Dream, Dream, Dream, Dreamy Dream Dream Dream...

 Dreams for me are an opportunity to experience rapid memory decay, dreams and people's names. I definitely get afflicted by the Baker/baker paradox for some reason seeing someone's name in writing helps, but I suspect only with social media because it is about making meaningful associations. Names are seldom meaningful, they are more often commonplace.

Dreams for me I suspect decay in retrieval for the same reason, but I do have a sense that some of my dreams are more vivid than others.

I recently dreamed vivid dreams of people I know, and they've all decayed to about 10% of what I feel was the experience. As usual with my dreams, the plot was a series of non-sequiturs, as such remembering part of the dream does not enable me in any way to reconstruct the whole of the dream.

My original, sexist, conceit was that it might be amusing to try and hold the people that appeared in my dreams accountable for my dreams and call it "my feminine side" don't think I'm backing away because I've realised that it's sexist. I assume it is, I've only had one person ever ask me to explain what I was doing in their dream and they were female, but that is not a sample that rises anywhere near to statistical significance. In fact it is more accurate to say that women are very unlikely to hold a person to account for an action in their dream.

No the reason I'm abandoning that conceit is that I wouldn't even know where to begin.

Rule 1 of Dream Interpretation

I will not answer for my own unconscious (subconscious in the US) just like a law court wouldn't. I mean a court of law might hold me accountable for being unconscious, but not in regards to things like malicious intent or criminal culpability.

For example, I was once accused of saying "I want a divorce..." in my sleep, or something to that effect (I've never been married or even engaged) and I've been told I've said shit in my sleep and I know I can have night-terrors that result in short term hallucinations - usually of a rodent or snake being in the bed - so It's plausible I said something in my sleep.

It's also plausible to me, that given the mystery of dreaming, my dream might have had nothing to do with what I might have said in my sleep, but I do like to think that dogs when they are dreaming are having somekind of visual experience internally that they are barking at and twitching their paws toward.

I had no such dream of going through a seperation, and I recall dreaming that I was asking someone if they "parli italiano?" (do you speak Italian) and as the most memorable verbal interaction, it seems the likeliest candidate for what I may have muttered aloud, and someone listening for a meaningful english phrase might have got some variation of "I...anna...vorce" or maybe "api...ation" or something.

This was interesting for me, but in the moment I answered honestly, and most relevantly that I could recall having no such dream, do not feel any such sentiment and as such felt obliged to offer no explanation for what I may or may not have said while unconscious.

So that basically is the rule, and I feel it should be respectfully observed where one has the presence of mind to do so. Of course, it is another level of absurdity to be asked to answer for someone else's unconscious impression of you.

That said

Clearly dreams are not entirely random. I have never dreamed of being Xaphod Beeblebrox Intergalactic President with Two Heads. They can be untethered from reality, but never that untethered.

The usefulness of dream interpretation for me, is in identifying stressors that we may be denying in our waking lives.

They have helped me discover, that actually I need to do some minor confrontation to say something will be delivered late, or I don't want to take on some responsibility, or do some activity that is only nominally fun.

They've never helped me figure out I'm gay or right handed or anything useful like that.

Miami Sunset 198X

Is what I'm calling the first dream, so this is as much as I can remember.

I was in the car with her, asking her questions when we simply ran out of road and started driving on the water. It wasn't as clean as you might be picturing, I knew this was a dumb thing to do, I was a passenger forced to accept this new reality.

I was talking to her, trying to ask her questions, we were bobbing over the swells, coasting on momentum. Her job was to keep the wheels straight as possible, and I pointed out to her a couple that had shot past us at greater velocity in a modern 4WD and had flipped a wheel causing them to capsize and sink in the shallows, I believe they managed to push off the sand bank by turning a wheel hard enough to roll all the way over, but then they were kind of adrift.

