Puzzles

Last night I finally dreamed and remembered my dream.  I have been impatiently waiting for this since we received our assignment.  It isn’t very often anymore that I remember my dreams, but then most nights I only sleep very little.  Every weekend, though, when my hours of sleep increases to that of a normal person, I go to bed wondering if tonight will be the night that I remember a dream.  The funny thing, though, was last night I fell asleep on my couch while doing homework.  In the middle of the night I woke and moved myself to the longer couch with a blanket.  Then around six thirty, I awoke again to my alarm upstairs going off.  Just a moment before, I had been dreaming.  As I sprinted up the stairs to turn off the screaming clock, I had to smile to myself just because it had finally happened and I was going to be able to complete the assignment I had been hoping to work on for the last three weeks.

Even when I woke up, the dream was starting to fade, but then that’s what they always do.  I remember that I was in a uniform with my ROTC squad.  It was bright out and I had a pair of dark sunglasses on, but I still had to squint from the light.  Cradled against my elbow was a M16 that pulled my arm down heavily.  I was walking and laughing at something another team member had said.  The sun was hot on a dry and brown landscape. And then suddenly everything changed.  I was then in a stadium looking out over a meticulously groomed diamond.  Droplets from the sprinklers across the field sparkled in the ever bright sunshine creating a prism affect.  The dark brown of the baseline and mound complemented the green of the expansive grass.  I looked next to me and said something to the man standing next to me.  He was childhood friend in a uniform that matched the one on the scoreboard.  I can’t hear what he is saying, or I don’t remember it, but I can see a sparkle in his eyes and his enthusiasm about something, most likely the game that is soon to begin.  People begin to trickle into the stadium and he starts to walk away.  Even though I don’t hear conversation, I know it is that he is headed to the locker rooms.  Then the scene fades again.  I am back in a uniform again, but the environment is once again different.  I am in a hospital, working with patients.  I see myself around equipment for Physical Therapy and the patients in the room with me repeating the exercises that I give them.  Suddenly someone enters the room and I feel the need to leave.  An unknown emergency has occurred, but I don’t know what it is.  All I know is that it is including a person I care for and I am torn between staying with my patients and going to the site of the emergency.  Right before I make a decision, I am woken up by alarm clock. 

I wish dreams were less confusing.  They are always a puzzle to me.  For as long as I can remember, I have never made a definite decision in a dream.  Just about the time that I am going to concrete something in that world, the dream either ends, I am woken up, or I move to a new scene.  It makes me wonder if dreams are the questions that you ask yourself, but never let a decision be made.  They seem to be played over and over to yourself, whether in a dream form or subconsciously in the back of your mind, ever present, but not always a consciously available.   Frustrating.  An ever present impossible puzzle.