vignettes from a different world

i had to put together some christmas-themed gift bags for my classmates. i was walking to the dollar store, which i understood was in downtown toronto although the area seemed more suburban. it was sunny outside and obviously not winter. i entered the dollar store, which was more like a warehouse. i wandered around for a long time looking for gifts. i purchased some small things. i had to be careful because i didn't have much money. one area contained some creepy old dollhouse furniture. i left this area and found out that my boyfriend was here. we looked at stuff together. i found a pair of fleece pants with airbrushed bears, owls and eagles on them and i thought they were amazing, but the tag said 'size 46' and i didn't know if anyone in my class was that large.

there was a 'computer room' in the warehouse and i wanted to use my computer for some reason. i tried to turn it on but the screen was blank. a tall guy was laughing at me.

i decided to leave, so i walked a block over to the other dollar store. i hadn't gone inside when i realized that i didn't tell my boyfriend that i left. i sat down on an outdoor bench outside of a bar and tried to get wifi on my phone. i sent him a message but i wasn't sure if it went through.

then i saw a bus and i got on it for some reason. the bus took me back home in about a minute (it would be at least an hour in real life!) and i felt really bad that i had left my boyfriend in toronto.

i had a dream early in the night but i don't remember it at all. i will edit this if i recall any details.

later i am in the dining room of the townhouse. various people are here. i have gotten 7 or 8 identical tattoos on my hip. they are tiny outlines of men. i colour them in with a pink marker to make it look like they're naked. a girl laughs and asks me if it's my halloween costume. suddenly i realize that it is halloween. i want candy but i do not have a costume so i go to my room and find a pair of bunny ears. i put them on and leave the house (it is night) but i only get a few steps before realizing i've forgotten to get something to hold the candy. i go back inside the house. there's a long segment here that i don't remember much of. all i remember is that i was carrying a purple nightgown with bleach stains and i saw an identical nightgown on a shelf, which creeped me out a little, and people were discussing times? i went upstairs to get a pillowcase but for some reason went into the bathroom instead. i heard someone talking about slenderman downstairs. then i entered my room. i grabbed a pillowcase and put on a glove shaped like a bunny's paw. the dream ends here.

around 9 am i had the following dream: i am visiting my mother in an unfamiliar house. we get into an argument, the details of which are a little personal and so won't be posted here. i end up screaming at her, throwing a stack of paper in her face and leaving.

edit: remembered another part of the last dream. this occurred prior to the argument. my father and i were in an apartment with white walls; a lot of stuff was made of wood. the room was filled with blue light. there were parts coming out of the walls that created steep hills and inclines and we were trying to climb on top of them. at the same time that these represented parts of the room they also represented a landscape and at times they would become much larger in scale and look, for lack of a better description, like real-life video game platforms; at one point there was an elaborate gothic church on top of one. yet they were still components of the apartment.

comment: these simultaneous perceptions feature commonly in my dreams and often make it difficult to write down an accurate description. the best way i can describe it is that they add layers of depth to the dream world.. that is to say a table in a dream is not just a table; it may occasionally be perceived as an object that is functionally or structurally related (eg a chair because it's used for dining, a dog because it has four legs and is brown) or, if not fully perceived this way these sorts of associations will persist at a subconscious level and colour the dream experience. the mechanism behind this, i think, is an intensification of associative thought. i have experienced similar perceptions in waking life w/ the use of marijuana.

haven't updated my dj for a while.. got lazy. have to get back into the habit. this was a very long dream and my descriptions don't really do justice to the feelings of absolute terror it inspired at points.


