I’m going to veer a little off track here and talk about dreams. Specifically , recurring dreams. More specifically the recurring dreams I have, one of which I’ve been having since I was a kid. I assume we all have them and I would love to know where others go in their sleep, but I’m fascinated by the themes that keep popping up. There’s the “Restaurant dream”, where I’m working in a restaurant so enormous that there’s actually a mall inside the restaurant and it takes hours to get from one end to another. I’m always in the weeds and I can never figure out how to use the computer. That part is a variation on the “telephone dream”. Since I was little I’ve had this dream where I keep trying to dial the phone but can’t get through. Back then it was a rotary phone. Now it’s a smartphone that has so many games and pictures popping up that I can’t get to the phone part. Last night it combined itself with the “trying to get to Hollywood Blvd. so I can catch the bus home” dream. I’m on some main tree-lined street , the Santa Monica Freeway is somewhere to my left and I have to figure out how to get to the bus to get home. Often in this dream will appear elements of the “I graduated from Pitt years ago, but I’m still going to school for free” dream. This dream splinters into one of several recurring sub-dreams, either the “it’s halfway through the semester and I have no idea what my schedule is” or “I’m trying to find my dorm room” or the “I’m leaving campus and trying to find Hollywood Blvd. so I can catch the bus home…” And all of these can incorporate the “trying to walk” dream in which I feel like I’m practically crawling trying to walk, like I’m walking through invisible quicksand, not to be confused with the “I’m driving an old Chevy which has no pick up and almost no brakes” dream, which is the “trying to walk” dream with wheels. What is the point of all of this, you ask? Damned if I know. Are dreams our mind trying to work out a problem we have when we are awake? Maybe. But the interesting thing in my case, is that all of these dreams have an element of past lives, College, living in LA, driving my dad’s Impala, working in restaurants. I never dream about money, which occupies so much of my waking thoughts these days. I only rarely dream about my current work situation, or my current husband. If my subconscious is working to come up with solutions for today, why is it a squatter in the abandoned buildings of yesterday? I have choices. I can squat in yesterday, and daydream about the future, or I can see the past lives for what they are, a guide to understanding today and embracing tomorrow. And that’s a daydream come true.

The Regression Series
carynjune