Amazing Dreams

The other night I had a pretty common dream, at least for me. It reminded me, though, about how boring my dream life is and how often my dreams contain the same, tired elements. It's almost as if sleeping, while still a valid escape from the horrors of daily life, isn't an escape from tedium.

While my dreams often have me driving a car or riding a bike with mechanical problems such as tricky or non-working brakes or steering, shouting ineffectively to be understood, impotent fighting with my blows performed as though I were swinging my fists under water, and, less often, scantily clad or naked women, I frequently have dreams involving mazes. Not the kind of mazes like rats run through for food or that are seen on some palatial estates, mind you, more like three dimensional mazes like you'd find in trees, cavernous mountains, or other large objects. In this latest dream, I had to solve how to climb and get through sculptures that sat on lawns and corners of some neighborhood.

In most of these dreams, I've already solved the maze and have determined the fastest way through. Incredibly, I'm often proud of knowing the best and fastest way through, and somehow "win" when I'm being chased or just showing off. That the same mazes, or at least the appearance of a known one, shows up might mean something, but I have no idea what. Maybe it's a lame attempt by my dream self to give me confidence or it just might be a lack of imagination.

It's not unusual, I don't think, for my dreams to keep being centered on certain places, such as my apt in Playa del Rey where I happily lived for seven years, but these mazes confound me. I mean, it's not like I'm any good at solving mazes in real life or enjoy them very much, so it's not like I'm doing something in the dream world that I want to do in this one. While the appearance of willing women who want something to do with me makes sense in a dream setting, mazes do not.

Still, I can expect to show everyone up by my whisking through that conical mountain at least a few times every year until I die, just as I've always done. I can also expect to get so excited that I'll never stay asleep to dream long enough to find out what she's really willing to do.