I have been meaning to start a record of my dreams, visions, spiritual wanderings and odd notions, and since I spend more time at the 'puter than at my desk this blog is the result.
I do not expect many readers, as this is mostly a way for me to mull and muse on the strange stuff my head comes up with, but comments are welcome - just no flames please. These thoughts are the accumulated recollections of many years coalescing at last into words, so that I can go back and see how accurate my memory of certain dreams might be, and to keep track so I don't have to remember all the details.
Briefly, I have had an extraordinarily active, vivid dream life from a very early age. These dreams are almost universally full color, stereo sound, full sensory experiences, many taking place in a single world to which I return as if to an alternate home reality. Others are clearly just the commonplace sort - the stuff of stress and daily living, and are, by comparison, relatively uninteresting except for their vividness. The latter will only be recorded here if I suspect they might hold the seed-pearl for a story. All are to be considered my personal property, and may not be reproduced or used for any purpose without my express permission.
The primary location of my other world may have a name, but in the dreams I don't think about such things, any more than one thinks about 'I am on the planet Earth, in the Solar System of Sol on the edge of the Milky Way galaxy'. It simply is home, and I know my way around most of it quite well, and periodically explore new places in it, much as in this world one knows ones home town, but still visits new places occasionally.
My known world consists of a huge city with a river on one side, a big one with an equally huge bridge crossing it. The bridge is so big the support ends are also high rise apartment buildings. It is about 6 lanes on each side, and getting on and off can tax ones patience. The riverside road has a lengthy walkway that extends on into the suburbs and surrounding country in one direction and to the ocean in the other. The ocean front part includes extensive contiguous buildings where one may travel indoors in inclement weather, making ones way to restaurants, theaters, even schools, all under one long roof. Passage to the outside - either the road or the beaches - is easy, and convenient.
Up the river leads to hills and farmland, including ice-covered mountains and expansive bedroom communities. As the river narrows far upstream away from the shipping it is possible to canoe and swim, or fish. Ah, the fishing in this world is amazing :-)
Of course one can fish in the lower river too, as well as the estuary portion. and the ocean as well, but there it can become a question of who is going to win the battle... especially since some of them get quite large and intelligent.
Back in the City there is a business district (fairly boring by comparison) a Bohemian downtown where the theater district and many restaurants vie for attention. Uptown is more residential, with parks of many sorts - some elegant monuments to some past event, with huge fountains and formal bench seating, others well wooded and serene, others with attractions - two different zoos and an amusement park in one.
One might enter a grocery store from the street entrance, continue through to a clothing store of multiple levels, on through hallways to museums, movie theaters, opera houses or The Planetarium, again, all under one roof, and most often underground.
When places like K-Mart & Walmart began appearing, with their all-in-one shopping it was weird to me - I had been living in a world with that convenience for over 30 years already :-)
The Planetarium is a place I will go into in more detail later, but for now I will say that it is one of the focal points of my world, and is a very special place, not quite the usual sort one finds in the 'normal' world.
As a side note - I frequently lucid dream, and most recently I have found myself testing the boundaries between the worlds. When I realize I am probably dreaming the quickest way to confirm it is if I can fly, I'm dreaming ;-) Once I'm sure, then I continue (or not) depending on the circumstances at the time. If I choose to wake I can often return to the same place later to continue the story.
Now to the reason I finally began this; I recently had a terrifying dream in which I saw the end of civilization as we know it. I have had many post-apocalyptic dreams over the years, starting when I was too young to know the meaning of the word. Worlds where we were in a baby ice age, preceded by massive flooding which destroyed most of the bridges, effectively isolating pockets of humanity. More detail in later posts. This recent dream was more of a vision that seemed to be from the perspective of several different people and takes place over many years. It starts with mysterious disappearances where only skeletal remains are found. It takes place in our common world, not in my alternate world.
Gradually the cause becomes apparent - vents are opening in the ground, expelling extremely hot and highly corrosive gas and smoke, and anyone who happens to be unlucky enough to be nearby is incinerated almost instantly. Initially the vents stop spewing their lethal cargo after a short while, but that is only the beginning. After a few months they begin to open in increasing numbers, first in the country where they are not noticed immediately, but then they begin to erupt in the city, and the death toll rapidly becomes enormous. The first person whose perspective I follow - Inez, an immigrant working as a maid in a high rise - does not survive. However, she makes a record of what she observes and manages to stash it in a cave before she dies. It is found by survivors later, and becomes their sole historical link to their past. Though she is not a hero, her journal gives the new world people some idea of what happened, as many of them don't have clear memories due to the lengthy trauma of the disaster. Barely 2 million people survive worldwide. Civilization must start afresh.
In the more northerly regions on the edge of the ice people take over schools and other large surviving buildings to serve as community housing. A sort of socialist feudalism becomes the norm. No one person is in charge in any given community, but individual talents are used to decide who does what. If one has no particular skill, one helps out in whatever way is needed to earn ones keep. Barter and self sufficiency are the only way to survive.
Trade between these communities is difficult and sometimes dangerous, as there are some people who inevitably turn to banditry - often in snow-mobile driving bands. Due to the reduced population the worlds surviving wildlife has made a comeback, and wolves and bears make traveling any distance risky. Most of the people hunt, but as they are also hunted they rarely venture out alone. A few make their peace with the animals and live in the woods, rarely venturing out to trade herbs and wood to the communities. It is a hard life for all, but it is possible to survive if one is willing to work hard and can keep ones wits.
The cold is so intense in the north that the ocean freezes, making it possible, though dangerous, to cross from one continent to another. Rope lines are implanted in the ice as guides, and every twenty miles or so little rest stops are set up to give the hardy travelers a place to eat, sleep, restock or, occasionally, set up housekeeping with the locals.
Enough for now. It is, after all, a start.
