Dreams

Afternoon naps generate the strangest, most vivid dreams in my mind. I believe today I had a lucid one.

Dream 1. I was half-asleep and I had an image of a long road, kind of like Hanover Street, the road I bike on almost every day, which stretches from Stanford's Hoover Tower to the bike trail by my apartment. There were a lot of people on that road; women with small hats and petticoats, men in business suits with briefcases all walking along that path in the same direction. Except a few of them could go the "fast track" - there was Flyaway Lane above them, a thin almost invisible rail with a handle attached like the ones in public buses. A few people held onto these handles and flew away faster, in the same direction. I think this is the point where conscious imagination started to blur with dreams; I distinctly remember egging on my brain to submit to the dream world so I could experience it fully, and not just think it. And it worked- I was walking along with all these people, when one of these rare handles came down and was offered me; I held onto it and immediately I was whisked away very fast up and up! Here I slid in and out of consciousness, but remained in my dream. Immediately I felt the wind on my face, brisk and cool and Californian; and then as the Flyaway zipline climbed higher and higher, I felt scared; I was too high, held only by an invisible cord and a plastic handle. I felt my stomach drop a little, but I kept going. I don't remember when the dream ended, but here comes my second dream.

Dream 2. I was in the arctic with my father. This dream is most definitely inspired by Lyra and Lord Asriel in The Golden Compass. We were walking back from exploring and there was a wooden board walk that stretched beside a small body of water, melted ice perhaps, that would lead us to our camp. The sun was going down and my dad wanted to leave quickly before it got dangerous. That was when we encountered two wolves, trotting along the board walk, hungry. I saw them first as I rounded the corner, and they saw me. My dad was 50 meters or so behind me. I panicked, then decided to climb up the small ice hills around us to the right of the board walk and next to the small lake. I kept slipping because of the ice, but managed to crouch while moving slowly. I then noticed the wolf saw me - it was trotting up the ice structures that flanked the water. Sheer panic hit me then: the realization that I may be attacked by a wolf, my dad would probably not be able to save me, and he might not survive either. I then shouted "DAD! HELP! THERE'S A WOLF!" and he yelled at me to jump into the water. We both did and it was cold but bearable and we swam to the embankment slightly further ahead, where for some reason, there were a lot of people who looked like they were taking their after-supper stroll in the arctic. We were safe.

My dreams are hyper-allegorical and crazy.