A Brief Sojourn Into My Subconscious

Given all the hubbub surrounding the film "Inception" and the subsequent articles (like this one by my friend Alexis), I thought that I would post about my dreams of late. But first, a word about my sleeping habits. Essentially, if sleeping were a sport, I would be an Olympic athlete. I sleep more than most people I know. An astrology book I flipped through once told me that people born on my birthday (March 1) need more sleep than others because we have especially active dream lives. This is what I remind myself when I guiltily wake up after 11 am.

Those of you who know me know that I sometimes have some, um, anxieties. And thus, I have a lot of stress dreams. Now that I think about it, I have at least one a night. Some are more garden-variety/common, while others (I think) are more specific to me and my bizarre little brain. The basic categories of my stress dreams are:

1. The Travel Stress Dream


I only started having these about two years ago, when I was preparing to leave NYC and move to Boston for grad school. So obviously, the dreams are manifestations of my anxiety about transitions and changes. In the dream, I'm about the take a trip, BUT

a) I don't have time to pack/can't find my suitcase and/or
b) can't get a cab to the airport and/or
c) I'm at the airport, but I can't find the gate and/or
d) I'm at the gate, but I can't find my ticket/passport/luggage

I'm always in the same, horrible imaginary airport and it's huge and there are no informational monitors or signs. It's also strangely deserted, so no one can help me find my gate, etc.

2. The Academic Stress Dream

This one's pretty classic. Sometimes I'm back in high school, sometimes I'm in college. Sometimes I'm in "college" but the campus is my high school campus. Usually, the problem is that I suddenly remember that I signed up to take a class and meant to drop it, but forgot and now it's too late. The semester is almost over, I haven't been attending the class and I'm going to fail because there is no way I have time to learn/read everything before the imminent final exam.

3. The Health/Appearance Stress Dream

This one's a little weird. I occasionally dream that I'm blind or that my teeth are falling out. But sometimes, I have a more vain variation where I look in the mirror and I just don't look like me. Sometimes I've gained a lot of weight and sometimes I just look like a different person. Once I looked in the mirror and had become Monica Lewinsky and I was really upset about it. Because who wants to look like Monica Lewinsky?


4. The Performance Stress Dream

Again, fairly common among theatrical types -- I'm in a play and just haven't bothered to learn my lines. So I'm frantically trying to get my hands on a script backstage. The show is about to start. The twist is that the play is always something classical, like Shakespeare or Sophocles, so I know I can't just adlib my way through it because my lines are in iambic pentameter or rhymed verse or something.

5. The Restaurant Stress Dream

Since getting hired at Lineage, I have had one of these about once a week, usually following a busy shift. In the dream, I have a bunch of tables and am totally in the weeds. And to make matters worse, the computer system has been redesigned so I can't enter my orders. Also, the menu has completely changed and customers ask me questions I don't know the answers to (in one version, Lineage had mysteriously transformed into a Brazilian steakhouse).

6. The Wedding Stress Dream

I'd be curious to know if other single women nearing thirty ever have this one. It's my wedding day and everything looks beautiful. I'm in my dress, my bridesmaids are helping me with the final touches. I'm about to get married. My mom is literally weeping tears of joy. But here's the bad part: I know I'm marrying the wrong person. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it's a huge mistake. I know it will end in divorce. But it's too late to call it off so I know I'm going to go through with it. I'm about to make the biggest mistake of my life and there's nothing I can do about it. Pretty fucked up, no?

It's not uncommon that I will become aware that I'm dreaming at some point in these dreams and then will try to alter the course of events. Even though I know it's not real, if I can just get on the plane/drop the class/keep my teeth/ring in the order/memorize my lines/call off the wedding, I will wake up feeling less anxious. Sometimes I achieve this, sometimes I wake up before it happens.

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

Sleep is one of my favorite activities and according to The Book of Birthdays, people born on March 1 (my b-day), need a lot of sleep because we have especially active dream lives. This poem, published just last year, is by Elaine Equi, a poet I only recently discovered but already adore.

Everybody Has Dreams

Last night, the cook dreamt a giant mouth dribbling blood

or ketchup. He has trouble relating to women.

The woman in the beige pantsuit dreamt of a computer that

transports objects into the future.

The woman by the window was a little girl holding her mother's

hand.

That guy near the door followed a melody into a forest.

The busboy was driving a sports car fast.

The skinny girl was a military general in a country ruled by a giant

inflatable cat.

The waitress murdered somebody. Even now, she looks guiltily

over her shoulder as she wipes the silverware clean.

Other People's Trout

Only the very young and the very old may recount their dreams at breakfast, dwell upon self, interrupt with memories of beach picnics and favorite Liberty lawn dresses and the rainbow trout in a creek near Colorado Springs.
The rest of us are expected, rightly, to affect absorption in other people's favorite dresses, other people's trout.

--Joan Didion, "On Keeping a Notebook"

It occurs to me that writing a blog is indulgent in the same way that sharing your dreams is, so I figure it's not a big leap to write a post about my dreams. Which, of late, have all been anxiety dreams and fairly easy to interpret. It bothers me when the meaning of my dreams is so transparent; I get insulted on behalf of my subconscious, feel like it should be more clever. I shouldn't literally be dreaming about the real things in my life that are worrying me, but figurative, highly abstract representations of those things. I went to an Ivy League school, goddammit.

Last night, I dreamed that I cheated on my boyfriend with Richard Blaise from Top Chef. I do not find Richard Blaise attractive and if he ever tried to make me eat his bacon ice cream, I would vomit on his face. What I kept thinking, as I was fellating Blaise, was "how I am going to explain this to Noah?" (Noah = boyfriend) Sure, I have had the occasional sex dream about David Cook (who hasn't?), but fantasizing about our new American Idol and a Top Chef cast-off of questionable sexual orientation are two very different things. Troublesome trout indeed.

This dream was followed by one in which I was trying to get my collegiate women's a cappella group, Whim 'n Rhythm, on time to a concert in the Hamptons. But somehow I got sidetracked and found myself wandering inexplicably around a mall, shoplifting cosmetics. And finally--yes, I had all 3 of these dreams last night--I was at an audition for NYU's acting graduate program, frantically trying to remember the lines to a monologue I haven't performed in months. I have this dream and several variations of it all the time, even though I haven't auditioned for anything in the past six months. It's the actor's version of the academic stress dream everyone seems to have, the one where they are supposed to take a final exam they haven't prepared at all for.

Oddly, I've never had that dream, or the one where you are in public and suddenly realize that you are naked. My humiliation/body shame dream is much stranger -- I'm in the company of friends, usually at someone's apartment or at a party, and suddenly I realize that I am masturbating in front of them. Like, I somehow just forgot that you don't do that in public. Unless you're this man:

So, here's what I have deduced from a careful analysis of my dreams: I'm fucking stressed out. Or, as my former therapist helpfully phrased it in almost every session we had, "Katie, it sounds like you're having some difficult feelings that are making you anxious." Thanks, Freud.