Side Effects of Reading Mystic Realism at Bedtime.

I am fortunate (or maybe sometimes it is a little unfortunate) that I can say I remember my dreams nearly every night. Whether it is my travels through a cartoon wonderland, a friend desperately trying to save me from a conspiracy, or a mission through the levels of my mind, I find all of my dreams rather curious. This is why at some point in my life I hope to take a class about the nature and interpretation of dreams. Sometimes when dreams are discussed around me I hear a person say something along the lined of, “What the hell did you eat before you went to sleep?” But I don’t know if I believe that has anything to do with the scenes that play out in your head. I think that while we are sleeping we are able to see into a part of our minds that has the potential to be an untapped resource to our own self-understanding. The only thing prohibiting ourselves from seeing the message that our subconscious is trying to reveal is the fact that we need the key to unlock it.

Just last night I had a particular dream that I very much wish I held the key to… and just a little preface; this dream may seem a little confusing to readers.

The dream took place in descending levels of my subconscious mind that, as the dream continued, went deeper and deeper. In addition to my mind being the setting, it was also one of the main characters, yet my body was different. My conscious mind was inside the body of Harry Potter and I was on a mission inside my own subconscious with my English teacher, Ms. Healey, and Ron Weasley.

Now, the earlier plot points of this dream are fuzzy to me now, but the general idea was that the three of us were supposed to discover clues in each level of my subconscious in order to be able to move through the door and descend to the next level in my mind. We had passed through several different levels when we came to a floor where there was no door. The room was vast like a warehouse but was furnished with décor that was odd but beautiful. There were large, ornate mirrors hanging on the walls, tall shaped shrubberies, and an extremely long banquet table with only two chairs. After the three of us had examined our surroundings we began to look for a secret switch of sorts that would reveal a hidden door when Ms. Healey began to scratch at a spot on the wall. After several seconds of intense clawing Ms. Healey, turning away from the nail marks she had made, looked a Ron and me with a manic face and began to speak in a language that sounded like gibberish. All of a sudden, in an attempt to make her stop, Ron hits Ms. Healey right across the face! Despite the fact that I had Harry Potter’s body, my mind was still astonished that Ron had hit my teacher. After several more slaps to the face, Ms. Healey returned to lucidity and at that moment I was woken up.

While I have absolutely no idea what I was supposed to gather from that dream, I think it is interesting that I can explain why I had it. I can with a good bit of certainty say that the unusual sequencing and the presence of my English teacher in this dream was the result of our class beginning to learn about magic realism in literature. And I also know that the Harry Potter characters were a result of my mom making a comment about a Harry Potter commercial after I got home that night.
But the question I am left with is why? Why that specific combination of elements from my day at school, my interaction with my mother, and what is going on inside my head? I’d like to think that if I had the key to understanding that dream it would reveal something astounding to me… but I suppose that I will just be left wondering.