Why is it that one's own dreams are absolutely fascinating, but the dreams of others are generally quite dull to read? I guess dreams tend only to make sense to their owners. Looking back at my "ideas for blog posts" file, I found the following idea which I wrote down after dreaming it. At the time it seemed like a fantastic idea for a slightly surreal sci-fi story. Now it is just hilariously ridiculous:
Aliens taking the form of sticky spots invade dinner parties across Earth. Attracted to cheese sauce stains and killed by Martinis. They form geometric patterns on surfaces, as each needs to be the correct distance from its neighbours and must be next to an even number of other live aliens. So by killing or removing one alien one can cause a chain reaction leading to all but one alien disappearing. Trying to find a way to eliminate them once and for all.
Between late 1999 and early 2001 I wrote down all the dreams I could remember. In the process of writing this post I went back and re-read them all (something I haven't done since I wrote them down in the first place). Most are completely meaningless drivel like the above, but there are a few I do still remember, years later. For some of them it's just a particular colour or smell or feeling that I remember, for others it's all sorts of minute details. I wonder why some dreams I remember well and others have completely vanished from my memory. I suspect that it is something to do with how many times you recall the dream after waking, but I haven't done any experiments to verify this.