A Room of One's Own

I am feeling a bit Virginia Woolf-esque today and will try to keep up with the thoughts as they seemingly skip out of my head like stones bouncing across water. I've been having really dark/strange dreams recently. Not every night, but more often than usual. I have this one recurring dream set up like a bad horror film; desolate and dark small town, it's night and I am running away from a hand that is sticking up through the dirt. A hand isn't exactly terrifying, but this hand has Wolverine style instruments extending from the fingers. After running for what seems like forever, I inevitably can't move, I am stuck and the scene usually ends in what reminds me of a high school bathroom; grimy floors, multiple stalls and a never pleasant stench. The hand breaks and chips its way through the tile floor as I curl and cover my head; the tiles crumpling and chipping shooting dust into the air. The hand shoots upward and sometimes I come face to face with my chaser, sometimes not, but if I do, I see my father's face. How f-ed up is that?

A new one I've experienced this week is very Alice in Wonderland. It consists of flashes of color; gold and silver and reds and me falling through darkness. I find myself in a dark room that feels as though it is underground, deep inside in the earth. I am walking, almost floating towards a round table. I see hideous things and intuitively I know each thing, each one represents Dante's vision of the the 7 circles of Hell. I am compelled to sit down and I turn to see my brain's manifestation of Ianna, generally speaking a Sumerian goddess, the earth mother and she places her hand on my shoulder. The touch is warm and safe and reassuring and like most scenes in a dream I instantly can understand and feel myself linked to women across history, across the universe. She kisses my forehead. I wake up smiling and as if just embraced.

I don't pretend to know or understand what any of that means. I believe the subconscious needs to work things out; whether that means unspoken desires, daily frustrations or just strange random things based on experiences or memories from the past. When I have vivid dreams as such I always wish I was more artistic and could capture a scene via some paint and a brush. Alas I am not.

Dreams are strange indeed. Can you a imagine if the whole "no rules" environments and scenarios that play out in dreams applied in reality? Could you imagine a world where people just said what was on their mind or acted out fantasies or desires? Good and bad mind you...chaos! I suppose that's why some dreams can be so scary and regardless of how good or bad a dream is, why it's necessary to wake up.