Ever try to sleep in, only to be rewarded with nightmares?
I'm prone to waking dreams- the ones where you're half dozing and aware of your surroundings, but are, in fact still in dreamland.
It happened the other morning. As I drifted to sleep, I dreamed I was dissolving into running water. Trippy!*
Then the water got rough, yanking me apart and bashing me into rocks...
I thought I woke up. I floated vertically over my bed, only to be flipped foward and be thrown face first into the carpet...
I thought I woke up again. Stupid dreams! I thought. Daylight oozed through the curtains. I sat up, only to have an empty nightgown lunge at me. I screamed. One of those muffled dream screams.
I thought I woke up for real. Then a formless mess of fabric and foil ambushed me from the side. Wait! I thought. I'm still dreaming. It can't really hurt me...
...but it could morph into something gruesome! Something mutilated and awful with ripped flesh sagging like water damaged plaster! The thing shook me like a can of RediWhip. I screamed and tried to morph into a piranha-faced creature to scare it. It was unafraid. I screamed some more...
"What's going on?" my Mom** knocked on the door as I woke up for real. "You were screaming!"
"Sorry about that," I answered, sheepishly. "Just a nightmare."
Stupid Dreams!
*I've never taken any hallucinogens so I can't blame it on flashbacks. Nor have I endured any post traumatic stress disorder ordeals. A very cushy life considering I sometimes wake up screaming.
**whom I was visiting
About nightmares: Being someone who's experienced them lifelong, it's weird to have a child who has never waked up screaming. (Dinah)
ReplyDeleteSometimes even as an adult I could wake up and see a small gargoyle on the dresser.
Last week one night I had an odd nightmare, after seeing footage of the spiderman who crawls walls on local news. I was struggling to get to the front door of our Colorado house, scrambling along a very narrow path. As I struggled, in the dream, I thought, "If this were real life it would be very scary!"...
or did I think "if only this were a dream..."
Now I can't remember which choice came up, but I remember the separation, even in the dream, that I knew there were options...
for what it's worth...
in college I remember having dreams where figures would enter and say, as if on stage, I'm so and so, and I represent:"
(I was taking a basic psychology class then, plus they'd bumped me up to the Dean, convinced by my artwork that I was on drugs, even though it wasn't true.)
You too, then?
ReplyDeleteMust be the overactive imagination.
That's funny that your dream characters were telling you what they represented! Makes sense since you were taking a psych class.
That's funny they thought your artwork meant you were on drugs! I hear when Fantasia was rereleased on 1969 that young fans wanted to know what the animators "were on" too.
That second illustration is one of your best.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Sally.
ReplyDelete