01/25/05
River Of Dreams

I had this dream an hour before it was time for me to wake up, so I was unable to take notes for it immediately afterward, and even though it was clear when I had it it's faded now. :/

I can't recall the beginning but it picked up with me at a river with one or two other people; one seemed to be my high school art teacher, Ms. Kolaski, though I can't be sure. If there was another person with us then they were likely around my age. This river looked vaguely like what little I saw of the Tahquamenon River in the Upper Peninsula, but not quite; that's just the closest thing I can compare it to. It was medium width--not too wide, not too narrow--too wide to walk across easily, but narrow enough to swim, I guess. It was shallow but very fast moving, brown/amber water, trees along both sides, and it was sunny out. I think at first we were in a canoe (!) but at some point that changed and we were on foot. Ms. K. seemed to be in charge, a sort of guide or leader, and I was following.

We came to an area where a small rapids or cataract was in sight and this rattled me. I think we were in the canoe at this point for I exclaimed, "Oh great, a rapids!" I had no clue how we would get the canoe over it without tearing it to pieces. It was not a huge waterfall drop or anything, just a rough rocky area in the river--at first, that is.

Someone with me--Ms. K. or the other person?--said, "Huh?" I think they hadn't understood what I'd said or else they weren't sure why I was upset. I might have said cataract but I think I said "rapids" because I seem to remember using a singular verb and a plural noun, and I wondered if that was correct or not ("a rapids"). There might have even been two sets of rapids, a bigger one and a smaller one, just like at Tahquamenon (Upper and Lower Tahquamenon Falls--in real life I only got to visit the bigger one, Upper).

I pointed. "Are we going to have to cross that?" I don't think I ever got an answer because the answer became clear when we got right to it, and NOW it was like a little waterfall, maybe eight or ten feet high, only it wasn't facing away from us, we were facing IT, and we would have to go UP it! And instead of an actual waterfall it seemed more like a mass of large outcropping boulders. They were kind of brownish in color, worn by the water but still with pits and handholds and such. Ms. K. seemed to be atop this already; I got to them and started climbing right up. I wasn't really afraid of falling, I just felt kind of flustered or frustrated for some reason. While I climbed there was a little kid perched to my left on the rocks, I think, watching me curiously. I glanced up at the top and saw Ms. K. making her way up there too; she stood atop them and glanced back down at me with some surprise, almost like she hadn't expected me there. I felt grouchy but I made it to the top and...this is where it gets weird.

Somehow...we then passed through a door. That's right...I don't recall actually seeing a door set out of place out here, over this country river, but we went through one anyway. There was SOME dissonance, for as we passed through it I noticed we were entering this modern hallway like in an office building and that startled me; I glanced back over my shoulder (I hadn't yet entered the door) and looked at this sunny roaring river and all its rocks, then looked back in at this modern hallway again. And then I said, "What the hell...?"

Yes, I swore. I remember thinking how I must sound like my character Charmian, 15 years old, from my fantasy fiction, since she occasionally uses mild swear words, whereas I, 28 years old, do not swear out loud at all. It actually felt kind of good to swear, especially considering the weirdness of the situation!

The door was not opened all the way; the hallway was kind of dim, with nice warm lighting, and was in light earthtones, like ecru, matching walls and carpeting; very nice and clean and modern. And there were some large birds wandering around in front of the door. o_o Like geese, only I think it was more than one species and they might have been exotic birds or something. There were at least two or three of them; perhaps one was speckled.

There's a hazy bit here; I guess we entered and walked through this hallway and somehow ended up in the office of the man who plays the psychiatrist on the TV show Monk. It didn't resemble his TV office in the least; it was a small, almost cramped and cluttered office with lots of pictures and such stuck to the wall. In particular, as he talked I noticed a map of Mackinac Island on his wall, and when I looked at it more closely I believe it said it was from 1935. It somewhat resembled a map I own from around that time period. The psychiatrist talked a lot, sitting in his chair while we stood (there might have been more people with me now; not sure where Ms. K. went, if she was still with me), and he had some very strange things to say. Now since it's faded I can't remember it well anymore, and this was the most important part of the dream too. :/ He was talking about dreams and reality and how do we know which is really which? He was getting very deep and I wasn't paying much attention but then he said something similar to this:

"Maybe you were out traveling one day, wandering all over and exploring the world," he said, "and you got tired and decided to lie down and take a nap. Now, maybe, you are still there, taking that nap, and you only dreamed you got up and left, and came back here, and went on more travels. Perhaps you are still lying out in the wilderness, asleep and dreaming, and this reality is the dream."

