dreams: VICTORY
11 Oct 2010 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimoreneLast night for the first time ever I had what started along the lines of a nightmare and then turned around into victory! Victory that I caused! By fighting back! (It's not that I've never dreamt anything like a conflict where I fought back and/or was victorious before, but not in a nightmare.)
One of the Recurring Dream Places I dream about a lot is this privately-owned nature park place that has some farms and cottages, some nice stone ruins, and a little museum and gift shop, and on whose grounds my dad's step-cousin Carolyn owns a summer house. (I don't know why. My dreams about this recurring place usually involve her summer house, even when she isn't home, and it always looks more or less the same, even though I haven't seen Carolyn IRL since 2002 and she doesn't have a summer house.) Last night I dreamed I took my parents to visit it for the first time, and Daddy was in his wheelchair just like in reality. (NB I have dreamt about being there with my parents before, but in the dream I knew it was their first visit. Also, it's always a toss-up in my dreams whether his quadriplegia exists or not.)
The management at this nature park or tourist destination was in the process of pushing through some sort of restructuring, shutting off previously available footpaths, adding needlessly argumentative tour guides ("Of course we always tell people there are no canyons in the vicinity." "My dad's step-cousin's vacation house is here and I'VE STAYED THERE, and there IS a canyon! Right behind it!" "I don't know about that. It says here that there are officially no canyons."), denying visitors access to bathrooms, and just generally working to make the place less pleasant than in the past. Daddy's wheelchair was providing a lot of accessibility problems and the staff were useless and their boss/manager person the worst of all, completely unwilling to even answer questions, let alone help out in any way. Daddy was in desperate need of some bottled water so I took him to their gift shop while Mom waited for my sister somewhere, and he got stuck on the door frame and I couldn't get his wheelchair inside, and its wheels spun and he was out of balance and then through some only-in-dreams bending of the laws of physics involving children appearing from the ceiling on an apparently-magical tube slide, he fell out of his chair and it bounced down over a wooden deck railing and over an embankment. And broke in half. Leaving him on the floor, and me alone without Mom! Obviously at this point in the dream I was both screaming and crying, and thinking he was probably dead, but actually he turned out to be okay. He didn't lose consciousness or anything, and when the evil boss left, the cashier took pity on me and brought us a bottle of water for free.
I called Mom and she was able to pick up the two halves of the wheelchair and jury-rig them back together. (You can see my subconscious has unshakable faith in Mom's powers. She's kind of like MacGuyver, with more art supplies and spontaneous murals.) We were on our way out as quickly as possible, but happened to be passing a pair of decorative suspension bridges on our way to the parking lot and spotted a large cadre of martial artists in white jumpsuits and masks who explained that they were Korean ninjas (I feel certain this is the result of the "NINJAS AREN'T CHINESE" conversations after the "Blind Banker" OrientalismFAIL episode of BBC's Sherlock; it's as if my subconscious has a sense of humor) and coming to invade. They had already caught an entire tour group, the evil boss and a number of park employees and tied them up, stacking them in neat rows on a nearby hillside. I'm not actually sure what they were taking the park over for - perhaps a story for another day? - but they didn't want to let us past. Obviously our family of two spindly intellectual weaklings (one wheelchair-bound), one sturdy peasant farmgirl-stock MacGuyver artist, and one undernourished sprinter is no match for a group of ninjas, so non-resistance would have been the better part of valor, except they declared their intention to kill us to save time. Mom, Dad, and Sis climbed onto the other suspension bridge (not the one the ninjas were on) as the only remotely plausible avenue of escape, and had even made it most of the way across to the decorative island on the lake when the ninjas started in pursuit. (Of course I was the slowest as always.)
But, however, I had a brainstorm, and was able to distract the ninjas long enough for Mom and Sis to get Daddy off the bridge by pointing out The Flaw in the Ninjas' Plan!: the secret experimental underwater kindergarten! The ninjas had failed to do their research on the park and didn't know that in the lake there was a secret kindergarten in an underwater building, reachable only by tunnel! They may have captured everyone in the park proper, but they wouldn't be able to reach the underground kindergarten, because for reasons of water safety the tunnels could be completely closed! And the teachers would be able to call for help with their cell phones! I said triumphantly. (I stopped to wonder, privately, if cell phones work underwater, and decided that they did.) The ninjas were discombobulated and their progress across the suspension bridge arrested. And suddenly I noticed a switch. By jumping up with the aid of a tree branch, I was just able to reach with my foot an emergency switch that (for some inexplicable reason) cut all the cables of the suspension bridge. They didn't just retract or go slack, either, they broke sharply in the middle as if severed by an invisible light saber. Don't ask me. The ninjas plummeted into the water, I phoned 911 for help, and after everyone was released from their bonds by the rescue workers, the asshole park staff fell over themselves thanking us for saving them.
