This doesn’t make sense because you’re conscious.

in Random Crap

You know how when you’re having a dream you sometimes get angry, or frustrated, or delighted or calm…but you almost never get utterly baffled.  A giant purple ostrich walks into your house, which you’ll later realize (upon waking) is not your house at all but is actually a bakery you peed at once, and instead of thinking, “When the fuck did I get an ostrich?” you think “I wonder if it wants me to scritch it on the head?”  But you think it in symbols that aren’t real words because words don’t exist in these dreams, and then you have a sudden epiphany and you realize something brilliant and clever and life-altering and you wake up and jot it down on your arm so that you won’t forget it, and you fall back asleep feeling as content and satisfied and proud of yourself as you’ve felt in years because FINALLY you’ve made a small bit of sense of it all and put things in order.  And then you wake up the next morning and lay in bed feeling happy that you figured out an important truth out and then you start to think about it and it seems a bit cloudy and you thank God you thought to write it all down.  And you look at your arm that “enlightened you” wrote and it says “Cheese is the meaning of life.  Because milk is the beginning of life and you need milk when you’re a baby and you need milk to make cheese and that’s how the world is made.  BECAUSE OF CHEESE.”

And then you frown and collapse back into bed and realize that you’re an idiot and that your one moment of pure clarification and epiphany is just a jumbled bit of nonsense about the meaning of the world being cheese.  Which is actually not a terrible epiphany, all things considered, because cheese really is brilliant, but it’s not quite the earth-shattering truth that made you understand the world and your place in it in your half-dream state.

It’s odd, isn’t it?  That dreams are so confusing, but that we’re so seldom confused when we’re in them.  It’s only when we’re awake that we realize how insane our dreams are.  And when I’m awake, the emotion I feel most often is confusion.  Is it that I use up all my confusion during the day and then at night I’ve exhausted it so much that houses-with-legs-on-them and universal-languages-made-of-cat-noises seem unquestionable and common?  Or is it that dreams are where everything makes sense and that we’re just not able to appreciate them when we’re awake because we’re too drugged up by our consciousness to understand the massively complicated string-theory of cheese because we’re too full of brakes and fear and “no-you-may-not-have-another-cookie” and the number of days our inspection sticker has been expired?

I don’t know.  I suspect I might know though if this was a dream.

Let’s pretend it is.  Let’s pretend that it makes perfect sense and that for just a moment we understand life, and things are good and clear and we are so much less stupid than we feared we were.

It’s a nice dream.

I think I’ll keep it.

237 thoughts on “This doesn’t make sense because you’re conscious.”

Read comments below or add one.

  1. “Let’s pretend it is. Let’s pretend that it makes perfect sense and that for just a moment we understand life, and things are good and make sense and we are so much less stupid than we feared we were.”

    I spend every day trying to pretend this. I’m hopeful I’ll start believing it at some point.

  2. I think you are right – only in dreams are we free enough to fully engage our brains without the societal restrictions!!!

  3. once again, you have captured a little slice of wisdom and served it up to us with some chips of humor and the salsa of poignancy. wait, this analogy is going nowhere. never mind. also? i have noticed i never use my sense of smell in my dreams. do you?

  4. I had a dream last night that we went to a magic castle (not THE magic castle though) and that my head actually exploded. The worst part of it was that I woke up stressed out because the handyman is coming on Wednesday and who is going to let him in if I’m a big soggy mess in a magic castle.

  5. I totally get the not being confused by the ostrich type of bizareness. When I wake up, the few peices I can remember are so off the wall bizarre I can’t imagine why I thought they made sense in the dream. In case you haven’t seen it – this XKCD cartoon is so true! Every.damn.morning!
    http://xkcd.com/430/

    🙂

  6. I’m just happy when I wake up and am not mad at anyone (especially my husband) because of what they did in my dreams.

  12. What if life is the dream and the real world is the ostriches and cheese IS the meaning of life?

    Recommended reading: “Life is a Dream” – Pedro Calderon de la Barca (free on Amazon kindle!)

  13. Dreams are so weird. Most of the time, I’d prefer not to have them. However, the other night, I dreamed that Eddie Vedder and I were cubicle mates in some office. That one has provided me with a fair bit of amusement. 🙂 Happy dreaming!

  14. This is so apropos. I love that word. I had a dream last night that was so richly detailed and terrifying but I was utterly calm AND married to Brad Pitt. Well, it was MY husband but he looked exactly like Brad when he doesn’t look like a serial killer but a little older than he does in Thelma and Louise. There was no cheese, though, which is fortunate because I’m dairy-intolerant.

  15. Maybe it’s the string cheese theory all along and you’ve nailed it, Jenny!

    I’ll join in another cookie, you deserve it.

  19. I love those half awake moments. The only time in your life when you don’t have to make sense because the entire Universe exists in you unconscious mind and there alone. FYI in your unconscious universe it really is because of cheese. 🙂

    I sleep walk and talk sometime and my husband gets to glimpse my unconscious universe sometimes…involuntarily. Because I shake him awake (while I’m still asleep) to tell him that there is something on his arm and it’s green. Then demand to know if he understands me (because some part of me know he in his conscious state could never fully understand the genius unconscious universe). Now I wonder if the thing on his arm was just a new type of cheese.

    Thanks for sharing. I’m in for pretending.

    PS. My husband is pretending for years. “Yes dear I understand” are totally the magic words to make me go back to “sleep” when I’m already asleep.

  21. You know what’s magical though? When you dream about something crazy like cute baby elephants turned dragons that can fly and is your own personal pet (elephagon you call them and shake your head at self, for being so bloody juvenile) and then stumbling upon a pin on “dragon pets” and think hey! elephagons… I dreamt this.. and maybe she had a similar dream and suddenly I feel more connected to an absolute stranger, through crazy networks intricately woven all over this utterly webbed world, and she’s not a strange r anymore, she’s a friend, who has crazy dreams just as you do.. and she writes about it too.

    That’s a great dream to keep as well…

  25. I’m not so sure your cheese epiphany is that far off of the mark. Cheese gets better when it ages. You just have to trim off the moldy parts, which is like the bad stuff in life. It leaves a little hole, but you taste better. I don’t know. It sounded good in my head, where I sometimes go when consciousness overwhelms me.

  26. I was just thinking about this the other day. Dreams, not cheese.

    I was probably thinking about it because I sort of went off my meds for a few days and had incredibly vivid, awesome dreams full of life-altering realizations that were about stuff like…see, I can’t remember because I didn’t write it down.

  27. Just this morning I had the kind of dream that’s actually a little bit better than my real life and I didn’t want to wake up. It’s kind of unfair that my subconscious has better parties than my reality.

  28. Maybe our dreams are actually real life, since everything seems right in them, and real life is actually our dreams. Hmm.

  29. I don’t like to dream. I don’t feel well rested after and when I interpret them, they’re mostly about how I’m stressed out. Super. I’d much rather have cheese. Or dream about cheese. Big balls of fresh mozz and little crumbles of feta. Mmm. Yeah, I’ve gotta hit the grocery store.

