Climb to nowhere

kw: dreams, musings, climbing

Though short of sleep, I had a week's worth of very vivid dreams last night. The most memorable, and possibly meaningful sequence was of climbing, in three stretches, and No, I did not reach the top.

The first climb began after some colossal game of tag that was taking place in a large office building. When one guy pulled out a rifle, I fled up some kind of ramp, then climbed a cloth-covered slope to a window that I could not get through. However, the next stretch above the window seemed climbable, so I went on up. By this time I was alone, struggling up a rather soft-sided incline that became a vertical with ledges. It took all my strength to get to one ledge, but that led to a meadow or yard. I walked alongside someone for just a short way, then was alone again. I circled the upper part of the building I'd been in, which I now saw was mostly underground.

I was walking along, marveling at a junkyard of truly unusable stuff, when I came to another slope, with the conviction that I had to either traverse it or surmount it. It soon seemed like a giant trash bag full of leaves, and the plastic stretched and rippled, making the climbing almost fruitless. Finally, when I got to a concrete lip that I could grasp—and by this time I had two men climbing with me, plus there was a third atop the lip—the lip turned out to be a loose slab that fell back on us, at which time I awoke.

How to interpret such a thing? Climbing in dreams often indicates worry over obstacles. Two out of three ain't bad, but I remember feeling quite surprised when the slab would not support me. I guess I am anticipating a betrayal. Now I just have to figure out whether it will be related to home, work, or something else. I do remember thinking soon after I woke up that I have a very strong disinclination to turn back from any path once chosen. This reminds me of a side story.

When I lived in Pasadena, California, I owned a decrepit VW bug. It's an important detail that the boot around the gearshift was badly cracked and split. I enjoyed driving around in the San Gabriel mountains. Once I did so after some rain, and I found myself splashing through puddles in the dirt track, scarcely a road. I pancaked my way through one large puddle, and muddy water splashed up alongside the gear shift lever and got on the headliner (and on me). I said to myself, "Well, I'm glad I don't need to come back this way." I knew the track I was on was a loop. Less than a minute later I came to a "swimming pool" of a puddle. So I actually did turn back, right back through that other puddle, and got more mud on the headliner (and on me). I got home safe! 'Swhat counts.