I think that poor quality sleep might be the reason why I have such linear dreams. What I mean is that I don’t think that the part of my brain which tries to make things make sense is completely turned off when I am having dreams like the White House dream. In fact, with that dream I sort of fell asleep for a little while, woke up, lay there, petted the dog, and listened for the clock to chime and then fell back to sleep….so while I’m laying there not sleeping I remember the dream and that’s why I remember it the next day. During an average night I wake up at least three times and at least once a night I wake up enough to locate the bathroom/ a medical article/ an appropriate part of the dog to pet. Did you know that if you pet a mastiff in his sleep his tail still wags? Weird....

But I still have plenty of dreams of the non-linear kind. You know, like the one where there was a crazy mad scientist / magician at The Depot who turned The Hub into a woman (albeit not a very attractive one at 6ft 4 and with five o’clock shadow) so the police wanted to question me about his disappearance, so I hid out among the Amish people wearing nothing but a bright orange highway cone (and I didn’t stand out at all! Hmmm.) and then decided to try to get home so I broke into an abandoned gas station which was actually a log cabin inside and I found a white nightgown that I put on. Then, someone was coming, so I ran outside and hid in a tree stump which was shaped like a skull and when the person left, I ran into a shop where some guy was air brushing religious figures on tee shirts he was trying to sell and he began to chase me because he thought that I was St. Theresa of the Little Ways.

No wonder I wake up tired.

I once heard a story that Salvadore Dali wouldn’t let himself sleep at night. He’d sit up with a spoon in his hand and when he began to drift off the spoon would hit the floor and make a noise and rouse him, and it was those images he saw in his mind when he was drowsing that he painted. I have no idea if this is true or not, but it doesn’t sound very healthy. I guess he was suffering for his art.

That sounds so much more romantic than insomnia!