Dreams
I've been thinking about dreams lately. Not dreams as in the life-long wishes/hopes/aspirations of someday becoming an astronaut/princess/superhero variety. Just actual dream-dreams. Nocturnal hallucinations. Bedtime brain entertainment. You know what I mean.....
This is probably because I saw the movie Inception this weekend. Cool movie. Could have been even cooler. But very cool nonetheless. Though I have to say, my dreams rarely have such detailed scenery. They tend to be much more plot and character oriented.
For example, last night, I dreamed I was a vampiric Cinderella, complete with a ballgown and fangs. In the dream, my real-life human husband and I had to sit on a concrete bench and watch a soccer match between humanoid dinosaurs (as in, they wore shirts and sneakers) for one hundred years in order to complete a spell that would turn him into a vampire too so that we'd both be immortal and could live together forever. It was all kind of romantic, except that every once in a while, one of the dinosaurs would eat the goalie.
Sometimes I do have more realistic dreams. When I'm stressed, I dream about transportation issues, like being late for a train. Such a waste of good dreaming time. I've also had many dreams interrupted by scenes where my dream-self has to leave the telepathic dragon/unicorn/whatever to find a toilet.
But typically, my dreams involve visiting with or being attacked by aliens, dragons, Lego-zombies, Ewoks, or killer M&Ms from outer space. (Those M&Ms haunted me for years. Don't even get me started about the Skittles.)
Studies have shown that people who aren't allowed to dream go crazy. I rather like the idea that soccer-playing dinosaurs and Lego-zombies are actually preventing me from losing my mind!
But sometimes I do wonder what my subconscious is trying to tell me. My current theory: it's just trying to keep me amused. It likes the same kind of fiction that my conscious mind likes!
Have you all had any cool dreams lately? Please do share in comments.
Any theories, thoughts, pet-peeves about the movie Inception? I've been bugging my husband with my theories ever since we watched the movie.....
Labels: Dreams, Inception, Lego-Zombies, Soccer-Playing Dinosaurs, Vampiric Cinderella
posted by Sarah Beth Durst @ 11:16 PM
10 comments
10 Comments:
I wish I could remember - I know I have had some cool dreams recently. Too often I dream about teaching (which is what I do all day) But I've been praying to stop that! I have discovered that even if I don't get a break all day - if I dream about something entirely different then I am ready to conquer another day - so I have to agree with the dreams keeping you sane theory. My tastes in fiction must be similar to you. The top three writers in my small bedroom library (books have overrun my room :) ) are J.K Rowling, Tamora Pierce, and You. I also have some Twilight thrown in there (*gasp* harry potter and twilight in the same collection) I like to have crazy dreams that are not so scary - it's a good escape :)
Oh, gosh. My dreams ace crazzzzy. I still remember the killer mecha space opera dreams... my most recent have been kinda disturbing. People trying to kill me, and my retaliating. I slit a murderer's throat with a broken shard of ceramic. Broke a woman's hands. Lots of bones crunching lately. Kinda gross.
My only problem with Inception (that comes to mind, the last time I saw it was in the theater) was that all the different dreamers' dreams looked so stylistically similar. Kind of like they were all the imagination of one person (director) whereas I imagine that people's dreams tend to look different from one dreamer to another. Like you say yours are more focused on characters, and not on the background, so how about if one of them had always had hazy backgrounds and the people in super-focus? Or what if one had just had a completely unrealistic, trippy Tim Burton-esque background for what was going on?
I liked the movie a lot, though, plotwise: I felt like, as much as you think, "How can this possibly all come together?" in the end it's pulled off nicely.
Last week's dream featured Jake Gyllenhaal telling me to cut my hair...
I dream almost every night, yet the only reoccurring dream I have is of a campout in our front yard and suddenly everyone else turns into werewolves! I run into the house, somehow knowing that if I stand on the toilet I will be safe. So I'm stuck on the potty wolves swirling around me, yeah it's pretty scary!
I love that movie, though I chose to distract myself during the first 20 minutes by painting my nails, bad idea, I was sooo lost for a while!! My little sis and I are still fighting about whether or not Leo was dreaming at the end of the movie! I say no she says yes, I know I'm right! hehe
PaulaAlicia: I'm honored to be in such company on your bookshelf! And I agree -- so much better to dream something that is unrelated to real life. No offense meant to real life.
Jess: Yikes! Glad you're retaliating. I've been a supreme martial arts warrior in dreams before. Those are fun. :)
RichLayers: You're totally right that different people would have visually different dreams. I did love the whole concept of a dream architect, though. That was cool.
Scarlet: That's nice and random. Did you cut it?
KatySue: Sounds like one of my dreams, in which a nice paranormal plot segues into a search for a potty...
The other day, probably due to my current project, I had a dream where Grimm's Fairy tales were real. My friend Nathaniel wears a stupid, puffy red jacket all the time that comes complete with matching hat, so of course, in my dream, he got eaten by my dad (who was actually the big, bad wolf in disguise). Then I stabbed my dad-wolf with a butcher knife and freed my real dad, who then simultaneously dissappeared. Nathaniel had been digested, I think. My mom got an ogre-butler and became a witch (personality-wise) and all of a sudden I was inside a TV-show I'd been creating in real life and was on a quest to find Tom Thumb for some unspecified reason. Then I yelled "maple-syrup" (a clash of my dream and a dream Nathaniel told me about where he owned a kick-butt panther that came at the call of "Maple-Syrup!") and woke up.
The other night I also had a dream where me, my dad, my mom, and my friend Nathaniel were going to Disney World. We pulled over and were in some kind of Amish-looking village inhabited by normal-looking people. Most were vampires, it turned out, and I had to use my Super-Christian, Van-Helsing-like, vampire-butt-kicking-knowledge-of-awesomeness to scare them and escape (alone, due to the fact that everyone but the vampires dissappeared mid-dream, which isn't too strange for Nathaniel, who usually dissappears mid-dream in every dream I have). I think the pink-heel-ladie was one of the vampires (as a little kid, I always had dreams of a woman in pink business suit and heels who always tried to kill me. I never saw her face, but I think it would have looked somewhat like my mother's).
Yeah, I have some pretty weird dreams. There was a while when I was in middle school where I would dream I was in a castle chasing dragons and had to learn to fly, and damn was it hard. Each dream would end up "To Be Continued" in swirly font.
Question though: How can anyone prevent you from dreaming? Is that like a legit machine?
Oh! I have really strange dreams. One time I was captured by the Emperor and taken aboard the Death Star with my mom and brother, and then he went crazy and started to blow the whole thing up, and so we escaped with my dad, who was wearing, for some reason, a long-billed, acid-yellow hat. We escape aboard a shuttle in the nick of time.
I have locations for some of my other dreams. There's a huge, never-ending library, which changes all the time, and also an old church, which apparently (in my dreams, at least,) has about four floors below ground level. Some of which house zombies and dead people, who I am strangely never afraid of, and sometimes dragons or other mythical beasts.
Heh. I love my dreams. I love thinking about my dreams. They keep me wondering about myself, to be honest.
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