If I am allowed to wake naturally, I wake at dawn. No matter when the dawn is. Always a dream is with me. Like a mist. A diaphanous fabric of colour and movement and air and dreams.
Do you wake up like that?
I rise fast and often write down as much as I can of the dream. If I forget to write them down they are lost.
Don’t worry I will not tell you my dreams. They are often colourful and layered with detail and there is nothing more boring than listening to another’s dreams. Or is there?
I feed the cats . Feed the dogs. Make my first coffee – all with images of the dream trailing behind me like echoes. Like footsteps. Half there and half here. Sometimes mostly there – even for the whole day. Dreamy.
Then through the morning, as I link one thought to the next the images are gone. They just slide off into the ether and unless I have imprinted a thread of imagery onto paper the whole dream is gone. And I always feel that loss – there is a wave of sadness that accompanies the the leave-taking of a dream.
Sometimes I mourn all day. Sometimes I am angry with someone who did something mean in my dream – I can be angry with them for weeks. Even though I cannot remember the dreamt slight.
Is it the same for you?
I have often thought of having a private blog just for dreams. To document them. Invitation only – where we could all share our dreams and see if there is a common theme. I did have a dream book once. God knows where that is now.
Years ago I read a book about a person who bought dreams – or rather a woman who sold her dreams for a few coins to buy food. Regularly. And then the dream buyer left or had enough dreams or something. So the woman was left with her dreams. Or was that a dream? No I am sure it was a book or short story.
I might start a dream book again – a dream book needs to be literally beside the bed with the pencil on top. So I can write the images down immediately. Though when a person writes a dream out it is no longer a dream – it is a story.
My best friend Donna ( the one who died – the tree I planted for her is blooming now which makes me think of her), she and I used to try and find each other in our dreams then compare notes ( over the old fashioned phone that you would talk into) the next morning as to where we were. I don’t think we ever did though – find each other in a dream – too long ago to remember – maybe?
Do you dream? Would you sell your dreams? How would it feel to sell your night dreams to a Buyer of Dreams.
John says he never dreams which makes me feel sorry for him. Not to have this alternate universe to visit. Not to look froward to sleeping because that is when we get to step over.
Last night (I dreamt), (after having told you I would not bore you with my dreams) that I was having dinner with my daughter (who lives in Australia) I could describe for you every detail of the room and all the food – the plates. The table setting. What we were wearing. The heat. The open doors. The lighting. The night. The night sounds. She told me she had eloped and got married to a man who I hate. But I could say nothing. Because we are all allowed to make our own decisions. A mother cannot judge. She is caught into silence by this knowledge.
When I was young I could direct my dreams – I called it rethreading the needle – If I ran out of thread before I had finished the stitching I directed my dream self to go back and thread the needle with more cotton and start the dream again.
Now it is time for me to leave you – I will dreamily go and make my breakfast, then load dry straw into the Black Mariah so the calves have a comfy warm trip back here. It is cold again today. It was freezing at dawn – lucky that I brought the tomatoes back inside for the night.
A Dream Blog could be fun. I would call it Sell me your Dreams. (Maybe next winter).
Have a great day!
c
The Kitchen's Garden 
85 responses to “Sell me Your Dreams.”
What a lovely, reflective post today! I hardly remember my dreams at all- only a few meager images remain when I wake up and then within minutes they are gone. I have vague ideas that they seem to be a jumble of situations and people from my past, my history. Often no one in the dream would have ever been together in real life yet they show up together in the dream. I don’t ever dream about my family in any way unlike you C. I think studying dreams and their possible meaning would be fascinating.
And then – after writing about this I did not remember last nights dream at all! Not even the vestige of an emotion. Funny right!?
Maybe this is a message that sharing dreams should remain personal… although I loved your writing about them.
I won’t bore you with my dreams but I think after yesterdays heavy day I slept like the proverbial log!
I’ve been keeping a dream tracker in which I write down any dream I can remember. During the month of March, all of my dreams were pleasant. During April, they have been bad or weird dreams. One night in April I dreamed three separate and distinct dreams, but all three were unpleasant. I’m not sure what good it does to track my dreams, but it is interesting.
Maybe over time a pattern will emerge. Maybe our inner therapist will be heard? Like Bobbie suggested. But fascinating that they seem to change with the month. What hemisphere are you in?
Yes, maybe a pattern will emerge. I’m in the northern hemisphere, in the southern U.S.
