Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Weird dreams

I know I dream every night but I often don't remember what they're about. The memory of their details vanishes with my waking. But every now and then I experience one that sticks in my brain and won't let go. I had one like that a couple years back, where I was on an upper floor of a building during an earthquake, and the building collapsed around me but I wasn't hurt. I wound up on the street watching the fire. In another, my car went off a bridge into a lake and I had to swim for shore with a shark chasing me. I made it. What's really weird about that one is, I can't swim...but I was going faster than Mark Sptiz, I gotta tell you.

So last night I had a vivid dream where two people I know (who shall remain unnamed because I halfway think they were representational of others I know) worked together to end my dreams because they felt it was best for me, and I was given no chance to respond. One was fussy and demanding and the other was so sure of being right, condescension dripped from every word. And when I woke this morning, I was so weary, I had a hard time getting out of bed for work.

You know, I was raised Presbyterian and they believe in predestination. Like your life is written and you are just fulfilling it. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but it does seem to have colored my views in more ways than I can think of. The most obvious one being my love of Russian literature, which relies heavily on the idea of "man trapped in his fate." POS has more than a dab of that in it.

I do believe a lot of my life was and is out of my control, most of which stems from events in my past that seem to back that up -- like illnesses as a baby that set the course of my health and well-being, and actions by others that forced changes on me which I did not want to make. And I've watched friends of mine who believe strongly in self-determination get little farther in their lives than I have in mine...which also seems to bolster the notion that we are all trapped in our fates.

It's a scary thought, the idea that you're here and following a script laid down by someone else and from which you cannot deviate. So many of them are tragedy, a few are comedy and some are triumphs over adversity while others are about the dignity of facing the worst the world has to offer. It means luck plays no role in your world, not really. And it means no matter how hard you try, if you're not meant to rise above a certain level of success, you won't. Life will conspire to crush you or distract you or wear you down or lead you to change your mind or just surrender to whatever direction you're being lead towards.

So what I want to know now is, what the hell did I do to deserve the fate I was handed?


Penman said...

Fate can be explained by comparing it to the sex education of Victorian maidens. When asked what to do on her wedding night, the mother of the bride would say, "You do nothing my dear but lay back and think of England."

I have had dreams so vivid and real that when talking about where we been with friends they'll say, "We never been there, and I don't where it could be."

I would look at them as if they were crazy until, while pondering, I realized the place doesn't exist except in my head.

The worse are when I wake up and I can't recognise where I am even though it is my bedroom. Not that I shouldn't be in my bed, but not that bed and not that house. It takes me a few terrifying minutes before I realize I had been dreaming of being somewhere else

JamTheCat said...

Maybe we're tapping into what the future brings. Maybe this is where deja vu comes from. Maybe my boss's cats are reading my mind and manipulating it. I wouldn't put it past the little bitches. I haven't yet offered them any of my tuna sandwiches because "mommy and daddy" say they don't like "people" food and I'm wondering, "Since when am I people?"