We kept heading straight, toward like some mangroves or something and I thought we could make it, and I had no care for the car. This was obviously a stupid way to travel, but our convo was not about the regrettable decision to drive out into the water. 

I was asking her questions, questions about her.

The dream just ended, I think the action may have moved to another location, a different cast. Above is all I can recall now.

Now I actually think the metaphorics are all pretty congruent. This dream was a pretty good tone poem of the relationship I have with this person. In terms of feel, there's the instability, but it isn't a frightening instability, a familiar instability. There were oddities like left-hand drive, but everything about where I was was aesthetically pleasing, the only exception being the 4WD in many ways a symbol of where I am. We were riding in like a Datsun or Renault 70s type car, or a muscle car from Street Rod II like a Corvette even. I don't know I was in the interior. 

I think it is a dream about longing and impermanence. A very vivacious dream, it had a positive valence, feeling more like Waverider on the N64 than a watery death. She would be steering, I was the passenger. 

I can't recall the sequencing of my dreams, but it's possible the underlying stimulus, the prompt was the first of the dreams I had about her, a different her that the her from this dream compares herself to, for fear that I would compare her to her, and look where we are.*

*I guess I am holding someone accountable for what they do in my dreams.

Don't Mention the Exile

I'm going to smush together the decayed memories of two quite vivid dreams I had here, because they are very similar to the point of being a 'recurring' dream. 

The first's stimulus was obvious to the point of being conscious, but not a lucid dream. Red Letter Media published one of their "Re:View" features on "Wet Hot American Summer" and I watched it, and "Wet Hot American Summer" was originally introduced to me by her, it has a strong association.

What I'm also conscious of, is that while a seasonal cue to dream of her should be between August and October somewhere, where she ended our friendship in response to my conduct, I feel as though I often have the seasonal activation months early, and can forget about it completely in the time of year where events transpired.

Anyway, in the first dream she was just there, wearing green flannel and just wanting to catch up and discuss all the things we used to discuss like whether "Wet Hot American Summer" is comedy gold or not, and I got this sense of momentum from her speech that the friendship ending had never happened, but I was very much conscious of it, and my recollections of this dream end with me confronting "are we not going to talk about the ostracism?" 

I recall waking up asking myself questions I hadn't for a long time, wondering if I should actually seek to confront this person. Then I put together the stimulus with the dream, and didn't think much more about it.

Then a few nights later, a youtube music playlist worked it's way to Kelis' "I hate you so much right now" and I was reminded of her because I think she told me that Pharrell produced that for Kelis and she liked it more than "Milkshakes" and we were probably discussing it back then because I prefer "Trick me" to "Milkshakes" but we can all agree, Kelis is great and we're glad it happened.

That night I dreamed of her intruding into my life again, this time she tapped on a window like she'd just spotted me walking by after more than a decade of estrangement, and again, the rage was there that she wasn't acknowledging that I'd been held irresponsible for over a decade, for my actions.

Competing with that rage, is the desire to realise the undoability of my grief. So I kind of just followed along, hung out and tried to enjoy her company. At some point I was left talking to her dad, whom I've never met, so he was just what I pictured - a Conservative pro-free markets, pro-Neoliberalism white dude from the wealthy side of town, I had to listen to him exposit about himself to me as we walked to the local footy oval that was being torn down for renovations or a rebuild or something to build some new state-of-the-art facility, and I expressed some remorse that another piece of heritage was being demolished, and he was making arguments to the effect that it had fallen into disuse and the old had to make way for the new.

I pointed to like this brick art-deco feature and said "I'm going to miss that" and got the concession from her dad that he too would miss it.

Anyway, I woke up, kind of stressed that I'd dreamed of this same person two nights within a week. If there was something I needed to resolve to make these dreams stop.

Again, tonally these dreams are pretty coherent to me, and it's also fairly easy to explain what stimuli caused them to happen - two abstract associations cropping up thanks to Youtube. 

