Dreams in Early May
I usually write down my dreams (or mumble what I can remember into a voice recorder as soon as I wake up so I don’t forget anything, which eventually ends up written down). Honestly, they’re all pretty interesting and weird, and I dream every night, so there’s no scarcity of ideas. But I rarely share them with other people unless I dream something that eventually happens and I get to pull out the record I made of it to prove it.
I thought I might talk about two of them today, since one is a cosmic mystery and the other is such a metaphor that even dream-me was rolling her eyes as it happened.
The first was only five seconds long. I stood in front of a massive round door, deep in a mountain or cavern, I’m talking easily 80, maybe 100ft tall. It was made of brown and gray stone and carved into five or six rings, like a bullseye or a cinnamon roll. Within each ring were symbols, over and over again, all the same: a shut eye. As I approached, I felt like it was more of a seal, something not meant to open, something not meant to be known at all, until a big enough problem or certain conditions awoke it.
When I got close, I felt a humming through my boots, and thought suddenly that I had made something aware that should have stayed ignorant. Every eye on the seal opened, slowly, a sickly blue light shining beyond it. I stood still. Surely it had seen me. Surely, my small, humble, mortal presence shouldn’t have been enough to bother it. And yet.
After a few seconds, the eyes shut again, slowly, and nothing had changed.
Of course, I woke up thinking, “Something saw me that I shouldn’t want seeing me, and it was big.” But whatever it was must have seen me as nonthreatening and not-food, like a cat woken from a nap by a noise and taking a moment with its ears perked before deciding it wasn’t food, play, or danger, and snuggling back to sleep.
The second dream was weirder. I felt something on my scalp, at the top of my head, and worried that it was a scab or cancer. When I looked in the mirror, it was a flat, round, black plastic disc. About the size of a quarter. Stuck to my head somehow. So I, in my infinite wisdom, started picking at it, and I popped it off, and it turned out to be the top of a small milk bottle…which entirely fit inside my skull. I pulled it out and thought, “Oh right, I put that there as storage so I would have it close by if I needed it.”
Once it was out, I could see that I had put even more things in my skull. I started pulling out all kinds of snacks, little bags of chips, dried fruit, and like ten beverages in glass bottles. As I took them out, I could feel myself getting lighter, less weighed down, and clearer-headed. I emptied the space entirely, and felt so relieved. Like a burden had been lifted from me.
Metaphor. Obviously. I had stored these things thinking I might need them, but I kept them there for years and never did. Carrying them around was a burden that I had learned to live with because I had forgotten I had made the choice to carry them to solve a specific problem that never ended up happening.
It applies to food, yes. Buying more of something than I need “just in case.” But then the pantry fills up and fills me with dread. But it was taking up space in my skull, so I think the lesson here is temperance, and letting go of the things that aren’t serving me.
Not sure why my mind chose these visuals to tell me, but it worked. And that’s a little glimpse into the stuff my brain does while I’m trying to sleep.