Only in Dreams

I had a dream last night that K and I were on a roadtrip and I wanted to smoke some meat. I set up a little smoker rig like Alton Brown did on his smoked salmon episode except that mine involved more open flame and the trunk of my Prius instead of the hotplate and cardboard box of the TV cooking deity's version. The weird thing wasn't that I'd start a fire in my car (I can unfortunately see myself not thinking through that on one of my less practical days) but that the Prius doesn't have a trunk. It's a hatchback. Anyway, while ignoring the vague worry of burning my car's interior, I headed up to the hotel room where K was waiting. We were tired and took a nap. When I woke up, I headed back down to check on the smoked meat. My car was gone, firefighters were watering down the damaged vehicles next to where my car once was, so I nonchalantly ambled through to the underground parking deck hoping they wouldn't know it was my car and feeling mildly disappointed that I lost my car. I love my car. I tend to feel very muted or no emotion at all regardless of the dream's content, so that I felt anything at all is a huge statement. Continuing on through the parking deck, I headed into a field where I found a horse struggling to orchestrate its trembling limbs to pick itself off the ground with no luck. Slightly disturbed by this image, I turned and exited the pasture into the wooded area adjoining it. There I caught a deer with my bare hands, but it was getting late and I really didn't want to go through the effort of cleaning the animal so late in the day so I released the once dead animal back into the wild of the hotel parking lot. I woke up with that same vague disappointment that I'd destroyed my car through my own stupidity until I gradually was able to convince myself it was just a dream a couple of minutes later.

This dream, and how rewarding it was to me despite the depressing imagery, reminded me of an essay I wrote for a Teaching Writing course in college. I had just had a dream, the first remembered dream I had had in a while and the joy the dream brought inspired the essay. I had been working nights and taking classes during the day and not getting enough sleep. I'll let the essay explain just why this is so important to me.

I Don’t Want Your Sandwich, Saddam

Saddam Hussein once offered me a sandwich while I was a guest of his recently. It was tuna fish salad I think. I politely declined and instead chose one of the fried fish patty sandwiches that floated on the tops of water lilies in one of the reflecting pools in Saddam’s marble plaza. I would have preferred the tuna fish, but I was worried Saddam might have poisoned it. As I munched on my sandwich, I marveled at how the reflecting pools, surrounded by marble tiles of a slightly pinkish hue, stretched long and narrow to the horizon. To the left of me was the desert, to the right, tall, small-windowed buildings constructed out of the same marble clustered tightly around dusty alleys. Saddam wasn’t very talkative, so I bid him farewell and took off in search of a bank so I could exchange some of my American dollars into Iraqi dinars.

* * * *

I am obsessed with dreaming. It’s not an obsession that I completely understand, but an obsession nonetheless. When I sleep too deeply and awake without memory of the random neural firings of the previous night, I feel like I’ve been ripped off. I mean, what good is sleeping without the in-slumber movie? Then, some other mornings, when I wake up still wondering just how Saddam Hussein managed to get those water lilies to grow fish- and chicken-sandwich patties, the day just seems to be a little brighter, my mood a little lighter.

Maybe part of my obsession with my dreams comes from their vividness. Going back to the Saddam dream, I can remember how the smallest details. A few scraggly trees and bushes dotted the desert vista to my left. The green water lilies with this fish- and chicken-sandwich fruit were evenly spaced in the reflecting pools about a foot or so apart. The sandwich patties were the perfect light brown of a properly fried processed meat product and the texture of each patty was like that of a tater tot. I hated to leave.

* * * *

Our dog, Pam Collie, saved my little sister’s life once. Or at least that’s what my parents told me later. My sister, 2 or 3 at the time, was playing in the dirt driveway behind my father’s truck before he left for work one day. When he got into his truck to leave, he did not see her and started to back out. If it hadn’t been for Pam Collie, my sister could have died under my father’s tires.

* * * *

I dreamed of a memory once and it took me several years to discover that the memory wasn’t real. Not all of my dreams are as abstract as my fish sandwiches with Saddam dream. It’s these boring, mundane dreams that give me the most trouble. Since my dreams are so vivid with color and texture down to the tiniest details, I’ve often been unable to distinguish them from reality at least for a few minutes or hours. Not only did I spend four years thinking that our family dog had once saved my sisters life, but there were times that I was truly shocked to discover that, no, I hadn’t taken a shower and gotten ready for school and, yes, my father was right that I was still lying in bed asleep.

* * * *

I’m afraid. What will they do to me? The raccoon seems to be the leader, but why do they have me trapped here on the merry-go-round at my school? The rabbits carry guns and the squirrels do too. I’m scared. Maybe these herbivores are tired of salad.

* * * *

I awoke screaming and with a fever. It was Kindergarten and it was the last time I had a nightmare. I don’t know what happened, but sometime after that I lost the ability to be afraid of my dreams. All emotion is dulled there, but fear is missing entirely. I still have the dreams where I’m being chased and can’t get away, or where I’m falling into a bottomless hole, but it’s almost like I’m an observer. I see myself doing the running and falling from a distance, both physically and emotionally. It’s an odd experience, but it doesn’t take away from my love of the dreams. I’m sure a psychiatrist would love to help me figure out what happened to the fear, but I really don’t want to blame my mother. Besides, I don’t really want to know the answer. I’m not supposed to know. Knowing would kill the fun, kill the mystery.

* * * *

* * * *

I may not fear my dreams, but I do fear not dreaming at all. My dad doesn’t dream. He hasn’t dreamed since he had part of his brain removed to make room for the shunt during surgery to help with his seizures in the ’60s. And when I get too busy and don’t get enough sleep, I don’t dream either. I awake in the morning and have no memories of anything since I curled up next to my wife the night before. I miss out on having my fish sandwich with a dictator; I don’t get to make memories of things that never happened. My life doesn’t allow for as much creative expression as I’d like, and when the dreams don’t come, I miss the reassurance that the creativity is there.