i dreamt that i lived in a big house with some other teenagers. occasionally my boyfriend came over. we played video games and cuddled and it was very good. i remember feeling anxious about how to arrange our next meeting.
then i was walking around downtown. it was sunny out. some store had gone out of business and they were giving away their furniture. i found a large bed, whose bottom panel comprised several dressers. i opened each of the dressers and i discovered very elaborate blankets and dresses, as well as some scraps of paper.
there was writing on the paper. although it was in "polish", i was able to understand it. (i don't know any polish). the words frightened me. i cannot remember what they said but the content was very paranoid, surreal and fragmented. it chilled me to the bone.
i went in search of the woman to whom the bed & these papers belonged. (she was an old decrepit polish woman with long grey-brown hair.) i was wandering through downtown at night. i remember also seeing medieval-style maps of eastern europe that the woman had made. an atmosphere of visceral horror pervades this dream segment.
i finally found the woman. at first i was terrified of her and i tried to hide from her as one might try to evade a bear. later i took pity on her and invited her to a formal dinner with some of the people from the dream house. she wouldn't eat at first but i got her to eat a small amount.
then i got into a car with a man in his late 20s and we drove around downtown, which was now sunny. there were two mario figurines in... uh... the little things on the inside of car doors where you can store tiny stuff. one of the figurines toppled over and turned into a waluigi figurine with oddly coloured, very dark (but not black) clothes. when this happened to the second figurine i knew the polish woman was dead. i felt relieved.
we knew that some scrawny ginger guy was responsible for her death and we took a different route home to avoid him. when i was home my boyfriend was there and we decided to go to a café called "the simoleon". this café was buffet-style: they had many sweets on offer and you could load up your plate with as many as you wanted. i ate a weird pudding thing and it tasted good.
next my boyfriend and i went to the mall. he wanted to buy a watch. there were two stores that sold watches, an absurdly expensive designer store and american eagle. the watches were bands of engraved black leather with detachable clock pendants that hung down from the leather band. my boyfriend went into american eagle while i tried to steal one of the expensive watches. i could not steal them because they were attached to the display rack with strong magnets.
i joined my boyfriend in american eagle but when i tried to leave the alarm went off. i hadn't actually stolen anything so i was confused. some people took me into the back of the mall to interview me. they thought i had tampered with mail? one of the people commented to the other that they had heard me talking about incest and even if i hadn't done anything they should arrest me for that.
at one point i became half-lucid and sort of willed the dream to become less stressful. i walked away from the interview and entered the "back" of the mall, which was where all the extra items were stored. i went into the luxury store and looked around. i also recall going into a store called "HERON CLOTHES" which sold low-quality clothes with small embroidered emblems of forest animals (no herons though). the dream ended shortly after.

i am lying on the couch in the living room of the old townhouse. it is night and the room is lit by lamps. i feel very ill and feverish. my mother is here. she tells me to get up and go to school. i reply that i can't, i have meningitis and i should be in the hospital. she screams at me and we have a long argument. i am intensely angry. later i wonder if i am going to die and think about what my boyfriend would do if i did. (i was violently ill before i fell asleep which probably accounts for the focus on illness here).

in the next scene i am walking to my high school. it is snowy and i am with my father. i find an iphone sticking out of a snowbank. i ask my father if it's ok to take it. he says yes, so i do. then i am inside the library at my elementary school with some other people. we are watching a movie on a projector screen. at one point there is some starbucks product placement in the movie and starbucks gift cards pop out of the screen and onto the floor. the other people and i scramble to grab them up. they keep coming, along with some lollipops and -- hydrocodone pills... i grab several pills and remark to C.W. that i'm surprised it was legal for the filmmakers to do this.

then i am working at a daycare for disabled children. i am standing on a large circular mezzanine in a domed wooden building with a rustic/old-fashioned atmosphere. there is a matronly black woman here. later i am taking a bath while covered by a white canopy to research therapies for autism?

finally i am outside, on a beautiful rocky coastline. i am listening to a lecture about canadian geography from a disembodied voice. i sprinkle green powder onto a moss-covered slope which i recognize to be british columbia. the voice is now talking about aboriginal tribes: "our friends, the mogwai, are dead..." finally the subject of the lecture changes to buddhism. i don't recall what the voice said.

the general atmosphere of these dreams is unpleasant.

i was directing a music video with my mind. i do not remember what the music actually sounded like but i recall thinking it was like the doors. the vocals and lyrics were very prominent. the music was vivid and complex as it always is in my dreams. the lyrics were about some kind of drug hallucination or delirium.

the music video was set in a darkened suburban area, on someone's lawn. the colour scheme was mainly dark blue and black. the lead singer was dancing around erratically while i caused strange imagery to manifest. there were many of these strange images but i only recall a few. at one point there were cloth-like, lumpy growths swirling around the branches of a tree, disappearing and reappearing. later, there were unfamiliar people standing in rows and i caused their faces to distort. after doing this for a while the dream scene unexpectedly went black and an image of a humanoid figure with a bright red, glowing circle for a head and an ill-defined glowing yellow body appeared. i felt a jolt of intense fear unlike anything i have experienced in waking life. i screamed loudly in the dream but my screams sounded muted and distorted. i wondered if i was screaming in real life. soon afterwards i woke up. (i wasn't).

i am in a house with M., S. and A. the house is located in a clearing in a coniferous forest. the scene is generally dark. the house has wood floors and a warm colour scheme.

