Dreampolitik

While we’re still on the topic of dreaming, let me tell you how dreams spoiled my Tuesday. Again, I don’t know if it’s just me who this happens to, but do you ever get stuck in a dream just around the time you’re supposed to be waking up? You may or may not know you’re dreaming, but it’s always so incredibly vivid that you can’t stop. Whether or not your body is physically ready to wake up, your mind just won’t.

So anyway, I was brimming over with plans to wake up early and spend the public holiday doing useful things. Instead, I got stuck in a dream that I was an aide helping Tony Blair prepare for a very important UN Security Council meeting, so I woke up at 1.30 pm. What was I going to do, just up and leave? I had responsibilities.

Popcorn

You know how when half-asleep and half-awake you can get lost in thoughts that are almost like Dadaist films? And if someone happens to come wake you up in the middle of this you start babbling incoherently, like “No, I’m not going to work today because I need to stay and wait for the clothespeg inspector,” and it’s really embarrassing while you sleepily try to explain why the clothespegs need to be inspected (so that your kindergarten teacher can use them in her home renovations, naturellement) and somewhere along the way it slowly begins to dawn on you that no clothespeg inspections will be necessary, you haven’t seen your kindergarten teacher in twenty years, and the other person is laughing their ass off?

(Please God, don’t let this just be me.)

So anyway, this has happened to me a fair number of times while sleeping normally in my bed, but Friday was the first time it was prompted by the particular music I was listening to. Deep in my usual commuting drowse on the bus to work with Hood’s Cold House on the iPod, somewhere around the last 50 seconds of I Can’t Find My Brittle Youth I became convinced that the popcorn machine on the bus was overheated and about to explode. Why was everyone so calm? Maybe I needed to raise the alarm and alert everyone to the danger so we could escape from the bus! Maybe it was too late and we should just all hit the floor to avoid being skewered by flying shards of hot buttered metal!

I jerked awake in shock and stared bug-eyed around the bus for a good five to ten seconds before I realized that springing into either course of action would be a very very bad idea.

How You Gonna Have A Dream Come Truuuue?

And so, on Friday, my life as a student finally ended. As usual, given that I’d had about two hours’ sleep the night before, I didn’t mark the end of exams with anything even vaguely hedonistic. I had a nice lunch with my mum, went to the library (due to exam stress there was a ONE WEEK period where I didn’t have any library books out, and it was terrible. I filled the void by rereading Watchmen, but I always like having something new and sexy along with my old comfy reads) and then to Waraku where I enjoyed ordering my first kaminabe (yes, I still find silly coincidences of language like this funny).

Apart from my fuck-yo-mamma steamboat, I was pleased to find a selection of “froats” in their drinks menu. (Edit: Picture added! Here.) After considering the charms of various froats, I eventually made the mistake of choosing alcohol instead and going with an oolong tea-maccha liqueur mix, which tasted like Pokka green tea I could buy from 7-11 except that it cost about 8 times the price. Ida ordered a dessert called “Pear for the Voluptuous” and I made a cruel joke. At one point the conversation turned to dreams. I said I often dreamt about my teeth falling out, and everyone was certain it meant something, though they weren’t sure what. I said I often dreamt about being chased by a shadowy figure, and everyone was certain it meant something, though they weren’t sure what. Then Fay said she had dreamt about being chased by the shadow of a penis.

The Dream With The Lemon Cult

I went with a faceless friend to a flat. We were greeted by someone who was there to welcome us, but the other people who were meant to welcome us hadn’t arrived yet. The person served us lemon tea. It was very good lemon tea.

More people arrived, all dressed very well. They all knew each other. We didn’t really know anyone. They were all really friendly and welcoming, but in that way where you think, well, this is great, but I don’t know you at all, and I’m getting a bit tired of being so moon-facedly smiley, and actually, what on earth am I doing here at all?

I asked the first person we’d met why I was there. He looked a little surprised, but explained that they had invited us there to introduce us to worshipping the lemon. He showed us pictures and brochures about the lemon, and spoke earnestly of the need to worship it.

He asked if we’d like something to drink.

“The lemon tea you gave us earlier was pretty nice,” I said.

“Oh no,” he said, “that’s only meant to be drunk for special ceremonial purposes. That was part of your special welcome to our community.”

We left shortly after. Everyone was still very nice and friendly as they waved goodbye. I woke up craving lemon tea.

Dear Morpheus

Dear Morpheus,

I’m getting rather tired of this. Every night I flop around restlessly in bed until about three. I wake up at seven, but because I know I haven’t had enough sleep, I try to go back to sleep till nine. I inevitably wake up at noon, feeling absolutely wasted.

That last stretch of sleep between nine and noon forms the bulk of my complaint. Somehow during that time I’m plunged into incredibly stressful dreams, and it’s really not much fun.

I no longer want to dream about Shu-pei (old, much-loved school friend) inexplicably chasing me mercilessly and murderously around a shopping centre until I am forced to fly to evade her. When I had fled through the aisles of a supermarket and finally got cornered by high shelves in the frozen food section, you will not believe the cruel cold hand of terror that gripped my heart when, as I hovered fearfully in the air above her growling below, she concentrated hard for a moment and started rising into the air too. She wasn’t as good at flying as me, and floated down again, but she was learning. I woke up soon after sweating and shaking.

I no longer want to dream about it apparently being the day before my WEDDING (look, I REALLY have no explanation for these fucking dreams, I do find this particular dream setting disturbingly weird too), which I have somehow forgotten to invite any of my friends to, and I am frantically trying to call them up and tell them because I don’t want to spend one of the most important days of my life without them, but no one by that name ever existed at all the numbers I try.

I no longer want the losing-all-my-teeth dream which I must have had more than five times before already, but somehow every time I dream it, even though I tell myself it has to be a dream just like before, I can feel the teeth wrenching themselves out of my mouth one by one and taste the blood, and this time, oh my God, this time it’s not a dream, I really have lost all my teeth, how will I go on with no teeth at the age of twenty-two (dentures don’t occur to me okay smart-arse, it’s a dream) and ow ow OW MY JAW IS BREAKING ITSELF and then I wake up.

I know they sound damn funny in hindsight. They’re probably funny to you too because you’re, like, immortal, and tend not to be plunged into existential insecurity. They’re not very funny to me at the time though. Please make them stop.

Yours hopefully,
Michelle

P.S. Have I ever told you you’re totally the sexiest fictional immortal two-dimensional entity ever?

[To anyone who clicked on the above link and has decided I’m crazy, you kind of have to read Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics to get the whole picture (how apt)]