Nightmares
When I was young, I sometimes had a recurring nightmare about walking through the subway beneath the road behind our house. The subway lead to the nearest playpark. There was a huge steel door in the side of the tunnel. In the dream, as I entered the tunnel the door would burst open, and a giant crow – identical to a puppet in a children’s TV show I didn’t like – would burst out and attack me. I would wake up shaking, pouring with sweat.
One night, when I was about six or seven years old, a dream took me into the tunnel, and instead of running, I fought the bird. It’s one of the only times I can ever recall being conscious during a dream – making decisions, and acting on them.
I never had the dream again.
I suppose it says something about the power of dreams that I still recall it so clearly. I was perhaps six or seven years old, and nearly forty years later I can still remember every detail.