Nights Not Long

I haven't really been remembering my dreams lately, maybe it's the change in weather, maybe other things; I've usually just been waking up with a generalized sense of dread and the thought that I had dreamt but not at all what the dreams were about. Maybe they're too powerful and secret for me to handle yet. Maybe it's just the hell the weather is playing on my sinuses lately. Either way, it makes for very tired mornings I can assure you. Jamie had a doozy of a dream last night, and I had my first memorable dreams in almost a month; apparently the storm blew in our minds as well. Here is the first, less-well-remembered dream.

This dream involves a train. It starts at Pac-Rail, the company I used to work for. We would take in big-rig truck trailers and load them on flatbed rail-cars with giant machines called the packer and tailer. The packer doesn't pack (it picks up and loads), and I have no idea what 'tailing' is, but whatever. I was visiting Pac-Rail, and many of my old coworkers were still there. They would probably be there until they died as is the way of old-fashioned working-class jobs like the railroad. I traded how've-you-beens and so-what's-news with Abraham and Sal, and put up with pig-faced Roger Brooks' good-natured ribbing out on the ramp, watching Ray and Gage load the train with the packer.

Standing here talking with these familiar faces my period of employment at Pac-Rail seemed impossibly far in the past but being back felt strangely like a homecoming. It is a profoundly nostalgic feeling. I complained while I worked there, but it was actually quite a good time in my life, work included. Perhaps it is the nature of the evolutionary drive to be eternally unsatisfied with the status quo. If I were to truly settle in I would probably wither and die.

There is a gap in my recollection of this dream, maybe I drifted toward consciousness and the train is the only thing that stuck in my mind to tie these two parts together.

The next thing I remember is a giant, cartoony freight train not unlike Thomas the Tank Engine, but somewhat more sinister; maybe a cross between Thomas and Blaine the Mono. The train hurtles through a broad green field with nothing at all on the horizon. It finally stops with almost magical speed, bisecting a giant set of concentric stone circles in the ground that span the entire length of the train. On each ring is a strange pattern. Each ring then rises to meet the underside of the train and they begin to spin in alternating directions. Sparks fly from under the cars and the whole train shudders and quakes with a terrible grinding noise.

I wonder what could possibly be happening when, just as suddenly as it began, the grinding stops. The rings then sink below the ground, revealing a slowly descending staircase around the inside of the newly-formed chasm below the train. Somehow the train stays suspended above this gulf and I descend the stairs to get a look at it's undercarriage. There is a soft light glowing from within the pit, and as I look up, it plays glintingly off of a beautifully intricate pattern of lines and waves carved into the golden underside of the train.

I think I drifted awake at this point and later in the evening I had the following dream.

I pull the keys from my pocket and click the 'unlock' button. I open the door and climb into the silver rental (I think it's a newer Impala, but I'm not 100% certain). It has a lush black leather interior with wood-grain trim. As I turn the key to start the car I realize that this is one of those dreams where my body just won't listen to me.

I have a hard time seeing peripherally, and my ability to manipulate things is that of a mostly numb child with downs syndrome. I think in my mind I must be drunk. I put the car in drive and hit the gas, but the wheel is cranked all the way to the right and the car flails wildly in a circle. I immediately panic and try to jam on the brakes but my foot hits nothing but accelerator. I try and try, but the car only speeds up. I try to look down at the pedals but my eyes won't cooperate. I think: I'll have to just drive it like this until I can find a hill to slow down on. All of my attempts to straighten the wheel end with it either all the way left or all the way right and the car just keeps careening shambolically down the street, faster and faster. I finally talk my head into looking down and notice that there are 3 pedals at my feet despite the car being an automatic. They're all gas pedals. I look up just in time to see another big silver car parked right in front of me as I slam headlong into it.

I am shaken awake by a police officer leaning into the car. I am completely dazed and have a hard time gathering my thoughts. The officer tells me that I hit my head and to sit there until I feel better. He takes my driver's license from me to run it in the computer. I finally regain my faculties and realize that my driver's license is suspended, I'm trashed, and I just wrecked a car. I realize that I am massively fucked.

All of a sudden I hear the police dispatch radio for all units to respond to a crime in progress. All of the cops pile into their cars and speed off, taking my license with them in their haste. I get out of the car and stagger drunkenly away from the wreckage when my alarm goes off.

I hope this is a return to form for me, dreams wise. We'll see.