When someone tells me they don't dream, or can't remember their dreams, I find it a stretch to believe it. Oh, I don't think they're lying. It's just that I can remember in detail dreams I had when I was 3 years old. And the old question, "Do you dream in color?" I know I do. I see colors in my sleep more vividly than any during my waking hours.
For instance, take the strange dream I had the other night, as it ties all this together in a tidy package, albeit the wrapping is a bit bizarre:
Somehow I found myself in a hospital bed. All I kept thinking over and over again in my mind was, "Dear God, my memories are gone. My memories are gone. Please don't let that happen." Over and over again. And suddenly out of nowhere I was zooming down the highway on the back of a friend's motorcycle and to my left was hillside after hillside covered in the most brilliant blue imaginable. In the dream I knew what had happened. I had actually recovered a memory. A real-life memory that I had long forgotten from around 1989. A motorcycle camping trip with a dear friend in northern California, near Yosemite. We came around a corner and my breath was taken away by this gorgeous sight. I don't know if they were lupines or bluebells or what, but it was so beautiful you couldn't take it all in. I can still feel my eyes widening, trying to see it all at once. See it hard enough to memorize it because I certainly never did want to forget it.
The day after this dream, thoughts would pop into my head all day long. Things I had forgotten about all these years. Being caught in a thunderstorm at the top of a mountain and riding through hail until we found somewhere to pull over. Just pulling over somewhere to camp and feasting on sourdough bread and a bottle of wine we had bought at a Napa winery.
If dreams are our subconscious trying to speak to us, I think mine was telling me to resurface these happy times. Lately I need any happiness I can get and this served the purpose well. Lovely mellowed happiness without any fear of it being taken away.
Monday, February 1, 2010
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