Dating Morpheus

My dreams either amuse me or scare the hell out of me. Almost all the time - that is, if I remember them. Either way, I have very vivid dreams, sometimes up to the point of being tactile. Or in black-and-white. Or in black-and-white with some shades of blue.

For instance, there was this dream I had of being in a place surrounded by blue waters. It almost looked like Santorini. There were a lot of people, most of them I know - friends, colleagues, people I met in some of my travels. I started taking photos with my D40. After a few shots, my D40 started acting like a Polaroid camera and churned out the photos that I had taken. Strange, I know. Then again, it was a dream, and strange things like this are expected to happen in dreams. The strangeness does not end there, though. As I looked at the photos, I realized that the shot was the live scene right in front me! NOT the shots I took a while back.

There was another dream I had where I was in a bar. The concept was cool - quite literally because dry ice was everywhere, giving the effect that we were in a freezer. There were booths at the center and by the walls. Each booth had some drapes and could seat about 4-6 people. I don't remember whom I was with in the dream, but I do remember OSTRICHES popping out of nowhere.

I have others that are too gory, morbid, or intense for me to share here.

I wake up asking myself what the hell just happened and what the hell do they mean. I gave up on websites on dream interpretations because it seems like I'm reading my daily horoscope. I could invent the best and worst out of it. For instance:

Camera: To see a camera in your dream signifies your desires to cling on and/or live in the past.

Photograph: To see a photograph in your dream indicates that there is a relationship that needs your attention.

Ostrich: To see an ostrich in your dream suggests that you are not facing reality.

So I stuck with my friend's explanation. She took up Psychology back in college, and she had a class where they were taught what dreams could possibly mean. I think it had something to do with Freud.

Apparently, our dreams indicate one of three things:

1) The events we went through, or the stimuli we were exposed to in the past - be it images, people, sounds, etc;

2) Our deepest fears; or

3) Our deepest desires.

If we look at dreams from this lens, it seems like dreams are a way for our subconscious to speak to us. These may be things that are deep-seated in our minds, but we don't really think about in our waking hours. Sometimes, I think that my subconscious has gotten ahead of me, of the decisions that I'm bound to make. For some strange reason, I take comfort in that. That I'll somehow manage to figure things out later on. Maybe. At the same time, I find it scary because these may be things that are bothering my subconscious, but my cerebral conscious brain seems to shut them out. So it's like our minds - and by extension, we ourselves - are in a constant state of denial and discovery. If that's making any sense at all.

It reminds me of what I once read in Sandman: "People think dreams aren't real because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hope."

Oh well. I think I should buy myself a dream notebook where I can document my dreams. It would be good to refer back to it when I'm a bit older and more experienced in life. Maybe I'll finally make sense out of them in (future) retrospect.