20151115.0719

I have noted before that I do not often recall my dreams. This morning, however, I remember at least one, a dream I had while dozing between shrieks of my alarm, taking advantage of the snooze button. For some reason, I had visited a clothier, and I was getting a full suit of clothes--including a hat. As ever, my hatband size showed up as large, and I quipped about having a big head (which is true; I take a large hat size, for my head is far from small). Finding one that looked good on me proved a challenge, however, and at several points, when I looked in a mirror to find out that the hats looked funny, I found that I looked funny. The effect was not unlike a funhouse, elongating my neck or expanding my belly more than it already swells. Yet none of the background was distorted; only I was changed as I looked on and the hats I tried on did not fit.

What I might read into such a dream is uncertain. The big-headedness could imply arrogance, as quips about cranial size tend to do--even though it is demonstrable that I have a large head, physically. (Note that I do not argue much about the hubris; I do, however, have a large head.) The details I recall of how my body was distorted in the mirror call to mind older personifications of the Seven Deadly Sins, particularly Gluttony. (An easily accessed example is here.) I have been a glutton, to be sure, as those who recall seeing me at table in my youth can attest; I am trying to be better about things now, not least because my body has taken to punishing me for excess, but if I embody Deadly Sins, they are Pride, Envy, and Lust, rather than Gluttony. (Why I make such assertions, I will not discuss now. Perhaps another time.)

I am tempted to let it be simply a dream, tempted to let the matter rest examined no further. Work continues, after all, and I am facing a deadline. Perhaps I ought to attend to it; I do not know that I can get any more from what I recall of my mind doing while I straddled the line between wakefulness and sleep.