Pleasant Dreams

I love my dreams.

I don't mean as in 'hopes and dreams' (although I'm quite fond of those).

I mean the ones where Geraldine Page teaches me how to fly in a candle-lit kingdom where human flight is outlawed. The ones where I go back to Yellowstone and float under the Canyon Falls, chatting with friends and taking walks down secret paths that lead to New Orleans and Provincetown. The ones where I know the hidden passages of an old house and can flee from the monsters du nuit.

I even like the ones (well, the one ... I haven't had it for awhile) where I wake up knowing that I've committed the near-perfect murder and am pretty sure I'm going to get away with it. Something about a body in a lake and a wrecked car down the road. At least I woke up before they caught me.

Strangely, Larry's had a similar dream ... but not, as far as we know, on the same night. Maybe we were Sacco and Vanzetti in a previous life. Wouldn't that explain a lot?

I like when characters in my dreams make me laugh, and I think "I wish I was that funny," only to wake up and realize that, duh, it was my subconscious that did the writing.

I like my dreams so much that over the past several months, perhaps to a fault, I have mastered the art of the nap just to enjoy those extra REM nuggets of surrealism. Surely it beats watching Richard and Judy, and I've gotten a few story ideas. I'd have more, but I tend to forget to have a pen and notebook handy ... I'd rather just go back to sleep and try to find the lost dream. Or, sometimes, I'll write the dream down only to wake up and realize the perfect transcription was only the next phase of the dream.

I saw The Science of Sleep this afternoon (is it better to watch dreams than to have them?). I'd read about it ages ago, but it's finally here in the UK. It's an utterly charming film about a young man who lives in, if not perhaps for, his dreams.

It's out on DVD in the States. Watch it if you haven't already. Gael García Bernal has never been so adorably beguiling.