Hamlet, Revisited

What was sleep, after all, but the process by which we dumped our insanity into a dark subconscious pit and came out on the other side ready to eat cereal instead of the neighbor's children?
-- Dexter Morgan (Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter)

"Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives."
-- William Dement, in Newsweek, 1959

"To sleep, perchance to dream, ay there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause - there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life:"
-- Hamlet (The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Act 3, Scene I, William Shakespeare)

When I was a kid I had a recurring nightmare. Thinking back, I think it was probably triggered by headlights shining in through my window. We lived on a circle of sorts on one of the USAF bases where my Dad was stationed, and our house was situated so that when cars drove by on the street, their headlights would shine right into my bedroom. Once I saw a pair of those lights float across my wall so slowly I swore I'd seen a ghost. Scared the pee-willies out of me. Hey, I was seven. Gimme a break.

In my nightmare, there was a giant game wheel on my wall, one of those spinning things with lights, and it would spin and the lights would flash and there were bells and whistles and alarms and people screaming. I think it was the screaming that scared me. Or maybe the lights and alarms scared me and it was me who was screaming.

That dream recurred on me for about a week. I was afraid to go to bed at night. I really can't remember how my Mom dealt with it, but I'm sure she probably offered me some kind of logical explanation for the lights on my wall. Maybe that's when I learned about headlights and reflections. Funny how I remember the nightmare but not how I managed to stop having it.

Dreams are intriguing things. Some are good, some bad - some give us definable goals, some can even change the world. (Remember? "I have a dream ...") We always dream in our sleep, did you know that? We just don't always remember the dream. So why is it that I can remember the essence of a nightmare I had when I was seven but not the really great plot twist I thought of as I was going to bed? Maybe it's not our dreams that are the problem, but our subconscious minds and the need to suppress things that would do harm to our psyche. Or what won't work in the grand scheme of things.

Whoa. That's going just a little too deep, isn't it?

When I was writing my very first book (that is, when I really got serious about it), the WMVR and I had a shopping date with some friends from work. When I picked her up, the first thing she said when she got in my car was, "I woke up dreaming about the book!" From her dream, I twisted out a whole new plot element, which lives within that book today.

I've been inspired to write by daydreams before, too. The fourth manuscript's opening scene was based on one.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is, when you have a dream that makes sense to you or has special meaning, regardless of what it is - something out of your sleeping subconscious or a conscious goal that you've set for yourself - if it sticks with you, then there's a reason for that. Hang onto it. Pursue it. Write it down if you have to (trust me, sometimes I have to).

My dream is to find a new publisher. And I'm pursuing that dream. One step at a time.

Read a book. Get lost in a dream, just for a while. It's good for you.

=) JB