Dream Interlude

This morning I was half woken up by my house seeming to rumble and shake. It was over after an instant and I turned over and pulled the blankets up around me and closed my eyes, attributing it to the wind and to the dream-like state where everything feels more intense. A few hours later when I was fully awake and on facebook, I read in Valerie's status message that there had been a minor earthquake this morning.

I've never felt an earthquake before!!

I'd been hoping there would be one while I was here, honestly. Just a small one, like this. Part of me wishes I'd been more awake and could have appreciated it for what it was as it happened. But I also sort of like the vague, dream-like memory of my house shaking that I now know was real. In some ways it's more powerful like that.

Meanwhile I've been having instense dreams recently. So I'd like to record some of them here, although obviously attempting to captures dreams with words is hopeless. At least this way years from now if I read this, maybe I'll have a tiny flash of memory.

The first dream involved actually sitting up in bed, which is rare for me. My right foot was completely numb and I was half-awakened by the discovery that I couldn't move it or feel it at all. In a panic, I sat up and shook and prodded at it until sensation returned, at which point I flopped back onto my pillow, my heart still pounding and breath coming rapidly. The frustrating thing is that in whatever dream world I was in, this whole event had some deep significance. I distinctly remember lying there, catching my breath, letting the panic fade back into sleep, and thinking something along the lines of "that's it, that decided it..." But what was "it"? Probably, really, nothing. But I know at the time it felt crucial.

Monday night I had the most persistent anxiety dreams I'd had for a while, without even being anxious about anything. All night, over and over, I was dreaming about my classes the next day, doing Apples to Apples with the remaining three classes. The anxiety seems to have mainly been about running out of time and not having them write me messages. We kept running out of time because Apples to Apples and karaoke took up almost the whole period. I kept waking up, or partially waking up, and trying to reassure myself that it had gone fine with 3-2, we'd gotten through Apples to Apples and karaoke and still had time for messages. But even though I knew that was true, I couldn't make the timing work out in my mind. Did we do karaoke first, or the game? I couldn't remember, and I would fall frustrated back into the dream. It was only after I'd gotten up and dressed that it occurred to me that we weren't singing karaoke in class.

Last night, or rather this morning, I was punished for my laziness in calling in sick for the morning by several hours of continuous bad dreams. First I forgot how to get to 一中; I thought it was on the 9th floor of a certain building, but the elevator would only go down. I stopped at every floor it would let me, but they were all fancy restaurants or ballrooms. No school. I was going to be late and I couldn't believe I'd forgotten how to get there. I had the feeling it had just disappeared and I could never go there again. Later in the dream I was going to an elementary school, the one I'm scheduled to go to next Monday. One of the teachers was telling me that they didn't think very well of me there because last time I showed up late and completely unprepared and my class with the fifth and sixth-years was a flop. I wanted to explain that I was late because I couldn't find the school (which in the dream, for the record, seemed to be in a kind of little stip mall down by the water near Kobe) and I was unprepared because I'd misunderstood how the class would work, but couldn't find the right words. I was determined to make this class go better, however. The teacher wanted us to sing some songs, but I wanted to play the greeting game with the progression of animals, and I took charge and got the kids into a circle and began to review greetings with them. At one point I distinctly remember getting fed up with whatever the teacher was saying and hissing "Shut up!!" to her. But then, when I went up to the whiteboard to write out the outline of the greetings, I discovered that I could barely form letters. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't write the word "name" neatly; it came out wobbly and illegible. I assumed this meant I was having a stroke and I panicked, saying I had to leave and call my mom. Someone, I'm not sure who, led me out of the room, saying she'd get me to a hospital, and I kept repeating that I needed to call my mom but I didn't know how to make international calls. And it was this panic that finally woke me up for the day for good.

Such have been my dreams recently. There've been other snippets too, that don't even fit in with the overall plots of the dreams (such as they are). Like this morning I know there was a moment when I was in an airplane about to crash into a house. I pulled myself into enough consciousness to realize it wasn't real, and then slipped back into a different part of the dream world. I go through short phases of a few days or a few weeks of having many of these very intense, panicked or even morbid dreams, and I'm not sure what triggers it. Maybe nothing. Maybe it's just something my subconscious needs to do once in a while. The last time was shortly after I first got here, when I started having many dreams involving the deaths of people I knew. Perhaps it's not so random. Right now I've been feeling the weight of various decisions, like leaving Japan, and my sense is that it comes from that. From starting to really face the next several years of my life. Not that anything is wrong, or that I think I'm making mistakes. Just that it's scary.

I'm glad I got to feel an earthquake while I was here.

I should be able to think of appropriate lyrics, but nothing's coming to me. Hmm, let's go with this:

強く望むことが　欲しいと望んだよ
夢の先なんて見たくもないから。。。