I didn't say I saved the day in a way that made sense. It was a surprisingly pleasant ending to the dream though.
One of the Recurring Dream Places I dream about a lot is this privately-owned nature park place that has some farms and cottages, some nice stone ruins, and a little museum and gift shop, and on whose grounds my dad's step-cousin Carolyn owns a summer house. (I don't know why. My dreams about this recurring place usually involve her summer house, even when she isn't home, and it always looks more or less the same, even though I haven't seen Carolyn IRL since 2002 and she doesn't have a summer house.) Last night I dreamed I took my parents to visit it for the first time, and Daddy was in his wheelchair just like in reality. (NB I have dreamt about being there with my parents before, but in the dream I knew it was their first visit. Also, it's always a toss-up in my dreams whether his quadriplegia exists or not.)
The management at this nature park or tourist destination was in the process of pushing through some sort of restructuring, shutting off previously available footpaths, adding needlessly argumentative tour guides ("Of course we always tell people there are no canyons in the vicinity." "My dad's step-cousin's vacation house is here and I'VE STAYED THERE, and there IS a canyon! Right behind it!" "I don't know about that. It says here that there are officially no canyons."), denying visitors access to bathrooms, and just generally working to make the place less pleasant than in the past. Daddy's wheelchair was providing a lot of accessibility problems and the staff were useless and their boss/manager person the worst of all, completely unwilling to even answer questions, let alone help out in any way. Daddy was in desperate need of some bottled water so I took him to their gift shop while Mom waited for my sister somewhere, and he got stuck on the door frame and I couldn't get his wheelchair inside, and its wheels spun and he was out of balance and then through some only-in-dreams bending of the laws of physics involving children appearing from the ceiling on an apparently-magical tube slide, he fell out of his chair and it bounced down over a wooden deck railing and over an embankment. And broke in half. Leaving him on the floor, and me alone without Mom! Obviously at this point in the dream I was both screaming and crying, and thinking he was probably dead, but actually he turned out to be okay. He didn't lose consciousness or anything, and when the evil boss left, the cashier took pity on me and brought us a bottle of water for free.
I called Mom and she was able to pick up the two halves of the wheelchair and jury-rig them back together. (You can see my subconscious has unshakable faith in Mom's powers. She's kind of like MacGuyver, with more art supplies and spontaneous murals.) We were on our way out as quickly as possible, but happened to be passing a pair of decorative suspension bridges on our way to the parking lot and spotted a large cadre of martial artists in white jumpsuits and masks who explained that they were Korean ninjas (I feel certain this is the result of the "NINJAS AREN'T CHINESE" conversations after the "Blind Banker" OrientalismFAIL episode of BBC's Sherlock; it's as if my subconscious has a sense of humor) and coming to invade. They had already caught an entire tour group, the evil boss and a number of park employees and tied them up, stacking them in neat rows on a nearby hillside. I'm not actually sure what they were taking the park over for - perhaps a story for another day? - but they didn't want to let us past. Obviously our family of two spindly intellectual weaklings (one wheelchair-bound), one sturdy peasant farmgirl-stock MacGuyver artist, and one undernourished sprinter is no match for a group of ninjas, so non-resistance would have been the better part of valor, except they declared their intention to kill us to save time. Mom, Dad, and Sis climbed onto the other suspension bridge (not the one the ninjas were on) as the only remotely plausible avenue of escape, and had even made it most of the way across to the decorative island on the lake when the ninjas started in pursuit. (Of course I was the slowest as always.)
But, however, I had a brainstorm, and was able to distract the ninjas long enough for Mom and Sis to get Daddy off the bridge by pointing out The Flaw in the Ninjas' Plan!: the secret experimental underwater kindergarten! The ninjas had failed to do their research on the park and didn't know that in the lake there was a secret kindergarten in an underwater building, reachable only by tunnel! They may have captured everyone in the park proper, but they wouldn't be able to reach the underground kindergarten, because for reasons of water safety the tunnels could be completely closed! And the teachers would be able to call for help with their cell phones! I said triumphantly. (I stopped to wonder, privately, if cell phones work underwater, and decided that they did.) The ninjas were discombobulated and their progress across the suspension bridge arrested. And suddenly I noticed a switch. By jumping up with the aid of a tree branch, I was just able to reach with my foot an emergency switch that (for some inexplicable reason) cut all the cables of the suspension bridge. They didn't just retract or go slack, either, they broke sharply in the middle as if severed by an invisible light saber. Don't ask me. The ninjas plummeted into the water, I phoned 911 for help, and after everyone was released from their bonds by the rescue workers, the asshole park staff fell over themselves thanking us for saving them.
I didn't say I saved the day in a way that made sense. It was a surprisingly pleasant ending to the dream though.
(no subject)
Date: 11 Oct 2010 06:46 pm (UTC)BEST EVER.