Dream: Driving Through Floods

Dream:  I was driving in the family car in Eugene.  I was driving down a street like Chambers street from 28th.  I was going to meet Mark at a movie theatre, probably at Gateway Mall, and rather than traverse a diagonal through downtown Eugene traffic, I was going to zip along Chambers until it met something like the Beltline and then zip along the Beltline until I hit the Mall.

It didn't work out that way.  I zipped along Chambers, which became more and more rural (almost like Greenhill Road).  The road became more narrow, and weeds and tall grasses began to sprout up on the shoulder.  I was driving through fields.  The day became more cloudy and rainy.  I zipped around a long curve in the road, and the road was flooded.

I started to drive through the water, but somehow turned back.   Then I decided to try to get to the underpass on the other side of the flood.  So I gunned the motor and drove as fast as I could through the deepening, surging, swirling water.  Brownish water frothed around the wheels and half-way up the doors.  I think in real life the engine would have been flooded or car would have gotten swept off the road.

I made it to the other side and parked the car.  The dream shifted, and I was waiting with a bunch of other folks for a bus.  There was a woman who was a bus representative who was taking customer's money and answering route questions.  The stop was under an underpass, and the roiling flood was near-by.

An older lady in a white convertible drove through the flood and parked her car next to the queue of folks waiting for the bus (to take them to the mall?)  The next thing I knew, I was in the white convertible with the lady, and she backed us into the torrent.  She tried to drive us forward, but we were swept back and into a kind of dark culvert with iron grates.  It almost was like being in a lock.  The bus lady was shouting instructions to us, and the car floated under the road and into a dock of sorts.

There was a break, and I was Tsunami Books.  This dream version was in a large Victorian house in a rural area.  Lots of wooden porch, wooden stairs, and segmented rooms.  I was letting people in or somehow in charge of a craft fair.  I was looking for an ink stamp to stamp people's hands and someone else was looking for a cash box...   There was something about waiting in line for a bathroom... but at one point I told Connie Newman "I dreamed the car got caught in a flood, and we floated into this dark culvert.  I need to write down the experience so I can use it in a story."

...And then the dream went on to other things, and all of us were on a flat-bed truck, and a youngish woman was in a speed boat on the river aside the road, yelling at us, "Have you seen [I'm gong to make up a name, Dexter, a large white horse]?  He was supposed to be in the paddock behind the house..."

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It occurs to me that there were mostly women in this dream.

Driving a car through a flood is an anxiety motif I've dreamed since I was four.

I'm not sure why I would mash up being in charge of Tsunami Books (I lock the place up after Wordos meetings) and running a craft fair (Mark has run a holiday craft fair at his work for the last several years).  Oh, wait.... flood = Tsunami?

Crossing a river to an otherworld, frequently with a white horse, is another dream motif I have... although I'm reading "The Two Towers" to The Child and Shadowfax is carrying Gandalf between the Ents and  Helm's Deep.

Mid December

Saturday we got a tree for the house.  We usually go to a tree farm about a half-hour out of town and then tromp around.  The tree hunt started out sunny, but as we got to Fern Ridge, the clouds rolled in and it became grey.  I thought it might rain, but it didn't.  

The Friesan We Didn't See

In the past, we've managed to be at the farm the same weekend as Friesan Horses, but we missed them and had a ride around the farm in the horse trailer pulled by a tractor.  After the ride, we found a tree pretty quickly.  Mark sawed it down and we took it home.  It's in the tree stand now, soaking up water and undecorated.  The house smells like pine.

This weekend was the weekend of craft.   I think I may be peaking out on craft.

As I've been writing this in the PLC parking lot, a woman of a certain age has driven up in her red SUV with Death Metal blaring loudly enough that I can hear it clearly through her car and through my car one stall away.  Now she's sitting in the car with the engine off but the music on.  I think the song must have ended, because she's getting out.  She's in a fuchsia rain slicker, and walking away with a poinsettia in her hand, looking like Amanda King's grandmother and not like a Death Metal Rocker.  

Writing:  45 minutes of mostly editing the Tuesday Holiday story.  Which is very silly and will probably need trimming or an abrupt end.