Dreams

They are so full. They are the things music is made from. They are funny and scary, enlightening and exhausting. Some people live there and some never visit – how sad. And I cannot imagine my life without them.
Though I have traveled through 48 states and crossed into both Canada and Mexico, I have gone much further into the world in my dreams. What we used to have to imagine in our childhood, relying on pictures in magazines for fodder, we have since seen many times over on the silver screen and we now own our personal versions in the living room. Ours is a 47″ – how about yours?
The places we went in our childhood playtime! Building forts in the woods, or from hay bales in the barn, tree houses, snow forts – we employed our creative juices and delighted in building with our own hands with whatever was available. I can still hear mom say, “Who took my…???”
Summer mornings would often see Mom pulling a whole loaf of bread from a bag, making it into PB&J sandwiches, and putting the whole loaf back into the bag with a  ‘see ya later‘!
We would be gone all day on our 200 acre farm, drink water from the creek, (up stream from our cattle) play hard and eat sandwiches from the bag when we were hungry. I also remember Dad having to examine us for ticks from head to toe before we jumped into the tub to wash away the day’s grunge.
We rode our bikes, rode our horses, rode our motorcycles, and eventually moved onto cars – which took us away from the farm.
Me thinks today’s kids would find it hard to comprehend such freedom. So few have had a share of that life. They live indoors, in videos, building digital forts with someone else’s software, driving digital cars and tanks, and pushing buttons to kill the enemy who sheds digital blood.
I realize all things must pass. I realize cars replaced buses and trains, airplanes replaced ships for travel overseas, television replaced movie screens for the most part, e-mail replaced handwritten notes, e-books replacing printed paper books, Facebook has made us all narcissistic, mini movie stars . . . we have moved fast in recent years. But, it does not necessarily follow that I must embrace all of this and like it. And it doesn’t mean that I can’t long for a trip to the past . . . and I can go there in my dreams.
My dreams are vivid, rich and constant. To not dream is such a rare thing that I can’t remember the last time I slept so hard that I left dreams behind and went into that deep, dreamless sleep. I have a running video with music in my head all night along with a constant awareness of time. (This is what it feels like – I am aware that dreams take place going into and coming out of rem sleep.) For the most part, I can tell you what I dreamt, but since no one is interested, I usually let it go and forget about it during the first few minutes of the morning while I am thinking about my day. Sandra Bullock was in the bathroom last night, though.
I find it fascinating that we can have our bodies shut down during sleep and still have such activity going on, traveling, cooking, painting, mowing, dental work < nightmare! And still wake up rested.
The brain is such an amazing organ! I have learned much about it’s abilities in these last 60 plus years and it never ceases to amaze me – so much stuff stored in there. I could go on Jeopardy if they would just give you 5 minutes to answer while I spend the first 4 minutes and 55 seconds going, “Oh – I know this, oooo, it’s, it’s, um, um, . . . .”