May 6, 2002

I've been feeling tired the past few days - physically drained, wanting to curl up and sleep at any time to recharge my batteries. I've been getting enough sleep at night; 7 to 9 hours depending on the day and circumstances. (Yes, you Finnegan. Stop waking me up at 4:30 am for snuggles.) It didn't help that Saturday night, the night I should have gone to bed at 7:00pm because I was so drained, the damn hockey game went into triple overtime before the Leafs finally won and I could go to bed at midnight.

I've taken to wearing earplugs at night to help me fall asleep and stay asleep for most of the night. They do cut out a lot of the ambient noise, such as neighbours from hell walking above and certain wives snoring beside. A sure sign I'm getting older and more curmudgeonly in my ways.

I had a peculiar night of dreaming and such last night. We watched Diana Krall Live In Paris (our latest dvd purchase) and crashed at 10:00. I was out like a light within 15 minutes and slept soundly until 1:30am. I woke up suddenly then, because I heard a woman's voice in the centre of my head loudly speak a single word in a language I do not know. I pulled my earplugs out and looked over at Lisa, thinking she had said something to me, but she was snoring away. The voice was literally in the middle of my head, aurally. It creeped me out. When I finally fell back asleep I had a long adventure of a dream until the alarm woke me at 6:30am. I suspect watching the Buffy episode Hush at 7:00 last night may have had some influence on how my dream started.

It began in my old high school, in the auditorium, where an assembly was taking place. I was on-stage behind the curtains, working on what was going to be presented next. (I was, in real life, in the Tech Club in high school and as such worked with the lights and sound for various auditorium uses.) I then made my way into the auditorium proper to see the assembly. The principal was telling us that something odd was going on and that the school was surrounded by a black void. When I peered out a window, I could see across the street to the houses there but could see nothing beyond. The light outside was rather subdued and unnatural. It was not sunlight, and it had a grey-green hue to it. There was no life on the street at all. Turning my attention back to the speech, the principal was urging us to bar all the doors and windows because there were creatures outside the school who wanted in. Once in, they would attack the student population and devour the hearts and brains of those they caught.

The assembly over, everyone spilled into the halls and went about fortifying the school as best as they could. I went from classroom to classroom, offering advice and helping where I could. I'm pretty sure I was on staff and not a student in this dream, given my dreamself was my current age. I knew that the school was located on a dimensional cross-roads of sort, and that portals to different worlds opened up in various rooms and at certain times. Those of us patrolling the corridors were speculating as to where and when these creatures had come from. We speculated that because the school was located on the cross-roads, these creatures would use it to travel between worlds. The brains and hearts of those they captured were to be used to fuel their powers and to force the portals open.

Someone, somewhere, opened a door to outside the school to see what was happening there. This was the opening the creatures needed, and they flooded through the open door into the school. They looked very much like amalgams of the critters in the Hush episode - the Gentlemen and their assistants. Try as we could, we were unable to stem the tide. Soon we were on the run from them, going from floor to floor in an effort to escape. During this frenzied procession, the principal pulled me aside and told me that I had to get out and find help somehow and that I was their only chance of surviving. (No pressure.) I broke away from the group I was with and made my way back to the auditorium to the Tech room there to get supplies. Once re-equipped I climbed the ladder into the attic above the auditorium and made my way across the wooden planks there that lay as a path from ceiling beam to ceiling beam, exiting to the roof of the school. I re-entered at the top of the main stairwell and made my way down to the foyer and into the midst of the creatures. Oops. I ran. I sprinted into the library, creatures hot on my heels. As I ran, I chanted the incantation that would summon the closest portal. Ahead of me, the library wall dissolved into a two dimensional image of another world, complete with snow topped mountains in the distance and a lake and stream close by. Without hesitation, I ran directly into and through the wall. For a few seconds it was if I was in a round black tunnel, library behind and mountains ahead. Then, I was through. The portal closed as fast as it took for me to get there. I stood there for a minute, stranded in another dimension.