  30. Twice, in the last few years, I have experienced being utterly, completely baffled. The first time was at St James’s Park in London, when I saw an eider for the first time. My mind could not process what I was seeing. It looked like a duck/goose hybrid, like an anomaly. It was a fascinating feeling to not understand what I was seeing.
    The second time, in a parking lot during a windstorm, I thought I saw a giant bird attacking a car windshield. When I got closer, I discovered it was an oversized helium balloon (shaped like a pug), attached to the windshield wiper, that was blowing like crazy in the wind.

  31. One of my recurring dreams is having to use a toilet that’s exposed, everywhere from a public restroom with no walls to in the middle of the street. And I get frustrated in the dream because I don’t WANT to do what I need to do without a bit of privacy, but do I ever question WHY that toilet is in the middle of the street or why anyone would be expected to use it? No, I don’t.

    “Let’s pretend that it makes perfect sense and that for just a moment we understand life, and things are good and make sense and we are so much less stupid than we feared we were.” Yes. Because, cheese.

  32. Yeah. I…uh…I mean this girl I used to know….once spent and entire night scribbling the exact profound meaning of life the universe and everything onto the pages of a notebook while tripping on acid. Imagine my…I mean HER…sadness and embarrassment when the next morning all those profound world altering observations turned out to be things like “music is yellow and that girl has a snake in her tummy.”

    Also, glad to hear I’m not the only one who has dreams where my house is actually some business that I used the bathroom at five years ago.

  34. Ostriches always want their heads scritched. Fact. And damn if I’m not lactose intolerant. No wonder I don’t get life.

    (I am too. No wonder we’re fucked. ~ Jenny)

  35. Perhaps the dream is reality and THIS is sleeping and you like in the bakery, and cheese is the meaning of life, and the dream you’re in now tells you that doesn’t make sense because you’re really in the matrix and Keeanu Reeves is walking around in a weird too-tight coat and now I want cheese. A lot.
    Wait…. what just happened. I dunno.

    I feel like I think in symbols all the time. So there’s that. 🙂

  36. So, yeah. This makes sense. I had a dream that I woke up sobbing from and when I tried to describe it to my husband it came out like this:

    “My mom didn’t really die, she was alive. But she thought we didn’t love her. So she left a cassette tape telling us why she had left us and that she wouldn’t be coming back. My sister and I were so upset that we immediately took off in our Hummer and then we suddenly started being attacked by iguanas and I knew we were never going to find my Mom and Julia was freaking out and the iguanas just kept coming. Even the Hummer couldn’t stop them.”

    And I woke up SOBBING. I guess cos in my dream it was like losing my Mom all over again but honestly subconscious?!?!? Attacked by iguanas!? That doesn’t even remotely make sense.

  37. That made total sense to me, which may be a bad thing for you that I understood that.

    Speaking of dreams, I used to wake up and if i got mad at someone in a dream, or wanted to have sex with them in a dream, it carried over to while I was awake. But I would just wake up with that emotion towards them and never really remembering or understanding why.

    If my dreams had their way, I’d prob be fighting or fucking everyone.

  38. This morning before I awoke I experienced a dream that I was supposed to be cooking with some famous chef (unfortunately I don’t know who it was). Upon entering the building we were going to cook in I found a friend of my mom’s stapling shingles in the hallway. She said it was “for traction.” This is tamer of the dreams I’ve had over the last 6 months. Pregnancy makes you dream weird shit, man.

  40. Seeing your post about dreams made me think of a nightmare I had the other night. My sister’s boyfriend left me alone with his pet spider. It was HUGE. Like the size of a dinner plate huge (maybe even bigger). No matter where I ran, the dang thing ran after me. In the end, I tried to shut a door on my mom’s porch, but for some reason, there was a fire extinguisher in the way and the spider was able to jump through the small opening. I woke up when he jumped through.

    The crazy part is…..I think the spider was wanting to cuddle and be pet and whatnot. I’m deathly afraid of spiders, hence the running away. I wonder what that dream was trying to tell me.

  41. I need to pretend that today. And I didn’t even realize it until you said it. Thank you.

    Also, I need to eat cheese.

  42. have you honestly NEVER weirded yourself awake? Don’t get me wrong, plenty of times dream logic seems to make total sense and moving from one room to another through a hat is clearly the most sane and rational choice. but I have moments… maybe three or four times a year, where I like to think my subconscious is doing ‘spring cleaning’. and I say that b/c it’s the nicest way to explain that it makes that cat-with-a-hairball sound and just… HORKS all over EVERYTHING in a dream. so that even DREAM LOGIC is left going “… um… wh…. but…. fuck it, wake up, i’m out”. and then you wake up and your first thought is “what the FUCK, brain??”

    that CANNOT just be me.

  43. “Let’s pretend that it makes perfect sense and that for just a moment we understand life, and things are good and make sense and we are so much less stupid than we feared we were.”

    Works with my philosophy of life: Fake it till you make it.

  44. now I want cheese nachos. and there is no Mexican place near my office. cheesus christ jenny, you just messed my world.

  46. This one made me smile so much today! I think I’ll keep it too…if that’s okay.

  47. The other night I had this awful dream about being on this invisible personal hovercraft thing that looked surprisingly like a segway before it went all invisible. But it went haywire and somehow left me stranded on the slowly eroding/crumbling cliff-like bank of a nasty river where zombie hyena-manatees were determined to eat me if I fell in the water. But I couldn’t climb up the crumbling dirt because that’s where all of the death spiders were and if I ventured into the jungle on this side of the river I would surely die. The worst part was seeing my son staring at me and crying at a table outside the cafe on the other side of the river. He knew that if I went up the cliff I’d die and if I went down the cliff I’d die. So I just had to keep clutching at crumbling bits of dirt and try not to fall into the jaws of one of the terrifying zombie hyena-manatees….
    I have no idea what that dream meant… But zombie hyena-manatees are terrifying.

  48. Epiphany – I AM too full of brakes and fear. Where the hell did I put that accelerator?

  50. Being baffled in dreams never happens! But the worst is when you have a sexy or romantic dream about someone random and you bump into them later throughout the day. Gotta dumb smile like “I don’t really fancy you, but I just saw you naked.” lol. Or worse, you feel swoony about people you are NOT interested in.

  52. My husband loves when I wake him up telling him about something that JUST happened in our house, except not really our house because (insert whatever) was totally different, but (insert whatever) was totally JUST LIKE our house. I talk fast, scared, freaking out, make him go check all the doors and windows. I can remember the details clearly until he goes to search and I fall back asleep while he’s gone. The next morning, I got nothing. No memory of any of it. Truth? He’s probably making it all up to make me think I’m crazy 😉

  53. If anyone can help me make sense of this awesome dream line that I woke up with on my lips a little while ago, I’d be very grateful: “Yeah, but he works for the over kitten squad”

    I mean seriously? Kittens are cute, but I’m allergic and no one I know even has a kitten.

    Also, why is it in dreams I can never read what’s written down. Like I’ll look at a menu or something and…nothing…it’s either blank or blurry. I admit, I get pretty confused then. Because I know I can usually read. :-/ But I can nearly always fly (even though it’s by doing breast stroke in the air). I do love dreams, they’re awesome. Life would be super dull without the craziness of dreams.

