Demolition Dreams
Science says everyone dreams. I know for sure I do, recurrently and lucidly. Every night I explore a growing collection of dream locations and have adventures with people who are like but not exactly like the people I know in waking life. It's a regular entertainment, and one I participate in. I even have a tag for the times I blog about the weirdness in my head.The landscape grows and changes according to its own logic. I haven't dreamed about lake monsters eating misbehaving campers for a long time (for example) but the lake still shows up. It's connected itself to the ocean near where my family once vacationed in Florida somehow. The cast changes too, as I meet new folk and old acquaintances pass out of my life, but some dream-people have stuck with me for decades after their day counterparts moved on.I always know I'm settling into a life change when it first shows up in my dreams. I was happy when the library showed up (working the front desk on a weekend while some huge city event happened outside and a crisis drives everyone indoors.) My cast of dream companions still includes a lot of Borders alumni, but the library's appearance in my dreams means that I've settled into my new home in reality. Borders is nearly five years gone now. The library is taking its rightful spot in the work zone of my subconscious.I do still dream about Borders, though. My favorite one revolves around spending Christmas Eve in a store open to customers at night in a blizzard while still under construction. Believe it or not, that's not a nightmare. Dramatic, challenging...but somehow not nightmarish.I dreamed that store last night, but this time my Borders buddies and I (Spouseman is one of them in my dreams, although he only worked one holiday season ages past) weren't putting the store together and training staff. We were breaking it down, removing hardware and boxing up books against an apocalyptic backdrop of broken walls and rubble-covered floors. The hotel where we stayed had a huge heated pool but no electricity. (Dream significance. That struck me as highly important, although I cannot explain why.) We were the recovery team, there to save what we could and then make our escape with as many employees as we could rescue.The shift from construction to demolition probably means something deep in my emotional bedrock is shifting too. Probably. The important takeaway is this: after all these years my dreaming brain is still going on new adventures and taking me with it.Time: 12:10 PMTea: Ginger's OolongSteep: 9 minutes. I got carried away.