Tell Us Your Dreams A2K

I'm soooo sorry. I forgot to quote the author. It's one I get to sing every once in a while at our shows.
Sung and written by Toby Keith...who has a real poetic touch

I liked it. I agree it's very poetic.

I liked it too.

Alrighty then, gotta dream to share now. It's doozy, quite long so I think I'll split it up into a couple of posts.

Here goes:

An evil was threatening the world, but no-one knew from whence it came. Threats of destruction and devastation had been made against all the nations of the Earth and the people were in panic. Seemingly random attacks had been staged across the continents.

I knew I had to track this strange foe to its source.

Many thought that it was a rogue state, some more inventive souls believed it was alien invaders, but I knew better. After days of searching (which conveniently took no time at all in my dream) I eventually managed to figure out where these mysterious and deadly people had their base. The ocean.

Using new and sophisticated technology, which my crack team of experts had developed (don't ask me where I got a crack team of experts, I just did) I set off on a solo mission to the bottom of the sea.

From my tiny submersible vehicle, I watched as the weak sunlight filtering down from the surface gradually faded from view. I was headed for the deepest part of the ocean, a great, wide trench which stretched for miles and miles along the bottom of the sea. The darkness below was absolute. It seemed to go on forever as I sank into the abyss, far from life and all hope of light. It seemed as though I was leaving the world, everything I knew was slipping further and further away. I felt panic rising like a tide, crashing against my resolve in waves. What if I was wrong? What if the sub failed?

But I held steady. Just as my fear reached its peak and I knew I would have to turn back, I noticed that the darkness below was lightening. It was not bright, so slight was it in fact that at first I thought that I must be hallucinating, wishing it to be so. But it continued to grow lighter and lighter, and eventually resolved itself into a centralised glow, a steady beacon towards which I directed my tiny bubble of existence.

As I neared the source of the light I strained my eyes to see what it was, peering through the gloom to try and pick up any recognisable feature. When my eyes finally adjusted I got an enormous shock. What I was looking at was not simply an underwater base, it was an entire city! The perspective had fooled me, I had thought I was nearing a small installation but in fact I was looking down from a great height upon a great metropolis!

I decided caution was called for and manoeuvred my craft to come down at some distance from the edge of the enclosed city, then crept in towards it along the floor of the ocean. The great structure rose up before me to a terrifying height, my little sub no more than a speck in the water before it. It looked fierce and terrible, nothing like the idea I had held of imaginary underwater cities, smooth and sculpted into domes or coral like edifices. This place was angular, built from some dark substance which did not reflect the light, and yet it was lit. Great flood lights shone into the inky blackness all around, steady lights which did not waver in this current-less trench. Yet fearful as the place was I preferred it beyond measure to the endless blackness all around.

I inched my sub in closer until I found a place to enter the city. The port opened up and swallowed my craft without hesitance. I had expected it to be harder to get in, but I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Once inside I was sure I would find some resistance, but when my pod opened up inside the dock I found nothing but an empty echoing chamber, dully lit by lamps along the water line.

Yet I prepared myself, soon I knew I would face the origin of the attacks which had been made upon the surface world.

I crept throughout the weird city, exploring the labyrinthine corridors and echoing halls of the forbidding city. Yet nowhere did I find a living thing, everything was still, silent as a tomb. Gradually I made my way inwards to the heart of the city. I could see there had been beauty here once, a thriving civilisation, yet now there were only the eternally glaring light of the city lamps.

But as I neared the very centre of the city I saw a new kind of light, a flickering, yellow light. Fire! It came from torches and braziers set in walls. I knew that if there were torches there had to be people to tend to them so I moved with more care than ever.

The deep shadows were my shelter as I stepped to the edge of a balcony over looking a great fire-lit hall. The walls arced high above me and my eyes followed them first up to the unreachable heights and then down to the litter strewn floor below. Peering over the edge I saw the first sign of living things that I had encountered in this otherwise dead city. People were there, moved unconcernedly between the great bonfires that dotted the once elegantly tiles floor, the remnants and refuse of their day-to-day lives accumulated in small heaps around. I scrutinised them carefully and noted that every one of them was garbed in the same ragged manner, makeshift armour and weapons making up the majority of their garb. I sat still for a while and watched the flow of people and soon noticed that there seemed to be a lot of activity in the vicinity of a particular set of stairs which led up to a large set of doors set into the wall to my left, and only slightly lower than my current position.

I don't know how long I waited (time moves in funny ways in dreams) but soon the people moving about this large gathering hall became less numerous, I supposed they were settling in for what passed for night here in the depths. When the traffic up to the large doors slowed to a trickle and then ceased I decided it was time to move. Keeping yet to the shadows, I made my way down and around the room to the doors, finding them open I slipped inside.

I found myself in a significantly smaller set of rooms. Some sort of headquarters by the look of them. They seemed deserted so made a quiet tour.

Nothing really caught my attention in the first few rooms, but soon I came to one that was slightly wider, and in it I found the evidence of battle plans. Maps were everywhere, on the walls and several desks throughout the room. Maps of the surface as well as sea charts, they all looked old, even ancient. On many of the surface maps were markers, some I recognised as sites that had been attacked, others were obviously for future assaults.

