A giant gumby almost got me. Oct. 6, 1985

  

I dreamed I was attacked by a gumby.

Well, not exactly a gumby, something similar, something rubber-like, safe one moment, complete savage the next.

The whole thing came out another dream I can’t quite remember; yet the penis-shaped green creature was vivid and terrifying, and the cure for killing it had something to do with a big stick.

While the gumby twisted and stretched, it did not quite get ahold of me – although by the end of the dream, it had come perilously close.

At which point my sleeping self-asked “What if…?” as I tried to figure out a way of killing the foul creature by sticking it in a freezer while the creature coiled around it – or perhaps I might burn it on the stove.

The situation resembles a bit my campaign to rid my cold water flat of roaches – only magnified.

The phallic nature of the dream is obvious – resentment growing in me over my own sexual nature. I see myself too often saddled with sex, rather than sex as a gift.

The women in my life seem to get in the way of something else I need or want, but do not know what.

Since most of the other characters in the dream have faded, I can’t pinpoint anything else that might put the thing in context, and I’m left with a general feeling of apprehension and fear as the green gumby hovered over me as I woke.

Dreams sometimes have a way of ending conveniently, such as a telephone ringing that turns out to be an alarm clock, even though the original sound signifies something significant in the overall dream and can’t be completely explained by the sound in the waking world – such as when a boxer in a dream is saved by the bell.

The ringing in the dream actually predicts the alarm. One might argue that the dreamer knows from having set the clock that the alarm will eventually go off, and thus fabricates the dream around that single event.

There are a number of problems with that theory. Timing is one. The dream fight must be timed perfectly to when the fight takes place. Thus, the body/mind must keep time compatible with the time of the clock.

What if the sound is something less predictable such as the sound of a random phone call?

Such instances are not rare. Freud suggests that it is our sense of time that is erroneous, and that the occurrence revolves entirely around the sound stimulation. In other words, the whole dream is sparked by the sound of the bell and the dream occurs between the beginning of the sound and waking. The sense of elapsed time, Freud claims, is an illusion.

But what of those people who wake up in the middle of a dream, and then return to it?

Studies show the rem sleep occurs in real time.

Does the mind actually go forward in time to predict the bell ringing event?

Tough stuff to contemplate. And here I’m worried about a Goddamn gumby.

 

 1985 Menu


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