only in dreams

Been AFK for a while with post holiday brokeness and worming my way through the mountain of books Santa brought me this year. My thoughts on those shortly, but in the meanwhile I've had this bizarre recurring dream that keeps rolling through my thoughts that I wanted to write a few words about. But first ...

On the topic of dreams; I got into a disagreement with a friend recently who told me she believes dreams are simply our interpretations of random firings of neurons and are not to be given any more thought than any other idle curiosity. I agree with her as far as the random neurons firing go, but if random neurons X, Y, and Z fire off in my brain and the "same" ones go off in yours no doubt we will interpret them differently and that is where the value of a dream lies (IMHO). I consider a dream to be a sort of internal Rorschach test and have often found that giving a dream some thought can reveal insights about myself that ring with a resounding truth which I may not have reached otherwise.

Having said all that, mine are pretty standard first person perspectives. I've had friends tell me the are always an observing "eye in the sky" in their dreams, and even one very empathic friend told me she is quite often multiple people in her dreams, switching back and forth to carry out the roles of others from their perspective.

Me, not so much. I'm usually just me.

Beyond that though, when I am able to actually recall a dream they tend toward the unusual. Example: my toddler brother was once made of blue glass and when he tried to speak his tongue fell out and smashed on the ground. I yelled at him that he'd "better grow a new one quick, or mom will be mad!". I was also once trapped on the outside of an Earth orbiting space station trying to find something to eat because all the hydroponic tomatoes we'd grown inside were poisoning the crew. Y'know ... unusual.

So this leads me back to the recurring dream.

Abnormally, I am a floating eye in the sky this time. The scene unfolds in front of me in a sort of animated Ken Burns effect, panning right and left from different angles. I'm watching a sort of Roman feast, a large group of people, not all of whom I can see, are gathered around a table heavily laden with fresh fruit, roasted meat, and dozens of rich looking goblets of wine, all illuminated by dancing flames I can only see reflected on the dishes and their faces. I can't discern the conversation but it's very loud with lots of hearty laughter, back slapping, and toasting. The one thing that I can see everyone doing is eating.

Every conversation and belly laugh is accompanied by full mouths of half chewed food with juices freely pouring down cheeks and dribbling through beards. The fronts of robes and gowns alike are spattered with gravy, wine, greasy fingerprints and who knows what else. As I notice all this mess contrasting the finery and rich dishes laid out, the panning slowly settles on two men who seem to be the hosts. Both large, both jolly, both leading happy conversations with different groups of guests. They're just so damned happy that their eyes are practically bulging, and their roaring laughter is creeping towards maniacal.

Then, very suddenly, everything just ... tilts.

The food and the tables are gone, as are all the guests and their conversations and the dancing firelight. Only the two hosts remain, and they haven't moved from their seated positions but now they sit on the ground and they're not ancient romans any more. They're wearing tattered jeans and wife beaters in a mud floored basement lit with only bare utility bulbs. There don't seem to be any stairs or windows and it feels quite close and cramped. They're still laughing in that too hard, screw loose kind of way and still stuffing their faces and dribbling all over their shirts, but they aren't eating food anymore. They're stuffing themselves with the mud.

Just cramming it down, shoving fistfuls into their gullets while they laugh and LAUGH and flail about in the soupy muck.

Now if you think that's odd, here comes the really weird bit...

I notice that one of them has drawn a big heart in the mud and within it is written "I love unicorns", which for reasons I cannot fathom in the least sends me into a terrified frenzy and suddenly causes me to cease being the floating observer and snap into "myself" standing there with mud oozing between my toes looking down at the two hosts. They both snap around mid mouthful of mud, no longer laughing or talking and just stare at me without moving which is usually about the point I wake up.

I've woken up this way about three times since the new year and have no idea where to begin trying to determine what this interpretation of random neurons may say about yours truly other than "yo that dude ain't right in de head boss".

I'm open to alternate opinions ...