Intense Dreams

One of the things I look forward to every spring/summer is the day being longer. Now that we're well past the equinox, the sun comes up noticeably earlier and goes down quite a bit later. This combats the frustrating experience of going in to a meeting or rehearsal or something during the day (say, at 5pm) and coming out when it's dark (by like 6:30). On the other end of the day, it makes sunlight pour into my room in the morning, which is a great way to wake up. If my alarm goes off and it looks like it's morning, it's much easier for me to tell myself, "it's morning, time to get up!" and bound out of bed, fresh-faced and excited for a new day. Well, maybe not all that, but it sure beats leaving your house and thinking, "it's still nighttime and I should be asleep."

The second side effect of the morning sunlight happens when I don't have a specific reason to get up. The sunlight wakes some part of me up a bit and brings me into a very intense king of R.E.M. sleep. I'm fairly sure that's how it works. What I'm getting at is, the kinds of dreams I have on lazy summer mornings are unparalleled by almost any other experience of my life. Not only are all five senses fully engaged, but I get emotionally caught up in what's going on in the story. I often have the experience of waking up and not knowing where I am, or even WHO I am. For all intents and purposes what your brain experiences during such a dream is indistinguishable from reality. During most of the year I'd say I have one of these dreams about once a fortnight. During the spring and summer months, with their lazy mornings in sun-filled bedrooms, it happens frequently. Recently it's been every single morning; I'm not sure where I am and I feel as if I've been physically and emotionally ripped out of some situation. I kept a dream journal a few summers back and it was really fun. I'd start writing as soon as my eyes opened. I'd commonly get a page or two of really descriptive characters and settings, dialogue, plotlines, emotions and secret intents. Whole narratives would spit out of me every morning and I'd write them with as little non-dream thought as possible. When I'd look back there were bits of my waking life blended together with total fantasy, culling stories from every aspect of my imagination. The catch was that I could spend an hour every morning thinking and writing about my dreams. So the dream journal fell to morning productivity, but the dreams will probably never stop.

"Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives." - William Dement

This morning I woke up almost in tears because in my dream I'd been writing this beautiful song for a woman I was desperately in love with. The coolest part is I remembered a little of the song, and I went and figured it out with my trusty acoustic guitar. Now I wouldn't say it was as beautiful and life-changing as it felt in the dream, but the circumstances of it's composition are a bit different in this reality. I also found this written on the notepad next to my bed, "Now if there's one thing that a man hates, it's when something makes him stop." It's apparently from another reality-bending dream earlier in the morning, and I believe it was a joke told in a sort of Duke's of Hazard Narrator type of way. Good times!

So if you encounter me shortly after waking up in the morning, cut me some slack. I was just about to scream because I couldn't save the city, and now I'm in this bed and I can't remember my own name.