Apocalypse by water take two

For some reason, we all knew when the world would end, but no one knew how it would end. (It turns out we were actually one day off, and initially celebrated only to find out that it was really the next day).

Some people thought the sun would suddenly become so overpoweringly hot and bright that it would melt our retinas and we’d all just somehow disappear in this blinding white light. This way wasn’t so bad really. For some reason, there was no melting involved, no worrying about the extreme heat that would inevitably accompany the sun. People ran around on the beach, wearing these huge, dark glasses, specially made for the occasion.

Other people had other theories.

At one point, we discussed that it was strange that no one really seemed to be espousing the religious apocalypse thing. There was no big deceiver and surprisingly, little panic about religion or about anything really.

I was at the ocean’s shore when I saw it—a strange site. So many ducks in the water, rolling towards us in a breaking wave. Mallards. In the ocean. It struck me as strange because of course mallards are fresh water ducks, but I didn’t have much time to think about this since I quickly realized that all those beautiful ducks, rolling towards us at a disturbingly fast pace… they were all dead. Every last one of them.

"Oh no!" someone shouted. Anyone. It didn’t matter who at that point. We were all thinking it silently in our own heads as he pronounced the words, ‘It’s not the sun at all. It’s the sea! It’s full of death, and it’s coming towards us to claim us, too.’ As he said those words, the odor hit us in the face. The odor of millions of dead animals, and the water started lapping impatiently at our ankles.

“Run!” someone shouted. We were on the beach front of Fripp Island where my grandparents lived for many years in South Carolina. We picked out the tallest beach house (as if that would make a difference) and took off. It was the one with the elevator in it. We bounded up to the top floor. (I remember being surprised that Leslee from the Strand could run so fast).

We could see the water rising. I asked if we should try to find higher ground, but this was struck down. The water was level with the windows now, and it was starting to leak in. There was another family next door on the roof of a house: a mom, dad, and little boy. The boy was sobbing, so I walked over to him (the roofs were connected) and tried to comfort him before I launched my own tirade of, “We’re all going to die. We’re all going to die.” Over and over.

Then I woke up.

(Note: This is pretty much what I wrote down in the middle of the night, but I left out the references to NPR people - interestingly, I was mostly surrounded by NPR people in my dream.)

Looking on the bright side

Twice this week, I've had these odd, self-affirming/optimistic dreams. It's strange how my psyche seems to be trying to build me up. I appreciate it--though I'm not sure if it means I have low or high self-esteem at my core.

Dream #1:

Working my butt off at Savory Cafe (where I held a brief stint as a part-time barista on the weekends.) There was a long line of customers, and people were getting kind of pushy and annoyed with my slow service. Instead of allowing this to get me down, however, I focused on the song that was playing in the background, which had the horribly cheesy/elementary lyrics, "Isn't this so wonderful?" repeated over and over... and not in an ironic way.

Dream #2:

Stepping out of a bathtub in the middle of a large open room and taking my time getting dressed and drying off only to later realize that someone (actually a fellow NPR intern, and a female) was sitting in the window sill ledge, casually peering over her book at my naked figure. Once she admitted to this voyeurism, I remember trying to remember if I had done anything embarrassing, which is strange--trying to remember within a dream. Of course, I was pretty mortified that she had been there the whole time, but then, she said, "No reason to feel ashamed. You have a beautiful body."

The other day,

I woke up with the last part of the Humpty Dumpty nursery ryhme in my head. You know, the part that goes:

"All the king's horses
and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty
together again."



Can't remember if the phrase actually pertained to my dream or not, but I thought the rhyme was pretty indicative of the current situation.

