Dream On

"Half my life's in books' written pages. Live and learn from fools and from sages. You know it's true; all these things come back to you." -- Aerosmith

Six years ago, when it came time to choose classes for my senior year of high school, I petitioned for permission to take more classes than normally allowed. My request was approved, I carefully chose my five-and-a-half classes, meticulously plotted out my schedule... and was foiled by timeslot conflicts. I was left with half a class to fill after I rearranged things, and motivated solely by the Honors curve it offered, I chose Psychology in Literature.

"I was in an outdoor cafe and the sky turned red. I looked to the west and saw a mushroom cloud. A fireball started towards us, rolling across the land. Some dude in the cafe started chanting 'USA! USA!' which struck me as the downright worst thing to say or feel at the moment." -- 12.20.2003

I don't remember too much about the class, but I'll never forget one of the teacher's weirder requests. On our first day of class, she introduced The Metamorphosis by discussing the importance of dreams to writers. Then, as a tool for inspiration and self-analysis, she asked us to start recording our dreams.

"I was in the desert at dusk with a machine gun. Bruce Willis, Steve Buscemi, the entire family from 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding,' and I were camped out on the highland, while Louis XIV, Lucius Malfoy, some storm troopers, and my old lab partner were on the lowland behind a rock." -- 11.03.2003

Every day for eight months, I kept a notebook and a green pen next to my bed and wrote down anything that crossed my unconscious mind. The practice stopped once I finished high school, and almost as punishment, my ability to recall my dreams diminished as well.

"He ran up to me, started telling me about this petite blond girl that he met, and asked me to help him find her. I agreed to help and off we went, wandering the streets, calling her name. I was searching half-heartedly because I was upset at the prospect of handing him over to someone else, but I just wanted him to be happy." -- 09.29.2003

I dug out my old dream notebook today, just to see if my seventeen year-old subconscious was more insightful than I remember. The entries shocked me; apparently, I was dreaming about dilemmas, crushes, and life crises weeks and sometimes months before my conscious mind acknowledged their existence. (Some of the stranger and/or more insightful entries are scattered between these paragraphs.) Sparked by this realization -- as well as two recent dreams on two consecutive nights that were so strange and interesting that I can't get them out of my mind -- I resumed recording my dreams this morning.

"I was a contestant on The Apprentice and had to search someone's living room for index cards bearing my name. No problem, I thought... then Donald Trump stole my glasses." -- 03.19.2004

In Thursday's dream, a man and I walked through a small-town street somewhere in the south. We entered a store filled with nothing but tomatoes and tomato products and started kissing between the beefsteaks and the heirlooms.

"Then I saw a man in black climbing the stairs to my new apartment, and I knew that the mob had hired him to kill Johnny. I had no idea who Johnny was and had never seen him before in my life, but my dream self seemed to be pretty attached to this guy. I snuck up on the assassin, disarmed him, smashed his head against the banister, and flung him over it." -- 09.23.2003

In Friday's dream, I was staying in a cabin in the Catskills, heard a weird noise in the bathroom, and walked in on someone horrifying in the shower. I freaked out, but my shower intruder locked eyes with me, spoke rationally, and I calmed down instantly.

"I went to spend the night at Columbia University and forgot pajamas and a change of clothes. I was staying in a room with eight other girls and all of them were borrowing my toiletries but refused to help with the clothing situation." -- 04.13.2004

My notebook and green pen are next to my bed. I'm looking forward to what tonight may bring.

"I was in school and my kidneys disintegrated. I ran to JS for help and he massaged my back so I'd live for five hours rather than three." -- 10.12.2003