then my friends and i are in my elementary school gymnasium. we are playing a game in which the goal is to guess what the other person is thinking of. the theme in this round is fetishes. i come up with an idea which turns into an entire dream scene:
this scene is in the style of a documentary and it is presented by a man whose appearance and mannerisms recall louis theroux. several muscular men wearing leather bdsm outfits sre gathered together in a field. on the edge of the field stand rows of huge metal bows (about twice the height of a person) which are anchored to the ground. "louis" interviews one of the men who tells him that this is a fetish. participants obtain satisfaction by being fired from the bow as if they were an arrow. louis chooses to undergo this process. an arrowhead attached to a short length of shaft is glued onto his forehead and he is placed into some kind of leather bondage contraption which keeps his legs together and his arms at his sides. the man pulls the bow back, releases it and louis flies straight through the air.
afterwards we are in a classroom with the lights off. some blue-white light filters through the window. we are discussing sexuality with a teacher figure who is male and in his mid-20s.

the scene returns to my elementary gymnasium but now there is a war going on. the tile floor has become bumpy and ragged, unevenly painted with blue, yellow and green stripes. i am talking to a tall, thin man in a suit who has unruly black hair about the war. i understand this man is jean-paul sartre. sartre complains that another writer's books are racist and colonialist and tosses them onto the ground.

next i am inside some kind of professional building with wooden doors and blue glass walls. a man is advertising his book on quantum physics. the cover photo of the book is a ripple in multicoloured liquid. i open the book. there is a grid on one page and each cell contains a line drawing of a person. on the opposite page the author derides all of these people, complaining that the men are "assholes" and the women are "sluts". on another page, there is a large circle labeled "A" to the left of a small circle labeled "B". the book describes how the larger circle represents the immediate effects of a quantum process while the smaller circle represents the other effects. the example he uses to elucidate this theory is that if you consumed lead atoms, you would experience mild symptoms immediately, while the rest of your family would become severely ill and mentally retarded but this would occur over a long course of time. (that's dream logic for you). when these two circles intersect, they supposedly create a ripple pattern.

finally I am wandering through the hallways of my elementary school. they actually look more like the hallways on the 3rd floor of the hospital but in the dream i believe it is school. the walls, floor and ceiling are flat white. the hallways are very narrow and take strange zig-zag courses, which is disorienting. someone tells me that there is a fire in the school. i am not concerned until i see brushed metal cylindrical objects careening through the hallways and spraying water, ostensibly to fight the fire. these 'robots' frighten me slightly.

lovely, lovely dreams tonight. nothing particularly unpleasant has been going on in waking life as of late, but these dreams showed up anyhow. slept from about 9 to about 6.

i have spoilered the more graphic parts of the molestation dream for those of you who might be disturbed by it.

in the first dream i am driving around my city at twilight. i remember the exact area where i was -- near the intersection of R-----d & R----n.

Spoiler for click to read:

suddenly i feel invisible hands touching me. it is as if i am sitting on someone's lap but there is nobody there. i am greatly disconcerted. suddenly i am in the passenger seat and a teenaged asian boy is driving, while still touching me occasionally. he pulls into my school's parking lot (it is night now). there are 3 other boys waiting for us as well as an old man. i am nervous. the asian boy introduces me to the old man and tells me that he was the one who was touching me. a girl adds that he is 63 years old and a banker, and gives me his full name. she urges me to tell the police.

later i am in a room with blue walls. there are my little pony posters and merchandise everywhere. i am talking to a woman in her 30s about my experience. i want to tell her the man's name, but i cannot remember it. i get frustrated at this and also about the fact that i am discussing my sexual abuse in a my little pony fanclub.

in the second dream i am in an unfamiliar house. i am sitting on the couch and i am shocked to discover that my ex is sitting right beside me. for a moment i consider that this could be a dream, but the vivid and detailed imagery convinces me otherwise. i get extremely angry. i start yelling at him, asking "how did you get here?" "why are you here?" i don't get a straight answer. i begin punching and slapping him. he barely fights back.
i go do something else for a while and i come back to find my ex sitting on a bed crying. i thought he had left and now i get even angrier. i scream at him and throw heavy objects at him. i tell him that i'm going to bed, and if he isn't gone by the time i wake up "something bad will happen".
i go into my bedroom for a while and then come back. my ex is still there, playing a SNES game on a blue tv. again, i physically attack him and threaten that bad things will happen. i'm furious. the tv says "error, zero zero, error" and then i wake up.