My apocalyptic dream

Two nights ago, I dreamt about the end of humanity. This is what I wrote in my notebook when I woke up:

Because I have seen how the world will end. Over time, water takes over the land--continents disappear, and the beasts of the sea start growing. It's kind of like that thing with goldfish. Sure, they stay small when kept in a tiny bowl, but give them space, and they'll soon swell to enormous proportions. Eventually, one mammoth fish assumes the role of leader of the whole world. He is huge and hulking. All the remaining people have long been subjected to the sea--they float around in a glass ship, watching the sea creatures swim by until one day, they see him--the beast of the sea. He swallows the whole ship... and with it, the rest of humanity.




a possible explanation
I recently was taken by a song called "Whale Belly" by a band called Autopilot is for Lovers. The lyrics were as follows:
"If they ask you tell them we got swallowed up by a whale. If they ask you tell them... tell them we wish they were here. If they ask you tell them that we found a city in his belly and a forest inside of his chest, and his heart is our grandfather clock that beats out the hours like the fist of God. If they ask you tell them we're not coming home. We are home."

Resurrection, take two

Stuck in a cabin in a remote part of the woods with only the remnants left by the previous visitors to cook with, I flavored the soups/stews I made with the ink from scented markers, but I worried we would soon run out of flavors or that we would all surely begin to show signs of sickness from the toxic (but tastey) exposure.

It was a cellar this time instead of an attic

So last night I had an epic Stephen King-esque kind of dream. I can't say it was entirely a nightmare since the first portion of it was more dramatic than horrific. I was living out in the country on this old semi-abandoned farm, and after realizing that my friends had been missing for a while, I saw that the door to the cellar was open--you know--one of those outside cellar doors that sits on top of the grass. So I decided to go in.

Almost immediately up walking down there, I fell deeper into the underground through a hole in the ground and soon got lost in the this underground, earthy labyrinth. I wasn't panicing though... not yet anyway. After a few hours of waundering around, I stumbled across my friends who had basically set up a camp in one of the unusually large and open caverns. They were just sitting around down there as if not much was wrong, so I decided to join them. In my first day down there, I managed to read a whole novel--a really long one that upon reflection, turned out to be a narrated account of my entire dream. In my dream I spent what seemed like hours reading the thing, and upon waking up, I wondered if I had really composed something resembling a novel or at least a short story or if I had just been remembering portions of something I had read or watched in the past.

Then we ate some food from their stash and went to bed. This is where the nightmare begins. We awake to three strangers running into our cavern, screaming. For a second, we all celebrate because we think we have been rescued, but those screams were not of the joyful variety. They quickly tell us they had been running from another member of their party who had gone crazy since they had gotten last in the passage and begun to run after people with the intent to kill them. So we take off, blindly running through the tunnels. We run into the crazy man and his devilish grin and unblinking, distant stare a few times, but we keep running and evade his attempts to make us his new victims, always wondering if we would not soon join him ourselves after losing our own minds.

Though I would like to say I just woke up now, the dream was actually not open-ended, and the old farmer, having seen the cellar door open, found us and was in the process of rescuing us when I woke up...

the little girl that I killed

ok. I guess I should warn you... this dream is kind of intense. or at least I found it to be pretty disturbing, but then again, I guess dreams and nightmares specifically are always scarier when they are ocurring than when you are looking back at them later.

Right, so I was working at a summer camp... I'm not sure if it was the same summer camp I worked at for four summers or not. The majority of the dream took place indoors, so it was hard to tell. Anyway, for some reason, it was my task to think of something really scary to present to kids for a haunted house sort of deal, and the scariest thing I could think of was the truth. So I was in a big room with just this one girl. She was maybe 9 years old. So I just started telling her all these grusome tales about ways that people could die, and she was so scared that she literally died of fright. She was standing up, and she just froze and turned stiff--like she had been frozen solid. She quickly turned pale and he hair stuck out at odd and wild angles. I couldn't believe I had killed her.

I have thought of a few different possible interpretations for this dream. It could show peoples' inability to live with the truth or it could be related to my religious struggles as of late. I used to work at a Christian summer camp, you see, and I'm afraid that if I were to work with kids today in that kind of setting that I might kill them in more of a metaphorical way--in the sense that I would hinder their faith and spiritually kill them. heavy stuff. ... or perhaps I killed off a part of myself.

The image of the little girl is still implanted in my head.