Blog

I had a plan. I was going to start this post with a pithy and pertinent quote, which should be easy to find in Google. Should be a matter of mere minutes until I hit the right link and then we’d be off. Except I have now spent way more time than is reasonable trying to find this particular quote, doing untold permutations of what I’m looking for and can’t find it. It’s making me nuts. So you know that quote about how there’s nothing more boring than people who tell you their dreams over the breakfast table? Yeah, that one. Imagine that in neat italics just below the post title and we’ll move on (and if you know the quote I’m talking about, please leave it in the comments so my brain will stop trying to figure it out).

Because that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. Dreams. I’ve had a couple of weeks with highly active, detailed and quite interesting dreams and if only I could remember them in more detail, there’d be enough material for an anthology of short stories. But since only the broad strokes remain, I’m going to bore you with them instead and I hope you’ll join in so we can all “bore” each other over the metaphorical breakfast table. If you’re one of those people who don’t dream, feel free to pretend.

A virus has hit the world, transforming human beings to a sort of chittering monkey-like creatures with eyes of neon blue light. I’m a member of a group from somewhere else, come into this world to explore, to help. Only a few of the inhabitants were not affected and in one area, large and devastated, ruined buildings slowly being consumed by vegetation, there is a boy of about 13, hair in tangles, large brown eyes in a dirt-smeared face, holding his arm outstretched so one of the creatures can grasp it with one spindly hand, hanging there, peearing at us curiously and chittering excitedly at the boy. He is a modern-day Mowgli, alone in a post-apocalyptic jungle of stone, surrounded by groups of naked tail-less bodies, throwing themselves from perch to perch, incessantly screeching, chittering, their eyes strobing a white-blue light wherever they turn their face.

I am back at university for some reason, I don’t know what. The friends I used to know are there, too and we are having lunch on the black leather couches place by the walls of windows looking out over the valley. The trees are turning, the valley a riot of yellow, orange, red. I need to go, need to meet someone for an appointment and then head to the front entrance to await my ride. But the large buildings made of concrete and glass are now made of glass and tubes of steel painted white, so you can see everywhere, endlessly. I see the people within through the halls of glass and overlapping pipes upon pipes, the building a living sculpture, a living hive of people and I keep thinking that I have to come back with my camera because this, this is one of the most visually interesting things I’ve ever seen. I am disoriented, having trouble superimposing my mental map of the campus I attended 25 years ago on top of this nebulous landscape where the glass and the pipes have transformed the known hallways, corners and departments into an abstract nebulous world. I miss my appointment, I miss my ride, and lost in the levels of the hive, almost there, just around the corner, almost, but never there, endlessly continuing down yet another hallway. I don’t have recurring dreams as much as recurring themes and this is one of what I call my “punching Jell-O dreams”. I have them when I’m stuck, when I’ve tried to solve a problem over and over and over again, but nothing ever changes. I suspect this one may have had something to do with 11,000 e-mails.

I am a Russian cosmonaut, on a solo mission in my shining metal ship, blasted off from somewhere far away. I crash, a gentle crash, more a glide, really, caused by lack of fuel, in a small village in the Scottish Highlands and am both one of the villagers and the cosmonaut alternately and at the same time. The cosmonaut is welcomed in the village, taken to the pub for a pint and a meal while fuel is found and it turns out that all that was needed was one of the old tires from my wheelchair that I kept when I got new ones. For some reason I am not pleased with the cosmonaut taking my tire – I’ve no idea why, it’s not as if I’d be using it again anyway, as it is quite bald – but sulking, I give my permission, the tire is placed in the appropriate location on the ship and I, back in the cosmonaut’s body again, enter my ship, strap myself in at the front by the windows at the pointed nose and blast off, feeling the force everywhere in my body, exhilarated by the speed, a trail of black rubber smoke pluming out behind me. I can see the village below, surrounded by mountainous forests, the landscape dotted with deep blue lakes and the ship hesitates, reducing velocity, but by a great effort of will I press my body forward, physically and psychically making the ship accelerate again and I fly into the heavens.

Your turn! And afterwards, go check out Gutter Vista, where my friend Mary has just established an online home. Be nice to her – I’ve nagged her to get a blog for a while and want her to get sucked into the blogosphere, just as addicted as the rest of us.