The first: I dreamt that I received a phone call from my deceased older brother's deceased first wife (who has, by the way, been dead for thirty or more years). She says, very clearly, "______ is dead" (I leave out the name of the person she mentioned because some people are squeamish or superstitious — but a person very much alive. I'm shocked. I say, "what happened." There's no answer at the other end although I hear the sounds of paper rustling. I ask again and once more there is no response. Then I say, "did he do himself in." There is quiet at the other end of the line. End of dream. I take the non-answer as agreement — yes, it was suicide After a while, I wake up, less troubled than puzzled. How peculiar — how different from my usual "lost-in-the big-city" or "can't-find-the-classroom" fantasy.
Later in the night, I dream that it's time for me to write a novel (remarkable in itself because I am a most unimaginative, uncreative person and not a writer of fiction). In the dream, I compose the first paragraph of a novel. I can't remember my exact words, but basically I set the scene in an old, tired, tumble-down country tavern where a couple of nondescript folks are sitting and drinking. It's all very fuscous, grey, washed out. (In retrospect, it seems as though I've plagiarized Thomas Hardy.) But I complete the paragraph with this remarkable sentence: "A brindle cat supplied the color." A wonderful detail, even if I do say so myself. But here's an oddity. Even though my well-informed dreamatorium found and deployed the word "brindle," my conscious self is not familiar with the word. What a revelation!!
I wake out of the dream and, immensely curious, immediately google the word "brindle" which turns out to mean something like tortoiseshell — a standard very familiar domestic cat color. My daytime self is therefore dazzled by the pertinent vocabulary of my night time self.
I am also impressed by the use of the word "supply" — a brindle cat supplied the color" –where my more pedestrian daytime self might have said, "there was a brindle cat."
Once again, I find that although I'm a moderately dull kind of guy during the day, my unconscious or dream life is imaginative and daring. How can this happen?
Moreover, I wonder what would my life have been like if I had been granted easy access to the creative side of my brain? Is it possible that I would have written many a sentence as accomplished as "a brindle cat supplied the color."
[Addendum April 24
Just a few minutes ago I woke out of the usual troubled sleep. I must have been dreaming, but I can't recall a single detail except that the name "Karlheinz Stockhausen" came vividly to me. I even said the name out loud (there's a witness). But why in the living blazes would Karlheinz Stockhausen be in my mind, or unconscious mind, or dream life? I am aware that KS was a composer of electronic music; that is to say, I've heard his name. But I'm not interested in electronic music and as far as I know I've never heard a single note of any of his compositions. He's not a figure to whom I've given a moment of conscious thought. And yet there he was in my mind and in my mouth. Without the slightest inkling of context.
Minds (especially my very own) are mighty mysterious.]
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