Bizarre

[kaasirpent]

Have you ever had a dream that was so surpassingly strange, you almost feel as if it came from somewhere outside yourself? I just woke up from one that lasted what seemed like a long while. I think the clock said 4:something when I was having the early parts of it, and I woke up at 6:15 with it vividly in my memory.


In the dream, I got into the elevator at work to go down to the lobby to leave for the day, which was Friday. Five or six other people got in. Oddly, there were several comfy chairs arranged haphazardly in the strangely large elevator. We tried to wrestle them out of the way so we could stand comfortably. I work on the second floor, and the ride down to the lobby is only 20 seconds or so.

The elevator lurches. Surprised and thrown off-balance, we all sit down in the chairs. Twenty seconds passes, and we're still moving. Fast. And not vertically. It lurches again, and we realize that we're traveling at a pretty good clip horizontally.

Suddenly, there are windows in the elevator. We all look out them as though this is normal (you know how dreams are), and we realize the whole elevator is on a truck.

We start talking in a half-panic, and it's at this point that one of the other passengers (a woman I've seen around the office but never spoken to) yells at the man still slumped in a chair. I don't remember the exact phrase my dream coughed up, but it was something like "You should act like who you are--an astronaut--instead of a drunk!" So there was a drunk astronaut sitting on one of the chairs...slumped over, passed out...in the elevator...which was now sitting on the back of a truck traveling at a very good clip into a city with an impressive skyline. Yay, dreams. I hadn't yet clued in that I was dreaming, either.

I should mention here that the drunk astronaut wasn't dressed like an astronaut at all. We just knew he was one, even though he was dressed like the rest of us. And was drunk, apparently at work, and this wasn't unusual to us. I just thought I'd mention that. :)

Anyway, once the elevator stopped moving, it wasn't long until the doors opened with a cheerful "ding!" (which is weird in itself, because they've disabled the bells in our building at work and they open with a muted "dnk!" that sounds like someone just stuffed the bell with toilet paper). Cautiously, we all walked out.

Into what amounts to an empty (as in abandoned, not as in devoid of furnishings) building. Crammed with random crap. Think Escape from New York meets Mad Max, but both in office buildings.

We split up into several groups at this point, and my dream segmented into what I can only describe as being like Die Hard mixed with any siege movie, filmed in vignettes around different characters...who are all me, including the woman who yelled at the drunk astronaut (who is also now me).

I wake up at some point, but I'm still "in" the dream, if you follow that. It becomes a "lucid" dream because I'm by now very aware that I'm dreaming, as I am neither a woman nor a drunk astronaut.

It goes on as each of the groups tries to find a way out of the building (not as easy as it might sound, because this is a dream, and has about as much logic as a dream). It is unclear to me whether each group intends to go back for the others if they do. :)

At one point, the astronaut-me throws up into a sink because he's got a massive hangover (which I've never had because I've never drunk alcohol).

At another point, the woman-I-don't-know-but-have-seen-around-the-office-me goes around the floor of the building she's/I'm on, gathering water...even though the astronaut-me is using profuse amounts as he tries to clean up after himself and wash his mouth out.

It was, in a word, bizarre. I kept waking up and looking at the clock, changing position trying to get comfortable (made more difficult by the immovable lump that was Taz, who had found his warm spot and wasn't about to give it up because I couldn't sleep. I knew I was dreaming, but never consciously took control of it to end it or make it go where I wanted. Because I was trying to "get back to sleep."

I have no earthly clue what weird part of my psyche this dream tapped into, and I don't think I want to know.

A drunk astronaut? Yeesh! Oh, did I mention that the drunk astronaut may have been either Bruce Willis or Nicholas Cage? Or some weird amalgam of the two? Uh...yeah. :)

I don't honestly know if I was really waking up and was lucid or if I only dreamed that I woke up and was dreaming lucidly. It was very Matrixy. :) The "movie" aspect of it was what made it feel like it was coming from somewhere outside my own mind. I think I'd be more comfortable with that notion than with the notion that I could generate that with my own mind. :)


So. Yeah. I'll be very careful when stepping onto elevators, today. With comfy chairs. And windows. And that move horizontally. And if I see any astronauts at work--drunk or otherwise--I'm leaving. Immediately. :)

<suspicious look> Of course, if the astronaut isn't dressed like an astronaut, how will I know he is, in fact, an astronaut?

I better suspiciously examine every Bruce Willis/Nicholas Cage guy who comes onto the elevator today. Yeah. Just in case. :)