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Saturday Morning Dreams
Do you dream about politics? I often do.
I recently had a complex dream full of remarkably creative eructations from my unconscious mind. Donald Trump, believe it or not, made a cameo, and threatened to fire me. (No, I am not kidding.) I was supposed to be selling a kind of vending machine that dispensed candy bars with labels claiming they were uniquely nutritious. I looked at the ingredients and saw that they were made of nothing more than sugar, so I didn’t think I could honestly sell these machines. Trump thundered that I knew nothing about selling anything; I was a failure and should do as I was told.
Shortly after that, I heard a fight break out down the hall in Trump Tower, which in the strange way of dreams had become my old college dormitory. I was, I realized, the dormitory warden. I was told by the students rushing down the hall not to try to break up the fight: Just look away, they said, you don’t want to be mixed up in this one. Then, to my horror, an anguished young black man rushed down the hall and before I could stop him, jumped out the window.
I don’t think the interpretation of that dream requires much by way of laser-light psychoanalytic insight.
This morning I dreamt I was back in Istanbul. I had a meeting with Prime Minister Davutoğlu. To my surprise, he seemed warm, professorial, avuncular. He was organizing an international conference at a large and luxurious hotel. He took a keen interest in every detail of the hotel’s hospitality, he assured me.
A group of journalists were gathering outside the hotel to get on a bus to Syria. Michael Totten was among them. (Odd that he showed up to play a role in my unconscious mind; I’ve never met him in person, although we’ve spoken on Skype. What does he symbolize, I wonder?) I was supposed to go with the journalists, but decided at the last minute that the security precautions weren’t good enough. I was conflicted: It was a chance to do reporting that I wouldn’t get again, so I wasn’t sure I should miss that bus, and as it pulled away, I regretted that I hadn’t taken it.
I decided that instead I would find out what the sermon was like at the grand mosque on the top floor of my hotel — or rather, in the strange way of dreams, that’s what the hotel had become, a magnificent and infinitely mysterious ancient mosque. Was ISIS preaching in Istanbul yet, I wondered? Davutoğlu sounded very reassuring; he was busy with his conference preparations. But I had an uneasy feeling that I’d hear something that wouldn’t set my mind at ease if I spoke to the men who were filing up the stairs to hear the imam. The phone then rang and woke me up, so I don’t know how the dream ended. Had it not, I might not even have remembered it.
That one isn’t difficult to understand, either.
What about you? Do you dream of politics? If so, what do you dream? Do you find yourself as surprised as I do by the richness of your dreams’ metaphors?
Published in General, Religion & Philosophy
You know what Letterman said to George in one Seinfeld episode, “next time break the Prozac in half” but selling different flavors of sugar is pretty darn good metaphor.
It took me a bit after I woke up — it wasn’t as if I realized, “This is a metaphor” as I was dreaming. It was only after I puzzled over this very bizarre dream that it occurred to me how many layers of meaning that has. There’s no way in a million years that it would have occurred to me while I was awake. Where does this stuff come from?
Last night I dreamt of Casa Bonita – except instead of being a dump it was a nice restaurant… With luxurious beds. So we went to sleep.
Claire, I’m worried about you.
I had one of those candy bars in my dreams last night. It was delicious. I was so happy (in my dream, of course) to find that someone had made American candy bars great again! I mean you can’t even believe how great they are.
In my dream I realized that Hershey bars are for losers.
I remember a really weird dream I had in which Bob Dole was hawking viagra….
Oh, wait…
Hey Claire, that sculpture in your photo for this post is really cool!
Do you know who/what? Thanks in advance…
Dali.
I often have nightmares about how Obama is wreaking my kids and grandkids future.
I almost never remember my dreams, but I distinctly remember dreaming last night that I was excited to show my wife a beautiful, gently used luggage set on sale for only $200.
-E
Claire, you had breakfast before telling us about this, yes?
Last weekend I dreamed that I was watching a presidential debate, and Betty White was one of the candidates. As Sue Ann Nivens. She was killing.
Too much melatonin.
Most memorable dream I’ve had was hitting my receiver at the back of the end zone with a rocket in the last moments of the Superbowl. As a walk-on QB at the start of the season.
Actually that’s two dreams–my rockets always look more like wounded ducks in real life….
My life’s goals just have never involved politics. And I’ve never been subtle enough to do metaphors in any milieu.
Eric Hines
I once dreamt I was a geneticist who bred a male cat that, instead of yowling during mating season, would sing Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and other crooner tunes:
I never dream about politics. I often dream about being back at school and kinda realizing I should have been going to class but don’t know my schedule or how to get there. That one is pretty obvious and I understand similar ones are very common.
My daughter once had a very vivid dream- she woke up talking about it- about saving the USS Cole, when under the influence of morphine after surgery a few months after the Cole was attacked. Her worries are more along your lines, evidently.
I have that one all the time.
A dream I had last night makes no sense to me. Also I am having difficulty recalling it because there is something about waking up that causes you to have amnesia about the dream.
