...I had another back-to-school dream last night, this time focusing on how many of my would-be classes went wrong (one of my classes involved going to a church service where people didn't know any of the responses--such as "And also with you," or "Thanks be to God," etc.). Even though my memory on most of what happened is greatly diminished (it's been about 12 hours since I dreamed the such), I can still remember walking from a Music History class down an endless hall that connected to a church, which in turn connected to a stairway that led to state-of-the-art practice rooms, where the ceilings were high and the acoustics were great. At the same time, as I was venturing between classes and practice sessions, I passed several people that I knew but for some reason didn't want to talk to them. I remember feeling both a rush to get someplace that even in the dream I had no clue where I was going, and guilt for not saying hi to the several friends that I had not seen in a while.
...It was probably the fourth or fifth St. Olaf-related dream I've had ever since I started going there, but this was the first time I had any negativity associated with it. It's possible that my brain was reusing old scenes from previous dreams in which I was going back to my high school and getting ready for Physics and History. About a couple weeks ago, I crammed a dream in three main sequences: first in which I finished practicing, grabbed a few of my friends and headed on a long footbridge over a bay of some sort; second in which I attended a History class with several Olaf and North Shore friends, all taught by one of my high school History teachers; third in which we all split up, and I walked back with my musician friends on the same footbridge that was fast getting flooded with water; we walked all the way to a train station, at which we would take an underground train back to school.
...I recall the first college dream I had actually didn't occur till midway through freshman year. It was the most obvious that I was on campus. My brain shot several scenes at Buntrock Commons (the center of campus where you get food and the mail) and an unnamed dorm, all in which I was hanging out with several people from North Shore (playing card games with guys and making out with the girls). I woke up several times just when the scenes were getting good, but the last part of the dream I remember driving out of St Olaf with family and suddenly finding myself driving on a Houston freeway being chased by some ex-cons wanting revenge for ramming their car, or cutting them off (by changing lanes), or something.
...The second dream didn't occur till halfway through the summer, where I was well away from my dorm when I heard that I had to go back and start packing everything because the U.S. suddenly engaged in a nuclear war with Al-Qaeda and we all had to evacuate and go north (presumably to Canada). So I returned to Kitt and found Tyler already having packed up most of his things (the room was half-bare). Next thing I remember, I'm running with a couple suitcases and a pillow northward in some thick woods, and suddenly I'm in this "safety center" which looked more like an open dungeon. Everyone was huddling together somehow, and I basically just set my stuff down, and woke up. I was actually so intrigued by the scenario that I actually wrote a short story about it. But of course I mixed in some fantasy to spice it up.
...There was another dream or two between then and the last couple weeks. Sadly I don't remember them. I think I had more music opportunities in those dreams, but that's all my brain can muster.
...I've had multiple themes in which I had clusters of dreams with the same ideas floating around again. When I was young I used to dream about different Chicago street plans, and wake up everytime a thunderstorm struck or my cat wanted to bite me. Over the years, I also had dreams about returning to St. Thomas and seeing everyone I knew again, and church dreams in which I was desperate to take part in the services and hang out with my church friends. Off and on I've also had reconfigured Evanston dreams, half the time with a river (not a canal) running through the middle of town, and sometimes Lake Michigan would disappear off the map. And over the past 5-6 years, I've had dreams generated by hormones, some more intense than others. In the past I would have dreams about chasing particular girls, creating all sorts of exotic scenes that wouldn't happen in reality, and at least for a couple hours I would be a happy boy. Now I have dreams in which I hook up with one girl, then we go someplace (like class) and afterward we split and I'm hanging out with other people that happen to be the "persons of the hour." Or, sometimes my dreams will reflect periods of being lazy socially, and my alienation of such people will drive me insane in the process.
...I worry I may get a little nervous about going back to school now, due to my history of being very socially active in small clumps and socially inactive in large clumps. Until the last couple days I have been extremely excited about going back to school. I learned where I was going to live, who was living near me, and all sorts of other possibilities. Suddenly this fear of replicating what I've done pretty much every year of my life, sitting alone in my room, not talking to people and not doing stuff with them and building memories will set in, and I worry about repeating my history in that regard.
...I really hope I'm not connected with Cubs in social futility. If it turns out that they have to go another century before winning a World Series, I surely hope that I will have started dating, hit a homerun, sustained a strong relationship, keep in touch with all my friends for sustained peroids of time, and other important aspects of social vitality long before that happens. Seriously, I couldn't stand getting myself to the point where I dream only about failing to keep correspondence with people that I care about.
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