A.E. Bayne
I’ve had a difficult time sleeping as of late, so it is apropos that my writing assignment for last night was to write about a recurring dream. Dreams have been few and far between during this period of unrest in my slumbering life, so recalling those that have been frequent visitors in the past was like calling up an old friend who I’d once had quite enough of, but who I now wish would make an appearance and fast. I’ve had some fairly wacky dreams throughout my life, dealing with both realistic and supernatural subject matter, but there are three that have recurred at various times. I believe I have them pegged for what they are, but they are open to interpretation. The first two deal mainly with my fear of loneliness and things that are beyond my control. The third concerns a deeper topic, more introspective to say the least; it’s a symbolic exploration of my conscious and subconscious minds.
The first dream is the one with the zombies. They lurch out of the corn stalks that line the sides of a dusty gravel road upon which I am traveling. I am plopped into this apocalyptic Frost poem at a fork in the road some distance back, one with a dilapidated shack standing sentry to the desolation ahead. Road less traveled indeed, as there doesn’t seem to be anyone here at all and there is no indication as to which fork I should choose; however, when I finally get a good look down the two roads I notice that there is a large city peeking up over the horizon of one road, while the other leads toward the horizontal with no marker in sight. I choose the city, hoping for citizens and answers.
The corn is as high as an elephant’s eye and the sun is a ghostly bright globe overhead. The corn stalks occasionally shimmy in the slight breeze, while the gravel protests my steps below. Intermittently, the corn begins to rustle and I catch flashes of cloth flitting behind the stiff green and yellow stalks. Forms stumble out from the veil of vegetation behind me that are straight from a Romero scarefest, complete with moans and groans. No matter how many times I have this dream the zombies are never distinct, and yet they never change either. In some sense I cannot make out their exact forms, but I always see them clearly. I run quickly, and though the zombies are only staggering along in impaired pursuit, I never seem to get any further ahead of them. Again, dreams are a tricky sort of reality where physics need not apply.
As I sprint toward the city, I notice that it has been devastated. It rises out of the corn as if planted. There is no gradual suburban gateway, no bridge or port of entry; rather, there is simply a distinct point at which the gravel road and corn field leave way for a paved, albeit cracked and weedy, asphalt avenue lined by high rise buildings. The zombies do not follow me into the city, having fallen away into the corn, and there is a cold desolation to this place that frightens me even more than my undead stalkers; at least the corn was alive. Sun flits through blasted out windows, casting reflective light onto surfaces left and right. A steady whistling breeze stirs torn curtains that flap against the side of buildings. I call out “hello”, even as my observant self thinks this is a horrible mistake. This place is sinister. Again, “hello”, and the voice in my head is screaming now, “shut up”. I hear a click and what sounds like a tape cassette whirring from high above in one of the empty spaces. A message begins to echo through the city that freezes me in mid-step and throws me into an inconsolable sadness. It says, “We are gone. There is no one left. You will find no one here.“ The message repeats, riding on the wind that blows through the hollow metropolis, and then I wake up.
While the zombie dream is frightening, it is not the one that causes me the most anxiety. That would have to be the tornado dream. I have always found the mere suggestion of a tornado to be terrifying. They are forces of nature that are totally uncontrollable, and I often have dreams involving tornados when I have a lot of stress in my life. Though the dreams take place in different settings and with a variety of people, the tornado element seems to have the same qualities. Always there are multiple tornados involved, and no matter where I hide they hone in on me, a marked target. They surround me (and those who are with me at the time) and hem me into a hiding place while they whir about outside. These tornados have wisdom and the qualities of a hunter, and the dreams themselves are never resolved.
Finally, I have house dreams. I’ve had these dreams for as long as I can remember, and I understood after the second or third time that they were not really about houses (though I do enjoy looking at the architecture of homes). Houses are a symbol of security for me, even in today’s uncertain market.
Typically, these dreams begin in one house, but end in a house existing in an alternate reality. For instance, I might be visiting a friend, or more often I’m looking at a house that I’m interested in buying. Sometimes the house is one that is left to me in someone’s will. No matter which, I enter the house and begin touring the rooms. There are many rooms, and rooms within rooms. Each house is a joy to explore because I keep finding odd rooms here and there that the owner/friend/executor has never seen. The rooms are a surprise to these people and are always tucked within spaces. Once I point them out, the other people drift away or disappear and I am left to explore without companions. Alone, I explore the hidden rooms and eventually find a secret door.
I remember one such dream where I exited the room through a small closet under a bay window and ended up in a barn. The barn was attached to the house, but was not visible from the yard because it was outside the reality of the house that contained the portal. In the barn, I had to climb up a mountain of antique bureaus and iron bed frames to reach the loft and the small window opening that is typical of barn lofts. Oddly, this window did not open to the outside world, but rather into a long carpeted bedroom of another house. I walked through this new house and out its front door to find myself in an entirely new place with the people who had accompanied me left in another realm.
The house dreams are disorienting, but never seem sinister. I believe they represent the recesses of my mind, and that the dreams are a way for me to explore the “rooms” of my own reality. Perhaps I am crawling from the conscious to the subconscious in these dreams. Or, as one friend suggested, maybe I am entering a type of astral plane when I exit the second house. Fascinating ideas. Whatever the meaning, the house dreams always leave me wanting to explore more rooms and with a strong sense of ownership and security.
Dreams overall are diversions of reality, or perhaps they truly are another reality altogether. While I enjoy most of the dreams that my subconscious conjures up for me, these recurring dreams have become consistent signals for me throughout my life. Whether I am feeling under pressure, feeling lonely, or just wandering around in my own head, these three dreams always lead me to examine my waking life with a renewed objectivity and purpose. Here’s to dreaming a little dream tonight!
I am sitting in my assigned spot, in the midst of a six hour seminar on teaching honors level English, in a room filled with years of scholarly intellect and insight. The topic – analyzing poetry at the college level with students who are on track to take AP courses during their senior year in high school. Why am I, an eighth grade teacher, worried about how a twelfth grader might analyze a Shakespearean sonnet or a ballad by Keats? Well, my dear friend, in this day and age it is vital that children be guided through the honors system just as they cope with raging hormones that cause them to act the fool for the rakish boy or comely girl down the hall. That is why I am here, in this scholarly environ, to learn how to move them from knowing to understanding; or, more commonly known as passing the AP English exam with a grade of three or higher during their senior year in high school. 
It is in this hesitation that I recognize her insecurity, and acutely feel her painful need to be accepted as a fellow scholar in what should not be a competitive, but rather a collaborative, environment. Here, where we all come to the table with years of schooling and professional development, years of experience and age, in this place that should be as far removed from high school as the cliffs of Dover are from Delaware, I find myself reflecting on the very familiar need to prove oneself as ‘more than’. In this bright, articulate, qualified woman’s very insecure comment lies the true future for these AP, IB, and honors students – a life of fear of making a mistake, fear that one is less than one’s peers, fear of being ‘normal’. I can recognize the desperation in her voice, pushing her to appear better than her peers, her clever dialogue climbing a ladder whose top she cannot see, and I feel pity for our students who are about to embark on this path.
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