In the dream AC powerstrips were equipped with something like built-in Wifi access points. Other details are too fuzzy to put into words.
Rats, I just gave away an idea on which someone will make a fortune.
I had one the night before last that I had been put in charge of a haunted library. From there, it got very interesting and graphic.
It is great to see that my colleagues haven’t mentioned that one word at the beginning. It’s because we all knew what it means, of course. It’s what makes us different, here at Ricochet.
I certainly knew; I use that word frequently in conversation. I didn’t have to immediately Google it. Or even if I did, it was just to remind myself of the conjugation of the Sanskrit root. It’s not because I didn’t know what “eructate” means. Ha! That would be really funny, if I didn’t even know a simple word like that! Heh. That would be crazy talk.
Strangest one I remember recently….I was on a bus or a trolley car, which I owned, and was telling the driver where we should go, when a very arrogant man got on and started giving orders. I reminded him that this wasn’t his vehicle, upon which he said: “Do you know who I am? I work for PWC!”
To which I replied, “You’re an audit manager, aren’t you?”
Upon which he burst into tears and sobbed, “Yes, I’m an audit manager, that’s all I am”
Sort of like expectoration.
I can see a Saturday Night Live skit having a field day with that one! The candy bars, getting fired, no sugar (reminded me of the school lunch program nowadays)…..so funny…..Trump becomes the warden!! ….then you go to another place….
Turkey is weighing on your mind, the whole ISIS thing, like everyone else. Sounds like you are not buying what the Turkish leadership is peddling.
My dreams are usually pieced together by what is on my mind or what I see on TV before I go to sleep. Lately its been snakes – which I hate, but we have had more this year than normal in FL – my cat found a pygmy rattler near my potting bench – my husband killed it but I have been freaked out ever since – I have hardly seen any in 12 years but now I’m paranoid – I can usually piece together weird dreams (mine are always weird and in color) by what is on my mind, family, health, aging!!, world events.
I had a bus dream too a few months back where I didn’t get on either……I think I summed it up as I did not want to go along anymore with past issues and difficult people – that I want to move in a different direction, choose another route – can anyone relate? PS …..I didn’t know what eructations meant either – sigh..so I skipped over it……rarely there are premonitions…but if I wake up truly shaken, I share it.
My dreams are often strange. The most recent relevant one is from several days ago -I was in the library reading an important refutation of the bureaucratic populace, a concept that was obviously wrong because of the lack of societal regimentation.
Took about an hour after I woke up to realize that none of that made a lick of sense.
My dreams are not routinely on a theme. I’ve dreamt that I was escaping over a mountain with a disguised princess. That I was riding a train to an emerald mine, where the emeralds glowed and had magical powers. Walking in the woods with a woman talking about flowers.
The teacher’s equivalent from time to time: “I’m giving an exam today I haven’t written!” or “I should have graded the exam already!” Or, yes, “Class is at 9:00? I thought it was at 11:00?!” Those are particularly bad when you wake up at 8:30 and are halfway through rushing out the door -half dressed -when you realize it was a dream.
I didn’t know what the word meant. From context, I assumed something along the lines of eruption or erection. Something created in the mind.
I see that the actual meaning is “belch.” While not literally correct, I think I grasped the metaphoric intent of the sentence.
All it takes is for me to read a headline….I read they found the remains of a partially mauled man by a grisly bear – I never clicked on the story, but that’s all it took…….I had a dream that I was chased and scratched by a “baby” bear…..at least my sub-conscious toned it down!
With today’s headlines being what they are, I scan, but click on maybe 15% of topics for that reason. I don’t want to see “videos” regarding Planned Parenthood. The Hilary emails keep me awake at night. I can handle daunting news, but take it in doses.
I was checking on my properties Friday and tuned in to Sean Hannity Show in the car. He was on assignment, but had 3 or 4 very high level people standing in, with backgrounds in FBI, military, etc. who explained the layers of security when sending highly classified emails and what takes place if, in the rare event, they are sent to a private server. The conversation was unreal, and their summation was unreal. Very worrying.
So instead of saturating my mind with all the crazy headlines, I read selectively. Sometimes you have to draw the line and say enough – turn it off, and work in the garden, go to work, call someone and have a laugh, have a glass of wine….keep life in perspective. I think our dreams tell us when it’s time to take a “news siesta”.
I once dreamt that I picked up a hitchhiking Dan Rather on the side of the road while driving from Tokyo to Hiroshima.
Claire,
My dreams have been very elaborate lately but I can’t remember much upon awakening. The political dream I had involved Jeb Bush. He wasn’t doing anything or saying anything. He was wearing a cardigan sweater. He looked at me with a slight smile on his face as if to ask my help. Not an appeal to logic more an appeal to sympathy.
I awoke with a mild headache. It went away soon.
Regards,
Jim
Oh my god Claire I had that exact same dream.
Weird, isn’t it? It’s like everyone has it …