On Dreaming (#1)

"Eames : They come here every day to sleep?

Elderly Bald Man : [towards Cobb]  No. They come to be woken up. 

The dream has become their reality. Who are you to say otherwise, son?"

From the movie, Inception

Last night I had a dream. It was intense enough to wake me from slumber. Haunting enough to leave me there, on the bed, exposed for some time. And beautiful enough to have me commit to memory what had transpired.

I stood in the shade of some steal framed building with a long overhang. The walls were large panes of reflective glass. A calm, cool air enveloped me. Then I looked down, at the ground beneath my feet. Under that building’s shade stretched a short bit of land, cast in a burgandy hue, made from wide, smooth slates of rock slightly uneven. As my eyes scanned the ground that led away from the building, it became clearer that it was an outcropping of some sort, and the awning like structure above ended at its edge. As my eyes looked up to take in what lay beyond this perimeter, three observations flooded my senses: I was not alone, the cool air had given way to a noticeably warmth, and the land beyond this narrow outcropping opened up abruptly into a vast landscape. The people, who were strangers to me, shuffled about, lost and self-absorbed. The air grew heavy, but not suffocating or unbearable. But it was the land beyond that ledge that grabbed my attention for most of the dream.

Something led me to that ledge. It may have been curiosity, or it may have been an external force. But whatever it was, as I stood on the tip of the precipice, it subdued my fear of heights, and allowed me to stretch my gaze from my vantage point to the far off horizon. The land was ablaze in light, color, texture, shape, and warmth, with an intensity that was not withering, but stunning. The coolness had surrendered to a blanket of heat bearing down from an eerie glowing sky. The color and shine were alien to me: there was no blue or even black. Just this overhanging brilliance.  

Basically, I stood on the crest of an earthen wave, rough like sandpaper, that sloped steeply to a trough below where misshapen rock collected like broken seashells. But it was a deep drop, about a mile, mile and a half. And it rose back up again like that of a bowl. Spires of cone-shaped rock, tall, but relatively narrow, twisted up the sides of this canyon, forming an impenetrable wall. Beyond it rose more mountains of rocky spires, creating rows that blurred into the horizon.

The colors, yellows, reds, and browns, were layered like you would find in the Grand canyon. And they shined brightly, just on the edge of blinding me. But I did not want to look away. It was all so mesmerizing.

And like a surfer atop a great wave, I wanted to ride this outcropping down into the depths of this valley. I teetered there between the fear of falling, and the thrill of gliding down. Then I took a deep breath…

And dove head first, facing the land, arms outstretched. I fell fast, a foot or two off the ground, following the contour of the land, which began to reveal a sandy, desert like surface, scattered with round rocks. As I approached the bottom, I pulled up suddenly, and looked back, in time to see myself still standing on the edge.

Within the dream I had come to realize I never plunged into that great expanse of land—I had only imagined it. The exhilaration of the moment was cutoff suddenly by the realization that I now stood back beneath the cool canopy of the steal framed building with the people wandering aimlessly. 

Then she appeared: Janet from the Good Place. Except she was dressed in a sixties-style mini dress, solid royal blue, outlined in white. Her black hair was held back by a broad white headband. But she still had that endearing smile from the show. She knew me, like we were very old, dear, friends. 

And we stood together and talked for some time. Most of the dialogue I do not remember, if in fact it every came across in the dream. But it was her last words to me that resonated. “You were right, it is possible to love and care for someone.” We continued to stand side-by-side, and I could feel her appreciation for our friendship surround us.

It was at that moment, within the dream, that I realized I was in a place of transition, a purgatory of sorts, a state of being lost and uncertain. On one side was where we came from, and somewhere out there in the vastness of that land, was where we needed to go.

 

With that epiphany in my mind, Janet smiled, and without speaking it, let me know that the two of us belonged in neither place, and that we had a mission, one that would never end, no matter how hard we tried. And trust me, at that moment, within the dream, I began to try and imagine myself in either world: individual and separate within the steel-framed building, or all as one out there beneath an alien sky and strange, eternal landscape. But Janet made it clear, through a knowing silence and her beautiful smile, that she and I were called to do something else.

Then I smiled, too, as a single thought crossed my mind:

“There is someone I must find..”  

With those words spoken, I woke up.