Dreams of Cockroaches

Twice this week he had dreamt about cockroaches. He couldn’t remember what they were doing in the dreams. They weren’t talking or dancing reciting the sermon on the mount, there was nothing exciting about them. They just did cockroach things. Like wriggling. That’s why he remembered them, the wriggling, it wasn’t nice at all. Surely nobody in their right mind likes cockroaches? We must have an inbuilt disposition to feel disgusted by them. That’s why he could remember them in the dream so clearly. Dreams to him were never that clear. Never lucid. Usually he was in a place from his past. A workplace, a bar, his childhood home. But never with the cockroaches. This may well have been the first time he had ever dreamt about cockroaches. That’s why the dreams were staying in his mind. Disgusting.

He though about the famous short story about the man who turns into a cockroach. He actually had the book on his shelf, he could see it. He had never read it of course, one of many books he had bought, classic heavyweight literature that could be bought cheaply at flea markets or from charity shops and displayed impressively on a bookshelf but never actually read. He had this idea that you needed to read all of these books before you died or you may miss out on the answer of life. Maybe the answer is hidden on page thirty-three of one of these books. Maybe the thirty-third word on the thirty-third page of thirty-three of the classics will produce the one sentence that is actually the message of god. What he actually wants us to know. But the internet probably already has that somewhere. And if the answer was something we didn’t like. Then what would we all do? Write more classics of course. Keep checking thirty-threes until we come up with a more agreeable sentence. He kept Ulysses in the toilet. He only ever read a couple of pages at a time.

He had seen a cockroach in Barcelona once. That is the only lasting memory of a cockroach he could muster up. To see one cockroach one in your life many years ago and then dream about them twice in a week. It must mean something. They are meant to be everywhere, aren’t they? Like rats. All over the place. Maybe there was on next to him in the bed while he was asleep, whispering to him. Telling him to read the story on the bookshelf about me. It’s about you too. You horrible little man. Why don’t you wash the dishes, or hoover under the bed? You always just hoover around the bed., never underneath. Can you imagine the dust under there right now? Creepy crawly empires have risen and fallen under that bed since you last ran a vacuum through there. Then, and only then, will I go away from your dreams.

He looked up the meaning of cockroaches in dreams on the internet. It means you need to confront an aspect of your life that you are unhappy with, or an ugly side of your personality. Alternatively cockroaches are known for their resilience and ability to survive. It would be hard to wake up after this dream and think to yourself that you are resilient and you should be proud. A big pat on the back for myself for the symbolic cockroach. This must be a portent of only good things to come. I should be very pleased with myself today. I will go to work with a smile on my face because nothing shall destroy me, a quality I share with my friend, the cockroach.

To confront the aspects of your personality that are ugly. That is not as easy as you think it may be. The immediate response would be. I am lazy, I need to work harder, eat better, drink less, stop smoking, earn more money… Society’s dictums. The same for all of us every day of our lives. Why would the two cockroaches pop up this week to tell me that? There must be something else. The best course of action is to ignore it. Ignore until you dream of another insect. Maybe beetles, woodlouse, all of them scurrying around together, maybe they will finally arrange their bodies in the shape of the words of the message rather than just suggesting what it is they want to tell you. Just tell me, stop being so fucking cryptic you bastard insects. I don’t have time to decipher dreams.

He had had all day in fact. He even read the famous short story about the man that, as it turned out, hadn’t turned into a cockroach. It was a large, nondescript insect. It was good, it had a happy ending. Maybe the dreams were of misrepresented cockroaches demanding he read that particular story so he would no longer think about it as if it were possible. That the pathetic and feeble human being could turn into anything as proud and resilient as the cockroach.