Dream analysis

I've never been one to over-analyze my dreams, but lately I've been having dreams that have gotten me quite curious. The subject matters of these dreams aren't necessarily anything out of the ordinary, but the characters in them have been consistently different. I used to have dreams with somewhat believable plot lines (at least until you wake up and think, "Oh, I guess that WAS kind of silly."), but with characters or settings that aren't familiar to you in real life. A classic example is a dream in which I'm doing something with a group of my friends, and I'd say, "And you were there.... but it didn't look like you. But somehow I just knew it was you." Or "and we were at my house, but it didn't look like my house in real life, but it just was, you know?" Lately, though, I've been having much more realistic dreams.

A week or 2 ago I had a dream in which I was on a dangerously tall iceberg with some of my friends (Jana, Nick, Anna, Kerstin, etc... these are a few friends from Greystone Singers, and in my dream they all looked like the real people I know in my waking life), and this iceberg was made up of all of our personal belongings frozen into the ice. So we were climbing to the top, chipping the ice away to retrieve our belongings as we went along. Everything was ok until we realized that we had climbed up extremely high, and we had accidentally removed all of the belongings that we were using as foot and hand holds. So at that point we panicked, and we were all struggling to hang on for our lives. And naturally, because all of the people in my dream were real-life Greystone Singers, we decided to sing Moses Hogan's "Elijah Rock" to comfort us in case we were to plunge to our deaths. The funny thing is, though, that I don't remember being frightened when I woke up from this dream.

Two nights ago was a different story. I had a dream that I was with Shelly and Anna (why is Anna suddenly a recurring character in my dreams?) and we were in residence on some university campus (visually I'd have to think that it was not U of S, although in my dream I felt like it could have been). We were hanging out in our room on a relatively low floor, like 2nd maybe, and there were tons of people around us in residence and outside the building. We then casually walked over to our back window or balcony or something, and we freaked out because there, walking very purposefully towards our apartment/condo/residence room, was a well-known serial rapist and murderer that had been all over the local news relatively recently. We panicked, and had to decide quickly what we were going to do: should we run to a high level floor in the building and hide under beds, in the showers, etc. where the killer might not think to check? Should we run out of the building as fast as we can and get as far away as possible? We decided to run away, and we couldn't see the killer after that.... but as we ran, if we ever stopped anywhere, Shelly would freak out saying, "You guys, I feel his presence here right now - he knows we're here!" So we'd have to run again to another location. The same thing kept happening no matter where we went; we couldn't escape it. Then weird things kept happening with Shelly's intuition and crazy "coincidence" occurrences that led us to believe that the rapist/murderer was after us because he thought Shelly was someone else. I know that in my dream, 2 things happened that we thought were really weird and coincidental, and I can't remember the first one, but the second one involved us driving away in a car at dangerous speeds, then, despite the fact that it wasn't icy on the roads, we spun out of control and hit a building that a girl named "Lisa" (?) worked at. Somehow we knew that the killer was trying to stall us, and he thought that Shelly was Lisa, so weird things like that kept happening, and Anna and Shelly and I were all caught up in it with no real way to escape.

I woke up from this dream with my heart pounding. When I calmed myself down, I went back to sleep and the dream picked up right where it left off. Finally I woke up again and decided to stay up so as to not have to dream about the serial rapist and murderer who was after us again.

Then, on a much less nightmare-ish note, just last night I had a dream in which I was at some sort of discovery museum type thing, and I went upstairs to another display room, and who was sitting there giving an informational talk about New Zealand, netball, and other kiwi things, but Fiona and Sam?! I remember walking in there and being like, "Oh my goodness!" but having to be quiet because they were busy working and talking to the people who were taking the tour. I had to patiently wait until they were done to go over there and give them both a big hug. Once we had officially met, I ran down to my car to grab a postcard that I've been meaning to mail them (in real life, I'll mail it today! haha). Again, although I've never met them, Fiona and Sam actually looked like themselves in my dream.

I'm not sure what this change in characterization means, or if it means anything at all, but it's just something that I've been noticing lately. For years my dreams consisted of people with names, and faces, and personal connections, but they were never accurate in terms of those real-life people. Now if I have a dream about a friend, it actually looks like that friend. In fact, I had a very vivid dream about a month ago that I was getting a tattoo with my good friend Nick from Greystones. In real life, we got body mods together in Prague (I got another ear piercing and he and I designed him a travel tattoo that he got on the back of his right arm, right above his elbow) and then we decided that if I was to get a NZ tattoo of a koru, we should go together. In this dream, we were together and I got the tat right below my bra line on my left side rib cage. When I woke up I realized that I didn't in fact have that tattoo yet, but the dream was so vivid that I decided, "hmm, that's a good idea!" and that's where I plan to get it now.

I'm rambling a bit here, but I think that this is pretty interesting. I really think that there's something to be said for dream analysis, but I don't have enough of a knowledge of it to know whether my change in dream characters means anything significant. Regardless, I've just provided you with perhaps some entertainment on a lazy Saturday morning. :o)