Dream

Today’s post was to be about something else entirely, and was shaping up in a way that I was so pleased with, but then a wordpress gremlin reared up and ate my draft. Twice. Growl. I hope a goat bites you in the knee, gremlin. Or a troll. Or that giraffe at the top of the page: chomp! In sum, bad tidings.

Instead, this tiny negative dramatic thing is what I will share for today:

Normally the dreams I share are about inventions I make up in my sleep: edible dreams of Zoasters and ancient ice cream cones.

Last night I had one in the “disaster” genre.

I was in the back of a car-service car with Matthew, to whom I am married. I think we were going to the airport. Our son wasn’t with us, thank goodness, based on what happened next:

Planes started crashing. The first was not too close but was very dramatic. It was a real cinematic scene unfolding through a window, like a movie, except it was actually happening. Well, happening to me at least in my subconscious, rather than to Will Smith at the Cineplex.

The second crash was far more intense: huge barrels of welded together metal painted rich blues and orange, flying low and close, beginning first to swerve heavily and then to tumble from the sky, twisting into a collapsed structure before it even hit the ground.

The first crash made me flinch, but the second was so close that we immediately knew it meant possible death: it looked like it might hit the car or at least cause a huge fiery explosion. I turned to Matthew and he turned to me and we held each other’s hands, not two hands but four hands—all hands on deck—and shut our eyes tight and waited to die.

And then we didn’t die, and I woke up. I looked over at him. With his head cozily sandwiched between two pillows, he seemed completely unconcerned, at least with that matter.

I had another dream like that once, long ago. A tsunami was rearing up over my Tercel and had curled tall over the roof and I was looking up through the windshield and waiting for it to slam an unbelievably tall bright blue wave into the bright blue glinting metal of the roof of my car, and then straight into my skull. Then, too, I closed my eyes and waited. After I’d waited a while and nothing had happened, I opened my eyes and saw the green-glowing numbers of my clock radio. Hey! It’s morning!

It sounds awful but once you just close your eyes and wait, it’s really not that bad. Is that what the dream is about? It almost feels like it’s about stopping worrying about something really bad.

A dream like that makes you really need a nap, though.

I wonder why all of this royal blue in scary disaster dreams.