dreams: May 31, 1998
blasted by the shower
I'm in a dorm at Swarthmore.
I'm in a bathroom, a big open room that is tiled everywhere. I want
to wash my face at a sink, but a shower is spraying me. The shower
nozzle is on the wall near a corner; nobody's taking a shower,
bu it's going full blast, in a concentrated firehose-like form.
I go over and try to turn it off. It's stuck. Then
Nooshi
and Ila come in and show me how to turn it off. They live in
this dorm. I hang out and talk to them.
setting the crops on fire
NEXT, supposedly I'm in Mexico. I'm walking down a dirt road.
American tabacco companies have taken over large areas of Mexico, and
they've deforested acres and acres of trees in order to plant
their own crops. It makes me mad.
I'm now at a plantation in "Winston-Salem, Mexico." There are
rows and rows of tabacco plants in front of me. I have already
destroyed a bunch of them, and it's now my goal to burn down the rest:
the five neatly rectangular hedge rows of dark leaves. They're in
a big room that looks like a library, with high ceilings. It's
totally dark, and I feel the presence of someone in another room
further away, so I need to stay quiet and hurry through my actions.
I'm going to set the five hedges on fire. I go around the
first one with a little lighter, lighting the bottom dry leaves,
letting it start to burn. I go to the next row and do the same thing.
I light a twig and try lighting other leaves with it, but it soon
goes out with a smoky sizzle. I'm having trouble with my lighter,
since it's tough to get the flame to come up on it; it's covered
in a pastel-colored crochet cover, making it slip around in my hand.
I'm trying to do the whole thing as quickly as possible so I can
light them all and get out of here without getting caught.
I have some decks of cards with me. They haven't been
opened yet and still have plastic wrappings. I open one and light
the deck. When it ignites I throw it onto one of the hedges. It
sits on top, flickering with a growing orange flame. I realize
it might draw attention there, so I push it down into the bush
(since it would also burn it up more efficiently from below).
I go around and light the bottoms of all the other hedges. I slip
out of the room. I have to go up some stairs. I look down through
the big glass windows into the library and see the five rows
that are now ablaze. I hurry up the stairs, which are made of
beautiful shiny wood; all the surrounding walls and bannisters are
made of the wood. When I get to a certain level I have to go
down a different set of stairs. I pass by two administrative-looking
adults (a man and a woman), but they don't seem to notice me.
I start running, scared to be identified later as the one who started
the fire. I go through some glass doors. I'm almost free.
I go through a second set of doors, and right when I open them a loud
shrilling alarm goes off, ringing aggressively. [I wake up
realizing that it's my alarm clock.]
- FIN -