My dreams are starting to get more vivid. And to tell you the truth, I don't really want them. I'll wake up thinking of my grandfather making jokes with me as if he were the comic relief roommate in my sitcom of life, or spring from bed to learn in slow motion how some imaginary friend of mine lost her younger sister in a car accident outside of a restaurant. I see the good and the bad in vivid technicolor, but I liked it much better when the alarm woke me and I remembered nothing. Not remembering an old Christmas morning or watching a boy learn to fish with his father would make my mornings less confusing, less disorienting, and less distracting when I try and start my day. (...was that really real what I just saw? ...Did I see the future with that one? ...I can't believe what just happened!)

I turn on the shower and wait for the hot water as I think "it was just a dream" but too many times, that dream will linger minutes, hours, days beyond the normal shelf life. They're supposed to disappear when you wake up. They're supposed to get fuzzy right when you're going to tell someone about the strange dream you had.

I've had deja-vu before. I'm certain of it. In my lifetime, I've experienced the very strange notion that I had seen the present scene in my mind from another perspective, and can almost mouth the words of what my friends will say next, or what the guy in the booth next to us will order, or what song will magically play on the jukebox at a diner.

I've had closure dreams before, which are really cool- Haven't had one in years, but they used to come frequently to finally put my subconscious at rest over an issue long since gone. I'd dream that I got a chance to say goodbye, or thank you, or I'm sorry, or anything to someone I'll never see again. They'd say you're welcome, it's okay, goodbye, or a host of other things, and then I'd wake up- for a split second not understanding the calm about me - and then recalling the closure and thinking, "wow. If only life were this simple."

I've had nightmares too. I rarely get them, and when they happen, it's never me falling, me drowning or anything like that. No, my nightmares always involve people that are close to me, or total strangers that somehow get into bad situations. They're often very convoluted (as dreams often are) but even if good is right around the corner, my mind won't let me sleep to enjoy the closure. I'll wake up thinking "Damn. That was horrible. If only I had a half-hour more to fix that." Only, I never get to see. When the break-in at my apartment happens, and I lodge the tomahawk replica from my bedroom into the neck of the would-be robber, I stand over him and dial 911 over the shrieks. The cops are on their way to lock this bastard up. I look down and am glad he's going to face justice in pain- but alive. and then I wake. (pretty messed up, huh?)

The best dreams are the happy ones. I'll see old friends and learn that they've become very successful and happy. I'll meet an old man who tells me about an adventure, only to learn that he's talking in the 3rd-person about me. "and you know what he did? He packed up and left a perfectly-good job to start his own business. Folks thought he was crazy!" heh. Of course they don't stop there. Good dreams involve any number of scenarios, all typically with a lesson like "see what donating to charity can do?" or "and that's how you make lemonade out of lemons," crap like that. I wake up with a smile.

I get the usual sex dreams - always a good time - and the flirtations with the long-sought-after women who have come and gone over the years. I imagine these dreams happen far more than any of the above, because there are days when I wake up with passion and others where I feel cool and confident as if I had done something really smooth in my subconscious not three minutes before.

I used to take stock in what my dreams meant. I used to care. But now, I think of my brain as its own creature. Back at TruSecure, I had dreams of symbols... if I opened a jar of strawberry jam, it had an octopus on the seal. I'd look at my watch, and it was in the shape of an octopus, stuff like that. Out of curiosity, I'd look up dream interpretations the next day and get freaked out: An octopus in dreams is often an interpretation of having too many projects on the go at once or feeling pulled in several different directions simultaneously - exactly how I felt back then. Having some web site decode my brain was just too creepy, so I stopped there.

I guess it's the brain's revenge. If I keep it active for 18-20 hours (a typical day for me) I think my brain revels in getting to fight back by conjuring up some of the weirdest shit it can fathom. The duality of being exhausted yet racing in one's mind is something that we're not meant to understand. If that's what my head needs to do after the abuse it gets during a day, so be it. Part of me just wishes I wouldn't remember beyond a few minutes- even the good ones. I don't like waking to a reality that isn't real.

But then again, I've been awake 15 minutes now and can't tell you more about my last dream except to say that my grandfather was blowing snot rockets with me in the hamper of my parent's old bedroom.

It was funny at the time.