Dreams

For a new project, I’m interested in my readers’ most common dreams.

For instance, for a long time, years, I had only one dream. It was a variation on the actor’s nightmare: I was always booked for some kind of performance in some faraway city, and I was always showing up the day of the show and finding out that my housing was bizarrely inadequate (one dream had me staying in a rotting trailer in the middle of a woods), my transportation confusing and dangerous (subway trains without platforms, jet planes that must take off or leave in the middle of city centers), and the venue always in a state of turmoil. And, of course, I was always showing up without a clear idea of what the show was and what my part was in it.

The other dream I’ve had for at least the past twenty years is that I’m showing up at a college campus on finals day and realizing that I’m due to take an exam and haven’t been to any of the classes that semester. In fact, I haven’t even been on the campus before.

I used to have the dream where I showed up at work naked. The strange thing about that one was that no one else ever noticed that I was there, much less that I was naked.

And, in times of great stress, I’d have flight dreams every night. I would have them so often that they became routine, I would know when one was starting and know exactly what to do. I had them so often that my flight-dream life became an easy, comfortable place, and flying became no big deal — I could just as easily fly down the hallway to get to class as soar over my neighborhood in the moonlight.

I’ve had some version of every kind of dream reported in the Wikipedia "Common Themes" paragraph, with the exception of the one with the dreamer’s teeth rotting and falling out.  That one strikes me as bizarre.