Strange Dreams
Like most people, if I do dream every night, I only remember those dreams once in a while, usually when I wake up in the middle of one. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about or trying to analyze my dreams, but last night my little Buddy who gets very grumpy when he is awoken, woke himself up and started growling loudly enough to woke me at about 3am. Sure enough, I was in my REM sleep and was suddenly aware of the dream I was in the midst of. Like all dreams, it was like an abstract painting and was less rooted in absolute reality and more a jumble of symbolisms which were left for me to interpret this morning. What I do know is that it made it harder for me to go back to sleep, even after a bathroom break and the taking of some ibuprofen to ease me back to bed. The dream was puzzling enough (note I did not say terrifying, but rather puzzling) that I was left to ponder it even though it was difficult to tether to any issues I feel I am confronting in life.
Usually, dreams for me are a place to play out my problems in some sort of simulation of the mind. The most regular topics that make the hit parade are financial issues, career path issues, love life issues, family issues and friend relationships. In extreme conditions, the topics can drift to include harsh weather, the political landscape or the general state of the world. I think the mind tries to set these worries into a context to make them easier to manipulate. Now, if I was guessing what I might want to resolve through dreaming, it might be the current political situation, a situation that occupies a great amount of my waking moments, even more so on a daily basis these days with 55 days to go until November 5th and tonight being the night of the first and perhaps only presidential debate of this cycle. With all the polls showing a race too close to call, even the slight lead that Harris/Walz seem to enjoy is little comfort given the starkness of the alternative outcome. I could see a dreamscape where America becomes a dystopic version of Pinochio’s Pleasure Island, populated by debauched and raucous naughty boys that eventually grow donkey ears (Isn’t that ironic imagery). I am a Harris/Walz donor and supporter who has written publicly and regularly about the problems that a return to the White House by trump would bring. That means that I could be put on a list for some form of Trumpian retribution since he has said as much for those of us with those qualifications. There will be many ahead of me in line, but that too is small comfort. Who wants to be on a list of political enemies, especially when the boss man is wigged out and vindictive?
But strangely enough, unless the symbolisms are so obtuse as to be indecipherable, I did not dream about the political situation. Perhaps it had to do with the rather extreme weather we have been experiencing. We have had a week of 100+ degree temperatures which has forced us all to live like those who live in Phoenix or Las Vegas…we’ve stayed indoors. Today was the first break in that pattern with temperatures dropping to a cool 90 degrees and expected to shift gears into a high 70s climate for the rest of the week. But the dream was not about a sizzling heat wave and the Lovin’ Spoonful was not singing Hot Down Summer In The City in the background. Since I often wake up at night with a sweaty and gritty neck, that song would have been a perfect accompaniment for such an awakening.
As best I can piece together, the dream involved two topics, the first was house renovations and the second was singing performances by friends. I attribute the house renovations not to anything happening at Casa Moonstruck, since there are no renovations planned or underway, but rather to Kim and my nightly episodes of House Hunters International. This is our favorite HGTV series and it has the predictable format of finding some silly person or couple that are moving internationally for any number of reasons and then seeking to buy or rent a home in a Monte Hall manner with doors numbered one through three. They give some local broker a list of wants and a budget and then the broker shows them the best fit for those parameters in whatever city is on offer that episode. Usually, since the show is targeted for American audiences, it involves Americans relocating to Europe, Asia or Australia. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an episode involving Africa, South America or the Middle East. They position these stories to be intriguing to people who probably have never lived more than fifty miles from where they were born and while Asia can be pretty exotic, they are simply not ready for what places like Africa or some Andean dictatorship hold for emigrating Americans.
The drama is sometimes positioned as conflict between the spouses who want different things and sometimes with what people seem to think they will have to do to make these limited accommodation choices livable for them. We are amused by the low budgets for those moving to Asia (usually places like Chang Mai in Thailand or some place like Phnom Penh in Cambodia) where $200/month seems to get you two bedrooms and baths with a private swimming pool. We are equally amused by people moving to Europe and dropping $2 million on a house with bedrooms with no headroom and a six foot square garden that qualifies as outdoor space in Amsterdam. For some reason, my dream was focused on a renovation of our home that was so severe that the decision was to fix the roof line or just tear down the whole structure. It seemed like a very vexing dilemma in the dream.
Meanwhile, we had guests staying with us and they regularly left and showed their appreciation for our hospitality by singing show tunes to us almost like auditions for something like the right to stay with us again. We have had a number of guest over the past month or so, but I have no understanding of why I would want them to audition Broadway tunes for us. The best I can figure, it must have something to do with Kim and all her music work these days. For every story I write or every movie I watch, Kim is preparing a performance of one tune or another. There are her Encore choral rehearsals (both entire chorus, the Alto-2 sectionals, or her solo auditions and rehearsals). There is her monthly Jazz ensemble rehearsals and performances. This is all a big part of Kim’s life now and by extension, a big part of mine, either in attending performances or covering for Buddy duty when she is off rehearsing. I have no idea what connection all of that has to our guests or their need to perform for us, but dreams never have to explain themselves. It is up to us to decide if they warrant further assessment.
I’ve spent the day thinking about the dream on and off and have decided that there is clearly something very wrong with my brain. Every night we watch Sheriff Walt Longmire solving grizzly murders in Absaroka County in northern Wyoming and that doesn’t give me weird dreams. Donald Trump’s autocratic rantings do not give me bad dreams. But House Hunters and show tunes have got me in their grip. Strange Dreams indeed.