The Dream

In the dream it’s nighttime and I am running down an industrial alley being chased by dark, vaguely grotesque figures. I am carrying my skateboard; the alley is full of gravel and broken glass. I am sweating and the dust and grit form a crust on my skin. There is a feeling of dread as I frantically look for an escape, or hiding place. The wind is blowing and in the background faint electronic music is playing. I turn a corner and duck into an empty warehouse where the silence is noticeable. Through the large double doors in the back a faint light is filtering in.

I cautiously peak through the doors and I’m looking down a hill at the other end of town, the sun is shining. I ride down the road towards the park, and I see people I know absorbed in their mundane afternoon activities, yet they don’t seem to notice me. A car pulls up and it is some friends of mine who tell me to get in. As we drive under the bridge we see an amazing site – a gigantic ramp made of plywood, 30 feet high and about 50 feet across, it forms a bowl and there is not a kink in its smooth clean surface. I can smell the wood as I drop in and my wheels echo along the flexible surface in a rolling, hollow drone. There is no other sound except for the occasional ecstatic hoot of joy that carries through the wooded area surrounding the bridge and this giant megalith. I wonder how this structure came to be here, but my friends say, “We built it.”

Cars pull up and shadowy people begin to get out, there is a vague, impending feeling of threat and conflict, so we bail and run through the woods. My friends’ voices trail off in the woods and I emerge at the other end of the trail. I’m walking home and they pull up in the car again, rock music is playing on the radio. They drop me off at the end of the street near my house, there’s a park by the river where I sit down on the gravel parking lot. In the sand I am watching a large scarab beetle roll a ball of dung that keeps getting bigger. Somehow he can hear my thoughts. As I sit watching him the wind begins to blow again and I am slowly being smothered by sand. It is muffling all sound, and I try to cry out but the closeness of everything is stifling. The beetle does not seem to care. Slowly I begin to suffocate and the sand fills my eyes like so much sleep.

Now I am sitting in a car at the curb of the winding road by the old apartments. The have cut down all the trees and bulldozed the parking lot into oblivion – nothing looks the same. Three of my friends, two guys and a girl, are in the car, and I get out. It’s an old rusty 1970’s sedan that rumbles off as I stand looking up at the sky. Then I am back in my apartment, remembering her, and the others. Her face is vague and keeps escaping me. There is a feeling of loss and sadness and chances gone forever. I can’t help the nagging feeling that something I can’t remember is just out of reach. Then her face appears in front of me, striking in its vivid reality, but as I stare in horror she morphs into a terrible witch, a visage like a shrunken head hanging in the air and silently mocking me. I wake with a start, wondering what it means and how it could all be so real. The sun is shining through my window.