Do you dream?

Dreaming seems to be so rare for me. I know that we probably all dream, but don't necessarily remember the dreams. I don't. At least, not usually.

So, what goes into a dream?

Where do the images that haunt it, the people who inhabit it, the locales where it is set come from? Why does what happens in the dream happen?

My husband always dreams the end of the TV show or movie he falls asleep watching. Usually a mystery or spy story, so he gets his stint as master detective or spy. He always tells me how it ended. He always solves the crime. He is always wrong.

I have a recurring dream (by recurring, I mean that I have waken from it half a dozen times in eight years) that was initially caused by medication I took to prevent malaria when I went to India in 2000. The possible side effects listed for this med included vivid dreams and psychotic episodes. You took the pills only once a week, and I only took them for four weeks. So I was only psychotic a couple of times--paranoid and agitated. And when I first dreamed that dream and woke screaming, the only other person awake in the compound was the night watchman, who spoke no English--and, of course, I was paranoid anyway. The dream recurred three or four times in the following months then faded. Then, several years later it popped up again suddenly--again while away from home. It scared me half out of my wits. And I screamed again.

And as for the malaria? I didn't meet a single mosquito in India. Wrong season. But what did we know!

So what goes into a dream?

I woke this morning later than usual but earlier than I'd like. I lay in a half awake state, hunkered into my quilts seemingly to stay warm, but what? I was not cold and I was really hunkering and then I looked around and...

Well, I didn't look around, my eyes were still closed and it was still dark anyway. When I realized that I was not where I had seemed for -- how long?--to have been just before, I wanted to scrunch further into the covers--like a turtle pulling into the shell.

No, that won't work! It will just take me back where I had been wherever that was but it was not good stuff was happening.

So, what goes into a dream?

The happenings:
--events in the book I just read--but transported 250 years forward into sort of contemporary times and not looking anachronistic at all
--events in the TV show we had watched before going to bed. Don't remember the name of it: the one where the guy is Henry and Edward and one of them is an assassin and the other is a peaceloving husband and father.
--the shooting that happened in the next town yesterday
--war and strife images from the news: Afghanistan, Iraq, Zimbabwe
--the drive across state last month with a seriously disturbed person

The people:
--a ranger we worked with this summer, sort of
--a blogger I visit regularly, or maybe my daughter-in-law. She drove like my DIL did when she was learning to drive. (Come to think of it she drove like all my kids did on their first practice drive around the block. Those were harrowing experiences.) Or maybe it was someone else. Well, obviously it was someone else.
--a lady from the Altar Society who I've known for thirty-odd years. The others, whom I was in the company of were vague. This one was very specific--definitely her.
--the mother of the second person--I spoke to her by phone and she had a heavy accent.

The locations:
--Spokane (That's where we drove like--well)
--my town (That's where the Altar Society lady was standing in the middle of the street holding--well)
--Canada (That will be explained later.)

Some of the props:
--a canon
--a convenience store
--a collection of cell phones in my pocket--It was using the phone that put me in Canada, because I specifically told the ranger person that I couldn't call the blogger/DIL person because my cell phone wouldn't work in Canada. As it turned out, I had her phone--which was how I ended up talking to her mother.
--a bus
--folded blue pieces of paper
--a me that was, hmm, at least 30 years younger--maybe 40--than I am today

So, what goes into a dream?

You know! Every single thing made perfect sense. Images and people who have been in my mind at some time in the last couple of weeks.

Except the folded blue paper.

Where on earth did the folded blue paper come from?