“I was in a tangent once”

Dreams fascinate me.

I don't necessarily mean just the dreams I've had specifically. I'm talking about the act of dreaming in the first place; the fact that your conscious mind is unaware of what your subconscious is doing during the night unless your sleep is disturbed or you are startled awake in the aftermath of a particularly vivid nightmare. Maybe it's the fact that I like to be in control over myself and my actions, and my subconscious is one thing I have very little control over. This lack of control really freaked me out after what happened with my dad a few months ago, because I had woken him up inadvertantly by a scream I couldn't control. But, aside from that negative side effect, I've always been intrigued by dreams.

The reason I'm bringing all of this up is because I recently read a short story by an actor named Valentine Pelka. He played Kronos in Highlander: the Series, and his story is part of a collection called “An Evening at Joe's,” a book of Highlander short stories given to me by lizalou. This particular story has nothing to do with the Highlanderverse, but I found it so fascinating I stayed up until 2am Saturday night reading it. It's a story about a man dying from cancer who has no will to live. His doctor sends him to a hypnotherapist, and though he is more than reluctant to undergo the therapy, he eventually concedes. The dream symbolism and techniques involved in the hypnotherapy were really interesting to me, and though parts of the story were undeniably cheesey, it kept me hooked.

It also brought to mind the most disturbing dream I have ever had. For those of you who have already had to listen to this story several times, I apologize. I had this particular dream a couple years ago when I was reading a book called the “House of Leaves,” and I can say with little uncertainty that the two were related. It was one of the most vivid dreams I've ever had, and though it involved a lot of creepy imagery, the most disturbing part was how it ended. My family and I were standing outside of our old house (the one I grew up in) and we had this feeling that we needed to leave. We didn't know why, but it was urgent that we left before something happened, though we had no idea what that something was. Then, we heard a knock at the door. But we were outside the house, remember, so the knock was coming from inside. Then, the door opened and the entire house from floor to ceiling was filled with dirt. Suddenly, a box comes sliding out, and I realize it's a coffin. We catch it and the lid pops open and I am staring at my own decomposing corpse. Now, I did a lot of amateur dream analysis on this one, and came up with some theories that I think fit pretty well at the time, but I can't discount the fact that the creepy house from “House of Leaves” might have had more to do with it than anything.

Finally, to close, I will explain the title of this post. It's a quote from an episode of Alias titled “Conscious.” In this episode Sydney goes through an experimental kind of dream therapy created by a really cooky, druggy doctor. The quote is from his assistant, Kaya, who spends the entirety of the episode high. She says it to Jack, who replies, “How nice for you.” I almost went with, “Facon, anyone?” but in the end I decided this one fit better since it deals with dreams more directly. Luckily, unlike Syndney, I have not ever dreamt of cutting someone's hand off of fighting myself in a room full of plastic, but I have had quite a nice dream about Sark. I'll leave that one to your imagination.