I had one on the night Bush the Elder was inaugurated. Tip O’Neil was peeping at me through the window as I slept so I went down the hall to another room where Ronald Reagan was staying in order to complain about Tip’s behavior. There sat Reagan, with his secret service agents. However, before I could complain, I noticed I was half naked, with only a small sheet wound loosely around my middle.
I was so embarrassed all I could do was stammer “Reagan, do you know that I agree with everything you did?” (NOT true in real life). Later when I told my mother about the nightmare all she could say was “That really was a nightmare!”
The other day, I had a dream where I was trapped in an episode of Mad Men ( a show set in the 60s). It was way more disturbing than you would expect it to be.
I fly in my dreams all the time, and have died in them too. Except that in my dream world, dying doesn’t mean you can’t still walk around and do things.
PunditLisa, you should teach yourself to lucid dream. That would probably make things a bit more interesting.
No kidding - I’ve been killed in more than one dream now, and I’ve also been Queen of the Underworld (that was actually really cool). I’ve hit the ground from the falling dream many times, with varied results (none of which was me dying in real life). One thing I can’t really do in my dreams for some reason, though, is taste things. I can’t really read well, either, but I think that’s a brain hemisphere thing.
The only dream I’ve ever had that wasn’t surreal was a romantic dream between Natalie Portman and Hugh Jackman in scruffy Van Helsing getup–and it only lasted for something like fifteen minutes.
I also had a dream (or hallucination) where I was approached by the Kangaroo of Death. As it came bouncing towards my bed I reached out to take a punch at it–and wound up knocking my coffee cup off my nightstand.
I have strange dreams all the time, but naturally, I don’t remember most of them now!
I do recall one from a few months ago where I was at school with a friend of mine, who happens to be a twin IRL. Only in the dream, I knew he had a twin brother, and knew them both, but they didn’t know about each other, and it was somehow up to me to keep them from running into each other on campus (and they kept having close calls, obviously!) I think I remember that one so much because I have never seen two people closer to each other than they are! Very weird.
My dreams tend toward the surreal. I recently dreamed of being locked in a mental duel with a psychic villain. The “physical” confrontation in the dreamspace was quite mundane, but it was overlaid with another layer of abstraction, a mindspace. The mindspace was a temple complex with Greek architecture and rooms that didn’t connect in straightforward ways (shades of “And He Built a Crooked House”); it was filled with tangible memories. Touching them caused the memory to manifest. I didn’t have any psychic powers to fight with, so I created false memories to use as traps and weapons.
Are you saying that you only love them for their branes?
Last night I had a dream that one of the guys who used to work for me and I went to get a hair cut. We were using a lot of Yiddish idioms when we spoke (OK, likely pseudo Yiddish, since I know little or no true Yiddish.) The fact that he is Peruvian makes this rather bizarre. His brother (a man I used to work for) came to cut our hair and he too was using a lot of Yiddish. (I don’t remember much of the conversation, but I do remember Schwanze was used.) Since is brother is also from Peru and runs a software company, I can’t imagine why he would be cutting hair and speaking yiddish.
Cut to me driving a car from the back seat in the U.K. Once I realize that I’m having trouble steering, I pull over and try to get in the front seat (but the wrong one for the U.K.) A police man sees this and comes over to check to see if I am drunk. He does this by putting a finger down my throat and then sniffing it to smell for alcohol - twice.
The other night, I dreamt that I was late coming into the office so I went to the other office. What other office, I don’t know, because I only have one office. Luckily, I had a cubicle at this fictional other office, too, so I sat there working. I was trying to get some projects done there before I went into the real office.
Then, a couple of people came to my cube, dragged chairs in there and started talking about work. After a minute or two, I turned around and asked them what they were doing. They said they were having a meeting. I told them that it was my cubicle, so why were they having a meeting? They said they booked it in Microsoft Outlook so they were going to have their meeting there. I asked why they chose my cubicle and, duh, it was because all of the conference rooms were already booked. They continued on despite my protests.
I had a dream as a kid that I remember well, kind of Twilight Zone-esque, surreal without flying and such things. In it, everyone had a watch that counted down the hours and minutes they had left to live. You could murder someone by putting the hands forward on their watch. Just as I was waking up I realised you could live forever by just putting the hands back. All this and not even ten years old.
During my teens I dreamt I had to chase a lizard creature through a maze of cubicle doors, just like a challenge from the game show The Crystal Maze. Having found it, I started to kill it by chopping it to pieces with a laser. It turned out to be a gentle creature and I knew this, but I kept cutting it, and it died a gruesome death.
Sometime later, I had a dream of which I only remember a fragment. Something about a fat man, whose skin split open and he fell out of it, in slow motion, into a perfectly smooth body of water. I had a sense of being in the middle of town, but somehow it was empty, and the town felt like it went on forever.
Then in a recent dream, I dreamt that I had to warn people that the Aliens from that movie, Aliens, were about, somewhere. Along the way, I had to find my daughter. I passed through a forest park, warning the people there and finally reached my destination, a rock festival. I told the people there, they believed me and were frightened. But they proceeded with that night’s music, although afterwards everyone went straight to their tents and there was no revellry. I joined them in a tent of my own, emerging in the morning to find everyone gone. Looking back, I can’t remember if they went off themselves or were taken. Either way, the Aliens never made their prescence known to me. After this, I went onto the dry and barren ruins of a city and stayed with a black family in the remains of a block of flats. I stayed overnight, and woke up the next day, shortly after which the dream ended. I never did find my daughter in the dream either.
Thing is, my mind can come up with this shit, but in my woken state I’m just the colour grey. Trying to throw myself at music, art or writing at school just brought up a blank slate
Fuck yes!
I have dreams that defy explanation and retelling afterwards. I often think through how I’m going to put this down on paper when I wake up, while I’m having the dream. I feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t have, for want of a better experession - fucked up dreams.
They remind me that there might be something deeper in store for life than the mundane daily routine. They also let me know that my mind can be creative when it wants to be…
… If only that creativity would make itself known in waking life.
My dreams are routinely bizarre, fortunately in a funny way. I often wake my husband up because I’m laughing in my sleep. Sometimes I’ll even wake up myself. My son seems to have inherited my predilection for entertaining dreams - my husband and I often wake up to hear him laughing in his sleep.
Last night I dreamed that I was watching an all-night live movie fest of Asian movies, and Sharon Stone was there in person taking notes in Chinese (I watched her write some of the characters). That weird enough for ya?
In regards to the thread in general: Ironically the best are the ones that are incidentally not all that surreal: The ones involving the person you have a crush on.
I’m known as the ‘last night I had a weird dream girl’. Almost everynight I dream and its always an odd dream. For example last night I dreamt that my mother had looped a length of string into a wool hat. This was to hide the string so she could strangle me with it. Apparently she was angry that Sarah Palin was not going to be President (please note my mother or myself have little to no interest in politics). She then tried to stab me with tweezers and I tried to do the same to her. After that I was suddenly sitting my driving test in an automatic ford focus. It was muddy and the steering wheel has really high up! Weird, huh? Fully explaining my weird dream on the way to work with my flatmate usually takes up the entire time it takes to get to work.
One of my most memorable was one where I walked into the kitchen and saw my mom next to the oven. I asked her what was cooking. She said - “Your father”. Then she opened the door, and he came sliding out, like on a morgue table.