  54. I sent you a dream epiphany on FB back in May but I doubt you read those messages so that’s probably why you never replied. Seems appropriate to share it with you again, here , in this forum, so here goes (copy and pasted from my FB message):

    Thought I’d share a little glimpse into my crazy world (head)…

    Last night I had a dream that was set in the future after zombies had tried to take over the world but the non-zombified had overcome and were once again in control. My business in this future world was of a trader and one of my most coveted items was the tame zombie. However, as is the case in most zombie dreams, the zombie’s true nature could not be tamed and I had to fight my way out of a three pronged zombie attack. The last thing I remember (before I woke up totally freaked out) was holding on to one of the zombies by the foot and repeatedly jumping on his knee. The freaking knee wouldn’t break so he kept getting up and trying to bite me.
    When I woke up, the first thing I thought was, “Wow that was a freaky zombie acorn dream. Jenny Lawson would love it.” Then I thought, “No, it was a freaky zombie unicorn dream… that’s why Jenny Lawson would love it.” Then I thought, “Why would I say acorn when I meant unicorn? They’re nothing alike.” Lying there trying not to fall asleep (I didn’t want to go back to that dream!), I started saying the words in my head, “Acorn, unicorn, a corn, uni corn.“ Then it hit me! A corn = a single corn. Uni corn = a single corn. They mean the same thing! We never see unicorns because they turn into acorns! I’ve solved one of the great mysteries of the universe!
    You. Are. Welcome.
    Disclaimer: I don’t remember any unicorns being in the dream.

  55. I know what you mean by those epiphanies and the jumbled bit of nonsense. We could surely solve all the troubles of the world if only we could stay asleep. Only there, in that world does it all make sense. It’s great reading this. Fascinating really. Glad to know I’m not the only one.

  56. I think cheese hits closer to home than any of us are giving you credit for. Milk being the beginning. Cheese being the end product. If we could all be cheesier, we’d succeed in enlightenment.

  58. Our waking minds are the order-finders or order-constructors. We can’t help but try to make some sense of our world – and since our world is disorderly we get confused. In dreams the order-constructor is turned off. In fact, the only reason dreams make any sense at all is because when we wake up the first thing our brains try to do is put it into story form. Then it gives up on that and we get the wonderful hybrid that is a (half) remembered dream. But in the dream itself, none of it makes sense and that’s OK. Nothing confusing about that.

  59. I thought brain-elves were supposed to mend the broken parts while you slept. Either I’m having the neurological equivalent of the government shutdown or Keebler gave them a better offer. The brain squirrels have offered to move in, but they can’t fool me–they’ll chew through all the wiring. Perhaps the ostriches would like a turn.

  61. I’m a huge reader, I fall asleep most nights with a book in my hand. As often as most people have the ‘falling dream’ I have a dream in which I have dozed off but wake up to read a few more pages, but I slowly and gradually realize that _I can’t read._ There are symbols on the page and they clearly make words and phrases, but I can’t make heads or tails of them. So frustrating. And every single time I’m so grossed out but don’t even question it. (bonus points because I’ve done this with your book?)

  64. I sometimes like to pretend that my life, especially at work, is actually a dream. I wonder what would happen if I reached out and scratched behind the ear of a guest staying at one of our properties?

    Or like in so many of my dreams, chase after them holding a detached ear asking them “Have you lost this?”

  66. The place I am in today, this post hit me in exactly the right place. I am crying with happiness because I’m going to pretend it makes perfect sense, and that life is good. Just this once.

  67. My last dream I remember well I was being attacked by zombies and the Doctor showed up to save me. When I entered the Tardis Sherlock was there waiting. I was so not happy to wake up from that one. Normally though I am half awake and half asleep hitting my husband and telling him the cat is on the ceiling again.

  68. A friend and I were inebriated into a state of enlightenment late one night, and we wrote something very profound on the top of a takeout food container. When we checked out our wise words the next day, we found “Test the dead.” (And the food in the box was long past edible. Double disappoinment.)

  70. I wear the cheese, it does not wear me.

    The only time I ever think “well this can’t be real” in a dream is when I am dreaming that I have won the lottery or am making out with David Boreanaz. Those are the things that are strange enough to jolt me awake. Sigh.

  72. This is a lovely dream and I’m so very pleased that you’re in it, Jenny, Guru of Cheese Wisdom (not to be confused with Cheese Whiz-dom). And I adore dreaming, because I love the feeling that it makes perfect sense that I’m a flying alien hamster spy or that I can string long spokes of pink bubblegum on the Space Needle or communicate telepathically with black animals or play trumpet with the Beatles. Although, once I composed song for my younger sister in a dream, about how much I loved her, and thought it was brilliant and moving, and I woke up briefly to write it down, and when I looked at it in the morning, it was . . . well, you know. Cheese Whiz.

  73. I wish I had in waking life the acceptance I have in my dreams. Life would be messier, but more peaceful. I sometimes dream in geometric shapes, and it’s beautiful.

  74. Dreams are where our subconscious takes over and everything is possible. It’s all-accepting. There’s nothing to fear, reject, or understand. Everything just is. I could use a lot more dreaming while I’m awake. Thanks for the insight.

  75. I hate realizing (when I’m in a bakery or some other random place) that I dreamed I’d be doing EXACTLY what I’m doing now in exactly said random place…two months ago. And I wonder what the hell is WRONG with me: if I’m going to have weird deja-vu shit going on in my dreams, why is it so utterly mundane? Why can’t I have some prophetic dream about lottery tickets?

    Now I realize it’s probably because of cheese.

  76. I’m glad I’m not the only one who dreams this way. My latest was that I had to babysit my friend’s baby goat. She doesn’t have a baby goat. But she did just have a baby….who knows.

  77. I have a BRILLIANT idea. And I am awake, so it’s probably not that brilliant. But if the only way that ‘BECAUSE CHEESE’ will make sense is in dreams then…we need to have somebody read us those words in our sleep. A Dream King perhaps….NEIL FUCKING GAIMAN. I can just imagine a lovely recording of him lulling me to sleep with that sonorous voice: “Cheese is the meaning of life. Because milk is the beginning of life and you need milk when you’re a baby and you need milk to make cheese and that’s how the world is made. BECAUSE OF CHEESE”. CAN’T YOU JUST IMAGINE HOW AWESOME THAT WOULD BE?
    You can make the check out to ‘She’s a damn genius’. Thanks.

  78. I get it where I’m having a dream that’s actually something I’m reading, but I can see the dream happening too while I’m reading. And I never think ‘what the hell! I don’t usually see the things happening in the books I’m reading!’ and if I could just do that maybe I could control the dream to make super awesome things happen in them like magicking things around the room or singing in front of a million people without being afraid…

  79. in my dreams I am almost always saving kittens or babies….from floods…fires…the devil…bad people…monsters
    once in awhile, it’s puppies instead of kittens or babies.
    my subconscious obviously thinks I am a heroine of some sort….the kitten baby puppy saving sort.

  80. That is a lot to write on one arm. I am impressed.

    Also I am super sad now because I don’t like cheese so does that mean my life is meaningless?

  81. You are brilliant. I’m going to pretend everything is a dream, and just accept things as they are and not worry about why. 🙂

  83. I have a recurring dream that I run a boarding house for zombies. They’re always very polite. I’ve spent a lot of waking hours trying to make it mean something other than “my subconscious is an awesome place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there”.

  84. my inspection sticker has been expired since August but now I am holding out until Nov 1 to get the car inspected so I get an 11 tag instead of a 10.
    I had the same plan in August & September as well. If this goes on long enough it’ll be August again and I’ll be back where I started.
    This makes perfect sense to me both asleep and awake.
    My husband feels differently but not differently enough to go get the car inspected himself.

