Tuesday, October 26, 2004

The Two Horses of the Apocalypse: My Strange Dreams and What in the Hell they Might Mean

A few things about my sleep patterns here in Paris, for anyone who is curious, and I know that that one person lurks somewhere out there.

Typically, I have a profuse amount of incredibly vivid dreams before and after waking up somewhere around 4 or 5 in the morning and laying in bed awake for an hour. Sometimes I dream about certain aspects of my day. One night for instance, after taking the Paris Metro home late and voyeuristically eyeing a young couple bidding their prolonged adieus, I dreamt about said couple and their domestic life. I do not remember the details of this dream to well, except a picture of the two of them standing in a kitchen.

I have a couple recurring dreams as well. One involves me somehow landing on the Metro railroad tracks. I used to have this dream back in Chicago too, although the tracks in those dreams were often elevated to frightening heights, since Chicago's CTA is an elevated system. Well, in my Metro-related dreams, I usually land on the tracks not by falling unintentionally but by some sort of intentional and logical process. I never get run over or even see a train either. The Chicago railroad track dreams have been more perilous: one time I was hanging on to a pole for dear life as the wind nearly blew me off the platform.

The other recurring dream is framed around me returning to Chicago after my stay in Paris. Since I have had this dream since relatively early into my stay here, my time in Paris has always seemed short. I had the dream again last night and marvelled at how the abroad stay flew by.

A last dream, also from last night, involved me as a passenger in a speeding car on Lake Shore Drive, following behind two horse and buggy rides--the kind that one sees chauffering tourists around Michigan Avenue and surroundings--, in neighboring lanes, speeding down the Drive.


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