Dreams have always held a high level of gravity for me; I give as much meaning and significance to them as I give to 9/11 and remember them just as much as I remember the wreckage caused by the 2017 and 2018 California wildfires. Despite having a lamentable imagination, my dreams have always been creative, engaging and, more often than I would like, disturbing. In my case, the quality of dreams compensates for their infrequency; they’re so vivid and distinguishing that they occupy my mind almost naturally – if they were still memorable.
One of my many dreamscape scenes has been of one concerning helplessness disguised in the form of physical disability. In this droll dream, the focus was on color and symbolism. Every object, every picture, and every pigment possessed a juxtaposition between the opposing colors of black and white. The walls, floors, ceilings, wallpapers, and backgrounds were all bleached white. But the clothes individuals donned, the hair people did, and the sable chair my buttocks were glued to were all an inky, alarming black. Someone was ushering me through this school building as if I was on a personal tour, and that someone was guiding me by the two cylindrical handles of my ebony wheelchair. I was familiar with the institution I was at – it was The American International School of Muscat or TAISM. I had ‘attended’ this school in the Sultanate of Oman for about four days – they were not in a row. Due to an extremely complicated personal situation relating to feminism, legal rights for women, and visa issues, I was forced to leave this school and return to California for attending my senior year of high school – in October. My recollection of this place when I had left – and returned – to it were filled with muddled, equivocal reactions of disappointment as well as relief. The hallways I once walked through and the electric blue lockers I had gazed at were all realistically present in the dream; the only thing missing was the function of my own lifeless legs.
The person guiding my wheelchair was of Asian descent; her eyes, framed by coal-black, rimmed glasses with a maroon hue, were almond-shaped and implicitly friendly. Her skin glowed with an ethereal luminescence of brilliant, blinding whiteness. But she did not blind my sight because I was not focused on her. I wasn’t even surprised to be strapped to a debilitating wheelchair. All I zeroed in on was the school tour; it was exactly as it was when I had been there: massively Brobdingnagian in size, perceptibly exorbitant in affordability, and expensive and excitingly full of unimaginable opportunities – it was the hallucinant equivalent of UC Berkeley’s Dwinelle Hall. And yet, I felt no pain to be physically incapacitated. It was just like the time I once accidentally stapled my index finger in the third or fourth grade: it may have hurt at the time, but in memory, the pain and discomfort ceased to be a part of my reminiscence. What was most alarming in the fantasy was the binary contrasts between black and white: All students were sporting inky, black clothes. At a school lacking a universally instated uniform, how could it be possible that every single high school student in the 12th grade managed to wear the exact same type of clothes of the exact same shade of black? And, why the mildly dolorous color of black of all the plethora of colors was chosen for this act?
It was as if the dress code had been such a version of yin and yang all along, or so it seemed. Sense lacked its presence in the scene – but I did not. I, a moderate individualist, who refused to conform to societal “norms”, values and rhythms without sufficient thought, was sporting the same customary style of dress as the rest of the crowd. I, too, was wearing pitch-black slacks, with an ivory white blouse and an elegant black coat on top. My dark chocolate hair was braided as it always had been by my mother – one singular plait stretching down my sturdy back. However, one detail caught my attention: why was everything white? TAISM – like Cal’s “blue and gold” scheme – had the theme of “blue and white”, not just white. But, in my dream, every person wore black trousers/skirts and white blouses while the architecture carried paleness as its hallmark tone. Throughout the tour, I felt intrigued, and, stunningly so, perhaps only slightly stunned. I wasn’t vexed about my disability to walk. I wasn’t flabbergasted by my limited mobility. I was simply watching, absorbing in my surroundings. Little did I know that this dream would all make sense, and become an absolute reality on Graduation Photo Day a few days after I had the dream. This incident was spectacular, not only because it confirmed the reality of my dream, but because the significance of it was that I had my Graduation Photo taken twice despite graduating from one high school in California: the photo sat hauntingly somewhere within my inbox, serving to remind me of the movie, A Walk to Remember, and how I “appeared” in two places at once.
