Dreams: a funny old business. I have particularly vivid and bonkers ones and always have, with lurid M C Esher-gets-drunk-with-Dali vertigo ones a speciality. I had always attributed these to my generally going to bed slightly the worse for wear, once I hit adulthood but since have recently cut this down I’ve realised my subconscious must just not have a very imaginative grasp of metaphor at 4am.*
Now, despite being absolutely and totally used to these dreams this doesn’t stop me waking up (usually several times, the snatches of dream between which having had ever more nightmarish symptoms attached as my semi-conscious brain helpfully supplies suggestions, eg: “yeah so you’re up the edge of a building on a narrow set of broken stairs with a railing a foot away over an abyss to hold on to but what if that railing WAS BENDY, eh?”) in a cold sweat with my feet burning, marvelling at the horrors my brain
can produce. These aren’t nearly as bad as my ultra-graphic and much more occasional genocide nightmares but nevertheless, it induces that “can’t go back to sleep
in case THAT happens again” feeling.
Thus it is that I am writing a FT post on my phone at 4am. There is a real point to this, however, which is that I ended up idly googling “dream interpretations vertigo” (I would say these dreams are more about the disorienting feeling of vertiginous situations, where one knows to some extent that any danger is exaggerated and perhaps even imaginary yet the world takes on Melting Watches levels of dysmorphic definitely-going-to-die fear) and have now learnt that it can mean:
a) the expected “scared of teetering aspects of life”
b) the unexpected “getting in with the wrong crowd” (although that is perhaps less illogical than it initially seemed, since the feeling of misbehaviour is a little like vertigo sometimes I suppose, if in a heady, teenage manner; the wild cocktail of adrenaline is I guess similar)
c) the head-deskingly inane “you must face your fear of flying”
which told me absolutely fuck-all. The thing I found interesting, though, being a generally analytic person was that these analyses (which seemed very basic) were obviously intended as insights and indeed on every site there were people marvelling at them. People are easily pleased, I know: I’ve spent a lot of the last week marvelling at the pop-up book of 20th Century Architecture (“it’s a pop-up book! For GROWN-UPS!”) and am frequently amazed by things I haven’t previously thought about and also, this is the internet: someone, somewhere is amazed/outraged by 1+1 equalling two.
Still, this shit is big business; how many psychic helplines are kept lucrative by people not thinking about these things, after all? I once applied for a job as a tele-psychic, during a long period of unemployment and eventually turned it down on the basis it was too fraudulent for even my dire financial straits at the time but clearly if this is all you’re meant to come up with then hell, callme Mystic Mog etc.
On the other hand, neither I nor the internet supplied an explanation for the way in which, earlier in the dream, several of my friends had outed me for my secret dark love of going to the supermarket. (!!!)
Meanderingly, though, the actual point of this post was:
-vertigo nightmares BAD
-their footwarming properties GOOD.
And now back to sleep for me.
*”O noes my life is going a bit t1ts up” “well this ROAD’S going THE WRONG WAY UP -DO YOU SEE?”