Not nightmares, at least not exactly. I tend to remember many of my dreams; I was going to write all, but obviously, if I completely forget some, I wouldn’t know it. But sleep is no longer the refuge it should be. My mother, who died a little over two years ago, and my son, who died thirteen years ago, have been in just all about all of the dreams. The circumstances are always impossible. So I’m going to vent here, if you guys don’t mind.
In the dream from last night, my wife and stepdaughter and I were living in the house where I grew up, where my father still lives, and my mother and son were with us; but my father, who is still alive and living in that house, was not there, and no one remarked on it. I was on the porch setting a train set for my son, who was still six years old though his sister was grown up, which no one thoguht was strange either; but my mother was in her early 30s, as she was when I was born. Anyway, I was setting up a train set, and someone my son was playing with what I thought, in the dream, was a Mexican jumping bean. At one point he knocked over everything I had set up, and I got angry and took the bean from him and sent it skidding across the porch. It rolled into the yard and became a cat: not Mrs. Whatsit, our pet who just died, but an anthropomorphic beast, a catgirl with bright red fur. In the dream our house was in the neighborhood Mrs. Rhymer & my stepdaughter and I live in now, and the next-door neighbor’s dog had gotten over the fence between the two properties. He turned into an anthropomorphic beast too, a dogman with black fur, and approached the catgirl, and before I could do anything sank his teeth into her neck.
In the dream from the night before last, the Earth was about to be destroyed and everyone expected me to save them. It was some sort of comic-book, the-sun-is-about-to-be-extinguished peril, and I apparently had super-powers; at least, everyone thought I did, acted like I did, but I couldn’t put them to proper use; I could fly only at very slow speeds, not nearly fast enough to take the macguffin to the sun in time. But I tried and flew off; and suddenly I was where I had begun. Everyone was acting as if I had succeeded, praising me for my valor, but I couldn’t see that I had done anything; the Earth was in a new ice age, but no one would admit it.
In another dream I took my mother and wife and stepdaughter and son shopping, but could not find them when it was time to go home and no one would help me; my sisters were there but would not acknowledge that they were missing. In the real world they have always been very supportive. Frequently in annoying and infuriating ways, but I’ve never had reason to doubt the sincerity of their love.
A fourth dream was one I have had before. My son was just a baby and he had eaten poison. At least, I think it was my son. He looked like my actual son did at that age, but in the dream Kim was his mother, which is impossible for several reasons. Anyway, he had eaten poison. My wife and I had taken him to a hospital, which, for some reason, was set up like a shopping mall; there were endless shops where I should have been able to buy medicine. But at each shop, the clerks/nurses told me they were out of the antidote, but there was another shop in the mall/hospital which had it. So Kim and I kept running from shop to shop, uselessly, until at last Kim said we should just sit and wait and hope he would get better on his own. We sat on a bench by a fountain, and my parents were there and wanted to pray over my son, which I thought was useless. So we argued, as we always argued, and then I woke up.
I’m not sure why I’m bothering to post this. I just need to vent.
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“Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey … The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.”