Dreams

 

It's noonish, yesterday, I'm feeling disposed to take a nap.  I've been up since 2 AM and, among other things, have spent 4 hours typing a blog post; see yesterday's post.

My usual nap time is around 3 pm, so it's too early for me to lay down to sleep.  I decide to sit at the end of the sofa and start my new book, thinking, it will either wake me up or lull me into slumber.

After only a few pages of the introduction to "The Times," and my eyelids are becoming too heavy to lift.  I use a nearby mail envelope as a bookmark, set the book down, pull the fleece blanket up to my chin and I'm off to dream land.  If I nap while sitting, I rarely, if ever, go into a deep sleep, seeming to drift in and out of dozing but never really unaware.

Today was different.  Different in 2 ways; I was deeply asleep and when startled awake I remembered the dream.  I've remembered dreams before, immediately upon awakening, but if I don't immediately get up and write it down (poems come to mind here,) In just moments it will be unrecoverably gone from my memory.

Most of my dreams are a conglomeration of people and places out of sync with reality but not so much as to be unbelievable. to wit:  I'm in the nurse's lounge at Hepburn hospital.  I'm on break, relieved from a case in room seven where I'd been administering an anesthetic for a few hours.  I'm tired and hungry.  Looking in the mini-fridge I see what, at first, appears to be a bagel sticking out of a paper bag.  When I reach in to pull out a bagel, a 2-foot longish bagel like item, softer than a bagel but otherwise bagel like comes out.  I'm now ravenous.  While I'm rapidly stuffing my mouth, the back door to the lounge opens and in comes Tammy Demers along with another women and young girl (think 6 or 7,) all carrying bags full of Christmas packages.

After the little girl asks me why my eyes are closed and I'm, only then, aware that they are, Tammy walks to the other side of the lounge and sits down on a 2-seat sofa.  I turn to talk to Tammy, desperate now to open my eyes.  The unknown woman and little girl disappear.  The harder I try to open my eyes the tighter shut they become, while Tammy converses with me nonchalantly, asking what the case is I was doing before break.

Of a sudden, shrieking, screaming and a sense of gnashing teeth pierce the air.  I'm frantic now to open my eyes and at a loss to locate where from the terrify sounds are emanating from.  

Slowly, as I leave the dream state but still pondering confusedly where are the screams coming from, I'm suddenly fully awake, eyes sprung wide open, ears acutely aware of the horrific screaming which now appears to be coming from just outside my kitchen door.  And just as I'm rising from the sofa to investigate who is being attacked outside my door, I recognize the radio announcers voice over Alexa describing a new apoplectic movie which is about to come out.

When our mind blends the dream world with the real world the results can seem bazaar.