As I studied these markers I suddenly heard the sound of people talking close at hand. My first instinct was to hide, but the voices did not seem to be coming closer, so I decided to investigate. A door across the room led me to the source of the voices, a conference was being held. Several men stood in a semicircle around another who was clearly their leader. The leader was not speaking but rather listening to the recommendations of his followers. They were not discussing the battle with the surface but rather were arguing over resources, really vicious bickering. The leader merely waited impassively as they quarrelled.

As I listened I learned about their society. They were a people on the brink of extinction, some great disaster had destroyed their great society many years ago and the remnants of the people who once lived here were living in a hostile, almost barbaric, state of survival. Their attack on the surface, it seemed, was a precursor to a mass exodus of their ancestral home, the pride of these people was unbelievable! It seemed that their ancestors, believing themselves superior due to their technological advancement, had divorced themselves from the rest of humanity centuries, perhaps millennia ago. That sense of superiority, even once its source was destroyed, had lived on in the hearts of the descendants. They intended to rule or be destroyed!

I learned more, the attacks on the surface nations had been performed through computer operated defence weaponry that the old inhabitants had built into their under-sea fortress city. The controls were still functional even after all these years, even though these new barbarians had no notion of how they worked. It seemed that this city had been built to last, thus the operative flood lights outside and the city lights inside, it was all automated!

Eventually the leader of these people, a large and brutish looking person, became fed up and dismissed the bickering underlings. I knew I would have to get past him if I wanted to sabotage those controls, and I really wanted to sabotage those controls!

Soon he was alone, I hoped he would leave but he showed no inclination to do so. There was nothing for it, I stepped full into the room. He didn't see me at first as I took a few steps forward. Then suddenly he turned to look at me. He showed no trace of fear or surprise, a life time of hard living and battle for survival had cured him of such weaknesses. He drew a large blade from a sheath at his side and levelled it in my direction, a singularly threatening look spreading across his face. I carried no weapon but I knew I could match him (don't ask me how, I'd be running from the room in real life!). We fought.

A few feints and a few near misses started the fray. I dodged a wild blow and struck him hard under the ribs (Jackie Chan eat yer heart out!). He backed away wheezing to regroup before charging in once more. We fairly danced in the dim glow of the braziers as we exchanged swings, I took a ringing blow to the side of the head and nearly collected the blade too, but managed to roll out of the way just in time. The fight wore on, I almost began to doubt my judgement in engaging him, until, by pure chance, he swung too wide and I managed to get around him and land a heavy blow to the base of his neck. He went down like a ton of bricks.

I did not stop to catch my breath before turning to the large computer display lining one side of the room. Filthy as the screen was, I managed to decipher the readout and find the command path that would destroy the firing protocols. There were no safeguards, no passwords or anything. Apparently these people had lived pretty fearlessly here at the bottom of the ocean. Perhaps that had had something to do with their downfall, perhaps it had more to do with their overbearing pride.

What I did not expect was the deafening warning claxon which began to grind the moment I had entered the command that would destroy the power of these people to wage war on the surface. It had a sick tone, as though it had been wakened from a long sleep and resented it immensely. Over the sound of the siren I heard the shouts of men coming towards me. I knew I had to run.

The chase through the city was harrowing. If the place had seemed like a labyrinth before, now it was a nightmare of shadows and weird geometric shapes. All I could do was head in the general direction in which I thought the docking bay might lie, trying all the time to dodge the parties of hunters which scurried after me with brands and spears.

Eventually I came to the edge of the city, literally the edge, an impenetrable wall which rose beyond sight above my head. I picked a direction and followed it. Luck was with me, I came at last to docks and found my sub waiting for me like an old friend. But now I could hear them catching up to me. Even though I had reached my sub I worried that my pursuers might lock the water doors against me. I jumped in and started up the little vehicle, its engines whirred softly as it reversed and turned towards the submerged gateway.

Just as the water swallowed my sub, I looked out the bubble-like roof and saw a group of vicious looking city-dweller reach the edge of the docking pool, screaming their frustration at me as I manoeuvred out of this strange relic of a city. The doors parted for me without hesitance, apparently the people here had lost the ability to control that automated function, and my sub slid out into the benighted waters.

I watched as the city grew small and dim behind my rising sub. I thought of those desperate people left to their dead metropolis. Would they come to the surface after all? Would they choose to stay down there in the dark among the echoes of vanished greatness until the cold black water swallowed them up?

A while later my sub crested the surface, bobbing lightly on the gentle waves. Wearily I looked up to clear blue sky and felt the warm sunlight on my face.





That's it! End of dream.

Wow, Fortune; that was quite a roller-coaster ride of a dream! Did you dream that last night? Do you see yourself in your dreams, or do you see from your 'eyes' as you would in real life?

Yup, I dreamed it last night. Oddly this dream was taken from a 'my eyes' perspective all the way through. Usually my dreams have some variation in that respect.

