Nighttime Fried Rice (NaBloPoMo #24)

Nephews slumbering.... notice they kinda hold hands, too? Cute!

Lately, I have been having some very vivid dreams.

Sterling and I have begun to call it "fried rice" - like how fried rice is often made with leftover ingredients, all thrown together, all mixed up. In that way, dreams are often the brain's way of taking the residual "unresolveds" of the day and trying to make sense or possibly trying to solve or understand a situation or event. All the loose ends, the lingering thoughts, the delightful and not-so's all make up some wonderful movie reel that has us hooked.

In the morning, we do the post-mortem:  "Did you have fried rice last night?" and if so, we do a re-cap. As we share our dreams out loud, we see the things that get incorporated in the dream from the previous day's events, some very innocent, or a conversation or a visual that neatly and seamlessly fit. Or so it seems during the dream. Often when trying to explain the dream, it's easy to see somethings are not so logical in the waking world.

Reliving dreams regularly is a way of also getting to know what the brain is processing - some long-term or possibly deep-seated issues - or to understand what various symbols are recurring nocturnally. What might seem innocuous actually stands out in the grey matter.

These days, I wake up remembering at least two dreams and they can be quite bizarre. It can be quite amusing, of course, and really, if I were an artist, maybe I could sketch something that could be a backdrop to a painting or something that could be captured on film. For now, I am enjoying the fried rice and enjoying seeing how my brain puts it all together.

Sometimes I look forward to what my dreams will have in store. I haven't exercised it as much, but I want to work on actually "programming" my brain to work on certain solutions... Directing it, or becoming a master chef, I guess!