Dreaming

Had a bit of a strange dream last night. Thinking about it in the half-haze of awakeness, I wondered if it was about escape...or madness. That is, if it had any meaning at all.

The three of us were somewhere around here. It was winter, or at least cold, and getting colder. We found ourselves part of a mass of people trudging up a hill, everyone carrying some kind of baggage. At one point we passed a pile of discarded bags, and I thought that these were things that the people had wanted to take but could not muster the strength to bring up the hill. In the pile of bags, we saw some brightly colored kids toys, and my daughter darted over to pick up one or two, saying that perhaps we could come to the kid who owned them, and she could give them back.

At the top of the hill we started going down a long flight of stairs, with the mass of people ahead of and behind us still. Occasionally people with crazed or lost expressions would come up to us, right up to us, and gibber at us or stare blankly at us. We would step around them. Halfway down the stairs I took out a cell phone to see if the bus company we were going to use was still in business, and found that it was not -- under the press of events, it had dissolved. The woman on the phone wished us luck, and I wished her luck, too.

Then I found a doorway.

It was just off the stairs -- unmarked, nothing special. Nobody that I could see was going through it. I went in and immediately felt -- not better, necessarily, but not so burdened, not so immediately concerned for our future. I went back out and retrieved my family, and all of us went inside. We found ourselves in a tunnel that looked hand-excavated, but as if what it was excavated out had actually been a hallway at one time. We climbed a short flight of stairs, and found ourselves at two doors -- one marked Full Earth, and one marked Empty Earth. We chose the latter, and came into a room that looked just like the large room that had been at the bottom of the stairs, only this one was completely empty. In a few moments, we came to a small apartment, and we set up living there. It was very quiet. Occasionally we would meet other people, but we didn't so much interact with them as nod and smile. They were pleasant but a touch melancholy.

I don't believe in dreams, though I do think Freud could have made something of this. Or perhaps Ray Bradbury.
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Update: My wife told me that she'd had a strange dream, too -- of a teenage boy who was systematically putting dogs into a chute that lead into a building. One dog would not go, and the boy explained that the dog knew that the chute lead to a furnace, but that the dog trusted him, and he'd eventually go -- which he did.

Last night, I told my wife somethign unusual about me, of a religious nature. Wonder if that was the source?