Monday, February 25, 2008

Wind and Waves









From the time Madame x was just a little xlet... she has had a fear and fascination of giant monster waves. Who doesn't, one might ponder. Madame x, however carries this morbid terror (and curiosity) deep into her psyche, complete with repeated dreams of water demise due to giant monster waves.

This is the dream:

Little madame x is sitting on a beach towel playing with her friends and family (her back is to the beach), suddenly a look of fright and panic appear on the faces of all the beach goers. The sky abruptly becomes dark and as she turns, she watches the ocean being sucked out.... and to her horror! sees, a mind boggling, terror inducing, wall of water.... a Gi-normous wave. So big it blocks the sun... There is a flotsam and jetsam mishmash of weird stuff in this giant wave. Mostly furniture (couches and tables and chairs). She awakens just as the wave begins to peak.


This dream has been recurring for the past forty years and the fate of Madame x is always spared by the alarm clock.


What in the world happened to cause this to be her demon? Who knows. Perhaps it was when her brothers learned about the tsunami(s) and spent the week creating tidal waves in a galvanized tub in the back yard, sinking battalions of little plastic army men on popsicle stick rafts.
Or maybe it was the time a young madame x got caught in an undertow at San Clemente beach. When an ocean rip current pulled her under and towed her, bouncing and somersaulting, until she popped to the surface on the other side of the wave and swam safely back to shore.

Madame x will watch an entire t.v. show about guys surfing gazillion foot waves. She Just stands watching transfixed.... in awe and amazement. She looks and looks...but there is never furniture in those huge waves.

What ever the reason for this fixation, it created a lifetime allure. So yesterday when the local newspaper reported twenty foot waves due to gale force winds.

Madame x had a perverse desire to go see them.

8 comments:

Chellie said...

That's what I've been waiting for...a comment from you that reminds me you're still there and gets me to laughing so hard..."when Madame X was a little xlet!" Too cute.

I think long-standing recurring dreams are from some sort of time line that was meaningful and meaningful can be negative. My recurring dream is that I discover that I still have my hamsters from Junior High and I have not fed them or cleaned their cage in forever and I'm absolutely saddened at how they must have suffered.

Aren't those dreams just a blast?

Mx said...

Oh man.... now I'll probably see hamsters in that wall of water in my next dream. But the cage will be clean.

I have one other recurrent dream, but I haven't had that one for a couple of years... it is about my college classes.

Anonymous said...

Hmmm. It's been a while since I've had a recurring dream. I can only think of two. I used to get strep throat every year, right around Christmas time, and whenever I was in the throes of its fever-inducing temper, trying to get some much-needed rest, I would dream a horrible dream where I was racing around this flashing red grid in a too-small go-kart, with some horrible bad guy behind me, and we're just going in a square, around and around the grid, but it's like mowing the lawn, where we keep making the square smaller and smaller every time. It's a trap I know, but I'm stuck and can't go anywhere else, and the red is flashing and the guy is going faster than me and therefore gaining on me, and just as the whine of his kart gets unbearably loud and he reaches out for me and I start to scream, I wake up in a feverish panic, drenched in sweat. It totally sucks.

I haven't had strep throat since I was a kid though, so I haven't had that dream for a while. But I remember dreading the annual ailment just because of that dream that I knew would come, and it always did.

The other one has to do with bugs being in bed with me. I am deathly afraid of bugs, all of them, and actually, this dream has several variations on the common theme, all causing me to wake up sweating, heart thumping, and gasping for breath.

Usually it's just one bug that I dream about finding in bed with me, and it's so horribly realistic that it always causes me to jump out of bed and turn on the light and thump the bed a few times and stand there in a cold panic for several minutes before convincing myself there is absolutely nothing there!

The particular variation I remember having as a kid is where this whole infestation, nay, army, of bugs comes crawling into my room while I'm sleeping, all sorts, beetles locusts, spiders, crickets, grasshoppers - the crunchier the better, and they cover everything (like the plague of locusts in the Bible), and they crawl up onto me and try to eat me, and I wake up (in the dream) and try to go running to my parents' bedroom but when I step foot on the floor there is this horrible crunch that makes the bugs all buzz with anger because I've killed a bunch of them and they redouble their efforts at attacking me. Then, still in the dream, I run out of the room (crunching underfoot the whole way) to my parents' bedroom, but the bug army follows me and not even my parents are safe! It's horrible.

I remember waking up from this dream and lying in sheer terror of moving or opening my eyes for fear that I would see the bugs everywhere. When I finally got up the courage to open my eyes and saw nothing there, I wanted to go to my parents' room but I was terrified of crunching something on the floor. My bed was positioned in my room in such a way that if I crawled to the very end of it, I could *just* reach the door, and I opened it, while still on my bed, and jumped from my bed out into the hallway and quickly shut the door behind me, so none of the little bastards could escape and follow me, and I went and slept in my parents' bed until morning.

Sorry for the length. But that was fun to share! Dreams are so funny! I wish I knew how to analyze them.

Em

captain corky said...

Wow that's wild! I recommend you rent lots of Bay Watch DVDs. This should help you with your phobia, and perhaps in your next dream David Hasselhoff, or Captain Corky will come and rescue you. ;)

Mx said...

Someone actually interpretated my dream once (unsolicited from me):
As.... my life being out of control...
Hmmmmm....

don't think so

But here is what I could find on line about your dreams

Chellie: Hamsters are know in dream interpretatiion as "safe and comfortable ideas and non-threatening thoughts. To see a Hamster in your dreams, represents guarded emotions. You are distancing yourself from others so that you won't end up getting hurt. The neglected Hamsters are your own neglected needs.

Wow girl... Whenever you have this dream, you need to throw caution to the wind and do more nice things for yourself.

-----------------------------------

Em: This one is easy... I could interpretate this without 'the google'. But I did google this:
LOCUST plagued by something
BUG things that bug you
SPIDER "Stuck in circumstances - maybe even the dreamers own dominant family"
INSECTS Insects are small creatures and are often linked to irritations

Maybe when you have this dream is means someone or thing is annoying the hell out of you. Which means, 'I' would be having this dream every night!

------------------------------------
Corky: I think the Hoff is too busy maneuvering those 12 steps.
But you can save me.... bring Max

Chellie said...

Intersting!

Guilty Secret said...

Wow. A recurring dream for 40 years? Wow.

Anonymous said...

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Em