On dreams.

Picasso's The Dream via

I've always had vivid dreams. The earliest dream I remember - and I remember every minute of it - is from when I was seven. I had just learned about DRUGS, in the way that little kids do: drugs are bad and will ruin your life! In my dream, our babysitter, who was in fact a very nice teenage girl that my parents knew from church, was on DRUGS and beat my neighbor kid to death with a garden hose. I have no idea where I got the idea that that was even a thing. I'm certain I'd never seen a movie or anything wherein a person was beaten to death with a garden hose. Obviously, scared out of my mind, I spent the night in my parents' bed, and I can recall the precise feeling of dread I felt when my mom opened the curtains in the morning and I expected to see Michael's body laid out on the lawn. I feel that I should add that the very vast majority of my dreams aren't nearly this awful. Most of them are just weird.

When I was in high school and had mono, my fever-fueled dreams were even more bizarre than normal. I had one where I somehow owned all of Europe, and because it was mine I could rearrange it as I see fit. I used this power (mostly) for good, by splitting up the fighty countries and such. The weirdest part was that the countries were all laid out on a board, like one of those wooden puzzles toddlers play with, but that I could move the pieces around however I wanted and they still always fit. All the puzzle pieces were an interesting shade of purple. It made discerning the borders kind of difficult, though.

Over the summer I was starting to think in earnest about my next tattoo. I have most of the components figured out, but I have a gap where there's still one missing piece. In a dream, I was thinking about the tattoo, and I suddenly realized that the missing item was a Meyer lemon! Of course! It all fit! It was such a relief to have the whole thing figured out. The thing is, I'm not even sure I've ever seen a Meyer lemon in real life, or if I'd recognize one if I was looking right at it. They hold no significance to me whatsoever, and I'm certainly not including one in my tattoo.

Two nights ago, I dreamed that Charlie Sheen and I were working together to teach reformed prostitutes to crochet and embroider (but not knit, which I actually know how to do) so they could support themselves. Apparently this was some distance in the future, because Charlie, who has been making some interesting choices lately, seemed sober, cheerful, and well rested. He really seemed to have gotten his shit together. He was in charge of the crocheting, and I was busy teaching the hookers how to do really fancy crewelwork, which I've never done a single stitch of and would probably suck at. The former prostitutes were really nice, and seemed to really be happy to have a new way to make money. Of course, once I woke up, I remembered that it's almost impossible to support oneself these days with handiwork, and that hooking is actually a pretty good rate of pay for the hours worked, and that Charlie Sheen is a degenerate woman-beating drug addict whose show I refuse to watch on principle.

I think it's interesting to look at dream dictionaries to see what the various elements supposedly represent. Lemons, for example, according to the first link, suggest something being inferior. Except that I was super-excited in the dream to hit upon the idea. (There was no entry for Meyer lemon or Charlie Sheen, for some reason.) My point here is, dream dictionaries are bullshit, but funny sometimes, like fortune cookies.

Do you remember your dreams? Do you assign meaning to the things you dream about? Anyone want to psychoanalyze me based on the four dreams described here?