To Sleep, Perchance To Dream...

I'm having trouble sleeping tonight, I'm not really sure why. It's been a long time since I've been this awake at midnight and not had caffiene to blame!

I had an interesting dream last night that has been rattling around in my head all day. I'm fairly certain it was inspired by the book I was reading before I went to sleep. I downloaded Roseanne Cash's autobiography from the library before we left for vacation, pretty much on a lark. It turned out to be a good read.

The chapters I finished up with last night were about her personal growth as an artist. She waxed poetic about words and concepts that generally don't get much play in the more logical thinking, pragmatic business crowd I'm often a part of. New age stuff doesn't get much stock in the courtroom, in case you didn't know. Just the facts, ma'am.

In the middle of one of her chapters, she referred to Jung and his apparent statement that people could have up to five "big dreams" in their lifetimes - dreams that signified a change or shift in consciousness or in patterns of thinking. I thought it was a fascinating thought, and it reminded me that I have one of his books at home that I've been meaning to read for ... well, several years now. May need to pick it up when I get back home. Anyway. She applied that statemenet to a dream that she had at one point that allowed her to move on to a new phase in her life.

I don't think my dream last night was anything of the sort, although it was still riddled with enough typical "dream" symbolism that it stayed with me after I awoke this morning. I dreamt of finding additional rooms in our house that had been there all along but I had somehow missed. Empty space to fill in a house that could certainly use it.

Now, when I say dream symbolism? You know I'm not talking about predicting the future here, right? Just sayin.

There are, however, symbols that show up in dreams that have been interpreted over time to mean certain things - classic test anxiety dreams, dreams of teeth falling out equating to an insecurity in personal appearance, tornados suggesting internal turmoil, among many others.

Anyway, I could be totally wrong, but I think the house is often symbolic of the self, with different rooms being symbolic of different aspects of your personality or pieces of your life. Taken a step further, dreaming of discovering a new room in your house is sometimes equated with finding new aspects of your personality, new traits or talents, exploration, things in that vein.

I'm fairly certain that the dream came from the book - she has lived a very different life from me, one dedicated to artistic pursuits, with music burned into her soul from the beginning. But more than that, she has a love of words, and her life's work is devoted to teasing out the right words, the right lyrics, the right phrase. How cool is that?

I've always loved words. God knows I use enough of them. But sometimes in the cacophony of everyday life, it's easy to forget how much I truly enjoy them, how awe inspiring it can be to read something that reshapes the way you look at life. Or a phrase that literally sings to you from the page. Phrases that are so amazing that they make you almost sad, because how could anyone ever write it better than that? I'm fairly certain the dream related to a love of words, and the amazement words sometimes brings me.

Or it could just mean I feel like we need a bigger house. Who knows.

Anyway, I just feel at loose ends tonight, and I've spent the evening with words, in one form or another. Apparently my brain needed to throw everything together and jumble it up and spit it back out before I could sleep. Fabulous. I'm sure I'll be thanking my brain in the morning when I read back over this and wonder what the hell I was thinking. Oh well. My space, my words.