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To Sleep, Perchance To Dream
Had another one of those so-vivid-you-can-recall-them-hours-later dreams, or more accurately nightmares at around 4:00 a.m. this morning. I and a bunch of friends were at an old farmhouse. Evidentally, there had been some sort of announcement on the radio, because we were all getting ready to hunker down and ride out a storm or tornado or similar natural disaster, when I suddenly realized I had to go find my father. I left everyone at the farmhouse, and suddenly was in a yellow school bus with my Dad and the driver, whom I didn't recongize.
We decided to go back to where my friends were, but all the roads were blocked by gates or emergency vehicles. By the time we circumvented our way around we got to the end of a road that was blocked by some sort of barricade, but one you could see through. On the other side was a veritable wall of cascading water, a living entity bearing down on us, like the giant waves in a Hokusai woodblock print. Beyond, the landscape had been scoured clean of all vegetation, buildings, any sign of life, leaving only a scarred vista like the side of a volcano. I was driving at that point, and decided, No way am I going to try to cross that! There isn't even a road on the other side! But, when I turned around to drive back, I got lost and ended up taking the bus over the side of a 1,000 foot chasm. fortunately, we fell onto a ledge only a few feet down, landing upside down on some soft turf, which evidentally broke our fall because none of us was injured. I told Dad and the bus driver to get out --
-- at which point I woke with a start, spending a good half hour wide awake and recalling every detail of the dream before eventually falling back to sleep. In what must be a very rare occurance, the dream seemed to pick up again, almost from the previous point. The deluge was over, and I was back at the farmhouse, although there seemed to be a number of new people there, whom I didn't recognize. But, everyone seemed safe, the farmhouse and surroundings unscathed -- even the naked mole rats (!) appeared completely unpurturbed by previous events. We got the old truck behind the house running, although the accellerator seemed to be stuck, because it took off like a bat out of Hell!
Then, my alarm clock went off.
Here it is nearly 4:00 in the afternoon, and although many of the details are a bit hazy, a surprisingly large number are still crystal clear: I can picture the school bus, and the men standing around the firetruck trying to block our path; the foaming chocolate milkshake color of the raging water, the luminescent green of the grass beneath the wheels of the rusted red pickup truck with its driver's side door and separating inner door panelling, the view through the front window as the bus sommersaulted over the edge of the cliff into the mottled brown abyss below, the tooth-rattling "plop" as we landed sooner than expected. The cool breeze through the broken windows.
Some Freudian would probably have a field day with this, but I don't think it really means anything more than maybe I ate just a little too much of that leftover meatloaf for dinner last night.
Still, I've had a headache and a general feeling of listlessness all day as a result.
Posted byCOMTE
on 3:23 PM
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