Everyday Canvas

"In Grey Hours"

Prompt: If you could dream any dream you wanted tonight, what would it be about? Write about this in your Blog entry today.

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Any night dream I wanted? I think I'll pass.

"I will not in grey hours revoke
The gift I gave in hours of light"

Just two lines from an unpublished Yeats poem, which says just about what I feel where night dreams are concerned.

In my case, it isn't the dreams themselves, but the waking up from them that turns me off. I was never a good candidate for getting shortchanged with unreality.

Also, let's face it, night dreams are often a blend of absurdity and wonder. Their illogical structures, bizarre characters, and situations aside, they also distort my reality, or rather the way I view it. This means they add some kind of an emotional inconsistency to my already mixed-up old mind.

Then, of course, there's that problem of their unresolved plots that make me wonder through the waking hours if or when I recall them. Once upon a time, I had dreams with recurring themes that made me wonder why I did dream the same stuff cooked or boiled one way or another. Luckily, whatever they indicated, I must have overcome their symbolic nonsense.

Having said all that, I did have some dreams that came true, which scared me. One such dream was about a much younger pregnant cousin who lived thousands of miles away. In a night dream, she came to me and said, "I have to go now. But I couldn't leave before saying good-bye to you." The next day, someone in the family called me to say that she had died during the night due to eclampsia while giving birth. Her child is in his late thirties now.

Then, I had other dreams that came to be true that also scare me, to this day. Not all of them had to do with death, but still, that they came true has been something to be wary about. But such dreams are rare and usually there are months or years in between their appearances.

Maybe, it is a better idea to embrace the foolishness of night dreams and let them drown in their own humor and whimsy, but I am not now or ever wishing for or ordering any night dreams. Unfortunately, they have a mind of their own and they show up unannounced to bug me at night.