I am not one to casually recount dreams, especially for their entertainment value. I don't believe their narratives work in a conventional manner for sharing. This is especially true due to their inimitable ability to use direct emotions inside our heads, It is also due to their ability to construct contexts out of thin air, like in Science Fiction or Fantasy but without the tedious explanations, instantly communicating them as "real" in the dreamer's head. It's a brilliant trick, but not one that exists outside of dreaming. So if one tells of a dream one might have to explain all that nearly incommunicable context and feeling, sometimes laboriously, and most of the time it doesn't translate quite right anyway.
What's that?
No. The nearly 3,000 blog posts you have read here are not dreams at all. They are all real!!!
Yes, I'll let you catch your breath. Maybe you should sit down for a moment.
No, no, I'm glad you asked.
Despite all of this, I had a dream last night.
It was very simple. And it barely used any of its fancy tricks. And it was very realistic in a flat, translatable way. But, alas, it had that other quality that dreams sometimes have; it came with a small compulsion to share it. Which I was only willing to do if I used it as an excuse to write all of this above.
I was at the library, my library, where I work.
My manager said to me: "I'm thinking of volunteering here. Do you think Wednesdays would be a good day for me to come in and volunteer?"
I was slightly horrified because this manager is here way too much already as far as I'm concerned. So I delicately replied "I think that sometimes we are compelled to do things that aren't good for us. Like sometimes I eat too much cheese or I stay up too late on my computer. When you are here too much you get a little crazy. Have you considered taking up a hobby? Any hobby whatsoever?"
I looked at her hat.
"Would you maybe like to start knitting?"
That's the whole dream. It doesn't have so much to work with on a narrative level. But the main good reason to share dreams is for their rich psychological elements. Which, ultimately, makes all of this okay. I do discuss psychology freely in this blog.
But more in a dreamlike manner.
No comments:
Post a Comment
If you were wondering, yes, you should comment. Not only does it remind me that I must write in intelligible English because someone is actually reading what I write, but it is also a pleasure for me since I am interested in anything you have to say.
I respond to pretty much every comment. It's like a free personalized blog post!
One last detail: If you are commenting on a post more than two weeks old I have to go in and approve it. It's sort of a spam protection device. Also, rarely, a comment will go to spam on its own. Give either of those a day or two and your comment will show up on the blog.