THE ELECTROMAGNETIC FIELD OF DREAMS

Here's a question for you. Can one person have another person's dreams?

On one of my favorite TV shows, Northern Exposure, they did a show about how the Northern lights got everyone's internal electro-synaptic brainwaves all crossed. Of course, it's not scientific gold, but it begs some speculation due to examples we all experience in our own lives. Hasn't everyone had a dream and woken immediately saying, "Whoa, that's weird!" It's not weird; it's someone else's obsessions.

Last night I dreamed about stamps, flipping through a giant book of stamps. Thrilling, I know. Apparently, stamps will one day be 47 cents.

But Natasha, my wife, sleeping in the same bed, seemed to dream a "Jae" dream. You'll see why I call it this in a second.

So, is it possible? It's certainly plausible that if two people are close and think about each other's pains and losses that eventually there's some context for a mixed signal to go somewhere else. Here's what she dreamed.

Natasha dreamed that we were living in Korea and that we were happy. My mother and father (adoptive parents) came over to visit me. They "were" qualities that I associate with them: my mother was sad and detached; my father was talking about money and telling jokes that aren't funny. Anyway, it made me sad and upset and this is what Natasha is feeling in her dream. Then we are in this open market. It's an auction and there's thousands of people there. The auction is a fundraiser for the orphange where I had a short stint. Suddenly, she becomes aware that we are separted. I'm in with the crowd and she can't find me. I start yelling, "Mama, Daddy," obviously looking for my Korean parents. She knows, instinctually, that I won't find them. Running through the crowd in a white dress, she finds me crying, confused. Jumping into my arms, I feel whole.

Okay, that's a "Jae" dream if I ever heard one. It is specific and symbolically charged. That's how the dream ends, except in Natasha's dream, since that's where it all went down, Celine Dion appears and starts singing, "My Heart Will Go On." And what do you do with that? I mean, yes, it's pure-top-level cheese, but also, it's the score to a movie about a ship going down and hundreds of people dying in the ocean. You're writers and perceptive people. You know where I'm going with this.

So, do me a favor and go take a nap. Right now. Sleep and if you have one of my dreams, email it to me because it's mine, I need them, and I will do the same.