On Dreams

"Do you dream in color?"

I remember my friend in high school asked me that once. We were running down the genetic traits that supposedly made people more creative. My buddy was destined to be the next Van Gogh. He was left-handed, right-eye dominant, had no hair on the second joint of his fingers, and of course dreamed in full vibrant Doris Day Technicolor.

In college, I had a friend who dreamt fully-realized sci-fi epics. I swear part of his brain held a Hollywood story department hostage. His dreams had problems and resolutions, inciting events and denouements; his characters had arcs and love triangles. He'd explain them and I'd want to pay money to see them.

My dreams are never that way.

In my dreams, impossibly mundane things happen like me taking a shower, surreal things like riding downtown with a bear in the driver's seat. I've had nightmares about seeing a snake hanging out in a tree. What interests me about my dreams is that they make complete sense at the time.

I got a digital voice recorder for Christmas. I use it primarily to record story tidbits that pop up at random times, but since I keep it on my nightstand I also use it to recite the occasional dream as well. These things invariably happen while I'm still half-asleep and mumble here and there with the added bonus of my croaking middle-of-night voice coming in and out of legibility.

I can barely understand these recordings. They make absolutely no sense. There has been no time for my left brain to try and make sense of them. They are raw streams of subconscious that sound very strange and personally humiliating. I figure this is just the type of thing that the Internet needs more of.

-Brian Miller.
Austin, TX
4.13.2005

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