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QotD: The Lion Grumbles and Mumbles
“The lion is the king of beasts. It often grumbles and mumbles to itself, proving it to be quite intelligent.” — Quotation from a book I was reading in a dream.
I am told that most of my dreams are unusual. Now, not all of them are. I woke from a dream the other day that was the typical anxiety dream. Nothing was going right in that dream. I woke up and told my wife to keep her dreams on her side of the bed, since that is much more typical of her dreams. Most of my dreams seem to be full cinematic productions. It is like I am either watching a full movie, right down to the credits and soundtrack, or I am directing a movie. Shortly after James Gandolfini died, I dreamed I was directing him as the romantic lead in a rom-com. I have no idea if he ever starred in a rom-com in life, but he was doing great at it in my dream. (And why shouldn’t a tough-looking, balding, middle-aged man be the male lead in a rom-com?) Something much more recently was on Saturday. I had a dream that I had been watching a movie, and at the end of the movie, they had a song about going to Mars. The dream/movie was not about that, but the ending song was. I woke up and sang the part of the song I remembered to my wife.
This morning I awoke with another dream in my head. It was certainly one very much in keeping with my dreams, although it was not cinematic. Instead, I had been reading a children’s picture book of animals. The dream was extremely vivid. For instance, on the page for the cat, there was also the body of a dead and desiccated mouse next to the cat. Very vivid. Then there was the page for the lion, the text of which I have quoted above. I thought it very funny that the implication was that because the lion grumbles and mumbles to itself, it must therefore be quite intelligent. The book I was reading in my dream must have been written by a curmudgeon.
What sort of dreams do you have? Are any of them quotable?
Published in Group Writing
Here is another quotation from one of my dreams:
I have no idea what it means, but it was very striking.
I read recently that one cannot read in a dream because that part of your brain is asleep. Apparently, that’s not necessarily so for everyone.
Maybe that is why I have such interesting dreams. I may sleep, but my brain does not. Or maybe it’s the other way.
The mistake is assuming that reading in a dream is the same as reading awake, that the mind imagines words arrayed as letters on a page and then scoops them up. Dreams are full of shortcuts, the words “on the page” are composed as one says them and ascribed to the page and on you go. I have read simple signs in a dream where the words were there, but never more than a handful. And then I notice that I am buck naked and there’s a sniper on the roof and I am running like an old man. That last piece used to be less true of my general abilities.
Also, I have never run across that “gentle savage” Hulk in my dreams. He is always vivid green and killing everyone in sight, with nothing for it but to hide until he passes and bury the remains. I can never find Cap’s phone number when I need it.
But the best dreams are when it’s quiet in the customs house and I am sharing tea and biscuits with Geoff while he tries out his latest poetry on me. Delightful, but I can never remember a line of it after.
Definitely sounds more like my wife’s dreams.
I can’t remember any dreams like that offhand. I don’t remember other people’s characters showing up in my dreams.
Don’t know if I’m supposed to catch a reference here, but it does sound delightful.
I’ve had dreams where you’ve appeared. Don’t tell me that’s right! And Percy was there—
I haven’t had a humdinger in a while.
I’m due.
Geoffrey Chaucer was very, very productive poetically in his years running the Customs House for the docks of London. In between weighing wool and sampling wine he related tales of the Wife of Bath and various odd clerics. Palomon and Arcite. You know, that lot.
Do you ever go back to the same dream again, back to that house or that strange land where those people are doing that thing?
They say there are the (six?) basic types, flying, falling, snakes, etc. But do you ever find yourself back in an actual old dream?
I’m old so most of my dreams are me in some strange place trying to find the elusive bathroom. Then I wake up, go to the bathroom, and go back to bed.
But I did have a strange dream sequence a couple nights ago, never experienced before. In my dream, I was with a girl on whom I’d had a major crush many decades ago which had never gone anywhere, but in the dream, I made the move and kissed her.
Then I woke up, went to bathroom, came back, went back to sleep, and was right back into the same dream, same girl, more kissing. Kinda nice, actually.
