Dreams

Last night I dreamed that I was in a take out restaurant in LA and could see the downtown skyline across a body of water. (My dreams rarely make any physical sense.) There were some kids and families from my work there as well. As we were watching, something happened. It might have been a plane but I don't remember the dream clearly enough. After whatever this act of terrorism was, the big cylindrical building downtown collapsed. I thought, here we go again. The people I was with didn't seem to know what to do. I was telling people that if they were staying where we were, they should close the windows to avoid the dust. Otherwise they should go home.

I've had at least one other dream about terrorist attacks recently. I never dreamed this kind of thing when I lived near NYC or when everything happened.

I did, however, have dreams after the destruction of the towers where I would be walking through the mall under one of the towers just like I always did when coming out from the PATH station on my way to work at Trinity. Everything was there but without other people. These were some of the few dreams I have had where things were physically in the right places. It wasn't spooky, but it was just as it had been.

There were visions as well. One was a quick flash of scripture on the Saturday before that infamous destruction. A group I sang with had just finished what had been an important performance for us on the Hudson side of the World Financial Center. I was standing at the entrance to the underground mall that I would pass through on my way to the PATH train home. I was talking to one of my older and closest friends whom I had just sung with as we prepared to part ways. She was telling me about changes in her life and decisions that she was preparing to make that would change things for both of us, including her anticipated departure from our current shared musical venture. I remember looking at the chunk of stone in the sunlight by the entrance behind her and a spot of scripture popped into my head. I thought of Jesus saying, "not one stone will be left on top of another." Three days later than would be literally, not just figuratively, true.

During my time working in lower Manhattan, the night before Easter was also a night of unusual thoughts. Although they were probably induced by the hysteria of the 10 day music marathon at Trinity that surrounded Holy Week, there was a certain theme. The night before my first Easter in 2001, I closed my eyes for the few hours of precious sleep to come. As I relaxed, I saw before my eyes the scroll work on the pillars inside St. Paul's Chapel growing and unfurling like a wondrous plant or a billowing cloud. The next year I had driven or walked around the pit that day before Easter. I saw what looked to me like layers of basement that remained with their edges scrappy and fibrous bits of metal splaying out. When I closed my eyes that night, the landscape of that pit was all around me, expanding and growing through my vision. In 2003 the scene was different. No longer mentally anchored in lower Manhattan, I saw the green shoots of new born plants from my morning's run, stretching and growing out, a young and vital green.

I don't know why I've been dreaming these things, or why I'm dreaming them now, but I've been in a horrible place during the day after these recent visions. This blog that no one reads is a place for me to let it all out, a place to wonder aloud, vent, ask why and try to find some resolution for myself.