Soft Dangerous Shores

Dreams have a geography. If you remember enough dreams, you'll see commonality of places in the ever shifting landscapes and emotions. You can become a cartographer of your subconscious mind.

My dreams are full of dense cities comprised of high rises that create narrow but deep concrete canyons. These cities are never the same, but they are always near the water--wide rivers, the ocean--and are full of tall bridges. In the waking life, driving over bridges make me nervous. The idea that only pylons and wires are keeping me in the air, hundreds of feet above water. In dreams, when I'm in these dense cities, I think nothing of crossing bridges. When I'm not crossing bridges, I'm looking at the water, deep, blue, unfathomable. I'm thinking of those tall, dense buildings. I don't live in these cities. I am travelling.

When I'm not in these cities, I'm travelling along long, rolling green hills, or through dusty stretches of two lane highways in the desert. Sometimes, those green hills lead to suburbia, where I'm back in a old neighborhood, getting lost in developments I thought I knew. Lately, instead of driving when I have travel dreams, I've dreamt of airports, of waiting in large planes the size of cathedrals.

When I dream of a residence, it's always a dorm. I'm trying to figure out how to arrange my belongings, to get a sense of place in a room shared with other students. The dorm rooms are generally large, larger than the rooms I've lived in, always triples. The dorm rooms are also old, the floors warped with use and the lighting a butter yellow.

My dreams are populated with strangers for the most part, people I don't know. That doesn't bother me at all. When I do see people I know, friends, parents, the dreams are fraught with emotions I can't control.

Two weeks ago, I had a dream that shook me. It was unlike any dream I've ever had. I can't remember how I got to it, but I dreamt that it was a pitch black night (which if you know anything about Jungian theory, is a dream of low points, a dream at your lowest).

I looked up in the sky, and suddenly, I was looking at a band of stars and celestial gas, thin at the edges and bulging in the middle. It filled my field of view. The image was crisp and defined. This wasn't the hazy lights that comprise the Milky Way when you go up to the mountains. It was if I were in space myself, far away enough in that inky blackness that I was able to see the entire galaxy on its edge. To be able to see the galaxy so clearly was to be billions of miles from anything. I heard a voice say, "This is what the Milky Way really looks." I was both awed and terrified.

"Every angel is terrifying." Rainer Marie Rilke