Do you remember your dreams? What proportion of your dreams are good ones?

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2000

Answers

I had a dream where I was in prison. It was terrifying. I was trapped in a cell with the Great Irish Potato Phantom and he wanted me to "toss his salad." I kept asking him what he meant by that and all I would get in reply was that he thought I looked like I had a fierce monkey grip and then made a strange fingering motion with his hands. I couldn't figure out what he meant so he said he was going to go back into time to kill millions of dirty Irish people and then guest star on "Welcome Back Kotter" as Horeshack's brother. It's not natural and I'm not right.

jmazz.com

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2000

The dream I keep having is the dream of the Infinite Library... huge heavy shelves of antique books, floor after floor in all directions around an open central shaft, all unlighted and chill. Somewhere in the stacks are packs of creatures-- the creatures from 'Aliens'. They rove the stacks, shredding the books with dripping teeth... And I'm there in the shadows, armed. I'm there to hunt the creatures, to stop them Eating The Words. The most important thing is to stop them doing that-- Eating The Words. The dream goes on and on: stalking them by night-vision goggles through the stacks, stepping over shredded and half-dissolved books, centering them in laser sights and blasting them, trying to avoid their ambushes, trying to save the Words...

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2000

i had a dream of a pristine mythical land that made vallhala look like that shity dirt mall at the intersections of 24a and 136...well any how, in my dream, in this land, the land that was better than pot and beer mixed together there were couches...everywhere I looked was couches, now these couches were not the kind you wana sit on...but the kind you wana sleep on...it was fan-fuckin-tastic...and i took a couch nap of epic proportion

P.S. -Quote of the day- when Bruce Lee was asked of the trials and tribulations of prejudice he was forced to endure as an asian american he replied..."be like water...like water my friends"

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2000

I usually remember my dreams but, of late, they are strangely hidden. One I do remember is from the other night. I was sitting in a creaky kitchen chair in a bare wooden room ...likely a pantry, of some sort.

There was a woman - a composite of my ex-girlfriend and several other women - who stood near the door kneeling. She told me to be very still while she listened for mushrooms! As she knelt, I watched motes of colors swirl around her head. I remember thinking, she's going to explode. Then I woke up.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2000

Funny you should have this topic today. I spent 15 years in radio, most of the on the air. I would periodically have 'performance anxiety' dreams, like the ones you mention, where I'm on the air, but the record won't cue, I can't find the tape, there's dead air, etc. Since I've been out of the business for 6 years, they rarely happen anymore, but last night I had that very dream! I believe it's because I'm getting ready to take one of those Microsoft networking exams this week and I'm a bit anxious about it.

Right after I got fired from my last radio job (that business is all about getting fired), I had a dream where I'd gone back and been rehired. As I walked out of the station, these fierce-looking dogs came charging at me, and I ran back in. It's the most easy-to- decipher dream I've ever had: I need a job, as the saying goes, "to keep the wolves from the door".

I've had this recurring dream, though not lately, that I've killed and buried someone and thought I got away with it, but someone has found out. How creepy is that? Most of my dreams are just normal, goofy stuff. I heard once that some Native American tribes believed that dreams were reality and what goes on here on earth is an illusion.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2000

You know, this topic reminded me of a past desire to try lucid dreaming. I never got around to it though. And I don't know about the validity of the whole idea, i.e., whether it really can be learned.

The few times, I've become self-aware that I was dreaming, I woke up within the next few seconds.

I suppose there is a reason why the brain may be mostly wired to "not" know you're dreaming. Either, perhaps you wouldn't get any real rest, or your dream life would be so far more exciting than your waking life, that you would never want to get out of bed.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2000

The first dream I've remembered in months was last night. And, how insipid is this, I dreamed I gave birth to twins. Both the twins and the pregnancy were surprises. A woman with a clipboard kept coming in to my room to find out what I wanted to name them, but my boyfriend was nowhere to be found, so I told her to come back. On her fourth try, I finally relented, and named the little girl "Rocky", no name for the boy. Then my best friend came in carrying a litterbox with my cat in it. Why am I remembering this? Generally, my dreams tend to be --neutral-- so close to reality I wake up thinking that whatever transpired in them actually happened. Stupid things like returning books to the library or waking up and getting ready for work, then I wake up and realize, wait, I dreamed *that*??? Is this what moving from SF to Boston does to you? Mundane dreams?

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2000

OK, all you psych students out there, feel free to go to town on this one:

I was in my house, and a bunch of German people were staying with us. I had to share my Queen bed with one of them, a big, pale, stern lady who understood english but couldn't really speak it. I think she was a school marm...yes, she was. The other Germans were all students. During the night, she kept on touching me until I finally sat up and bed and said, "Don't effin' touch me, OK?!" I was really mad, and disgusted. And then she touched me, you know how people do, when they just poke you with their fingers and say, "Touch." She did that twice, and then I slapped her and told her to stay the hell away from me. She was this very serious, commanding woman, and I slapped her! It was good, though appalling.

