The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

Dreams are just fascinating little bits of psychology, aren't they? Not the "I want to be a rock star when I grow up" type of dream. Rather those little moving images in our minds that appear during REM cycles. Is it really possible that all of that information occurs in little thirty second bursts?

There are four distinct elements to my two parts of one dream.

Part One. I was in the living room of my mother's house, with her, watching an episode of Grey's Anatomy (this one is easy enough to figure out, since it was just on last night). She was trying to talk to me, and I was ignoring her, trying to watch TV. One ep segued directly into a second ep.

Element 1.1. In this episode on the TV in my dream, McDreamy was outside the hospital, at night. Possibly just there to think, get some air. Two guys came up behind him, asked for smokes. Smash cut to paramedics wheeling a gurney into the ER, with beat-up McDreamy on it (I'm thinking this is a result of my fannish need for hurt/comfort in my shows).

So mom interrupts me, and I don't get to see the rest of this episode. She sits on the couch next to me, all serious.

Element 1.2. She says "Your Uncle B. has cancer around his heart." She gets all weepy, and I hug her. I let her cry, but am rather ambivalent about the diagnosis (there is a lot of backstory with this particular Uncle). I was trying to be sympathetic, since he is her brother, but kept thinking that it was because he is so intolerant to anyone that isn't the perfect WASP.

Dream changed, thank goodness. I forget what segued one dream into another, that little episode is forever lost to my subconscious.

Part Two. I found myself at the beach. It's a beach that I have dreamed about before, probably representative of Lewes Beach and the State Park. One side of a sandy peninsula is very calm water, the other side is rougher, with large waves.

Element 2.1. On the calm, sandy side, people were running across the water. Or rather, across floating lily pads of some fashion, just beneath the surface. These pads created paths, that only the fastest and lightest runners could use to cross the water.

I walked across the dunes to the other side of the beach.

Element 2.2. A familiar scene here, with the beach dropping down sharply toward the water. A forty-five degree drop, toward treacherous ocean waves. And people were trying to swim! A man started shouting for them to get away from the water, that a big wave would come and swallow everyone. Sure enough, we all saw the wave coming. I slipped down the bank, and couldn't seem to climb back up. The sand kept slipping.

Thank God my alarm went off.

It's kind of odd. Element 2.2, the killer wave thing, is one of about three different recurring dreams that I have had in the last twenty years. I'm sure it has something to do with being knocked down by a giant wave when I was a child, and nearly drowning.

And all of this self-analysis coming from a girl who got a C- in the only Psychology class she ever took.