Dream Assignment By: Thomas Armstrong
Dreams are one of those things of natural wonder. Dreams have led people to do things that have caused the downfalls of empires and the inventions of break through technology. They are simply a fascinating subject. People often try to make sense of them and apply them to their lives as if they mean something, even in the modern era. How do I feel about them? I avoid them like the plague. I spend my nights in two distinct ways. I don’t dream at all or I have extremely vivid dreams that make me feel trapped. Dreams are simpler to control that I realized. Dreams actually stop if you consume alcohol, a quid pro quo. My dream schedule is erratic. They always happen after I have been woken from sleep and fall asleep for the second time that night. I know they are coming when that happens and I dread it. As stated previously, they can typically be terrifying and I feel helpless for their duration. Ive had one dream since beginning the sleep log, that I know of. I often times wake up panicked as If something freighting happened but unable to remember what happened. For this dream, I was in some type of apartment in the city in the middle east, I think Pakistan. I was talking to a person that seamed familiar, we talked like we had met before. He had long hair and a pony tail. He was talking about something illegal but I’m not completely sure what it was. It felt like I was seeing a blurred out object. He was showing it to someone. There were other people in the room and we were both sitting at a counter. At this part of the dream everything was in first person conversation. He began to show me different versions of the thing I knew was illegal. I saw one that was bright blue. Everyone wanted to see it and crowded around me. He then put them in containers and then the containers into a sealed bag. Someone began yelling, I couldn’t make out what he was saying but the guy he was talking to didn’t like what he had to say. The guy was yelling and I couldn’t make out his face. He walked behind me and over to the left near a chair, I think he had a gun but im not completely sure. The guy I was talking to started mumbling and walked into a side closet pulling out a shot gun, he walked back behind the counter, both people started yelling, I grabbed the bag and watched them. The guy I knew shot the guy in the right leg blowing it completely off. He then just started shooting at everyone including me. I ducked down but he caught me in my right arm, I felt blood streaming down my fore arm to my fingertips. It was cold, I cold feel it evaporating because it was hot in the room. I was still holding this bag in my left arm. I ran out the back door, he was still shooting constantly, I got to the door and ran down an outside stairwell. He wasn’t chasing me but I was running. I tried to hold the bag in my bleeding hand but I couldn’t. I was getting dizzy and it was hard to hold the bag because everything was now covered in blood and slippery. I could feel blood cooling and dripping down my arm quickly. At this part of the dream it began to be narrated by I think me in third person. I hid under something, can’t remember what it was. I think I died, then I woke up. I never have any feelings of emotion during the dream. They feel emotionless. The second I wake up Im sweating, panicked and confused. I feel similar to how you feel when you get woken up soon after falling asleep when you’re very tired. Disoriented, asking repetitive questions and lost.
As far as interpretations go, my dreams are often pieces of old memories. Small fragments of the memories that my brain fills in fictional blanks to. I think that’s why they often feel familiar, with familiar faces and even senses that I remember. Especially smell. Specifically the smell of exploded aluminum nitrate. I don’t feel as though there is any other meaning to them. They feel like stuck memories I can’t escape that are continually recycled into a different version of the last.
Decide what the dream means to you.
In all honesty I wish the dream was a completely fabricated hypothetical situation. Unfortunately its the reality of what many young individuals experienced after high school in the early parts of the century. Much of which is forgotten in the current social climate, essentially deemed irrelevant.
For interpretation and meaning, the dream is a reenactment. It presents a situation that is familiar but not correct. I can’t say that is a recurring dream as far as circumstance but it is a recurring dream as far as things I have experienced. The context is always changing but revolving around similar traumatic experiences. I wish I could write this paper and analyze a significant meaning behind the dread but unfortunately I cannot. I know why the dreams exist. At first I thought they were a disease. The older I get I, I realize they are an impactful reminder of my friends and the sacrifices the made.
Memories fade… but dreams? They can instill feelings long forgotten. Dream return you to a significant moment and make you feel like the day it happened. For years I interpreted them as the devil but over time I’ve come to appreciate how they have made me remember what my buddies sacrificed.
As stated in the actual dream, emotions don’t exist. Its not a numb feeling or any feeling at all for that matter. The emotions don’t exist in the dream, as if a computer was watching a sitcom.The computer feels nothing but the video is playing. The emotions return after the dream and they flood in suddenly… overwhelmingly.
Moving onto themes, symbols and characters. I wish I could apply all aspects but only themes stand out. The themes stand out as hot, smell and death. My dreams formulate around these three things the most. Fragments of experience filled in with fictional blanks to complete a story. A reoccurring smell of aluminum nitrate which smells similar to chlorine with out the burn. My brain is obscenely accurate when recreating that smell.
Dreams are a series of thoughts or feelings during sleep. Are they meaningful? I never dream about anything other than manipulations of past experiences. My dreams are sporadic and infrequent.
Reviewing the questions I fee; as tho none of them apply to my dream cycles. Many require feelings or a constant antagonist to the situation at hand, none of which my dreams provide. My dreams are reruns of the same movie in a defiant scenario with people I cannot identify. I hate them. I wish to make sense of them but they are more of a nightmare than a significant or identifiable scenario.
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