June 27, 2008
My dreams have been really choppy and disjointed lately. And I can't seem to hold onto the plot even immediately after I wake up.
The weird thing is that I know I've been having nightmares because my jaw aches for about an hour every morning after I wake up. I can tell I've been clenching my teeth in my sleep, and if I'm not fully awake yet in my shower, or if I got an hour less sleep than usual, I have to consciously tell myself to stop clenching because it hurts.
In related news, I've also been getting less sleep. Two weeks ago, I had insomnia. I even consciously tried to get to bed earlier than usual, but I just laid there for an hour or two until I finally bored myself to sleep. I kept thinking of things that made me get out of bed. Oh, I left my phone with the alarm in the other room. Oh, I forgot to put away the ketchup. Oh, I just thought of this really funny picture to PhotoShop; I should do it before I forget; it won't take very long.
Then I got sick. The seasons are changing here, and there are illnesses going around, but I attribute it to my lack of sleep. So in the last week, I've been chugging Vitamin C health drinks here and crunching delicious Vitamin C pills. I started feeling better before some of my friends, so I really think it did the trick.
I'm really busy this weekend, but hopefully not too crazy at night. I won't be able to sleep in, but I won't be able to have crazy late nights either.
Wow, this blog post is almost boring me to sleep. I guess I just want to track why I sometimes dream and why I don't.
Well, I'll tell you about the last dream I remember before my draught, on a Friday night about 2 weeks ago. In my dream, I was at this rock concert with my friend Melissa. For some reason, I wandered around to the backstage area and met some people who remind me vaguely of some old short friends I use to have. Actually, because I'm gargantuan, almost everyone is short to me, but these people were like a short crew all through school.
Anyway, I met them backstage, and we rekindled old friendships. We began trying on different sparkly outfits made, I guess, for the backup dancers? Or maybe, like, stock costumes for the venue. The rock singer was no one in particular, just a general star like Bon Jovi or something. Only, like, cool within this decade and attractive.
I spent the whole concert back there hanging out with my friends and Mr. Fake Bon Jovi (during a break in the music, I guess?), and it suddenly occurred to me that Melissa was still in the crowd. I was upset because she would have wanted to take part in the costume fun, so I went out to get her, but the crowd was cleared. The stage was gone, and it was just an old park with some swimming pools lined up. Yeah, Melissa was gonna be real pissed.
The end! More interesting dreams, I swear. Even if it means eating a chili dog and banana split right before bed.
June 16, 2008
Friday, there was a tiny earthquake in Nagano. I felt it here in Yamanashi, and it was kinda cool. The next day, strangely, I actually went to Nagano, and felt another earthquake in the early morning. It felt the same to me as the other one, but this one's epicenter was way at the other end of the island, so it must have been crazy strong.
Anyway, earthquakes have kind of been on the mind over the past few days.
Sunday night/Monday morning, I had a terrible nightmare -- one of those where I wake up and my jaw actually hurts from gnashing my teeth together from stress.
So at the beginning of the dream, I knew somehow that an earthquake was coming, and I ran outside, even though I know you're not supposed to. I just felt (and I still do) that it would be easier to dodge some falling tree than being trapped under a desk for days without food. So I run outside, and I see these buildings collapsing in the distance, and they're all falling forward. So I stand in a clearing behind a building I am sure will fall away from me like the rest.
Well, when the wave hits this building, it falls in every direction, and I see a huge piece break off the top and come barreling down at me faster than anything I could react to. I duck and do the TiVo thing, rewinding my dream enough so that I have time to run off to the side.
But the earthquake keeps going, and I keep looking for shelter. I end up in some park where there's an artistic sculpture that looks kind of like a silver Jenga tower, and I get caught in the middle of it. The pieces are light enough so that when it tumbles on me, I can push them out of the way, but I soon see that there are so many pieces, I'm gonna get buried and crushed, and I start to panic.
