[I try to start my day writing 250 words on anything. I’ll post one every Tuesday until I run out of good ones.]
I have a couple of recurring dreams. They don’t always follow the same storylines, but the locations and my goals are the same. I suspect they give me some insights into how my mind works.
One recurring dream is set in my grandparents’ house, which is nothing like any house they ever had. It’s a huge and rambling maze, with rooms built off a corridor that makes an enormous loop. Usually, I’m searching through rooms, and rooms within rooms within rooms, to find something.
My other dream is set in Disneyland but, again, it’s nothing like the original theme park. In contrast to Disneyland’s hub-and-spokes design, the park of my dreams is on a rigid grid, with different themed areas laid out like city blocks. The rides are bare-bones versions of the real ones. I always sneak in through a back gate. Usually, I’m looking for my family.
I’ve spent enough dream time in both environments that I think I could draw maps of them. Their rigid rectilinear architecture reminds me of the “mind palace” practice of organizing your memory as an imaginary network of spaces, with each space representing a discrete event or data point.
I wonder if wandering through a house or theme park is my subconscious brain’s way of integrating new information with old, plugging it in to its proper slots. Like defragging a computer. Maybe a mind, like a house or theme park, needs housekeeping to dispose of litter and sweep cobwebs out of the corners.
* * *
PLEASE SUBSCRIBE! I am sharing these little "250 Words On" essays via Substack, which will email a new one to your In Box every Tuesday morning. Just follow this link and enter your email address. It's free, and I promise to never use your address for evil purposes.
No comments:
Post a Comment