Dream yourself anew

For the past two nights - or more accurately, the past two times I've slept - I've had some odd dreams. Since I've been working the night shift, my sleep patterns have become very inconsistent. I'll work all night and try to get some sleep during the day, leaving just enough of the day awake so I can take care of business (i.e.: going to the bank, grocery shopping, etc.). During the weekends, however, I try to sleep mostly at night, leaving my day open so I can "play with my friends," most of whom don't work at night and lead semi-normal sleep schedules. This weekend, I went to bed around 3:00PM on Friday, and woke up at 5:00AM Saturday morning. My second sleep period was from midnight Sunday to about half an hour ago.

During the first period of sleep, I began dreaming that I was on a long road trip. A friend was with me in the passenger seat. We suddenly pulled off into a rest area, however this rest area looked unlike any highway rest stop that I had ever seen previously. It had been late at night outside - pitch black, as a matter of fact, save the reflection of the headlights as they bounced off of the concrete barriers of the highway. When my friend and I entered the "rest stop," it was suddenly early evening outside. Inside, however, was not a rest stop with the expected bathrooms and vending machines, but what seemed to be a recently abandoned bedroom. The rays of the quickly dying day filtered through blinds left haphazardly open, giving everything in the room a shockingly orange-brown sheen.

Up until that point I wasn't sure why we were in the room. Then I remembered that someone - or something was chasing the two of us. It looked like an old woman, but made a noise like a high-pitched wail at regular intervals. It sounded like an animal in pain whenever its mouth opened and the noise came out. We had been running from it, which was why we were in the car, but I knew that it was nearby. I immediately slammed the door to the room shut and locked it.

A feeling of calm came over me at that juncture and I began actually looking about the room. To my surprise, all of my possessions were in there, including my CD collection, alphabetised as if I had lived there. I picked up a disc and put it in the CD player. When the disc started spinning, the case morphed in my hand. It was warped and the liner notes inside were burned, as if someone had left the disc in the sun in a hot car in the middle of summer. I looked at the disc spinning in the player, in mint condition. Then I looked back at the burned plastic case in my hand, or what was left of it.

"This is not possible," I said to myself. "If the case is so damaged, then the disc inside of it would be unplayable." Then came my moment of lucidity: "I'm dreaming," I said. Then, looking at my friend, I said that I wanted to wake up immediately. Immediately I was awake.

The dreams I had during my second sleep session were less interesting, as they weren't lucid. Some may ask why I didn't play around with the last dream when it became lucid, but the fact is that I didn't like the setting I was given to play around end. I felt it better to end the dream instead.

There were a trio of dreams, the details of which are quickly escaping me. In the first, it was as if I were God in an art class. As I played with the material laid out on the desk before me, profound things happened in the universe. As I am awake now, everything that had made sense in the dream suddenly seems incomprehensible. I wish I could elaborate.

The second and third were set in some hotel where the only true detail I can remember is the gaudy 70s-style brown shag carpeting on the floor. In the first, I had a stack of slim, hard-cover children's books in my hand, all by the same author who I desperately had to call for some reason. Though I had the phone in my hand, I don't think I was able to get in touch with him.

The final dream dropped me into the hotel lounge/restaurant. It was upstairs and someone had broken in. I was fighting with this man, trying to bring him down with - of all things - a rubber band. Strangely, this seemed to be working, as suddenly he was upside-down. I was about to fling another one at him when I woke up with a start.

If I am dreaming again with this degree of regularity, something is bound to happen in my waking life. I'm a bit apprehensive about that.