I love dreams. Mine… anyone’s. According to my blog stats my most popular post still is about a dream I had “If you dream of a ginger cat, love is in your heart” written well over a decade ago. In the last week or so I’ve been having long annoyingly rambly dreams with only the odd moment of clarity. Even when I rouse myself from them they return and continue when I go back to sleep. Most dreams fade but message dreams stay with me for as long as necessary but sometimes the lesson becomes an indelible memory. Amongst the recent dreams an incongruent detail has stayed with me, and its relevance may become clear I think in coming days.
I’m glad your trip to Australia is coming up soon.
Yes!! Australia at the end of July. This whole trip got shorter due to farm stuff but if my new business venture takes off maybe I can travel and work at the same time!
I was trained to look closely at people’s dreams for they often reveal great insights and guidance to life. A dream journal is an excellent idea, for psyche tunes in to revealing what you need to learn.
I will then. And see what we will see. I always listen when you write you know Urspo. You have a learned way about you.
Funny thing, for weeks after I lost John I dreamt of trying to find something, usually my car. I would get more and more anxious, absolutely couldn’t find it, never found it before I woke. Finally figured out it was John I was searching for. Once I figured that out the dreams stopped. Now I often have the strangest, screwiest dreams, people I haven’t seen or thought of for years, chopped up scenarios. I usually wake thinking ‘where the heck did that come from?’.
The dreams after your John died sound so sad, but perfectly in place really and interesting that they stopped after you realized what/who you were looking for.
I either only have mostly bad dreams or they are the only ones I remember when I wake up or they wake me up. I think it’s odd I never dream of sheep. I don’t dream about any animals except for two dreams I’ve had about a bear. One was horribly scary and I still remember bits of it. They other I don’t remember anything about other than it was a bear, which I think is probably significant in some way. Maybe my spirit animal?
A bear. Wow. As a spirit animal that would be pretty awesome do you think? I would have thought there would always be a sheep in your dreams! When I was a young woman I was always carrying a baby on my hip. No matter the dream.
Dreams are so interesting. My therapist thought we did “work” in dreams so I have a habit of remembering them. I have what I call anxiety dreams that reoccur about trying to do my job ( Massage Therapist for 30 years) and I don’t have my table , or there are gobs of people without appointments or I forget where I need to go …..crazy stuff that never ever happened. I do love dreaming because mostly they are fascinating . I also have dreams like you do C and wake up disgruntled with someone and have to shake it off all day.
Great thread today !
I can really identify with your comment. I worked as a RN for 40 yrs. …..I very often dream of being at work and suddenly my shift is over and I realize I didn’t pass any meds to any of my patients and did no charting on anyone..in fact then I can’t find the work schedule to see if I should work the next day. Crazy, combobulated dreams…..thankfully, not too often tho now that I’m retired.
That anxiety that bleeds into our dreams. And your job was so high pressure too. It must have taken weeks maybe months for your brain to come down from that.
True. I’ve been retired now for 17 yrs. and I still have that same dream now and then. But now I just ignore it as “a piece of my past life” never to be repeated.
My favorite dreams are when my now adult children visit me in my dreams as they were as young children. I wake so happy to have had a visit from how sweet they were. I loved their childhood and raising them. There are always visitations from my spare children too as I call them. Ones I took care of and were a second mom to them. These dreams are always such a blessing to wake up from, utter joy in my heart.
Those do sound like the most beautiful dreams. Utter joy is so rare. How wonderful .
Hi Celi…I suffer from occasional insomnia (comes from being an RN working 12 hr. nights), so sometimes I don’t fall asleep until 4am…I sleep soundly then but dream vividly…the past few months I’ve had a strange thing happen in my sleep/dream….I hear my doorbell ring, always awakening me at 6am-6:30am….it wakes me up, I go to the door but no one is there…..It’s very loud in the dream and the perfect sound of my front doorbell. I live alone in a very quiet neighborhood so hard to imagine some kid doing this at 6am. Google tells me “doorbells in dreams” mean someone is trying to get my attention…..I have no idea who that “someone” might be….I just wish the dang doorbell wouldn’t ring anymore because after it does I can’t get back to sleep!
That is extraordinary/ – wow – what do you think it is? Do you have a camera on your door?
No, no cameras anywhere….I’ve had this “doorbell dream” quite a few times…Now, when I have it, I ignore it, roll over and try to go back to sleep. I think it’s just my “semi OCD brain ” working overtime!