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Driving Bed
By admin | June 22, 2008
Again I dream of “presence.” Something there in the dark. I am sleeping in a narrow bed in the way upper part of a house. Somehow, I think it may be the house where I did a significant portion of my growing up; but, of course, the details of the interior have changed substantially: for instance, it now has more floors/levels. I am sleeping in the apex of the attic. I am comparing, somehow, the proximity of my nose to the ceiling in this place with a previous place, possibly another room below. The ceiling in the apex room is painted orange, or a ghastly tan color. I can’t remember the color of the other room. All I know is that when I sit up in the bed my head is very close to touching the ceiling. I lie down and wrap myself in blankets, afraid not to be completely covered. Conscious of my cowardice, I scold myself for being afraid.
Then, it is as if the whole bed is in the backseat of a car driving down the road. I am still cramped and held close. It is my aunt JK driving. An emotionally distant woman often as not, with a droll wit. She is driving and I am in the bed. I don’t want to leave the bed but now I know that I will have to, as I see through the window buildings that are strange to me and yet represent landmarks that I somehow know. A city that is close to home: I will have to get out and drive the rest of the way myself.
When I am out, I am stuck. At first, it is as if I need gas, and then later as if I have no car at all and need some other form of transport. Without gas, I go to pay a large, old black man on the street. He has a pad of paper and a large hand. I reach into my pocket and pull out strange old coins: some very big with antique heads on them. The units of measure are strange but I recognize those that have a 1 on them and know them to be larger units than some of the rest. Every time I pile the coins, the man loses track and then we have to re-count. I take the paper and write everything down as we go: placing the coins one-by-one in his hand. The coins disappear, presumably into his pocket, but we still disagree on the count and when I look at the tally on the paper it is unfamiliar to me, as if I have written in a language that I cannot understand, or lost my understanding of the units in which things are measured. Angry, I attempt to take my coins back but cannot.
I am then in an airport or a train station. It is my only way home, but I have no fare and no ticket. I am outside in an open area near a fence. There is a clear security presence and I know that in order to gain access to the travel I seek I must get inside, but that by doing so I risk much. Somehow, soon after this, I have a machine gun. I monitor the situation near then fence and see a train car or tram go past. It is visibly marked as a security vehicle with various jack-booted types gleefully riding past inside. As they pass, I make my move: I go through an opening in the fence. The tram stops and I am spotted almost immediately. I fire and then run into a building. Inside there are sundry pieces of machinery: massive vehicles with tracks for moving earth, etc. I jumped on a small vehicle and rode directly toward my pursuers, somehow bursting through their ranks and racing toward the train or plane I needed.
Next, I was on the plane or train and I was arriving at my destination. I was quite content with only an inkling of fear concerning how I had gained my passage: as if it were a incident in the distant past.
Topics: Action Sequences, Attic, Car, Driving Bed, Guns, Opposing Forces, Otherness, Planes, Presence, Station, Strange Coins, Trains |