Garote's
Dream Asylum

I don't pretend to understand them.

13-OCT-93

I stopped my car and walked through the woods to a farmhouse, and went inside. A long rectangular patch of light brown dirt had been cleared, and on it were chickens of all shapes and colors and sizes, some wearing clothes, all sitting down- a sign said "place your babies here", and there were a bunch of screaming women holding infants, wrestling with some indistinct demonic figures. I picked up one of the larger chickens by the wire-mesh cage it was tangled in to examine it, and it made a weak croaking sound. I dropped it and opened the door to leave and as it swung out all the little chickens made this frightened "mnrmMRMph..!" sound and tried to scuttle away. I floated up over some buildings that resembled old whitewashed farmhouses, and saw my car below me, which had three parking brakes and didn't run very well. At this point a disembodied voice said something suprisingly profound about the human condition, the implications of which seemed to frighten me in the extreme. I can only remember the words "fear" and "running away". Before I could reach my car I woke up with a strange vision of a big black angel of death floating through my door towards me- not to take me away, but to -join up with me, become part of me, or seep into me, or... something!! Dreams deal feelings like they deal images, and it's hard to place them at times.

Then I fell asleep again:

There was a deep, clear rushing river, flowing through smooth grey rocks. The light was eerie. A man was in the river up to his shoulders, pushing along a big shiny metal shopping cart, in which was standing a naked toddler, who was looking curiously at the water as it disappeared over the edge of a waterfall that seemed to fall off into the sky for miles. Suddenly I was the person in the river, and the shopping cart and toddler were gone. I waded upstream and found myself in a large natural pool, enclosed by the same grey rock, with strange metal angular shapes sticking out of it. As I climbed the grey walls, the water level increased so I was always up to my shoulders.

Suddenly I was seeing under the water, and the pool had turned into an underwater canyon, which contained the apparent remains of a civilizations' technology center. Strange electronic and mechanical apparatuses(?) lined the grey rocks. In the middle of this conflagaration was an enormous keypad as if from a touch-tone phone, with big grey keys larger than my body. Then the old woman arrived, and told me to take the exit in the middle of the entryway. So I walked into a small rectangular room that was slightly bent in the middle, and crawled through the vent at the crux of the "V" shape the room formed. I appeared in somebody's bedroom. I was looking for information about something, but all I found on the bookshelves were some strange perverse anime comics. I recognized the girl in a few of the pictures, but I don't recall from where. I looked under the bed and found another magazine, and as I was looking through it I began to wake up. I knew there was somehing profound in the magazine, like what had been said before, and if I could find it I would be able to remember it this time. I remember concentrating, like I would on a particularly complex peice of art, and actually forcing my mind to shift back into the dreaming state- but perhaps this was all part of the dream?

Unfortunately, by the time I got back the magazine had disappeared, and I walked out the bedroom door and found myself in a huge valley, within which something very strange was going on- There was enough water to form a lake in the valley, but the water was not standing still- it was flowing as if it were in a river, or crashing to the beach- across the bottom of the valley, slowly up the side of the valley, then slowly back down and up the other side- as if the whole valley was moving left and right, making the water slosh- but it was happening very slow. Then me and a group of friends I was suddenly with saw the water run around the side of the valley as if it were a big traveling blanket and collect in a raised pool in one corner. The water began to rush about very rapidly, and form huge mounds and ripples of water, as if someone were shaking a bowl of gelatin, or rolling marbles around under a sheet. I gripped a telephone pole as the water broke free and headed towards us from across the valley in gigantic hill-like waves which must have been a hundred feet tall. As the waves hit I was under water, lifted off my feet, then abruptly out of the water, then in the water, then out... As this was happening my alarm rang.