In the morning, I jumped on one of the German boys while they were still in bed and said, "You didn't tell me she was a *dike*! Do you know what I'm saying?!" And he nodded, and started laughing at me, and then he told everyone else, and they all started laughing because I had been stuck with the gay school principal. Now, about that word, "dike". I think it a very ugly word, like saying "fag" or something equally derogatory. I think the reason it was in there is that one of my gay female friends was explaining to me the other day the difference between the two, that is, between a dike and a lesbian...Whew. Weirdness. Weirdness all around. I can't even have a decent homoerotic dream without messing things up.

That's it. No more curry before bedtime.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2000

My dreams tend to be more vivid when my sleep schedule is more screwed up--like, staying up until 5 a.m. and then sleeping in until noon, as I have been doing too often lately. In one recent dream I found myself in some sort of alternate universe in which the USSR had taken over the world, and I had been captured by the secret police, and suddenly I realized that one of them was an alternate version of famed underground cartoonist R. Crumb....I remember feeling sad that in this version of history he had turned out to be this sort of petty authority figure, and commenting about this to my "friends" who had also been captured...although at the same time I felt that the little impassioned speech I gave about this was "staged" somehow, like I half-knew that none of it was real and that I was just putting on a performance for some imaginary audience. I think I woke up pretty soon after that. Someone also mentioned lucid dreams before this...I've had a few of these, again usually on "mornings" where I've been sleeping in really late...what's really interesting is when I go into my "scientist" mode and try to analyze how realistically my surroundings have been "rendered"...each time I am amazed by how detailed and solid and textured all the surfaces are, even if the scene itself is somewhat bizarre...if I try to imagine a scene consciously while awake it doesn't contain even a fraction of this level of detail. The other interesting thing I notice during these lucid episodes is this: although whatever I'm looking at always appears completely solid and stable, if I look away from something and then look back at it, it will often have changed in some way...apparently the "virtual reality generator" only bothers to keep track of whatever I'm looking at in the immediate moment...this is particularly annoying when I try to read dream-text, which is always completely incoherent...it's all very "Alice in Wonderland"-esque...

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2000

uh, sorry about the lack of paragraphing there...I've never learned the ol' "html"...

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2000

Most of my dreams revolve around pretty mundane stuff....... getting hit by cars and such....... but I had this one dream when I was a kid, my babysitter and my sister put me in a hot air balloon and then went to watch television while I floated off to a distant land (Bitches) Anyhow, I arrived in this land that looked like it had been covered in some sort of chemically engineered drug, real shiny and kind of translucent. The inhabitants of this land looked like some sort of fucked up Mario brother, their helmets pulled down over their eyes and big bushy mustaches. All they did in this place was mine the same stuff that was covering the ground. They seemed harmless enough so I decided to hang out and see what the big deal was with this snow-like substance. We traveled into one of the mining caves and it was pretty spectacular, and then.............. my sister woke me up.

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2000

I never really believed the pregnant girls at work when they told about their horrible, vivid dreams until I became a pregnant girl myself...

The worst night was about two weeks ago. Just before going to sleep, I had a lengthy conversation with an old friend from elementary school. We were discussing a mutual friend's recent abortion, and she became quite upset with me when I didn't agree that the poor girl is now damned to eternal hellfire and damnation -- especially given my current condition. So, we hang up the phone and I go to sleep. Suddenly, I'm eight months pregnant (in reality I'm 5 mos. now) and working in an abortion clinic. I was in some sort of administrative position, and there was some kind of fuss about not allowing the patients to see me. Suddenly, some guy is just in my office, holding a gun. There's a nurse on one side of me, and a doctor and a very young volunteer on the other. The guy shoots the nurse, then the volunteer, each in the head. Then he shoots the doctor's hands and feet literally off his body, followed by his head. Then he looks at me, smiles, says something in a foreign language that I don't understand, and points the gun at my head. So I'm crying and begging this guy to spare my baby's life...he looks at my stomach, looks back at my face...slowly lowers his gun until the barrel is pointed directly at my abdomen...and pulls the trigger.

I wake up at this point, absolutely hysterical, and make my husband wake up and turn all the lights in the house on.

I could fill pages with the strange and scary dreams I've had over the last few months! I'd be interested to know if any of you have ever had these weird pregnancy dreams, or know someone who has.

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2000

Back when I was finishing up my dissertation, dreams would sometimes be the best part of my day. I would be having a good dream, and then I would wake up and think, "Oh, shit! I'm still in grad school!"

It didn't help that I went to grad school in Cleveland.

Fortunately, that was five years ago, and I'm now living in Boston, having mostly recovered from grad school hell...

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2000

i once had a dream about this girl i had a crush on.. she was sitting in an examination hall.. and i was sitting on a row on her right.. and i was stealing glances at her.. and then this other guy comes in... and goes to her table.. and they talk and he then hugs her and she looks up in his eyes and he passes his hand on her cheek...

and i woke up just at that moment.. feeling so sad and hurt that i wont ever forget it

-- Anonymous, April 14, 2000

Do you know of a good website/source for celebrity dreams?

-- Anonymous, January 08, 2001