The dreams have returned

For some reason I hardly ever remember my dreams. I’m sure that objectively speaking there are dreams, but it feels like I just lose consciousness for seven or eight hours, and remember nothing of that time. Like a book with several blank pages between chapters.

If I wake up in the middle of the night, I have a vague recollection of being in the middle of a dream, but it quickly evaporates, like morning mist on a bright summer day. I only have the faintest memories of even having dreamed.

I’ve theorized this has something to do with writing for a living. By the time I go to bed, the creative juices aren’t exactly overflowing anymore. It’s also possible it’s somehow related to stress or being busy. Whatever the reason, I suffer from a lack of dreams.

But on vacation it’s different: After some days of no stress and no writing the dreams come back! Last night it happened.

Last night I woke up from a really intense dream: my brother was trying to kill my with a makeshift knife. He’d made a pointy Lego structure and then somehow sharpened it like a prison shiv. We were maybe teenagers, maybe grown-ups, it didn’t really matter, but we were in our childhood home in Naantali. He chased me around the dinner table, and I remember trying to figure out how to get out. He’s stronger than me, has a better position, and is armed. Maybe I could jump through the window, but the fall and the broken glass would probably leave me unable to escape any further. At some point I realized the only way to beat him is to wake up.

Having an intense fictional experience like this when you’re completely unaccustomed to them was really powerful. It wasn’t a nightmare exactly, just a really exciting and scary regular dream. I had to read a book for a long time before I could fall asleep again.

This time I dreamt of a science fiction wedding with marvelous plot twists and characters. Often with dreams like these the ”great ideas” don’t really work in real life, either because they’re not ideas at all or because you’ve dream-jumped from the problem to having solved it with nothing in between. Like trying to find a hammer a nail, but lacking the right tool, then writing down ”a hammer” on a piece of paper, placing that next to the nail, and suddenly the nail is in. But this time the ideas were really good and novel. I wrote them down, and now it looks like they could make a nice short story or a film.

There were small elements in the dreams that I can immediately spot were from something that happened yesterday. One small scene from a movie we saw, playing with Lego, things like that. Most of it… I have know idea where it’s coming from, but I like it.

The dreams are back! Give me more!

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