Dream Franchise

Moving into a new home means a great deal of new stimuli to absorb, as well as subconsciously letting go of one's previous set of routines and familiar sights. I've found that these sudden shifts almost always cause a sharp increase in my dream activity, that old dream patterns are washed away and a new anthology of motifs and appearances by random faces from the past are featured.

It's not too unlike a new season of original programming after a summer of reruns.

I see horses out my window every day now, and I look forward to seeing them in my dreams

As I've mentioned before, some of my most fertile ideas occur to me in my sleep, as if the writer-side of my brain is trying to send messages to my conscious self that it has something worthwhile. Instead of a ghostwriter... a dreamwriter. Neither one is really you, but both of them quietly fade into the background if they produce something good for you.

Last night I had a doozy of a dream, the kind where you're somewhat aware that you're experiencing a dream but also can't quite shake the feeling that the jeopardy of the dream scenario is very real.

Mrs. Word Player and I had just bought a condo inside a sprawling indoor casino in Las Vegas. Neither of us were excited about the condo, especially because the doors weren't quite attached to the hinges, and the windows kept hovering slightly off the runners they were supposed to be attached to. I kept losing track of where our condo ended and the neighbors' condos began, as the hallways were maze-like and poorly lit. I kept getting frustrated by the lack of boundaries, so I would walk downstairs into the gambling areas, which looked like the interior of an enormous, vaulted-ceiling airport terminal done in tacky Vegas reds and greens.

The hallways in my dream reminded me of the hallways connecting the two realities in LOST HIGHWAY

I kept running into people I knew killing time playing slots or blackjack. I was always surprised to see them, but they were never surprised to see me. Every time I started to gamble, a voice inside my head told me that I only had $100 a day gambling allowance, and not to blow it all too fast.

(It struck my semi-aware conscious self how odd it felt to be privy to the little voice inside the head of my dream self.)

I wandered away from the tables and into a two story saloon-type bar. I emerged on the top floor balcony overlooking the place, and the big crowd down below stopped what they were doing and looked up at me. The only way down to the first floor was a wire that you had to wrap your legs around and shimmy down, pulling yourself with your hands.

I didn't want to go, but the people down below started yelling at me to, and then I realized that a bunch of ruffian types were approaching from behind. I noticed that the floor was covered in shards of brown and green broken glass inches deep. I started making my way down the wire, and everybody on both floors started shouting and breaking chairs and bottles over each other's heads in anticipation of my arrival.

This was terrifying, and I was sure that the mob was going to rip me to shreds when I reached the ground floor. It came as a huge relief to discover that I had entered a theme restaurant where you get to experience a real Western barfight without fear of getting hurt. The glass wasn't real and the chairs were breakaway props. Everybody crowded around me and rubbed my head and good-naturedly punched me in the shoulder in the "we really had you going" way, until we turned out attention to a new guy who'd appeared on the balcony above, and we all started acting crazy and menacing again.

Breakaway glass sure looks like fun.

That was the end of the dream, but it wasn't until a few minutes ago that I thought how cool it would be to have a real cowboy theme bar where you got to participate in a real barfight... something that few of us ever get to (or would want to, in reality) participate in.

In all likelihood the ship-to-shore dream message was something completely different, but that's probably what I'll remember from it.