  85. I dreamed that I spoke fluent Russian the other night and had a whole conversation with some Russian guy who had a beard. Then when I woke up I didn’t know what we had talked about. Sometimes I dream in Spanish, too.

  87. So I totally got this, and I’m worried now that I’m just asleep all the time and maybe my body is just plugged into a giant battery pack somewhere feeding alien machine bugs or ostriches or something…

  88. I’ve been dreaming that zombies invade my wedding, eat my guests and steal all the party favors. And I wake up really pissed off about those party favors.

  90. Okay I got that quote wrong. “Bakery YOU peed at…” I just wish I had peed at one. What do I know…I’m still asleep.

  91. A long, long time ago, I dreamed that I was standing on the street where I lived until the 8th grade. I heard a noise, looked up, and a pod of whales was swimming through the air. It was so beautiful and they were so majestic and peaceful. I cried when I woke up, because I just wanted to watch them forever.

    About a year after that, I went with a friend to see “Fantasia II”, and there were my air whales. When I think of a way to prove intellectual theft, I’ll own you, Disney! 🙂

  93. Isnt there 42 different flavors of cheese?
    The meaning of everything=42.. and this includes cheese!
    XO

  94. I don’t really remember my dreams, but there’s usually one vivid piece that sticks and makes me say WTF? This morning, for instance, I remember thinking “Good, no more buried goats” as I woke up. I like your cheese thing better.

  96. I’m coming out of a month that felt like a nightmare. And now everything is looking up, and things don’t have to make sense when you’re happy for the first time in a while. It’s just lovely.

  97. The trick is to operate from the feeling you have when you first woke up, that happy content place and know that all is right with the world. And not about looking back to see the what the epiphany itself was as that was a mere catalyst for knowing that truth. If you operate from that point then a good portion of the time the truth comes to you again not in symbols of cheese but in the words that you need to understand them.

  100. It sorta freaks me out when I have those dreams when I have an absolute understanding because I think my waking mind might be way more limited than I want to admit and my epiphany is TRUE!

    True story – I once had a dream about a Tweet that I thought was going to be hilarious. So funny I made sure I memorized it while I was falling back asleep. I was absolutely certain that this was a brilliant and witty observation:

    “Old chicken…now THATs interesting chicken!”

    You can’t say it isn’t true.

  101. I bought a dream encyclopidia once to try and bring that clarity into my waking hours but there was nothing in there about monsters who give hugs or talking furniture. stupid book.

  102. fantastic post! Thank you!

    now I cant get that damn ROW YOUR BOAT song outta my head!

    Thanks alot.

  103. I dreamed that I was carpooling to school with then freshly ex-Auburn qb Cam Newton, and we arrived to find ourselves in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. (This makes no sense because I wasn’t in school at the time, and I didn’t even attend Auburn anyway.) So, Cam and I have to hot-foot it across campus to a safe haven. I’m keeping up with him step for step, which is surprising given our relative heights, when I see all of these girls on heels losing their balance and falling and generally being left for dead. I take a look at one particularly tragic figure (she had her heel caught in the stairs and was looking rather pitiful) and yell, “THIS IS WHY I WEAR SENSIBLE SHOES!”

    And it is. (Cam and I made it to safety, in case you were worried.)

  104. The dreams I like best are the ones that take me to really cool places that are awesome and amazing. So then when I wake up I feel like I just had a free vacation.

  105. First, I would like some cheese now. Thanks for that.

    Second, weird timing because I had a bizarre dream last night that made complete sense when I was in it. I woke up thinking it was weird but also very happy because my dream had my dad in it and he lost his battle with cancer a little over two years ago.

    Sometimes dreams help us deal with things when we’re asleep that we can’t handle when we’re awake…Other times they tell us that we need more calcium in our diets.

  106. Tell me more about the string cheese theory! Please! I don’t know which it is that causes dreams to make sense when you’re dreaming them. I like how that’s just how it is and it’s not big deal in dreams; if only more of life could be that way. I had hallucinations due to medication once and felt the same that’s-how-this-is way, so there may be some correlation there. A friend once noted how dreams skip over the boring parts and that’s true too. One minute you’re in the bakery you think is your house with an ostrich and the next thing your at a birthday party on a gold course with miniature llamas but the boring commute across town was left out.

  109. I want to live in dream world! Just in everything makes sense dream world– not I’m being chased by a mummy who wants to kill me dream world. That would be a bad one to get stuck in. I guess I’ll just hang out in real world for a while…

  110. I really really realllllyyyy hope the answer isn’t cheese because it makes me very very very sick & have to go to the hospital.

    However, knowing my crappy body it IS cheese and my failure of a body isn’t made to understand good things.

  111. I still haven’t figured out the meaning of the chia table dream I had once. Twenty years later I still remember it so it must be significant!!

  112. I have a different opinion when it comes to dreams. When I went through the period of my life when I discovered I was having “prophetic” dreams…I discovered that we are all unique and we each index information uniquely that is taken in from all 5 senses. So, therefore, no one else can interpret your dreams…only you know what the cryptic symbols mean. Freud was an idiot. Sometimes the dreams will be crystal clear and other times they are cryptic head-scratchers.

  113. i love dreams. no matter how weird, or confusing. i tend to remember most of them and it actually relaxes me knowing before i fall asleep, i’ll be dreaming.
    i don’t even think it’s because things are bad in conscious life, because they aren’t. it’s like i get to live 2 lives and one i control (the awake one) and i one i have no control in a very good way.

  114. Go find your self some magic mushrooms and you will get to re-enter your dream state but your awake. And you’ll beable to interact with real people, and the cats. And then they can write down all your universe saving tips, or what ever amazing things come out of you during your trip to dream land, but awake. Oh, Victor would have a very productive day! You could understand what the cats have been trying to communicate to you since you’ve had them. And I’m sure the Tarids thingy will be there as well.

  116. First of all, I think that cheese is the meaning of life.

    Second of all, this post made me laugh, think, and get a little bit emotional all at once. Bravo. I’m at a pretty scary point in my life right now where everything is about to change, and that last part you wrote… yeah, that got me good.

  117. I do admit to worrying that a) We are IN FACT living in The Matrix, or b) This whole thing called life is one big Lost episode, and fuck it, live it while you can (except we didn’t crash land on a gorgeous desert island with polar bears and a people killing monster/black smoke thingie)

  118. This made me think of something relevant to the season. I was told once that the leaves turn colour because the chlorophyll has done all it’s going to do for the season and it goes away or something. (Don’t judge me, I’m not a treeologist.) What it said was that the trees are actually bright colours to start with, but when they’re active and creating food for themselves the chlorophyll is in the leaves and they’re green. When the chlorophyll drains away when they get ready for winter, their real colours come out. Sadly, they also fall off since they’re not really doing anything productive anymore.

    So are their real colours the green that you see most of the time, or are they the red/yellow/orange that you see for only a couple of weeks?

    Is your dream reality, or is reality really reality.

    Believe me, this makes sense in my head.

  119. There have been days when cheese has served as a reason for me to get out of bed, so it very well could be the meaning of life.

