Jet Lag and Dreams

Dreams are weird.  Dreams can be mysterious, most often the nighttime subconscious are random thoughts that attempt to make a plot, but they are never quite cohesive. The actors in the drama are usually friends or families, an occasional stranger I suppose, but mostly the characters we knew, though they have been dead 10 years and you can’t think of a time you consciously thought of them in a decade.

My mom told me the other night she had a cramp in her foot in the middle of the night and in the midst of the cramp dreamed of my dad.  She was startled to see my dad at the foot of the bed with a rifle shooting at her foot, thinking it was a squirrel.  Dad passed away over a year ago but a cramped toe was enough for the subconscious to raise one from the dead to eliminate the critter that was causing my mom pain.

I’m presently in throes of the vortex of subconscious illusions, known to the traveler as jetlag.  The eleven and half hour time change compound my thirty-six hour journey from Siloam Springs to Bangalore, which is enough to dull the human senses.  Why, at 3 p.m. do I feel that I should be curled up in a bed in deep zone sleep instead of trying to have a conversation with my host colleague who is clearly wide awake, full of energy and is planning a get-together supper at a fancy restaurant after work?  When I am able to call it a day, hopefully about 8 pm, I’m out in an instant only to be eyes wide open at 11:00 pm.  I search for sleeping pills knowing that if I don’t quickly fall back to asleep I will toss and turn until 5 am, exhausted but must face the cruel morning sun without a chance to lie down again for another 14 hours.  Like a zombie I will see the day as a distorted series of events, neither enjoying nor comprehending what I do in my stupor.

In between the first wake up and the sleeping pill induced knockout, I dream.  Last nights dream was about an uncle that passed away two years ago.  At the funeral the daughters mourned by simultaneously telling jokes and arguing with each other.  We drove to a cemetery that resembled a hay field surrounded by a subdivision in one of the most exclusive resorts in Southern California. My uncle, according to my dream, bought these two hundred aces of prime real estate fifty years ago because he thought it would be suitable resting place.  The land had become so expensive that he sold off much of it in his latter years, but still possessed enough sod to cover his mortal remains.

An old girlfriend approached me at the cemetery and asked me if I had moved on since our breakup.  Not having a clue who she was I said yes, all the time trying to remember who she was.  She said she “needed closure,” which I suppose meant one last date, one last kiss.  I didn’t need closure, I confessed, and was quite happy and that any feelings on my part were nonexistent, especially since I didn’t remember her at all.

Now that it’s morning I review the three acts of my nighttime theater I wonder if anyone of it has meaning.  The funeral of distant relatives I’ve not seen in forty years, the girlfriend I obviously dumped but have no recollection of her existence, and my dad’s quirky remedy for cramps.  I am sure they are not dreams of any spiritual implications, nothing like Josephs dream of seven wheat sheaves bowing down to him, unless it is a sign from God that my uncle wants me to prepare a cemetery plot where in time it will be a good business deal for my children and that the strange girlfriend is a reminder to make things right with those I have offended and dad, though he is gone, still wants to control things as he did when he was alive.

Since jetlag dreams have no basis for rationality I can merely smile, take another pill and see if I can go back to sleep so when I do wake the world will make more sense.