On Nightmares

I've had vivid nightmares and anxiety dreams since I was a child.

The first one I can remember was being chased chased by a fossilized dinosaur and watching it attempt to eat cars driving down the street. (Note this was a good 30+ years before Jurassic Park movies) It was scary enough that I can still remember the dream to this day over 55 years later. While the description is comical it wasn't funny when I was 7 years-old.

Most of the time the dreams were during stressful times but not always.

What is also strange to me is that often the dreams recur multiple times over multiple nights, weeks, or even years. Some of the common dreams have been, standing on a pole or pillar that is thousands of feet high with no way down. I've had dreams where shadowy ghost or spirits talked to me and left me wide awake and trembling. Once I dreamed that there was a man with an ax standing over me about to chop me in two. This one ended with me standing up in bed, punching the ceiling and yelling “No!”.

One less scary but frustrating dream that was repeated probably 7 to 10 times, had me driving a car, normally with another passenger. In the dream we are driving to a city, but must avoid a different city at all cost. The cities have changed over time but let us call them Houston and San Antonio. I keep taking the splits or exits for Houston but as I do, I get further from Houston and closer to San Antonio. I think I wake up n the middle of this one. I don't really remember how it ends.

Several times I've dreamed of having to cross a swamp full of monsters, snakes, or alligators to get to an MTR station in Hong Kong. If you've ever been to Hong Kong you'll understand how strange, and borderline funny, that is.

One particularly frightening nightmare occurred several times. It is a lucid dream, I knew I was dreaming. In the dream, I wake up and there is someone standing beside my bed, just at the edge of my sight. As I turn to see who it is, they backup. So no matter how far, or how fast I turn I can never see who is there. I just keep turning until I yell, “Enough!” and truly wake up.

I had a new dream last week. A strange one.

In the dream I was living in a dark and scary place with almost no light. Everything was in shades of grey. I thought of getting a dog but it was too big and more frightening than whatever I was scared of. So I decided to just leave. As is common in dreams, there was no transition I went from standing in a yard to standing on the sidewalk of wide city street. I could see the shape of non functioning traffic lights when I looked up the street. But everything was deserted. For some reason, I had to push a dumpster or skip across the street to check for invisible cars. Then I was across the street and entered another house. There was a man in the house who gave me a guitar and asked me to play a song. He was the first person or thing in color in the dream. I haven't really played a guitar in decades but I took the guitar and started to play. As I did the dream changed perspective. I saw the dark city from a bird's eye view. My house, where I was, was the only point of light in the dark city. The overarching theme of the dream was loneliness.

This dream has haunted my thoughts for a week.

I don't place any psychic or prophetic importance to my dreams. I am not a pharoah who needs Joseph to interpret my dreams. If standing on a pillar in a dream is just a dream then this one was too. And yet, I am not an irreligious man.

The prophet Joel wrote;

“And afterward,
    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
    your old men will dream dreams,
    your young men will see visions.”

All I can say is that if the dreams of an old man are so intense, then I don't want to know the young man's visions.

Until Next Time

Fai Mao

The Blogger who dreams the dreams of an old man