Quitting the Daydream
If you’ve watched Inception, you’ve heard of my condition.
That part when they walk into what looks like an opium den, with fading shells of humans hooked up to intravenous needles. Fed through tubes that trail from skeletal bodies, it’s no common street drug. Those non-medical narcotics induce long and life-like dreams.
But kids my age are known for short nights balanced out by episodic late mornings. When I feel like I could easily sleep away an entire Saturday, it doesn’t seem unusual.
I’ve done it, several times. And I’m not particular about Saturdays. At any time of day, you’ll see me slink off to carry out some purpose but within minutes find me passed out in my bed. I should be embarrassed. But like I said, it’s a condition — even one I have grown to enjoy.
My dreams are incredibly vivid. Not only are they in colour, but I dream in all 5 senses and maybe a few more you’ve never even heard of.
My dreams are the stuff movies are made of. Usually a Tim Burton, the occasional Woody Allen, or rarely, a Christopher Nolan — soundtrack included, if I choose my alarm sounds strategically.
My dreams are hauntingly wonderful. Confusing in their realism but shockingly unemotional. If I lost something the day before, I’ll find it in my sleep. If I meet someone new, I might later watch them die, without twitching a closed eyelid. I’ll suddenly recall childhood locations with startling accuracy, but something’s different this time… Ah yes. That teacher monitoring the playground slide — definitely not a purple-tentacled monster with a multiple personality disorder.
But in the way of comic Calvin and his Hobbes, it’s the visual representation of the collective cognition. Because we don’t see people. We see what we expect to be there. We project the way we feel about someone onto their appearance, which is why cruel people look ugly, and kindness is considered beauty.
When I dream, my thoughts come alive. Some are trivial. Others, very revealing. And though everyone knows dream stories are interesting only to the teller, let me give you a rundown of last night’s three very real dreams, in rapid succession.
Example 1:
Someone approaches me with a Samsung/Blackberry hybrid phone asking me if I can figure out how to connect it to the network. It cannot be fixed.
Thought revealed: Phones that are not iPhones will always give you more problems.
Example 2:
A Caucasian and East Indian mother sit across the aisle from each other. Each has her daughter next to her. The girls are in their pre-teens, dressed up, having just completed a music recital. The Indian girl leans over to me and whispers that she was stolen from her mother at birth, pointing at the white woman on the opposite bench. A few minutes later, the other girl tells me the same thing, pointing back across the aisle. After deliberation, the two mothers confess to me that the girls were switched at birth in order to avoid scandals on both sides. Both have regretted their decision ever since, but feel it is too late to fix it.
Thought revealed: Everyone harbours secrets, and people are — no, I am — scared to admit the truth for fear of what people will think.
Example 3:
He and I were spies working with Sherlock Holmes. You know how dreams are; I don’t know how we got there. Or, especially, how we ended up with Snape as double agents among the Death Eaters. I knew the story was getting off course when Voldemort drew a knife and pointed it towards Severus, making his intentions very clear. But he held me as it happened, as I buried my face in his chest even as I heard the sickening crunch of Snape’s vertebrae being sawn through.
The power went out seconds after, and that’s when he grabbed my hand and told me to run. We were in the back of the escape car/cab when he finally told me his name: Frederico. (I’ve never heard that name before.)
Flash forward 3 years (I think?) and we’re on the beach sipping drinks. My best friend and her man are also there reclining on yellow chairs, navy-and-white striped umbrellas fluttering over us. I laugh at something Fredi says, leaning into him and placing a palm on his sun-warmed chest. I felt it all in that moment — even how distant he seemed. As his eyes linger on my royal blue, halter-top one piece, it’s as if he sees through me, smiling with shadows in his eyes. Maybe it’s the trauma we’d been through, or the falseness of this paradise, but I’m losing him.
Thought revealed: Even if by some miracle I find him, there is no guarantee that I will keep him.
These stories are not enhanced; I have tried to tell them as honestly as I can. Because I remember it as clearly as if it all really happened, and although for the most part I’m glad it didn’t, there are some things about my dreams that leave me wanting more.
Not like a new Netflix show you want to binge. It’s a world where, if you can imagine it, you’ll experience what it could really feel like. Where there are no consequences and nothing is too wild. If the worst that can happen is death — and I’ve died hundreds of times — simply wake up, and decide “how it should’ve ended.” Try to write it all down, as soon as you can. Or if you’re like me, drift back to sleep and see if you can pick it up where it left off.
The danger, of course, is embracing another world more than this one. In Inception, the lines blur between reality and The Dream.
But I know when I’m sleeping, and when I’m not. I have learned to be conscious of my subconscious. Being more imaginative then, it serves me well to be aware. It’s the inspiration for my wakeful work.
There is a certain way to be content with the reality that is in front of us: it is called gratitude. I am glad to experience these thrilling adventures even as I sleep. More than that, I am, or choose to be, thankful for the reality that I am privileged to wake up to.
Rather than chasing the fleeting sensations of the unconscious world, I’m encouraged to pursue the adventure in awakening. Where actions have consequences, life is more than feelings, and there is meaning to it all. This is real — and worth getting out of bed for.
