phantom

I’ve been having strange dreams lately. I keep dreaming of slapping men on the face. I’d rather be dreaming of kissing their faces, but no, it’s always the slapping. I wonder what that says about me. I tried looking on those dream interpretation websites, but they’re full of shit. (just to clarify, I don't remember ever actually slapping a man's face.)

I’m of two minds about dreams. My strongest impression from all my psych classes is that no one really knows what dreams are about. They think they are how the brain forms memories and consolidates information learned during the day, but then they also think dreams are just your forebrain trying to interpret random brain electricity during it’s repair phases during sleep. They’ve tried relating night-dreams with day-dreams, but resolved that they are two different things. So psychology itself doesn’t have a clear stand on what the function of dreams might be. That’s something I like about psych: sometimes they just say, I don’t know. It’s flattering to humanity that there are things about us that are unknowable.

I’ve long since given up the idea that dreams are messages from a higher power, but I can’t shake the idea that dreams might be my own subconscious getting the microphone for a while. I don’t place deep meaning on dreams, but I think that recurring themes and dreams might show a brain trying to understand or come to terms with something.

And so, when the slapping dreams keep coming back, I wonder: what the fuck?

I watched an Oprah show about dreams a long time ago, before she started giving away jaguars and sample bras, and she had on this one dream-interpreter who had a really interesting take on symbols in dreams. Some interpreters think that certain symbols always represent specific things. For example, dreaming about infants is supposed to foreshadow death, while dreaming about childbirth is supposed to represent change. Or something.

This interpreter was different because she said it’s more important what each symbol represents to the individual. This one lady kept dreaming about being surrounded by monkeys. The interpreter made her free-associate about monkeys, and the lady realized she thinks monkey are dirty and scary. She somehow related those monkeys to the men this lady dated, and it turned out that the lady usually dated sort of lowlife men.

Anyway... I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I don’t know what men represent to me in general, and I don’t know what I think about slapping. I would rather not dream about slapping men anymore though.

I’m not even going to mention the talking donkey dream... that was just weird. (It was a little donkey – about the size of Buddy, a big black husky dog, from which it morphed in my dream.)