Jul 5, 2007

A dream that I had in the middle of winter

It starts with a large military force walking through the streets of a city that looks to be somewhere in the Middle East. My perspective is that of the commanding officer of this military force. Eventually we come to what looks like a small house. I knock on the door and say something in another language. There is a long pause, but a voice from within shouts at us to enter. The door is opened and we all walk inside. Inside, the small house appears to be a fortress. The ceiling is gone and the sky is cloudy and gray. We are walking through a narrow hallway with large stone walls on either side of us. Everywhere I look there are soldiers that appear to be of Arabic descent. They regard us suspiciously from the tops of the walls and from the end of the hallway. I remember thinking to myself that if they wanted, they could gun us all down right now very easily. But they don’t, and we keep walking. Eventually we come out of the long stone hallway into what looks like a courtyard. Now the structure looks to be built out of the ruins of a very old castle. The grounds are very large and in the distance there appears to be the living quarters. As our guide leads us closer to the middle of the courtyard (and to what I assume to be the leader of this group) I start hearing orders coming from my earpiece to ‘wait for the second gunners,’ which were a group of our soldiers that were already here and disguised as the Middle Eastern soldiers. As soon as they revealed themselves, we started killing everyone. We combed through the ruins shooting everyone in sight. In addition to soldiers, there appeared to be men of different ethnicity wearing suits. We killed these men as well. I recall two men of the aforementioned description walking calmly towards me. One told the other that he ‘had evidence that would get them out of here.’ I shot both of them and kept moving. At this point my perspective changed to that of different soldiers around the ruins. When we got to the living quarters, they were mostly empty. We searched the rooms one by one. Eventually we found one with a woman and two or three children. She was screaming, but my soldier talked to her and tried to calm her down. In a few minutes he came back out. I just nodded to him, and he went back into the room. I heard gunshots, and for a brief second saw the terrified children right before they were killed in their bed. After this, the world around me slowed down and then there was a flash-forward. In the same room that I had been a military commander, I was now a journalist (I think) and it was something like five years later. I was standing in this room with another man (who looked Arabic) and we started to walk down a flight of stairs back to the courtyard. When we got to the bottom, I saw some old women hunched over and painting a red line around the perimeter of the courtyard. These women were chanting something as they did this which reminded of Native Americans. My guide explained to me that this was the day of a ceremony commemorating the bloodshed that took place five years ago, and that the women were blessing the ground. I looked over to the opposite side of the courtyard and saw many people with flowers and banners who looked as if they were in mourning. We walked over in their direction chatting about things that I don’t remember. We left the ruins and started to walk up the street. My guide showed me the scaffolding on the outside of the ruins and explained his excitement that they were restoring these old buildings. As we walked, I saw other ruins that looked to be separate from the structure in which we started. We walked for a very long time up this road, and it soon changed from cobblestones to dirt. At this point my guide began talking about religion and his own perspective of religion. He explained that there were three things about religion that he loved. I don’t remember the first two, but the third was ‘long, dark, silences.’ He then posed the example of that time after two people make love and are lying in bed together. He said that during this time, he waits for his companion to fall asleep and then just lies there in the dark silence. At this point, another man interjected (this man just appeared. I don’t remember him being with us at the beginning, although my guide appeared to know him) saying all manner of things about how one should properly treat a lady, like bringing flowers and candy and lots of different things. My guide just laughed and I thought this man was drunk. It is also important to note that when this second man appeared in my dream, there was a simultaneous appearance of a pan filled with frosted and sprinkled brownies.
As we walked up this dirt road, my guide continued to talk about religion (though I don’t remember any details). I did get the impression that this man was the head of some form of militant sect at this point. I also figured that it was his plan to take revenge on those who killed everybody in the ruins five years ago. Soon we stopped at a decrepit old house that looked painfully small. We walked in, and there were many other people inside. The room looked like a small arena. Everyone stood in rows that were separated by metal gates and poles. Soon an old woman came out and announced something that I couldn’t understand, but elicited cheers from the crowd, my guide included. She then walked out of my line of sight and released a small pig into the arena in front of us. The pig was running around on two legs and for some reason looked artificial. Soon after, a wolf came running in. The pig attempted to flee from the wolf, but the arena was so small that the wolf had the pig in no time. The wolf dragged the pig into my peripheral vision. I couldn’t see the wolf or the bottom half of the pig, but I could tell the wolf was ravenously devouring the small animal. At this point, the horrible violence that was being inflicted on the pig is difficult to explain. I could still see the top half of the pig, and I saw its skin get ripped off, its skull caved in, and there was blood everywhere. In a few moments, the old woman came back in to gather up the bloody remains of the pig (which now looked like a human doll/child). The wolf obediently stood at the old woman’s heel. I looked over at my guide who was drinking from a hip flask, and then back to the old woman. The wolf was now a young girl with blood all over her face. She asked my guide for a drink from his flask, but the old woman reprimanded her, telling her that ‘she must do what she does for free, otherwise it loses its meaning.’
At this point, I woke up.