The Baboon Congress

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

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Today’s guest blog comes from Steve Grooms

Dreams have a curious power to move us, convincing us that they are authentic even when they obviously are not. I occasionally wake up smiling and feeling the world is perfect, only to realize that my happiness is based on a pleasant dream, and that dream was pure bunk. As I lie there the euphoria of the dream slowly drains away.

Dream theorists have wildly divergent explanations for dreams. Some believe dreams represent ways the brain incorporates new knowledge. Freud thought dreams were caused by the unconscious (and much of the unconscious was driven by sex). Some modern researchers believe dreams are part of the process by which the brain processes the complexity of life.

One of the latest developments in dream theory is the creation of computerized data banks of vast numbers of dreams. One researcher, for example, has 30,000 dreams in his data base. Having so many dreams to study makes it possible to see patterns that could not be seen with less data.

It turns out that there are common themes in dreams. One of the most ubiquitous storylines is finding one’s self naked in public. Another “favorite” involves taking a test for which one is not prepared. I’ve had both of those dreams. I once dreamed I was returning a borrowed saucepan to my next door neighbor, only to realize that I’d forgotten to put on clothes. And I have had three dreams—nightmares, really—in which I had to take German exams for which I hadn’t studied a bit.

Another common experience, especially among creative people, is solving a puzzle or inventing something in a dream. Musicians have created whole compositions in dreams, compositions they could retrieve upon waking. My father was a stuffed toy designer. His first major success as a designer was a dog that came to him in a dream. “Cheerup” (a sort of silly beagle or basset) made my dad famous.

gvg w cheer-up

People vary in terms of how seriously they regard dreams. My own conclusion is that dreams are entirely whimsical and illogical. Or at least mine are. I once lost a dear friend who regarded dreams as holy truths from another world. When she learned how I saw dreams, she quit speaking to me and the friendship died right there. And I sure goofed when I casually mentioned to my daughter that I’d had a dream in which I had a tryst in a hay loft with elfin Olympics skater, Tara Lipinsky. Molly howled in outrage, “She’s young enough to be your daughter!” I could only sputter, “Molly, it was a dream! I didn’t do anything!” “Daddy,” huffed my daughter, “that is SO inappropriate!” Since then I have judiciously failed to mention several dreams to Molly.

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My favorite dreams are those in which I can fly. Dreaming of flying is surely second only to the actual experience of being a bird. Have you had such a dream? If so, do you have to flap to get airborne? (I do.)

The most wonderful dream I ever had is hard to describe. In that dream I checked out rumors about a sportsman’s club in north-central Minnesota that maintained a trout stream so well that it held trout as mighty as trout routinely were in the early 20th century before Europeans came along to exploit them. In my dream, I visited that club’s lands to see this incredible stream. As I passed through the club house and entered the land the club kept, I realized I had gone through a wrinkle in time. All of our fishing gear was gear that anglers used in the 1920s: long bamboo rods, canvas vests, creels made of woven wicker. And, yes, the stream was filled with huge trout. We had been transported to an earlier time.

The most stunning thing, though, was the look of the dream. Outdoor magazines in the 1920s and 1930s often had covers that loosely reflected Art Nouvea effects, especially that super-saturated wild colors favored by illustrators. And suddenly I realized that this land I was in was actually in the style of Art Nouveau. I was dreaming in an artistic style!

What patterns have you found in your dreams?

61 thoughts on “To Sleep, Perchance to Dream”

  1. For many years, I dreamed of houses. First, it was my grandmother’s tiny house that like the TARDIS became bigger on the inside as the dream progressed. My favorite version involved a ballroom.

    Then for awhile I dreamed I had sold my own little house, and I spent the rest of the dream trying in vain to buy another.

    These days, I don’t have dreams I remember. I blame lack of sleep.

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    1. I have the same dream about having sold my house and regretting it profoundly. I don’t try to buy another house, though, I try to find a way to buy back the same one.

      I’ve always felt that most dreams are just random and don’t mean anything, but if you keep having the same dream, it probably has a deeper significance. This one, I think, means my subconscious mind is trying to point out either something that I should let go of, or something that I should not let go of. I wish I knew what and which it was.

