Dream, from Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels
I am absolutely in love with everything Neil Gaiman has touched. I was first introduced to Gaiman's works back in college, when a friend lent me all of the Sandman graphic novels. I recently read Smoke and Mirrors (thank you, Linda!), and when I was finished, I found myself craving Gaiman to the point that I re-read Neverwhere again. (No, that's not redundant; I really do mean that I re-read it again. I've read it several times.) Anyway, I'm not sure if it's the influence of Neil Gaiman's specific brand of insanity right before I turn out my light, or the recent problems I've had with my suspect prescriptions from Vanuatu, but I've had some crazy dreams over the past few weeks. I wish I'd thought to write them down. Instead, all I can tell you about are two of my most recent dreams.
Yesterday I left work early, as I was ill. I went home and slept for several hours. I should probably mention that my landlord owns a gigantic white bunny rabbit named Toto. Toto always greets me when I come home, so I had petted him briefly before staggering upstairs and collapsing into bed. I dreamt that I was at a restaurant with a group of people. One of them was Caitlin; I don't remember who the others were. Caitlin was encouraging us to order a certain dish from the menu, so we did. However, when it was her turn to order, she only requested tea. It turned out that we had ordered rabbit stew, made with Toto, boiled whole - fur and all. Luckily, that was where I awoke.
While I'm sure I dreamt a lot last night, I only recall what I was dreaming right before my alarm went off. I swear I don't usually have dreams about high school - after all, that ended ten years ago! In my dream, the band was going on a trip somewhere for a concert. Evil Mr. Atkins was still the director. It was winter, and raining; the weather was thoroughly miserable. Gwen, Melissa, Avery, Chris and a few other were there, no one else. Fatkins (nope, not a typo) was furious that everyone was late. Slowly, people began to trickle in, and we were told to get on the bus. It took so long for everyone to arrive, however, that they decided to give us a 30 minute lunch break. One of the chaperones asked me and Gwen to stay on the bus to make sure no one stole anything. Except that then the parking lot flooded, and the bus was swallowed up by a giant whale. Gwen and I barely escaped, and were holding onto the top of a chain-link fence to keep from being swept away when my alarm began beeping.
Who knows what any of this means. I would just like to add that Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley received the inspiration to write Dracula and Frankenstein, respectively, from dreams. Obviously, my dreams last night were far from that caliber!
7 comments:
Very interesting dreams. I really don't remember my dreams too much anymore. Maybe I'll start a dream journal. When I first got Harriette (cat), I did have two dreams about killing her that remind me of your bunny dream.
1) Alex's parents bought us a gigantic roaster/slow cooker for christmas one year. In one dream I slow roasted Harriette in a stew whole (fur and all just like Toto).
2) In another dream, I killed her (don't remember how) and then felt guilty so was holding her in my lap crying and Alex came home from work. He didn't notice that the cat was dead and kept asking me what was wrong and telling me "how bad can it be, at least Harriette is sitting in your lap, look how much she loves you!"
I was really disturbed by both dreams and obviously I didn't want to hurt Harriette in anyway, so I'm not really sure what they meant?? I also find it strange that we've both had dreams about whole, boiled pets.
Melissa
I'm thinking about teaching Seasons of Mists in my graphic novel class in the fall. That's the one where Lucifer gives Dream the key to Hell after letting everybody go. I think everybody agrees that's the best Sandman graphic novel, and I don't think you have to be very familiar with the others to get it. (I read it first.)
Melissa - I have no idea what it means, although it can probably somehow be traced back to those self-hypnosis tapes.
Glenn - Have I mentioned how I really, really want to take your graphic novel class?
Kekule claimed he discovered the ring structure of the benzine molecule after dreaming of a snake eating its own tail.
I found two other interesting dream stories by accident, after misspelling Kekule's name as "Kelkule" in the search engine:
The sewing machine needle was discovered after its inventor had a dream in which angry tribal warriors branded spears with holes in the points.
A woman dreamed that she had found the solution to all the world's problems, and in her dream she wrote it down. The next day she found the following verses:
Higamus pigamus
All men are polygamous.
Higamus hogamus
All women monogamous.
Not like these anonymous stories are particularly trustworthy, but I thought they were neat.
Oops. I meant "brandished spears," not "branded."
Well, Jane, I can assure you that when I go to restaurants, I eat. And I don't eat people's pet bunnies! (Bunnies...well, rabbits, are fair game in general. Pun intended.)
As for the band dream, I know I have mentioned before that I have nightmares about being in high school, in band in particular, with frightening regularity. Lest you think I am a total freak, I remember multiple dreams from every night I sleep, which is all of them. That's many hundreds of dreams a year and maybe a dozen are about band.
As for an explanation, maybe you had these weird/bad dreams because you were ill. I always dread going to sleep when I am sick, because I know some messed up crap is about to happen in my head...
Certainly my dreams are more vivid when I'm ill, but weird messed up crap occurs pretty much every time I close my eyes. Luckily, I love it. Usually. Yesterdays dreams were a tad off kilter. I'm seriously thinking it might have been more the Neil Gaiman influence than the illness influence though. It was totally like having Gaiman-scripted dreams.
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