Dreaming Over Yucatán

by Mr_Yesterday Uploaded May 30, 2023

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Dreaming Over Yucatán
D A Ayer 2023-05-12

In high school, I kept a dream journal for a while.

I thought I might use it for some writing project or other, although I’m not sure I ever did. I felt bored and inconsequential, impatient to be off to college and “real life”, equating those two, not yet getting the joke. I was very much in need of something to do.
I read a lot back then. Pop psychology of the day emphasized “self actualization” and “finding yourself”, and there was a niche market for books and articles about dream study. You couldn’t do a school writing project describing your experiments with mind-altering substances—assuming you had any—but mind-altering practices seemed like fair game, as long as they were justifiably philosophical in nature. Yoga and meditation were trending, though still considered pretty exotic. But we all have dreams, right?

So I started reading up on dream theory. The more how-to oriented authors suggested keeping a dream journal to help you remember your dreams, the first step to analyzing and understanding them. Most suggestions about the meaning of dreams—especially the notion of images or people in dreams as symbols—struck me as abject hokum. But I was interested, if only in an adolescent, navel-gazing sort of way.

Back then, I could still fall asleep easily, though getting out of bed was a different story. I got some sort of notepad to keep by the bedside along with a pencil and a flashlight, resolving to wake up after each dream and immediately write down as much as I could remember before falling back asleep. I was surprised when it actually seemed to work. Though it wasn’t very predictable, I did get to recording a dream or two every few nights.

I detected no pattern to my dreaming. Yet eventually I tended to recall more details on waking, and it seemed to me the dreams were more vivid than before. Still, they didn’t seem to mean anything at all: fascinating, odd, sometimes troubling, but just dreams.

One morning I woke up and scribbled down as much as I could about a dream I still remember parts of, though only as images. A friend and I were flying in a light plane—neither of us were pilots, but I was familiar with single-engine Cessnas because my father was an avid amateur aviator, and I’d spent a lot of time in the air with him when I was younger—and we were looking down at a dense jungle canopy. And though I’ve never been to Yucatán, I felt sure that’s where we were, looking for Mayan ruins or something.

Now, the doors had been taken off this plane, so it was possible to lean out and even stand on the small footrest on top of the landing gear strut. And so we did that, on either side of the plane, and then we looked at each other and both just stepped off altogether…and we kept on flying. We swooped down toward the trees and then back up again, exhilarated, laughing to think we’d needed a plane at all.

It was one of clearest, most visually detailed and colorful dreams I can remember having up until that time, though I can’t recall its ending.

My friend in the dream was a girl I knew from school. We sang in a choir and had been in some plays together, and we’d hung out but never dated. She went out with a couple of my friends from time to time, and I was all wrapped up romantically with someone else. But at some point I made the mistake of relating the barest outline of this dream to another friend, and someone in our crowd had read somewhere that flying with someone in your dream symbolized a sexual relationship and so we were both subjected to weeks of relentless teasing, all thanks to my dream. At least, that’s how I remember it.

My senior year ended without us ever going on a date.

Loose lips sink ships, as the Navy used to say, and I guess I took that to heart. I stopped sharing anything about my dreams with anyone.

My friend’s family moved a few towns away that summer. I went off to college at the other end of the country, where my old romantic entanglements dissolved. She left for college a year later, somewhere off in the opposite direction. We’d write letters once in a very long while, keeping in touch, casually. I stopped keeping a dream diary, though now and then I’d write down something from a dream just to help me remember it, pondering whether it meant anything at all.

Years later, we ran into each other again, accidentally, at least on my part. And then, two of those lifetimes ago, she married me. ...More

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Name	Type	Size
Mr_Yesterday_-_Dreaming_Over_Yucat_n.mp3 waveform	mp3	4.6 MB

Mr_Yesterday_-_Dreaming_Over_Yucat_n_1.mp3 waveform	mp3	4.6 MB

Mr_Yesterday_-_Dreaming_Over_Yucat_n.flac waveform	flac	15.3 MB

Mr_Yesterday_-_Dreaming_Over_Yucat_n_1.flac waveform	flac	15.2 MB

Comments

Speck May 31, 2023 6:54am

Again - well told. It strikes me, as I ponder the expository nature of your tale, that saying 'tell me about your dream' is another, perhaps more effective, way of saying 'tell me about yourself'.
Also - I like the phrase 'abject hokum'.

Mr_Yesterday May 30, 2023 7:43pm

Ah, yes, I remember "Lucid Dreaming", though when LaBerge's book came out I was already a parent and still at university. I recall being more focused on sleep than on dreams. Breathing underwater could come in handy... (a vid from last year @ https://vimeo.com/735590339).

Admiral Bob May 30, 2023 5:07pm

I remember this sort of thing: there was a book called “Lucid Dreaming” which I took rather seriously. I taught myself how to fly and breathe underwater in my dreams, an ability I retain in pretty much any dream to this day. I just have to remind myself I can do it, and bingo.

Apoxode May 30, 2023 1:47pm

So sweet, such a romantic adventure!
I think we've all had experiences like that, at least I have :)
I liked the part about "You couldn’t do a school writing project describing your experiments with mind-altering substances" which is kind of true for life in general. There's a stigma to it, so I just say I saw a movie about "it" which I forgot the name of :)

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