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      1. I think it says you would like to try a new page turning on your life but fear not being able to go back if you like your current situation better

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  4. Good morning. The dream that I can remember having had many times is the one about problems taking a test that you mentioned, Steve. In many of the test taking dreams I am upset because I don’t know where they are giving the test and wander around the halls of a school building without knowing where to go. In a related group of dreams I can’t find my schedule for the classes I am taking and I apparently have been failing to attend some of my classes.

    I also have the dream about being naked. There are a variety of unusual dreams that I thought were remarkable and I wish I had a record of those because I can’t remember much about them. I think they usually are fantasies about very strange events that include very unusual people.

    I haven’t solved any problems in my dreams that I can remember. I do often have solutions to things I am working on when I wake up in the morning. I don’t know if these solution were worked out in a dream. I think we all have lots of dreams that we don’t remember when we wake up in the morning.

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    1. I used to keep a notebook by my bed so I could write down my dreams when I woke up. If I delay, the dream disappears and I’m left with nothing but the memory of how it felt.

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  5. I dream a lot, most often when I’m sleeping. 🙂 Sometimes those dreams are so vivid that I struggle to free myself from their grasp when I awaken. This is especially true if the dream is unpleasant. I’ll wake up, and it’ll take me several minutes for the realization to set in,” hey, that was just a dream, relax.”

    As a child I had recurring dreams that occurred in Salvador Dali-like dreamscapes (I might add, this was before I had ever seen a Salvador Dali painting. I remember when I first saw one that I was immediately both fascinated and repulsed by them.) I’d struggle to move, but my limbs would be so heavy I couldn’t, or I’d me mired in quicksand. Those dreams were so traumatic that I still remember them, not in any great detail, but sufficiently vivid to recreate the sense of dread that they evoked. Most of my childhood dreams were ominous and scary, and I can still recall several of them.

    An adult recurring dream I have is not being able to find the place where I’m supposed to be taking an important test. I’ll wake up from those dreams exhausted. I have the occasional naked dream, but for whatever reason, the lack of clothes never seems inappropriate in the dream, even when other people in it are fully clothed. One recurring dream that always leaves me puzzled is my ability to speak and understand languages, some of which I’ve never heard. I don’t recall ever having a flying dream, but husband has recurring running dreams. Dreams in which he runs with great speed and ease; dreams he finds very exhilarating.

    Mostly my dreams are fleeting tableaus that vanish into thin air within minutes of waking. I don’t attribute any particular meaning to most of them, or have a clue what triggered them. Occasionally, though, there’s a clear connection between a dream and a current concern that might have triggered it. I think dreams would be a very interesting thing to study.

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    1. You have that ability, PJ, to think, “Damn, that was just a dream!” I have extended that so when I’m having a really difficult dream I can often say, “Damn, this isn’t a real problem! I’m just having a dream!” A few weeks ago I had a dream in which I had to kill a dog. I kept avoiding doing it, and then that voice spoke up and told me I didn’t need to worry because it was just a dream.

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    2. when those dali landscapes are in there you need to figure out how to back it down a notch . or switch drugs, i have had that stuff but only when i knew my world was upside down and the dreams were an extension of the foggy wandering i was embarking on for extended periods. i hate it when that happens. i would loive to be able to live alife where sunny picnics with bluebirds chirping and babbling brooks on sunny afternoons with beautiful happy laughing friends told the story of my life. why dont i have those dreams damn it. i want those dreams damn it. not these serching struggling wondering always trying to get it done dreams. maybe im doing it wrong.
      this is feeling a bit like a group session.

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      1. The Dali landscape dreams were during my childhood, tim. No drugs involved. I attribute them to the constant fear and anxiety I lived with at the time. Once I escaped, those dreams never recurred.

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  6. I often dream ii am in some sort of emergency or life threatening situation and I have to use the phone to call for help. I am never able to dial the number accurately. That dream really annoys me. I also dream that I have forgotten to attend a college class all semester and now it is finals week. Then there is the dream in which I am still writing my dissertation, and when i wake up from it i have to remind myself that I am finished with it and my advisor isn’t really angry with me. In High School I often dreamed that I was with a group of friends who had been turned into mere replicas of themselves, and they were going to turn me into one of them, too. My dreams are not pleasant.

