Do you dream about the same thing over and over?
For years I had theme dreams. How I wish they were of nice things. Meadows. Carnivals. Melting ice cream cones on a beach. I’d even take being naked in public.
Nope. Mine were scary. A man with a machete looking to whack off my head. Or falling through snow to a burning lava river below. Slice and burn. Not my choice to exit this world. And I can’t forget the wolves racing across the tundra to devour me.
Of course I never actually died in these dreams. I always wake up just before being diced. Dreaming in color just makes it that more vivid. Especially when its monster armadillos riding motorcycles throwing giant cupcakes at you.
I think we are fascinated with dreams. My friend Jessica Cooper wrote a great YA book about dreams called REM, which recently made it to the Top 50 semi-finalist round with Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award. Read my interview with her here on it. In REM when a group of kids discover a machine to record their dreams they soon discover how using it transforms them, in fantastic and terrifying ways.
Perhaps we’re better off not remembering our dreams – or re-living them over and over. Perhaps they need to stay as dreams to ward the dark away.
But back to machetes. I ran for miles in my dreams avoiding decapitation from that unknown machete wielding maniac. He swung blades of steel seeking my neck. Across dark woods. Through houses. Down lonely roads. He chased me.
Then one day a crowd came. They surged onto the machete murderer and whacked him to death with garden hoses. He disappeared and never returned. For the first time someone came to help me. And they destroyed the thing that haunted me most. They gave me hope. Someone finally came to my rescue.
Maybe this is the reason I write from the darker side with a touch of hope. No matter how dark things are, there is hope for salvation. And then it hit me. The machete man was awfully familiar to the antagonist in my book, A Human Element, being released by Echelon Press in March, 2012. The power of dreams, right?
I looked up what this machete terror-filled dream could mean. When someone wields a machete at you it’s time to be brave enough to walk away from a situation that may be causing you to feel threatened and under attack. Check out what your dreams could mean here.
The man with the machete has never returned. I think he hides inside me and comes out when I write, and that is the only place he’ll remain safe from now on. If not, I’ll send back in the angry hoard of garden-hose attackers to get him good.
I wouldn’t mind the garden hose dream. To dream about them suggests a washing away of mistakes, thereby giving a fresh opportunity to grow as a better person. I’ll take that.
Do you have theme dreams and do they affect what you write?