My dreams are disturbing. Really disturbing. In the morning when I wake up, I often consider finding the nearest Jungian Institute to check myself in as a subject. I must admit I was never much of a Freud fan but I do have matricidal goldfish dreams. Oedipal goldfish drama aside, I did find out that although they don’t kill their mothers, these fish do actually eat their young quite often or anything else that fits indiscriminately in their mouth. Maybe it’s just all their collective unconscious drama of being flushed down toilets after so many school fairs that they tend not to get attached.
They say the subconscious controls our dreams so I wonder what the hell I ever did to mine that it serves up a nightly stream of anxiety and horror. (And for the record clinics define one to two nightmares a week which cause you distress to be sufficient cause for concern.) Everyone has drama in their lives but growing up as a WASP the fear of wearing white after Labor Day just scratched the surface of what wasn’t talked about over Tanqueray and tonics. Jung said, “I have noticed that dreams are as simple or complicated as the dreamer is himself.” Lack of non-inclusive pronoun not-withstanding, maybe it is my very rich imagination and ability as a writer to tap into a world between light and dark, past and future and seen and unseen which fuels this nightly chiaroscuro.
One of the ways to combat bad dreams is to make sure you destress during your day so I often take long walks on the beautiful beaches here to take in the amazing feeling of the sand in my toes and waves washing onto the shore and children and dogs and people experiencing the joy of nature and I wonder with all the Brazilian bikini bottoms in fashion now do swim suits cost less because there is practically no fabric used.
And then I see it. The one-legged seagull. For some reason this image fills my waking life as well as my sleeping life. For most people a seagull with a limp does not even register in their consciousness. They are more concerned it will try to steal their gourmet sandwich. And yet I wonder, does it matter if you have a bum leg if you have the ability to fly? Well at some point even birds need to land.
So, similar to my goldfish googling I learn from my online research that seagulls often stand on one leg as a way of heat regulation. It is apparently not an uncommon sight. And yet in our polluted oceans a gull may very well get a leg tangled in a net or plastic which renders it unusable. And according to ornithologists, one-footed seagulls often lose their mate or have more difficulty finding a partner, especially as the courtship displays requires two strong legs. So as a writer attuned to the romantic life of all creatures, maybe I am picking up on something, concerned for the courtship displays of one-legged gulls the way I am for the courtship displays of girls who don’t have the perfect body for that bikini.
As Jung tried to point out, it may be all in the interpretation. Goldfish in dreams are considered good omens unless they are dead in which case it indicates you have stopped believing in your dreams. It strikes me of the two different meanings of dreams, one which is in your inner world when you sleep and the other is what you hope for yourself in waking life. The vulnerabilities and imperfections I see in the world and in myself do not need to impede my dreams or anyone else’s. In fact, it’s the very compassion and empathy I feel as I move through the world which makes me a better writer. But maybe, just maybe, a pleasant dream now and then would be nice.