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        1. Really? Worse than fear of cancer? Fear of dying? Me, I’d rather flunk another German exam than die. I’ve done that lots of times.

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      2. I blame those bad dreams about tests on the failures of school to change their approach. We are still mostly stuck with an education system that is top down and not bottom up. Schools should be student centered. Instead they tend to concentrate on making students follow a curriculum that mostly fails to meet the needs of the students.

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  7. I repeatedly have anxiety dreams about hotels and strange labyrinthine houses. Sometimes there are people trying to track me down, other times I’m just trying to find my room or get everything (including the cats) together so I can check out, but if the dream includes a basement or, worse yet, a parking ramp, it’s always a nightmare about being chased or trapped.

    One of my most memorable dreams involved a pet shop, at night in a mostly-abandoned mall. The place was full of huge dark tanks with giant lake fish gliding ominously in and out of view, and I had to rescue litters of puppies, kittens and baby ferrets from wire cages before the fish (somehow, gods know exactly how) got them. I kind of freaked the first time I went to Underwater World and saw some of the same lake fish from my nightmare swimming past in the same manner. And people wonder why I don’t like water…

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  8. I am happy to report that husband’s nightmare disorder is under control with his new medication and cpap machine. The bedside lamp is relieved it is no longer being wrestled to the ground any more.

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    1. nice, my dad used to beat up the surrounding area too. the cpap helped a bunch. now my mom and sister are doing it.they plug you in to see if the sensors find you waking up during the night 6 times and hour is a problem. my sister wakes up like 8-10 times , my momwakes up 200 times. no wonder she walks around in circles. if i ever get health insurance worth a damn i guess it would be interesting to see if the sleep deprivation that has become my companion could be exorcised.

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  9. i used to go to a shrink that used dreams as her way of picking my brain. it was always real appearant to her the way my brain was heading not so much to me. since i have have gone off on my own with no dream guru i have ideas about where i am headed in the dreams but t was interesting getting input form outside.
    im a big believer tha the stuff dreams are made of tells about what you are up to. mine are usually about searching or trying to get somewhere or being somewhere and checking out the joint. i was in a maze in one of my vivid dreams from years ago. like the high hedges of ancient labyrinths. one foot in front of the other. drudgery and no end in sight but whats a guy gonna do?
    never been naked, never flew but i rolled off an escalator and started doing cartwheels in the air so that when i hit the gorund i would roll to a soft landing, no broken wrists just a cushiony spring landing, never took a test i wasnt prepared for hell im never prepared.
    if you want to tap into your dreams you cand do it by the numbers. as soon as you put a pencil and paper by your headboard and tell yourself that you will wake up just enough to write the basic idea down and then go back to sleep, you can start racking up the remembered dreams. the memory only lasts a minute in your groggy state so write it down and you may be amazed what shows up on the page. but you will remember those misty non actionpacked trecks through the recesses of your mind. at least i do . i checked the notepad by my bed and there are 3 dreams on there i didnt remember writing. one about driving my car and having it brake so i had to walk to get help, one about my old next door neighbor from 40 years ago and i had to go to my new apartment to get changed and getback. i was having some difficulty getting this done. and another one making a cake, riding a bus and looking out the window at city scapes. nothing very dramatic but the scenes do tell something that can be referenced about my inner psyche. i can see rod serling. do do do do.

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  10. I once posted that I had dreamed about all recent presidents. Barack Obama has yet to appear in a dream, but he will. My G W Bush dream was a hoot. He had a pistol and was chasing me through some huge Victorian house. I was ducking from room to room when I had the thought: “Hey, this is GEORGE BUSH trying to kill me. He’s gonna screw it up one way or the other!”

