A cigar is just a cigar

Any conversation about my many neuroses begins and ends with my dreams. Everybody dreams every night, but I'm unusual in that I remember many of them, and that the dreams I remember are usually a cascade of crazy, seemingly random images and situatations.

Case in point last night: I frantically scaled a mountain with two friends (hazy placeholder friends -- I can't remember who they were) to flee ogres (quasi-orgres, really), fought fruitlessly with the man-beasts at the top of the hill, but then made peace. We decided to head back down the mountain, I decided to slide down on the jacket I was wearing, since it wasn't mine -- it belonged to one of the ogres.

Thing is, this one was strange enough to even bear being noteworthy. As proof, I offer a sampling from my Dream Hall of Fame:

Taking flight. A series of dreams in which I run, but take longer and longer steps until eventually I'm soaring through the air with each stride.

Lucidity. In lucid dreaming, you realize you're dreaming and exert control. My most vivid lucid dream was about a year ago -- After accompying a girl (a cousin, maybe) into a house with an octagonal porch, I sense I'm in mortal danger and see the girl on the ceiling, Linda Blair like. But because I realized it didn't make sense, I created a knife and armed myself with it.

Abandoned. I had two variations on the same recurring dream theme when I was much younger. I was with my dad, in one version in his '78 Buick Regal and in the other in a rowboat in a subterranean lake, then he suddenly disappears.

"Running with the Deer." After making friends with some wild animals, I romp through a field with them. Later I reflect, "This will look great on my resume." This dream has inspired considerable ribbing from friends.

Pope John Paul II. The recently deceased pope came by the office. When pressed on his physical condition, he gave us the slip by sneaking into the women's bathroom.

The diagnosis, Dr Freud? Atavism? The dream as wish fulfillment? I say sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.