Shades of Grey

I am a dreamer.  Have been all of my life.  As I have said before it's a bit like going to a second life when I go to sleep.  Dreams come most nights.  Always different and at times somewhat bizarre in nature.  Whilst  many of them become a core memory as though they had really happened, others just melt away.   

Most dreams are quite strong and clear in my mind when I wake and so it's a strange feeling for those that fade.  Irrespective of how much I want some to stay they ever so gradually disappear in the moments of wakefulness between sleep and getting out of bed.  Again it's like replaying the scene from the '2001 A Space Odyssey' film where Dave, whilst protectively wrapped in a mis-matched colour wise space suit, slowly inserts and turns a metal key to eject the core memory modules from the HAL computer, who being bereft of arms and legs, can only gently protest by saying, "I can feel it, Dave", as its memory slowly fades away.  It's kinda like that for me 'cept without the modules and the key and for sure there's no Dave in my head.  

For me it's more probable that the once upon a time brand new zinc carbon battery which was delivered at the same time as my head is now pretty damn flat but still connected to and so trying to keep my old style RAM memory (that's a computers Random Access Memory for you non techie types) energised, for which I have no tape back ups at all.  Hence my regular use of PooTube and this blog.  Anyway, whilst I have writ about the space odyssey before I do not break into singing 'Daisy, Daisy' first thing every morning whilst laid in bed.  What would the neighbours think?

Yes a dreamer.  For sure a day dreamer too.  Earliest memory of that was in Mr Swinglers class in the first year of the junior school.  I guess I'm about 7 or 8 years old.  Sat at the back of the class for no other reason other than that's where the spare desk was when I first arrived.  God knows where I had gone but I do remember something winging past me as Mr Swingler, now enraged and looking like for all I might have imagined the teacher on the front cover of Pink Floyd's 'The Wall' album; 'cept I guess he was in his mid thirties with a red and purple angry face and a white hot throbbing vein on his forehead that was about to go pop!

Now I know that some memories from my early years have also been suppressed simply cos a visit to my cousin Gary last Christmas or so resulted in him re-introducing me to a few of them.  Yeah!  I'm sat in his new extension having just been introduced to his wife to be having a jolly good reminisce when he suddenly says, 'Do you remember when we went to the bodybuilders gym when we were sixteen where you went mad and pushed really hard with all the weights just before collapsing on your way to the showers and of waking up with a bodybuilder stood over you, naked, with water dripping off the end of his [ahem] onto your face'?  After a small silence with Gary staring at me with a big wide eyed grin on his face and his wife to be sat on the edge of the chair with her hands on her knees, waiting in great anticipation and properly interested on what I was going to say...  I said:

'Er, no.  But thanks for reintroducing me to that one matey.  I think it's time to go home now...'.

Anyway, not only am I good at forgetting things I'm also very good at generating fantastical and grotesque places and of wishful and unwanted events in my life in my unconsciousness when I sleep.  I can't associate it with any foods I might eat.  For example, cheese, cos the other day I ate a mountain of cheddar just before bed yet slept well like a rather oversized baby in a man sized crib.  It's a good thing that I live alone cos anyone following me to the toilet the next morning, well for sure it would have resulted in a scream and an impromptu divorce. 

My unconsciousness must be strong.  I  recall being at a 'developing presence' event.  A managers meeting designed to help folk who might one day do presentations to millions of other folk.  Oh how they overestimated me.  Perhaps also to help folk deal with aggression with others at work too.  Of 'centring down' which was taught to prevent the squeaky falsetto voice that comes whenever you breathe from high in your chest.  'Hello my name is Wayne, squeak!, ...ooh I feel dizzy..!' I might've tried to say just before falling off the stage in front of a million people due to an inability to breathe.  

Part of the event was relaxation exercises.  One particular was about focussing on the pure art of it.  I'm sat in a circle on the floor with perhaps eleven others.  The instructor is in the middle of us.  I close my eyes.  He starts to gently speak.  I relax, focus on my heart and breathing and...  I'm gone.  In my mind I'm suddenly walking through a doorway out of a dark windowless building into a bright lit courtyard.  Roman like in design with white marble and a bright sky.  It's blinding!  I hold my hand up to shade my eyes.  It's all in monochrome.  A billion shades of black and white.  I see the silver leaves on the trees in fantastical detail.  I watch them rustle in the breeze.  And then bang!  I snap out of it into a panic.  I'm still sat in the room.  The instructor is still speaking in a gentle voice.  My heart is racing.  Where the hell did I go?  What just happened?  Wow!

