Dreamland

My grade-school classmates and I used to convene on the playground during recess and have deep philosophical confabs about the nature of the universe. I vividly remember one topic that generated the briefest discourse: "Would you rather fly or be invisible?" Everyone immediately agreed that flying was the neatest superpower. After all, we had Superman as our role model. Who could invisible people look up to -- Claude Rains? Anyway, we couldn't look up to a superhero we couldn't see. No, we all wanted to fly. End of discussion.

I was already having flying dreams by then. Do you have them? The earliest dream I can remember took place right at that same school, Little River Elementary. The building formed a horseshoe around a vast lawn, and I was hovering over the grass near the library. I wasn't literally flying, I guess, but I was suspended in mid-air, which was cool enough.

My flying dreams since then have taken on a general pattern that rarely changes. Someone is chasing me. It's an urban setting, because I'm usually flying vertically to the safety of rooftops. My pursuer or pursuers are always earthbound, but they're good climbers, and I often have to kick them off the edge of the building. When they hit the ground, they just start climbing again, and that's when I soar horizontally to the next rooftop. These are intense dreams, always fraught with an element of panic. You'd think flying dreams would be fun, but they're usually a matter of life and death.

If I thought I'd be flying like Superman when I was a kid, I was wrong. I always have to make a running start, and then when I shove off of the ground, I often drop after a height of just two or three feet and have to try again. This can be unnerving when someone is trying to kill me. Even once I'm airborne, I sometimes have to struggle in midair to reach a safe altitude. Once in a while, the bad guy will jump up and touch my feet, but I shake him off and keep going.

Only one dream motif feels like a blessing. Whenever I'm descending a flight of stairs (usually a stairwell with many levels), I can jump from the top step and gently land on the bottom one, almost in slow motion. I always try to do this when other people are around so they can envy my agility. If there's a stairwell in my dream, I know I can breathe easily -- it means no one is after me. When I awaken after these dreams, I always feel a touch of disappointment that I can't really do that (whereas after a panic dream, I'm understandably relieved).

Many friends I've spoken to over the years have also had flying dreams. There's one aspect of my dreams, though, that not many people I've known share with me: the settings are always the same. If it's a work dream, it's the same position at the same job with the same co-workers. The stores I go to are the same, as are the homes where I live. This would be normal, I suppose, if these places were an extension of my reality, but they're all dream places. Although I really was an editor for a huge law firm, the law firm in my dreams is completely imaginary and yet never varies. In fact, I recently changed dream jobs and now work in a smaller dream office. Even the streets and neighborhoods are the same, and I've never been there. The only things that change are the plots of each dream. Not only do different things happen, but subsequent dreams pick up where the previous dreams left off. My sister calls these my "sitcom dreams." If there were a laugh track, I'd probably wake up screaming.

Do you dream in color? I found out that I did years ago when I noticed someone in my dream wearing a red shirt. Then a long time later, someone was hurt and I saw their red blood. Red is the only color I'm aware of in my dreams; maybe they're monochromatic. (See my May 7 post about red being my ex-favorite color.)

Every once in a while, I'll dream that I'm reading a book that's real but which I've never really read. When I wake up the next day, I have to rush out and buy it. I was a teenager the first time this happened. The book was Myra Breckenridge by Gore Vidal, a bestseller at the time. I went to Waldenbooks in my local mall and began reading it that night. Yikes. It was a good book, but not one I was quite ready for at 16. Sometimes I'll dream I'm seeing a real movie I've never seen. If it's in theaters, I have to go see it, or I have to rent the DVD or get it from the library. It's a good thing I never dream I'm seeing a house fire or I might wake up and have to go start one.

Do you ever dream you're not the main character? I've observed myself at a distance doing something or talking to someone. I have no idea who the "I" who's watching is supposed to be. But I've found that I'm pretty boring to watch, so I don't have too many of those.

I've heard from various sources that you can never actually dream that you're dead or else you'd be dead for real. (But if you're dead for real, how can you be dreaming?) The closest I came was to see myself (again at a distance) get shot, then disappear through a doorway and drop dead where I can't see me. So I was dead once removed and was able to wake up and still be alive (needless to say).

Why is it that people who say they never dream are so defensive about it? If someone tells me they never dream and I tell them that everyone dreams or else they'd go insane, they raise their voice and tell me in certain terms (as opposed to "no uncertain terms," an unnecessary double negative) that THEY DON'Y DREAM. Why is that? Do they dream shameful things? Do they dream they're dead and think that if they told me, it would come true? Do they dream they belong to the Tea Party? It puzzles me.

Finally, I'm reminded of something Freud said in The Interpretation of Dreams that I always found fascinating. In fact, it's the only part of that book I remember. He said that every dream is a wish fulfillment. As a result, I analyze every dream I have, especially the nightmares, to figure out what it is I really want. My dreams are easy:

I want to fly.
I want to wear something red.
I want to read good books and see good movies.
I never want to join the Tea Party.
I never want to be dead.

Now about being invisible. . . .