when there are dreams

Lately, my capacity for dreaming has been so vivid and compelling that I have often not wanted to wake up and not wanted to fall asleep. I have had the sort of dreams that lack coherence and sense, as well as the kind that recycle the factoids and random bits from the previous day, as well as the old Stine classic...the searchie dream.

For a while, my dreaming was very sporadic. If I dreamt about something, it was usually vague and I could not remember it and I quickly forgot about the whole thing. In fact, my dreaming had become so notoriously depleted that I decided against enrolling in a class at school (one of the few classes in the Fiction Writing Department that was still open on the first day of class) called Dreams and Fiction. The syllabus said something about recording dreams in a dream journal and building stories out of them.

Then, I took some vitamins. (There is probably more story there, but for this one, we'll leave it at that.)

After a week, I noticed that my dreams had returned full force, the sort of exhausting interactive dreaming that makes one feel as if they hadn't even slept. I could also recount nearly every person, place and twist in the dreams I had.

Another week later and I had the sort of dream that catapults you from sleep. I felt so intensely disturbed by this dream that I stayed up the next night until four a.m. and whimpered whenever anyone asked me what it was about.

Then, I talked to the woman who gave me the vitamins. She said it probably had something to do with the fact that my body was getting the nutrients it needed and this was a healthy side effect of the vitamins.

I stopped taking them.

Now that I hardly ever wake up early anymore (thanks to the job change!), one healthy side effect is that I sleep a lot more. Sometimes, I even sleep way too much. Even though it sounds funny, too much can be a bad thing. I know I've slept too much when my body aches from lying in bed.

I've noticed that my dreaming has not stopped simply because I stopped taking the vitamins. It's like whatever switch got turned on in my head is on and staying on. Maybe it's the longer bouts of sleep.

This morning, in between Eric's alarm going off and him waking up for real, I had a strange dream about money. I had been carefully collecting twenties in sets of five and sticking them into empty soda cans. I gathered all the cans together to take them to the bank. I put them into a black garbage bag and carried them slung over my shoulder like Santa Claus with the bag of gifts. On my way to the bank, I went to the grocery store (a repeated routine from the days of Siena coffeeshop, in that a trip to the bank often included a trip to the grocery store) and saw my friend John (who recently moved from Chicago to Cleveland, Ohio) talking to a girl who works there. He ignored me, and rather than clamor over with my clanking cans and wide girth, I felt bad and slipped outside. When I got outside, I started counting the cans in the bag, trying to gauge how much money I might be carrying. I counted them by feeling the cans through the side of the plastic garbage bag (a very unscientific way of counting to be sure) and thought to myself, well, Eric and I have the money to go to Ireland now! Oh, and I can pay rent!

Then I woke up. I never actually made it to the bank. Oh well. I have no clue what this dream means, other than I came home last night and realized I hadn't paid my rent yet (all these holidays and working through them and vacation and all).

I guess part of me feels glad about these dreams. I have actually thought a lot about my writing before bed and I'll remember having these dreams where I'm trying to compose the best first line to an essay I'm supposed to write, or I'll wake up knowing that my goth girl has a floor length house robe that is velour and soft and sheeny that she is trying to figure out how to wear it out to a party one night.

The only thing I don't like is the rare dream that I can't remember, but feels like the word on the tip of your tongue, it's right there and then it's gone. That feeling is very frustrating and you always think that something good must have gotten away. I try not to spend too much time excavating and trying to remember, but usually this is what keeps me in bed longer than I ought to be, in my hazy slumber, grasping at the wisps of smoky lingering dreams.

I haven't had anymore startling dreams like the one that made me not want to sleep, but upon further reflection, I decided that dream was more symbolic than the dreams I usually have. I don't know if that had anything to do with the vitamins. I just know I didn't like it. That is one of the few dreams I have had where I didn't know I was dreaming until I woke up. Maybe that's the aspect of it I didn't like. When I'm dreaming and I know it, I'm all, hey, look at me dream!

Today in class, a guy did his oral presentation on Graham Greene who religiously wrote Dream Journals and 500 words a day of fiction writing. Sometimes he used his dreams in his writing. I thought that was interesting. I once wrote down something in the middle of the night and could not read it the next day...maybe if I wrote it down first thing in the morning?