By Jan Chaffin March 30, 2024

I just watched a sweet interview with two of my favorite authors Louise Erdrich and Tommy Orange where he describes being a child and lucidly dreaming of flying. They tallied the audience-“who believes dreams are important?” Had I been there, I would have raised my hand.

Dreams are forms of time travel and problem-solving, ways to move vast distances in an instant or be stuck eternally in one spot. Studies indicate birds and even we problem-solve about flying and foraging and other tasks while dreaming. Dreams are the truth’s doppelgänger as Naomi Klein (not Wolf) mentioned.

Many of my dreams seem to persist throughout my life. I don’t know if that impression is a quality of the dreaming or the waking world or perhaps both. I’m aware of the waking world in my dreams and a repeated theme (I think) is of trying to wake up, thinking I’ve woken up just to realize I’m in another layer of dreaming instead, sometimes nested layers, fooled again and again.

As many times as I try to wake up and can’t, there are those times I very much don’t want the dream to end. The nightmares of falling endlessly are deeply disturbing and cause panic but are followed by relief upon waking. However waking from a sex, love, longing or lust dream when ultimate satisfaction is just moments away is heartbreakingly disappointing as if life were dreams’ consolation prize.

Is this common, a shared experience? Do we all dream the same?

Some recurrent themes in my dreams:

As a child, I always wanted a pair of Chuck Taylor hightops-white with red and blue rubber piping around the soles. That wish persisted in my dreams also. I never got a pair. Always so close but I’d either wake up or they’d be taken.

As a child, I also had repeated nightmares about a doppelgänger Mom-one was kind and good and one was evil and conniving. I’d think I’d identified them properly only to be fooled. Again and again.

I’d have recurring nightmares about being stuck in one place while giant appliance noises at night threaten to overrun me.

I have recurring nightmares of being attacked from the sky by battalions of enemy aircraft. I have to hide under something and hope no one finds me. After 9/11, these increased.

In some dreams I am able to fly, anywhere from seconds to minutes, from inches to many feet above ground. It is glorious. Tommy Orange described the dream flight muscle as somewhere between heart and belly. I think that’s how I feel also. I have to will the flight, more or less successfully, and as he says, for many reasons-to escape danger or simply elevate above vulgarity.

Do others dream of flying? I think many of us dream of falling in fact I once read if you don’t wake up you die, but how that can be proven is a bit of a mystery-with brain probes maybe? The closest I come to flying in real life is running. Maybe a few feet of air travel for every mile I run?

I often dream a very old pet from childhood who has been dead for many years is still alive and neglected in our childhood home that I’m visiting. I see the pet and am overcome with nostalgia, sadness at the imminence of their second death, and concern for how to care for them- find them food, comfort…

I have two cars in many dreams. I get to choose which one to drive. In waking life, I’ve come close, but so far, for one reason or another,  that pleasure still escapes me.

I dreamed God scolded me from the TV set during Andy Griffin telling me to be kinder to my Parents. He then pinched me. (OK that one hasn’t persisted!)

I am sometimes forced to climb horrifically scary routes to get to ordinary places. They start out fine, then become nearly impossible with no escape. I have varying degrees of courage and skill but somehow always succeed, swearing to avoid this climb next time. Sort of like Sisyphus without the rock.

I am playing in a desert paradise, climbing grippy rock walls like at Joshua Tree, calm and content knowing I’ve arrived home. In subsequent dreams, I am looking for this place. It is right around the bend but I never find it. I want to see what’s around the bend.

Every fall my cousins send me cards filled with crimson, lemon and verdant Virginia leaves to remind me of what I left behind. I keep the leaves in clear plastic and hang them from the kitchen cabinet so the sun shines through them. What my cousins don’t know is that Virginia never leaves.

When I started playing with Barbie, women couldn’t get credit cards but Barbie had  her own Dream House. I never forgot that. She inspired me to dream of  my own house. Greta Gerwig reminded me of that feeling of imagining yourself being endlessly re-invented through child’s play.

Doesn’t it seem absurd that there’s this giant orb in the sky so bright we’ll go blind if we look at it?! Somewhat ill-suited aren’t we, if we can’t look at the sky?

I have an irrepressible desire to express myself.

Clearly, people prefer the thrill of clandestine romantic encounters over those which are condoned, ones that risk if not ensure exposure.

I ran away once. Gathered a bandana like a hobo, with a few supplies, and my map of the United States with my Einstein stamp over Los Angeles; I was going to Hollywood. I was eleven. It was dark and Mom and Dad were asleep. I recall opening the front door, leaving and locking it after me to keep them safe.

I was terrified and excited. I’d never walked alone at night in my home town of Charlottesville Virginia. I headed towards Rugby Rd where a friend lived. A man in a car slowed beside me and asked if I wanted a ride. I said no thanks and kept walking. He drove away. I dove behind the bushes and hid in fear. Then I turned around and headed back home. Somehow the door was unlocked! We never discussed that night.

I guess, in truth, I ran away twice. The second time I stayed.