Dreams Are Bizarre Because Life Is Too
On occasional nights, somber and with my eyes shut, I dream. These winter evenings are peaceful aren’t they? So despite the cold rain, despite the howling wind, I never linger here — in the real world — long. Falling unconscious to all that makes life. At peace with myself. This is how I sleep. Dreams come rarely. But I suppose that makes me lucky. It makes them easier to remember when they come around. It makes them something worth pondering. So whether I wake groggily or suddenly, I always move to scribble them down so that they might become immortalised. It’s a written glimpse into a reality that never was or will be. Otherwise, I sleep soundly and heavily — like a cat that dozes in the light of a warm noon sun. Tranquility. Such quiet. A life in the snoring dark.
When I do dream, they come and go. I find myself placed amongst them; episodic, fragmented, without a clear end. They’re always fleeting, or mournful, or happy. They float across my unconscious consciousness, confusing, yet also clear. The only constant is that I’m the host. Others are the subjects, and the setting is generally the star. My mind watches over it all. The sleeping soul is a slave to the wonders that come from the places within.
Do all of us dream in such a manner? A question that comes to me when I (with considerate haste) write in my bedside journal about these passing dreams. These passing moments of the make-belief, I’ll write. I like to think they’re a culmination of the wonder, craziness, blandness, excitement, sadness, and hope I experience in the day-to-day of life on Earth. That would explain why they sometimes contain real people and real places. Happiness and sadness is inherent in the dream world because these emotions only come from real things, and it’s the real things that make our dreams.
As humans it’s our great gift to think and feel isn’t it? To have fantasies. Maybe to dream is to experience a fantasy — or a horror — that we have only experienced facets of, but that we might well want to experience all of. Maybe this is why dreams can seem so bizarre. After all, life is bizarre isn’t it? I am bizarre. You are bizarre. All our days are somewhat bizarre. Billions of unique days. Unique perspectives. Unique dreams. Dreams that have to come from somewhere. Everything comes from somewhere, no? We are all dust from the stars and the cosmos. Or did God make us so? Perhaps our dreams really are from all that make our days real. That would be something that might make our bed times bizarre too, for in a world where reality is bizarre, sometimes it’s our dreams that help us make sense of it all. Dreams that come in the quiet, empty blackness of sleep.
Indeed, it is so often with no idea of what’s to come or of what has led me to bed and to dream in the first place, that I head forlorn into a slumberous place. My bizarre day is behind me. That’s that, I’ll think, and then maybe I dream about all the things I’ve felt of late. The things I’ve lost. The things I desire. The places I’ve been and am yet to see. All very real I assure you.
In one such dream I find myself in a joyful dusty place. I’ve never been but I know it’s Mexico. Don’t ask me how I know for sure. It just is. Perhaps my mind is constructing it from photos I’ve seen. The people in this dream are all real. That’s for sure. One minute, we’re playing football. The next, it is I alone on a journey. I see an old car in an old Hispanic street. Suddenly I’m in it. A woman turns and talks to me. Outside is a pasture riddled with evergreens — a place I must’ve seen before. The entire episode begins to feel like a precious dream for the two of us. With her looking to the road and driving through a Mexican night and I looking on, it’s almost like I am ogling at something so ostensibly untouchable. I suppose though, that that is what it was, for as real as dreams aren’t, she in fact is real, going about her lovely life somewhere and not knowing of the dreams I have and cannot shake. When the end came, it was at the purple door of a white building. The pair of us stood alone in an arid place and the light of the world was coming from yonder. I can only tell you that it was quite beautiful and totally bizarre.
With this anecdote written, dreams I have come to realise, will always be open to interpretation. For this young man? They truly are bizarre — bizarre because life is too. And it will always be this way until the very end of our dreamy days. I think I’m okay with that, and I hope you are too.
~ Samuel Hodges, March 2021