    I actually have completely lucid dreams, so I am always aware that I am in a dream when I am dreaming, and am usually able to completely control everything that happens. It can be a little exhausting.

  120. That’s a really good point….I’m very rarely confused in my dreams, but am almost always confused BY them when I wake up.

  121. This is RIDICULOUSLY timely!!!!!!! I ate the rest of my leftover pizza yesterday and was thinking an appropriate answer to most of life’s questions ought to be “because pizza!” Then I was thinking even moreso it should just be: “because cheese!” I can’t believe you posted this! Too funny 🙂

  122. The other night I was sleeping and heard our dog speaking in real words that were understandable, and it woke me up, and I thought OMFG! OUR DOG CAN TALK! But when I was full enough awake to be in reality I discovered that the dog was whining in here sleep. The next morning I couldn’t remember what I thought I heard the dog say, but The Husband now believes that in my dream state I can speak DOG!

  123. I still don’t understand why they say words don’t exist in dreams. Then why pray tell, do some people talk in their sleep?!?!

  124. I always giggle and snicker when I read your posts, but this – “the massively complicated string-theory of cheese” – was brilliant. And I’m pretty sure if the world exists today because of cheese I’m totally OK with that. And now I want string cheese.

  125. I totally feel you on the weird dreams. I have some truly bizarre ones sometimes. What’s funny is that in the dream, I recognize the bizarreness of it all, but I’m helpless to stop it.

  127. Dream logic = no logic. It is all reaction/response to whatever is coming at you. It is like the left-side of the brain gets to sleep and the right-side gets to go wild while dad is asleep. It is all free association and string cheese theory and your hippy-half is all, “hey man, sounds reasonable to me”, or “fuuuuuuuck”. On the rare occasion that the dad-half starts waking up, it becomes, “what they hell is going on here?! Everybody out!” and I wake up. I’ve had dreams where I finally have a thought, and it usually goes, “wait, what? Is this real?” and then shit starts breaking up and kind of floating apart and fun time is over.

  128. The other night I dreamed that I was in a massive traffic collision where dozens of cars sailed over an embankment and into the ocean. Most people died, but everyone in my car made it to shore. When we got to the beach, I realized it was made of lentils rather than sand, but decided not to mention it since everyone else in my car was Indian and I didn’t want them to think I was racist.

    It should also be noted that the lentils were perfectly cooked and seasoned by the seawater.

  129. Once, I dreamed I visited the Sistine chapel (never been there). There were some real problems with the dream. First, it was in London. Secondly, it was like the dingy basement of an office building and the ceiling had a cartoon image of the picture projected as the actual picture had faded off years ago.

  130. I have nightmare disorder, which basically means I’ve been having nightmares every night since as long as I can remember. It sucks. And it’s real. Don’t google it if you have any kind of anxiety disorder (especially nightmare disorder) because the page that comes up has the most unfortunate choice of picture in that it’s the stuff nightmares are made of. Anyway… I know exactly how you feel because I have nightmares regularly, and also because the only thing that stops the nightmares was taking Lunesta, which was great because I could enjoy sleep for the first time in my life (imagine being 18 years old and never having experienced the joy of sleep before; after I learned that sleep didn’t have to be scary, all I ever wanted to do was sleep) but the bad thing is that if you don’t immediately stop doing everything and focus on sleep after you take the medicine, you can end up doing some weird things. This is why I have a 100+ long list of names for a black cat as a note in my phone, how I ended up reading to a former roommate about Boudicca while asleep, and how I ended up having an incredibly one-sided conversation about the Bible in the middle of my sleep with my ex. So not only do I understand the weird dreams, I totally understand doing shit in your sleep and not realizing it and then having someone tell you the next day what you did or looking on your phone and finding your list of black cat names.

  131. Just a little nugget from a bizarre dream I had a couple of nights ago: the outside of a woman’s uterus looks like a koosh ball. Thanks, brain.

  132. Sometimes I dream that I’m waking up, getting out of bed and going into the bathroom…and then I realize that I’m still sleeping. So I wake up, get out of bed, go into the bathroom…but I’m still sleeping. So I wake up…

    I wonder if I’m dreaming now.

  135. Very rarely do I remember my dreams – Instead I have that weird thing where you wake up feeling like you’ve just fallen/slammed into your body from a great height – or just as I am falling asleep I will hear loud crashes and I will have to try and figure out if they really happened or if I am having an aneurysm.

    And then my anxiety disorder kicks in and then there is no sleep or dreaming, just wide eyed silent panic attacks in the dark.

    Except of course, when I take painkillers or medicine. Then there is all sorts of wackiness.

  138. Sometimes we don’t get dreams…but last night’s I got. Totally. I was waiting to go to the movies…but I was alone (umm…naturally). But I’d forgotten to get popcorn, so while everybody went over to the restaurant and sat down, waiting to go into the theater, I asked a co-worker if he’d save my seat. But when I got back with my popcorn the restaurant was empty and they wouldn’t let me in the theater (naturally). So I got mad and decided to leave the mall…but the guy walking ahead of me wouldn’t hold the door for me so I got really pissed off and I went to my car, planning to drive past this moron and spray him with the snow – which had somehow fallen in September – but when I dug my car out and drove past where his car was, he was gone (naturally). I totally understand this dream. IMPOTENCE. But can women BE impotent?? Or…wait…epiphany…it was cold and snowy…so maybe frigidity instead of impotence??? Hunh. Now I don’t understand anything…

  139. Sleep and dreams seem to be my theme of the week. Over the weekend I downloaded an app to track my sleep patterns, because I feel like I could be so much more productive as a human being if I could just figure out that magic number that isn’t too much or too little or in the middle of an amazing REM cycle. Then last night a friend that I haven’t seen in a long time showed up in my dream, and it just felt like spending time with them. So that got me wondering if people ever do share a dream… Thoughts this deep require more cheese though.

  140. I have TONS of goofy dreams!! I can usually trace them back to something I did/said/thought about/saw on the new/etc. I’ve had a couple of dreams with George Clooney—nothing erotic LOL, but nice.

    I have recurrent dreams about work when I’m stressed—it used to always be some variation on “I’m not at work—but I forgot to call in”. Now I dream that I go out at lunchtime or something and I can’t find how to get back to where I was working. Weird.

    You guys here in the Comments are pretty creative—-so here’s a question for the group: Does anyone else wake up hearing music they’ve (seemingly) never heard before?

    Love you all!

  141. Dreams are not odd at the time because the symbolism represents something completely normal. If a person is completely self-aware, then dreams are more literal. This is why everyone has weird dreams, because we are all lying to ourselves.

    That being said, I’m going to try my hand at decoding the night time epiphany. The cheese bit happened while you were in a partially-conscious state, so think of the cheese as representation of the meaning life. Dreammoods.com lists cheese as “gains and profits”, but you wrote down a reference to children. I think the meaning of life is providing comfort and security – not just financial, but emotional (mother’s milk = bonding) and physical (“life”) – to your offspring, maybe to provide them with a life or a world better than what we’ve got.

    Hailey is one very lucky girl.

    If this sounds completely wrong, then it is completely wrong. The truth about dream interpretation is determined by the dreamer. Even if I’m way off base, Hailey is still a lucky girl.

