Dreams of Ordinary Men

I love dreams.  Even when they’re bad, they can tell us so much if we listen. Oh, sure you should never read too much into dreams, but if you listen, you can  glean little lights from your psyche: who you are, who you think you are and who you think you should be—All available to those who look.

Take my dream last night.  Last night I lived in my old house and opened the front door when I heard a knock. The door stuck like it always did, and crack-poped when it released the jamb, just like I remembered it. Even the dirty aluminum security screen door was there, protecting me from whoever was outside.

In this dream, the people outside were five Scotsmen, of varying degrees of maturity.  How do I know they were Scots? They work kilts and spoke in brogues.

“You stole what’s ours,” the leader spoke in the aforementioned brogue.
“Uh, what?”  I said in my nondescript American English.
“Our birthright. You stole in. Now you pay.” He said, “you,” but “you” sounded like “yee” on his lips. Then as an expression of displeasure, all five spat on my door. It was dream, so real-life physics carried the phlegm no further than the aluminum mesh. It stopped, and dripped, turning brown, mingling with the dirt and dust that already settled there.

I was as grateful as could be expected.

They were as courteous as could be expected: the Scots spat and left.

In the mists of dream magic, and Scottish curses, my dream jumped forward.  I’m no longer standing in my living room staring at a spit screen. I’m standing in the street, staring at a foreclosure sign. The shift to the future hasn’t unsettled me, but the recent dream turn of events are a little too close to home. My house has been foreclosed, everything I own is missing, including all my unpublished fiction, and even my dog is gone.  It’s like a bad country song.

I’m dream-ported to a dark wood paneled one room apartment. It’s bare. Dream knowledge reveals that it’s where I live now.  I’m alone, because that’s how this dream has me. There is a knock at the door, so at least I have visitors.

I open the door. It’s the Scots. They’ve come to gloat. See, these bad things didn’t just happen, The Scots did it to me. They forced the foreclosure, they stole my stories and, as the little old short Scot holding a leash proves, they took my dog. Cosmo licks the old Scot and sits at his feet.

I explain to them that I don’t know why they’ve done this: I don’t have their heirloom, or birthright, or whatever they call it. They’ve taken everything, so, as they can see, I don’t have it.

“We can’t see that,” one said.

“What do you mean? You’ve left me with nothing!”

“We can’t see it. It’s invisible. You still hide it.”

“Uh…” dream me doesn’t know how to argue that logic.

“No matter. We’re not here for the birthright. We’re here for the revenge.”

They leave, taking my dog with them. There’s also a book on a shelf that I’ve been reading.  One of them grabs it as he leaves. No one spits.

The dream rushes forward again. I’m watching an entertainment show. The host is interviewing a family of five Scots who’ve written several books that are all now best sellers.  Sure enough, I recognize the Scots as quickly as I dream recognize the books. They’re my Scots and my books. The Scots edited the books, found agents and publishers and are now the next big Scottish thing since Fat Bastard, all because of what I wrote.

After raking in millions of dollars and riding the fame train as far as they can on what I’ve written, the Scots stop by again. They’re not sorry, but it was never their plan to become so rich off of my stuff. To make things even, they give me back my dog. And to remind me of what I stole from them, they give me a ghost, who hates me. Who puts me down whenever he can.

After this, I decide to find the Scotts’ invisible heirloom. I’ve got nothing else to do. After an epic dream quest with my dog and antagonist ghost, I find the thing.  I don’t know what it is: it’s invisible, but when I find it, I know that I have in fact had it all along—whatever it is. It’s magic. It gives a little bit of luck to it’s holder. Not great amounts, just little blessings, if you will. And like any other kind of magic heirloom, there is a always a side effect. The side effect of this invisible thing? The possessor is doomed to write unsellable stories.

After the revelation, I woke up. I was happy. Sure the dream was vague, but never read too much into vague dreams. Stick to the obvious. There, on the discernible surface, I found a meaning worth clutching to my heart: I’m gonna get my dog back.

I love dreams and I really love happy endings.

The Problem with the Dream is the Dreamer.

The nice thing about writing is that the words are always at my fingertips. They may jump the tracks on the way to my lips, but my tips are always on track and on time

I’m a writer not a talker.

At least not about the substantial.  Words are bombs to be left in backlit silhouetted font corners.

“It says here that…”

Boom!

Conversations are a different matter. Conversations are about things that are close. Conversationalists have to stay and live the aftermath.  With the mouth, I’m always quick with the wrong joke, or slow to speak the right words.

When it comes to writing though, I always know what to say, and I have time to edit.  An instant in writer world is like hours in the real world.  It’s like the opposite of the dream world.

In dreams, you can relive life’s river rapids in less time than it takes drool to trickle down your cheek. In dreams your decisions may not be right, but they are interesting.

Usually.

Have you ever had boring dreams? Have you ever woken up and thought, “Man, I need to go to work for some excitement.”  It’s rare, but it does happen. Those dreams are worse than the dreams where you think you’ve woken up, but you’re still asleep.

And almost as bad as the dream where you scream in your dream but you have no voice for that scream to escape. I’ve had that dream a lot lately.  A few nights ago MyQueen woke me up because I was mew-whining in bed, and kicking all the sheets down.

“Honey, if you’re going to kick the sheets, kick them over here. It’s cold.” 

The next morning she asked me about the dream. 

“I dunno.”  I said.  I couldn’t remember the dream. Only that I was trapped in some net and I needed out. I couldn’t even scream to make anybody hear me. In my dream, even the mew-whine wouldn’t come out and I was trapped, for what seemed like forever.

“I had a weird dream last night,” said MyQueen, trying to start her dream conversation. “I dreamed that I woke up, and walked out to the living room, and you were on the couch, watching porn.”

“Can I have your dream?” I thought I’d ask, it sounded more appealing than the one I’d had.

“I was pissed.” She continues with the details. She doesn’t need to; she had me at “porn.”

“Maybe we should trade dreams.” I offer. I wouldn’t have been pissed and she’s a strategist.  Maybe she can find her way out of the net. Maybe not, but either way, a dream where I watch porn certainly sounds more appealing than a dream where I’m trapped and voiceless.

Odd that those are the only dreams I remember lately. I don’t remember any dreams of promise.  Where are the cool spy dreams I had when I was a kid?

“Chocolate milk, shaken, not stirred.”

I had a dream a few weeks ago where I was teaching a Sunday school class.  I was teaching the kids about Jesus, and his sacrifice, and I started expounding on his birth. In the dream, I was trying to make a point, about the relevance of that birth. In my dream I said, “The most important thing that you need to take from this birth…” and then I burst into tears. Overcome by the enormity of Jesus’ sacrifice and that the concept I tried to convey could not be expressed in mortal words. Then my dream shifted into three pictures of Jesus that sort of looked like FaceBook icons and three broken Q-tips.

Then I woke up.

After that revelation, I woke up, just as befuddled as when I fell asleep. My dreams don’t make any sense to anybody, and lately they’ve made even less sense to me. And yet I cling to them, because these dreams are mine. They’re why I go to sleep. They’re answers to questions that cannot be expressed in mortal words.

And maybe when I figure them out, I’ll have a great story to tell for it.

For now, I blog.