If you have nightmares about zombies...

dream yourself a 12 gauge pistol grip pump shotgun.

Seriously, yours truly used to have terrible nightmares in childhood: monsters, falling, flying and then getting scared of going too high into the sky, with panic in all.

Until, somehow, something taught me to regulate my breathing to regulate altitude.

Later when chased by zombies and other existential fears, my self told my dreaming self that this getting too scary and panic inducing, and so acquired myself a 12 gauge and began blasting pursuing creatures.

Many have scoffed at this notion over the decades, that the "conscious" mind can influence the dreaming mind;  "That is impossible!" mocks Rusty, a current neighbor.

Nevertheless if Freud explored the sub-conscious through exploring dreams related to him to analyze the conscious mind, humans can sometimes affect their dreams consciously.

Put another way, when the brain turns any situation over and over in the head--say the SAT exams, a job interview, a relationship--these things can show up in dreams.

Needless to say, this remains an unproven theory.

Imagine my surprise as an adult when reading Herman Hesse's Demian to find the same description of controlling dream flight by breathing, a discovery which allowed me much sleep n childhood, adolescence, and my so-called adulthood, now preserving whichever wisps of slumbered dreams remain with my insomnia.

So now after never watching scary movies as a child--once had to hide behind the black and white telly in Milwaukee during a terrifying episode of the Twilight Zone with fearsome aliens--movies like Zombieland don't terrify me any more nor haunt my dreams.

If zombies do show up during the small hours of darker mornings, I just get me a shotgun.

What a great way to work out frustrations for surely God forgives blasting zombies--and vampires.









Rage Against the Machine: "Pistol Grip Pump," possibly greatest bass riff of all time, "Bowm wa wa BWOMP!"