  142. I had a dream last night I was laying on my back in a pool which was actually a bed (not a water bed exactly) and my blankets were mashed potatoes, which were really bubble bath substitutes.
    It screams “food is my security blanket” but I don’t get what the water was about.
    I definitely cannot have another cookie, but I will anyway. Looking forward to seeing you at the Texas Women’s Conference, by the way. Squeee.

  143. I had a dream it was the end of the world. So I went to in n out. I love California. And the house with legs thing sounds like Baba Yaga. (the cannibalistic old hag lady, just in case you didn’t know)

  145. I saw someone else wrote that they couldn’t read in their dreams. I can’t either. I had a friend who says that is how you tell it is a dream–you read something. If the letters stay still, can be read, and say the same thing the second time to you read it then it isn’t a dream. So good to know in case you lead a very um… interesting life style. It is a good guideline to have, having had to use it once when I was not dreaming but having a very wacky day.

  146. You were kidding about “no words in dreams”, right? Because I totally have words in my dreams. I can remember entire sentences that were spoken in my dreams. For example, last night I dreamed my tenants got a tiger and a mountain lion as pets, without my permission. Then they came over to my house and said, quite clearly, “jfp89u3 njr893 nh373 8989dc h hu33 q27y6da .”

  147. I rarely dream…as in almost NEVER. Now I’m wondering why I don’t. Apparently, I’m missing out on something here.

  148. I have very few connections to reality right now but I have to tell you that I love you. I have loved you for over two years now but this, this decent into the maelstrom…… yes.
    It’s all fine webs of silk that seem to have little connection until the twilight hours. The Dali Lama said the meaning of life is to be happy – not for what the world gives you but instead for what you give the world……
    Dude…. I f-ing love cheese.

  149. P.S. Do you think it’s okay that I misspelled descent?? Spell check is messing with my world….

  150. PPS. Is it okay that I am so very self-consious and anxious because my comment gets moderation before publication?? Seriously, you are freaking me out right now.

  151. Damn – my first post – Which talked about how my connections with reality are so very slim and I misspelled descent…. didn’t post because I enjoy tequila and not spelling so much??
    RIGHT – I adore you. I have for well past 2 years but this post – that heads hell-bent into the grey spongy lines that define joint reality from…our individual ones???…. I just love you.
    The Dali Lama say s the meaning of life is to be happy – not for what you get from the world but instead for what you give it. And dude…….I f-ing love cheese.
    Thank you.

  153. I make up the best songs in my dreams. They are purse genius and would be mega hits but I for the life of my can’t remember them when I wake up.

  154. Pizzas can’t have bones cause pizzas grow on trees. c. 1984, Southern Methodist University, me

    It was an awakening that has stayed with me for nearly 30 years.

  155. I had a dream yesterday that my husband had borrowed a male lion and two female lions and they were hanging out in our bathroom while he watched a DVD on what to do if a problem should occur while the lions were in our care.

    When I mentioned this to him the look on his face made me think he was actually considering whether this was me giving him permission to see if we could borrow some lions. Hopefully he realizes that would probably not be safe, at least without borrowing a handler as well because whenever the vet shows us how to give our two cats pills it never works the same once we try it at home.

  157. I will not recount my last dream that included a bunch of naked us, happy in the woods until a nazi showed up and then we converted him to being naked in the woods and it made total sense. Also apparently I was sleep walking this dream because of what I found in my living room, no I’m not telling you what was there. AND that is why I do NOT take Ambien two nights in a row any more.

  158. Of course you are so full of confusion, seeing how your father brought home a cute magical squirrel that warped before your curious young eyes into a demonic puppet of FREAK THE FUCK OUT!! Thank God, you saved yourself with a sense of humor, self-compassion, and sheer brains. I had a dream last night that I got a personalized license plate that read “TRAUMA”. I fucking hate personalized license plates. But our traumas can be born. Sort of all over the place here. i DO have a therapist. Peace out and such.

  160. last night i dreamed i got the perfect house, with 7 bedrooms (because clearly two childless people need a 7 bedroom house) and i could slide down the stairs and land on the couch but then i went outside and realized that it had no yard and was in between two car dealerships and backed up to a nasty beach and there was a boardwalk under which an evil clown was killing people.

    actually one of the more normal dreams i’ve had recently…sleeping pills give me WEIRD dreams.

  161. What’s that about words not existing in dreams? There are definitely words in mine. Sometimes I remember them when I wake up, but it’s usually just ordinary conversations. Like the other day, this giant ship was coming to attack the space station we were on, but we had to check the rooms down this one corridor and we found an old dentists & hair salon (combined), and I remember discussing whether we should salvage any of the items. I also frequently have conversations in my dreams about the classes I’m going to fail because I forgot I was enrolled and now there’s a week before the finals but I haven’t learned any of the material…

  162. My life is all about pretending life doesn’t confuse the hell out of me and that I’m happy when I’m not. I never thought about treating those confusing parts of life as being as inconsequential as a dream where I can just say “Who gives a fuck!” and do as I please or better yet, as a dream where I can go back to sleep and make it turn out the way I want. I can do that when I’m lucid dreaming, why not in life? Thanks, Jenny!

  166. I would like to stop dreaming of the paper I’m supposed to write on a book I’m supposed to have read. In college. I’m 61.

  167. When I fly in my dreams I end up flying with other people sometimes, we all do loops and curls and it’s great flying fun. Are you one of those people in my dreams Mary? Or am I in yours? 🙂

  168. Hilarious. I was just thinking last today about a dream I had over and over for a certain part of my life, and I never have it anymore. I am starting to wonder if I actually only had the dream once.. but it seemed like such a familiar dream.. ha ha maybe that makes no sense? Anyway, it is funny how many of us have dreamed about not finishing a paper or assignment in school!

  169. Wow. Do I even dream wrong? I spend most of my dreaming in absolute terror because I don’t know the rules of the strange universe I find myself in – or is that a totally fucked up expression of just how anxiety laden my life is?

    Purple ostriches are very cool, and cheese is yummy.

    Totally dig string theory.

  171. I love the seamless-ness of my dreams. How else could a full scale volleyball match be played in my grandfather’s 10′ x 10′ living room with enough room for spectators?! My great dream truth was one I barely remember now except this one line someone told me about my great grandmother–“She holds the string to the light of the world”. Perhaps she really did….

  175. Jables, I have the same dream! Except I run around searching for a private toilet but they’re all out in the open! It’s worse than the dreaming you’re naked in front of people.

  177. I wish I could have some “cheesy” dreams that I could write about…anything to promote my “kraft.”

    And I’m out of puns.

    Seriously though…sounds awesome. I wish I had more than just laying down…a half-second of total “blankness” followed by being rudely awaken via obnoxious alarm clock.

  178. The most persistent impressions I take from my dreams are usually feelings of terror or loathing for intimate acquaintances. I hold that these are perfectly legitimate reasons for cold shouldering and trepidation.

  179. I just recounted to my husband the dream I had last night that made me curl up to him this morning:

    Apparently him & I were involved with another couple made up of David Duchovny and some nameless woman who did not look familiar. So apparently we all shared each other(yeah I don’t understand this one either but it was rather hot).

    BUT apparently I did something wrong because all three of them walked into the room I was holding laptops spouting how upset they were with me and walked off with the laptops. I followed them, and walked up to David kissing him(he was in his underwear & a navy blue T-shirt). It was then as I pulled back I realized that I was pregnant with twins. (WTF???). I guess I wasn’t sure who the father was and neither my husband nor David seemed to mind.

