Just Listen to the Rhythm of My Heart

On the meaning of dreams

Recently watched movies

1. Janet Planet, Annie Baker (2024)

2. Perfect Days, Wim Wenders (2024)

3. Y Tu Mamá Tambien, Alfonso Cuarón (2001)

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written on January 9th, 2025

This was my first attempt, in years, at writing about a dream right after it happens. I have not done this since 2013? It was an interesting and complex exercise in memory, world-building, and not trying to make sense of my subconscious.

Last night I dreamed that I was asked out by someone I was attracted to. He did not only ask me out first, but he wanted me first. I was unable to look him in the eyes when he sat next to me. Eventually, we begin chatting and warm to one another. I said “yes” when he asked me if I wanted to go on a “fruit first date.” Even in my dream I took pause, thinking what is a ‘fruit’ first date? I presently do not know what that means and I doubt that it symbolized a subliminal message from the deepest corners of my mind.

He gives me his phone to put in my number and I get everything right, except I accidentally switch a 2 and a 7 somewhere. I try to change it and spell my name wrong. How will he know it’s me if he has the wrong name? Flustered, I want to try again. It feels like I’ve had this man’s phone for at least ten minutes and he is bound to notice.

Of course, he notices. Of course, he pries the phone from my hands. I try — and fail — to explain what happened when he just gives me a short, but warm, “I’ll call you.” How can he call me without my name and with a number that has a switched 2 and 7? What will make me real to him?

This dream appeared to be taking place on a field trip of some kind. A big group of us have gathered in some unmarked beach town (I’m thinking something akin to Big Sur or Carmel). We will be attempting a polar plunge.

Our tour guide leads us to an old warehouse and allows the group to explore its grounds two at a time. Despite the fact that we are holding hands (and the fact that his flesh, flush and warm, against mine felt so good), we are split. He gets paired up with another girl. She is quite plain. She has to be some abstract embodiment of what has been called ‘beautiful’ genealogically, socially, and anatomically.

Before entering the warehouse, my unnamed object of affection hugs me from behind. This is the part of the dream I choose to hold onto. It’s not so much the solid weight of his body or the way he speaks to me. It’s the way touching me is instinctive. Because this was a dream, I am allowed to neglect the fact that I had just met this man and we were already exchanging intimate touches. Both the fact and meaning of the hug have carried me through the day. That form of intimacy has really been a saving grace. How powerful is touch? How powerful is desire?

After the hug that sends me reeling, he ascends these dark steps with the girl. I watch them for as long as I can before a door (which literally do not exist thirty seconds prior in my dream) shuts with a finality that feels unsettling. By the time they come back, I know something has changed. She has given him something that I cannot. That I did not have the chance to give.

He is still nice to me, but with a cold indifference. It oddly makes me think of freezer-burned food. Everything about it is exactly the same on a cellular level, but there is some underlying, unnameable thing that is “off.” And because you know what the real thing tastes like, you realize that what you are left with is, frankly, quite shit.

We sit down at a bench right by the water and maintain a friendly conversation. I realize I get along quite well with this girl. It is then that a deeper hurt metastasizes. I cannot hate her for beating me at a game she did not know she was a playing. A game that I, admittedly, did not know I was playing. I excuse myself and trudge towards the murky waters. Although I wish to act nonchalant, I know my resignation to the water is just a desire to show them how little I care about their newfound camaraderie. How little I care about the fact that he was able to woo and dispose of me in the span of five dream minutes (which, in reality, was more like three sleeping hours). I crouch with my toes in the sand (I love the impossibility of landscapes in a dream. It is possible to have both marsh and sand and the ocean and be on the border of Northern and Southern California…what a treat) and allow myself to feel hurt and cold.

There are murmurs about whether or not we are all actually planning to go down to the water and take the dive of death. I slowly rise and remove my hoodie and jeans (another perk of dreams? I do not have to think about where my shoes are). I am wearing a metallic, tennis ball green bikini and feel absolutely ridiculous. Everybody else is in wet-suits. I take a daring step into the water and feel nothing (thank you, dream world, for protecting me from the harsh reality of Northern California waters). I look back. I have drawn a few curious glances. He does not notice me. He’s not even with the girl anymore, which might be worse. It would be one thing if I could excuse his lack of attention by blaming it on a third-party distraction. But this? This is just pure disinterest. I feign bravery and pray to God that I do not contract anything in the water, submerging my entire body and taking a couple strokes out. The fact that the water did not kill me allows my peers to release a collective exhale and run to its depth, crashing and diving.

I splash. I scream. I dive. Still, he does not notice me. I am not even sure he’s there anymore or if my body has just become accustomed to his phantom presence. I slowly crawl to shore. I sit on that same bench the three of us convened at. I wrap my arms around my body and try to make myself as small as possible. I’ve got goosebumps and I am shivering, but I feel nothing. I stare at the sun until my eyes burn. I am vaguely aware of the shouts coming from the water. I stand up and leave my clothes on the bench. Of course, he still does not notice. I walk along the planks of the bench, testing my balance. I look back at everything — the warehouse, the water, the insurmountable mass of my desire, and I keep walking. Nobody notices.

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written on January 10th, 2025

As I reflect on this dream, I cannot help but think it is meant to relate to my greater relationship to love and yearning. It could be something as easy and clichéd as “the more I want it, the further away it gets.” It’s rare for me to have vivid dreams that are not nightmares, and so it feels particularly brutal when I get to experience something I have always wanted, only to then realize I do not have that sensation or person, and have not, in fact, ever had it.

Author’s note: there’s this quote about waking up from a dream only to realize that it is better than your life, but I cannot remember the author nor the work.

This is one of the vapid cruelties of being a human that I do not always love or understand. I’ve tried to rationalize it a variety of ways. The universe is showing me that what I want is possible. The universe is telling me that there’s a future version of myself that has it. It’s my brain conjuring images based on media I’ve consumed, etc. etc. Really, it could be anything. And yet the infinite possibility does nothing to quell the lingering ache of loneliness. While I can hold on to the phantom warmth of the dream, it loses its potency after one day, one week, one year.

I remember almost every dream I’ve had where I am happy or in love. I remember my fantasy families. I remember feeling myself open up.

I am not one for analyzing dreams, but sometimes I’ll humor myself and look up “teeth falling out dreams” and know that I can expect a significant change, or “falling out of the sky” and know there is uncertainty in a major area of my life. But this? I do not know what meaning to ascribe to this.

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

- Harlem, Langston Hughes (1951)

I don’t know if my dreams have been deferred or if I’m just impatient. It feels like something could change if I held out longer. If I chose to believe that what I wanted also wanted me back. That it was on its path to an alignment that would inevitably lead to me. My grandma used to say “patience is a virtue, virtue is a grace.” I am worried I am starting to lose patience and grace. I am not sure what the solution is besides believing that I’m barreling towards something good. It does not have to last long, but it will show me what is possible. It will be good.

Thanks for reading. Hope the new year has been treating everyone kindly and you are all safe. Let’s do this again, sometime?

Lots of love,

Jasmine