The first thing I noticed was how clean the air smelled. The second was how bright the sunlight was. I surveyed my surroundings. I stood at the top of a small hill on the shore of a large body of water. Before me, it appeared that a road wound its way along the shore. On the other side of the road was the swampy mouth of a small river, which made its way down from a long shallow escarpment. Atop the escarpment, not far from me, stood a house. Looking back across the water, I could see a range of mountains on the horizon. I didn't know what world I was in, yet I knew instinctively what I needed to do. I started down the shore side road, only to be stopped in my tracks after a few minutes of walking. The road had been washed away by flooding for as far as I could see. I had little choice but to go up to the house and ask for help there.

By the time I got to the door, dusk was settling. The house stood next to another road which lead off in directions I didn't need to go. I knocked on the door, which was answered shortly thereafter by a man and a woman. They spoke heavily-accented English and asked me what I wanted. I explained that I was a stranger to these lands and that I needed to travel to such-and-such a place (I spoke the name in the dream, but it eludes my memory.) They said they could, for a price. I then asked them the currency structure of this land, which they rhymed back to me. Pulling out my wallet, I was surprised to see that the dimension jump had somehow transformed the 3 $20 bills, the toonie and the loonie coins therein into a locally viable currency. I offered them 2 $20s, which they accepted. They agreed to let me stay the night. In the morning, the man there would take me in his boat to another place where I could get the proper letters of transit to travel to my eventual destination.

The next morning, dream time, I was fed a hearty breakfast by the woman and went with the fellow down to the water's edge where his dock was. We climbed into a leaky dory he had and rowed out to a larger sailing vessel. As we rowed, I looked into the water. I could see wrecks and ruins of older boats lying on the sandy bottom. We climbed aboard the sailing vessel and cast off. We sailed across the water, basked in sunlight, for quite a while in dream-time until we reached the Island of Thingy. (Again, the name escapes up post-dream.) This island was the last in a string of islets that reached out from the shore, all of which were connected by a long wooden causeway. Atop the island stood a castle. We dropped anchor and soon I was making my way into the castle. Once there, I explained to the bureaucrats my situation. They knew of the portals and that I would require letters of transit to travel this world to reach Such-And-Such safely. Such-And-Such lay in a different kingdom and relations between some people in this world were less than close.

To reach Such-And-Such, I would have to rejoin the shoreline road and walk (and walk and walk) along it until its terminus at the border of the next kingdom, not far from my destination. I bade thanks for their help, crossed the causeway and joined the road. My destination lay somewhere to the Northwest along the shore of this large body of water. I began my journey, again travelling a large distance in dream-time. I can recall the sheer clarity of the scene - the vibrant sunlight whose reflection danced upon the ripples and waves of the bay beside me; a few small cumulus clouds floating in the sky; the fresh clean air of a world that did not know combustion engines; the sight of the snow capped mountain range on the horizon; the intense hues of greens and blues all around me; the smell of the loam and of the plants nearby as I kicked my way along the dirt road; the sound of the breeze through the trees, the birds singing and chirping as they flew overhead, the water of the bay lapping on shore below. This was a dream in which every sense was assaulted and which seemed more real, more alive than reality itself.

Finally, I reached my destination - the kingdom border crossing. The guards there examined my letters of transit and escorted me to Such-And-Such, a walled city high atop a cliff on the shore of the water. In the centre of the city stood an imperial castle. There I was taken, to be presented to the monarchs. They questioned me - who I was, where I came from, what was my business, and such. They doubted the authenticity of the letters of transit, in part because I was dressed in strange garb and spoke with an odd accent. (See jeans and Canadian.) They decided to test my story by sending a doppleganger, who would assume my shape, back to the island castle to verify my tale.

It was at this point that the dream began to lose continuity. The dream camera followed the doppleganger back, leaving me, only it went the wrong way and arrived at another place near the house by the portal. There, Elizabeth Shue, who was some princess or witch or something, questioned why a doppleganger was sent to her when she was expecting the original person. The unravelling of the dream world continued rapidly and within seconds dissolved into the sound of the 6:30 CBC local news on my clock radio as I woke.

No wonder I'm so bloody tired. That's a lot of running and rowing and walking and sensory overload. I wonder if I'll be there again tonight. And what was the deal with that voice?

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