    And I woke up feeling a bit…rawwr.

  180. Dreams are so interesting.
    I have one that is totally a repeater. I’m usually in the room I grew up in and will wake to find a flying saucer outside my window to ride around the outside of the house. I like that dream, it’s been a while since I’ve had it.
    I do have some deja vu dreams, but I dream it first then freak out when I’m awake and I notice “I’ve been here before…” Ah well. Thanks for sharing Cheese – I like cheese. I like that it means everything. Much like 42..

  181. If it makes you feel better…when I was pregnant with my daughter, I woke my (now ex) husband up to yell at him for something I dreamed he did. In retrospect…I shouldn’t have apologized, and I should have hit him, too.

  182. Cheese, of course, all these years I’ve been wasting my time worrying about what life is about, what sense there is in my existence, when all along I should have been contemplating fermented or curdled food products!
    It’s just like the meaning of life in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the answer is 42, now find the question, only in this case the answer is cheese, and the question can go and fuck off, because who cares if there is cheese?
    Cheese; if it isn’t the answer, I don’t want to know the question!
    Now if only my life could make as much sense as my dreams do – clearly I’m doing things backwards!

  183. I had the most awesome life affirming dream a few months ago. I was at a yard sale looking at stuff and I realized all the stuff was from my past. An older woman came up to me and put her hand on my arm. She said “Everything is going to be better than you could ever imagine.” After I woke, I had a feeling of calmness and then it dawned on me…that woman was me in the future. And the stunning young woman she was with was my daughter. I told my therapist about that dream and she fired me. I guess she figured that her work was done! Dreams are weird…

  185. I would totally wear a shirt that says “…because cheese.” Just a thought. FYI. I think I peed in the same bakery.

  186. I often have dreams about losing teeth and not wearing underpants as I slid down a slide at the playground. I used to love analyzing dreams and what it meant when I was driving vs someone else. I love a good dream 🙂

  188. Jennifer Wilson up there, Spiders in dreams are supposed to be good luck, but I have my doubts, particularly when the spiders are dinner-plate sized and chase me. But I really hope it is true, because after a dream like that, you deserve some good luck!

    Jenny-I always liked to dream, and remember dreams and then look them up and try to figure out what they mean. Then I started to read about Chinese medicine a bit and I went to a seminar and the guy at the seminar said that the Chinese don’t subscribe to dream bullshit. (not in those rude words). He said that they feel if you balance in your life, then you should not remember your dreams and your subconscious will deal with them. So I freed my dream of becoming proficient in Chinese medicine. I let that dream run away across the meadow and into the wood to get eaten by wolves because if I can’t remember my dreams there goes 18%of my annual entertainment, down the drain. 2,555 hours of sleep with nothing to show for it.

  189. I dreamed I was in a busy train station and couldn’t find the stairwell that led to my train, and I was gonna miss it, and it was the last departure for that day. Not weird or surreal except that my dream was like a musical. No one spoke, everyone sang the dialogue and there was this whole soundtrack to this dream. Everyone was in tune and stuff. So, kinda pleasant and all until I went into the gift shop to ask for directions and suddenly this rattlesnake came out of nowhere and lunged at me with fangs bared and I jolted awake when it bit me.
    I used to dream about my teeth falling out, too. I looked it up in a book and the book said those dreams indicate insecurity and a feeling of a lack of control over one’s life. Actually quite an accurate dedescription of me at the time.
    And yum, cheese! I totally want a quesadilla now.

  190. I never seem to have those interesting kinds of dreams… Except this one time I had a dream where I was the only one on a bus and it was hanging over a cliff. I had my nose pressed to the glass (NOT odd behavior for me) and was looking straight down on a church (this exists no place in real life) and then I realized it was a stunt bus and they were making a movie. It was weird. Especially as I’m not actress material. Also (this has nothing to do with your entry), I just found out that May is Zombie Awareness Month. I think that’s pretty cool, and if you didn’t know, I thought you should. Awesome work, Jen, keep it up!!!

  191. It’s not the confusion of life that is so disorienting. It’s the judgments we make about how to think about confusion. We are just as stupid as we think we are (which makes us pretty smart and self-aware). But it doesn’t matter. Embracing the suck of confusion and letting go is the key to sanity.

  192. I took that Neuro Sleep “nutritional supplement drink” for the first time last night. It worked in that I slept, but I dreamt about being lost in a huge space where there were a lot of books and big windows very high up. Library maybe, or bookstore. At some point, I encountered conservative columnist George F. Will. I tried to help him, I think, but many of the books were stacked vertically, in no apparent order. He left, but I couldn’t find the exit. String cheese theory is as good an explanation as any. I think I’ll skip the Neuro Sleep tonight. If I’m going to dream about someone in a bow tie, it should at least be Matt Smith.

  193. We tend to imagine that the profound things in life are complicated but they’re always simple. Yes, cheese is the very fabric of teh universe. We always have cheese at the animal hospital where I work. A plate with several fine cheeses offered with some whhheat thins, pita chips or the “Entertainer” Crackers (for reals) that I buy at the dollar store…every time I open a new box I’m secretly hoping that Frank Sinatra will pop out….anyway, this elegant spread sits atop the crash cart. Epinephrine? Atropine? Triple Cream Brie?? Which would you choose?

    Cheese trivia of the day: The most expensive cheese in our solar system is made of moose milk.

  195. Turns out, dreams are likely a by-product of our brains cleaning themselves during sleep. Fun, yeah?

    Dreams are brain poop.

  196. I ACTUALLY dreamed that an ostrich was about to attack me in my bedroom last night. I was going to a website to find out what ostrich dreams MEAN (I’m not making this up) when I decided to check your blog first. Which makes this post creeptastically prophetic.

  198. Aren’t dreams designed as portents of the future? In which case I believe pizza lies in your future, Jenny.
    Speaking of which, as of this writing it is 7:57 am here in Niagara Falls, Canada and now, thanks to your cheese dream, Jenny, The Hook is starving.
    Where am I going to score a pizza at 8 am on a Wednesday in Niagara Falls?
    Well, I’m royally screwed…

  199. I still have a torn piece of paper from 5 ~ 6 years ago on which, upon waking from a magnificent Labyrinth-type dream, I wrote the one universal truth which would solve every problem ever faced by humanity.

    *Blue cow, purple cheese*

    huh . . . . .

    I’m keeping it until I figure out what it means.

  200. Okay, other than the fact that I have a nose bleed from trying to make sense of that… Self-medicating isnt always the option you should choose. Or maybe its time to adjust the meds. Just saying 😛

  201. The snippet I recall from last night’s dream drama was that my watch band was macrame and it was coming unraveled and got in my way when I talked (evidently, talked with my hands). Is that a statement about time… or fashion?
    My recurring dreams are about forgetting about being enrolled in school and suddenly panicking when it is final exams week (“I won’t graduate!”). Plus, there are apartments and jobs in them that I have but have forgotten about. It appears that my subconscious mind is not a fan of big commitment.

  202. WAIT THAT MADE SENSE. obviously something is wrong with me. ALSO, i saw something about nachos somewhere and it has me wanting to eat something for the first time in days.

