I'd Rather Dream I Was Flying

After a long dry spell in Dreamland - having no dreams, good or bad, that I could remember when I awoke - my subconscious life has bloomed within the last few months. I dreamed at least once that I was Capt. Jack Aubrey, in command of the H. M. S. Surprise - or, at least, a really wacked-out, surrealist version thereof. And twice within only the last month or so, I have had these horrid dreams...about airports.

Generally, and perhaps logically, I tend to have these airport dreams within a few days of picking someone up or dropping them off at the airport. I haven't flown, myself, since last April and I don't recall having any dreams about flying then. Not that flying, as such, had anything to do with these nasty recent dreams.

In the first of two airport nightmares, I was apparently on some kind of international trip, and I must have been a VIP because I had a personal assistant, or guide, or chief of staff, or whatever, guiding me through an interminable series of interviews with customs, airport security, immigration, and various other government officials. When it was all supposedly over and my henchman had deserted me, I realized that I was missing a piece of luggage and I had to go to the lost-luggage office to get it. The lost-luggage office turned out to be like something out of a painting by William Blake, with a door that opened and slammed shut rhythmically so that you had to jump through it with perfect timing, leading to a confined area where a waiting queue got longer and longer until it was difficult to move or breathe. Then I was pulled aside and assured that someone would be with me in a moment, after which everyone else in the queue had their concern dealt with in record time; and as each customer left, so did one of the employees behind the desk...until I was the only person left in the room. I woke up in a cold sweat.

The second airport dream is a little fuzzier in my mind, but equally unpleasant. I was either picking up my boss or dropping him off. The fact that I couldn't be sure which it was, should have been a big clue that I was just dreaming. If he wasn't in the car when I drove there, I must be picking him up, right? But in REM, reason goes out the window. I was confused about what I was doing at the airport, but it had something to do with work and I was sure that I was botching it terribly, and that my boss would be ever so ticked at me. I couldn't get the simplest things done and I couldn't find anything I was looking for.

This must be where all those "look down in fourth period and realize that you're only wearing your Froot-of-the-Looms" nightmares go when you grow up.