The Privacy of Dreams

NASA endured further budget cuts.

I awoke with a big smile on my face this morning.
Yes, I'd just had a perfectly happy dream, and the last act was still fresh in my mind - not just the images, but the feeling of complete happiness.

I was with a friend. I have no idea who he was.
We had just stopped at a gas station. I say gas station because it was something from an American road movie: hot sun, old redneck guy sat in shade outside, erratic whiskers on his chin, possibly smoking a clay pipe. I think my friend was driving a red pick-up truck. We approached the man. He wore a straw hat and he smiled and most of his teeth were missing. My friend politely asked him if there were any hand-drying facilities and the man directed us round the back.

I think we walked quite some way to find them. As we approached, I seemed to recall having seen the hand-drying facilities before - at night - from above, as though I had been looking from a third floor window, and the small courtyard below was lit with fairy lights and people were dancing. With this memory, I was able to relocate the hand-dryers. They were two tall machines, like cabinets, and metallic with rows and columns of nozzles and buttons. We each stood at a cabinet and moved our hands in front of the nozzles, until one would momentarily blast warm air before switching off. We couldn't figure out which nozzles worked, or what the buttons did, or how the buttons and nozzles might be related. A dark display slot informed us that we would have, I think, one minute per nozzle, and this appeared to clear up the mystery and we were able to dry our hands.

As we walked back, we strolled through the beautiful ruins of an abbey. The grass was brilliant green in the sunlight, and the shadows like something from an Impressionist painting. Sat on a wooden bench a little ahead were a black woman and her young son - he was about ten years old. I knew them immediately. I think I had met her a few times before, and we were rapidly falling in love. I was so pleased to see them both. And on the path ahead was a small tree root. I told my friend that I was going to perform a comedy trip. I extended the pauses between my words so that I would utter the word 'trip' at the moment we reached the root, which would correspond with the moment the woman and child would see and recognize me. My trip was brilliant and I was very pleased with it. I continued walking. The woman and child were happy to see me - from my peripheral vision, I could see them beaming. The woman called out 'I love your coliseum!' I thought to myself 'It's an abbey, and it's not mine,' but I quickly dispatched the thought because it didn't matter and the thought threatened to mar my supremely happy mood. I carried on walking and was about to do a cool extension of my hand as if to say 'Thanks gorgeous; catch you later for some love,' when the boy spoke up: 'How many times have you died?'
At that, I wheeled round and took a few steps back to them both and they were still beaming. At some point around here, I realized that the child was a robot, and that I was too. I was happy to talk about this with a kindred spirit. 'I've died twice,' I explained.
'Cool! Me too! I've had two new bodies.'
I felt a bit of miscommunication and felt the need to clarify a point: 'Oh, I've only had one new body, but I've had a new heart too! If your heart breaks, then that's a way to die too.'
Still smiling, the boy tilted his head to give the matter some thought.

We arrived at what might have been a hotel or a manor house. It was furnished more like a manor house, but then it had corridors lined with numbered doors, which were guests' rooms. It was evening, and the lamps were turned on in corners of the rooms. A party was about to start and people were arriving.
A famous musician came and sat on some floor cushions with me. He had brought his cat. I was in awe of this guy and knew lots about him and thought very carefully about what I might say to him.
'You know, Deep Purple are coming later. You love them don't you!'
He seemed to know already, and was very happy. It was a tranquil inner happiness rather than an outwardly excited happiness.
I then chose to speak to him through his cat. I held his cat, and the cat didn't like me and tried to wriggle from my metal arms. 'How long was your journey, you poor thing?' I asked the cat.
The musician replied 'Oh, it was only an hour.'
I was surprised: I thought it must have been a much longer trip.

Searching for a bathroom, I found myself wandering down corridors until I found a games room, which was far more ostentatious than all the other rooms. A door led to a bathroom with gold taps. I could see this because the wall separating the games room from the bathroom was built with a large glass-less window. I found myself in conflict: This must be the best bathroom in the building; but anybody can peer in. Do the best bathrooms all have viewing windows? Is this how the royal family go about their ablutions?
The toilet itself was horrendous, with papers and scum lining the bowl, the murky water level rising and falling, always threating to spill into the room.

And then I woke, presumably needing a wee.

It occurs to me that I can identify much of the imagery, and can understand its significance to me. An outsider would not be able to do that. An outsider might take the abbey scene and propose a religious connection; or the ruins of a belief; or the concept of love beyond death... I could postulate dozens of scenarios. What a stranger won't know, for example, is that the scene closely resembled a scene from our next game, and only with that knowledge is it possible to find the consistent themes within the dream that reveal the dream's meaning. An outsider, also, wouldn't know that, before going to bed, I watched Rude Tube, and then read a few pages of Derren Brown's 'autobiography'. For an outsider to interpret my dream, they would first need a context for each image (for an omg cat is different to, say, a dead cat by the roadside), and then an understanding of my connection with the contextual image: How do I feel about an omg cat? Does it make me laugh and do I subsequently feel guilty laughing at such a puerile youtube clip and shake my head mournfully at the collapse of civilization? Do I contemplate buying a cat and teaching it to feed a mouse in order to add my own cat clip to youtube and vie for some pastiche of fame? And so forth.

If anyone has any cool dreams to share, please feel free to add a comment safe in the knowledge that the meaning will be well hidden from strangers! ;o)