  203. Cheese IS the meaning of life. It makes perfect sense to me. Even my cat knows this, though she does only eat Boar’s Head white American. She won’t touch anything else. Clearly, Boo Boo is missing out.

  204. I think ideas, music, art and whatnot seem brilliant in our dreams because it’s just direct stimulation of our “this is clever” emotion.

    Also, I once had a semi-lucid dream in which I read a “brilliant” piece of poetry, realized I was dreaming and (within the dream) grabbed a pad of paper and pen and started trying to write it down so I would have it when I woke up.

    All I remember is that it supposed to explain why teenagers feel so frustrated and involved a reference to anti-venom.

  205. Yeah…I’m often FRUSTRATED in dreams (ever had that dream where you spend the WHOLE. FREAKING. DREAM packing and getting ready for vacation and yet you never actually GET to the vacation?) but I’m rarely confused.

  206. Awesome ideas always come in dreams, but then I totally forget them. Then they come back through the “shower head God” and then I forget them again. At least you had the where-with-all to write it down…on your arm, but still! Brilliant!

  207. Thanks to Rob Rios – one of the first commentors – I will use the phrase “the salsa of poignancy” at least twice today. I like it.

  208. NSA: Oh my God, she knows about the cheese. How did she find out about the cheese, that’s compartmentalized super uber Top Secret, dammit. Now she’s told everyone about the cheese. She’s become the new Wikileaks. She’s Wikilactose!

  209. I’ve learned one way to tell when I’m dreaming– in my dreams, I can’t read. Which is a real tipoff, because it’s something I’m really good at. Like, I could be on the Olympic Reading Team for a civilized country (although I still wouldn’t go to the one in Russia because Uncle George Takei).
    So I can briefly do lucid dreaming, except that these realizations tend to start me waking up before I can do all those fun things that I’d do if I knew I was in a dream.

    (I do the same thing, except that I can read signs in my dreams, but if I look closely enough I realize that the letters are just strange symbols that only make sense to me in dreams. I used to be really good at lucid dreaming but I haven’t had one in years. I miss it. ~ Jenny)

  210. @Kim 54–

    I once dated a girl in college who used another meaning for “acorn,” and no, it wasn’t dirty, stop that.
    Unicorns were horses with one horn, acorns were horses without any horns. Cattle with two horns were known as “bicorns.”
    Good gal. We might have stayed together if we hadn’t been rabid fundamentalists at the time, and had just screwed our brains out the way we both really wanted to. Talk about opportunities foolishly wasted.

  211. If you haven’t seen it, you should check out the Buffy the Vampire Slayer “dream” episode, “Restless”. Cheese figured into those dreams, too, so obviously you and Joss Whedon are on the same wavelength. ; )

  212. I have weird dreams all the time…more often than anything “normal”. Last night’s adventure was among my most strange. I dreamed that Neil Gaiman was so eager to please his fans, he offered me like, 6 of his hairs.
    I have no explanation.

  214. I just had to close my eyes and have a little sigh over this nice dream we’re pretending to have. 🙂

  216. Scritch! I use this word everyday when I scritch my dog behind the ears. To celebrate that another human knows this word, I will now take off his collar and scritch him on the neck. It frees him!!!

  217. You might find the Gestalt method of dream interpretation interesting. Basically it says every part of your dream is a part of you. The ostrich is you, the bakery too. You are picking those things for a reason and if you could just see your dream as the ostrich or the bakery you might find something out.

  218. Oooooohhhh…Ask me some time about the Sheep People of Alexandria. It must have been 25 years ago, but I can still see them in my head: Enormous sheep, stomping over the countryside, their “baas” sounding like thunder. I woke up laughing, and remembering what the voice-over (yes) had said. “They walk by night. They’re big and fluffy. People tremble at the sound of their cry. The Sheep People of Alexandria.”

  220. I’ve tried to get my dreams interpreted by those on-line dream sites. But none can deal with dreams like the one about Shirley Temple falling from an airplane, getting up and asking if we wanted to go to the zoo.

    Mostly I dream about controlling people via programming code. Those are pretty easy to interpret.

  222. String theory of cheese? Is it string-cheese that you’re string-theorying about?

  223. I was going to make a string theory -> cheese -> string cheese joke but the person with the last comment got there before me.
    Damn.

    Cheese.

  224. OMG. This is the funniest thing I’ve read in days!!! I’m right there with you. I have crazy dreams and in the middle of my dream I think, “Oh, I have to remember to tell my husband this in the morning” or I’ll think that’s a great idea for a product to sell… remember that, Cara. And then in the morning I wake up and have to laugh hysterically because I make no sense whatsoever in my dreaming frame of mind.

  225. My friend’s dream epiphany on how to save the world (written down as well) was “the answer is to dress like a porcupine”

  227. Your next title should be “Let’s Pretend This Makes Perfect Sense” because it really does. And it goes so well with the first title. And BECAUSE WINE. I may have had a glass or three. Maybe that’s why this post made perfect sense to me. Or maybe because I’m crazy too. Or maybe just because you’re a genius and you verbalize all the things that deep down we really know but can’t or choose not to verbalize.
    And yes, I have had that dream where I wake up SO DAMN EXCITED because I’ve had this amazing epiphany and suddenly everything makes sense and there’s an underlying reason and I GET IT and then I wake up later and it’s just… what? It’s just cheese.
    But really I guess cheese is good too, even if it’s not epiphany cheese.
    Mmmm… feta…

  230. The idea sounds so freeing and I want that. I’m going to sleep forever, when I wake up, I’ll let you know how to fix the world.

  231. Actually, I every so often do have actual epiphanys in my dreams. Well, sort of. I mean that I dream something so clearly symbolic that I wake up thinking ‘Oh, THAT’S why I’m upset this week!’.

    Recently I had a rather disturbing dream about eating a head that was alive. I woke up and couldn’t work out what it was about. The next night I had a dream with a similar feeling about it that was much more clearly my subconscious showing my conscious self what was bothering me so I did actually wake up feeling enlightened.

  233. I have not encountered any explanation of how we experience dreams & how we (don’t) deal with them when we are conscious…anywhere close to how it is…until yours.
    I love how you deal with life…moreso, I love your attitude towards it.
    You give words & explanations for how so many of us feel…no amount of thanks can be enough.

  234. Dreams are weird because they are metaphorical stories. You have to piece together all the symbols. Try to step back a bit from the dream and ask yourself what the big picture is and how it mirrors your life metaphorically. All the weird feelings you had that seem to make sense in the dream, but never do in waking life are because you are feeling the metaphorically symbolism.

  236. DEAR JENNY, THIS IS YOUR FRIEND, LAURIE F.
    I HAVE SOMETHING HYSTERICAL TO SHOW YOU. PROMISE ME YOU WILL GO TO MY FACEBOOK PAGE LAURIE FESSLER AND LOOK AT THE POST THAT STARTS WITH “IT’S NOT A TUMOR” I PROMISE YOU WILL LOVE IT. IT’S SO ME AND SO YOU. PLEASE. PLEASE LET ME KNOW. LOVE YOUR FRIEND, LAURIE F. AT HIBERNATIONNOW.WORDPRESS.COM

    PLEASE WITH RAINBOW SPRINKLES ON TOP?

  237. That should be the title of a book you write.
    “Let’s pretend this makes sense.”

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