I encourage lying among my children because I find it among the most useful of our distinctions from the animal kingdom and these lessons manifest on the mornings I work from home, where I ask over breakfast (PIZZA POCKETS), 'WHAT DID YOU DREAM LAST NIGHT?' In the beginning, the children would try to pass the most painful banalities off on me, as though I cared about a dream where you 'got a bicycle' or 'went to Chuck E. Cheese.'
YOU CALL THAT A DREAM? I would scream. NOW THIS, and here is where I jump upon the kitchen island, remove my shirt and fly head first into the couch, THIS IS A DREAM!
And their landscapes are suddenly richer, and sometimes darker, sinister and yes, painful, they can be that, but they cannot be ordinary or dull or the kind of painful which makes you want to continue on sleeping, how close to your unfulfilled life they compare. They are allowed to dream in black and white, but must also dream in colors, but not the colors of their days. Upon waking, I want them to ask, 'Why is the sky green?' Because it makes surfacing from underwater feel like drowning, it makes flying feel like falling.
"I dreamed I was counting frogs. One, two, three." She crouches onto all fours and starts to hop around the dining room. "I dreamed I was a frog."
"I dreamed a man was chasing me." He steadies the cereal spoon in his hand. "But the ground opened up and swallowed him whole."
They ask me what I dreamed, not yet aware that the teacher is well known for failing his own lessons. But I have a cheat sheet. "I dreamed my spirit reached the end of the universe, where there is a small room containing the souls of all the people I miss. And we shut the door, turned on the lights and danced."
Last night, after working til 11pm, I downed a glass of wine, a couple of sleeping pills, and proceeded to dream about being in a meeting, then returning to my desk to type up the notes, then submitting a report that no one really liked and no one really loved. I dreamed I was working.
I'll be damned if I ever tell them the truth of that.
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9 comments:
how many times can a person say the word sublime before it loses its meaning? i love this. I think it should be a musical.
also, i love it because when people learn i do jungian dreamwork, they often want to share a dream. i actually enjoy hearing them, but i have a fantasy that one of these days, someone's going to tell me a dream and i'll just stare agog at them, give a theatrical exhale and back away, saying, that's fucked up.
Lying about your dreams requires an active imagination, which, in turn, primes the mental pump for potentially more interesting actual dreams. Therefore, by encouraging children to lie, we strengthen their imagination and creativity. My God...you're an evil genius, Brandon!
On the other hand, if you made them drink a glass of wine with a couple sleeping pills before bed, that might work even better than lying. Hmmmmmmmm....
Dear NBC,
I have an idea for your idiotic "The More You Know" segments....
I am an excellent liar. Little known fact: I ghost wrote all of Simon and Garfunkel's lyrics. We had to go our separate ways when they shorted me on the cash for "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Pity.
A musical! What a perfect idea. You and kyran co-produce, and I'll buy two tickets.
kyran, oh, if you could have been in my head last night, i think you might have leaned on your heels if not backed up completely.
sir, in our house we don't call them lies we call them active truths.
caitlin, 'little known fact' is an excellent euphemism for 'lie' as well.
peefer, i'm pretty sure i can get you a discount on those tix. i'll post the code on my secret nonexistent blog.
They say that lying makes baby Jesus cry, but I tend to think he's too sensitive anyway.
What I want to know is what Teenage Jesus thinks of our non-truths.
I want to know what Teenage Jesus thinks of a lot of things.
One night I had a dream about cleaning. It seemed like I was cleaning all night. It was so depressing to wake up and see that my apartment was still a filth-hole. All that mental energy for nothing.
Uhh, I mean, I dream that I had a baby and the baby was a mermaid.
dustin, i'm pretty sure teenage jesus was busy solving mysteries with teenage mary and his foil, teenage judas. at the end of every episode, the villain was unmasked to reveal pontius pilate who bemoaned the interference of those meddling kids.
mg!, the only thing you have to be concerned about with delivering mermaids is when they come out tail first, which is what we call a beach birth.
I always have the same dream. I'm at a concession stand at a baseball game buying a hotdog. They only have really small hot dogs. "I'd really like a bigger weiner," I say to the man. He just looks at me and holds the tiny hotdog out. "That'll be $3.00, ma'am," he say. "I'm a man," I say. "$3.00," he replies.
I have no idea what it means.
Hello, Brandon.
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