I have this overall feeling of malaise when I think of writing, and I've had it for the last week or so, which explains the short, fun-induced entries recently. I'm not sure exactly what has caused it, but it probably has something to do with vowing not to write about anything political for a while.
Side note: for someone on a vowed sabbatical, I certainly mention it a lot don't I?
I have seldom felt the rush that I felt in the last week or so before the election, pertaining to how I felt about my writing. There is something about taking the time to do a little research and then use the facts in a way that proves your point. It reminded me of my senior year of college, which was nothing but English courses so that I could complete my major (I had switched after my soph. year, from finance. Yep, that's true. Get the giggles out while you still got them.). I think I had to write about thirty papers that year, and I got A's on every single one. I've just always had a knack for writing those types of things.
So I am on election withdrawal. That is part of it. The rest is the fact that while I have been sleeping a lot lately, I haven't been getting much rest. I have been dreaming completely out of my mind recently, dreams so vivid and stunning that they are waking me up. When I fall back asleep either the same dream continues or I have a new one more vivid than the one before, with the same ending, me awake in the middle of the night, wondering what the hell is going on in my brain.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
I've always been a dreamer. For as long as I can remember my nights have been full of them. I can remember certain dreams from when I was five years old. If I tried to, I bet I could list the contents of at least a thousand different dreams that I have had in my life.
I never had a repeating dream in my life until two autumns ago, when I left my job as a retail manager. Since then I have had hundreds of dreams where I am back in that environment, sometimes as the head honcho, sometimes as just a clerk. These dreams have re-introduced me to the many people I met and worked with over twenty years in that business, people that I forgot even existed and will surely never see again for the rest of my life.
Last night I fell asleep shortly before midnight, woke up after a dream thinking that it was probably 3or 4 AM, and saw that I had been sleeping for about twenty minutes. That is how it was for the entire night, short spurts of sleep interrupted by a vivid dream and then lying awake until the cycle repeated. I hate trying to describe dreams. It's like trying to describe a vacation to someone that wasn't there-it's impossible to convey it perfectly unless you can make them experience it.
My last dream of the night went something like this: I was sitting on a bench on a street when I saw that Hillary Clinton was walking by. I said hello to her, and she stopped, displayed a gun that she had holstered to her waist while reminding me that the concealed carry law had passed so she could defend herself now. Then she walked away. I got up, crossed the street, and encountered another woman, who told me the same thing. I told her that she didn't scare me, and that if she came into my store (here comes the work theme) and showed the gun, I'd have her arrested.
That is exactly what she did, so I struggled with her and then subdued her while waiting for the police. All this happened at the front of the store, and I asked an assistant manager to help me restrain this person. Then I noticed an older woman walking through the liquor department with a young child. She opened a bottle of tequila and forced the child to drink half of it. I apprehended her as well, so now I had two people detained while waiting for the police. I soon grew impatient and told my assistant that I was going outside to look for the police.
I walked across the street and found myself in a warehouse district and there were police all over the place. I then bumped into a man that I used to work for a long time ago, explained the problem, and he told me that it would be impossible for one of them to come to the store because they all had to work security at his daughter's world premiere of her new play. This made me quite upset, and I decided to confront the first cop I could find, which just happened to be Dr. Phil (I swear I am not making this up). He told me that this was a high threat area, and that all police had to be here. I suddenly felt as if I was in great danger and ran away.
Soon I was hopelessly lost in an industrial looking area. I heard someone yell "action" and then saw a group of black men dressed in bright red suits emerge from behind a building. They begin singing in a Motown style, and I realized that I was in the middle of a movie set. I could see a big projection screen in the distance and saw that I was in the picture. I was embarrassed and looked for a way out, but all I could see were huge piles of woodchips. I dove into one of them, poked my head out and saw that I was still on screen. Then I ran away down an alley. Still lost, I could see the skyline of the city in the distance and did everything I could to find the way out of the alley, but everywhere I went was a dead end.
Just as I started to completely panic, two young kids came out of a field and told me that they could help me. As I started to walk towards them, I heard a loud growl and turned around to see a pack of wolves heading down the alley. A river of blood, meat, and other gross looking stuff flowed suddenly towards them, and they sucked it all up as they made their way past me. I turned and walked out the alley with the kids into a field of high grass with a swing set in the middle.
The dream ended with the kids asking me if they could swing for a while. I said yes, they hopped on, and I pushed.
The randomness of this dream is what all my dreams have been like lately, which is why they are dreams, I suppose. I couldn't create anything like this, I think. The worst part of it all is that I feel completely exhausted when I wake up, like I have run a marathon or something. Some of my dreams involved the normalness of life but with everyone moving at an incredibly high speed.
I don't eat or drink before bed, so I can't blame the psychotic ramblings of my psyche on that. I don't know what it is. I know dreams tend to be cyclical and that this will eventually wane.
Tonight would be nice.
No comments:
Post a Comment