As puerile fantasy and adult longing grease against one another in their attempt to assimilate, they slip in-between, leaving a gap in which I have come to inhabit. One of the many things that cajole within its confines is the dreaming mind. I find it fascinating that we are unconscious yet we possess the ability to remember, I also find the fact that many people share similar dream experiences rather interesting, especially those dreams/nightmares that make us anxious, for instance, teeth falling out, flying, falling, etc. Why are our fears manifested in such ways, and why are they synonymous with others?
I often remember my dreams, even dreams I had many years ago, they leave a stain, sometimes a Technicolor blemish on my memory. There are a few reoccurring motifs in my ‘anxious’ dreams, they are as follows:
*Teeth falling out – mainly my back teeth (whether that’s important I don’t know)
*Trying to turn on the light switch but it is doing nothing, and in panic I frantically switch it on and off, but to no avail, my efforts are impotent (for some reason this dream really invokes a feeling of terror in me – very odd)
*Water – usually tidal waves, tsunami’s, flooding etc (and it is strange that usually one of my brothers’ is usually present within the dream somewhere when the water occurs…don’t know what that means?) – although the best dream I ever had involved water, but it was calm and glistening, a beautiful azure blue that lapped up at the shore leaving tiny crystals that glittered in the sunlight – water seems to be very important to me in my dreams, and is a regular feature.
In the last few nights, I have had two recurring motif dreams, teeth falling out, and scary waves! In the losing teeth dream, I was taking the puppy of a friend with me to work, it was so cute, and I was really happy skipping along down the road with it. I got to work far too early, so decided to head back home for a bit and return later. With my back to work, I eagerly bounded homeward, not looking behind as sweet little puppy yapped after me, I didn’t look at the road properly and the puppy got run over. I was devastated, and felt so guilty. I didn’t know what to do. (There was something in between involving roller-skating and falling over lots, and feeling that I deserved it for letting the puppy die, but it’s all too hazy to recall – is that important? Is my inability to remember, my desire to keep what the dream is really about away from my grasp?). Then later in the dream one of my back teeth started to crumble, then a big bit of it came away, I remember thinking ‘I can’t afford to go to a dentist here in Holland, I don’t have any health insurance!’. Then the tooth next to it just fell out, along with another one directly adjacent. The other side started to crumble and the same happened to my teeth on that side. Halfway through I remember thinking that perhaps I am dreaming because I often have dreams about my teeth falling out, but then it suddenly felt so real to me, and I was telling myself that it wasn’t a dream and that this was really happening. I was so glad when I woke up to realize in fact it was a dream. As daft as it sounds I can’t stop thinking about the poor puppy. I really felt the loss. What does this puppy mean to me? Is it about responsibility, or perceived responsibility to other people? I always feel guilty and responsible for some reason, in this instance, it was my neglect of this other being that resulted in its death. But is death always really ‘death’? It is a loss, definitely. Perhaps something I needed to let go, or am worried about letting go of.
