DREAM: I am living with Sutter's family in a huge mansion that is fashioned more like a palace, with an enormous winding staircase, and the glow around everything is yellow. I am wandering around the house wondering where I am supposed to sleep when Sutter runs up to me wearing a white robe and a stocking over his face, like robbers wear. He said something like, "Did you see that guy run by? He's an intruder!" Sutter started racing down the stairs after this intruder. I started to run after him but panick started in my stomach, and rose to my chest, and burst. ...
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AWAKE (halfway): I sat bolt right up in bed and looked to my right where the closet/bathroom door was open and there I saw the intruder staring at me with black clothes and a black hat from the darkness. I screamed. And screamed. I finally turned to my left and switched on my bedside lamp, hands shaking, and looked to the closet, but the intruder wasn't there. Sutter panicked when I screamed and was no use at all for defense. When everything calmed down I made Sut look in every nook and cranny of our house to see if there were intruders. It was 2 a.m. and we turned every light in the house on.
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This incident happened at the beginning of the summer. I did not sleep well for three months after that. I was convinced there was a man that came into our house and watched us sleep. Before going to bed I locked all the doors, checked closets and dark places for intruders, and I shut all the blinds, and locked the bedroom door. In the morning I would check for footprints around the house. Every night I still felt a presence. Sometimes I would lay awake with the TV
on as Sutter slumbered deeply. (I nearly hated him for the peace he could find). I was able to sleep better, but not perfectly when I got a night-light. The nightly routine of checking everything was still in place. I was getting better week by week until I watched a scary movie, Mr. Brooks starring Kevin Costner. I was back to my old habits of a paranoid freak. (I really sound like a nut case here, I am really not).
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This incident happened at the beginning of the summer. I did not sleep well for three months after that. I was convinced there was a man that came into our house and watched us sleep. Before going to bed I locked all the doors, checked closets and dark places for intruders, and I shut all the blinds, and locked the bedroom door. In the morning I would check for footprints around the house. Every night I still felt a presence. Sometimes I would lay awake with the TV
on as Sutter slumbered deeply. (I nearly hated him for the peace he could find). I was able to sleep better, but not perfectly when I got a night-light. The nightly routine of checking everything was still in place. I was getting better week by week until I watched a scary movie, Mr. Brooks starring Kevin Costner. I was back to my old habits of a paranoid freak. (I really sound like a nut case here, I am really not).*
Now everything is fine. I sleep well without checking for intruders, without checking all the doors, and without shutting all of the blinds in the house. I am still baffled about how a simple dream ruined my sleeping life for so long. The impact was so deep I considered an exorcism of the closet. I was given Feng Shui books from my friends. Therapy was an option I hadn't ruled out. But now everything is fine and I fall asleep like I used to and sleep peacefully.
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I blame my bad dream experience on my overactive imagination and maybe a fear of something destroying my happiness. Did Alice (from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) have an overactive imagination? Of course she did. How could she fall asleep and have such a dream about Wonderland without an overactive imagination. Northrop Frye says in The Educated Imagination,
But we use our imagination all the time: it comes into all our conversation and real life: it even produces dreams when we're asleep. Consequently we have only the choice between a badly trained imagination and a well trained one, whether we ever read a poem or not (134-5).
I obviously have retrained my imagination to be positive rather than drak, scary, and negative. I forced myself to think of good and happy things before bed. I stopped watching TV before bedtime/scary movies and I have returned to reading books(not scary books) to put me asleep, which I used to always do in highschool.
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There seem to be no morals to dreams. Only images and fragments of story lines that merge and morph into other story lines. Like in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland on page 103 (in the Barnes and Noble's Classics edition with an intro. by Tan Lin) the Duchess says that Alice is thinking about something and that makes her forget to talk and she can't remember what the 
moral of that is. Alice responds, "Perhaps it hasn't one." The Duchess responds, "Every thing's got a moral, if you can only find it." Onto page 104 after the Duchess points out several morals, Alice thought, "How fond she is of finding morals in things!" That does seem to be the trend in children's literature, didactic practices, and adults (like the Duchess) often like to insist on morals to teach children a thing or two. Maybe in a dream and in our imaginations there doesn't have to be a moral. We don't have to learn anything from our dreams, or from our creative thoughts, but rather experience the imagination and put it to good use in our feelings, conversations, and basic daily life. Does that make us more interesting? Like Dr. Sexson suggested in class, that the text is not boring, but if we are bored with what we are reading than it is us who are the boring ones. Dr. Sexson said, "the more interesting we become, the more interesting books are." So then I assume the more interesting the books become, that mean we are becoming more interesting. This made me a little concerned with my sense of self....am I boring!? No of course not. No one really is....well maybe there are exceptions, and wouldn't that be awful to be the exception. Just thinking about exceptions, Alice is not exceptionally imaginative, but does she become imaginitive because she has this creative dream that a boring girl shouldn't have? I should think so, for she seems to have a "well trained" imagination. 
moral of that is. Alice responds, "Perhaps it hasn't one." The Duchess responds, "Every thing's got a moral, if you can only find it." Onto page 104 after the Duchess points out several morals, Alice thought, "How fond she is of finding morals in things!" That does seem to be the trend in children's literature, didactic practices, and adults (like the Duchess) often like to insist on morals to teach children a thing or two. Maybe in a dream and in our imaginations there doesn't have to be a moral. We don't have to learn anything from our dreams, or from our creative thoughts, but rather experience the imagination and put it to good use in our feelings, conversations, and basic daily life. Does that make us more interesting? Like Dr. Sexson suggested in class, that the text is not boring, but if we are bored with what we are reading than it is us who are the boring ones. Dr. Sexson said, "the more interesting we become, the more interesting books are." So then I assume the more interesting the books become, that mean we are becoming more interesting. This made me a little concerned with my sense of self....am I boring!? No of course not. No one really is....well maybe there are exceptions, and wouldn't that be awful to be the exception. Just thinking about exceptions, Alice is not exceptionally imaginative, but does she become imaginitive because she has this creative dream that a boring girl shouldn't have? I should think so, for she seems to have a "well trained" imagination. 
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