A fragment, really.
My brain is always active through the night, and as is true with most people, most of the dreams are forgotten before I awake. The few bits that are left, however, would make for amazing cinematography if they could be captured or reproduced. There is also the matter of multiple layers of meaning hovering around the images and events in the dream, something nearly impossible to capture in few words. With those observations to serve as disclaimers, here’s what I found myself remembering this morning, as the eggs were in the pan:
I am somewhere, in a large building, perhaps to attend a convention or other large gathering. It’s a hotel, I think. I’m many stories up, a dozen or more at least, and appear to be alone in the room when the shaking starts. After a few moments, it is clear that the whole building is unstable, and is about to come down. The room begins to rotate around me, furniture sliding, the ceiling soon to be a wall. It occurs to me that I may only have a few more seconds to live. It also comes across my mind that the same may be true of friends and loved ones, elsewhere in the same building. As those few remaining seconds become fewer, in my ongoing conversation with God (online all the time; kind of like broadband) I express these concerns, along with just a hint of curiosity about what, if anything, lies beyond. There is no memory of anything after that.
As has been the case with other such things, there is no sense of fear, or panic associated here. Not exactly detachment, either; somewhere in the mix was a complex of concerns about unfinished business elsewhere, whether anyone would ever know my passwords or even what-all I have passwords to, with attendant mild anxiety about those things. But personal fear? Not really. Disappointment at the idea of not getting to do anything else? Yeah.
Ok, that’s it. A dream fragment, nothing more. A snapshot. One person, dealing with the question of mortality and the fragility of personal existence.
