The Psychology and Pathology of a Dream

A recent June dream seemed to tempt me with the notion of getting to sleep, putting up all sorts of barriers that might have included skylines, lunar tracks, and fleeting celestial pathways that seem to possess a threatening tone, perhaps prompting me to write later in my dream journal: “Horrible night.”

Within the dream proper my task seems to just get to the other side of these apparent obstacles to find and embrace my slumber. This is becoming a little complicated because now the dream surface looks like an out-of-control chess board with kings, queens and knights looking a little lost, perhaps playing a game of their own invention.

I try to hang on to my major concern of managed sleep, but the road signs suggest there might be other obstacles ahead that I must deal with. Now my work shoes and aching muscles tell me that I surely have climbed a mountain or two and gotten much closer to the stars than I might have imagined. While I sensed I was out of my element, the dream brings me down to earth with the sounds of a river I was crossing that was rapidly gaining height as my ears carefully recorded.

Within the dream I am getting numerous mixed signals that I should not cross this dangerous river. I thought I was seeing Morse code littering the sky, perhaps a warning from my US Navy days, an SOS cautioning me to move slowly, while I was hearing in the dream sounds of the 2,000 lb. bombs on my ammunition ship off the Japanese coast, rolling with abandon around the deck as we struggled to escape Typhoon Nancy.

In the dream I seemed to be nudged away from danger with thoughts of shipmates Roger and Larry who were always at my side when the sea got unruly. The scene changed and now the sky seemed to be filled with syntax, with words like careful, gentle, slowly, cautious and others I didn’t manage to pull down from the sky.

Now I am back in my old role as a high school English teacher, where I am diagramming sentences for my students on a chalkboard that looks like the night sky, as I gently bring down Venus who can serve as that well-lit salutation about a decorative compound/complex sentence now under the full light of a proper regenerative power.

Then I hear a Naval command, “Attention on Deck,” a customary call to announce the arrival of a senior officer. That was not the message. In the dream I sensed I had been distracted by Venus and other bright lights and didn’t read the clear sings of a dangerous storm brewing. Now the sky seemed to be falling.

I find myself stumbling forward, holding a lamp to light my way, trying to read the night sky that is filled with muddled syntax that seemed pulled from the alphabet by a mad man who clearly suggested I shouldn’t proceed. I seemed to be reading the end of sentences that appear to end with a very large, “Do Note Proceed” sign.

In the dream I am thinking of that “bridge too far,” “getting too far over my skis,” and the like. I sense a general displeasure with my behavior. There is muttering about chasing false gods and letting the ego take over the reins. I seem to be covered with shadows.

The dream ends with me in some strange landscape, scribbling a series of SOS messages, perhaps in the night sky or on that abandoned wall, looking for that noun, verb or adjective or any appropriate language that captures that hope, that wish, that prayer I could hang onto until the light returns and I find my footing.