Chapter 9. Dreaming

Am I dreaming?

Am I dreaming? It’s hard to tell. I must have forgotten how nice things seem. Maybe more lucid, or less focused, more fluid. I seem to be guided by things I can’t see. If I’m dreaming, please, don’t wake me up. You might try to pinch me though I may dream it doesn’t matter.

Apropos

Patients of Jungian therapy dream Jungian dreams, and Freudians Freudian. Perls said everything in your dream is you; however, not in my dreams. In my dreams, I can dream without regard for interpretations of people I’ve just met. I can solve any problem, open any door, and break the laws of physics. My dreams are just for me, whether I share them or keep them secret. It would be horrible if you could change my dreams, but you cannot.

The god of dreams

The god of dreams is powerless, yet his temples are magnificent.

Being awake

I dreamed I wasn’t dreaming, awake as you know you are. I was driving on a freeway and thinking about things, as I often do, about energy and ignorance, about wings and air resistance. I dreamed I was flying, but, since flying’s difficult without a lot of energy, instead, I dreamed I was running or riding a bicycle, with air blowing past me and my eyes watering. And I was definitely awake.

Famous dreams

Jacob slept in the dessert with a stone for his pillow and dreamed of a ladder that reached to heaven. * Pharoah dreamed metaphorical dreams that were difficult for everyone to interpret except Joseph. * Friedrich August Kekulé (who discoved the structure of benzene) dreamed of the ouroborus biting its own tail. * Dorothy was knocked on the head and dreamed of the land of Oz in Technicolor over the rainbow. * Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream that his children would not be judged by the color of their skin. * Paul McCartney dreamed a melody without lyrics or a title. It was “Yesterday.”

“Life is but a dream within a dream.”

Although he often wrote about dreaming and the confusion between life, the stage, and dreams, Shakespeare didn’t write this. Romeo said, “I am afeard. Being in night, all this is but a dream, Too flattering-sweet to be substantial.” Close, but not quite. And Bottom had a dream, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and declared “it shall be called Bottom’s Dream, because it hath no bottom.” Edgar Allen Poe wrote “All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.”

Entering, lingering, leaving

As you sleep, your body cycles four or five times each night out of deep sleep, which has no dreaming, into a state in which you dream and maybe waken. It is only for you to say, when you come to a door, whether you enter, but if you enter you may linger or explore but you cannot stay.