-Tidal Dream Twist -
One preface: I have had for twenty years or more, a recurring
dream/nightmare where I'm staying in a house at the beach and the sky grows
dark and stormy and a huge tidal wave starts to build far on the horizon. I
see it coming but I'm powerless to do anything to stop it and there's no
way to get out of its path. At first I misjudge it's size and disregard it.
Then when I see the destruction at hand it's too late to do anything to
escape. I'm sucked down by this enormous wall of water and I die. Or at
least, that's when the dream ends.
Last night I had a variation on that recurring nightmare. This time I was
with my husband and we were in the same house at the beach that I always
dream about. The same beach. Probably at Ocean City, Md, since that's where
I always went as a child. We're on the porch of the house, just off the
boardwalk. The neighbors are discussing an impending storm that's coming.
The skies are darkening and we look up the coast to the north and can see
the waves increasing in size. In front of us the tide is coming in higher
and higher, closer to the boardwalk. Then suddenly the waves are in front
of us and huge,towering more than thirty feet high. There's no time to get
inside, we're washed under water and buffeted up against the front of the
house. The wave recedes and we run inside the house for protection. But the
next wave comes and it's clear the house is not enough protection. The
water is too high. The waves are too big.
During each recess of waves we run farther and farther away from the water
but it keeps rising and following us. By this time, scores of people are
running like us, like the masses of frightened Japanese in the old 50's
Godzilla movies. We look back as we run. We see what we're up against as we
hopelessly continue to run the same path. Sometimes waves churn over us
and suck us under but we bob up again and are carried along by the force.
Sometimes we are set down on the ground briefly, find a wall we can hide
behind and hope will break the wave's force before it picks us up again.
Soon we've been carried so far away that all the surroundings look foreign.
The water pools up and evaporates and we are left standing in a desert
basin.
We're looking up at a circle of rock formations that surround us and I
notice a chimney rock formation atop one wall. There are others like us,
who have survived the long ordeal and one of them tells me that the chimney
rock bears a strong Indian legend. I look closely and see a figure and a
face naturally formed into the rock. It's so clear you'd think it was
sculpted but I'm told it was formed by nature and that's why the Indians
revered it as a God. I'm standing far away from it but I can see the face
lift up as if it were a mask being removed by someone from behind. There is
a thunderous sound, like the roar of the waves we'd heard. I turn around
but the waves of water have been replaced by a huge wave of sand rolling
toward us. We run for shelter in an abandoned house but the the sand comes
in quickly through windows and cracks, lifts me up toward the ceiling and
starts to fill in the whole room. I'm frightened. I see my own death at
hand. I realize this is how I will die. I will suffocate being buried alive
by sand. I somehow manage to claw my way through the sand to the second
floor of the house but the occupants who live there tell me to get out. I
try to warn them of the waves of sand and finally they see the danger at
their feet and run out the back door of a 2nd level sun porch. Sand is
level with this exit but when we try to walk through it, or run from the
impending waves we realize it's almost impossible to run in deep soft sand.
My husband is still with me through all this and a thought suddenly occurs
to me. What's happened to our son, Ben. He wasn't with us at the ocean but
where ever he was he must have been in great danger and may even be dead
at this point. There was no way I could get to him, or help him. The
thought of this fills me with such dire dread and helplessness that I'm
overcome with grief. And then I wake. When I get up and brush my teeth my
gums are bleeding.
* * * *
(c)1998 Mars Tokyo