And can we make them stop?

I am not a person with a strong belief in the predictive power of dreams.  I don’t think they are premonitions or portents.

Thankfully.

Because I have been having some very odd ones lately, and I’d hate to think what they presaged if I gave any credence to that idea.

Usually, I think dreams are sort of a mash-up of images from your waking life.  With the exception of the Actor’s Nightmare—where you can’t remember what play you are doing or everybody else is speaking lines from a different play or in a different language or, worse, your costume is missing.

That one is an anxiety dream.

I have, in my life, had it in various other incarnations as well.  The Director’s Nightmare—where you are at tech rehearsal and no one—not the actors, not the stage manager, not the designers—will do what you ask.  The Playwright’s Nightmare—where your reading is starting and you realize you forgot to tell your leading lady and there’s no way she can fly in from the Coast in the next 15 minutes.

Fortunately, those stress-related imaginings are just that.  Imaginings.  None of them have ever come true.  (Although I have stood on stages and watched fellow actors’ eyes go blank and known something perilously similar to the Actor’s Nightmare.)

The thing I am wondering about today is why, all of a sudden, I am having these Grand Guignol horror movie-like dreams.  For the last couple of days.

Mafia hit men.

Axe murderers.

It’s not like I’ve been watching horror movies recently.  Or even the news.

I’ve been spending my time with BBC period pieces.  Edward VII.  Downton Abbey.  Edward & Mrs. Simpson.  (Just as a side note, imagine my surprise to find Sylvia Buchman’s (Paul Reiser’s mother on Mad About You) younger days were spent, in part, as Wallis Simpson!)

And when I haven’t been enjoying tea cups and crown jewels, I have been trekking to the Delta Quadrant with the crew of Voyager.  (Someday, I will get even with my niece for this whole Netflix thing, but that is a subject for another time.)

So, I haven’t been basking in terror.  And nothing particularly stressful is going on just now that would translate into a fear of getting killed.

I’m just having these horrible dreams.  And I’m not enjoying them, and I’d like them to stop, please.