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  12. I almost never have any sort of dream I would call a nightmare. My dreams seldom relate directly to anything in my real life. The closest I can come are those dreams where I am faced with some disagreeable task or confrontation and those usually resolve by my waking up and realizing that it was only a dream. I had flying dreams when I was a kid, but I don’t remember flapping. Rather, I would pump myself into the air, kind of like rowing a boat. I do sometimes have dreams where I’m running or sliding along at great speed and with ease. Those are really satisfying.
    Frequently in dreams, I am undressed or underdressed. I don’t remember experiencing that as mortifying– simply inconvenient. That may be partly because my dream self is never as flabby as my real self.
    For a short period, I took a medication that was purported to produce unusual dreams. Boy, did it ever. In one dream, I was seated at a sidewalk cafe, while down the street railroad boxcars were rolling majestically off the top of a building and crashing to the ground below. In another, I was climbing a mountain of mud with Prince Charles and lesser members of the royal family.
    By far the most common theme in my dreams is one of being lost or of looking for something or someplace that I can’t seem to locate. Sometimes it’s my car, sometimes it’s a class that I’ve just remembered I was supposed to be taking and now it’s time for the final exam. Sometimes I’m just looking for a bathroom. Usually when that happens, I wake up and it’s apparent where that dream came from. If I start dreaming that, to my relief, I have found the bathroom, that could be a problem.

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    1. Funny that you should mention that your dream-self is a leaner version of yourself, Bill, mine is too. I was wondering when Steve referred to “ducking from room to room” whether his dream-self is also some earlier version of himself? I suspect that most of us see an image of ourselves in our dreams that doesn’t much look like what we see in the mirror.

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      1. That’s an intriguing issue, PJ. The self that appears in my dreams is me as I was at 35, more or less. I have had one dream in which I was old and fat, and it was a shattering experience.

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  13. Greetings fellow dream flyer Steve! Flying is my favorite dream of all time. Haven’t had one in years, but used to regularly take off and soar about once or twice a year. Never had to flap my arms, but didn’t feel like I was Iron Man with rocket thrusters in my hands and feet either. I just sort of “took off” and more or less used my mind to steer me one way or the other

    The only downside of those dreams was sometimes falling out of the sky, but I never crashed per se, just sort of thumped to Earth. The fascinating part was the sensation of falling was real, and for me based on what it feels like to jump off a three meter diving board (never got the nerve to try the 10 meter).
    But man, when I was soaring like an eagle, wow was that cool. For real, that would be the most freeing experience I could imagine.

    I used to have a theory that dreams were memories of a past life that my “soul” conjured up. Mainly for the most vivid dream I ever had, being a Union Soldier in the Civil War, stationed of all places at Fort Wilkins State Park in Copper Harbor, Michigan. Visited there as a kid and it stuck deep in my brain. I was being chased through the fort by a Confederate soldier, who finally caught up to me and slashed me across the back with his sword. The pain was so real I nearly jumped out of bed from the reaction I felt. Such a sharp pain. Just what I imagine getting slashed by a sword would feel like. And I had virtually the same dream a second time, too. Same outcome, unfortunately, but I woke up before I either died or survived.

    Chris in Owatonna

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    1. I have to flap, Chris, or get a real good jump start (like going off a building). In a dream I had as a kid I was trying to save a pretty girl from a mob (think of the mob at the end of “Frankenstein”). But because I was holding her with one arm, I couldn’t flap to take off. I ended up clambering up on a dog house to jump off, the hands of the crowd snapping right below our ankles.

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      1. How exciting! I’ve never saved anyone by flying in a dream. However, I think I’ve had a few flying dreams where I’ve fallen off high places and suddenly was able to fly and save myself.

        Chris in O-town

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  16. People who have read my book know that my dad’s life was saved by a recurring nightmare. He was walking into an ambush in the Philippines when he recognized the setting. That setting was the location for a nightmare he’d had over and over as a teenager. He screamed, dove behind a rock and then the ambush was thwarted. He had no explanation for this. Nor do I. The facts are quite clear, but nobody can make sense of how all of this happened.

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  17. Nice one, Steve. I love it that you had a dream in the land of Art Nouveau.

    My remembered recurring dreams fit in three patterns
    – wandering in a house that at first looks familiar, but I keep discovering more and sometimes secret rooms
    – driving in cold weather and all of a sudden I’m on a downhill sheet of ice, can’t control the car
    – being in charge of a room of sound and unruly kindergarteners (this one hasn’t happened lately, but was just too close to home)
    – kissing famous people… it never goes any farther than that, but it seems to be that the famous person realizes I am important to them somehow. Latest one was our current president – wish I could remember who else now…
    Lately I often wake at the point when I am just about to finally get through to the end of some complicated task, something that should have been easy but is going in almost slow motion.

