It doesn't matter. I was dreaming. An ordinary dream in which I was kicking some zombie butt when suddenly my dream self realized I was dreaming. It's not the first time this has happened. I've been a lucid dreamer since I was a child. What was interesting about this particular lucid dream is that not only was I acutely aware of the fact that I was dreaming, but that my dream self had powers my corporeal self does not. I'm talking about the ability to bend the rules of physics! Of course, it's nothing new. People have been flying, breathing under water, & falling from great heights without dying (trust me, it happens to me all the time) in their dreams since, well, since people began dreaming, I suppose. But what struck me was how rational my dream self was about the whole thing.
My thought process went something like this: "It's ok, I've had this dream before. These zombies can't hurt me; they aren't real." So, instead of kicking more zombie ass, I went fishing. And in my dreams I take a whole body approach to fishing, which means literally entering the water & swimming with my prey. In essence, I became a fish. I won't go too much into what fish traditionally represent in dreams (the unconscious, fertility, sex, religion, to name a few), instead I'll tell you what dreaming of fish (& being a fish) means to me.
Fish have long been recurring motifs in my dreams (as well as zombies, vampires, snakes, water, & school). They have also been motifs in my recurring dreams (I have dozens!). I have no doubt as to why these motifs surface so frequently. I spent a great part of my childhood fishing & swimming, watching horror movies, & of course, attending school. What interests me is my dream self, a self that is so obviously like me but is not me. I am not always conscious that I am dreaming, but more often than not, I find myself inhabiting a world that is completely within my control. In my dreams, I can do anything. Be anything.
So, how about you? What do you dream about? How often do you dream? Do you dream at all? I'm dying to know.
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On a Dream
John Keats
As Hermes once took to his feathers light,
When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon’d and slept,
So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright
So play’d, so charm’d, so conquer’d, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;
And seeing it asleep, so fled away,
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe where Jove griev’d that day;
But to that second circle of sad Hell,
Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows—pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kiss’d, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.
&
To Sleep
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embowered from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength, for darkness burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed casket of my soul.
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What post about dreams would be complete without Keats?!
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