dreams

For three years after my life collapsed I had no dreams. I didn't even notice that they were gone until they started to return. Lately I've been dreaming every night. Strange dreams unsettling ones that penetrate my day life. I think that the writing about that time has stirred them.

I think it's strange how I didn't notice I had no dreams. They say that you always have them though, and it's the remembering of them that is the trick. They also say that antidepressants suppress the memory of dreams. Alcohol too. Stress. Trauma. Inattention. All stop the connection between the life of the night crossing into your daytime brain.

There was a period of time when I took medication to make me stop smoking. That medicine which I only took for three days made me have nightmares so horrible that I couldn't bear to sleep. It took weeks afterwards for me to sleep normally again. Since I started writing every day, I've been dreaming more.

Last night I dreamed that I found myself in an enormous multilevel building like a warehouse divided into portions. My portion was high up with sloped walls like an attic and it was packed full of strange items. Keyrings and foam pool noodles. Boxes in plastic crates and cartons of door knobs and hinges. There were plastic trinkets and foibles of all kinds. Clothes piled up and hats and baskets and boxes and beads and stuffed animals. Shelf upon shelf of uselessness. I was to vacate the premises my lease was up and I had only a short time to get rid of these vast quantities of cheap, garish, broken. Distraught at the impossibility of packing it all up let alone my chance of getting rid of it all I wandered away. I'll go home and be with my family. But I was in a strange city and I had no idea where they were. There was a road that I thought was the road and a turn I was supposed to take but I couldn't find it. I couldn't get home. I'd been gathering garbage I was told. Picking up the leftovers and bringing them back to my dragon's hoard of tacky gewgaws.