Disney, like Oprah, bambifies things. If you want to keep your head in the sand and pretend things will work out if we all just try to get along, that should float your boat. If you want to face reality, open your eyes. (Margot Fonteyn above as Cinderella 49 years ago. No wonder we feel wicked old.)
"A dream is a wish your heart makes," goes the Disney tune -- and there are nothing but obscenely bland Disney images of Cinderella out there at the end of a Google search. Two nights in a row our dreams have been haunted by the ghost of some wishes our heart once made. We found ourselves, in our dream state, just saying no: This is only a dream -- an annoying one -- so wake up now, fergossake. We remember trying to will ourselves out of the dream state, banging our fists to try to wake ourselves up, but the dream lingered on:
We're sitting in the chair across from our awesome Brookline shrink of old, a rising star in the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute at the time. That old New Yorker cartoon [either there was such a thing, or there should have been] comes to mind of the therapist snoozing away while the patient on the couch drones on about the minutiae of his angst, but once or twice, we recall, we actually got the old boy to sit up and take notice. If memory serves, we said something to the effect that when we made a major life choice, family members intervened to try to turn us back from the error or our ways. Eventually, things all worked out for better or worse, but that moment sticks in the mind. The shrink was horrified. He also sat up and took notice one time when we playfully threw a tear-soaked ball of kleenex across the room toward him. Poor boy. What does a woman want? indeed.
Fast forward to the last two nights, when our sleeping persona found ourselves once again across the room from Dr. X. Even as the doc seemed impenetrable to whatever it was we were trying to say, his darling young daughter -- conflated in the world of dreams with the daughter of another psychiatrist who was the adored husband of our best friend during Boston Museum of Fine Arts days -- held us close in her arms and told the shrink he didn't know what he was talking about. Throughout the dream, which seemed endless, we were trying to find our way out. 'Don't remember too many details, but one was that we came to the end of a corridor, looked outside and saw a landscape that "proved" this was real life and not a dream. Shortly thereafter, we awoke, to great relief.
A dream is a nightmare your heart makes?
Update: Pajamas Media seems to be amused.
In the normal course of events, if I dream I don't remember it... heh.
As for vivid and/or strange dreams, remember you had surgery only a few days ago - all that lovely medication wreaks havoc in the background for far longer than you would imagine. I have had some weird dreams after having had various sorts of anesthesia (several times in my life). Give yourself at least a month and maybe even 2 months to work it all out if your system. Until then be prepared for some very "interesting" dreams.
One always hopes the dreams will be enjoyable, but often they are just the opposite. Maybe in the short term future you'll have some lovely dreams too.
Posted by: Teresa | August 24, 2006 at 10:47 AM
Teresa -- I hadn't thought of anesthetic drug aftereffects . . . Combine it with nightly martinis, and who knows where it might lead?
Posted by: Sissy Willis | August 24, 2006 at 04:46 PM
When I was about five years old I was at my grandparents' house playing dressup with my cousin, Jeanne. We were dressing up in white lace, pretending to be brides. My grandfather was watching television on his black and white tv and I noticed a mushroom cloud on the screen and asked him what it was.
He told me. (I wrote about that experience just the other day but didn't include the dreams that his answer may have caused. Anyway, that's when the "kingdom come" dreams started. Around that time anyway. They frightened me so much that I was convinced that if I ever told anyone about them that they would come true.
I didn't have the nerve to talk about them until I was fourteen.
I dreamed I was standing in darkness. I couldn't tell if there was anything above or below me or anywhere around me. I started to take a step and a voice said, "Don't touch that or you'll blow us all to kingdom come." The voice frightened me and I tripped and I guess whatever it was I touched it and suddenly there was nothing.
That became a recurrent dream for most of my childhood.
Anyway, here's the post about my conversation with my grandfather (who by the way I loved very much and don't blame him for that weird dream)
http://www.thewideawakecafe.com/?p=1444
Posted by: Laura Lee Donoho | August 24, 2006 at 07:24 PM