Dream a little dream

The kids and I went to see the movie Inception, with Leonardo DiCaprio. It was really, really good. The movie is about dreams, and entering them via some machine they've cooked up that hooks you all together. Then their dream becomes your reality, so if someone is shooting at you, then someone is shooting at you. Though if you are shot, then you just wake up. Unless ... you have a dream inside a dream. Or inside yet another dream. It's all about dream layers, and the rules change with each layer. As does time.

So ... you have to somehow figure out what is real, what is not and in which layer they are in! It was fun to try to figure it all out, I thoroughly enjoyed it, and unlike so many movies these days, where you are forced to suspend belief in order to continue watching a movie star being shot at, driven over and flying through the air with the greatest of ease in the midst of an explosion, always to land on their feet with maybe a bruised shoulder.

I have been having this really irritating dream for over a month now. In my dream I have forgotten to do something. Sometimes I get really close to figuring that out, and then when I wake up it is so real to me -- this forgetting something. And I think, HAVE I forgotten something? It feels as though it is something I am supposed to do TO myself ... take a pill, put on a certain cream, I don't know, the details are fuzzy ... but whatever this imperative thing is, it is upsetting me IN my dream that I have continued to forget it, night after night after night. And sometimes I wake up SURE that there is this something, and yet, as the dream fades away, I become less sure. It is making me a little nuts ... because I am SORT OF sure and positive that this has no merit. But then, why does it keep happening, night after night?

This movie was interesting to me from the perspective of when you are in a dream you aren't sure what is real and what isn't. Having actually experienced that, it was very easy to see that if you are in a dream, then you wouldn't know it. They figure out a way to keep track of reality, but in truth, it's a tenuous grasp.

I think at this particular mid-stage of life (I am not sure why, but the term middle-aged does NOT appeal to me. I have thrown it into the vault of words I despise, along with zit, clitoris and puke.) I prefer blemish, clit and throw up, FYI. Anyway, according to the things I have read, a woman approaching the brink of "the change," (I think menopause might have to go in the vault too, just don't love it) often have very vivid dreams. I have always had vivid dreams, and I have also had dreams that would include certain people in my life, which would generally mean that I would see them in the near future. So much so, that when I do dream of a particular person I haven't seen in a while, I will know for a fact that I will be seeing them within a week.

I have books on dreams and I always write down the more interesting ones. I have had dreams that I could tell you about with incredible detail right now. Without looking at my dream dictionary. In other words, I really have a thing for dreams! And I think that when you get older, your wisdom gives you more clarity in terms of what they mean. So what does this niggling dream I keep having mean?

Though there is no unerring rule as to what any given dream might be about, a good rule of thumb is to re-experience the feeling of the dream and find out where this same feeling shows up in our waking life (often alluded to by the setting of the dream, though perhaps figuratively). This is the rule of associative logic - the dream associates to our life, and sometimes to our past, by a specific feeling.

Okay, that is interesting. So I have to figure out where in my life I feel this sureness that I have forgotten something important. Hmmmmm. I guess I'll go and sleep on it!