The other night, Elisabeth Shue and I were eating apples in my kitchen.
She said something amusing, and when I chuckled, a tiny stream of juice trickled down my chin. I reached up and wiped it away with the back of my hand.
It was a dream, of course. I’ve never met Elisabeth Shue, haven’t even thought about her in passing in years. Yet there she was, big as life in my kitchen, enjoying a nice red apple.
For those of you who don’t recognize the name, Elisabeth Shue is an actor. I first became aware of her as Tom Cruise’s love interest in the oh-so-steamy Cocktail. I remember really enjoying her performance opposite Robert Downey, Jr., in Heart and Souls. Later, she earned an Oscar nomination for her role in Leaving Las Vegas. She’s not acting much anymore—I looked her up after her visit—and the last thing I recall seeing her in was CSI, which ended in 2015.
Despite this gap, Elisabeth (or perhaps given the intimacy of our mutual apple-eating, I should call her Lis) made an appearance in my dream.
Where did that dream come from? What cell within the memory banks of my brain jiggled into life while I was submerged in REM?
Dreams prove that our sleeping brains are capable of spectacular, unlimited creativity.
Why, then, does my conscious brain find it so difficult to come up with a synonym for “know”?
Do you remember your dreams? Do they influence your waking hours?
The Callie Cassidy Mystery series is available on Amazon Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and paperback.
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Lori Roberts Herbst writes the Callie Cassidy Mysteries, a cozy mystery series set in Rock Creek Village, Colorado, and the (hopefully) soon-to-be-released Seahorse Bay Mysteries, set in a Texas cruise port town. To find out more and to sign up for her newsletter, go to www.lorirobertsherbst.com
Sometimes, dreams are where the stories I’m writing come together or become clear. Other times, they come out of nowhere and while interesting have no basis in anything I can imagine. But, I do dream and remember them.
ReplyDeleteIt's so bizarre that they can come from seemingly nowhere. But it's fun!
DeleteOnly once has a dream spawned the seed of a story, one that was never published and was, quite frankly, awful.
ReplyDeleteI have several recurring dreams (nightmares), but I know exactly what triggers them. And then there are the weird ones that make me wonder what the heck I ate before bed that stirred up my subconscious.
Side note: Heart and Souls is one of my all-time favorite movies.
Love that movie! Just so cute and fun.
DeleteThe dreams I remember are my stress dreams and ones where I am working on some issue. Others are for entertainment purposes, and like movies or "light" books, quickly forgotten.
ReplyDeleteStress dreams -- that's a good way to put it. I have a lot of those... uh oh.
DeleteThank you, Lori, for a fun post. I used to have very vivid dreams with total recall about the details. I recall dreams where I was swimming underwater, tasted food, felt fabric, etc. Sadly, I don’t have that recall anymore, even though when I awake, I realize that I had a dream, but I can’t remember it. And if dreams could give you plot ideas, all the better.
ReplyDeleteAll those mean something, according to Freud, anyway. I'd love to have some of them analyzed.
DeleteFor years, I had what can only be called an anxiety dream. I would be driving a car down Sunrise Highway, a built-up road with numerous crossroads and parking lots, and find I was not able to stop. I'd weave in & out, missing things by inches. Finally, one night, I pulled into a well-lit parking lot, glanced down at my feet, thought, "Why, there's the brake and the clutch," and stopped the car. I have no idea what brought the dream on, or what was resolved, but I have not had that dream since.
ReplyDeleteI did a little research into a dream about being unable to lasso a runaway elevator. My research suggested it was about my feeling of being out of control. Made sense!
DeleteI remember the stress dreams (college exams, lost in a big city unable to read or speak the language, the black snake wrapped around the kitchen sink pipes).
ReplyDeleteSo strange that our brains still want to torture us with stress even in our sleep!
DeleteCool dream with Elisabeth Shue in your kitchen! Susan Hayward showed up in my kitchen in a dream (is "finding a movie star in your kitchen" a dream type?). This happened when I was a young mother and had just lost my own mother. In the dream, Susan Hayward (who'd died 14 years earlier) was looking for something in our refrigerator. She turned around when I came into the kitchen and told me not to worry, that she'd seen Mom and she was doing fine. It was a weirdly comforting dream. Weird because I don't think I've ever seen one of Hayward's movies.
ReplyDeleteI remember lots of dreams all the way back to childhood. So many dreams!
That's amazing, Molly.
DeleteThis is wonderful. I do remember some dreams and will puzzle over them for hours. I have two reoccurring ones. The first I remember having all my life. It’s about giant ants. In the last scene of the dream I’m full grown, dressed in a beige safari dress (which I actually did have, but not as a child), swinging a sword and beheading those giant ants. I’ve since seen the movie Them. It came out in the 50s and I wonder if it wasn’t a matinee offering at the local theater. The second is the finding room dreams. I’ll be in a very familiar house, usually one I’ve owned, and I discover an entire set of wonderful rooms I never knew existed. I’m pretty sure I don’t want that one interpreted!
ReplyDeleteLove this post!! And about Elizabeth Shue. I had a recurring dream during my childhood where I was falling and spinning out of control. Never going anywhere really and never landing. It started when I had pneumonia and continued for a long time. But I love it when I have good dreams instead!
ReplyDelete