Actor's nightmare

Last night and tonight, I have been tardy. Two nights in a row. That's news. Two nights ago I called in sick. What's my excuse? Er...

I dreamt I was assigned a dressing room for a show. Only it wasn't exactly a room. Sure, it has four walls, one of which has a huge window with iron grills. If you look out of it you see a sprawling lawn, tall, unmowed grass and calachuchi trees. There is no door, just a doorway to a veranda which also leads to other doorways into other actors' dressing rooms.

A stairway leads up to two more floors of dressing rooms, but I never climbed up them. I went into the veranda, found the dressing room masking-taped "Del Rosario" and was about to go in when I saw there was no roof. In fact, none of the dressing rooms had roofs. We were in the middle of nowhere in a seemingly abandoned hostel and we're given somewhat questionable accomodations. I didn't dare go into my dressing room.

I wanted to make up some story that there's a spirit lurking in my room, and as happens in dreams, a shadowy figure appeared by the doorway. I instiinctively knew that if I dropped my bag in the room someone would steal my wallet and other valuables.

Scary dream, huh? You know what's more scary? The fact that in the dream I had a scene with Tes Jamias and Roeder Camañag and I didn't know any of my lines. Everyone of the actors knew, however. It was a tour of a successful play we did way back, and there's absolutely "no way" I could have forgotten my lines. Only I did.

I reviewed my script, which turned out to be a magazine. There were pictures in vivid colors all over, and my lines are printed magazine-style in neat columns. I tried to memorize much as I could... when I woke up.

It's called actor's nightmares, I heard, and actors get them once in a while. They consist of one or a combination of the following elements: you arrive at your dressing room not realizing you were so late that the show has already started; you step onto the stage ready to do your part when you realize you have no clothes on and your costumes are still neatly hung in your dressing room; or, like the one I described above, you have absolutely no idea what the play or your character is and you're scheduled to go on in a few minutes.

So why have I been late the past two nights? Because I slept so soundly! I slept through my phone's alarm. I had been having vivid dreams I couldn't shake out of. What they meant, I don't know. And who cares! It's fun having vivid dreams and remembering them in your waking hours.

Confucius was noted to have said he once dreamt he was a butterfly. When he woke up, he wasn't sure if he did dream he was a butterfly, or if he was a butterfly dreaming he were a man.

Do you remember your dreams, too?