Dreams for sleep

It’s early but not crazy early. Sleep has been a little less difficult recently although the dreams have been markedly more vivid. Is there a trade-off that takes place in the brain, an extra hour of sleep in return for letting the brain run wild dreaming? There doesn’t appear to be any similarity in the stories my brain has been spinning – except one.

The settings are all different, the people who inhabit the dreams are unrecognizable, there’s nothing sexy going on and I never feel in danger or wake up in a cold sweat. The dreams are, for the most part, uneventful. The running similarity in these recent dreams is that I generally find myself in an odd situation, some place I probably shouldn’t be, an unauthorized visitor of one sort or another.

The scenarios are all different; one time a delivery man, another time a traveler and yet another time just a man looking for a warm place to pass the night. Usually the other inhabitants of these dreams react with curiosity or confusion, sometimes there’s a measure of suspicion, but never fear or hostility.

Do any of you expats out there experience similar dreams? Is this a “stranger in a strange land” dream experience we share?