What are Writers’ Dreams Like?

I wonder what other writers’ dreams are like.

 

The ones I can remember of my own are nearly always long conversations or discussions–frequently they’re on topics that could turn into angry arguments, but in my dreams they never do. In my dreams, everybody listens. True, I do most of the talking in them, carefully constructing the pathway to my conclusions, using emotion and facts so people can see where I’m coming from, even if they don’t end up agreeing with me.

 

(I knew a man in Lake Charles LA, a professor named Beck, who did this. I was always intrigued by the way he brought his listeners along, paving the way for them to reach the same conclusions. One of his discussions was about the Vietnam war. After hearing him, I came on board and stopped kowtowing to the “official” history of the conflict…all of which was eventually debunked in just the way Professor Beck described it. That’s when the tragedy of it all hit me. Lost lives on both sides, all brought about by lies.) (As happened in the second Iraq war under GW. To say that I distrust the words of warmongers–who benefit financially from conflict–is an understatement. I think of war as “lots of people losing their lives”, not as “a tremendous method of income” and I wish everyone in power thought about it the same way. Our history wouldn’t be dotted with as many dead bodies if they did. Human beings shouldn’t be deemed mere “cannon fodder.”)

 

When my dream are what others would call “nightmares” I always orchestrate an ending (yes, while asleep!) that gets me out of the situation alive and none the worse for wear:

 

• If I’m on the edge of a raging forest fire or in a windstorm in a heavily-wooded area, as trees fall I dodge them expertly
• If a house is coming down around my ears, I manage to find a place that doesn’t crush me
• If someone in my nightmare is injured in a horrible way, hurting and scared, I know how to calm and care for them.
• If I’m in a tall building that’s collapsing, and I know I’m going to die–no two ways about it–I start praying and thanking God for my wonderful life–and I wake up.
• Whatever the situation in my dreams, I always make the best of it.

 

I guess this shouldn’t surprise me. I’m an optimist to the nth degree. I always envision a happy ending.

 

I was raised by a stoic mother with a good heart and a dry sense of humor, and a chronically-agitated  father. (Dad was a poorly-educated man, forced to leave school at an early age to help support his parents and siblings. He turned to drink to battle his demons. He was doing the best he could. I assign no blame here.).

 

There was little peace in our home: we three kids were frequently irritable and argumentative; Dad thought he was General Patton (always devising projects and telling us, seemingly for weeks, about how they would be carried out, to the point where I was sick of them  before they even got underway); and Mom… Mom was the only truly sane person in our home! I don’t know how she survived intact. Or how I did, being as sensitive, creative, self-isolating and turmoil-averse as I was.

 

(Here’s how I survived. I disappeared into lots of books and into writing journals and stories, and I reveled in TV shows where “families” were loving, mostly-patient partnerships–Leave It to Beaver, Ozzie and Harriet Bonanza, Family Affair, Star Trek, and the like).

 

But one of the most helpful things I got from Mom was stoicism. Stoics deal with their circumstances, whatever they are. Rarely do we complain unless we’re pushed into a corner in a fight for our lives.

 

So I guess it makes perfect sense that I “dodge” through dreams and nightmares as expertly as I dodge through life, taking it as it comes day by day, moment by moment, doing what I can to get through it and out at the other end with a prayer of thanksgiving on my lips and in my heart.