I've writ before about as a child dreaming of the lightning man stood tall at the back of the house on stormy days, of the most horrid sensation of falling down the stairs but never reaching the end; and, of the armadas of aircraft flying in formation in the sky on their way to battle monsters just over the horizon.  Also of walking out into a cold garden watching the planets and the universe collapsing down onto the earth, being unable to breathe and being sucked up into space whilst fighting to get back inside the house.  That was probably the same night where mum had tucked me tight into the double bed and where I had somehow slipped under the covers.  In the dark I suddenly awoke.  Being unable to breathe there I was in a panic, a six year old darting about under the covers like a flattened rat unable to find my way out.  Oh dear.  Do make sure that I am dead before you bury me, please!  

Then of course there's been the occasional [ahem] adult dreams too.  Raw in their animalistic nature leaving me to wake up somewhat flustered inside a tent?  I don't remember the bedsheets being like that when I went to sleep?!?  But of late, something similar but with a lot more to it.  

Just the other morning there I was laid quietly in a tentless bed thinking of the dream I had just left behind.  I was in a place, could've been anytime, anywhere but for sure had to be a time and place where most of my life experiences were behind me.  A woman appears.  I do not recognise her but there is a sense of familiarity about her.  I do not recall how we came together, just that we were.  Chatting.  All very pleasant.  As though I had rediscovered someone lost in time.  Not an old flame or girlfriend or acquaintance who I recognised though.  No, more of a kindred spirit.  Gently walking between dream scenes as though dancing together through all the random imagery as it was projected onto the back of my eyelids.  

The constant though was that we were together, chatting about what had been happening with us in the intervening years.  Somehow fully attuned with each others thoughts.  Common interests in things.  Perhaps the gentlest of flirting with each other.  My dreams include detailed images like I'm watching high definition TV and often forms my strongest memories.  I know we spoke in this dream but specifically what was said I do not know.  But the feelings remain strong with me today.  Of the wish to be with her, to not let the opportunity pass again.  To not let her slip out of my fingers as perhaps once upon a time she did.  

The dream changes.  She is with me.  Very close.  I am prone but not necessarily in a bed.  For all I know I could have been floating on a cushion of clouds.  I'm naked.  My body is slim like it used to be in my twenties.  She is similarly undressed.  And without going into the 50 or so shades of what then happened in that dream, what overrides my memory today is the feeling of happiness and of completeness in that moment.  That the person that I had so longed for and so wished to be with had finally, finally come true.  No it was not about the you know what.  The feeling today, the strong memory is that she was with me, we were as close as any two human beings could be, comfortable with each other, gentle with each other, what more should I say... 

It's a strange feeling to wake up with.  No big grins on my face.  No tent poles in the bed.  Just a lovely feeling of calmness.  A beautiful sensation of being together as one.  That something always wished for had finally happened.  A state of completeness I guess.  As I woke she slowly melted and disappeared from my mind.  I'm left with fragmented images of her which I now hang on to as best I can.  

But there I am alone, in bed, in a semi-darkened room.  It's quiet.  I catch myself thinking about my past just as a small tear hits my pillow.  Neva mind.  Up and at 'em Wayne.  Which I do and so get on with the day.  But importantly, a handful of the core feelings are still with me, much stronger than the lost imagery might suggest.   

I guess that's what life with someone you love is all about.  I'm just a very very slow starter.  Or I just keep on falling off the metaphorical bike of life.  Too many of my dreams are about not having things, losing things, being unable to cope with things, being unable to do things, of being pressured time wise with impossible situations that have no way out.  No not nightmares any more.  I am no longer a child so do not scare easily.  But they're not so pleasant anymore apart from the rare dreams that swamp my body with good feelings as she did to me the other night.  Most nights I have no wish to sleep for it will take me to my other life, sometimes to places and times I would rather not go.  

As Shakespeare once wrote, 'To sleep.  Perchance to dream...'.  

Yes, always.  It's just that --- I wish things were a little less grey for me.  

Ciao