One Man's Meat

[mrissa]

I get confused when I hear people talking about their dreams and their nightmares, because the things that qualify as nightmares for other people and the things that qualify as nightmares for me are not really similar.

I often have dreams where I've gone somewhere naked where it would usually be inappropriate, but it's never uncomfortable. Nobody ever seems upset by it, least of all me. Also I have dreams where I'm falling, but they're happy falling dreams, floaty cloud dreams.

If there's a bishop in my dreams, though, you can guarantee it's about to get deeply unpleasant.

Other nightmares -- well, there's the one where I can't protect some loved one from something hideous, that's pretty obvious, but if I'm riding in a car, it's very very bad, and I don't usually feel at all upset about riding in a car. And being in school again is always a horrible dream, not because I'm unprepared, but because I'm overprepared. Because I explain to them that I've done differential equations and calculus of complex variables and any number of things, and they still make me do third-grade math worksheets, and all of my arguments about why I shouldn't have to go through that get me nowhere. And that makes sense, because I made functionally similar arguments at the time and still had to do the damn worksheets. I had generally a pretty good college experience, with only some specific bad classes, but any dream where I'm back at college is a bad one. I just don't like dreams of going back.

So while I'm cleaning the house and looking for distractions, do you have dreams that don't connect up with how other people talk about them? Other people's nightmares that come out fine, or your nightmares that are hard to explain? Or do you always have neutral dreams, or do you remember your dreams at all?

Comments

[flewellyn.livejournal.com]

My dreams are...weird as hell. I've told people about them, and heard about others' dreams, and the response is usually "Man, Avi, you have one screwed up brain!"

Ferinstance: I once had a non-Euclidean dream. As in, the geometry of the space that I was watching the action unfold in did not follow standard Euclidean geometries. It didn't start out that way: it started out as an X-Files dream, in which Mulder and Scully were tracking this conspiratorial (natch) group of mystics who seemed to be behind a series of thefts and odd disapeparances, and eventually found them at a temple in southern New Orleans, providing support for a group of monks who continually chanted over a gate to Outside; their chanting had to continue uninterrupted, with different monks in shifts seamlessly picking up where the others left off, lest the gate open and let in Things from Beyond which would do Horrible Things that involved Capital Letters.

Anyway, Mulder ended up inadvertently screwing up the whole thing, and the gate opened, and Something came through...and space changed. They were now in a space described by hyperbolic geometry, and had to try and move through the world as it was now, while trying to figure out how to put things back the way they were. I woke up from this dream with a splitting headache: I don't think the brain is meant to process that kind of reality.

I've had other, slightly more pedestrian dreams, such as the one in which I had to help my beautiful girlfriend escape from the evil Canadian secret police (don't laugh) while carrying the last vial of nacho cheese flavoring in the northern hemisphere (don't ask).

Or the one in which my arm splits open due to an injury, revealing plastic and metal fittings and wires, instead of flesh and bone. Or there's the one I had about transforming into a predatory, demonic mantis and hunting down innocent bystanders at midnight in a field somewhere. Or the ones in which I'm flying; usually, this "flight" is very hesitant, as I basically step off the ground and find myself hovering unsteadily, wobbling around and drifting without much control.

I suppose the "you're in college, but you have to go back to high school as well for a bit" dreams qualify as frustrating. They're not actual nightmares, just very odd, and somewhat frustrating. I am usually, in these dreams, both in college and in high school. Just doing one class back in high school, for some unknown reason.

Oh, there's also the frustrating dreams I have where I'm trying to do something, or talk to someone, and the other person keeps taking it the wrong way and getting angrier, and everything I try to do to make things better just makes everything worse, and finally in frustration I end up killing them. It's usually a family member or close friend, too. I find those very distressing.

None of these are what I would call "nightmares", though. You really don't want to know about my nightmares.