of babies and bombs

Since I've arrived here in November, I haven't recalled many dreams, which is pretty unusual for me. It actually wasn’t until the last week or so that I’ve remembered dreaming at all. It’s as if during sleeping hours, my brain’s been motionless and empty, a black slate devoid of activity. Which is, to tell the truth, a little unnerving. I enjoy having crazy dreams from time to time and trying to piece them together, sometimes searching for meaning in ones that are especially vivid.

The first two nights of the new year have brought especially vivid and memorable dreams. I won't go into detail, since listening to someone else talk about their nonsensical, impossible-to-follow dream plots ("so I think we were in my living room, even though it didn't look anything like the real room, and Bob was there, but he looked exactly like that guy from the grocery store, but in the dream, I knew it was Bob, and we were sitting around watching this strobe light, or maybe it was the TV, I dunno, but then for some reason, we were suddenly in the middle of a corn field...") usually induces immediate glazed-over expressions, sometimes accompanied by drool from sheer boredom and puzzlement. And since everyone knows I can't tell a concise, interesting story to save my life, I'll spare you. Suffice it to say that one was about a baby, presumably mine, since I was showering it with affection, and another was about trying to escape from an exploding bomb that I felt sure would kill me, no lie. Like, I think I almost woke up dead. It was that real.

I seldom think of infants and I’m not especially moved by babies in general, so it was a strange dream to have, I thought. A sudden burst of nesting emotion thrust into the midst of my single, nearly anti-parental existence as of late. Perhaps nature was trying to plant a seed, attempting to have me embrace the primal backdrop that lies in wait somewhere on the back burner of my biological consciousness. “Pssst, Lauri. Don’t forget, you still want to have babies one day. I know you do. Here, look at this and think about it a little, before you write it off completely.” Or maybe the online dream dictionary had it right. Babies are about new beginnings, blah, blah, and it was the first day of the new year, so there you go.

The bomb thing was a tad off-putting, since it was scary. But it's sometimes fun to have that adrenalin rush in the middle of a peaceful sleep, if you ask me. And it apparently means I have repressed desires and unexpressed emotions I need to confront. (Hopefully nothing that tends to shoot lethal, fiery sparks when confronted.) And also I need to boost my self-esteem. Because, you know, nothing symbolizes, "you need to love yourself" more than running for your life from a fatal explosion. Those crazy dream gods should revise a thing or two in their execution of symbol usage.

I seriously hope Dream Moods is right, and there will not be any exploding babies or life-threatening combustions in my near future.

So, in sum, the take-away lessons are (if I'm lucky):
- I have hidden potential, and I need to gear up the self-confidence.
- I need to face my fears, and act on certain repressed desires.
- It is a new beginning. The year of change. The year I will Make Things Happen.

Also if I'm lucky, my next dream will feature either a scandalous affair with James Franco, or a psychedelic hippopotamus. And if you're lucky, I won't act on the desire to tell you about it.