Sleepless in Little Rhody

(Source)

(The picture doesn't really have much to do with the post, I just really, really like the picture. Besides which, can't go wrong with a bit o' plane pr0n every now and then, neh?)

My butt has been dragging the past few weeks. It's tired I am. Very, very tired.

There are multiple reasons for this, not to worry I shall survive. Too much on my plate mentally I think, both personally and professionally. Not bad stuff. I really need to get it through my thick old head that I ain't in my twenties anymore. Burning the candle at both ends is not recommended when one approaches old age. (I am not there yet, though I am well into the curmudgeonly stage of existence.)

Something has to give, while I love doing this blogging thing, every now and then I give the Muse the night off intentionally. So...

Yeah, you get a rerun.

ごめんなさい。

When I read this post from back in July of 2013, it freaked me out just a bit. Fortunately I haven't had a recurrence of anything like this in a while. Certainly not of the length and vividness of this...

Last night was, shall we say, interesting. And not a little bit terrifying. For I had a dream of flying. As least that's how it began.

The sensation of flight was intense. Things began with me riding in the back of a commercial airliner. I had a window seat on the port side of the aircraft and I was looking out that window. Oddly enough, I could also see out the front of the aircraft. I had the view from my window seat, way aft, and simultaneously the same view that the flight crew had, all the way to the front of the plane.

At first I thought we had either just taken off or were on an approach for landing, as the aircraft was in a rather low-lying cloud deck. The top of the aircraft was in the clouds, the bottom outside the clouds. The view from my passenger seat showed this clearly, but my view from the flight deck was different. The aircrew literally had their heads "in the cloud" and could see nothing. I also noted that none, absolutely none, of the cockpit instruments were functioning.

My consciousness seemed to be sliding back and forth between the flight crew and my own seat in the back of the plane. It was then that I noticed there were at least two other passengers on the plane. (Initially, other than the flight crew, I felt as if I was alone on board the aircraft.)

One passenger I instantly recognized, a fellow blogger, a man of large stature, with a beard. Likes to shoot cannons he does. Retired soldier. His Dad was a soldier. This was odd, as other than reading (and enjoying) his blog, I've never really had much contact with him. Odd, neh?

Yes, yes, but what about that other passenger? I have only a fleeting remembrance of him, for it was a male, I seem to recall him wearing a suit. Other than that, he was a rather non-descript fellow. He might have been Asian, I'm not sure. I just know he was there. His function was obscure.

So there we were, the three of us.

After appraising my fellow passengers I again looked out the window, we were alarmingly low, tree-top level low. And we seemed to be slowing down. I looked to my right, where my fellow blogger began to repeat, over and over, "This isn't good". I could see out his window and we were now BELOW tree-top level. What the Hell is going on?

Again my perspective switches to the flight deck, the aircrew is gone, just gone. And now we seem to be in the trees. And these are odd trees, very large with small tufts of foliage along the trunks, most of the leaves being at the very top. And they have very thick trunks, I had a a mental image of perhaps sequoia or redwood trees. I also had the impression that these trees were somewhat far apart. Surrounded by grasslands they were but the terrain also seemed somewhat rocky and certainly not flat. One could feel there was elevation involved, I mean it felt mountainous without really looking mountainous.

For some reason I had the fleeting impression that this looked like New Zealand.

Fleeting because now the aircraft was IN the trees. I could see the trees entering the aircraft, but there was nothing to suggest that the aircraft (or the trees for that matter) were being damaged in any way. Then I felt a very sharp blow to the upper left side of my head and the scene shifted. I felt that, it hurt. But I've had head injuries before (lose focus working under a Phantom and it's unavoidable) and they hurt far worse than in this dream. Just to put things in perspective.

Next thing I knew I was in an obvious hospital setting. Where I would expect to be after having just been in a plane crash. But again, it was surreal, very surreal. I was wearing a johnny and seemed to be liberally splashed with blood. But I was up, walking around, asking the harried and busy hospital staff what was going on. My fellow passengers were no longer present, but there were lots of other people who, I now believed, had been on the same plane. All of them were lying around on gurneys, carrying on conversations like nothing had just happened. Their clothing was torn and in some instances burned, but none of them seemed injured in any way.

The hospital staff, on the other hand, were all hideously injured and were bleeding profusely. They were missing body parts, not just limbs and were covered in blood. Yes, they too were walking about, unconcerned and seemingly oblivious to their grievous injuries.

I felt that my head injury was somewhat serious and it should be treated, immediately. I grabbed an orderly to explain that I had swelling of the brain (that's the way I phrased it in the dream) and could he get someone to take a look at it. This orderly seemed uninjured and in a very good mood, given the circumstances. I also distinctly remember that he was black, mid-thirties, with an impressive Afro. There was also blood pouring from his mouth as he told me, "someone will be with you shortly". Again though, I have to reiterate, this orderly seemed completely uninjured. Just bleeding.

As I was trying to find someone to explain all of this to me, the people all vanished. My first thought was "Good, at least now it's quiet, I can think." But at that point, the lights started to go out. Green cloth curtains were being lowered from the ceiling in all directions. By whom I had no idea.

I then realized that I needed to get out of that place. Fast. I began to head towards a light source in the distance, which was down a very long hallway lined by hospital beds and those descending curtains. But as I moved in that direction, the light vanished and a palpable darkness began to issue from where the light had been. Hhhmm, not good, I thought.

I turned and saw that there was a stairway to my left rear, I could sense daylight at the top of those stairs. I'm not sure why I knew that this was daylight and not electric lighting, but there it is. So I turned to those stairs and quicker than thought I was up on the next level.

This appeared to be street level as there were glass doors leading outside. The room I was in was darkened, lit only by the light coming from behind the curtains on those glass doors. I clearly remember thinking "more freaking curtains?"

I also found myself to be literally "boxed in". All around me were folding tables, in a square, stacked with boxes on top of the tables and with boxes stacked underneath them. I clearly remember in the dream getting frustrated and moving forward to shove one of the boxes off of the table so that I might jump over the table and head for the doorway.

It was then that two female humans in trail crashed through the glass doors (slamming them open, not actually going through the glass). They were fighting each other, though the one in front seemed to be trying to get away from the one behind. I sensed that they were young and old at the same time. Which was odd as they looked to be no more than in their teens. Before I could say anything, the one behind jumped on the one in front. Then slammed her head into the table to my immediate right. I could sense that the one who had just gone down had very long, brown hair. And that getting her head slammed into a table didn't hurt. It was more of an annoyance than anything else.

But in the time it took to think (dream?) that, the trailing female was on me. Her intentions were not benign and I found myself in a struggle. Unlike some dreams I've had, I was easily overpowering this individual yet it seemed to affect her not at all.

Fortunately, at that point I awakened. Rather shaky I was. I'm still trying to sort that all out. It's one of the first dreams I've remembered in quite some time. I'm not sure if I like remembering my dreams.

I wonder what triggered this particular dream? Something to avoid in the future I'd say.