However, my wheelchair dream of immobilization did not match the eccentricity of my Halloween dream. It was one of my most atypical dreams, though the fact that something so ordinary as a mode of transportation could become important enough for my subconscious to actually dream about was not the reason why. The oddness had to do with the overall nature of the dream, not its subject. I had dreamt about other trains, airplanes, boats, cruises, and buses many-a-time long before. But around the time of Halloween, the standard, slender, gray worn-out shape of the train that I so readily recognized appeared in the form of a mild nightmare. In the dream, it was still seven in the morning; the sky was still shadowy and midnight blue and the birds had only just begun to chirrup their sweet dayspring tones. The only thing was, I was the only person on the entire platform. The train had already arrived, but I wasn’t expecting to go in; I didn’t want to, from what I saw. The doors of all the individual cars connecting the subway were open wide; in each car, there were children, ranging from young toddlers to innocent middle school children to confused teenagers, dressed in amusing Halloween costumes. The cars had no seats, so every child was standing, with blank expressions that screamed something between consternation and utter bewilderment. They were all staring at me, with eyes open enough to focus directly on me, but not enough to petrify me completely. Quite frankly, while in the dream, I thought I was looking at the adolescent version of Sesame Street. It was, in one word, amusing. My mother told me that the dream simply reflected some hidden desire of my subconscious. It made sense: I was longing to go trick-or-treating as I had for the past two years, but I doubted that any college student attending the University of California Berkeley would dare engage in such a childish activity again. At least as a freshman, I thought so. I still remember it as vividly as I did when I experienced it one year ago.
Speaking of BART and transportation, another one of my dreams involved my journey on one of the most peculiar airplanes of history, on one that differed greatly from modern airplanes. The plane had aisles, but they were not the ones that spark claustrophobia in most passengers: they were wide and easy to navigate through. The lights were undimmed and the grayed ceiling lacked the “starry sky” blanketed with mesmerizing constellations that I had seen so many airplanes I had traveled on before, proudly adorn. I concentrated my focus on one pair of seats, where a man (hereafter referred to as “Uncle”) was sitting next to a girl. He had a depilated skull, with a fuzzy ‘cloud’ of about six or seven hairs on his head. His eyes were piercingly wide, like stretched almonds being elongated both vertically and horizontally, appearing like round olives. His nose shone with the reflection of the seat light to his left side, while his lips were extended in a tight smile, contrived and artificial. I knew him – he was familiar with my family, though I would gladly commit to anything to deprive him of that membership. He was not nonplussed by seeing me. Seated next to him was an African-American female child, with curly pitch-black hair and chocolate skin. She couldn’t be any more than nine or ten years old, at most, and she was vividly uncomfortable sitting to Uncle. It wasn’t because he was harassing her in any manner or sitting too close to her, but rather because she was simply quite young and naive; naturally, she wished to sit next to someone a little more…calming.
And, for an odd reason I may never fully comprehend, I was walking down the aisle with a strong sense of authority, with my chin up and shoulders broadened, and my back straightened upwards. I was actively taking charge of monitoring seat placements, perusing the plane through all the passengers and checking to make sure that they were all somewhat restful in their respective seats. When I saw Uncle and the girl, I immediately took initiative: I motioned to Uncle and spoke to him, urging him to ensconce himself in another empty seat I saw earlier a few rows back, which was situated next to another man’s seat. It was killing two birds with one stone: Naturally, both the woman and the girl would be more soothed sitting next to each other, and so would Uncle, since perching next to a gentleman would never hurt. Once that was done, I was satisfied, accomplishing something worth telling (though I told no one except for my conscience).
The other interesting aspect of this dream was the technological panels between each plane pew: they had replaced the windows adjacent to the seats that one would normally find in a conventional aircraft. These panels were touch screens elucidating information regarding every passenger onboard the flight. As I scrolled through the electronic screen – seeming to be searching for a particular someone I did not know in reality, but with defined purpose – my mother’s name, with her lovely picture, popped up. But I couldn’t see her on the flight; I knew she wasn’t on the jetliner I was currently on. I felt perplexed and slightly anxious about the exact meaning of this whimsical occurrence.
