Dream-Ending Dreams

I just woke up from a nap, & what woke me up was what I call a "dream-ending dream." These dreams are both impossibly familiar, & at the same time so completely absurd, that it shocks your system into consciousness just to assess their near-comic outrageousness.

There's nothing more boring than listening to someone tell you his or her dream (unless it's someone who think they can "interpret" a dream) (or than watching someone tell someone else their dream & having it interpreted) so I won't bore you with details except that this dream seemed to be about a "tradition," which is to say, something I did every year or so (which I never have) & which also referenced past examples of the tradition. The dream, therefore, either referred back to other dreams I've had (which seems terribly unlikely, with this fading memory of mine), or it created those memories & made them feel like memories in the dream.

The latter is more probable, & that's why dreams are so awesome. Still, if, when you dream, you retain a modicum of your own sense of self - like, for example, you're scared of heights, & in a dream you're going to bungee jump or parachute - then the dream of something so unlike you - or so unlikely that you would ever do such a thing - so disturbs your sense of self that it becomes a "dream-ending dream." It wakes you up to take stock of your sense of self, &, in the midst of the dream's artificial familiarity & its haphazardly concocted reminiscences, you have to return to consciousness just to make sure it wasn't real.

I don't think most of these "dream-ending dreams" are scary to the point of nightmare, but some of them have been a little on the exciting side - involving chases or other dramatic movie-style sequences - again, referencing something that probably couldn't or wouldn't ever happen to me.

I do wonder if they're the body's way of waking one up when one needs to wake up from, say, an overlong afternoon nap. I know a dude who naps thirty minutes each day in the afternoon. Thirty minutes! It usually takes that long for me to get to sleep!