Waking Dream

At some point last night, I dreamed I was awake. Or maybe I actually was awake. It’s hard to distinguish when deep into the sleep cycle. So perhaps I met the point where dreams and reality collide . . . What might a person do when they are awake but think they are still asleep?

I also dreamed about dogs. I dreamed my mom had a chihuahua, and in the dream my mom had died and the chihuahua was depressed. A couple who ran a crematorium under the deck behind my family’s house and also owned many dogs expressed concern to me over the chihuahua as I walked past one day. I took the chihuahua back home with me from their place, along with another one of their many dogs. That dog, a small, round, black thing, bit me with its sharp little teeth, leading me to meditate on the best way to discipline a puppy: punishment or positive reinforcement?

Another dream focused on a big warehouse bookstore. Its owner was anti-Semitic and, thus, refused to either stock books about anything Jewish or hire any Jews. I discovered this when going in with a Jewish friend (whose name I don’t recall) to apply for jobs or possibly because we already were hired and working that day. The owner though was furious upon finding out my friend was Jewish, and he was banished from the store along with a Jewish book that had somehow made its way into the stock. Naturally, I couldn’t let this stand in the dream, and I turned into a traditional sort of trickster, leading the owner in front of a crowd in the store into making admissions that his prejudices were baseless and wrong. I put him in for some serious humiliation over his discrimination in front of his customers and employees, with his wife’s tacit approval (she had been trying to change him for years). Of course, in the dream, my tricky ways led him to be seriously struck by my arguments and to seriously reconsider his beliefs. And of course, I can’t remember what “I” did or said.