There's the literal cognitive dissonance I feel at desiring the reconciliation, the forgiveness, and that while I accept and have long accepted what I did that caused me to lose the friendship, it's that the way that was handled was both understandable but cruel and unusual too.

Is there anything to be learned?

In the case of the first dream, the driving on water dream, it doesn't stress me too much. I think I have the opportunity to ask the questions I want to ask because we are friends. Maybe I just need to figure out when and how and what. I think we are aligned as people generally, in wanting healing.

The other is difficult, and all I can think to do is shout it into the internet hole.

The first thing is that rationally I can just accept that what happened, happened and it's not a fucking mystery. I applied stress in a fairly douchey way to a friend at a time when they really needed support.

I've written about it before, but in having the receipts for what I'd done, I was able to really examine my own behaviour that can't be done if its a conversation or something similarly ephemeral. I know in the first 6 months, when the status of our friendship was by communication an ambiguous hiatus, and I was conducting the autopsy of my actions, I felt such shame that trying to read my own writing seemed to bring on hysterical blindness.

At some point, maybe after one or two years though, when rereading my own writing, while some of it remains cringe - largely attributable to nerves I feel, in writing, that I do not have on rereading - I was actually surprised to experience less shame, less cringe, less embarrassment. To find myself experiencing my own behaviours as fairly reasonable and conciliatory.

Now, there's not actually anyone else to blame. The causal chain is one of the easiest to determine in all the times I've blown up my own life in some way. Just clearly some trauma remains unresolved for me.

I want to bury it, or rather have it be an inert chapter in my life. The easiest way would be to talk about it with the offended party, get information that can allow it to reconcile in my mind and stop agitating there, but that is only easiest on paper. 

What was striking about the dream, was that I felt a renewed burst of shame, embarrassment, guilt.

All I can think of as catalyst for that though, is all that remains unacknowledged by me. And it's not something I'd try and reach out to them with anymore. We are thoroughly estranged, to the point that most days I don't think of them at all, they only reappear with certain triggers, that are generally so intermittent as to not be noteworthy, except this recent "Wet Hot American Summer" "Kelis" double feature.

Unsent Letter Nth

I realised late that I liked you. I noticed you complain publicly about your partner, but even then I didn't realise. It became a conscious thought only after your breakup.

I took advice on what to do, and I ignored it. Because at that time, I had my own needs, and what I needed was for your breakup to stick. We were having lucid conversations, I was asking you pointed questions and you were giving me cogent answers, answers you were contradicting.

I was acutely aware there was history there of overlapping partners in a messy way that I didn't want. I wanted to see growth before I risked anything. 

I guess my problem was twofold, I didn't just want but expected growth, I was hoping, not impartially observing and I didn't anticipate my own emotional dysregulation when you didn't grow. 

I suspect, but don't know, in fact I kind of just assumed, that you knew at least enough to be confident I was interested.

I think I wasn't up to being your friend and broke because I couldn't accept the decision you went with. I likely blew up our friendship because it was too stressful for me not to resolve it in some way. I think I did so gracelessly, mostly due to inexperience, but also out of hope that it may turnaround if I just applied enough stress.

In which, I think you deserve credit for resolving it. In many ways it was helpful to me moving on, and enjoying my life.

I just struggle with the finality of it. I think that's what scares me, and haunts me about my lack of control. I've tried in myself, to be a safer person for my friends to blow up at. I don't know if I succeeded.

Inconclusive Like a Dream

I hope that's broad enough to be generally applicable, like how I relate to Jurassic-5's "The Thin Line" ft. Nelly Furtardo or even Mya (her solo hits softer) The nature of my dreams themselves indicate I'm conflicted as to the worthwhileness of a hypothetical reconciliation. I think an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and I would like very much to discover an adequate prophylactic even though, in the decade plus since losing that friendship, I haven't lost another, I'm still scared.

As to whether this exercise has helped, remains to be dreamed.