Danny ChaiI had a really strange dream the other night. My mom comes to me and shows me that both she and Abby got tattoos. Abby has this huge blurry blue and black thing on her upper arm, as well as a smaller one on her wrist. When I see it, I go ballistic. My mom doesn’t seem to realize that tattoos are permanent; she seems surprised when I tell her that, and when I think about Abby having to go through life with these hideous images on her arm, I start crying.
At which point I wake up. I go to the sink and wash my face and wash out my mouth, and I can both taste and feel the coolness of the water, confirming that I’m awake now, and I think to myself, thank God it was just a dream. I go out to the living room, and my family, in town for Abby’s dol, is there watching her. And I play with her a bit, again, thankful that nothing bad has happened to her. After a while, I tell my mom how I just had this awful nightmare that she had gotten Abby a tattoo. To which she replies, “I did.” And she pulls back the collar of Abby’s shirt to reveal two small cross tattoos between her neck and shoulders.
At which point I wake up again, this time for real. I had a dream within a dream, which has happened to me a few times. Dreams within dreams are very philosophically interesting, I think, because it points out how we can never be sure that what we are experiencing is truly real, and lead some to believe that everything is illusory. The ancient Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu wrote:
When we dream we do not know that we are dreaming. In our dreams we may even interpret our dreams. Only after we are awake do we know that we have dreamed. But there comes a great awakening, and then we know that life is a great dream. But the stupid think they are awake all the time and believe they know it distinctly.
It’s B.S, but still interesting. In any case, I’ve been wondering if there’s any meaning in this particularly strange and vivid dream, but I can’t figure it out. It was just odd.