The places in my dreams are familiar…
Cats: miscellanea|Not familiar to my waking life, but familiar in my dreams. I visit them over and over again as I wander the landscape of my subconscious, usually as an observer only, watching the inhabitants of these places play out the roles my tortured mind assigns them.
They fade so quickly upon waking, but I still retain impressions of them. Here are a few of them.
A large, circular building with a wide pillar in the center that houses a staircase behind its hidden door. This staircase leads up to another smaller room. The main room seems much like a tent, as the ceiling is of draped fabric. Always, within this place are robed adults and small children, most no older than 8 years old, the majority closer to 4 or 5. Another adult arrives. There is a flurry of activity to either disguise the children’s heads with the hoods of their robes, or whisk most of them through the hidden door, up the staircase and into the small, secret room above. Soon after, more robed adults arrive, but their attire seems more military… and they brusquely go about inspecting the building, stopping to carefully peruse the little ones… As they go about this business, the others surreptitiously make sure all hair is hidden behind hoods on the children… I get the impression the children are ‘outsiders’ and do not ‘belong’ in this society. The good people that belong to this building have taken them in, and will assimilate them slowly, building up documentation so they may live ‘normal’ lives, if they can avoid being caught in the process.
Then I am noticed for the first time, by everyone. All eyes turn to me. The officials register first alarm, then cruel intent on their faces. The others show compassion and sorrow in their eyes.
And I flee.
Running down narrow streets with fast flowing streams in gutters down the center… dodging behind gates, squeezing through the spaces between fences and buildings… eventually I find myself before a tall brick building, no way around. I will be trapped unless I push through the weathered door.
When I enter I am in a long, narrow room, split by a counter. Atop the counter, and on the wall behind it, are fantastic creations that would rival the finest special effects artists in Hollywood. The heads of various creatures, both beautiful and hideous, are modeled in perfect, frightening detail. There are busts; there are masks. They are flaking and rotted, or pustulent and oozing… each looks as though, if touched, my fingers will come away dusty or wet.
The impression here is that of a workshop. There are works in progress down the long, narrow aisle in front of the counter. Vats of some heated, viscous fluid, floppy molds of faces that have not been detailed… The denizens here appear very clearly to be ‘outsiders’. They exhibit signs of what my own waking culture would call ‘counterculture’. Dreadlocks, piercings, prodigious tattoos… But all of their markings, their decorations, their jewelry… seems somehow ritualized. Each piece or mark clearly has meaning to all of them, denoting rank, or station, or esteem, or perhaps their job within their small society.
These also notice me, but only nod gravely. A few smile faintly. A tall, imposing figure steps over, takes my hand, and leads me behind the counter, along the cramped space there. I take care not to disturb their creations. I have the impression that to do so would be disastrous, either to wake them into being, or to anger those who made them. I am led to the other end of this long, narrow room, to a door in the wall upon which many of the hideous masks are hung.
This door falls open, and my guide gestures gently, but firmly, that I should exit. I step out into a rain-soaked alley. A muddy yellow stream flows across in front of me spanned by a low footbridge. I look back. Again my guide gestures, his imposing, fearsome tattoed and pierced face frightening, but the eyes shining with something like the care I see in the eyes of those who love me.
Forward I go, across the filthy stream to find myself in more familiar territory. These are streets not unlike those I drive down regularly in my waking life.
There is a car before me, I find keys in my hand. I slide into the driver’s seat of a red convertible, start the car and shoot off down the damp streets careening around corners. I don’t know where I’m going but I want to get there fast. I slow as two women go running across the road in front of me. They look familiar to me, as though I might know them when I’m awake… but they run off down an alley as I turn and go the other way. Then I see why they were running. A gang of men, closer to boys, are running after them, laughing, with clear malicious intent.
Somehow, I realize I could be no help to these women, and may in fact find more trouble myself if I go back, but I still pause and contemplate trying to help anyway…
Here is when I always wake. A moment of choice, a moment of moral decision.
I’ve visited this world many times. The circumstances aren’t always the same, but I have been in that tented circular building before. I have been in that long narrow horror workshop. I have driven, or walked, these damp streets with gutters and streams running down their centers. I know the brick buildings. I know the grassy weeds that push up between cracks in the pavement, or along the foundations of these structures.
It is bleak, dark, overcast, oppressive.
Is this the landscape of my mind?
