Good Dreams and Brad Dreams

OK, I admit it. Lately the blog has kinda been a train wreck. OK, more like a train with its wheels locked so sparks shooting from the track as it smashes into a busload of retarded children headed for summer camp with their special guest star Lionel Richie singing ‘Hello’ and leading them in the chorus. (thx Adam) Sorry. There have been few posts and the ones that made it really blow. I think it is a mood thing and a time thing. Enough excuses.

Today’s topic: dreams. I am worried. Most of the time my dreams are benign and confusing with highlights of sexual content. I can cope with them. But sometimes I dream things that cannot possibly have originated in my brain. I mean, I know my brain. I live in it. It often generates the most random and unexpected things. I call that creativity. I like that aspect of my brain. But when I am faced with the realization that the dreams I have expose thoughts that are actually lurking in my mind…I entertain the thought of just accepting the psychosis and beginning the shock treatment.

And why is it that I am not free in my dreams. In the midst of the most disjointed, dysfunctional, delusional extravaganza, I am strangely aware of my boundaries. That doesn’t mean that I don’t go to the mall naked. It means that when I go to the mall naked I am always shamefully hiding behind a garbage can (and fashioning a suit of armor out of it) instead jogging round from store to store asking them if they want to participate in the ‘Name the Pee-Pee’ contest. Instead, I am wondering why it took me until I was in the mall upstairs outside the Mrs. Fields to REALIZE THAT I WAS NAKED! It must be the dough. Or the smell. And let’s just say that she wasn’t the only one handing out free samples…

I would never cheat on my wife. That said, I can’t even cheat in my dreams. I often find myself in compromising situations only to be thwarted by my morals and ethics. I don’t advocate explaining these dreams in great detail to the Mrs. because even if your explanation includes the disclaimer that your love for her and devotion to her transcended the subconscious so as to restrict your catatonic bone dancing you will still be sentenced to sofa-sleep. (Davenport dalliance dreams are delicious)

Why is nudity such a part of dreams? I see naked people. Usually I don’t know them. Often I am naked. Nearly always, my wife is naked. I will probably study this phenomenon a little more closely to see what the expert wacknoids who think they know but are really guessing have to say about it. My own pre-researched conclusion that I jump to is that the forbidden nature of nudity is socialized into us to the extent that it is only in dreams that we can dip our toe into these illicit waters.

Now, a dream. Last night I had a strangely disjointed dream about my friend Brad. Brad owns a successful advertising company but in my dream he was a plastic surgeon living and practicing out of his house in Hawaii. My dream picks up the story when I go in to visit him for an indescribable procedure. I can describe WHAT he did but not WHY he did it. I was lying on a table and he came up to my left arm and sank his scalpel deep into the shoulder and cut a line from it to the inside of my elbow right alongside my bicep. I remember feeling nothing. Not painful, no cutting. I do remember thinking that as he cut I was growing more delirious as if he had some sort of elixir on his knife that caused an anesthetic response (both local and general). As he cut, he complained about how hard it was to cut through a piece of fat near the shoulder/bicep division. He had to cut that a few times to get a deep as he somehow needed to cut. He left the room and my wife came in, naked, and slipped under the covers of the bed diagonal from me. He came back in and went to her bed, pulled down the covers, and used his scalpel on her hip, I believe, perhaps to revise her scar. But he must have forgotten the anesthetic because his first cut made her SCREAM so loudly that it woke me up.

This dream was not particularly troubling but I always have to ask myself...Why in Hawaii? Why Brad? Why wasn't the bed next to mine? I know why not my bed. She wouldn't want to disturb the large gash in my arm...