Let’s Parse: Last Night’s Dream
I don’t like to talk about myself on this blog. But I had this bizarre dream last night. And if we parse it out here—or part of it, anyway—we’re talking more about the dream than about me. Right?
Part of Tim’s dream last night:
Tim stands in a circular hall, watching a federal hearing. At its center is the nation’s overseer of nuclear materials, a Bush administration appointee. Many chairs in the audience are empty, but those that are taken are filled by white haired white men in navy suits. The man who previously held the overseer position, during, presumably, the Clinton administration, turns out to be the California controller, Democrat Steve Westly. Westly is looking visibly aged and grey. Westly stands and the audience watches him, transfixed, as he accuses the current overseer of illegally passing radioactive materials to various people in the room. Many of those who received this material are the old, white-haired, official-looking businessmen. One of them is wearing a tan camelhair blazer, who, under Westly’s withering criticism, walks out of the hall. Several others of the accused follow him. Westly’s criticism includes the revelation that investigations have revealed those men to be devil worshippers from Oregon.
When the meeting is over, Tim walks outside the hall, into the streets of the Tenderloin. He walks north, uphill on a street like Leavenworth or Jones. A youngish man follows Tim closely, hoping to be given money. A woman begins to do the same, but she doesn’t keep up (the man following him also pushes her away). Tim walks back downhill, west on Geary, and rounds a corner to the south onto a sunny street. Near the recess formed by an alley, the man following Tim suddenly shoves him, and Tim falls to the ground. As Tim gets back on his feet, the man draws a gleaming silver pistol with wooden handle. The man points the gun at Tim and demands money. Tim thinks this is a very nice looking weapon, suitable for any serious collector. Tim is being mugged. “Unbelievable!” Tim thinks. Awake Tim is also pretty sure that Dream Tim thought, “You’re not supposed have these kinds of dreams,” the kind in which puzzling bad things happen. As Tim looks through his wallet, rifling through various receipts and little notes, he finds a couple of dollars which he hands over. But as he looks further, he notices more money in the wallet that seems to appear from nowhere. A fifty dollar bill pokes out, which Tim fails to keep hidden from the mugger. An older man on crutches hobbles up and yells at the mugger that he’ll report him to the police. The mugger throws a couple of dollar bills at the old man and says, “There you go, officer.” The old man is satisfied. A two dollar bill peeks out from one of the pockets in Tim’s wallet, and the mugger demands that, as well. Tim reluctantly hands it over, but tells him not to fold it up or sell it.
*
There is no single, accepted explanation of why we dream. The Contemporary Theory of Dreaming contends that dreams are guided by emotion, incorporating events or their symbolic counterparts in order to adjust to new situations and emotional states. Other possibilities include, but are surely not limited to, exercising fantasies, interpreting experience, or just processing information. I recently read a study tip advising people to read before bed because the brain consolidates the subject material during sleep. Also, when I experience moments of déjà vu, they are typically the result of possibly predictive scenes or images in dreams.
What information was my brain consolidating in this dream? What was predictive?
Consolidating:
- Easily transportable nuclear material was mentioned in a commercial for KTVU news last night (I didn’t see the report).
- Steve Westly is quite actively campaigning for governor with several commercials on television. Did you know he went to Stanford and opposed apartheid?
Yesterday’s New York Times web site ran the image at right, by Lee Celano, of a couple of businessmen scooping up oil rights from the government in a story about untaxed royalties. Several unfilled chairs there.- The Bush administration is known for hiring lobbyists and businessmen and is widely considered to make decisions that favor business over the commonwealth.
- A friend of mine has a nice camelhair blazer.
- I eat in the Tenderloin, San Francisco’s lost district, multiple times a week.
- I have been wondering if I’ll get mugged. A friend of mine was mugged (and punched) in front of a restaurant in February—I had just gone into the restaurant. I was talking to a guy about his camera on Sunday and he advised covering the brand name of a camera with black tape so it won’t be so obvious to criminals.
- Last week, I kept finding more money than I expected in my wallet. Several times throughout the week I thought I’d need to go to the ATM, then discovered I had 40 bucks in there. Kaching!
- Two dollar bill—I got one in San Diego in January. Chris tells me they use them to count out your change at the San Diego Zoo. Two dollars came up twice in this dream, in singles and in a single bill.
Predictive:
- Walking back from lunch at Original Joe’s (in the Tenderloin) today, a man kept pace with Tom and me, occasionally asking us if we had a quarter. I wondered if he would mug us. Tom said he looked like a “twitchy character.” Lots of those in the Tenderloin.
Unclassified:
- Not sure if there really is a national overseer of radioactive material. Maybe that’s the Secretary of Energy.
- I really don’t know where the concept of devil worshippers comes from, though my impression is that Oregon does tend to attract cults. Haven’t seen Rosemary’s Baby in some time.
- I don’t know why an old man on crutches hobbled into the scene. The Tenderloin has numerous infirm on the streets. And I’ve been on crutches a few times in my life. But I’m not so easily bought off as that guy (I hope). Two dollars.
Really, I’m just making up for a dry spell in which I posted no new content on this page. I used a recent dream, didn’t go with an old favorite, like the one with polar bears laying purple urchin-shaped eggs (really), or one of the very few in which I fly. Critics say dream sequences in books, movies, or television are cheap ways to solve problems of plot or character. Why not with blogs, too?
