For some reason my brain seems to have lost its ability to cook up new dreams since June 2007. Yes, I remember exactly when I stopped having dreams.
The last dream I had was about three weeks after my Aikido sensei passed away. He was in front of the tokonoma sitting in a meditative seiza, surrounded by an ethereal light. I was sitting on the sidelines observing the kyu test. After one classmate completed his test, a 1st kyu sempai said I’m up next, even though I know I wasn’t planning on testing. “Yes, it’s your turn. 4th kyu.”, he said. After making a >__<; face, I got up to the mat, prepared or not. Then a commotion outside the dojo drew everyone’s attention. We all went outside to peek and found a pumpkin horse carriage. With nothing else happening outside, everyone went back inside to resume the tests. All lighting were turned off except for the ones at the tokonoma. There were supposed to three sempai judges sitting on one side of the mat; there were two. Sensei called out, “Marc, are you still here?” A disembodied head and upper half of a torso peeked out from the darkened shadows. Yep, he’s still here. Then I woke up.
My brain couldn’t even come up with a twisted nightmare anymore, yet it’s pretty good at retaining earworms.