Sunday, November 05, 2006

in which I tell you of giant monkey-rat-frog creatures

I just had the strangest dream... I don't remember my dreams often, but when I do they are generally wacky.

I was a teenager for some reason. Somehow I knew that I had been all grown up before and it was strange and irritating to be a teenager again. I was in a van full of teenagers, all of us on our way cross country to an airport on the east coast to go to some kind of competition somewhere far away. I'm pretty sure we were headed to Europe. We were driving on a narrow one lane road on a snowy mountain pass, and the driver was a terrible driver. We kept drifting towards icy snowy cliffs, the van moving way too fast. Frequently the wheels of the van would hang partly over the cliffs edge. Frequently we'd be flying towards big banks of trees, and then somehow make the turn, no problem. Somehow I thought the thing to do was just close my eyes, pretend it wasn't happening, breathe deeply and slowly, and have faith that we'd get there and I'd open them again, no worse for wear. This is an art I mastered long ago in real life. I'm a control freak and can't stand to watch the road while others drive, so while I may not close my eyes, I just don't pay any attention to the road or their driving at all, having faith that if I ignore it all somehow my friend or family member that's driving will come through for me, and I'll reach my destination safely. If I watch the road or pay attention to others driving, then things can become stressful or I can become critical, because I know better than anyone how to keep myself safe, of course (rolling my eyes at my own silliness) and we don't want that, now do we? Anyway, back to my dream. Suddenly the van was stopped on top of this snowy stormy hillside, and somehow that seemed to be planned. Somehow this was how we were going to make it to the airport on time. We all donned snow pants, boots, and other miscellaneous warmness that we just happened to have on hand for our trip to the airport to fly to someplace that I now seemed quite sure was a tropical destination. We got out and started sliding down the hillside. The trees were no more than a few feet apart in any place on the hillside, so we'd slide down moving our hands from one trunk to the next to guide ourselves and slow our descents. I got about half way down before I realized I was going to have to climb back *up* this steep stormy hillside in a while to get back to the van, and that wasn't going to be nearly as easy. Ugh. Somehow I didn't really have a choice, so I continued on down the hill. We came to an old decrepit building on the snowy hillside. It was long and narrow, running the length of the hillside and completely blocking our path. Suddenly our expedition seemed almost archeological, and certainly this was intentional. This building was a couple hundred years old, standing firmly in the snow. It was dusty and dirty and creepy, nothing more than a few boards nailed together really. Inside there was one long hallway running down the middle of the length of it. We went in through a strangely shaped door in the side of the building and wandered the hall. Apparently we needed to find some kind of artifact, anything interesting really, for this portion of our trip to be complete. The others went to the left, and I to the right. That portion of the hall was lined in huge cupboard doors that opened to large storage shelves that filled the space between the walkway and the outer wall of the building. I opened cupboard after cupboard, repeatedly finding little more than dust or a few old boards thrown in haphazardly. On the left, after the cupboards, there was a room, open to the hall completely aside from a wall of chicken wire and a little gate. Come to think of it, this building was more like a rickety old stable than a traditional building. Inside , towards the far wall, there was a large plexiglass tank, full of water and the dirt and debris of many years, brown and clouded, with little bitty goldfish swimming all around in it. All I could see was the top surface of the water, right at the top of the plexiglass, which was even with the floor, and the fishies darting around on the surface. in front of it, between it and me, was another tank. The water level was much lower (like the height of a room lower) and the water was crystal clear. There were large frogs in this tank. When I say large I mean that they were a couple feelt long atleast, even in a sitting position. They had faces and heads that resembled that of Curious George, and they were jumping all around. Their bodies were brown and covered with short hair, but they were clearly frogs. They kind of resempled huge rats as well, but they were frogs, ok? Oooooooooooook then. Somehow I had goldfish in my hand that needed to go into the goldfish tank. I threw them through the chicken wire that blocked the opening of the room. Half of them made it in to the fish tank (Score!) but the other half rained down over the frog-monkeys. They became vicious and scary and aggressive, jumping at the chicken wire and snarling, trying to get through to hurt me. I ran on down the hallway, lined with chicken wired rooms with other goldfish (in this building with no heat, with feet of snow outside) and came to a door at the end of the hall, at the end of the building. Out this door was a normal woodland trail. No snow, no rat-frog-monkeys, no teenagers, just now-grown-up me and the trail, the sun filtering down through the trees on a warm afternoon walk. I was happy there. Then I woke up. Ooooook.

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