Dreams of Occupied Space, or the Case of the Reappearing Red Dot

You are probably assuming from the title of this tale that I’m referring to the red laser light toys that drive cats crazy. No, I’m referring to the red dot that occasionally appears at the top of my forehead for all to see, looking like I’ve been stabbed with a large hat pin. It’’s not a permanent blemish. It’s a broken blood vessel. The odd thing about it is that it fades over a couple of weeks and then a few months later it shows up again. My conclusion is that either I’m shoving a fingernail into my forehead in the middle of the night or some recurring dream is causing me to bust a gusset. We’ve all had those dreams where we’re back in school and it’s time to take a final exam except we just remembered we forgot to go to class all semester, right? Or the one where we’d like to attend the class but we can’t find the right room? How about the one where we realized we’re on campus but we forgot to put on our pants? You’ve had those, haven’t you? How many of you have had dreams of space ships appearing in the sky, waiting to land so that aliens can kidnap you? Anyone? No one? Just me? My attitude about this recurring nightmare has shifted over time. It runs parallel to the feeling I had the first time I was ever outdoors in a place that had no street lights and saw a sky filled with stars. Try to imagine the impact this had on an inner city-bred child whose parents didn’t understand camping or traveling to places that didn’t have casinos. It was like being inside a sensory isolation tank. Everything was blacked out. I couldn’t see the rocks in front of my feet, the ones I would soon trip over. Frightening it was, as Yoda would say. Completely unnerving. Then I looked up. Whatever lack of visibility was going on earth-side was more than made up for in the celestial realm. You’d think I’d have been impressed, but no. I was even more terrified. I’d never felt so small, so insignificant, so overwhelmed by my unimportance. It was more than I could bear. I retreated inside a box and stayed there for a good many years. The dream of occupied space gave me the same willies. There I was, rushing outside to stand on the sidewalk and look up at the limited view of blue skies hemmed in by walls of towering skyscrapers in the middle of New York or another major downtown. Take your pick. Any city that limits your view of sky to a narrow rectangle will do. There, looming above the buildings, comes the mothership. I think George Lucas may have mind melded with me ages ago and that’s how he came up with the opening scenes of his first released Star Wars movie. That ship. And it’s not a friendly one. Let’s segue from alien ships to other dreams for a moment. How many of you have had nightmares that someone is breaking into your house and you can’t lock the doors in time to prevent marauders from entering? Surely I’m not alone in this one, am I? You run to the door but can’t get the lock to work. Or you frantically race from one door to another, unable to latch any of them. Come now, something’s got to have scared you into building a special scenario that haunted your sleep on a regular basis, especially before you grew old enough to fend off real foes. Learning to fight back seems to be key in my life of dreams, starting with the bandit attacks. The first step was when, instead of waking up with my heart pounding because I couldn’t reach the lock in time, I began to run out the back door and watch the invasion from the safety of my front lawn. Step two was actually getting to the front door in time to lock it. Step three was curative. An evil-doer was lurking outside my bedroom window, trying to break in. Instead of running, I picked up a steam iron and flung it through the window screen, screaming at the top of my lungs to get off my property or I’d iron him to death. I woke up from that dream feeling pretty good about my ability to defend myself and all who dwelt within. After that there was no more need for bad-guys-at-the-door-dreams. About the same era, I returned to the high desert and ventured out again into the dark to see the sky. Much to my surprise, some dramatic internal shift had taken place. Instead of feeling smaller and less valuable than the ants who tried to live in my kitchen, I actually felt a sense of belonging. It was awesome. I was the drop in the ocean, happily swaying with the tides. I was a star in the firmament, an integral and deliberate dot of light rejoicing in the support of myriad lights above, beside, and below me. And no, I was not smoking weed nor snorting coke. This happened all by itself, I suppose because I was beginning to get used to life on this planet. Now we return to the dreams of occupied space. They, too, morphed into something more joyous. This time I realized the smaller transport vehicles were landing, not to kidnap us, but to rescue us from a dying world. Hundreds of smaller ships filled the air with their coming and going and high above them waited the motherships, dozens of them. There was no room to notice if the sky was blue or smoke laden. All I could see was help in the form alien rescue. And that was the end of my dreams of occupied space. I wish I could tell you my dreams are more blissful nowadays. Sometimes they are. Sometimes I wake filled with memories of loving embraces, technicolor musicals, fully staged operas, comedies of errors. I like those dreams. The ones I don’t care for are the ones where you can’t get back to where you started. Do you have those dreams? You leave your hotel room and then you can’t get back no matter how many stairs and elevators you take—that kind. Sound familiar? How about the cleaning up dreams, the ones where you can’t finish picking up the litter on the floor because more keeps appearing? Anyone? Surely it can’t just be me. I Googled this one. There’s a suggestion that being unable to finish picking up other people’s messes means exactly that. You can never finish cleaning up other people’s debris. But if all the people in my dreams are really aspects of myself, then what? What mess am I facing? “It’s a symbol, you silly woman,” I tell myself. “It’s a sign of frustration.” “Why would I be frustrated?” I ask myself. “Because you no longer have the energy to ride a horse while shooting arrows from a Mongolian bow.” “You don’t know that,” I argue back. “Anything is possible with the right attitude.” “Really? You had to call the 18-year old neighbor to come over and change a lightbulb because standing on a step stool made you whoozy. You think you’re going to get on a horse and live to write about it?” “Maybe not … but I’m still really good at picking lint off the floor…” “Everything takes longer and seems harder and your waist has vanished forever.” “… and I just passed my driver’s test, even though I had to study for a month to get fifteen answers right. So what would I be frustrated about?” It’s so simple it’s sort of stupid. Thank goodness dreams are illusory and waking times are real. (“Keep thinking that, you silly woman.”)