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I Dream the Future

I had another night of extremely intricate dreams last night. Then 11 hours of conversation with new friend.

I’ve been reading this book, The Years of Rice and Salt, an alternative history of the world in which 99% of the population was wiped out by the black plague in the 1400s, and the cultures that remained were Muslim and Buddhist for the most part. Part of the story is trying to reconcile or fuse the two faiths. The book posits that we are reincarnated through time, and that we dream or remember our past lives in sleep.

I’ve heard these ideas many times, and they appeal to me, I think because my dreams are so active.

I document my dreams. The locations of my dreams interest me, and sometimes I can pick up elements from waking life, or my companions in the dreams will be people I know. Often there are new gadgets, new outfits, new physical capacity. I’ve flown, I’m been wind.

Most of the dreams, for years now, have been places I don’t know, and people I don’t know. And many of those dreams are clearly in a future where individual rights have been greatly reduced, people live in large common spaces, there’s not a lot of outdoors to go to. There is resistance and acceptance.

I like the idea of dreams being a space to remember other lives, and I like the idea of souls moving from one life to the next. I think, with population growth, of the finite number of original souls…splitting and growing like lizard tails. Maybe this is why we feel so incomplete; why some of us feel driven towards ends we can’t achieve in one lifetime. We are connected, woven throughout time.

But lately I think I am dreaming future lives, not past ones. Or glimpsing potential futures. In most, I am part of a resistance to unjust authority. I am often slipping through the window and escaping just before the round-up. In some I am taking care of my family, especially my sisters. In some I am obedient, and those are nightmares. In some I have given up, I am only observing.

I can track how I am participating in my current life by these future dreams.

In many of the future dreams where I have no privacy, which I so desperately need in my life now, I am so happy. We live in community with each other. Feels so different and familiar.

I think others might visit my dreams and think they were sad, too gray. But as I document these dreams, I am exploring some emotional evolution, or decoding some message sent back to me in my sleep. And it’s exciting, how people are interacting with each other, even in the most chaotic times, especially in the most violent times. In my dreams I can see that we’ve learned something, and though we have almost nothing left, the secret we’ve learned, the secret of how to BE with each other, is like a new pinky toe, such a tangible and necessary evolution.

In this new iteration of blog, I think I may post some of these dreams, the more coherent ones. And some songs, make a songblog. We’ll see. But this is perhaps a warning about those dreams, or a decoder tip: I dream the future.