Just finished an article, “Nightmare Scenario,” in the Nov 16 New Yorker. Nothing of particular importance, but it brought to mind the question, do you dream in black & white or in color? It’s hard to imagine anybody taking the question seriously, but apparently people still struggle with it, scrinching up their faces, doing a quick mental check to see what the projectionist last put up on the brain-screen.

Can you imagine asking a person in the 19th century whether he dreams in black & white or color. You would have to explain the concept of black & white: “no, it’s not like a painting. It’s more like an ink drawing, but because it’s your dream, it moves like a movie… wait, no no, it moves like real life. You know. Like a Dream!”

“What was it you just asked me?” your friend says as he moves his milk stool to the other side of the cow, just to put some distance between you and him.

I had a dream the other night which would qualify as a nightmare if it hadn’t been so much fun. (I recount this now just so you can look for color words). I was in a huge museum. It was filled with large jade sculptures. I thought they were beautiful, but I looked critically in hopes of finding things wrong with them. Nobody should be able to make things so impressive. Apparently, I wasn’t the only person who thought so. Before too long, I noticed others felt the same way. They had broken red pieces of rock from the crystalline museum walls and were throwing them, destroying the art. I joined in. It felt good. Until the management took the situation in hand. At a certain moment, another set of walls descended from above. We rock throwers were trapped. I began to worry, but a woman who wore a museum badge on her beret came along and reassured me I wasn’t endangered. She was attractive. She wore black silk shorts and a striped black and white halter top. She stayed with me as the walls penned us in. “They’ll go up again when they take the criminals out, don’t worry,” she said. Sure enough, most of us were freed. Workers swept up the rubble. The dream was in color.

What other questions can we ask of dreamers? Do you dream in regular or slow motion? Surround-sound or tinny headphone quality? Realistic or cartoon characters? Do you wake up with popcorn in your lap?