I come across this british lad, and it comes up in conversation that I happen to know a few handfulls of brits from my time in Ecuador. He mentions he has come with two of his “mates” that were in Ecuador this summer. I turn around and it is two of my favorite people from my time there. I give them quick hugs and explain I will be back later.

I spend the rest of my dream hunting down my jeans to replace the sweatpants so that I can look acceptable for them and don’t get to spend any time with them at all. DESPITE the fact that whilst in Ecuador I rarely wore makeup and was often in sweats (as were most of us).

Stupid dream.

After waking up because my room last night was full of paint fumes (I painted 2 hours before going to bed – somehow I expected a more interesting dream) I go back to sleep and my unconcious decides to grace me with a new dream…

I am making some sort of craft for mother’s day on a bench opposite of a swamp. I keep requiring things that are on the other side of the swamp (american flag, peanuts, apple juice, sour candy keys, loaves of bread??) and each time I cross the wet, sinky, smelly swamp and retrieve the item and return to my table I find I need another item from across the mess. I spend my whole dream going back and forth across this wretched swamp.

Frustration.

The dream begins with me laying on a big lawn, the entire thing covered in burnt grass and I am extremely worried that in my drunken state I somehow failed to make it to a bed and found a field in the wild. I get up and start walking to what appears to be a house in the distance but as I get closer it morphs into a horse (I am not lying – my mind actually did this to me).

The horse tells me (in a planet earth documentary voice) that henceforth I will be known as “Dasani” (as in the water – this definitely came from earlier when I was drinking wine out of a water bottle). It is at this point that I woke up and had to find a bathroom.

There was not a storyline, and I couldn’t even give you a genre for my dream-book to be categorized under. I dreamt last night of the fundamental act of reading. The firing of synapses, perception and interpretation (but without material to percieve or interpret).

If I were to attempt a visualization of this dream, I guess it would be a completely black world with words flying up in front of me akin the the beginning of Star Wars movies (my words are, of course, of classier font).

per me si va ne l’etterno dolore,

per me si va tra la perduta gente.

Through me is the way into the woeful city;

Through me is the way into eternal woe;

Through me is the way among the lost people.

The divine comedy (Inferno, III, 1-3)

This dream is set in a dystopian future, an Island no bigger than a small town. The entirety of the island is void of any plant life – while the base is harsh black rock (as if an oil spill had coated the shore) the remainder of the island is composed of run down metal and concrete building.

I am looking to the sky from a ledge at the edge of the island. The room I am in appears to have once been an attic, but the steel roof has been peeled back exposing a dark, polluted sky. I am crouched with a handful of other people. We are all wearing dirty clothing worn thin from wear. In the sky and surrounding waters are military machines (the ones in the water look from the past – circa WW1, while the ones in the sky look from the future – UFO meets HIND).

I hear gunshots and screaming, smell burning and pollution. In an instant it seems as though everything goes completely silent. One of the aircraft in the sky crashes into the center of this ruined island city. The first thing that hits me is the deafening sound of the impact and explosion that follows, then I am hit by a shockwave – we are all thrown to the ground, two people are sent over the edge. One of the people I am with screams but I can’t understand what he is saying. He throws gas masks at me and yells something else. I jump to my feet and scramble to put one on and get masks on the people around me. Then we are hit by a wave of thick dark green smog. Everything looks as if I am trying to see the world through a thick layer of algae. We all scramble for cover in what may have used to be a closet and wait for the wave to pass. When the air returns to normal we remove the masks. There is no more screaming or gunshots, and my world is again silent. The man who threw the masks at me rushes to the ledge to see what has become of the two people who were last seen careening over the edge. One (a girl – maybe 16 years old) managed to cling onto a second landing. We all help her up – but there is no sense of relief. Around her mouth her flesh is gray and decaying, and her eyes are flashing between light blue and deep sickly green.

The background story:

Humans have driven the world to its end. Pollution has all but blotted out the sun, any form of plant life or animal life is extremely rare. The only life that has been able to persevere is humans and disease (which runs rampant). The ice caps have melted creating a world of island cities that are few and far between. In a last ditch effort to manufacture sustainable life, chemists and biologists have been playing god, trying force the hand of evolution and mutate plants into hybrids of synthetic materials and natural life. Faced with overwhelming pressure from a violently desperate and dying population – extreme measures have been taken. Scientists have been forcing chemical bonds and performing dangerous procedures that would not have otherwise been considered acceptable. A synthetic fungus-like organism that they believed could be the solution was developed. A test location was chosen to cultivate these fungi, an island somewhere in the pacific. The island is home to vagabonds and lost souls who failed to secure a more favorable place in a world that is mostly barren oily ocean. Initially the project is a success; the fungus seems to provide some level of nourishment and is able to grow on concrete and steel. However, complications arise when the fungus begins to reproduce. The spores, seeking the most favorable environment to grow begin to take up residence in the respiratory system of humans. This has an extreme neurological affect on the starved and despairing people of the island. Those exposed to the spores quickly begin to exhibit animalistic and demonic behavior, seeming to want nothing but to devour healthy human beings. In an effort to contain the crisis, the project is terminated, the fungus burned and infected individuals are put to death executioner style. Still the epidemic persists. In a world where there is no room for ethics, a military aircraft is crashed into the island to eliminate life. It is only then that the full force of the crisis is recognized. When one of the infected is killed, the spores are released into the atmosphere. Attracted to the carbon dioxide healthy humans release upon exhale, the spores are drawn into a previously unaffected person. Upon the major impact of the military aircraft, many affected were killed and a colossal wave of spores was released. It was sent into the air circulating systems of surrounding military crafts, it made its way to air currents that brought it to neighboring islands and any who survived the attempt to destroy the test island and inhaled the spores – were immediately affected. Within a week the world is in chaos.

I’ll have to finish this one a little bit later – the rest of the dream falls away from the original feel and depth present in what I have written above, I may decide to stop here…