Ah, thank you. Yes.
That is a good question. I cannot remember anything like that.
Yeah. I might know something about that. In mine, I find the lavatory, but there is something wrong with it or strange people in it or other things.
When I was five and getting ready for school, I found a garter snake in the toilet. Over the years, all manner of things have issued forth from a toilet since.
Ben Franklin features in a number of mine. Like this one.
If you’re dreaming and Ben Franklin walks out of it, it’s Percival’s dream. And then he says, “Come on, no time to explain, just follow me.”
As far as dreams repeating, usually my dreams seem to center on going somewhere, though actually arriving either happens or it doesn’t. In one Franklin dream, we were going to Europe, but the whole dream focused on actually boarding the ship
So In Technicolor or DeLuxe?
To be fair, that can take a significant chunk of time. Wait thirty days after and see if you debark.
I’m not enough of a visual person to know the difference. But I know my dreams are very vivid.
Sounds like another McVey tutorial.
My dreams are very vivid, usually in color, and often reflect my general state of well being.
Most of my dreams have me back in some educational system that I have suffered through, usually my residency or fellowship. Two nights ago I was in the Army’s Defense Language Institute. Inevitably I am unprepared or become lost trying to find my classroom. I consider these dreams to reflect deeply-rooted anxiety about my professional qualifications.
One dream has come back to me over decades. In it, I walk out on a porch and see an endless expanse of verdant grass, like Louis XIV viewing the lawn at Versailles. In this dream I hear celestial music. As a child I considered this to be a vision of heavenly life.
When I was sacked from a gynecology job in 2020 by an employer trying to save money during the viral panic, I had dreams of women trying to drown me, to cut me up, to harm me in various ways.
Dreams really are a window into the soul.
Some of you know I go to science fiction conventions, probably about once a year on average. When the programming schedule is published, my wife and I will go through it and decide which items we most want to go to and come up with a schedule. I will have anxiety dreams leading up to every convention. In the dream, the convention will be at least half over before it occurs to me that I’ve spent all my time just sleeping, watching TV, or doing other unproductive things, and I haven’t even looked at the programming schedule yet.
I thought I was the only one.
Last night I dreamed of an upside down spinach quiche pizza.
I blame you.
Last night I dreamed I ascended a very tall ladder while holding a beer. Didn’t spill a drop! That the can wasn’t even open was immaterial. It still seemed a great feat.
Mostly, though, my dreams are of the fifty-page-play variety. That is, if one was written down, its first 49 pages would be synopsis. Such drama as there is entails people, but they speak almost no lines and do almost nothing, indeed hardly move around. They’re just there. And yet there is some sense to their presence…because the backstory has somehow been apprehended. Somehow, I got the summary already. They’re all here onstage for a reason, not that I could say what it is.
Then there are the dreams I used to have, then stopped, for unknown reasons. These too were densely populated, but with people I didn’t recognize. I suppose I must’ve seen ’em somewhere. Or, I was having someone else’s dreams! If I have a pet theory of dreams, it is that these aren’t fully in one’s own head. They come from some central source, and may be misrouted.
Frequently. The same rickety house in need of more repairs than I can handle. Sometimes it seems I’m making progress; other times just the opposite.
I don’t even try to remember dreams now, although I am sometimes aware that something I dreamt about at some point in the past, has just happened. Usually being in a certain place and doing some particular thing, maybe just looking out a window or hearing a line from a movie on TV.
Long ago, maybe 40 years or more, I had one dream that I made a point of remembering a bit of, just to show how odd dreams can be.
I was, for some reason – presumably I was some kind of salesperson, although I never did really know that part – trying to sell a (clothes) washing machine to a lesbian “massage parlor.”
But that’s all I made a point to remember; not if we were haggling over price or anything. Just the larger circumstances.
Weird, huh? But I’d rather have dreams like that, than anything involving Ben Franklin, or Chaucer…
Pineapple upside-down pizza?