Dreams

Last night I dreamed about Martians again.  It's been a recurring theme since I was a little kid, when I first read 'The War of the Worlds' by H. G. Wells.  Always it's a nightmare in which I'm trying to hide from the Martians, and frequently it takes place at my grandma's house in East Texas.  Last night I dreamed that I was at Grandma's and the Martians were outside, trying to get in.  I had locked all the doors but I couldn't get the living room window to lock properly.  It was one of those old fashioned rotating window locks, the kind that would turn and slide into a brace attached to the frame.  I stationed myself there on the couch which was situated against the wall with the window, trying to get the lock to turn while peeking through the curtains frequently to see if the Martians were coming.  The dream ended when I realized that even if I did get it to lock, the Martians would use their telekinesis to unlock it.

There is another dream that I've had only a few times but it has stuck with me for years.  I dreamed this back in 2003, and I associate it with the very beginning of my problems with addiction, as that's when my problems started with pain pills.  Anyway, it's not the dream I remember, exactly, but just a few images and the feeling that goes with it.  It takes place in a forest, at night, up in the trees.  There is torchlight here and there, orange flickering light, and it's as if there is some kind of society up here in the trees.  A town of sorts, but with no buildings or houses or anything actually constructed... but still, the trees are a place where people live.  Or something lives... maybe elves.  I don't know.  But the feeling of being up there in the trees with the torchlight, and the presence of 'others', is a mixture of comfort, sadness, joy, apathy, and of being content with all of that, and also a sense of timelessness.  That it is all enduring and never changing, and that things don't rot or die, and existence is static and almost intangible.  It's like one moment stretched out forever, and the feeling of that moment stretched out with it, and it is also like being embedded in a myth of thick fog... not real fog that you would see in the morning which dissipates with the sun, but a fog of mind and emotion.  A mythical numbness which keeps all that is 'inside', and all that isn't 'outside'.  Inside consists of myself, the 'others', the forest, the torchlight, the emotion, and the static unchanging quality.  Outside is everything else, especially the passage of time, and as a result, daylight.  It is always night in the forest.  Thinking about it fills me with such a longing that it's almost unendurable if I dwell on it.  The way I've described it isn't complete, as there is some description of sense which is missing, that can only be felt inside, and therefore can't be described to the other senses.

The comfort I feel in that dream is similar to that of a waking dream I used to have a lot, which I call 'The Wafer Fab and the Window Room'.  When I worked in a wafer fab, I used to sit next to the machine and wait while it processed wafers.  I'd close my eyes and get lost in the constant sound of the air filtration units, and I used to imagine I was sitting in a comfortable lounge chair with a glass of iced tea on a side table.  I would be facing a wall of glass that ran from floor to ceiling and tilted away from me at about a 45 degree angle.  The glass stretched to the left and to the right for about 20 feet in both directions, forming one long, unbroken window.  This 'window room' was hovering above a desert of concrete which was broken up into geometrically precise yet random sections.  Each section varied only a little in height from the adjacent sections, giving a slight but definite impression of depth to the flat immensity which stretched away in all directions, towards the horizon and infinity.  The sky outside was an intense and perfect blue, and the sun was bright, shining relentlessly on the perfect desolation of infinite technical concrete.  I always imagined how hot it would be outside with all of that concrete soaking up the brutal heat of the sun as it beat down mercilessly, but inside my window room, with the sound of the air conditioner, and my iced tea, I was cool and relaxed and happy.