What is this?

First, we all know what a dream is, that thing that happens at night when you sleep. However, not everyone knows the definition of 'aria.' My dictionary tells me it means "A long, accompanied song for a solo voice, typically one in an opera or oratorio. (By the way, an oratorio is "A musical composition for voices and orchestra, telling a sacred story without costumes, scenery, or dramatic action."

Anyways, you now ask, what does an aria have to do with dreams, and what is this blog about, anyways? First question first. I called this blog "An Aria of Dreams" because my dreams often seem like music to me. They don't always make sense, but they almost always have a beginning, middle, and an end. And I just liked the name. I wanted something whimsical and beautiful, because the dreams I have aren't always such.

Second question: this blog is where I'm going to document every dream I have. Starting now. I don't think I'm going to go back and list every dream I've ever had, because my dreams are prolific and I remember dreams almost every morning and have several a night. I want to chronicle this because my dreams often reflect my life, usually in a roundabout way, and I want to be able to come back to look at them without seeing the exact specifics of my life. Also, typing is much faster than writing.

As a beginning taste, I'm going to share a dream I had the night before last.

I dreamed I was walking down a suburban road with my maternal grandmother. I was carrying paper towels, it was a warm summer day, at about 5 or 6pm. We walked into her house. It was dark. She flipped on the light, and I see a man in black clothes sitting in the corner. I don't recognize him so I start freaking out and telling him to leave and get out of her house. She was completely nonchalant, went right up to him and gave him a kiss then introduced him as her boyfriend. (She got married recently, almost a year ago, so I don't know why I'm dreaming this.)

Anyways, I was freaked out a little, so I told her I was going on a walk. By then it was about 7 or 8pm and the sun was setting and everything was golden. When I stepped out the front door, the landscape had completely changed. I will do my best to explain the lay of the land.

When facing the house, there was a woodland area to the back and to the left of the house, with a narrow stretch that ran alongside a 7 or 8 foot high hill slope to the back and right of the house. On the other side of this stretch is an old corn field. I say old because while I can tell that corn once grew there, that had been a few years ago, and nothing else grew there now. To the far right of the house and the corn field was a small river, on the other side of which was a stretch of trees and then on the other side of those trees, construction workers building some big structure. There's cranes and a city in the background.

Anyways. I walked to the right of the house, toward the hill, and scrambled up it, for some reason hiding from the construction men on the other side of the river. When I got to the corn field, I walk along the trees to the left of the house. I reached the back of the corn field, and here the woodlands wrapped around the butt of the field. (The field, by the way, was shaped like a giant tear drop.) There were felled logs laying here and there across the fat end of the field. I noticed one in particular that was splotched with white, though it looked golden from the setting sun. A sycamore tree. I love sycamore trees. Seriously. They are my favorites.

I nudged the sycamore log with my foot, and it rolls over. This is where the fun starts. The ground started shaking and when I looked around, everything sorta rippled, like I was looking at a world of water. Black splotches appeared on growing trees and spread like a terrible blight. Birds take off from the trees, frightened by the earths shaking. Oil followed them through the air as it streamed off of their wings and tails. They couldn't fly like that, they fell to the ground, flopping and squawking in terror and distress.

I was so confused. I saw a trail through the woods and I knew I should turn back and go back to the house, but I couldn't stop myself as I started down the trail. A few feet along, I saw my grandmother and her boyfriend in the field and called for them, and they started following me. I still couldn't stop myself.

The trees all around me are black and slimy, I don't know how I know, but I know it's tar and grime. The ground was colored like a tortoise shell cat. The sky was a dark, dusky, haze of gritty blue, the clouds black. We tripped over slimy roots and stepped around abandoned spider webs. I heard a strange sound, and looked behind me and to my right. I saw what must have been a cat, with glowing green eyes. It was a bit bigger than a normal cat, and all black, like a half-sized black panther. It watched the three of us go by and growls and snarls but doesn't move.

Further along we exited the woods far to the right of the house where we all started. There was barn. It had been red, once, but the paint was mostly chipped off, the bare wood weathered and stained a very dirty and grimy gray. We slid open the big door and slipped inside. There were more cats here, but these were more domestic, and their eyes didn't glow. Not as much, anyways. There were other animals in there as well, but I didn't look at them.

When we reached the other side of the barn, and the next big door, we slid that open and stepped out... into a city. The walls of buildings are coated with tar and soot, as well. I saw what I thought were ravens, eating off a carcass on the left sidewalk (we were standing in the middle of the road.) I couldn't look away, especially when I realized that it wasn't ravens. It was minature (like raven sized) black Friesians, with long black wings and sharp teeth, eating that carcass. It is at this point that I wake up and go "Wait what?"

For those of you who don't know what a Friesian is: Look here at this Wiki Page.

This is all for now. Sleep tight, and don't let my should-be-nightmares hurt your night. I call them should be, because while they should be frightening, they really aren't. Not even this dream was actually scary. Just... there. Like "OK."