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  19. I used to dream that I had a huge house with rooms that went on and on. I luxuriated in all the space that I had somehow never noticed before.
    Since I got rid of wasband and all his clutter, I don’t have that dream anymore.
    No flying for me but naked and scrambling to figure out where to go for an unprepared-for exam, yes.

    My sister has an image of trying to recall a dream immediately after waking. The dream is clear for a few moments and then you grasp at air in front of you as it wisps away as you say, “wait, wait, I want to remember!”

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  20. OT: My finger control issues are from my neck: bone spurs (“exuberant” ones at that) sclerosis on the spinal cord, ossification of the ligaments that hold up my head, plus something else I don’t remember. No real cure without getting very invasive and then not much of a cure. Using my hands to do things like type will increase pain but not accelerate the ataxia (small muscle control). Will lose more strength in my hands and arms (anyone want to come open bottles for me; could not open a bottle of pop today). But it is not the major an issue in the large picture. More pain to manage. Have to learn to think about what my hands are doing when I am cooking and cleaning and not just reaching. But I will be able to take care of Sandy and the apartment it seems.
    So will stay silent on here a lot and try to develop a style that is brief, clear, minimal. I am going to try Dragon on my computer to see if I can do a second book that way. Have it on Ipad but it is awkward to use there.
    Back on topic: don’t remember being naked in my dreams. All the dreams I remember are seen from my eyes. Supposed to be an issues about dreaming if you see yourself from outside yourself. Never flown. Used to roll off cliffs, which is supposed to be a muscle tension release mechanism from what I was told my my college football doctor. Don’t remember being under-dressed. Have dreamed whole stories; dreamed the solution to the ending of “Beneath a Quilted Sky.” But not quite a dream, more in the autonomic writing stage I think.
    Major sleep issues. Sometimes wake up many many times a night. Not apnia; neurological. I hate having an odd dream, waking up in it and going back to sleep right back into the dream over and over again. Don’t know why it bothers me because I do not remember many dreams about five minutes after I get up.

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    1. is the dragon /ipad issue one of difficulty fixing the mis guessed words on the dragon version of the document. i had that with ipad and the damn touch screen but my son is all excited about the keypad for the ipad that makes it more like a laptop. i think its a soft touch keypad but full sized and not odd to work with like the ipad is.

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  21. As a child, I had a recurring nightmare. There was/is no way to describe it in a way that conveys the terror I felt when I had it. All sorts of twisting, moving shapes that petrified me. I would wake, too scared to even have screamed, and lie there, heart pounding, for a long time before I could go back to sleep.

    I didn’t have that dream as I grew older than 12 or so, but as a teenager and young adult, I often had a dream of riding in a car – I was not driving it, it was either driving itself or someone I couldn’t see was driving it – that was going so very fast that it felt totally out of control. It always ended up going off a cliff (or something similarly life-threatening) at 100 mph and I would feel myself falling, falling, falling for a long time until I landed with a shudder and thankfully woke up

    Now I rarely remember having dreamt anything in the night. Sometimes I have those wisps of dreams that go away as soon as I wake up. Sometimes my dreams are connected to something I am worried about. Sometimes they are something bad or sad and I am so relieved when I wake up and realize that it didn’t really happen.

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  22. I also had a childhood recurring nightmare. Interestingly enough this nightmare reappeared during my second marriage. Seems a pretty clear indicator now that subconsciously I knew I was in a bad place, but at the time not so much.

    For me, my dreams tend to be the flotsam from my waking hours. Sometimes when I have a particularly vivid dream, it’s fun to search through my memory of the last few days to see where the different pieces come from. I remember a dream about a huge gorilla pushing his way into the bathroom and brushing his teeth. Dentist appointment two days earlier and a movie about Dian Fossey the night before!

    Recently I’ve discovered the CSI: Miami effect. I’ve never watched this show (or any of these kinds of shows) before, but tuned in on one of my recent trips when there wasn’t much on in English. Since coming home I’ve found that CSI: Miami is on back to back to back to back on Mondays. Unfortunately I can’t stay away and then every single time I have weird, intense dreams. Tuesday mornings are getting to be a real bummer.

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