In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, one of the characters has a heavily symbolic dream, and the narrator says something like, “Don’t you hate it when you have dreams that are so obvious?”
Speaking of obvious, obviously it’s easier to make up those kind of dreams for fictional characters. But I can’t hate on Junot Diaz: I have obvious dreams all the time and I do hate them.
I had one this morning, and I’m still a bit shaken by it. I won’t get into details, mostly because other people’s dreams are always boring. But the dream left me feeling like something in my life was about to change. Of course, it was just my subconscious hoping that something would.
Along with being literary devices of dubious merit, obvious dreams stir up a lot of feeling. What happens isn’t real, but the emotions that come out still are. And what are you supposed to do then? Where’s the someecard for “you were a total jerk in my subconscious”?