2/28/2002
Weird dream last night.
For one thing it was strange to wake up from a dream at not much past 2AM. I'm used to dreaming mostly in the morning, as I understand is mostly when everyone does--but not only, I guess. In this case it was nice to have a relatively full night's sleep still ahead of me, and even nicer that in wandering off to the bathroom I found Miriam, on caffeine to quell a migraine, still awake. So I got to recount my little nightmare, and consequently I remember it.
Or mostly. Actually I know there were a lot of involved doings before the part I remember, but I don't recall too much about them now, except an atmosphere of tension and preparation, coordinating things. What I remember is this: looking from the doorway onto the back porch of "my parents' house" (actually no such place, though it bore a moderate resemblance to a house they were looking to buy recently) across a sloping lawn bounded by young woods over which ran power lines. Off to the left there was a broadcasting antenna, maybe, or just a tower for the power lines--it stood by a place I knew of, and I think I'd been there earlier in the dream. It was a reactor, maybe, and there had been some debate about security or the logistics of a shutdown, something inconclusive and frustrating.
From that point there was a tower of smoke or steam, mostly white but a sort of thick and dirty white like the smoke of burning plastic, rising several stories into the air. It thickened at the top, though it didn't exactly mushroom. Just above the wires an uneven ring of glowing chunks or coals of debris, trailing smoke, arced outward from the center; it was reminiscent of the crown-like ring of droplets that rise out of water when a drop falls in from above, and now that I'm awake I remember that I was thinking about that photo, the first photo to capture the impact of a drop into water (or milk I think), yesterday.
So that's what it looks like, I thought.
Maybe I looked back inside the house--I feel like there was some sort of break here--but when I looked again the cloud was spreading overhead, like a storm that boils up quickly, and in a sort of repetition of those radiating trails of smoke, a loose cluster of smoke-trailing matter fell out of the cloud nearer the yard, the column still rising off behind it. And again, a little nearer--another clump of something, breaking apart as it fell in a gout of smoke or ash--and another, nearer yet. As I watched, the cloud billowed out over the trees, and out of the indistinct thick of it these rhythmic gushes fell through the air, deliberately, not quite one a second, with a soft, sloughing, heavy sound. (Telling this to Miriam, I suddenly realized exactly what sound that was: Rebecca grinding her teeth in her sleep.)
I strained to see what was dropping these fat loads of white dust and ash, and realized what was happening. And as soon as I realized it, it obligingly became true: the cloud dissipated or resolved itself and there was a dirigible, a great byzantine apparatus of canvas and cranks, coasting slowly across the yard, just barely above the wires, silent but for the regular rush of the powder it released into the air.
I dove inside. It was a family gathering of sorts--I'm fuzzy on who was there. I shouted for everybody to remove to the basement (what that would accomplish is unclear now that I'm awake) and set about scooting through the house to find each person and make sure they were listening. My mother sat with her feet up, knitting maybe, concerned at any rate with some project on her lap. She assented when I barked at her to go downstairs, and set one foot down off the ottoman, but true to character it seemed she would not really rise to go until she knew for a fact that everyone else was committed and waiting. Nobody seemed to be sure I was serious, or anyway they wanted to know why, and I didn't want to take the time to explain while they were all upstairs and breathing. My younger sister wasn't there, but her beau was, and he at least headed down--I told him to make a phone call, but do it quickly. A few moments later I looked downstairs (at this point at least it really was my parents' basement, as it was years ago) and saw him shuffling through a stack of papers, not quite ready to pick up the phone. Miriam and Rebecca didn't seem to be there and I couldn't call until he'd called my sister.
That's about as far as it got; I woke up, not exactly frightened but head still full of this episode, and slipped out--told Miriam the story, shook my head, wished her some good sleep yet, and crept back into Rebecca's room to sleep again. Had no further dreams that I recall.
I'm not sure why I'm setting this in with the current events. In my mind it seems to belong, and I hope you will not mind to indulge me. Obviously it was all about our very current fears; maybe that's enough. Or maybe it belongs because history is not only about the brayings of warlords and posturings on Capitol Hill. History is about all of the human beings on earth, trying to live our lives, wishing there were someone wise and honest among the powerful, to whom we could safely leave all wider troubles--wishing hard we could simply have no need or use for power of our own.