This was my status yesterday, out of waking from a hugely intensive dream! And, a pondering on two nights prior when I received this message in the wee hours of the morning and Google Chrome gave up the ghost.
The Dream…
It was a cross between Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings and Alice In Wonderland, if you may.
Once again, I wake up late and tired, daughter is getting herself ready for her new school (the old one I went to) she’s running late and telling me I’m useless – she looks like someone I know, but she’s not my daughter – she’s a teacher, masquerading.
I pull myself together and follow her out the door, concerned as she’s never been this way before, it’s a long walk and I want to make sure she is alright… she walks too fast.
Soon it is apparent that she’s taken another route from what I would do, and I feel very lost when I try to catch her up… the trees cover the pathway shading the light overhead. I am so aware of being late. I see a bus and stop it and get on. As I do so, it dawns on me that actually, we’re not far from the school, just ahead of it, and I don’t really want to be on this bus. I paid £1.53 as well! And I get off at the next stop and try to backtrack. I see my daughter up ahead. The white railings of a tall modern comprehensive school’s gates… teenagers playing football in an adjoining park.
I’m not quite sure what happens next, but suddenly… we are together – with my other daughter and diverted. It is as though we are at the top of tall pine trees and we see this massive iced white cake. A sort of art exhibition – marked “New World”, and we enter… we are walking for miles, we have somehow missed the school and end up way over by the hills, but by the sea. It is quaint, and quiet, I feel sure I’ve been this way in a dream before. The buildings are those you’d expect in a small fishing village, craft shops, flowers, feelings of touristy attractions in their windows beckoning us in.
There is a highway – that’s not right! We try to look at road signs that might lead us back to where we want to be, but, they are names of places we’ve never heard of, and we’ve no idea where we are now…
We turn round and climb some steps (you have to almost crawl as there is very little headroom) and at the top, there are huge rocks with barnacles on them, sort of more like bells, dark black – and they sing, and the people (men) sing with them, a sort of hum in honour of these spectacular monuments of time.
We turn and go up some stone steps. It is like a mini supermarket – craft shopping mall – very, very different from anything I’ve ever entered before in my life – it is underground. Beautiful clothes of a different age or time, one that we haven’t yet met, not the past. Up the stairs there is this large mannequin type doll person, who ‘watches’ us. Her head turns slowly and she says nothing, but she feels my tension and unsurety, and she nods in a disagreeing, warning but agreeing way, as if to say, no, you are right, don’t go there.
We enter a room, and it is slightly dark, in the shadows, waxwork grannies jump out and come alive, pointing and hushing us, as we pass quickly, further – knitted animals do the same. It was very frightening and we can’t wait to get out again.
Sarah says we should go up this ladder – iron rope steps. I am unsure about this, it doesn’t feel like a place the public are meant to go. We go anyhow. Up the top the iron ropes change to tie-dyed, weaved ladders like the kind that cross a gorge – not too much between you and the end of the world. I feel myself fall, I see nothing under my feet, but I land on what is now, tyres upright – a new path. Someone near me tells me not to worry, we are still on the aeroplane, remember? We cannot get hurt, we cannot fall, we are safe, it is all an illusion. But, I’m grabbing another rope and manage to get myself up safe.
Terrified, I realise, I have lost my daughters. I may never see them again, but I’m clinging onto the man’s words of it all being an illusion and we will get back together. There are lots of people on this journey – all going in different directions. The path keeps changing – it becomes a plum velvet carpet with tables and teapots – we are on an elevator going up – somewhere? It turns into wood again – bare brown trees. I look at my mobile, and see it is asking me to play games I’ve never heard of, and the people around me, laugh with me. Then it dawns on us that I could try and contact my daughters with my phone? Not to give up hope. I still feel panic that we will never be reunited, we feel so far away from each other, not just distance but years.
I never got to the top of the elevator. I woke! Shaken and my arm hurt. It was good to realise I had been dreaming, but still, very scary.
The Logic…
1) The wandering around in strange places that are quaint – the day before I’d talked with friends about places in Scotland, Menstrie, Pitlochry…
2) The cake, exhibition and the weird, vivid colours… I’d been sorting books, very, very quickly. Art books, massive – full of Surrealistic images – I flicked the pages very fast…
3) The elevator with the plum carpet and tables set with white table cloth and teapots? The wedding I am planning to go to.
4) Feelings of being lost and on a journey – the holiday I plan to take, familiar places down South where I went to school…
5) The scary mannequin doll person? Johanna had been telling me about the new XBox with the camera, you can never switch off as the console will not work without it on, Big Brother action.
6) The wax grannies? We plan to visit Madame Tussaud’s – the knitted animals? Canopy Woods – exhibition of knitted life 🙂
There are many, many other associations I could probably come up with connecting my ‘awake’ moments with my ‘asleep’ moments – the state of dream.
I think one of the most important one’s for me though was the reassurance from a stranger that, no matter what happens, I cannot get hurt – I am on a steady journey. It is true with my actual life, I am going through so many changes all at once, so many that it is hard to manage time and know how to focus. BUT… it will turn out all right. Nothing I go through with all this will harm me, the plane is still on track, but taking a scenic route.
The dream is just my brain – much like my computer – and I was just – out of system resources, temporarily. I needed to defragment myself, and put all my files in order – so that I could find them again when needed. There is a danger of burnout, and maybe I do need more ram, I am a bit outdated! 😀
Again, a day late – this is day two of my blog exercise. “Write a list post?”
S-T-R-E-T-C-H.
That’s some dream, Janet! I’m trying to think if I’ve had any dream involving an aeroplane and I haven’t had any. But when I was in high school, I had this recurring dream of my grandmother turning into a wolf-like creature, biting me in the ass, and instead of getting bitten, I sort of “fly” from the top of the stairs to floor below. I fall like a feather… I would wake up all sweaty and clutching the bedsheet. It reminds of the Little Red Riding Hood.