To sleep, perchance to dream...

Warning: This blog entry contains nothing whatsoever about wisdom, meditation or spring coming and the grass growing by itself. It is entirely and unapologetically self-indulgent today.

Lately I have had some really vivid dreams. It could be that my imagination is running riot at night and sending me into situations that my unconscious mind knows I am not strong enough to resolve during my waking hours or, more likely, it is an early side effect of medication. Whatever is causing my night time manoeuvres doesn’t really matter because they are certainly entertaining. In fact my sleeping life is currently far more exciting than my waking one.

At the outset, let me lay my cards on the table, be perfectly open and frank and waylay any smartass commentary. I am aware that ALL dreams are sexual in nature. They are all open to Freudian interpretation and all boil down to repressed sexuality. OK, that’s out of the way so now I can begin.

Let me set the scene first. Two days ago we became aware of an unpleasant smell in the downstairs of my house, a very unpleasant smell. All of us looked suspiciously at each other, but no, it wasn’t of human origin and after checking various drains and overflow pipes it seems as if we have a rotting animal corpse somewhere under our house. Short of digging up the entire floor there is no real answer except to wait and hope the smell dissipates. To say that I am disturbed by this is an under-exaggeration. I am horrified.  As I fell asleep that night I could just get whiffs of the horrid odour and it was my last conscious thought before falling into a deep sleep. 

Dreaming – the smell was strong and very noxious. I started to explore where the smell could have been coming from and made a mysterious discovery. There were workmen dismantling the house next door and in doing so were relocating all the sewage pipes to flow over my back kitchen door. No one had asked us for permission to do this. In reality I don’t have a back kitchen door, but in my dream my house had a different configuration. Not only were the plumbing pipes being moved on to my property, but they were being installed wrongly. I knew exactly where they should go (?).  Suddenly the workmen started knocking down the back wall of my house. It was a total mess and things started falling apart. I remember screaming and being very, very angry. ’How dare they!” It was at that point in my dream I grabbed a huge machete or axe and ran towards the people destroying my house. I knew that I was quite prepared to kill the destroyers. I felt wild with anger.

And then I woke up! What the hell could that mean? I know that I am hung up on issues of security and safety and I also know that I am frightened of seeing my own defences crumble around me, but I awoke quite startled at the level of my rage and my absolute conviction that I would have killed someone, at least in my sleep state.

Last night I dreamt a completely different scene. I was on my way to the seaside and was being accompanied by two people. The first was a child of about 6 years old, the son of a very good friend of mine and the second was David Cameron, the Prime Minister. So far, so bizarre. David Cameron was flirtatious and a bit inappropriate with me, but I wasn’t particularly interested. I was laughing and fairly carefree. I was more involved in buying sweets for the little boy at a huge candy stall in a local market. The seaside location was somewhere I have visited in my dreams many times before. I realised, even as I was dreaming that this place was familiar from earlier dreams, so familiar I could begin to map it when awake.

The next thing I knew all three of us were walking up an outside staircase to a room or apartment. Cameron went away into the bedroom, the boy disappeared and suddenly there was Cameron wearing women’s clothes, my clothes I think, even though I was still fully dressed. Cameron beckoned to me to come into bed. He looked most strange. Here was the British Prime Minister wearing a silver sequinned top and satin leggings inviting me to bed. I was both amused and distressed. Had he misread my lack of interest as something else? I started shouting at him ‘Stop being so stupid’ and the more I shouted, the happier he became. It dawned on me that Cameron was a masochist and that my shouting at him was making him very excited. He invited me to hit him with a hairbrush! I was horrified. This was a no win situation because the more forcefully angry I became, the more stimulated it made him. I walked away to think about what I could do. I also remember making some comment about this behaviour being very wrong with a child present.

As I walked away I remembered I had my camera and re-entered the bedroom and began taking photos of David Cameron dressed in women’s clothes. He had by now donned a very fetching pale pink feather boa and was begging me to hit him as I repeatedly snapped photos. I escaped from the room and knew that the camera contained the evidence that could damage the Prime Minister’s reputation forever. By simply giving the photos to the newspapers I could single-handedly bring down the government. But wait, not only could I do that, but I could SELL the photos to the papers thus making me rich at the same time.

This became the real dilemma of the dream. Do I give the evidence to the newspapers and rid the country of an unfair, undemocratic government or do I sell them to the gutter press for exorbitant sums of money? Selling the photos would mean that I would no longer have any money worries, but would place me in a morally compromised position. Donating them would accomplish what I wanted but surely no one would blame me from profiting from my situation. Should I or shouldn’t I?  What should I do? This was when I woke up.

This is a summary of the past two nights. I awake tired. I think all the running about in my night travels exhausts me. So much processing. I hope you can see how my unconscious dream state is puzzling to me. Aside from the reality which is that I hate our present UK government and there is an unholy smell in my house, I have no real idea as to the meaning of these vivid dreams.

Any ideas?