Dreams, Dead Horses, and Swarms of Insects

I dream a lot, as I believe I’ve mentioned before on this blog. Nearly every night, all night, I have lengthy, vivid dreams typically of places that don’t exist full of people I generally don’t know. Every now and then I’ll be somewhere familiar with someone familiar, but the majority of time, I’m in locations that seem to be generated by my subconscious and are full of people I don’t know in real life. Meanwhile, most of these locations are full of objects, items, and decorations, including many I have never seen the likes of outside of my dreams.

Recently, I’ve started having things in my dreams appear in my daily life a day or two after. None of these things have been anything of any great significance, but the fact that is this happening is interesting nonetheless. Apparently it’s interesting enough (to me, at least) to get me to come out of a multi-year hiatus to return to posting on this blog, at least for now. I wanted to make sure I at least catalogued this somewhere. This place made as much sense as any other, especially considering that I’m on an extended vacation from social media as well.

Two nights ago in my dream, I had a swarm of tiny insects flying in a repeating pattern (almost like an infinity symbol) just a few inches from my face. It’s something that has happened to me multiple times in real life (particularly in summer time) but not for quite some time. It also hasn’t ever occurred in any dream I can recall. It was hardly one of the more fascinating aspects of that dream, but it became more interesting the following day.

The morning after I had that dream, I went over to help my dad with work around his house and yard. Since resigning my full-time position of nine years in youth mental health back in June, I’ve been spending a lot of time helping my retiree parents with their yard work, landscaping, and general maintenance around the house. In fact, I typically go over there a few days a week to both visit and do some work with my dad.

That morning, he mentioned that we needed to clear out all the overripe/rotten grapefruit on the tree in order to not attract rodents to the area. Our city sometimes gets roof rats, which are the last thing you want in your yard or around your house. Rotting citrus seems to attract them.

While I was under the massive grapefruit tree canopy, picking the remaining overripe grapefruit from last season, I turned to my right and saw an identical swarm of tiny insects flying in an identical pattern from the dream night before. Not exactly the most earth-shattering premonition, but the timing was uncanny. The fact that real life identically replicated something from the prior night’s dream (which I had never dreamt before) was at least worth noting. That said, it’s still only a sample size of one.

Fast forward to last night. In one of my dreams last night I started singing the intro of Guns N’ Roses “Dead Horse” from their “Use Your Illusion I” album accapella. It’s a song I’ve listened to plenty of times but also one that I probably haven’t heard in close to a year.

The portion I sang in my dream goes:

“Sick of this life
Not that you’d care
I’m not the only one
With whom these feelings I share

Nobody understands
Quite why we’re here
We’re searchin’ for answers
That never appear

But maybe if I looked real hard I’d
I’d see your tryin’ too
To understand this life
That we’re all goin’ through”

In the actual song, that section of vocal and acoustic guitar is followed by Axl Rose speaking the line, “Then when she said she was gonna like wreck my car, I didn’t know what to do” before he screams and the song absolutely blows up into a full-on rock song. However, in my dream, I didn’t recall what the upcoming spoken line was and left it at that. In real life, outside the world of dreams, I have no issue recalling all of it.

Why am I mentioning this? Every morning when I get ready lately, I’ve been connecting my iPod (yes, iPod– I’m old and I still use and enjoy mine) to a small bluetooth speaker and putting it on shuffle. My iPod has well over 8,000 songs on it, so putting that thing on shuffle means you really can end up hearing anything.

This morning when I put it on shuffle while getting ready, the first song that played was…

“Dead Horse” by Guns N’ Roses.

We’re now at a sample size of two. Admittedly, neither one is some kind of foreshadowing of a major global incident or anything of any true significance, but the pattern that’s beginning is interesting nonetheless. At least to me.

We’ll see what tonight’s dreams and tomorrow’s reality will bring.