I’m strolling through an unknown forest. It’s an ordinary day.
There’s a sidewalk in the forest—for some reason. I follow it to a river. A frozen river. Of violet ice.
The sidewalk ends … and resumes on the opposite riverbank.
I glance at the ice skeptically. It’s an ordinary (but warm) day.
Now I gasp as a polar bear emerges from the bushes behind me. It ignores me, thankfully. And tromps across the ice. My blood pressure ebbs, along with my hesitancy. I take a step…
Halfway across the river, I hear a crack. The bear looks back—and I fall through the ice.
I wake up screaming.
I’ve had the above dream a hundred times over the years. Why is unclear. I once made the mistake of asking Lennox, a former therapist, for his opinion—then sank in my chair half-listening to him gibber about symbolism, on my dollar, for a small eternity.
“Fascinating,” I said blandly when he finished. And launched into a rambling, anguished account of the time I was uninvited from a birthday party in fifth grade.
“Fascinating,” my therapist said blandly when my time expired.
As I made for the exit:
“Are you familiar with lucid dreaming?” he asked me.
I wasn’t.
Lennox dragged a book off his shelf. It was 500 pages, at least.
“Give this a look,” he said. “It might prove useful.”
I thanked him doubtfully. As I lugged the tome out the door.
Dreams are full of meaning—possibly. It’s just as likely they’re bits of synaptic trash and no more profound than a rash from eating strawberries. Either way, I wanted to know what lay on the other side of the violet river. So I hoisted The Orange Ball: A Guide to Lucid Dreaming onto my lap one night.
A hundred pages in, I’d gotten the gist of it. In a lucid dream, you’re aware you’re dreaming and can influence what you see and experience. Eat a million creampuffs …woo an ingénue … fly your chihuahua like a kite. With enough practice, anything’s possible, even curing oneself of troubling, recurrent dreams. The process sounded simple enough…
Clear your mind of dust and envision the universe of your dream. Now imagine an object that isn’t a typical feature of the dream. It could be an orange ball, for example—or anything that enters your mind. Tell yourself, “When I see the ball … I’ll know I’m dreaming. And I’ll take control. Nothing in the dream can harm me now. I’m in control.”
It sounded ridiculous. I decided to try it.
An hour later, I was wide awake trying to clear my mind not only of dust but all the useless curios and broken bits of furniture I’d stored/abandoned there over the years.
Two hours later, I was still packing.
By hour three, the floor was reasonably clear. I took a breath and pictured the polar bear, the sidewalk, the colored ice.
I swept away a little more dust and discovered … a birthday hat. That’s what popped into my head. For some reason. One of those conical, comical cardboard hats that children still mandatorily wear at birthday parties.
When I see a birthday hat, I told myself over and over, I’ll know I’m dreaming. Eventually, I fell asleep and dreamed about—nothing.
I repeated the experiment every night until, at last, I found myself strolling through the forest.
Though the dream was the same, it was different. There was a semi-familiar sheen to everything that made me feel weirdly ill at ease. I get the same impression when sitting through a movie I can’t decide I’ve watched or not, which happens several times a week, at least.
This time, when the bear appeared, I didn’t feel alarmed. Only puzzled. Because it was wearing a hat. A birthday hat. The significance of the hat was initially lost on me. I just stood there staring as the animal traversed the river and faded into the brush. As always, I felt compelled to follow it.
Halfway across the river, I spotted something lying on the ice.
It was the birthday hat.
I picked it up. And put it on.
Simultaneously, I heard a semi-familiar crack—and a thought dawned on me.
I’m asleep. I’m dreaming.
I looked down … and watched the flaw in the ice repair itself.
Giddily, I kept walking. Across the ice, to the opposite riverbank. I followed the sidewalk through the trees and into a clearing. In the middle of the clearing was a still pond. The polar bear was tranquilly drinking from it.
As I stood watching, a feeling of profound calm swept over me.
Then an enormous octopus rose from the water and wound its tentacles around my throat.
I woke up screaming.
Days later, I hauled the book back to Lennox and reluctantly told him about my experience. The birthday hat … the soothing pool … the malevolent octopus. I waited with a pained expression for him to rip the floor from under my feet but all he did was furrow his brows and say, “That’s disturbing.”
“Really?”
“Deeply” (his brow furrows deepened).
Silence. I filled the silence with another woeful story of a bygone birthday—until Lennox interrupted me.
“Did you say the bear was wearing a birthday hat?”
I nodded.
“And you’ve clearly had your share of unhappy birthdays?”
I nodded again.
Lennox stroked his chin. Before I could stop him, he began breathlessly unraveling the birthday hat’s profound significance. I wilted in my chair as he paced around the room, gesticulating so wildly at times that he seemed—I chuckled as it struck me—to have eight arms instead of two.
That’s when I sat upright and said:
“You’re the octopus!”
My therapist’s eyes widened.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re the octopus. In my dream. The horrible octopus.”
Lennox sighed as I commenced an outrageously thorough analysis of my own.
“Fascinating,” he said blandly when I finished.
Say what you like about giant octopi: after surviving my attack, I never had the violet ice dream again. There’s a decent chance it was a peephole into my agonised psyche. Or just the upshot of downing too many strawberries. I really can’t say—and won’t—because a middle-aged man has bigger worries. For example: I often dream I’m dreaming and suspect I’ll one day get hopelessly lost in the origami-folds of my consciousness, doomed to drift among paper cranes for my dazed, remaining years. I haven’t mentioned this to my present therapist, who I quite like, lest she get lost among the folds. That would be tragic. A good therapist is hard to find.