I’m not sure I’ve ever had the same dream more than once. Instead, I’ve had dreams set in the same world or environment, in fact, it is a pretty regular occurrence. Sometimes I like to think of my dreamscape in the same vein as a video game like Zelda (this concept applies to a ton of games), where you have this massive world and it is divided up in to these very distinct and pronounced regions; each with their own separate titles. There is almost a certain reputation associated with each one. As far as the universe I’ve constructed in my dreams, it is an environment that puts such a world you might find in one of the Zelda games into a molecular perspective. With that said, when I have dreams set in these very similar settings, I feel like I’m just in a different region of my dreamiverse.
For instance, I have one series of dreams that has a few defining traits. The biggest player in all of it is the nighttime setting. There is no concept of day, it is a very dark world, the only light is provided from the dim orange glow of street lights and sometimes houses. This leads into another dominant aspect; it is predominantly set in a large suburban neighborhood. Most of the time it is specifically modeled after a neighborhood of one of my best friends– a place where I spent a lot of very memorable times in my childhood. There are two other major characteristics I can identify off the bat too.
First is the concept of powerlines. In a visual sense, they are always of great importance. The angling of visuals in my dreams is often from an elevated view, one that is often high enough to be looking down from power lines, but I also can recall a lot of visuals of just random cut aways to looking up into the night sky as the dimmed grey clouds speed by, sometimes revealing the ruler of this nightened world– the full moon. Finally, and probably most distinctly to me is the presence of what I’d call vampiric creatures.
These aren’t actual vampires I’m talking about, but if you look at characteristics of the fiction of vampire folklore throughout history some of these things are consistent. Also, when I say creatures it is important to note that that they are essentially human in their cognizance and existence, but they represent a more ascendant and powerful figure above what we typically see as humans. In all my dreams in this setting, I’ve never figured out if they were predatory of just observational, but in this vast, dark neighborhood they often scour on the power lines prowling about, camouflaged with the night sky in excessively long black-caped cloaks. They fly about from street light to street light and are seemingly incapable of making a sound. In particular, there is one that tends to be dominant in these dreams, a female of this species who has often given me very uneasy feelings in my dreams– sometimes even terror.
I’ve had dreams in this setting that have led me to going to an absurdly massive neighborhood pool that was packed, wandering around the same block in my lonesome in an endless cycle as I was stalked by the vampiric creatures, a set of dreams that revolved around safely traveling to a caged outdoor basketball court, one where I took refuge in a basement maze that connected my friends house to their neighborhoods, and probably the one that I remember the best: the one where another street wandering leads me to an entire section of the neighborhood that has been engulfed in a cornfield. People’s yards and houses vanished into this small country of corn, except for one house that was a little bit off center in the maze, as a family sat in rocking chairs on the porch in the distance. When I managed my way to the house it was vacated.
What I’m getting at is less a dream recollection, but really the emphasis that when I dream, while a lot happens and there is a very powerful audio/visual presence in my dreams, I believe the most prevalent effect to be an emotional one. Maybe not emotional in the watered down version we know in our consciousness– anger, sadness, happiness, love, etc.– but the more abstract sense of feeling. Just as I, and probably everyone dreams things that are to bizarre for reality, the feelings I dream are the same. I dream feelings that I could never hope to describe or articulate into any form outside of just feeling them.
Even further, if I dream, I usually can remember most of it if I put the effort into it. Though, if I do it takes a long time. If I recall a dream and even go as far to write it out, it usually takes at least an hour to go through the entire thing. The feelings are different. I never have to make an effort, but I almost always remember the feelings I experience. I can think to a dream I remember and I.. feel how I remembered feeling when I dreamt it. It works in reverse too. I think of a feeling I remember having in a dream and I can remember the dream in a very distant sense. Kind of like seeing a painting at a distance that barely makes itself aware to the eye. While with recalling the occurrences it is kind of like knowing the answer on a test but not being able to bring the information out.
Now, when I brought up this suburban night world dreamscape I specifically wanted to point it out because the dreams tend to be rather unpleasant. They really aren’t good dreams at all. I don’t wake up from them and feel good. I wake up from them and if I have the time to soak it in and ease back into reality, I feel like I’m in desolation. A kind of dream that can make my mind take a vacation from the immediacy of reality for hours– I don’t know if other people have them that often, but I’d hope that you’d know what I’m talking about. Most of the feelings I have from these dreams have flavors of terror in these highly abstracted and complex feelings, yet here is the caveat: I love these dreams. If I had a choice, I’d take living in a world like this one that I dream than the reality I know. I think I can live with admitting this because it is simply impossible and will never actually happen. I enjoy my dreams better than reality. It is the only redeeming quality of sleep. The more I learn about my own dreams though, I realize it isn’t just these super surreal settings and scenarios that are so addicting, though they are, but these feelings may be the greatest draw of all. The combined effect of all of this leads to the essence of what dreams are to me. These things you end up aspiring for, but in this case can’t have.
Let me quickly note that I’m not trying to give reality a diminutive quality, but just that dreams are addicting because, well.. I think I’m about to get in part of why I’m thinking they are.
I remember when I was a lot younger, reading up on lucid dreaming. I think there was maybe one time up to that point where I had realized I was dreaming but didn’t wake up, but it was very short-lived. Apparently you can condition or train yourself to have a greater propensity to dream lucidly, or become aware you’re dreaming. Who knows how much legit backing there is to this idea, but I did try it for a few weeks in my teens one summer, and it definitely seemed to work. Funny thing is, for the most part I always decided to fly and not do much else in these instance, and I never woke up feeling rested. But given this concept, then if you have awareness that you’re dreaming while you’re dreaming, then you are gaining control of a world that nearly has the perception of reality on pretty much all the senses. That’s a pretty powerful thing to consider.
Just thinking about this a little bit really leads me to believe that a lot of why I really have an addiction to dreaming and visiting all these worlds my subconscious has constructed is because I am in control in some sense. I can’t help it that living in a world where Stevie Wonder drives an ice cream truck and sings with joy about killing one of my best friends as he makes constant attempted to obliterate him with his ice cream truck, ultimately leading to us sprinting into the back of his truck which is, in turn, a cafeteria with marble floors and tables that is at least a mile wide is more interesting than waking up every day and going to school, doing the same actions and hobbies on a regular basis, seeing the same faces, interacting with the same things and abiding by the same universal principles.
It is a dynamic escape, an unpredictable and fresh adventure each time. One that provides experiences, sights, sounds, events and feelings that we rarely get in our everyday lives (though there are definitely things that reach and exceed this standard in reality, they are rare events). Though, sometimes I think this represents the tyrannical self. In a physical sense, my body, my mind and so on is generating these dreams. On some level I want to feel and experience what I dream, or else I wouldn’t really dream them. I mean, I like having terrible dreams from time to time because the powerfully intoxicating feelings they give me when I wake up. And I know that I have some sort of preference to my so called dreamscape than what can sometimes be a mundane and limited reality.. so is there some sort of latent desire for a self-generated tyranny? I suppose so, as I have the gall to even think that a world that is heavily influence and even constructed by myself is better than the one I live in. Pretty selfish really.
Good thing they’re just dreams though, right?