Early March Nightmare

Mostly nightmares last night. Starting around 2AM I kept waking up and drifting back into the dream-plot....

Part One:

The dream was in Gotham City, sort of colorful and bright.
I was Batman (Adam West, not any of the more modern ones). The Joker (or possibly The Riddler) had just been elected mayor of Gotham City. One of the first things Mayor Joker did was declare me a vigilante and persona non grata at city hall. The setting became more dark and Tim Burton-esque. Commissioner Gordon had to work for the Joker, but was also helping me out on the sly. In the dream he was less statuesque and shorter than the actor who played him in the campy TV show. He put on a black trench coat and set out to warn me that The Joker was going to trace the Bat Phone line (obviously, some of this dream plot has been borrowed from the show).

There was a sudden shift in the dream's point of view... and I heard a voice saying, "The government always targets the poor. They put turtle urine into the drinking water and deny them healthcare. I have a vague image of the Joker in a water treatment plant.


Part Two:

I think Commissioner Gordon walked onto a beach were a commercial was being filmed. Or else it was a beach wedding. My recall is a little muddled here, and I have an disconnected image of sea foam or else whipped cream (or bridal veils?) in my head. At some point some guy is swimming in the ocean, and sea-monster-shark-stegosauruses come out of the water and eat him. I think there was more than one kind of monster. They were fast, stealthy, had scales or rough skin, and loped about on four legs eating people. I guess they could swim, because they came from the sea. Some had short triangular heads (with shark mouths), some had bony club heads. Somehow, the Joker (or his government) had sent them.

Monsters appeared all over the world and began eating everyone. Commissioner Gordon left the beach. By now he had a white trimmed mustache and spoke with a light British accent. Monsters rushed off of the beach and into the surrounding brush to stalk everyone. Around here, the dream got its own soundtrack: staccato violin and string-section "danger lurking in the bushes; you know it's right in front of you, HA! it's really behind you and now your head has been chomped off" music.

Somewhere around here, the lighting got very dark and noir. English Commissioner Gordon was attempting to lead his children through the dark and rain-slicked alleyways of Gotham City while monsters were popping out from behind corners and up from sewers.

Society adapted to the rampaging monsters by building thick, stone walled houses -- which the monsters crashed through in order to eat the occupants. So people built buildings honeycombed with empty rooms. The dream became video-game-like in the imagery -- I watched from above as though looking at a kind of architectural drawing of a house -- as monsters with battering ram heads galloped down long narrow hallways, crashing through walls into little room after little room. Somehow they sensed the cowering occupant holed up in the the last room; quaking as the sounds of thudding stones grew closer.


Part Three:

By this time I had woken up and returned to nightmares several times.

And then I was Arcosanti.

I think I might have had a sense that I was dreaming. I remember looking at The Vaults and thinking that for once I was visiting an Arcosanti not wildly at odds with its real location and state of construction.

I was speaking with Mary Hoadley, who was a site manager when I lived there. I don't remember all of our conversation, but I think I had just moved back to Arcosanti for something like the third time. I said, "I'm sorry; I keep coming here by mistake. If you need a computer consultant, maybe I could visit for a few days once a year."

I don't recall her response (if any).

... and then I must have woken up for the seventh time that morning....