This dream is from 27 March 2010. It was one of the most visually stunning dreams I’ve had in years, so I tried using it as the basis for a poem. That never really worked out, so here it is instead.
As in many other dreams I’m in a complex of rooms and hallways – maybe a mall, a school or a convention center. And as in many previous dreams I seek the passageway through and out – always by going further in.
The walls are white. A door leads to a big, cluttered storage room, which is almost completely dark. The dream becomes (as usual) more like a nightmare when I venture into the darkness. To the side of the room are some curtains. Behind the curtains is a kind of small stage area, even more run down and dirty. There I find another door, half hidden away. It leads to a smaller room, wherein is total blackness. Still I enter, feeling my way. I hit the far wall, and it feels like this is where I can never get through. But now there’s an opening…!
I tumble through, into a black sky. I’ve finally escaped! I race forward through black space. Then twinkling yellow lights appear. I’m above a city at night, tall buildings around me. Then I start falling down, points of light shooting up around me. I’m afraid, but force myself to change directions. I manage to fly up – black space again welcoming me.
I zoom through the void. Then an enormous yellowed skeleton rushes towards me, head first. But it’s a million miles long, so I slowly trace the huge bones from the cranium to the phalanges of the foot. After it has gone past me, several more skeletons appear, two or more at a time, moving from the vanishing point toward me. They’re perfectly still, but placed in different symmetrical patterns. When they go past I see that the ribcages are composed of petrified men. It all has an ethereal beauty.
Lastly a gigantic lone skull moves towards me, its mouth yawning open. I cannot avoid this huge opening, so I fly through. Inside is a brown rock, a boulder floating in space. I’m drawing closer and closer to this asteroid, until I descend upon its surface. It’s big enough that it’s like being on a planet.
I’m now in a canoe, the leader of a group of men paddling through the landscape. As I steer the vessel down the river I see something in the sky above us. An immense skeleton is floating up there, but only its skull can be seen between the craggy cliffs. Inside its mouth floats a rock, a world like this one, with its own flowing river. The gravitational pull between the two rocks makes the very land rear up, threatening to thrust us into the grinning head above.
But I maneuver the canoe onto the river banks, sliding over damp moss and slick rock, into the stream and back, barely avoiding the undulating hill directly underneath the jaw. We race uphill and down, a mad ride to find the right way.
Seeming to have escaped for now we disembark in a lush forest. Leaning against a grassy stone I feel a hardness on my hand. It’s a growth, a gray brown shape protruding out maybe an inch. It’s cylindrical with a concave base, tapering towards a half-burst top. Like a lid I open it. Inside is a clear amber liquid.