He might have explained this in the first person--"Maybe I was out traveling one day..." and he might have explained it somewhat differently or made a slightly different point...but I THINK that was the gist of it. I can't be positive, I just know it had to do with dreaming and the true reality of things, and the difficulty in telling one from the other. All I know for sure is that in the dream this idea really awed me and kind of freaked me out. All that time I'd been wading along that river, for example, could I really have been out sleeping, and dreaming, somewhere far away in the wilderness? Where was I NOW? It wasn't so much the thought that what I was doing right now might not be real, as the thought that I would have no clue where I really was, I think--it was almost like a fear of being separated from my body. Maybe. Not sure. Anyway, his comments really awed me, and I guess I/we ended up leaving, me mulling over what I'd just been told. Freaky!

It gets even hazier here, unfortunately. :/ Somehow his comments had SOMETHING to do with everything that came next, but I can't recall how. There was a crowd of black people standing outside somewhere, a citylike environment, maybe waiting for a bus; it was nighttime, and cold since they were bundled up and their breath might have been showing, but there were bright streetlights (?) shining down on them from above so they were well illuminated. I knew somehow that in this society black people were pretty much like "sheep"--simple and naive and easily led around, resigned to their fate. I knew we were in a sort of futuristic year.

All these people seemed to be wearing these yarn/knitted caps which fit right to their heads like skullcaps; they were talking amongst themselves but that was about it. I get the feeling that I wasn't really with them but was observing, maybe on TV or something. Another black lady, a young woman carrying a megaphone or bullhorn, came walking through the crowd, shouting things into it so they would all hear. Unlike the others, she was outspoken and forceful, and the others paused to listen to her as she wandered through the crowd. She was shouting out for them to not be sheep, and to remember their roots. I remember I put the number "70" in her mouth, so then I knew how far in the future I must be living--not the DISTANT future, but distant enough. I don't think it was seventy years in the future, but rather seventy years since a particular event to which she was alluding. I can't remember much of what she said.

"Seventy years ago," she yelled, "it was illegal to be black! Seventy years ago, it was illegal to be Catholic...!" She yelled some similar things, and I knew that the situation was supposed to have improved since then but it hadn't, not much. This woman continued yelling inspirational things to try to get these people to remember who they were, their roots, and that they were not helpless sheep to be led around. I knew that these black people were really mixed race and had a lot of different ethnicities and racial/social groups in their background, though they all looked black.

"Remember and be proud of your black ancestors!" the woman shouted as she walked. "Remember and be proud of your Nazi ancestors...!"

That surprised me somewhat when I heard it. But after thinking about it for a bit it did make sense. This woman was not teaching them to be proud of one part of their background to the exclusion of the rest. She was telling them to be proud of EVERY part of their background--and she was not saying to be proud of the Nazi doctrine or of what the Nazis were known for, but to be proud of the good things they accomplished. Now I'm not saying there was a lot of good the Nazis did...but in the dream I knew that they were simply a group that was considered our enemy, just like many others, and even though they had done despicable things, some good had also come of some of their actions (maybe they'd studied a subject and obtained priceless scientific results, or had contributed to the welfare of something...I felt it was something like that). In short, her comments were illustrating how nobody, no matter how awful they might seem, is TRULY evil--even the "bad guys" have their good points, and we should not overlook those and focus only on the bad. She told the people to be proud of their black roots--and also of their Nazi roots. Because wisdom and understanding could come from both of them.

She continued walking off through the crowd. I think a few of the black people had taken or were taking off their caps, though it didn't seem to be in response to her, or for any particular reason. I watched the reactions of the crowd and while they seemed surprised by what she'd said, other than that, they didn't really seem moved. They just continued standing where they were, and murmuring to each other. I wondered if they would rebel based on what she'd said, but they made no moves to. So the black lady's efforts seemed to have been rather in vain. :/

Real-life associations: The 1935 map, and the river, make me think of a real-life map and a real-life river. I don't know why Ms. K. would show up in my dream since I haven't seen her, and have barely thought of her, in years. For some odd reason crossing the falls made me think of portaging, like the French voyageurs would do, even though we did not technically portage. The psychiatrist probably came from watching a new episode of Monk a couple of days ago. I can't think of anything other than that. :/



2005 Dreams
HOME