My Technicolor Dreams

As far back as I remember, I have dreamed in technicolor and surround sound, and 3D too. In short, when I lay my head on the pillow, close my eyes and fall asleep, I have stepped through this reality into another and have experienced another life as if in the flesh complete with the other tactile senses of taste, smell and heat or cold. When I wake up from such vivid dreams, I remember them like anyone would after watching a regular movie at a cinema and I might go about the morning musing and reliving certain highlights of my dreams like any cinema-goer might after a particularly good movie. Sometimes my dreams might even continue where it left off the night before for a row of nights, like a television mini-series.

With nightly entertainment like that, little wonder I was hardly bowled over by television as other children were. During my time, a lot of television programs were still in black and white. Technicolor wasn't as crisp and clear as they are today, definitely no 3D or surround sound.

The few people I told about the quality of my dreams made me feel that I'm odd or weird or downright freaky. So I stopped telling.

As a child, you don't question why you have such dreams; as a teenager or adult, you might psycho-analyse them if you suddenly start having such dreams. But since I have had them from early childhood, I neither question nor psychoanalyse them. I look forward to escaping into my dreams and adventures every night.

What do I dream of? Adventures - great exciting adventures on the high seas, in the Amazon jungles, in the pyramids of Giza, in the catacombs of Rome, on the lost continent of Atlantis, in the centre of the earth. I am always me in my dreams - never some damsel in distress, but decked out in explorer gear. Like a female Indiana Jones. Imagine my surprise when I saw the first Indiana Jones movie: "Hey, they stole my dreams and cast Harrison Ford in my role!" Imagine my bigger sense of outrage and feeling plagiarized when I saw Lara Croft.

Of course, many of the scenes of my adventures/dreams come from the books I read, as in Jules Verne's centre of the earth, the worlds of H. Rider Haggard and Rudyard Kipling, as well as the fantasies of H. G. Wells and Jonathan Swift, and of course, I have my own versions of Narnia and Tolkein's Middle Earth. I believe the biggest plagiarism my subconscious effected were on, and therefore my longest-running, most popular dreams were adventures casting me as a cross between Rin Tin Tin and Allan Quartermaine. I guess Indiana Jones and Lara Croft were just versions of that intrepid adventurer Allan Quartermaine.

But there were some dreams that came to me seemingly out of no reference to any book or movie. And then years later I pick up a book and read of the exact same scenario minus the physical descriptions of the protagonist. But what the protagonist felt and thought and did were exactly what I felt, thought and did in my dream. Spooky eh? Except that I now believe that dreams and ideas come from this pool of ether in the universe that could be tapped into by any one with a mind to, which accounts for two people having the same idea despite the fact that they don't know each other or of each other and live across the world from each other.

One such dream that I later read with absolute delight is Stephen King's 'The Talisman'. I was Jack Sawyer, I went to the Territories, I had a wonderful companion called Wolf. Of course I'm not a boy called Jack, I'm still me but 12 years old, my name is Heidi but I lived all his adventures. Delight? Yes, because it proved to me that I must be tuning into the same channel as Mister King, sharing some of his nightmares and dreamscapes.

Back then, I didn't read sai King's novels in the order they were published. Living on a budget, I read them as and when I could get them at the second hand book stores or libraries. Some years before I read 'The Talisman', I read 'Desperation' - a darker novel by far. I read the opening chapters with deja vu which escalated into dread and then unquiet fear. My 'Desperation' dream wasn't as alike as my 'Talisman' dreams, but some of the darker points were sufficiently alike to scare me.

Some of my dreams recur in their whole entirety with no change in plot whatsoever, much like watching a favorite movie a second time or third time around. The 'Desperation' dream wasn't one of my favorites because I wasn't an adventurer or explorer a la Quartermain. I was just caught in a dark situation - a version of nightmare for someone quite free of nightmares in the usual sense. I dreamt it a few times prior to reading the book - wasn't the type of nightmare to wake up screaming in fear, but was a little oppressed with the darkness. Tried very hard the second and third time around to change the plot a little bit so that the ending would be less dark but to no avail. But after reading King's 'Desperation' book, I dreamt my 'Desperation' dream 5 times in a row. Dreadful; I was quite disturbed.

I eventually jollied myself out of the funk by telling myself that if a scenario like 'The Stand' should happen in the real world, I would be immune to Captain Tripps. My favorite author intimated that those who dream vivid technicolor surround sound dreams are immune to the superflu.

I also don't think I'm odd, weird or freaky anymore: that's why I share the nature of  my dreamscapes in public.