Quote – Character & Adjectives
“A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.”
Mark Twain
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Jan 9th, 2009 at 8:43 PM
Bad Dreams
Luke rants on about his nightly dreams…
I have always been a dreamer and what a strange phenomenon they are, seemingly realistic events conjured up by the imagination of the night over which I have no control. I’m told that science depicts that dreams are mostly based upon impacting past events, usually something seen or experienced (a good example would be having a nightmare after a particularly frightening movie). So therefore most dreams are not original. Makes me wonder why some people sat that “dreams can come true”… Flipping heck I certainly hope my dreams don’t come true! To my knowledge I have not had a pleasant dream to date, just a constant string of anxiety dreams and nightmares.
I’m told that anxiety dreams are really common amongst the masses, usually occurring before important events in life – like a test day, interviews, meeting up with people, going on holiday… yet I do not know why. What could possibly be the worst thing that could happen in tomorrow’s future? Nothing nobody couldn’t recover from surely? So is an anxiety dream forewarning you about the tomorrow? A perception? Tosh! One can not see into the future, you can not possibly know how good or bad it will be?
Now, there are supposedly many different common anxiety dreams, but I appear to have a recurring chain of four different ones…
Mostly I suffer what I call the “teeth falling out dream” a particularly gruesome dream where my teeth are literally falling out all over the place! However most bafflingly I am usually pulling them out myself by hand, inflicting a great deal of pain (for I have a perception of pain in my dreams) in my mouth. What’s more, for some reason I make futile attempts to reinsert my shed teeth back into my gum, blood everywhere… its very surreal, for every time I awaken from this dream I find myself running my tongue along my nashers just to make sure that they are all still there.
The second dream I suffer from is what I call the “falling dream” the clue is in the name as I am literally hurtling downwards for the entire duration of the anxiety. I never actually experience casting myself from atop a particularly large block of imposing flats (where the dream is always set) that carries on downwards for eternity. No floor to go splat on. Yes it’s said that nobody can die in a dream and this is reflected here, maybe the brain has no comprehension of what death feels like, so therefore can not interpret it whilst you’re in the land of nod. However this dream is silent with no sense of pain for me.
The third dream I have is one of embarrassment, I’m told one that is also extremely common, “the naked in public dream” I call it – well I say naked, more like half naked, yet I have always appear to have forgotten to put any underwear or trousers on… something to keep my decency intact. For me this dream is always set in a very public scenario (usually a shopping centre or the school) and all that I am wearing is a very short T-shirt. I find myself wondering aimlessly around desperately attempting to pull the shirt down to cover my manly parts, but to no avail. Yet the strange aspect of the dream is that, although surrounded by hundreds of people, nobody seems to notice or care that I’m there. Highly bemusing yet I am unaware of this it would appear, scrabbling about from cover to cover, I could almost label this as funny if it didn’t seem so damned realistic!
The forth dream I have is perhaps singularly the most sinister, darkest and strangest one of them all. I call it the “unknown entity” dream. I find myself alone in a vast, cold, empty, featureless universe of never ending grey running for my life. I run for I am perused by what I can only describe as a formless entity which I believe to be of a black hue and dark intention. The perspective is seen from the entity itself yet I can feel my legs burning in agony as I run, nowhere to go to, and nowhere to hide…
Still these anxiety dreams pale in comparison to a nightmare I had only recently. A truly terrifying dream that had me wakening in a cold sweat!
The setting was a sinister as the events that took place during the dream’s duration: what I could best describe as a roofless dungeon, complete with a stone cobble floor cold and dank to the touch. I can see a turbulent sky, torn asunder by the raw powers of the elements, rain lashing down, each droplet a dagger into the pit of despair that I found myself in. I am stretched out on my back in a star shape laid in a pool of water as if on some kind of invisible rack. Paralysis had gripped my body for I am unable to move bar my eyes and unable to react to the most excruciatingly agonizing pain that was being inflicted upon me, which was itself naked bar some pants keeping my modesty.
A faceless being loomed over me, writhed in black, placing what I can best describe as the wire mesh you would find on the inside of a toaster (though far enlarged) onto my belly that in turn emitted an electric shock. I looked around in a silent plea, unable to scream, at the people that were bearing witness to this torture… un-empathetic, unwilling to aid. Worse still these were people that I had encountered in my life, I could see faces like tom, one of my best friends from primary school yet had not seen since I left, through to family, with faces resurrected from the dead and my friends of the now, even the lady behind the till at the co-op was there!
That was how the dream started and the only event that took place… whilst I was seemingly aware of the miserable pain I began to develop a mixture of feelings about the un-empathy that stood around me. Desperation on one part and loathing on the other that they didn’t help me: A dark bitter feeling, betrayal. Why did they just stand there and watch? Who or what was the faceless being? Why was I being tortured? Guess that I will never know for the dream obviously ended before any such conclusions are drawn… like a nasty cliff-hanger ending a gripping novel. But then as is such the way with dreams, you always awaken before the pinnacle (you always waken before going splat in the falling dream, just before you see into the Contents of that interesting trinket you just opened…)
I have always been a dreamer, despise the fact I’m a dreamer. I long for a pleasant dream but never been graced by such a privilege. My dreams are like a plague that haunts my night’s rest, a torture from which no man has any means of escape, defence nor control. Well at least I haven’t been captured, gone splat, arrested for indecent exposure or started pulling out other body bits in them yet… which I suppose is a good thing…
By Luke Russell