May 27, 2003

• Repost with Revision ~

  
  

  Dream Chasing

  
  

  *Through the woodland, through the valley
  Comes a horseman wild and free
  Tilting at the windmills passing
  Who can the brave young horseman be . . .

  
  

  My kids have a new game.  If you know of some tv show or video game they might have seen advertised that led them to this play - DON'T TELL ME.  They play Superhero.  Michael wears my fuschia satin robe for a cape and does brave deeds.  He's ... da da da .... DreamMan. 

  
  

  He rides through the night alert for signs of trouble and I hear him say things like, "Great Scot!  This dream is overheating, quickly Sidekick!  Bring ice cream!"  This morning it was, "Holy Monsters and Shadows, Sidekick!  This dream is almost too scary for me!"  My personal favorite is a line from Tucker, "In my dream, I'm NOT the sidekick."

  
  

  He is wild but he is mellow,
  He is strong but he is weak
  He is cruel but he is gentle,
  He is wise but he is meek.

  
  

  I went through a time when I didn't dream.  I have a sleep disorder that prevents me from entering REM sleep and therefore prevents me from dreaming.  For several years I didn't know why there were no dreams, but I missed them.  It was like knowing that I stood in the center of a great cave of wonders, with no light to see the treasure.  When I was first began to dream again, I was like a neophyte experiencing hallucinogenics for the first time.  (Not that I have ever personally experienced such things, but I imagine . . . )

  
  

  Reaching for his saddlebag
  he takes a battered book into his hand
  Standing like a prophet of old,
  he shouts across the ocean to the shore
  Til he can shout no more.

  
  

  If you've never had a disruption in your dreaming life, or if you've never taken hallucinogens, you may not fully appreciate the consciousness altering experience of being "taken" by a dream.  Without regular dreams, people can become psychotic, literally unable to distinguish between reality and thought.  This never happened to me in spite of what you may have heard from certain of my friends and family.

  
  

  I have come o'er moor and mountain
  Like a hawk upon the wing
  I was once a shining knight
  Who was the guardian of a King.

  
  

  The journey between reality and imagination can be one of unremarkable transition between fairly similar terrain.  You go through waking hours fantasizing about the weekend plan or the upcoming vacation.  Then you go to sleep and spend the night doing work you can't claim on the clock.  How many times has the accountant balanced books, or the programmer reviewed line after line of code in a dream?

  
  

  Some people practice lucid dreaming.  Lucid dreaming is that state of consciousness in which you dream while knowing that you are dreaming.  This consciousness enables you to guide your dreams.  For someone like me, the idea of retaining conscious control even in an unconscious state is an irresistible enticement.  I can't remember when I first began to practice lucid dreaming, but I know that even as a small child I was able to direct my dreams so that I chose whether I would be terrified by the monster or he would be terrified by me.  Some day, it would be fun to sit down with an analyst and talk about what happened on the nights I chose terror.

  
  

  I have searched the whole world over
  Looking for a place to sleep
  I have seen the strong survive
  And I have seen the lean grow weak.

  
  

  As far as I have been able to determine, no one knows the answer to why our dreams are so important for our mental health.  There are all kinds of theories about the effects of dreaming and REM sleep on seritonin production or vice versa.  But, Nobel prize winning researchers in this area admit they can do no more than speculate. 

  
  

  I wonder if anyone is researching the psychological affects of conscious dreams?  Not the dreams that come at night, but the dreams we construct in our quiet moments lying on the grass.  What effect do our hopes, goals, and plans for the future have on our psyche?  What is it like to live without ideas of future possibility or pleasure?
  
  See the children of the earth
  To weak to find the table there
  See the gentry in the country
  Riding off to take the air.

  
  

  It's hard for me to think about dreams without being reminded of the song from "The Man from La Mancha" The Impossible Dream.  Don Quixote fascinates me.  He gave himself entirely over to a dream, you might even say to a psychosis.  He based his actions not on the world as it was, but on the world as he envisioned it to be.  In some ways his world was better, the lowly and coarse Dulcinea became a pure and gentle lady.  The broken-down donkey, Rosinante,  became a noble steed.  But in some ways his vision was terrifying.  We may laugh at him galloping across the plain to fight with a windmill.  But in his mind, that windmill was a monster of terrifying proportion and it took all his courage to perform that deed.

  
  

  Reaching for his saddlebag
  He takes a rusty sword into his hand
  Striking up a knightly pose
  He shouts across the ocean to the shore
  Til he can shout no more.

  
  

  I have a theory that people need extremes in their lives.  There isn't anything wrong with living inside a comfortable "happy" medium.  But there isn't anything in the comfort zone that raises the bloodpressure either.

  
  

  When I was younger, I found the stereotypical midlife crisis behavior equally fascinating and repulsive.  I couldn't imagine why perfectly reasonable people would do such unreasonable things as seek outside their marriages for excitement, trade in their volvos for sports cars, or leave lucrative careers to start driving a camper around the country doing odd jobs.  I'm not talking about people who were inclined to do these things anyway, I'm talking about the phenomena of men and women suddenly reaching the point of rejecting all they had previously held as core values and goals in favor of values and goals that appeared to be less solid, less meaningful in terms of building a worthwhile life.  But as I'm on the end of the diving board ready to spring into my forties, this crisis of need for younger, faster, more beautiful, less stable has begun to hum like a siren in my ear. 

  
  

  After four decades, there are few extremes in my life.  Somehow the process of lumbering through life has meant that rough edges get worn smooth and life is moving at a steady flowing pace.  It's easy, it's predictable, it's safe.  And it's boring.  It's much harder to find the pulse raising, finger trembling, breath catching thrill of the new, the different, the strange.  The dreams that sparked fires of imagination at an earlier stage of life have faded to the mature acceptance of limitations that keep me in the channel of security and responsbility. 
  
  See the jailor with his key
  Who locks away all trace of sin
  See the judge upon his bench
  Who tries the case as best he can.

  
  

  An old proverb says that "Ships in a harbor are safe, but that's not what ships are built for."  As we settle in the lane of least resistance, we dig ruts that make it possible for us to get from points a to b without much thought.  We find ourselves on automatic pilot drifting along comfortably.  It takes a dream to pull us up and out.
  
  Reaching for his saddlebag
  He takes a tarnished cross into his hand
  Standing like a preacher now
  He shouts across the ocean to the shore
  Til he can shout no more.

  
  

  Our dreams force us to stand where the wind blows hard and we have to brace our feet.  Dreams refuse to settle for the comfortable and in fact gallop hard toward the monster even as we cling, terrified, to the reins unable to control our mount.  In order to deny our dreams we must constantly push against them, forcing our conscious lucid direction upon them.  We ratchet them further and further out past our peripheral vision so they won't distract us.  But when we finally release that rubber band . . .

  
  

  Then in a blaze of tangled hooves
  He gallops off across the dusty plain
  In vain to search again
  For no one will hear. . .

  
  

  
  

  *Don Quixote lyrics by Gordon Lightfoot.

  • 10:47 am
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