Dream a Little Dream of Me

Last night I was at the National Museum of the American Indian, a place I had never been before. My mother was in town and we went to the museum to look at their exhibit of miniature pumpkins, since I think pumpkins are among the cutest things ever. Before we got there we ran into Walt Whitman, who stopped to talk to a little boy. Walt put his hand on the boy’s head and made some sort of gesture like he was absolving him from sin.

For as long as I can remember I’ve had incredibly vivid, occasionally prophetic dreams. Ranging from dreaming that I visited Larry Bird in the hospital while he got back surgery to dreaming that we did a poll on this site for the best drag performers in D.C. to dreaming that my family went to the White House and my mother had a throwdown with Bush, my dreams are pretty realistic yet strange. I also tend to dream in foreign languages, like French and Spanish. When I was in high school I started writing them down, since even though I almost always remember them, I thought that tracing the narrative arc of my dreams would provide insight into my present and future.

I never have dreams that I’m flying, (except in airplanes) or that I’m naked in front of a group of people, but many of the things that happen in my dreams could easily happen in real life. Sex dreams, which many of my friends seem to have all the time, are a rare occurrence. More frequently I have cuddling dreams, in which there's nakedness on occasion, but it only goes so far as spooning. One recent sex dream, however, took place in James McNeill Whistler’s Peacock Room in the Freer Gallery. (If someone could arrange this to actually happen, that would be awesome.)

I often look up my dreams in a dream dictionary (also known as googling "dream dictionary + symbol in dream") to try to parse the symbols present in each dream. In last night's dream, since pumpkins played a big role, I looked up the meaning of the orange fruits. Pumpkins = female sexuality. Pumpkins can also signify being receptive or open to new experiences, or that time is running out on something, a la Cinderella. Going with the female sexuality meaning, if I was searching for the pumpkins and didn't find them, but instead found a long-dead male poet, does this mean I will be destined to never have another girlfriend and to sit at home alone reading poetry? Maybe.

A few months ago I had a dream that I was on a train, and the train went by an ocean, where I could see humpback whales breaching. Whales are my favorite animal, and seeing them means that "something important and deeply felt is being realized or confronted." This was definitely accurate given a current situation, but could it also just mean that my subconscious knows that I like whales, and that I rarely ever get to see then, so why not throw a few into my dreams? Who knows.

Some of my friends put stock into horoscopes, but I think dreams are a better barometer for assessing how things are going. When I'm agitated, exes start to pop up in my dreams, and it's either really good with them or really bad. It's a clear sign that I need to start doing yoga more often when exes of exes are in my dream and we're friends.

Does anyone else pay attention to what goes on in their dreams? Or am I silly for trying to do so?