Occasionally I have a dream that seems to linger for a large part of the day. If it is bizarre enough and close enough to sunrise, that period of final sleep, then it can hang like a haze, muddling my brain and leaving me puzzled.

While there are tools enough on how we might think about the meaning of dreams, or why they appear in the form that they do, there seems little we can do to chase away the fog that they can leave in their wake. I have a lot of dreams (though fewer recently) about teaching and classrooms, usually surrounding my being totally unprepared for the lesson.

This morning, apart from the mandatory school one, I had a dream in which I had to take over the controls of a bus. I think that probably sprung out of having actually caught a bus yesterday from Strathfield to Penrith. On that journey, the driver had repeated trouble changing gears after coming to a halt. Watching him struggle obviously stayed with me.

I was reading a book once by Carl Jung on dreams and their relationship to the conscious and unconscious mind. He can be a little obscure and the subject matter is hard to pin down objectively, but I might give it another read sometime.

But on the theme of dreams, this wonderful sonnet by Christina Rossetti. It's a different kind of dream to mine, but nonetheless...

I dream of you, to wake: would that I might
Dream of you and not wake but slumber on;
Nor find with dreams the dear companion gone,
As, Summer ended, Summer birds take flight.
In happy dreams I hold you full in night.
I blush again who waking look so wan;
Brighter than sunniest day that ever shone,
In happy dreams your smile makes day of night.
Thus only in a dream we are at one,
Thus only in a dream we give and take
The faith that maketh rich who take or give;
If thus to sleep is sweeter than to wake,
To die were surely sweeter than to live,
Though there be nothing new beneath the sun.