Illustration | Bailey Classen-Schneider
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I am one of those people who is lucky enough remember most of their dreams. I also am one of those people who seems to dream a lot. So, I think I can tell you honestly, that this year has been filled with some of the most intensely strange, scary, and self-reflective dreams I’ve had in my entire life. In case you wanted proof that I’m not fabricating this, both National Geographic and the University of Toronto claim that “quarantine dreams” are a legitimate phenomenon. I don’t think that they really needed to tell us that. Or, at least, tell me that. They say that the changes to our lives have led to universal dream-themes of “confusion,” “fear,” and “anxiety.” (Makes sense.) So, frankly, I’d like it if someone attempted to explain why this year of social isolation, and daydreaming of the regular, has me mentally concocting backyard camp circuses in the dark of the night. A red steel slide under the maple tree meets boy scouts in park ranger hats, a carousel, a lion tamer, a whistle and a tightrope. Lawn swamping with blue, | ||
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floating ice caps* and polar bears fizzled in from air. Shapeshifting to neighbourhood dogs, skip stones to save them. I noodled on that one for three whole days and concluded absolutely nothing. I never even went to summer camp (though I did have a recurring clown nightmare as a child). That dream is just the precipice. Other nightly hallucinations that muddied my mind months ago are now beginning to fragment and fade: A party full of lovers, |
*Exhibit A: Sarah’s unconscious tries to philosophize the end of the world from her childhood bedroom. | |
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*My concern over this particular atrocity prompted my mother to purchase me coffee table “Dream Decoder” cards so that I’d stop fretting about what all this could possibly mean. I still fret. (There’s no card for dancing ex-boyfriends). |
past, present and potential*. Apocalyptic; their sneakers all match. Or a sniper on a neighbour’s cedar roof. There’s been a lot of fear everywhere, so I can’t say I’m surprised. But it makes it nicer to say that while some strange is scary, other strange can still be beautiful; good dreams are a cloudy escape from a year of the same day on replay: Like a lily that licks itself out of the ground in the morning. (A Cheshire Cat of a flower). | |
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*I walked into what I think may have been Cloverdale Mall in the West End. Instead of shopping carts, there were piles of desk chairs? (Perhaps I’d recently been to IKEA?) |
And a musty old mall hall*, with sixty spinney chairs, crowding older folks, and oracles. (Plus, one of those bubble-gum machines.) Rock bands who hold your hand at Climate Marches And perfectly sunny, white brick rooms with quietly beautiful people. Those are the dream worlds I wouldn’t fight against living in. (I’d love to relish in a wonderland or a crowd.) | |
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I will admit that, lots of the time, my brain draws from my very apparent, immediate reality*: Raging headlines: |
*Though, it still confuses itself. | |
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*Exhibit B: The world ends again. |
virus variant breeds fascists*. Red hats materialize from hospital beds. Consecutive sleeps toiling backstage, singing, feeling alive, all for a show, that never goes on. | |
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*The dream cards say texting means that I “desire to be more direct.” Not bad, dream cards. |
Texts* I’d love to answer, but will never get in the first place. We can agree that dreams are messy That they are abstract That they reflect our world and our own feelings back to us. And maybe even that dreams like to play tricks. I think maybe the question is less so, “what do they mean?” And perhaps should be, “how much do we listen to them?” (If we can listen to them without knowing what they mean, I guess.) I’ve been thinking a lot about how while so many of us are subconsciously dreaming the most surreal things at night, we’re also consciously daydreaming our lives away about the mundanity that we no longer have. Should those desires be taking centre stage instead? Maybe they’re just the same in different shapes. (I’m not a Psych major.) All I can really think of to say, to conclude this collection of my dreams, is: Though we might be at home trapped in our own little boxes, at least our imaginations are still able to do as they please. And I think we can find hope there, because that magic, in itself, is still something worthwhile. |
