Before I get to saying the things I am out to say, let me preface this entry by saying that any mentions of frequent nightmares are not offered up as subtle hints to my Emo Darque Artiste side. When I do offer hints up about my Dark Passenger, believe you me, they won’t be subtle. Your patient here happens to have frequent nightmares because he takes a dandy supplement called DMAE, which among other things, appears to increase dream activity. I take it because, placebo or not (and note that I started taking it at a physician’s recommendation), it makes me talk more clearly—I have a slight stammering problem that sometimes embarrasses me; that feeling where you know the word is on the tip of your tongue but it is not there when you need it so you waffle like an ass. Like I am doing now. Too long, didn’t read: TVC15 has lotsa dreams. Bad dreams.

It’s kind of surprising how many people I meet and get to really talk to don’t recall their dreams at all. I’m keeping this short because talking about how important I think dreams are is about 2 degrees of separation from talking about unicorn magic and the healing power of magnets. Anyway, I am out-of-control manic when I am not dreaming. A solid 75% of the shit I dream is nothing but imagery culled from the events of recent days, but for whatever reason it is something of a release. When I go for an extended period without dreaming, I eventually realize that those are the more out-of-control, manic periods of my life. Mind you, I’m always manic, but it’s usually controlled and focused mania. The good kind of mania.

As a side effect of watching too many horror or suspense or Pasolini flicks, a significant percentage of my dreams are nightmares. This has positives and negatives. As a writer, a good nightmare means a solid idea. The negative side of the coin is that I basically wake up every hour terrified. The variety of nightmares is usually pretty good. Even when you’re asleep, you can’t be scared by the same thing repeatedly. Variety is the spice of life, and my record of nightmares is proof of that. Never the same creepout twice!

Over the past several years I have run the nightmare gamut. Reliving the deaths of loved ones? Been there. All sorts of terrible high school related nightmares? Yeah. Incredibly nuanced nightmares about ruining friendships important to you? All the time. Losing my job? Yup. Nightmares where you wake up, have another nightmare, and realize that you just had a crazy recursive nightmare-within-a-nightmare? Man, you don’t even know.

But lately I have noticed something new: the failed nightmare. A rare creature indeed; I believe I have only encountered it a handful of times, with the most recent being last night. To give a bit of an explanation, a failed nightmare is like the bad twists at the end of some poor Twilight Zone episodes, or M. Night Shyamalan movies. The events of the nightmare all occur with a solid amount of tension, and when the scary part hits full force, instead of getting terrified, you realize the ridiculousness of the scenario and kind of sleepgiggle at the predicament.

Here’s the rub: in last night’s dream, I took off my hat and realized I needed a haircut. There was a sense of dread, and the visuals of the dream were setting themselves up with creepy angles. I ended up going for the haircut, which in spooky dream fashion, involved something akin to surgery; as in, I do not remember it happening. In the end of the dream, there was a reveal similar to the end of that classic (good!) Twilight Zone episode where the chick is trying to get plastic surgery to make her face look freaky, because everyone, in HER world, looks like a total freak. I took off my nearly ever-present Kangol cap and realized. . .that my hair had been cut too short. For a moment, the terror was there, but then I realized that this twist was totally retarded. I even woke up, mildly disappointed that this promising nightmare turned out so terrible.

Well, this has been a little different for me, as a blog post. I thought it was an interesting little meandering, but still navel-gazing will be avoided in the future. Dreams are especially time sensitive when it comes to memory. Even many memorable dreams disappear within days (my non-expert ass attributes this to the interference theory of memory, part of which states that short term memories not deemed important get brain-shitcanned as soon as that slot on the memory queue can be filled with something more immediately necessary, like which chicken sandwich at Wendy’s is your favorite), so quick documentation is necessary. I promise to start keeping an Oprah-esque dream journal so I don’t have to subject you to this nonsense again.