Sometimes, I have dreams that are so involved that I wake up and feel the need to dwell on them a little bit. I have decided to add a category to this blog called ‘dreams’…ummmm, yeah, so all zero of you who read this blog should be able to guess what will be in this category. It’s a cheap form of therapy. So here goes:
I was walking through a sprawling green college campus, with beautiful brick buildings and perfect tree-lined sidewalks. College students filled this place (as you could imagine). They walked, rode bikes, talked in small groups, and sat on benches.
Surrounding the campus was a huge, concrete city with gang members and graffiti and a generally unappealing atmosphere. If I stepped outside the boundaries of the campus, I was immediately in the city – the boundary was clearly defined: you were either in the city or you were on the college campus, there was no transition.
I only stepped over the boundary into the city once. When I did go into the city I felt an overwhelming sense of hostility and anger directed at me. There was no love here, and no hope. It was not a place I wanted to continue my journey, so I stepped back onto the college campus. I felt safer here, but not content. I felt as though I didn’t have any true friends here and did not belong with these people.
I walked on until I came to a set of rickety wooden stairs. It was as though this staircase was hastily or roughly built because it was not used much, or maybe the people who did use it didn’t really notice it because they were headed somewhere and only had the destination in mind (not the journey).
When I got to the top of the stairs, I was suddenly in my own house. I felt comfortable here until I looked out the picture window in the living room and noticed three little boys staring in at me. They were pale and expressionless. I felt like they were judging me, like they could see the mess of toys in the other room that my younger daughter had made that had not been cleaned up.
I went out to the front yard and asked the boy’s father what they were doing here. He told me that they went to the daycare next door. I accepted this answer and went back inside. The boys continued staring into the living room. I continued to feel self-conscious.
Somehow, I found those rickety wooden stairs again, which I now realized was actually a stairwell. I went up another level until I was in a room that contained people who were just sitting around in chairs. Their faces had no features: no eyes, no mouths, no noses. Just a blank sheet of skin. They seemed to be content, but I felt instantly bored and restless here. I asked the person at the front of the room if I could go to the bathroom (even though I had no intention of ever coming back).
I headed for the stairwell and went up another flight of stairs, which I knew was the top level. It was a small apartment. A man in his 60’s lived here. We didn’t speak in words, but I could feel his thoughts. He was very proud and righteous and regarded me as someone who was not worth his time. He was, however, extremely happy to show me his coffee maker. He showed me how the light goes on when you press the button. He expected me to be impressed, but I didn’t want to be in his company, so I ran to the stairwell and started running down every flight of stairs. I felt exhilarated, like I was breaking the rules. I thought that people would be chasing me to try to get me to come back, but nobody did.
The bottom level was a basement, and in it were a few older lunch ladies. They were big-boned and wore hairnets and lunch lady-type uniforms. One sat at a desk in the corner of the room, and some stirred large soup pots. I could tell that they were angry and did not want to be there.
I spotted a basement window next to the lunch lady at the desk. The window was packed with snow, but I opened it anyway. A little snow spilled into the basement, but it was just enough to create a hole for me to get out. I jumped up and wriggled through the window and found myself in a 50’s style kitchen. I went out the kitchen door to the outside, but suddenly realized that the lunch lady was coming after me with a huge blowtorch. There was a light blue pool raft next to the house, so I grabbed it and flew up into the air toward a forest that lie ahead of me. I looked back at the lunch lady once; she had given up on me and was headed back to the basement. I was free.
