\nWe’ve been watching the first season of Buffy<\/i> in the evenings. (It’s been years since we had a TV so we generally don’t see any TV series when they actually run.) There was one episode where people’s nightmares became real – not only for them but for everyone. One of Xander’s nightmares was about a clown who had scared him during his 6th birthday party.\n<\/p>\n
\nIt made me think about my own nightmares. I don’t have nightmares particularly often – generally only when I am fevered or when my brain is otherwise totally knocked out of its orbit.\n<\/p>\n
\nOne nightmare that I used to have, but don’t anymore, was a childhood one that survived for many years, like Xander’s. It makes sense that a childhood nightmare would survive – we are most vulnerable to nightmares when we are children, small and powerless in a large and scary world. In that dream the world is a child’s drawing of a forest. A very young child’s drawing, with trees that are green circular scribbles and tangles on top of a brown stump. And I am running through that forest while being chased by a child’s drawing of a monster: a big black circular scribble. In fact I never see the monster but I know it is there, and I know what it looks like. I remember having that dream already over 20 years ago.\n<\/p>\n
\nTwo nightmares that I have occasionally had in more recent years both also involve running. But now I’m not running away from anything – I am running towards something, or sometimes simply running but despite my enormous efforts I barely move forward. In one variation I feel like I am running uphill through treacle and against the wind: I feel constant resistance that slows me down. I lean forward, into the resistance, until I am leaning so far that I feel like I should fall forward, but I never do.\n<\/p>\n
\nIn another variety I am again running but my feet don’t get a grip. In this dream world running is done by pushing the ground backwards underneath me, only it’s like I cannot touch the ground. My feet are moving but simply passing just above the ground without any friction. In an effort to move I lean forward (and often the ground obligingly tilts up to meet me: I often end up running uphill in this dream as well) so I can also grab the earth with my hands and pull it backwards, almost like running on all fours, except there is no weight on my hands or feet as I hover above the ground and pull at it.\n<\/p>\n
\nIt makes me think of the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass<\/i>: “it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place”. The dominant feeling is that of frustration.\n<\/p>\n
\nIt’s interesting, I think, that my nightmares are so abstract and so similar. I am usually not running towards anything in particular. Sometimes there are other people running as well (and they never have any trouble getting a grip on the ground!) and sometimes not. Sometimes there is a world around me – trees, a path, something – other times not. Generally it’s just me trying to run.\n<\/p>\n
\nFar less deadly than knife-wielding clowns or giant spiders!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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