Dreams

I never lose in my dreams. I can be running in mud or water up to my knees, get lost, try to wake up and can't, get tied up, feel like I’m going to die, but I never wake up until I win. Maybe I'm running down an alley. Something is chasing me. It's a couple of ugly guys, driving a big combine. The blades are right behind me. I'm running out of breath. All of a sudden, I dance up the blades like Gene Kelly, doing a little dance on every blade. I grab the guys and toss them into the blades. Blood and gore hit me in the face and I wake up. Now that's a good dream, if you don't analyze it too much. I like the feeling of that gore hitting me in the face. I like being me and the combine and the blades, even the alley.  But the two guys?  Not so much.

Or maybe I'm carrying my own body around, eating on it. Across streams. Under bridges. There's a castle full of women, eating carry-out orders from a restaurant. I lose my body; find a stray dog in the basement. I awoke from that dream feeling too disturbed and elemental to understand the simplest rules of human behavior. I thought nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

Nowadays, I think most dreams are so straightforward they don't need free association to make sense. Suppose you're making love to a woman. You reach down and feel teeth inside her vagina. That's the old vagina dentata. I've had that dream a time or two. It's a good dream if you like to wake up scared.