I Dream Of Bad Coffee

A quasi- chicken-and-egg quandry has reared its head early this morning. Are dreams the reaction to the mind's wanderings or the foreshadowing of events to come? I'm sure the answer is both, but this morning's dream really has me thinking about what comes first. The dream in question actually woke me up for good this morning. I was in some dumpy diner or service station somewhere, and I poured myself a big cup of coffee from the pot that was sitting there. Well, good God almighty, that was some bad bad coffee. We're talking coughing, retching, spit it out coffee. The thing is, not only did I see myself reacting this way in the dream, I could actually taste that bad bad coffee in my dream (and what an aftertaste--I swear I tasted it after I woke up). The curious thing is that just a couple days ago, for what reason I have no clue, I was wondering about whether the senses of smell and taste "work" in dreams. When I was thinking this stray thought, I couldn't recall any dreams of mine where I could actually smell or taste anything. Makes me kind of wonder about the cosmic shenaningans going on behind all of our backs when I can think about tasting in dreams and sure enough, soon after I'm tasting wretched coffee in my slumber. Thanks for the info, Mr. Sandman, but you could have been a little kinder in your lesson: Guinness, Canada Dry Ginger Ale, or Tropicana freshly squeezed orange juice straight from the carton--next time.

But then I realized, shortly after shaking the bad taste upon waking, that this morning would be one of the few mornings where I'd be making my own coffee instead of buying it somewhere. You have to understand my culinary ineptitude and insecurity: I'd much rather chance a cup of Joe from a coffee pot like the one in my dream than one brewed by my own hands. So maybe my dream was all about forewarning me of the misery to come and getting me up early enough so I could endure and recover from the experience of drinking my own coffee in time for me to get to work this afternoon.

Who knows? Certainly not the on-line community of dream experts. Yes, I even indulged in a little oneirology this morning, which is the scientific study of dreams, though if I had had to guess, I would have said the word means the study of self-administered x-rays. Anyway, the half-dozen or so sites I checked out didn't have much to say about the sense of taste in dreams: a "secondary" sense that infrequently occurs in dreams.

All I know is I've never tasted worse coffee in my life (awake or dreaming) than that coffee I dreamt of this morning. But maybe that's a good thing. This real, "homemade" java I'm presently sipping doesn't taste that bad at all, though I suspect it's the stuff of most people's nightmares.