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Today's Keyboard Smash
Dec. 15th, 2020 05:30 pmI had a weird day at work, and my back and head are vying for the top spot on the Reasons Why Everything Hurts listicle. So please excuse me while I blather on about my dreams. I am capable of nothing more meaningful.
My dreamscape seems to have moved to a new zip code. Let me explain. For most of my life, I have had intense dreams. They're not always nightmares, though they are seldom particularly pleasant, but they're definitely not chill. And while they're not recurring dreams in the strictest sense, there are both themes and settings that crop up again and again to give a similar sense of having tread this territory before. Lately, that territory has been unexpectedly different.
The current staples have been with me since high school or earlier. Apart from the expected locations--my high school, the place I used to live--I have the museum, the house of many levels, and the railway. Real people will be family members or people I knew in elementary or high school--never anyone from college or the restaurant or such. Themes include being lost in maze-like buildings, trying to convince someone of something important, and trying to escape. (Nothing spoils a dream about flying like running into The Bird Net that Covers the World, one of the fabulous inventions of my unconscious mind. Fucker.)
Tl;dr my dreams tend to suck, but they suck in very familiar ways. It would probably be normal if, during a world-altering pandemic, I had an uptick in terrible dreams due to the ambient stress levels.
I have not! I mean, yes, I have absolutely been having way too many, very intense dreams. They have not been uniformly horrible though! And what's much, much weirder for me is that they're...new. New places. New people. Admittedly, same old me getting lost in maze-like areas, but you know what they say. Wherever you go, there you are.
Last night, I dreamt I was in some unfamiliar city. I think I was trying to get to a doctor appointment, the reasons for which need not be elaborated because that bit was Not Nice. It was a very pretty, faintly European-style downtown area that feels familiar, but I couldn't tell you where it might have been. I ended up, in my lostness, at a...bakery? Cafe? A place containing food for purchase and space in which to eat it, in any case. Run by a charming and entirely fiction-worthy cadre of Very Queer People. The ringleader was a lovely punk-ish enby with orange hair and a protective vibe, who ran this cafe and just...made whatever sounded fun that day. Invented new flavor combinations and fusion cuisines for fun.
I don't think I've ever dreamt of a group of queer people like this before. I mean, yes, individual queer people I've known have shown up in dreams. But this was a cast of original characters, most explicitly trans in some way, and that was a major theme of our interactions. This was basically the local queer cafe, and in the dream I got folded into the group immediately upon meeting them. I was also given a pizza of questionable taste--I wish I could remember what topping combination they had invented, beyond a general impression of "huh...that shouldn't work, and yet."
Upon waking, I was struck by just how vivid this dream had been, how clear the characters, how new the setting. This wasn't the first dream to bring fresh material lately, though it was certainly the most pleasant. I don't know why my dreamscape would be changing right now, and I understand even less the direction in which it is changing.
Not complaining! Good gods, not complaining at all. One can only get lost in the same imaginary, Escher-esque museum so many times before the bloom is off that particular rose. Perhaps it is just more of the perverse nature of my unconscious that it would process global trauma by being nice for once.
My dreamscape seems to have moved to a new zip code. Let me explain. For most of my life, I have had intense dreams. They're not always nightmares, though they are seldom particularly pleasant, but they're definitely not chill. And while they're not recurring dreams in the strictest sense, there are both themes and settings that crop up again and again to give a similar sense of having tread this territory before. Lately, that territory has been unexpectedly different.
The current staples have been with me since high school or earlier. Apart from the expected locations--my high school, the place I used to live--I have the museum, the house of many levels, and the railway. Real people will be family members or people I knew in elementary or high school--never anyone from college or the restaurant or such. Themes include being lost in maze-like buildings, trying to convince someone of something important, and trying to escape. (Nothing spoils a dream about flying like running into The Bird Net that Covers the World, one of the fabulous inventions of my unconscious mind. Fucker.)
Tl;dr my dreams tend to suck, but they suck in very familiar ways. It would probably be normal if, during a world-altering pandemic, I had an uptick in terrible dreams due to the ambient stress levels.
I have not! I mean, yes, I have absolutely been having way too many, very intense dreams. They have not been uniformly horrible though! And what's much, much weirder for me is that they're...new. New places. New people. Admittedly, same old me getting lost in maze-like areas, but you know what they say. Wherever you go, there you are.
Last night, I dreamt I was in some unfamiliar city. I think I was trying to get to a doctor appointment, the reasons for which need not be elaborated because that bit was Not Nice. It was a very pretty, faintly European-style downtown area that feels familiar, but I couldn't tell you where it might have been. I ended up, in my lostness, at a...bakery? Cafe? A place containing food for purchase and space in which to eat it, in any case. Run by a charming and entirely fiction-worthy cadre of Very Queer People. The ringleader was a lovely punk-ish enby with orange hair and a protective vibe, who ran this cafe and just...made whatever sounded fun that day. Invented new flavor combinations and fusion cuisines for fun.
I don't think I've ever dreamt of a group of queer people like this before. I mean, yes, individual queer people I've known have shown up in dreams. But this was a cast of original characters, most explicitly trans in some way, and that was a major theme of our interactions. This was basically the local queer cafe, and in the dream I got folded into the group immediately upon meeting them. I was also given a pizza of questionable taste--I wish I could remember what topping combination they had invented, beyond a general impression of "huh...that shouldn't work, and yet."
Upon waking, I was struck by just how vivid this dream had been, how clear the characters, how new the setting. This wasn't the first dream to bring fresh material lately, though it was certainly the most pleasant. I don't know why my dreamscape would be changing right now, and I understand even less the direction in which it is changing.
Not complaining! Good gods, not complaining at all. One can only get lost in the same imaginary, Escher-esque museum so many times before the bloom is off that particular rose. Perhaps it is just more of the perverse nature of my unconscious that it would process global trauma by being nice for once.
