Sunday August 30th, 2009 Dream Demons

I had that dream again last night, you know, the one where despite having finished school umpteen years ago, you’re supposed to be in a maths class but you can’t find the classroom; or it’s the end of the school year and you just haven’t done any of the work yet. I’ve had this dream countless times, and it’s completely disturbing, because I know it must be due to some sort of fear or guilt about my school life. Admittedly, I did, on occasion, write essays at 4 o’clock in the morning the day they were due, and I may well have feigned death just to get out of French. Time and time again, though, I’ve awakened from this dream in the middle of the night and sat up in bed, shaking my head, telling myself not to be so stupid, to just move on.

Well, I decided it was about time I faced my inner demons and found out what this dream and several other persistent ones mean. I quite often dream about frantically trying to pack all my belongings because of an imminent disaster, but I can never seem to get it all together. Then there’s the big house with the many, many rooms dream. I walk through one room and then, bingo, there’s another one I didn’t know about. I dreamt the other night that I actually had my own supermarket in my house, which was kind of cool, but it also meant that I had a stack of pesky neighbours feeling entitled to use it. As a kid I would dream of being chased, but my legs would go dead and I could barely even drag them along the ground. To solve this problem I would start flying through the air. This was fine until the sensation of falling fast from a great height would be so frightening I would wake up.

So, the logical way to deal with my dream demons was to consult the Thunder Bay Public Library’s catalogue to see if there were any dream interpretation books available. I’d much rather be dreaming about something totally and utterly delicious than fretting over things that should be well and truly buried by now. Give me something I don’t want to wake up from, or that makes me smile like a total goof the next day.

The beauty of dreaming is that potentially, anything goes. Dreams can be our ticket to however or whoever we want to be. They can help us solve problems, release tension, and realise our full potential – bold claims indeed, but as our dream guides explain, it’s all about control and building the skills to do so. As Penney Peirce explains in the Dream Dictionary For Dummies: dreams really are, in the truest sense, a door-way to greater self-awareness, knowledge, success, and the possibility of a rich full life.

This book is the newest edition in TBPL’s dream collection, and although most of our other titles are of an earlier vintage, their content is still valid. For example, All About Dreams: Everything You Need To Know About Why We Have Them, What They Mean, And How To Put Them To Work For You, by Gayle Delaney is a well worn, tattered and dog-eared book, but in my opinion, this means it has to be a most excellent read. Both this and Peirce’s guide also provide tips on how to remember dreams, something I personally grapple with. You can wake up feeling that you’ve dreamt something really important or interesting, but the moment you try to recall it, it’s snatched irretrievably away from you. There are ways to master this kind of dream theft, though, and although it may involve lots of practice, it’s well worth it.

So if you dream something totally weird and want to know what the heck it means, or if you need to exorcise some dream demons, a little investigation may lead you to some very useful information. For instance, did you know that dreaming about eating raisins means conflict with a neighbour, or if you’re eating celery, you can look forward to promising romantic experiences? Go figure!

Rosemary - Library Technician