(EDITOR’S NOTE–On this, the last “5th Day” I’ve reached back in time to a piece I wrote a long while ago. I choose it because it’s about dreams, and I had a whopper last night. R)
Good morning from Whiskey Creek, where from one day to the next we, the human residents of our little mountain retreat, have no idea what new little surprise wrought by that natural of all process, aging, will be visited upon us next. My own special treat, which arrived gift wrapped about four weeks ago, is a sudden and excruciating inability to sleep through the night. No, I’m not going to bore you with a column about my troubles getting a good night’s sleep; in fact, owing to my wife’s always-wise, always-caring counsel, (“DEAL WITH IT, WILL YA, JUST BUCK UP AND ROLL WITH THE PUNCH!), I’ve actually found a way to exploit the problem…when I wake up at two or three a.m., instead of fighting it, I jump up, pull some warm close on, put on a pot of coffee and start writing, that being the prime assignment I’ve given myself in this, the latest chapter of my life called retirement.
No, I won’t fall prey to the temptation of rambling on about how aging isn’t for the faint of heart, (my God am I tired of hearing that old and over-used axiom), at least not more than I have already. But dealing with this sleep issue of mine has gotten me thinking about it a lot more than usual and one of the little rabbit holes I’ve found myself exploring of late is dreams. And more specifically, recurring dreams. Here are what I’ve found to be through my vast research (started and completed in the last twenty minutes) the ten most common themes in recurring dreams:
Losing things
Flying
Nakedness in a public place
Being held back or failing in school
Being visited by the dearly departed
Finding new rooms in one’s house
Not being able to find a toilet
Being unable to turn on the lights in one’s house
Losing control of a car
Having one’s teeth fall out.
So it turns out I’m a pretty normal guy after all, experiencing recurring dreams that pretty much include all of these, with some variations on a few. For example, I don’t just lose “things”, I lose motor vehicles…cars mainly, but also trucks, at least one bus and many motorcycles. As for flying in my dreams, I used to do that but following a ruptured Achilles tendon in 2002 which couldn’t be fixed, I’ve taken up the more pedestrian activity of running, which, believe me, if you can’t do it anymore, can be just as exciting as flying.
Like the shift from flying to running, the flunking out of school thing was replaced at mid-life by the even more nightmarish, for me anyways, flunking out of WORK. That is, screwing up so badly in my job that I get fired, robbing me of my ability to provide for my family and worse, robbing me of my dignity, even my identity; this one produces a cold sweat every time. Public nudity? Hah, that’s pretty much a sub-plot in all of my dreams. Having dead folks drop in to my dreams is also standard faire. Most times it’s my mother and I always wake up missing her horribly. (Dreaming of my mom has always been bitter sweet for me. I love seeing her and being with her but in every single dream I’ve had about her since she died, my mom’s been sick.)
Finding new rooms in my house and, more generally, finding new buildings with extensive, complex lay outs, bizarre room after bizarre room, is one of my favorite recurring dream themes, and it’s one of the few that I can return to after getting up for a pee break. And speaking of peeing, my oh my, yes, do I ever search for toilets in my dreams. I’ve looked in hotels and airports and strange houses and sport coliseums and military installations and restaurants, on the surface of the moon, in an equatorial rain forest and even once in my own house. Fortunately for my wife who does our laundry, I’ve never found one.
My dreams do very specific and consistent variations on the turning lights on theme. It’s not my home, it’s always a hotel or motel room and, like a few of the others, the frustrating situation is anchored firmly in real life. (During much of my career I traveled a lot and stayed in more hotel rooms than Mrs. Winchester had staircases.) And then there’s another strand for this particular theme, that of turning my computer or handheld device on. Never, ever can in my dreams. Losing control of a car happens in my dreams for one of two reasons. Either I can’t quite reach the break peddle with my foot or my view of the road is compromised. On particularly bad nights, such as those following the late-night eating of pizza sprinkled liberally with red pepper flakes, I’ve had both occur at the same time and I can guarantee you it’s a scary business.
Interestingly, in that extensive research I mentioned, I found that having one’s teeth fall out of one’s mouth is second only to flying in on the Top Ten List of recurring dreams. I say interesting because, of all ten, it’s the only terrible thing that’s never happened to me in a dream. I feel very fortunate in that, though I can’t imagine how I’ve managed to escape that one and none of the rest.
So then, that leaves just one dominant dream theme unaccounted for in my pantheon of somnambular plot lines. One that didn’t make it on Psychology Today’s Top Ten list and far and away the single most recurring of all my dreams, and that’s bluegrass festivals and camp outs. Some of you think I’m kidding, but others of you just experienced a tidal wave of resonance.
The bluegrass event theme, (BET) can manifest its self in two ways in my dreams. The first and most common is bluegrass festival as driver in plot line; the second, bluegrass festival or some other kind of bluegrass event as simply a backdrop for some other plot line.
Okay, so it’s 4:05 a.m. and I’ve been here at my Mac for just about an hour. But just minutes before that I was deeply immersed in a BET dream, finding myself at a sprawling bluegrass festival being held along some narrow waterway on the San Joaquin Delta. I’d been lucky enough to grab a spot for my ’54 18-foot Siesta, (for some reason I wasn’t in my larger, later model Argosy…all right not much larger and not much later), right on the river, or more precisely right next to the levy that kept the river in bounds. The source of this BET’s tension…my dreams ALWAYS have tension, even the enjoyable ones…lie in the fact that two of my band mates and I couldn’t find the other two, bass and banjo, and we had a sound check in ten minutes (Losing things). We decided to split up, find the two and meet at the festival’s main stage. I climb up the steep levy bank and take off running toward a big encampment of RV’s (Flying/running). As I approach a large jam in the midst of Will the Circle Be Unbroken and am about to ask them if they’ve seen my two pals and I realize that I’m wearing a tank top and nothing more (Public nudity) and duck behind a huge cotton wood tree. Naturally throughout the dream I’m increasingly in fear that we won’t make the sound check and my band will be fired on the spot (Failure in school/job).
Further down the levy I come upon a ramshackle old resort/general store/bar/bait shop. From the outside it looks like a tiny dive, but upon entering I realize that the place is enormous, with an almost endless series of interlocking rooms, each decorated in the style of a different period in history (Finding new rooms). Oh, did I mention that this whole time I’m desperately in need of relieving myself (Not being able to find a toilet)? Anyway, as I enter the Middle Ages Room, (thick stone walls, thatched roof, various implements of torture), I’m greeted by a broadly smiling Done Stover, the guy who wrote the wonderful and poignant “Things in Life”, (“Now when they lower my casket down…”), (Being visited by the deceased), who kindly offers to take over banjo duties if I can’t find my band mate in time. At just that instant my cell phone rings, I see on the screen it’s Bob our banjoist, but when I touch the ‘accept’ button, nothing happens…the phone just keeps ringing (Being unable to turn on lights/devices). I can, however, use my GPS to check where the call is coming from. “It’s a half mile up the slough,” I say to Don, “we’ll never make it!” “Sure we will,” my new friend cries, “to my jet ski!”, which of course we can’t find (Losing control of a car/vehicle). Fortunately, through the entire ordeal no one loses so much as a single tooth. However, while searching for the jet ski, which Don assures me is a “two-manner”, my prostate refuses to go unheeded another moment, I head to the bathroom, the real bathroom and a few minutes later here I sit.
I know what many of you are saying right now…way, way too much information, Cornish. Well, I’m sorry, but friends share with friends, and they lean on them in times of trial. I’ve spilled my guts this morning and feel better for it. Have a terrific Thursday and a terrific weekend and listen and/or play some bluegrass music.