On Sunday, I trekked up a hill in the dark to watch a meteor shower.
The Draconids meteor shower reached its peak last weekend, and I’d never seen a shooting star before. Unlike most meteor showers - I had no idea until recently that there are showers going off on pretty much a monthly basis, which are visible to the naked eye - the Draconids are most easily seen just after nightfall, rather than in the early hours of the morning. So you can watch them and still get to bed at a reasonable time. Plus, this year they coincided with a moon in its last quarter phase, which wasn’t providing much competition light-wise.
So my husband and I drove out to the hills just outside our town, and scrambled up the footpaths as the sun’s afterglow was fading in a wash of yellow and orange on the horizon above us. We made it to the top in time to watch the final flush of colour sink into the deep velvet blue of the night sky. We spread out our blanket. And then we waited.
Waiting for a star to fall
We watched the stars appear, gradually at first. Just one, then another, peeking through the curtain of the Earth’s atmosphere, as if the sun’s absence had made them bold enough to sneak in to take a look. Their example made more and more grow brave enough to follow, and suddenly we were looking at an entire galaxy of diamonds sparkling above our heads. It’s almost unbelievable that all of this surrounds us, all the time, but we’re largely oblivious. The brightness of the sun (and the light pollution we live with at night) shields us - enables us to believe we are everything, we are the centre of the universe. When the sun is gone and we get away from urban lights, we’re suddenly able to see into the eternity we float in. We’re suddenly able to appreciate how very small we are.
We found the constellation of Draco (I used an app - I’d love to be able to say that I just know where all the constellations are, but I don’t, and I’m not sure who decided that these stars together looked like a dragon. Presumably, someone who had never seen a dragon.) and watched for meteors. We had been blessed with a very clear night, but suddenly a band of cloud swept in. We watched the wave of mist swallow more and more stars, and then gazed on sadly as the great dragon was gradually devoured from feet to head. But. Not long later, the cloud began to move away and the dragon was free once more. (OK, if you stare at it for long enough, it does start to look a bit like a dragon.)
Then we saw it. It’s a strange experience, staring at the sky waiting for some of it to move. It makes your eyes play tricks on you. Stars seem to move when they don’t. Any movement is a cause for excitement, until you realise it’s a plane. Or a satellite. I didn’t realise how many of those there were until I just lay on my back for two hours and stared at the night sky. Having never seen a meteor before, I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I started to wonder if I’d know one if I saw one. But I did. In perfect unison, my husband and I gasped and silently pointed towards a spot just above the horizon. A streak of light burst across the sky like a celestial firework. It was over in seconds, but it was somehow magical.
We stayed for a while longer to see if there would be more, but that was it for that night. Had we been somewhere further away from civilisation, perhaps we would have seen more. We stayed relatively close to home, and we could still see the lights of the town spread out beneath us as we looked up at the lights of distant planets above us - we were in the middle, suspended between two worlds. To be entirely honest, we hadn’t wanted to make the effort to trek too far out into the wilds when we didn’t know if we would see anything at all. Perhaps next year we’ll travel a bit further afield. For now, though, that was enough. I saw my shooting star. I saw the universe wave to us.
Dream gifts
That night, I dreamed about watching hundreds of meteors in a sky lit up by the vastness of the Milky Way. And as the meteors rained down, the universe bestowed “hag gifts” on me.
I’m sorry, what? What’s a hag gift? I’m pretty sure it has to do with the fact that I’m currently reading If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie, who talks about the gifts that ageing, and passing from maiden to mother to crone (or hag), gives us. I’ve written already about the fact that I now find myself on the threshold of that transition to crone, with my 40th birthday fast approaching at the same time that I’ve become aware of the dawning of perimenopause. Although, with a five-year-old and two-year-old, I think I’m entitled to claim Mother status for a while longer just yet, there is a part of me that’s excited for the next stage. And, inspired by Dr Blackie, a joy in the gifts that my 40 years of experience on this planet have given me, and what I’m able to do with those in order to serve others.
So I think my dream, of me amongst the vast universe, was asking me to find my place, to shine my little star, and to accept the gifts I’ve been given. You know, instead of procrastinating, kicking self-doubt and imposter accusations around in my brain.
Always pay attention to your dreams, they know things. Dreams are your subconscious mind, freed from all the chatter of your controlling and panicky conscious. Dreams give your subconscious space to explore what’s happened, and what might happen, and to unravel all of the tangled web of your life. Dreams tell you what you really think, underneath it all. Dreams tell you what you really want and need, no matter what you’ve been trying to tell yourself you should want. Dreams allow us to be real with ourselves, without all the bullshit.
I became fascinated with dreams as a teenager, and I’ve never grown out of it. I started interpreting dreams for friends, and it’s something I still get asked to do from time to time. I love it. There’s so much rich symbolism in our dreams, and, once you know how to decode it, you can help people to listen to their innermost self. It’s a great privilege. At one point, I started wondering if I could offer dream interpretation as a service as part of my business… Is that something people would pay for? Let me know if you would, in theory, because I’d love to be able to do that more regularly.
Dreaming with your eyes wide open
I’m also obsessed with the different ways that people dream. I dream visually - it’s like watching a movie in my head. It’s in colour, and I hear sound. I assumed this was the way everyone dreamed, until I was describing a dream to a friend who said, “Wait, you dream in colour?” They, it turned out, dream in black and white. I was amazed by this. It’s so interesting how much we assume that everyone else’s experience of the world is the same as our own, and yet it is so often radically different. So I started asking everyone whether they dreamed in colour or black and white, getting almost 50/50 responses. Until my mother threw a spanner in the works by answering, “I don’t know.” How can you not know?! She insists that she doesn’t, because she doesn’t remember her dreams that way. When pushed to say how she does remember her dreams, she was infuriatingly vague. But I’ve since discovered that many people don’t dream visually at all. There are so many ways to dream, it’s astonishing.
Why does human evolution do this? Dreaming is an important cognitive function - it helps us process experiences to support memory, integration and emotional adjustment. So we’ve been designed as a species to dream for our own wellbeing, yet we’ve been designed to do it in so many varied ways. What’s that about?
I read a Twitter thread a while ago (back in the days when it was still called Twitter) when someone expressed astonishment that they’d just discovered that some people remember things like a video replay of the event. I immediately had to respond with, wait, how do you remember things? Again, I’d assumed that everyone’s memory functions as an in-brain movie. Apparently I’m in the majority, but only just. Some people don’t have any kind of visual “mind’s eye” at all. The human brain is weird and beautiful and endlessly fascinating.
I need your help!
So, as part of my ongoing quest to learn more about how the world dreams, I want to hear from you. Please let me know in the comments - how do you dream?
Are your dreams visual? Aural? Informational? Colour? Black and white? Other?
I’m really looking forward to seeing some responses!
I seem to have really dull dreams where I’m doing everyday things, housework, texting, or something work related. Husband seems to have epic fantastical sci-fi dreams where he’s travelling through space fighting to save the world, or he says he has Inception style dreams within a dream. I’m curious as to why his are so dramatic and mine so mundane.
Such a beautiful read Allegra, and very timely, two weeks ago I attended a talk on the neuroscience of dreams, and it was fascinating! It covered a lot on why / how / and ways we dream, and the professor spoke a lot about the different types and stages of dreaming too. I always find the topic of lucid dreaming fascinating and loved the opportunity of learning more about it all ☁️💫