The Dreams Are Back

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The dreams have returned.

Years ago I would often have rich, striking dreams that seemed filled with symbols and meaning and could be mined for insight and stories. Sometimes there would also be nightmares--or terrors that would leave my body writhing, desperate to wake up.

And then, they were gone. Like half a magic trick, where the rabbit stays vanished. At first their absence was just an interesting phenomenon. Over several years, I accepted it as a permanent mystery. While in reality I probably did dream and just not remember, the veil was so thick it was as if not a flicker of seeing had passed during sleep.

Now they are back: Dreams of guns that don't fire--and those that do, but thankfully miss. An ear falls off. Strange air conditioners read my body with blasts of psychic energy. Michelle Obama diagnoses me as "defeated." I play pool with my grandfather, who passed years ago. Instead of a cue stick, I shoot with a can opener.

What has changed, or reverted? Is this temporary? Will the dreams vanish again? Is anything permanent? It makes me anxious, in a way. I want the dreams to stay, and wonder how I can make my subconscious more open to them.

Was I a bad host, before? Has something been fixed or found?

Sometimes the dreams feel significant; other times I suspect they are manifested brain farts. But most of all they are comforting, like a friend who was gone and has now returned.

The thing is, while almost everyone has dreams there really isn't a consensus on just what they are or mean. Many people focus on the objects in dreams as symbols, capable of yielding insight into the subconscious. Some dreams feel like premonitions. Others are altered memory.

There is a Greek word I like quite a bit: oneiranaut, which means “explorer of dreams.”

I like to write down the dreams, and then start “editing.” I delete anything that doesn’t feel deeply resonate, and after enough passes the truth tends to leap out. You can read some of those past dream-writing experiments here. An example:

In a crowded room
a woman I know
is trying to cut down a small tree

She swings an axe, but weakly;
when it strikes, it does not cut deep;
and what it does cut
is already dead and dried and brittled

Next it is my turn
and my cuts go deeper
and strike with force

The axe bites firmly, and the torn wood
is alive and soft and pulpy.
People are watching
but I do not want to do this.

Right now, I am simply enjoying the dreams’ presence. Happy they have returned, with all their surreal, inscrutable messages. Each night I go to bed curious what will bubble up. Whatever whiffs of subconscious remain in the morning keep me thinking all day.