Bicycling in Brighton, by Pat Neill
As a child, I spent a lot of time day-dreaming and it wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I woke up to my night dreams. They came fast and furious, and I diligently recorded as many as I remembered. Analysing them helped me to understand myself in more depth. Now I’m tired of all that self-analysis and I want to follow Jenny’s idea of using them creatively. Here’s a dream that did inspire me to use it creatively.
I was driving down a long, sloping, wide-open road in a town. In front of me, a lorry had stopped. I easily glided out to overtake it and then discovered a car manoeuvring – that was why the lorry had stopped! I felt embarrassed as I stopped to let the car finish. The car moved on, with me following, and the lorry behind me.
Now, I felt myself to be on a bicycle. The ride was smooth and the feeling exhilarating as I sped on down the hill. The street was like those in Brighton/Hove that lead down to the seafront. The weather was slightly grey and misty and the vehicles had their lights on.
I woke from this dream feeling happy, confident and optimistic. In my poem, I seem to have changed the weather. I think it was the feeling after I woke from the dream that carried forward into my writing. I have always set great store in the feeling a dream leaves you with – I reckon it has to be the most important feature of the dream.
Riding High
Georgian pillared terraces sloping to the sea,
I rode my bike between them feeling wild and free.
Swiftly leaning to the right, a stopped truck to miss,
I glided past, confident, riding high.
Oh what bliss!
Once, a sudden car appeared, half blocking my way.
No matter, I had pedal power and was lord of the highway!
Wind whistling, hair streaming, on and on I sped
With salt-sea horizon and cloudless blue skies, all beckoning ahead.
I love the joyful exuberance of this poem, and Pat makes an important point about the feeling a dream leaves you with when you awake. I’ll be blogging about emotions in dreaming and writing next week.
Pat is an astrological life coach with a brand new blog http://astrolifecoach.wordpress.com/ She uses astrology as a tool for understanding the issues present in a person’s life and life coaching as a method for moving matters forward to effect positive change. For details email pat.neill@btinternet.com or phone 01566 779792
Jenny Alexander's blog: Writing in the House of Dreams 
I particularly liked the way the embarrassed feeling of making a fool of oneself in a dream (when encountering the car) became transformed to a masterful confidence in the poem
Me too. And the way the dream enabled Pat to experience skills she doesn’t have in waking life. It’s expansive, and exciting.
As a regular and vivid dreamer I can completely relate to Pat’s vivid dreams and the mood that hangs around afterwards. It is so much better, as Pat says, to use these feelings and dream memories creatively. I had vivid dreams about a wolf-rabbit last night who tore into the palm of my hand… now there’s a dream I don’t want to analyse! Strangely though, it did make me realise something that I had never thought about before – I felt no pain at all. I wonder if pain can be felt in dreams – it’s made me think that it probably can’t!
I’ve never thought about this, Abi. I don’t remember experiencing pain in a dream or upon waking, though I’ve certainly woken from frightening dreams with all the physical symptoms of terror – pulse racing, etc
That cycling dream happened a few years ago but I was looking through my dream journal yesterday and spotted a similar dream I had in early December. This time the setting was Falmouth and the main street leading to the sea was now a river which I was riding on a surf board. I experienced those same feelings of perfect balance, speed, freedom and exhilaration. In my waking life I’m not very brave in a physical sense – a wobbly bike rider and I’ve never attempted to surf because I can’t swim – so it’s great to engage in these activities in my dreams!
Incidentally Abi – I have experienced pain in dreams, and sometimes wake up with a physical pain in the affected part of my body, which mysteriously disappears by morning.
It’s surprising how many dream themes you find running through dream diaries over a lifetime – I think of characteristic themes and stories as part of what I call ‘the landscape of the soul’ https://jenalexanderbooks.wordpress.com/2011/10/22/landscapes-of-the-soul/