a troubling dream
"Her teeth fell out. \ Late autumn leaves, \ crackling and brown."
I had a rather disturbing dream last night. Naturally, it makes little or no sense to tell it as strict
narrative here (as though you would get it!), but I'll touch on some of the salient points. I do not often
remember my dreams for more than a few moments after I awake; as a matter of fact, I rarely do. But last
night, when Michelle W., Joe, Florence, and I were leaving the Yuens' to go our separate ways home, we paused
for a few minutes and talked about sleeping patterns. How I, in college, regularly took up to 2 hours to
get to sleep each night... and now I'm at a quite happy 30 minutes. As the conversation evolved, which they
often do, we ended up speaking, at most, about 5 sentences on the topic of dreams. Michelle remembers her
dreams vividly. I, on the other hand, do not.
This morning, I first awoke without prompt from the alarm (which I'd forgotten to set) at 7:40. I then
set the alarm for later and went back to sleep. Sometime between 7:40 and 8:20, quite in step with one
of the 5 sentences spoken last night, I had a rather long dream. What it mainly involved, though, were 2
unsettling facts: my teeth were falling out. More precisely, the tooth behind my canine on the right side
went first. I was in my car, going to work here in Santa Monica, when it happened. The traffic was
heavy, or so I recall, and the periodic stopping and starting of the cars afforded me a chance to look
at myself in the rear-view mirror. At this point, I smiled, looking at my teeth. In the front of each of
my incisors, there was a gap, at least a few millimeters wide, where I saw that my teeth were fragmenting.
But there was no pain. Alarmed, I chose to wait it out, until my tongue moving around my mouth struck
that tooth behind the canine, and found it loose. I reached my hand into my mouth to wiggle it, and
about 80% of the tooth came loose into my hand.
At some point (unsettling fact number 2), it seemed logical for me to be going to my old workplace in Anaheim, Commwerks. Now, the
freeways were more like I would imagine them in my more ideal world; much less traffic, and looking
ever-so-slightly futuristic. But what concerned me most were my teeth. As I left the freeway near
CW, I suddenly chose to drive to Santa Monica. After all, I worked at MR now, not CW. And I was distraught.
My molars on the right side were loose, and felt like plastic toys in my mouth. I didn't bite down for
fear of working another loose. Around this time, I woke up.
I think I'd like to check out the meaning
of this.. because for some reason, it seems as though there is something in there that I'm telling
myself. Perhaps it's the fact that I'm worrying about the unimportant things. Perhaps I'm caught between
being loyal to my past or to my present. Perhaps, in all the confusion, I'm crippling myself, losing
my potency to affect change. Perhaps I'm neglecting my health (spiritual, physical, emotional) to
achieve something. I think I need to ponder on it more, because this is a message from me to me, and
it's as dense and arcane as my messages to other people.
