The Recurring Architecture of My Dreams, Part I: The Early Years

I had a dream over the weekend and it has caused me to think about my history of dreams and some of their standard settings. This last one was some place new yet familiar.

I can remember dreams going back to my early childhood (five or six years old). The two earliest were non-repeating: the first has no setting just a dark background and involves a standard wooden school ruler, 12 inches long with flat bottom and slightly beveled top, fractional inch segments* imprinted in black and the small metal insert running the length against which you could run your pen or pencil to draw a perfect straight line. I hold the ruler in my right hand (I'm left-handed) while a pale green, luminescent spider about an inch long slowly crawls from the far end toward me. I watch as it passes each printed tick mark on the ruler, starting and stopping, glowing faintly as it closes and I can not let go no matter how hard I try until I wake just before it touches me.

The second one seems more. . . normal . . . for a five/six year old: The new suburban neighborhood in which we lived backed up to, and was named for, a long, forested ridge on the other side of which was a reservoir. On the crest of the ridge, one tree stood above all the others, a pine with a peculiar top which, if you squinted just right, or had very poor eyesight as I do and couldn't focus properly, looked an awful lot like a Tyrannosaur. Which, in my dream, it became and waved its tiny arms about and chomped its huge jaws but never came down into our little valley because it was still rooted up there.

Both of those dreams are over fifty years old and only happened once.

The first of my recurring dreams started shortly after. It was also the first of my lucid dreams. It was the flying dream.

I remember lying on my back, under the covers, yet not touching the bed. With a little effort I could swing my body sideways, left then right, until I was moving like a pendulum or someone swinging in a hammock. Soon I was flying two or three times a week. I still remember the delight I felt when I eventually realized I could control how far I could arc the swing and when I first performed a full barrel roll.

At some point, I turned over so I was facing down and thus began moving through space. Left, right forward and (with some difficulty) back were mine. The only thing I never got the hang of was altitude control and I remained at a constant (and not coincidental since that just happened to be the height of my bed) three feet off the ground. And this is where the first of the recurring locations came in as I found myself repeatedly navigating through my brightly lit, empty school, into and out of classrooms and up and down the clean, polished hallway, no one else around, until, inevitably, the one long hallway would narrow down in a kind of forced perspective and I found myself with shoulders wedged against the walls unable to move and woke up. The school setting was accurate down to the desk arrangements, lights and radiators in the classrooms, including the overall floor plan. As dream settings go, except for the last little bit, it was quite mundane.

A couple years later we moved to another town and those dreams ended,

* There was no such thing as metric in those days. I wear an onion on my belt.

Eat Your Heart Out, Hammacher Schlemmer

The catalogs have been coming in pretty steadily for the past few weeks now and the floodgates will open soon but we may have received the winner of the season already.

In along with Grandin Road (the purveyor of those new Hallowe'en ghoulies we had out this year), Stauer (watches and jewelry), Smithsonian, National Wildlife Fund and a couple of others was Museum Tour, a new one to me.

Most of what Museum Tour offers is standard science education stuff for kids of various ages: puzzles, games, experiments, microscopes, telescopes, chemistry sets and selected intellectually stimulating toys.

And then there's the life-size Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton.

Thirteen feet tall, 39 feet long and weighing 661 pounds, this is a museum-quality cast resin model for only $249,000! Delivery and expert installation extra.

From the web site:

Educator Comments:Not everyone has room for a full sized T-Rex in their home, but if you do, you can be assured that the quality of this model is excellent and will make a perfect display. Museums around the world have installed this large dinosaur to the amazement of their audiences. The Geoword lab is meticulous about details. Even if you could find one, a "fossilized" T-Rex would be extremely heavy and cost many millions of dollars to display. This detailed representation is the way to go. It will inspire children and adults who are interested in the story of evolution.

        If you are interested in purchasing this model for yourself or a local museum, please call during business hours for details about shipping and installation. As you might imagine, displaying this large creature is not easy. An experienced team will be sent to your site to install the T-Rex to meet your specifications.

Of course, if that's a little beyond your budget (and in these times we would certainly understand) you can purchase just the skull (as seen in the rear of the photos) for a mere $24,900.

The web site helpfully lists the item status as "In Stock."

Don't delay! Order yours today!