I won't go into detail on the first. Most of it was irrelevant. It involved what I called a "spa" in the dream, but looked like an indoor swimming pool, most of it about five feet deep or so - if I stood on my tiptoes, my head was just barely out of the water. The sides of the pool were built up with fake rocks, and at some point I became aware that eventually we'd need to get out of the pool, and I wanted to be in the corner of the room. I climbed up the rocks and sat in a shallow depression at the top. Some people joined me, and I was just introducing some of them to each other when I heard an announcement. "EVERYONE TO THE WALLS!" I was already out of the pool. I watched.
On the sides of the pool were two wide ledges. A lot of the people in the pool didn't seem to understand that they had to get out of the water. When the bottom of the pool opened up, they had to scramble for safe places. The bottom of the pool slid open into a kind of chute, water pouring down into a vast pit of nothingness. The pool didn't entirely empty - water kept coming from somewhere (like watching a toilet flush, actually), and I could tell, watching the people sitting on the lip of the chasm, that the water had turned freezing cold.
Then I saw, at the very base of the pool, four people who had actually gone over the ledge. They were hanging on to the edge of the chute, each only using one hand, apparently unable to move enough under the torrent of water to even bring their second hands up to hang on. I could see their faces very clearly - if I were an artist, I could have painted them in the moments after I woke up - each one was a study in horror and fear and fury. They were crying and cursing, and I knew that they were my responsibility, because I had allowed this to happen.
When I woke up, I was awake for a long time, unable to get those faces out of my mind, especially the girl on the end, who I knew had been pleading for help even though I couldn't hear her.
The second dream came almost immediately after I'd fallen back asleep.
There's a wide, deep ditch behind our house - if you go to the photo album and look at the pictures I took during the hurricane in September, you can see it. In the dream, I was standing in our guest bedroom looking out at the ditch. It was mostly full - maybe six inches from being completely full, and the thing is a good four or five feet deep at its center. I was feeling tranquil, unworried, watching the grass sortof sway under the water as the water rushed along.
I looked "upstream" and saw something small and black floating in the water. As it got a little closer, I identified it as a kitten - a black and white kitten, floating in the water, legs splayed out. Oh, that's so sad, I thought.
Then I saw that its front legs were moving, slightly. It was still alive, caught up in the stream and trying to swim to safety.
I woke up instantly, hoping I had enough time to run downstairs and outside around to the ditch to rescue it. It took me several minutes before I realized it wasn't real - that it wasn't even sprinkling outside, much less raining hard enough to fill the ditch.
Drowning imagery is pretty obvious, usually, in dreams. But in these, I was never in any danger. It was someone else who was drowning, being swept away by the tides - people and creatures I didn't even know. And yet, I was responsible in some way, not for putting them into their situations, but for getting them out.
I don't know if they were supposed to be messages. I hope not. Since I woke up for good this morning, I've been feeling this kind of tightness in my chest, like anticipation, but I don't know what I'm anticipating. Maybe it's just exhaustion; between staying up late and the time I spent awake after the dreams, I think I only got about five hours of sleep.
If anything happens, I'll let you know.
Word of the Day: continual - continuing indefinitely without interruption; recurring in steady and rapid succession
I am continually amazed at the universe around me. I would try to explain that, but I don't think I can. If you know what I mean, then you know what I mean. If you don't... I'm sorry.
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