thunder only happens

Yesterday I woke up to an unusual and amusing dream & so got to thinking about dreams.  In my culture, my upbringing, life experience, I don't find dreams significant.  The only time I give consideration to a dream I've had is if it has an emotional impact:
funny / surprising,
scary, or
worrying. 

(Worry when you're awake; worry when y' sleep...!)
Usually if I remember a dream, it's a feeling of me trying to get somewhere.

Some cultures believe in paying attention to dreams, and analyzing them, & getting meaning from them which can be applied to Life.

"Tell me what you dreamt, and I'll tell you what it meant."
Tevye's wife says that to him, in Fiddler on the Roof, after he wakes up in the night screaming.
(He screams-"funny" -- this big strong man:  "Aaaauuggh!  Aaauugh--aaaauuuugggghhhh!"
Wife comforts him.
"Aaugh...")

Fran in "The Nanny" used that line too, once, in a mini-homage to Fiddler --
"Tell me what you dreamt, and I'll tell you what it meant."...

Woody Allen, on the other hand, says, "I like to use dreams occasionally in my work....I did remember my dreams when I was in psychoanalysis and I was making an effort to remember them.  But when I saw how wasted that effort was, I stopped remembering them.  The first time you're in psychoanalysis and dreams are interpreted for you, with you, there's a sort of exhilarating feeling that you're putting a puzzle together.  But I found...that apart from the puzzle pleasure, the play pleasure of doing that, it had absolutely no resonance in any way in my life.  I never learned a scintilla about myself from a dream."

And -- "Nothing I've ever written has ever originated in a dream in any remote way," he said one day while talking about director Robert Altman, who had a dream and made the deal for Three Women based on it ("with an option on two other dreams, I guess").   : )

[excerpted, Woody Allen, by Eric Lax]
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Now here you go again
You say you want your freedom
Well who am I to keep you down
It's only right that you should
Play the way you feel it
But listen carefully to the sound
Of your loneliness
Like a heartbeat, drives you mad
In the stillness of remembering
What you had, And what you lost
And what you had, And what you lost

Chorus:
Thunder only happens when it's raining
Players only love you when they're playing
They say, women, they will come and they will go
When the rain washes you clean, you'll know
You'll know

Now here I go again, I see the crystal visions
I keep my visions to myself
It's only me who wants to wrap around your dreams and
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell
Dreams of Loneliness like a heartbeat, drives you mad
In the stillness of remembering
What you had, And what you lost
And what you had, oh what you lost

Thunder only happens when it's raining
Players only love you when they're playing
Women, they will come and they will go
When the rain washes you clean, you'll know

Oh thunder only happens when it's raining
Players only love you when they're playing
They say, women, they will come and they will go
When the rain washes you clean, you'll know
You'll know
you will know
Oh oh oh you'll know

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"Dreams" - written by Stevie Nicks
Fleetwood Mac's Rumours album,
Warner Brothers  1977

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