Dream a little dream...

On Monday night B.O. and I saw the late (9:50) showing of Inception at Sycamore. Walking out of the mall at 12:30 to the empty parking lot, I realized I have a knack for seeing profound and cinematically stunning movies with him, then afterward being released into the quiet and surreal thoughtfulness of the night to ponder the symbolism and beauty as well as be completely humbled as an artist.

“Wow,” I usually think. “What the fuck am I doing?”

That’s exactly what I thought Monday night.

If you have not seen it, I highly recommend Inception. It’s been a long time since I saw a movie — a typical fictional drama, that is — that impressed me. I would not be opposed to seeing it again; there are a few things I’m unsure of or sketchy about, and would love to analyze the film after having seen it before.

But that’s beside the point. The fact I saw Inception, a movie about dreams, gives me a chance to pointlessly ramble about my dreams.

What’s so great about the dreams I’ve had recently? Well, it’s not so much the dreams — though they have been interesting — but more the fact I have actually dreamt.

In California I almost never dreamt. (I never had any dreams I remembered, that is. We apparently dream all night but can only recall one or two in the morning.) Every blue moon or so I had one of my stereotypical dreams about high school: my next class is on the other side of the school, there’s only one minute left in the passing time, and I either forget how to get there or am hopelessly distracted from getting there by friends, traffic, or the stupid shit that seemed to happen everyday in high school. Sometimes I have to get stuff from my locker, but when I get there I can’t remember the combination.

Why am I dreaming about high school? I have no clue. But the fact I even had those dreams was surprising. I just stopped dreaming. On most nights the cinema of my subconscious was closed. Nothing was showing. A sign on the door read, “Will he get to class on time? Find out next month.” However, since returning to Iowa my mind is once again very active at night, placing myself in fanciful, puzzling, and scary circumstances. More than likely it has to do with the exponential increase in social stimulation; interacting with my friends and family face-to-face once again has got the projectors rolling at Le Bijou de Quiet Man.

My new nocturnal brain activity has produced some real gems recently, and last week I had my first lucid dreams.

According to Wikipedia, my lucid dreams were “dream-initiated lucid dreams”: they both began as regular dreams, but at a point I realized I was dreaming and was able to manipulate what was happening. In my second lucid dream I stole a UPS truck. I was joyriding with a high school classmate, who I happened to see at the farmer’s market a few weeks ago. The truck was surprisingly underpowered, and we were going nowhere up a hill when the cops swooped in. In the dream, stealing a UPS truck was apparently serious enough to warrant SWAT involvement. So my classmate (someone I never hung out with or talked to much) and I where hauled off to jail. During processing I was scared out of my mind since it was my first arrest, but just before being led to my cell I thought, “What a minute. This is a dream,” and I stopped everything right there. The screen went blank and the show was over.

The transition to lucidity happened much the same way in my first lucid dream. At a certain point I realized I was dreaming and took control; I made a few small changes and continued dreaming.

I have to say, lucid dreaming is pretty cool. It is about as close as you can get to manipulating reality, and it gave me one hell of a power trip. I hope I keep dreaming.

(Back to Inception, though. That movie fucked with me somehow. In the middle of the night I will half wake up and think, “Whose dream am I in?” I must be going crazy.)