THE UNCONSCIOUS

I have been having the weirdest dreams…

Eh, before I go any further, I must say one thing:

BARCELONA BABY!!

This is how I hope to get to Barcelona at the end of March: focus on the end goal, and care less about the means… So I keep saying
BARCELONA (there it is again), and visualising myself in the city, and studying the street map that I picked up at the reception of my hotel, and visualising myself negotiating the narrow (?) streets and figuring out the public transport; I have downloaded a tourist guide and picture myself visiting this café or that restaurant, basically!! I will know for sure tomorrow, so fingers crossed!! In the meantime, say it with me:

BARCELONA!!!

Right, back to our scheduled programming :-) I was saying that I get the strangest dreams these days – well, all dreams are strange obviously but let me say I am more aware of them these days. The other day I dream that I’m sitting in a chair, and ‘walking’ towards a certain room whose door slowly swings open as I approach, and then as I begin to cross the threshold, a force field of some sort pushes me out again – I say ‘force field’ because it was not a wind, nor any physical thing that I could sense – it really felt like I was being repelled or something… anyway, next thing I know I am lying on my bed – and at this point the dream sort of merged with reality because I felt like this was really happening – a strong wind begun to blow around my room and my covers were yanked off me as my body was forced upward at terrific speed, not very high up, somewhere near the ceiling I would guess, and there my body held, stiff and straight. This happened so fast that I hardly had time to be afraid – and then as I started to BE afraid, something told me that it was alright, this was merely a prelude to something that I had been waiting to happen, and so I told myself not to be afraid, and to just go with it.. Don’t remember what happened after that but when I woke up I racked my head to remember why I thought this was nothing to be afraid of, but could not remember… Up to now I cannot figure out what that was all about, but I am still not afraid anyway.

Then two days ago I dreamed that I had to have my tonsils removed – and that they would have to drill through my throat and remove them.. so the doctors stuck an intravenous tube down my throat and begun feeding me with anaesthesia. I could see the fluid coming down the tube into my mouth, and this went on for sometime, on and on and but effect; then I begun to feel like I was drowning in the anaesthesia, so I tried to tell them to stop but my voice came out as an incompressible gurgling.. at this point they pushed a tube the size of a magic marker under my chin and straight into my throat but at that point I woke up – heart pumping.

Then this morning, I woke up from a dream which unfortunately I have largely forgotten but I know it ended with a woman trying to get us out the back way because some people were after us and were banging on her front door (I don’t know whom I was with).. So she gives us a key to fit into a small key hole in the wall (one couldn’t tell there was even a door there) and as I tried to turn the key in the lock it begun to melt in my hand and twist out of shape and finally broke in two so that I couldn’t get the door unlocked. I quickly went back to find the woman and apologise for damaging her key, but I was greeted with abuse as she informed me that she operated a brothel behind that door and now how would she survive etc… Next thing I know I am walking along with one of my mother’s brothers and he is telling me that my grandmother on my father’s side (who died about a year ago) was berating him for not having any children (my uncle is over fifty and has four grown children, but somehow in this dream I also believed he had no children). Apparently my grandmother went on to ask him if he was ‘lame’ – and as he said this we were walking up to a group of people at a barbeque, and one of them turned out to be my grandmother and she was falling about laughing from hearing my uncle talk about being lame; and then I woke up.

Reflecting on these weird dreams, I wondered at the richness of our unconscious – basically during sleep our brains can make free associations and make up all sorts of stories! I have just come from reading a book of short stories by a guy called Maugham Somerset, and his stories are just astounding!! It features some of the most ordinary people but they are faced with some extraordinary circumstances – and it is not even as if these circumstances are fantastic – they are all perfectly possible – but surely they can’t all be inspired by true life – he must have made some of them up – but HOW?? I think I am a good enough story teller, but I don’t know how I will fare in the fiction genre.. A book that I am reading on craft encourages the beginning writer to just be confident that they are an entertaining story teller, and to go with it..

No wonder sometimes to aid my creativity I lie down and day dream for a while – all sorts of crazy stuff goes through my mind then! Perhaps I should begin to mine this source? I am reminded of my Mom’s visions: before she goes on a journey or has to leave the house to run an errand, she has a lie down and she says this usually results in her getting some kind of vision that shows her what lies ahead, and then she can pray as is needed. I don’t know how effective or true this is, but it appeals to me somehow…

So anyway hooray – more afternoon naps for me!! :-)