First Dream

Soon after Einstein died, within a month or so, I had my first dream, or first dream remembered upon waking up. I was almost six and had never remembered a dream and didn't know what people were referring to when they talked about them. The things that happened to me in my sleep weren't dreams. I really did wake up in the woods, after Alex took over.

The dream was what I would now call a third-rate production, a C-dream. It was black and white and silent. The sets looked fake.

I think now that the dream was influenced by TV and the science fiction serials I started watching about then. Now that I was going to be a scientist I was interested in the fiction, to see where this thing could be going. One of the places it was going was outer space, where there were aliens. The aliens might already be here.

So the dream had aliens. There was a cavern, typical of the cheap cavern sets of cheap Flash Gordonesque serials, the ones made of papier-mâché. A canal ran down the middle of the cavern. A cigar shaped vehicle floated down the canal to a large hall. Everything was very dark until a hatch opened up at the top of the vehicle releasing a blinding light. As the gradually dimmed hundreds of white troll-like aliens could be seen swarming out of the hatch.

Or, it could have been an obvious re-imaging of the nocturnal rapes.

I looked for a video that showed the papier-mâché caverns. I didn't find any that were worth watching, but I did find this fine episode of the 1936 Flash Gordon serial. It has all the sparks and flashy lights that were very sciencey. Plus, Doctor Zarkov was in it. Aside from wearing hot pants, which was lame, Zarkov seemed to have all the fun, getting to play with more of the sparking sciencey stuff than anyone else. I wanted to be just like Doctor Zarkov, without the hot pants, and without the beard.

Flash Gordon (1936) Ch. 7 Serial Clip