21 - Dreamscapes

Recurring dreams aren't unusual, not for me at least. Last night I had one of my classics. It's a pretty rubbish dream. All that happens is one of my teeth falls out. It's always the same one. It's wobbly, then I fiddle with it, then it falls out. Then when I wake up I'm massively relieved that it hasn't fallen out.

Last night was slightly different though. During the dream, just after the tooth fell out I said to myself, 'Well at least it's only a dream.' I then had a subsequent dream where I told all my friends how I'd had this dream in which I pointed out to myself it was only a dream.

So it got me thinking back to this piece of writing I mentioned in post 12. There's this series of dreams I have that I tried to explore in a piece of writing but never got very far with it. They're not recurring dreams as much as they are recurring places.

There are three places that I visit in my dreams every so often and have done for the past 5 years or so. They're not real places, but exaggerations of normal locations. Generally each time I go to each of them something different happens.

The Tower
I think it's 200 floors tall. It's made of blue glass and two lifts run from the ground floor to about 10 floors from the top. The remaining floors are accessed by one central bigger lift. The top floor has a glass floor. The lifts always feature prominently in the dreams but what I'm doing in there varies. I've robbed a jewellery store in there with my dad. I've been chased around there by a man with a gun. I've escaped falling lifts in there. I've played hide and seek with a friend.

The Theme Park
This place is huge but sparse. I don't think I've ever really got much past the entrance as just inside is a rollercoaster. There's a clown hanging over the entrance. The rollercoaster itself is sunk slightly into the ground and full of huge elongated loops. What always happens is we'll go on it, do the loop, fall out and then generally, but not always, land in the carriage again as it zooms underneath.

The Cinema
This is a huge multiplex cinema in a dome shape. It must be miles in diameter. In the middle is the massive circular reception desk. The carpet is faded red and littered with popcorn. The only screen I've been into is pretty small. It has white concrete steps running down to the screen and the seats are more like benches. It's quite cold and empty in there. I've seen various films from Avatar to Kill Bill there.


So yeah, I keep thinking I might explore these dreams in writing some more but I doubt I'll get any further than this. I can't help but shake the hope that they mean something. Like I'm Richard Dreyfus in Close Encounters, continually molding Devil's Tower. More likely the dream part of my brain is pretty unimaginative and keeps recycling the same ideas.