The most vivd images from the dream were the darkness of the water and the weird feel of the city. Very sinister, very odd architecture indeed.

Resurrecting this old sucka (cannot find the recent How to interpret dreams thread)

I had a very vivid, urgent dream last night. Well, this morning, I suppose, when most vivid dreams tend to happen - just before you wake up. It combined everything - my ex, recent conference. plane crash, 9/11, very weird.

I was on a plane, traveling to a conference in Slovenia. I was traveling with the Monster, my ex. Seats were more like on a ferry - it was all open, people walking around, pilot was sitting right in front of the front row as a ship commander or whatnot. The pilot went to take a leak and this young stewardess took over. Apparently she didn't know how to handle it, slowly the plane spun around once, we were losing height and were just above the Twins. I jumped out somehow, and saw the plane crash into the buildings. I see things burning, people jumping, the whole shebang.

<Snip>

I am walking (presumably shortly afterwards) through a lobby of a gigantic hotel. It's a building I've had in my dreams before - it has elevators that are confusing, some go only to even floors, some to odd floors, some go to floor 15 and then you have to walk around long halls that go up and down to catch an elevator that goes higher... the whole hotel is a gigantic luxurious mess. I (dreamer, narrator), see myself waiting for an elevator, thinking about how I missed that plane and how E, the Monster must be anxious and pissed I didn't make it for the plane. I (dreamer) know that I (in the dream) am obviously confused and that I have a complete loss of memory of being on that plane, crashing, E possibly dying, etc. I watch myself getting on one of those silly elevators, knowing I'll be desperately lost trying to find my way through the damned hotel for hours.

End. (bow).


I can pretty much analyze it - anxiety, lack of direction in my life, too many things going on... blablabla.... but it was still one of the most vivid dreams I've ever had.

Ooh. Wandering around in labyrinthine buildings. That's one of my recurring dreams, too.

Never saw it as lack of direction, though. Rather as too many choices.

Hmm, that sounds better. I'm going with that, Eva. I doo have sooo many things going on in my life right now - but I do love them all.

Buttered scones, Montana, lk, Dag and Boomer.

at least it's not complicated.

Well, it was all pretty straight forward until lk showed up with the clotted cream.

Actually dag, when you described the plane scene,
I thought of the new relationship your ex has. Here
you're sitting in a plane with him, everything seems
pretty open and then when things get out of balance
(pilot leaving) and the stewardess takes over, all
hell breaks loose.

The stewardess could be your ex' new girlfriend and
while they're heading towards a crash collision, you're
jumping from the plane, meaning you don't want to
be confronted with their relationship (deep down you
think/wish it's heading down the tubes).

As for the hotel and the elevators, I think it is indeed
job related. It seems you're having too many projects
to finish up and are afraid of not being able to finish
(elevators having only odd or even numbers etc.).

hmm, CJ, that does make sense. I've never reached a 'perfect' closure on that relationship, possibly never will. wishing for their relationship to go down the tubes? noooooo (little voice inside: she doesn't know what hit her, he'll be on the run before she turns twenty...or twentyfive, however old she is....grrrrrrr!!!!)

ellpus, clotted cream is messy. in the dreams as well.

wow dag, where'd you find this old thing?..in the thread bone yard?
Drom and Fortune...I miss them...

When I dream about airports, it's always when something is unsettled in my life. I'm not prepared.

I can never even make it to boarding the plane. All sorts of things hold me up, or someone else doesn't show up, or I get abducted by Robert Wagner on a golf cart (he was in one of these dreams pretending to be a security card, but instead tried to rape me)

I often dream of houses too. Sometimes they are mazes I can't get out of, other times they represent some fondly wished for goal finally coming true. The latest one involved having a new home, which meant I would have to move from my city, and I didn't want to.

Strange thing, I know for a fact I have never had a dream of the inside of the house I grew up in. I've been around it, but never gone in it.

The other night I dreamt about Sam Jackson, that was a good one.....I wanted to tell someone about it, so I substitued my husband for Jackson and told him about it. He was all impressed with himself for the rest of the day.

hmmm...something to think about...did you have a frightening experience in the house where you grew up?

I have a whole series of houses I dream about -- I return to them often, recognize them. Some of them are variations of places I've actually lived, some of them are made of whole cloth, as far as I can tell. (Is that the idiom, doesn't look right... no particular connection to anything, just themselves, I mean.)

Anyway, I can tell my state of mind and link it back through the years to other times I've felt that way by which house a given dream takes place in.

The other day I had a vivid dream that my husband told me he accepted a job (in Massachusetts, I think) and that we'd have to move again -- woke up in an absolute panic. I moved 3 times in 7 years (starting in 1997) and I'm nearing the point where we usually have to start the process, looking for jobs, thinking about where we'll be next, and I've passionately hated it every single time (though it always was fine in the end).

Took me a couple of days to fade from that, E.G. assured me that he's happy where he is and plans to stay here a good long time. (All the other moves were pretty much mandated, temporary postdoc positions. Now he's a prof.)

I'm just starting to really settle in here, to relax in a way I haven't been able to relax in forever.