I just awoke from what is genuinely the most surreal dream I have ever had. As such things are, it's very difficult to describe, but it at least involved the following elements:
- Driving around Tulsa, Okalahoma, near a hospital, being redirected due to construction.
- "Terrorists" (who all looked vaguely like Saddam Hussein) throwing large breakable thin-glass jugs, like some melding of gallon apple cider jugs and a giant test tubes.
- Always at the same time that a "terrorist" lobs one of these things into the street, I seem to be aware that other unseen "Army guys" thwart the "attack" by tossing a similar breakable glass container at the other one as it flies through the air, neutralizing it.
- I am never quite sure if there are actually two men, or two glass objects—the "terrorists" and "Army guys" seem to be one in the same, attacking and thwarting their own attacks.
- The glass jugs contain something the consistency of sand and the color of chili powder. This red-brown sand spills into the streets and gutters when the glass breaks.
- Additionally, there are old women, knobbly-kneed, wild-eyed, wild-smiling, and wild-white-haired, wearing loose white hospital gowns with black polka dots. There are many of them, all copies of each other. They seem to be the Tom Bombadils of my dream—ultimately a cause for good, but strangely distant from the struggle.
- The old women, walk in slow motion along sidewalks and up walls.
- Multiple times in the dream, the direction know as "down" changes. This seems to be initiated or controlled by the old women. At the very least, the phenomenon is related to them somehow.
In the last scene of the dream, I dive out of my car to comico-heroically catch one of the hurled glass "bombs." I come nowhere close, and red-brown sand spills like all the other times and the "terrorist" pops out of site like a whack-a-mole target.
Then I see an old woman in her polka-dotted hospital gown walking in slow motion down the sidewalk, and then "down" is no longer under her (and my) feet, but behind her. We both start "falling"—her wild smile intact as she falls backwards as I fall forwards toward her.
She turns to face "down" as she's falling and "goes after" a terrorist who is now walking M.C. Escher-style up the side of a building holding a knife. She falls on him and suddenly "down" effects him too. They start falling together. I fall on different (copy of the) old lady who begins to fall (wild-eyed smile and wild hair and polka dots unscathed.
Now, I see another old lady walking up the side of the building toward me-in-mid-air. Behind her is a terrorist with a knife. He pulls back his knife hand to stab her in the back. Just then, she pulls a bullet time gentle turn-around (still smiling) and hugs the terrorist. Time return to normal, and they both begin to fall.
The last thing that happens is that I now a folling old lady, and I decide that I have served my purpose in the world and am (joyfully) going to fall to my death. So I might as well have fun with it. (I have thought this in waking life... you know, if your parachute doesn't work, you might as well enjoy your final minutes.) So I start surfing through the air, trying to control my flight direction, and then I smack the ground next to a parking garage and die.
Oh, but wait—my not-actually-being-dead-ness must have clued in my dreaming mind that, well, I was dreaming. So I'm falling again, and surfing the jet stream. This time however it's like instead of falling along the side of a hospital cum parking garage, I'm falling along a wall of the Grand Canyon... But when I hit the ground it's the street next to the hospital parking ramp again. And I'm not dead. Which is something I think, as I'm lying there feeling my teeth loose in my mouth in my fractured skull.
At that point I begin to wake up... and find that down (the real one this time) is the opposite direction to what I thought it was. I fell onto my stomach/left side, but I'm actually laying on my back/right side. This makes me laugh. Solange proceeds to drowsily ask me what's up...
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