Where do dreams come from?

I dreamt I met the Jo'bloggers, and they were just as weird (weird in a "good" way) in person as they are online. Their offices were zany, and they were nuts!

I dreamt that I had to catch a flight back to Cape Town, but everything was conspiring against me. The airport had no clear directions - you never knew if you were in the "coming" or "going" section. There were strange people from my past in the waiting areas or hanging out at the check-in points. Everything was industrial-steel grey with pink accents and shiny metal floors.

It was raining. The automatic doors weren't. My parents were trying to track me down.

It was dark outside and I couldn't find my plane. I couldn't even figure out if it WAS the airport, or if I were still stuck in some strange part of the Jo'blogger's offices.

Weird, weird, weird!

I wonder where dreams like this come from. Science says your mind goes into overdrive while your body shuts down in sleep, sorting through all the info taken in during the day, filing it or solving it or reconciling it. I know that I've woken up with a difficult problem solved clear as day before, which is very cool. (At least it's proof that my brain is actually working...)

I can't make head or tail out of where THIS info would have come from though, or why it needed sorting!

Often, when a whiff of a dream is remembered, I can trace its origins back to a moment in the previous day - a thought, or a glimpse, a fear, a worry, or a memory triggered. Sometimes when I'm bored and having to wait (like in a bank queue), I'll replay my thoughts from where they are now, trying to link them as far back as they'll go and see what I first started thinking about. I'm strange like that.

But some dreams - well they come out of left field and smack you upside the head without giving a single clue as to where they've come from.