Dream on

I had a dream where I started to cook dinner but then someone else took over. This never happens in my waking life. (Notice I didn’t call it my “real” life.) A friend I know better on social media than offline did the cooking. I trusted her. She’s Italian. Then someone got really bent about something I said about a committee’s view on something that had something to do with Shakespeare. You know how dreams go. I tried to explain. I thought I was calm but another person from my academia past freaked out when I talked. He thought I was too passionate. Especially, I imagine, for a woman. He also thought I was being rude. Because I didn’t agree. With him. I’m still talking about my dream. Suddenly I was in the childhood bedroom I shared with my sister for a while. I watched an elephant lie down on my bed and break it. I was lucid dreaming so I wondered what the elephant-in-the-room could be in my waking life and what it would need to break for me to notice it. Finally I realized that the small horde of fluorescent light purple bugs on the wall were responsible for the rash on my hand that existed in both the dreamworld and in my waking life. I squished one of the bugs and it became gray. Not sure about what that means yet. All I know is that it was a flashy sort of infestation. Something for me to watch for, to notice when I see it. I did ask, just before I fell asleep, for my dreams to “show me what I need to know.” My dreams delivered but some of the “knowing” may take a little more effort on my part while I am awake.

I took a photo quite some time ago of a sign that said, “Provoke Dreams That Don’t Exist.” The group called The Beautiful South has a line in their song “Mirror” that I love: “Imagine my wish for a future that cannot hold my wish.”

All of this is not me saying to dream big or to hold onto your dreams. No. Not that. Though that is a fine thing or at least it can be. What I’m saying instead, to you and to me, is to notice as much in our waking lives as we do in our dreams. To trust that the flow of existence in our everyday journeys holds as much magic and mystery and revelation as in our dreams. To make a pact with ourselves to do, or at least to try to do, not just lucid dreaming, but lucid living.

Cinse Bonino
2023