I believe this started when I was a very young child. I can't tell quite how old. I only recall that the kitchen table was round with a yellow formica sparkly top. I remember the wood floors, the crack in my door when I was in my crib which matched the floors and the blue rug spread in my bedroom. I remember looking out the front windows to see Lake Superior stretching as far as I could see, and snow. And siding on the house. And stones.
I had a dream then that God spoke to me. He would speak while I was outside in my yard, playing, and I would quake with fear and be rooted to the very spot I stood. I would quake and I would cry silently, wanting to scream or call out for help but the words would be a whisper and get lost in the wind and the magnitude of his voice. The words were always a warning. They were always the voice of my father.
I had this dream often enough that I remember at least ten instances of it, and it's my earliest memory.
I had a dream in elementary school that my best friend's father died when a tractor flipped over on him. It did, two weeks later. On a Wednesday. I even remember the shirt he was wearing in the dream, the shirt he was wearing when it happened. We stayed friends after that. A year later I had a dream her grandfather died in the same accident. Foolish child, I told her about it. When it happened, and he died in a freak repeat of the same accident, we were no longer friends. Everyone hated me - the children at school called me a witch.
We moved not too long after that and I was glad of it. We moved all the way across the state. I saw her again when we took our SATs. That was awkward. She remembered. I did too, how could I not?
Another dream I had involved a cornfield. This dream was when I was in eighth, ninth, tenth grade. Thereabouts. It would recur from time to time after that up until I was about 24 years old. I was standing in a cornfield and asked to choose a path. The paths were laid before me, and one was life and one was death, one was green and lush and tall. The other was stalks, burned and yellow, grown too short in their lives and stumpy. In that cornfield was a pile of bodies. They were being piled with a pitchfork and the sound they made when they landed was like wet steak slapping onto the floor. Further down that path the bodies, too, were charred and stumpy and dead too soon. In my dream I was compelled, I had to choose that path, I had to go that way and I could not turn back. Sometimes I recognized the bodies.
I had a dream that gelatinous black bow ties would chase me up the ramps of a mall whose stores were all arranged on ramps. There was no stairs, and the spiral nature was of blue crystal floors, sparkly and too-bright. The black bow ties were shaped like farfalle pasta. They would eat through anything they touched and leave it screaming and dead. They chased me and I ran, and sometimes I would try to enter this store or another one, to escape. On top of the mall was an airport. If only I could run faster - if I could just get to a plane I'd take off and everything would be okay. But sometimes I tripped. Sometimes a man in a trenchcoat would show me his shriveled body and I would be too shocked to move and I would be eaten. Always when I got caught it hurt. Dying hurt.
Last night I dreamed a romance. It didn't star me - I'm not sure who the girl was that it starred. But it definitely starred Winona, MN. Especially the back alleys, and the apartment Renee and I shared. Neither of us were in it - it was, in fact, fairly modern day. But the girl was in love with the wrong man, and she was in the front seat with him and in the back seat was the man she really loved. The crisis came when the man in the front figured it out - maybe it was the way she let her hand travel to her true heart's desire's thigh. The man in the front seat stopped the car at the train tracks. He got out. She clawed at the car doors with her lover-to-be as the irate boyfriend turned into a train and stared down the car. The locks had turned to sand and could not be changed from their positions. They died wound about each other.
Dreams are strange things. Sometimes they feel too real, too bright. Sometimes they're in black and white. I've tried to teach myself tricks to tell me hey, this is a dream. You can change it if you want. You can fix it if you want. I've tried to teach myself that people don't see numbers in dreams - have you heard that? That numbers and letters are very difficult to read when you're dreaming because the language centers are recharging? I tried writing numbers on the back of my hand, when the dreams were very bad and very frequent. And then I'd know if I couldn't see them that I was dreaming. My brain is a tricksy creature though, because apparently I can see fine in my dream and I would read with stunning clarity.
Sometimes I type when I'm dreaming, and I text people very strange things. I talk in my sleep. Apparently if I was a ravioli, I would be named Chris. Thus I've told my husband recently anyway. I'm glad I'm not a ravioli. I don't really look like a Chris.
One time when I was dreaming I wrote something down in a different language. It turned out to be sanskrit.
Brains are really interesting things.
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