Some nights I sleep very deeply, and it is during those nights that I have the sense that I have been travelling in my dreams, from one dream state to another, from one dreamscape to the next. Sometimes, I wish I could go back, and occasionally, in that half-sleep-sodden state just before or after a satisfying snooze, I wish I could live in my dreams; the non-upsetting ones, that is.
Even when I am fully awake, images from dreams past, even many decades past, can suddenly unfurl in my brain. Some of them are frightening, intimidating images; others are warm, familiar, even enticing. Landscapes, especially; I think of a town street seen from above, with a road bordered by green tree tops. I think of a lower-East Side-like cityscape, seen from above, but from an angle - . Another cityscape tickles my consciousness - a remnant of a dream about buying or trying to buy a house in lower Manhattan . . . There were recurring dreams about houses in Brooklyn . . . There is a more recent (some years ago, but not decades) dream with a lush green lawn which, however, had some dubious surprises.
There are those frightening landscapes, of course; I have quite a few nightmares. They scare me, I dread them, and yet I treasure their imagery: so rich, so strange, complex and engrossing. There are the images that terrify me because there is a building that is too large, grotesquely out of proportion to its surroundings. The first, and most disturbing of these images, belongs to a recurring nightmare I had when I was a young child: a lake in a barren landscape - just red mud and dirt surrounding it, and in the lake a huge, a monstrous 1800s sailing ship, incalculably too large for reality, for the lake. I feel frightened by it even now. I still have dreams about disturbingly large buildings, but I don't want to write about other recurring elements in my nightmares, because I want to sleep well tonight!
There are those frightening landscapes, of course; I have quite a few nightmares. They scare me, I dread them, and yet I treasure their imagery: so rich, so strange, complex and engrossing. There are the images that terrify me because there is a building that is too large, grotesquely out of proportion to its surroundings. The first, and most disturbing of these images, belongs to a recurring nightmare I had when I was a young child: a lake in a barren landscape - just red mud and dirt surrounding it, and in the lake a huge, a monstrous 1800s sailing ship, incalculably too large for reality, for the lake. I feel frightened by it even now. I still have dreams about disturbingly large buildings, but I don't want to write about other recurring elements in my nightmares, because I want to sleep well tonight!
