The Booze Cruiser's Blues
Introduction:
Everybody dreams. Have you ever tried to write down accounts of your dreams? There was a time when I conducted a little “experiment of the mind”, where I would make it a point to try to write down what I could remember of the dreams that I had, shortly after awakening, while the memories were still fresh in my mind. After a while, I accumulated a number of written accounts of the dreams I had.
This is an account of a dream I had on the night of January 13, 2010:
The Dream:
The Booze Cruiser’s Blues
I dreamed that I had gone into a place that may have been a bar or a pub. Now, I really don’t drink, but there I was, I believe with a beer in my hand, seated on one of those stools that you find lined up in front of the counter of the bar. The place was not too large, but it was comfortable, with woodgrained walls and woodgrained countertop, and the decor followed an overall emerald green color scheme, which gave a kind of more “personal” feel to it. Then I was standing in front of the bartender, a rather youngish man, no older than late 30’s, with short brownish blondish hair and mustache. He wore wire rimmed spectacles. He was dispensing a drink out of a tap that had one of those curved handles made of white porcelain. He looked like a friendly guy. I held a bottle of beer in my hand that had just been opened, and the froth kind of peeked out of the top a little. There may have been a couple of other people standing in my vicinity, but I thought that I had the bartender’s attention, and I tried to say something to him. Then he got a little surly, and said “I really wasn’t speaking to you at this time,” or something like that, and I felt a little put off. But the negative feeling was not quite impacting me fully, as I was still in a reasonably good mood from the ambience there. At first I thought of just brushing it off, and giving the benefit of the doubt. But then the thought entered my mind that I should just abruptly walk out of the place. I tried to weigh this out in my mind. But as I was starting to reconsider, I woke up.
Completing the Dream
After I woke up, I felt kind of bad – a bit hurt. (from a dream!) So I decided to “complete the dream”. I closed my eyes, and visualized that I was still in that bar, and was thinking in my mind that the bartender had been rude, and that such behavior was inappropriate in this context. I had not been rude. (Although actually, I really did not belong in that kind of place – I really don’t drink.) So I left the place rudely. Then I felt a little better, even though I knew I had made up the ending to the dream… (but then again, wasn’t it just a DREAM?)
NOTES: What does this say about dreams, and how the mind works? I’m sure we’ve all awoken from dreams, either good dreams or bad dreams, and have had some kind of feeling in us from the dream. It’s interesting that we can sometimes have very strong feelings or emotions upon awakening that have actually originated from a dream, while we were sleeping. Does the subconscious mind influence our emotions and thinking, and ultimately our conscious behavior, more than we may realize?
They say that people tend to have dreams with more negative content than positive content. I suspect that dreams are a way for the subconscious mind to act out the tensions of life, in a kind of a “dream theater”. It’s interesting, because on the evening before I had the dream, I had been kind of hounded a little bit about some things by a family member, which made me feel a little funny for a while. Could that have influenced the content of the dream which I noted above?
Also, when I read the account of the dream, and what I made up after I awoke to “complete the dream”, I actually feel a little bit of satisfaction (like I had done the right thing, or something like that) – even though I know that all of this was ultimately from what was just a dream!
Hmmm… the mind (especially the subconscious part of it) is a curious thing, isn’t it?
The Booze Cruiser's Blues