I have never gone surfing, nor do I want to. But this morning I dreamed that I was in a nameless coastal town, running down the sidewalk toward the ocean with a surfboard in my hands.
As I ran, I passed another man running in the same direction and carrying an inner tube.
It was Dean Karnazes.
He was shirtless, of course, but so was I. We were headed for the beach, after all.
I passed him without a word, but I soon grew weary and slowed to a walk, and Dean caught back up. Knowing him to be an accomplished surfer, I asked if he had any advice on how to carry the surfboard so that running with it would be more comfortable and less tiring. He certainly did, and gave me a few pointers in his usual friendly manner. Then we continued down the sidewalk toward the ocean. End of dream.
What’s most interesting to me about this little nocturnal episode is how, despite its apparent randomness, it tied together two things that happened just before I went to bed last night.
Thing #1: I went back to the lab for a late-night check on my bacteria, and I saw two kids skateboarding on the sidewalk by the building where I work.
Thing #2: I read Scott Dunlap’s blog entry about the Big Sur Marathon, which describes an unexpected encounter with Dean while racing along the California coastline.
A “board sport” I know nothing about, a sidewalk, a celebrity runner, and a nearby ocean — all perfectly normal items plucked from my mind to form a ridiculous, incoherent whole.
I don’t know what theories of dreaming are currently in vogue among sleep scientists, but my personal sense of the process is simply that the brain sorts through recent experiences and plays Mad Libs with them.
My Track Record 
Leave a reply to crowther Cancel reply