My dreams about planes, however, always dig deeper and contain such quirky, fey details that forgetting them would do my mind an unforgivable disservice. For example, one of my dreams involved myself traveling on a plane. The entire plane housed only young students – perhaps college students – onboard. I was seated next to a girl, one whom whenever I looked at, seemed smug and utterly bored with my presence. She was engulfed in her own unknown world, using the power of her Beats headphones. The music on the plane was dimmed down, but was surprisingly upbeat for any airline; it was suited to the musical tastes of the demographic age group onboard. Pop music? Taylor Swift lyrics? How could any plane or any airline ever play such music with a professional pilot’s consent – with any corporate company’s consent? None of my Gulf Air, Etihad Airways, Qatar Airlines, Air Blue Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Airlines, Emirates Airlines, Pakistan International Airways Airlines, or Cathay Pacific Airlines had ever played such tunes.
The complacent emocore girl next to me disagreed on my musical opinions: the music did not sound as euphonic to her as it did to me. She was also not as confounded as I was to hear such a choice of tunes being played to passengers. Out in front of my seat were two large granite gray desks – exactly as the ones on Amtrak trains – on either side of the plane. Was I in Business Class? If so, how on earth did I manage to afford it, despite being a struggling college student? Abruptly, I noticed that the girl seated on the left desk was my very own partner. How did she reach the table without passing me or crunching my knees up in front of the process? Do I need to visit the optometrist so soon? She was busily designing art on her sketchbook; her work manifested her talent. But, more importantly, she was drawing with a wet banana peel on her sketchbook, which, somehow, neither deterred her from her efforts nor disrupted the progress of her task. Located adjacent to her, on the same desk, was another female artist, whose artistic skills possessed more dexterity than my seatmate: she was sketching a beauteous landscape using felt tip markers, and her resulting artwork was a vista worth admiring. The realism and truth in the scrupulousness of her details were astounding. My mind wandered along, asking a string of rhetorical questions, receiving little in conscious reply: Was this flight supposed to be a study abroad field trip, or something of the sort? If so, who covered the expenses? As an Intended Economics major, I only felt it right that I remained concerned about the logistical matters relating to finances, even in a reverie.
En masse, I think of my bizarre, idiosyncratic dream as narratives soundly grounded in reality, most likely spurred by stress I – and many – feel on a constant basis at college. Mental health initiatives, counseling, therapy, and awareness are all ubiquitously important at UC Berkeley and are growing increasingly impactful on campus, and yet these salient features that seek to encourage the emotional – and thus, physical – well-being of students only help to create a pseudo-environment of normalcy. They endeavor to envision a healthy environment of cheerful academic inquiry and research, and yet, the more that is learned about their efforts, the more anxiety and depression seems to explode within its morose, atrabilious boundaries. I feel that the existential crises I have experienced ever since becoming a UC Berkeley student have played crucial roles in giving rise my outré dreams. Why is this journey to become a successful, educated young professional so difficult? Why doesn’t this traumatic sentiment of being trapped within an agonizing crucible become easier with time if the age-old adage of “time heals all” is genuinely true? Is it not? Why are pain and misery being added to nearly every aspect of university life? Why couldn’t flânerie and academic success cooperate with each other, and go hand in hand?
I’m conscientious, naive, petite, pear-shaped, nettlesome, mildly cheeky, overly ambitious, fastidious, gullible, introverted, quiet, wet behind the ears, and somewhat observant but I am anything but decisive. Since life is all about being tested and edified – through one’s own unique fears and flaws – I am continuously given opportunities to “decide”, challenging my ineptitude in decision-making; I am always faced with more choices and options than the average person in the most ludicrous of situations, ones where it would be difficult to imagine that multiple options are possible to be selected – and yet, there they are.
In the manner of Joan Didion’s syntax: I appreciate dreams because they allow me to escape from the dreadful, harrowing veil of reality, have eldritch yet mirthful qualities that add endurance to my life, that transform existing meanings to novel implications that yield more acceptability. If I had the choice to dream at all, to pick and select the exact nature of my dreams, it would be necessary for me to come to terms with the thought-provoking traits that they often hallmark as trademarks, and to give up my free will in the decision-making process, because I would not wish any facet of my Seussian dreams to be any less uncanny, inquisitive or inspiring than what they already are.