The Scripts of Dreams

I've learned a couple languages in my day, and one of the tired, common profundities I hear from teachers is that once you start dreaming in the target language, you're well on your way to mastering it. This little bit of wisdom is usually produced as some great revelation, that the students should consider themselves lucky should they ever experience such. Well, I've dreamed in Korean plenty of times, and it sounded just like how it sounds in real life: totally unintelligible. I like my English dreams just fine.

But... who is to say that I actually dream in English? If you were to ask me what language I dream in... actually, no--go ahead and ask me. Go on. It's okay. Your turn.

...

"Well, English, sort of."

...

"Oh, what do I mean by 'sort of'? I mean the accent is American... the letters are Roman... the words are English... but is the vocabulary English? That's the question."

...

"Two cats."

My brain renders dream-dialogue as English as best it can, but is a spoon a spoon in a dream? Can incorrect grammar suddenly become correct? I once dreamed that I was reading a poem, a great epic, composed by some long forgotten author. It went on and on and on and I was totally hooked. I remember instances in the dream where I realized I must be dreaming and, oh so briefly, wondered where all this poetry was coming from--was I coming up with it on the fly, myself? Tapping into some hidden memory? If I were conscious, could I recognize this poem as something decent? Or was it all just tripe, random bits of word fragments pieced together in a Frankenstein poem?

I managed to write down one of the stanzas, as I groggily regained consciousness. It made no sense grammatically, but it was pretty. Not the most amazing thing in the world, but hey: this is not the greatest poem in the world--that was lost in my dream--this is just a tribute.

I can probably answer the question as to whether the words themselves are random, meaningless garbage, by taking a different dream I had recently, this one about math. Bryan told me he was going to hike the John Muir Trail next week. He did not explicitly invite me, as is his habit, but I was considering inviting myself anyway, as is my habit. But he told me he would take just seven days to do it. Seven days? I quickly did my dream-math in my dream-head:

212 miles / 7 days = 14.1 miles per day

No, don't try to contradict me. It worked out to exactly 14.1 miles per day in my dream. I eventually bowed out of the running because even that perfectly reasonable amount would be too much for my knees to take safely, I thought. But it was a moot point: some guy (whose real relationship to me or Bryan I could only explain in my dream-English, but suffice to say he was some sort of camp director) showed up and turned the world all wonky and Bryan and I eventually ended up falling off a cliff and dying. So that settled that.

14.1 miles is obviously way off. It's less than half the real amount. But, when I think about it, it's pretty goddamn accurate! What was to stop my brain from reaching for 3176.8 miles per day and seeing that it was good? Nothing at all--my brain can do whatever the hell it wants to. Yet, I can't help but think the 14.1 figure was nothing more than randomness--a handy figure chosen because it looked okay, because some part of me wanted it to be the figure, and not because my brain even bothered attempting to do anything that might remotely resemble arithmetic.

Applying this assumption to language, I can only guess that that poem I read in my sleep was probably just a bunch of butchered phrases, smashed together in repetitive couplets, and my brain was providing all the interpreted emotional meaning. In which case... Perhaps those emotions, the impact of the reading, and not the writing at all, is the true script of dreams.

I'm going to bed now.