Why this should be, I do not know. Maybe my brain circulation differs in colder weather, moving blood past the poisoned areas more easily while dreaming; maybe it’s just something about being bundled up safely against the chill that encourages healthy, creative associations in my subconscious mind. I spent my childhood in a colder climate, so perhaps it’s easier for my sleeping mind to escape the taint of adult disappointments when it’s cooler.
I live in a warm climate now, and during most of the year I rarely recall any of my dreams. When I do, they are generally murky and disconnected. Sometimes, when the weather is extremely warm, I experience nightmares; but even these are typically incoherent, either featureless ‘night terrors,’ or else dark, sludgy re-enactments of unhappy memories and missed opportunities. I neither sleep deeply nor dream vividly when the weather is warm.
But when the weather is cold-- then, then my dreams are alive with imagery! Rich, textured, full of marvelously odd and improbable associations-- vivid, strange and memorable! I sleep so deeply, the dreams flow like rivers; I awaken feeling rested and refreshed! I may be recalling selectively, but I’m pretty sure there are also fewer nightmares-- at the very least, they pass more quickly and seem less personal. It’s much easier to pull the blankets close and dive back into a fresh, happier dream.
Thank you for last night, strange dream people: fictitious low-budget-Japanese-science-fiction-movie characters; giant wandering robot and family; lavish 1930’s-era theater awards ceremony (apologies for the nudity); the Pumpkin King; junkyard zombies; ghostly inhabitants of LARP Heaven; survivors of the cannibal apocalypse; rat-human hybrids of the hidden mesa (your mom didn’t really abandon you; she lost you while trying to save your rat-sister from the cannibals) and their descendants’ ultrafuturistic civilization; and Scott Baio and Willie Aames. Thank you; thank you all.
I hope I die while sleeping, on a cold night; because I’ll never know, and the strangeness will just go on and on.