Then I wonder for a minute what's happened to people in the subway, and I blink there. I'm riding in a tiny two-person subway car (in Japan still) with Crispin Glover of all random people, and he's being neurotic like usual. We feel the tremors and get upset, but the car keeps going, and I'm concerned. The subway kind of looks like an amusement park ride, though, and it comes to an underground clearing, and I hop out because Crispin's kvetching is annoying me to hell. I don't need this in a damn earthquake, buddy.
Finally, I stumble outside, and the earthquake's still going on. I see two drunk guys, and they're making light of the situation, and it kind of annoys me, too, because I'm still looking for shelter. Then a big fucking beam flies down and impales both of them through their stomachs. I'm pretty grossed out, and now I feel bad about being annoyed by them.
I take refuge in a real amusement part I dreamt about a few nights earlier where the actor who dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow flirted with me. I think I hid under the ferris wheel. Not smart.
Then I woke up. So I guess I lived.
June 11, 2008
Oh, I also forgot to tell you. The problem I thought I understood that my dead friend Mike appeared to me in a dream to tell me wasn't what it seemed...really wasn't. Like, I was further off than I knew.
I'm gonna go ahead and make it a rule to listen to things dead people tell me in dreams.
Last Saturday, I dreamt that I had to do something for my friend Sachi, but I was late for school. I had to go through this crazy dream maze that I've been through in other dreams. It's kind of on the side of a large hill or quarry, and I can see it from my first-person perspective and from across the way, like shots in a movie. It's very yellow and hot and sandy. I sound like a lunatic, but I'm trying to paint a picture here. And I don't know it's an actual maze while I'm going through it, but it's surrounded on all sides by various obstructions, and I'm growing increasingly frustrated, as I always need to be somewhere.
At the end, I get to this little house, and it's designed like one of those old timey colonies where people dress up like colonists and churn their own butter. There's an actor/worker there trying to get me to cook something with honey, and I'm just rolling my eyes the whole time.
I get a call from Sachi, and he tells me that I'm late for the play we're in, and they got a real director, who is now pissed off at me. I'm so overwhelmed from being stuck in the maze and forced to make some stupid honey dinner that I sit down at this table in the colonial kitchen with a friend here in Japan, Priscilla, and I just start sobbing.
Well, Priscilla doesn't know me very well, so she starts laughing at me, because, you know, Lauren's always the jokester. I absolutely flip out on her, and scream in her face, wondering who would laugh at a fucking hysterically crying person. She got this shocked look on her face, like she thought my crying was a joke, and now felt awful. Then I felt awful. Then I woke up.
My friends told me the next day that I dream of the most random people, and it's true. The two stars of my dream, I'm not really close friends with, and one we haven't heard from in months and might actually be dead. Nah, she lives next to Kevin. I'm sure he'd notice something. Unless he killed her...
Sunday, I had a dream that I was the stage manager at Performing Arts Camp, which is weird, because at the moment I was dreaming it, the first day of camp was actually beginning in real life.
I have a lot of stage manager dreams: something going wrong, the director stopping the play to bring me out in front of the audience and yell at me.
Only, this year, I'm not going back to camp, and they've had to replace me. I dreamt the new stage manager was so good, they placed this really elaborate beautiful Victorian set during the 10-minute intermission, COMPLETE with a working snow machine and huge piles of actual snow on stage.
Everyone was gushing about how good this new girl was (a camper named Amanda who was a few groups below me in the old days), and how glad they were to be rid of me.
I sat in the balcony watching it all, and the play went so smoothly, she even had the time to come up and rest in the balcony to watch the plays -- something I've always wanted to do. Seeing plays from the side doesn't do them justice.
Anyway, the two directors thank her for all her great work by shining a spotlight into the balcony for all the audience to see and applaud. I happened to be sitting in the corner of the far reaches of the spotlight's circle, and the directors screamed at me in front of everyone to quit ruining her big moment and get out of the spotlight.
So there you have it. Sometimes the thing I like most about my dreams is the lack of subtlety in its symbolism and metaphors. It's all right there on the surface. I'm an open book.