Woke up late this morning, tired from a night filled with irritating dreams. Not horrifying. Not filled with tension. Just irritating. Many, many fast-paced scenarios of things that just bugged me but were of no consequence, like trying to rake leaves with a rake whose handle keeps coming loose. I woke once after one such episode and was angry for having been disturbed from my sleep for such an irksome little nothing.
As a result, I find myself here this morning with little to say but still a little peeved about my dreams of last night. I wish I had experienced better dreams, even scary ones, so my mind would be at least somewhat sparked. I’ve had some great dreams over the years but I can’t share them. Too personal and in some cases, too startling and a bit disturbing.
The one dream that still lingers in my memory is one that occurred many years ago when I was a child, perhaps 8 or 9 years old. It was an odd dream, very calm and quiet but filled with a tension I couldn’t identify. It was a short scene that took place in a very narrow space, perhaps only 4 foot wide, with a wall on the right hand side from the viewpoint I had in the dream and windows with sheer curtains on the left that let in bright, almost white sunlight. In this little space there was a small girl, bathed pale in the white light, who looked at me curiously but without fright. At this point, my viewpoint in the dream shifted from the person looking at the girl to that of the girl looking at me. From her viewpoint I saw myself as a Nazi soldier with that distinct helmet and winter coat. There was a feeling that I, now the girl, had been discovered in my hiding place but that the soldier was not the threat.
It was an odd dream and one that has haunted me for several decades. I wonder if I was indeed the girl or the soldier and what the circumstances were meant to signify. I had the dream at a point when I didn’t have a tremendous store of knowledge about World War II or Nazis or the ways that Jewish families hid in the war so as time passed the dream evolved from one of pure scene and feeling to one filled with more symbology. Yet, I still wonder about that Nazi soldier and see that light-filled space as clearly I did over forty years ago.
I doubt that I will remember any of last night’s pain-in-the -ass dreams forty minutes from now.
Dreams!
Redtree Times 