Degas Dancer -- Image via Wikipedia

I had a night full of dreams last night.  Today I’m still shaking them off.  Not that I remember them well.  My dreams are so full of weirdness, so illogical, so detailed with situations and visions and plot that they make so little waking sense that even when I remember them, I don’t remember them well.  Last night included a dream about living in a house (not the one I’m living in) which I was having remodeled to be more Tudor-ish or Gothic, apparently mostly by chipping away at plaster to make gargoyles.  The workmen were sleeping (they needed a nap), all in a pile in a closet.  I seemed to have a very tall, blonde housekeeper who was putting laundry away over a freezer and I was pointing out to her that we really shouldn’t keep wine in the furnace room, it was too hot.  There were built-in drawers everywhere, even in doors that opened, which made them open awkwardly, and I told my helper that we should use more of the drawers.  The mayor of my small town was waiting for me in my living room.  He said he’d come for the garbage.  Apparently, within the dream, I had mistaken his garbage for my own (now this is getting deep, isn’t it?) and he wanted his own garbage back.  (It would perhaps be wise for my readers to realize that in my waking life I have met our mayor only once or twice to be actually introduced, so whatever this is about is probably more, well, public than it sounds.)  We went into the garage, which was very strangely furnished as a sitting room, and out of a rather large dumpster (I said this was getting deep, didn’t I?), I pulled some bags which he agreed were his.  He sat down on my mustard yellow sofa (which thank heavens I do not have one of) and pulled out various items that, while thrown away, were thankfully not wet or sticky, strewed them about the room and then vanished.  I was left to clean up.  Actually a fairly good description of the political process.  Then I rearranged quite a few things including a statuette of a Degas dancer on a shelf underneath a trestle table and then I woke up.

I think it’s the mustard yellow sofa I can’t quite stop remembering.

I dream quite a lot and, since I wake up several times during every night’s sleep, I remember having them even if I don’t always or usually remember the content.  My dreams seem to fall into categories.  One major category encompasses the “law firm” dream.  I usually call this by the name of the law firm I used to work for, but probably that’s not a good idea in a public forum.  In any event, for 18 years I worked for a major Los Angeles law firm, a sojourn which has some moments but was mostly something that the cartoonist who creates “Dilbert” would sieze upon with glee.  I started there as an executive assistant (fancy name for legal secretary) and then moved into the word processing department.  But my dreams are never so much about the actual work (which was exacting, often challenging, sometimes boring and sometimes quite interesting).  Instead, the dream will be about former bosses, the building itself, lawyers (shudder) and so forth.  In the dream, I either can’t find my desk in a building that somehow has grown into an impossible maze, or my desk is spotlighted and my boss (in the dream) is at least eight feet tall and really unhappy to see me, or I’m trying to leave and I can’t find the elevator that actually goes to the garage.  Or I’m in the garage and driving around and around, never finding the exit.  Or the lawyers are having a party in a huge cave-like room where things are morphing and growing  (believe me, I get the symbolism here) and I’m supposed to be getting approval for a document, but they pay no attention (that isn’t even symbolism, just the way it often was).

Not a fun dream.

But it seems to have taken over my earlier repeating dreams, which primarily had to do with, in the dream, a sudden realization that it was the day of the final and I’d never gone to class and now I couldn’t find the exam room.  Some of these would be so detailed and frightening that after I woke up I would have to remind myself very carefully and soothingly that I got the darned degree, that I did not leave any classes forgotten or tests untaken (let alone unpassed).

Those I really  hate.

As an actress, I of course always (while performing in real life) have the dreams in which one is standing on stage either naked (not a pretty thought) or obviously in a play I’ve never heard of, let alone for which I have the lines memorized.  I hate those too, although they make good stories to share with other actors, since we’ve all had them.

I don’t often have lighthearted, happy dreams, but I remember one I had many years ago in which my father (who died when I was quite young, tragically) was once again alive and was the general of the world’s forces (he had been in the army and had retired a Colonel).  This sounds grim to start with, but my father won the war using the weapons of green lawns, party balloons and kangaroos.  I can close my eyes and still see this huge army of kangaroos bouncing on the brilliant green lawn, releasing balloons of every possible color into the air.  What enemy force could possibly withstand that?

It’d be nice to have more dreams like that.  And, as for the dreams I do have, I will promise the mayor of Estes Park (who is quite a good mayor in waking life) that I will not take his garbage if he will promise not to strew it on my mustard-colored sofa.

Movie Poster Capturing How I feel About My Dreams -- Image via Wikipedia