harm comes to them, hmm?” I stand there, head hung in shame. I am miserable.

“It will go worse for you too, if you do not make the Payment before they return home.” Hope. I lift my head and in that instant, understanding comes. I know what I must do. Only, will I have enough time? Will I have the courage to win the day and complete my mission and buck the odds. There’s just one way to find out! I absolutely must pay Andi-Roo’s car insurance, before the Roo family complete with kids drive home from Atlanta, Georgia! Then, I woke up. Thank God. Per dreammoods.com I feel I have let people down, or fell short of my expectations. Thanks, Einsteins.

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This other dream is more like a typical snapshot and I awoke chortling and talking. In this one, I get the impression that I’m back in the Homeless shelter and it feels like it; chaotic and a lot of mouthy people. The usual. I know I’ve mentioned this, but homelessness isn’t exactly going to hone your Charm School manners, if you possessed any prior to finding yourself in that particular predicament. It doesn’t give you leave to be a complete asshole, although assholery does come in handy and I myself, have employed. I know, it is hard to believe I could ever act like that.

Well, it won’t take a soothsayer, dream interpreter, or any of that other babble to figure this one out and believe me this is not how it works in the real world. It would have been a lot calmer if it did in the Homeless shelter, but hey, you can’t have everything. Apparently, we’d all taken the Bus to the same head doctor at the same time and loaded up on our psychotropic meds for the month. Only in my dream, it looked like everyone had gotten at least one backpack’s worth of happy pills.

Back at the shelter, or our shelter, which is really an old converted Victorian-era house, they were all playing “Can You Swap 4 Xantax for 8 Ativans?” in a loud and exuberant fashion. For some reason, everyone was actually getting along! No fighting or anything, just the usual 24-hour, non-stop, par-tay, replete with blunts, malt liquor and I’m sure the crack-doers were there somewhere, along with the other drug-of-choicers. They were getting so loud however, I couldn’t concentrate on the instructions for some new stupid drug I’m supposed to start (something that’s always a problem, with my bipolar and Parkinson’s “features”) so, I hollered out finally, “WOULD YOU ALL SHUT THE HELL UP! IT’S GETTING SO A PERSON CAN’T THINK! Lo and behold, they DID. You could have knocked me over with a feather. This is all sheer fantasy. I don’t need to look at any guide about dreams to know what this represents.