i am with two imaginary friends. the dream begins in the park across the street from my school; it is winter and thick snow covers the ground. we are going to go to finland so one of my friends can get a scholarship for music. we have to walk lightly so the police won't be able to track our footprints.

we reach finland in a couple of minutes and enter into a large building with beige stone walls, great windows, and domed ceilings: the university. my one friend goes into the music room, leaving us free to explore other areas. i go into another room and find a shelf that contains papers on the history of finland & what i believe to be the earliest documents written in finnish. next i enter another room whose walls are covered in racks of clothing. i understand that these clothes are being given away for free, so i take some, although it is difficult to find clothes in my size.

later, outside the university, i meet my boyfriend. he jacks off and ejaculates on my thigh. there are no emotions or sexual sensations associated with this.

then i am working at a "record store" - a large, disorganized shop that seems to sell everything except records. nicki minaj comes in and asks for some vodka. i cannot serve her because i don't have a license: i feel awkward and incompetent. however a man who works at the store ends up serving her for me.

finally my two friends and i decide to visit thailand. thailand, evidently, is a large country home owned by an old lady. we are hungry, but the food here is strange. after several unappetizing choices the lady offers me a dish of fruit pieces and flowers in clear jelly, which i gladly consume: it has a delicate, sweet and light taste.

i enter into a bedroom in the house. it has blue walls and the layout is similar to my bedroom in real life. there is a sunflower on a yellow vase in my dresser. i have several vials of chemicals. i want to use a chemical that causes genetic mutations on the sunflower so that i can grow different varieties. i have to be very careful while handling this chemical because if it makes contact with my skin i will get cancer. i empty the vial into the sunflower pot but then i look at the label and realize i have just poured a great amount of acetic acid into the soil. i do not want to kill the plant so i use a vial of ammonium chloride to 'neutralize' the acid (dream self is not good at chemistry). however i quickly realize that this reaction produces chlorine gas (again... terrible chemistry...). i freak out. i get short of breath, light-headed and my vision begins to fade.

i wake up.

fell asleep around 12, woke up around 3, went back to bed, finally woke up around 7

12am - 3am
a long and complicated dream about a tall girl with red hair. in the dream we were good friends. there was a very jovial atmosphere, unlike most of my dreams.

then a dream where i discussed lucid dreaming at length -- without actually becoming lucid.

3am-7am

i am at a strange clothes store with my boyfriend. the store mainly sells lolita dresses but contains a large variety of different clothing items as well as miscellaneous objects. at the far end of the room there is a passage to a second room which is brightly lit with many large windows. the store owners, a middle-aged asian woman and her teenage daughter, work here, making all the clothes from scratch. we talk to the two women for a while. there are many items of clothing hanging on racks here and i discover a finely crafted leather jacket with luxurious fur trim; i ask the younger woman how much it would cost and she tells me "about a month's salary". we leave this room and return to the main part of the store. there is a dress i would like to buy here, but it is too expensive. instead, my boyfriend and i decide to buy two dvds. these "dvds" come in vhs cases with elaborate box art; the one my boyfriend buys has art that's a slightly altered version of the dark side of the moon cover, and mine is a complex pattern of organic plantlike shapes. we understand that these movies are beautiful works of art and that watching them will change our lives. we trade the shop owners a large pyramidal prism for the dvds.

then i leave the store and enter into a shady urban area at night. i am now running away from three young white men who want to mug me. i see my dad's car parked on the side of the street: i get in and we drive away.

terrible recall tonight

1. i am working on a group project with unfamiliar people. we are in the auditorium of my elementary school. we are on laptops and we are running a program with a neon green and red on black colour scheme. there is some anxiety associated with this dream.

2. i am waiting for the bus in the snow with an unfamiliar girl. the atmosphere is very bleak.

3. i cannot remember anything about this dream except that i became lucid at one point! i simply realized that the circumstances of the situation were unrealistic and deduced that it was a dream. sadly my lucidity faded very quickly -- before i could do anything of interest.

4. false awakening. i am in bed in my room: very tired and disoriented. windows 7 error messages pop up and disappear constantly, obstructing my vision. i wonder if i am dreaming but decide that i am not. i am afraid that i am going insane.

first i am trying to sneak in to a children's arcade. i don't remember anything else about this dream.

then i am on a hilly cliff-edge with a woman who seems vaguely familiar. the ground is blanketed with snow. there are several white and orange cats roaming around. we realize the cats are coming from an area further ahead so we follow the path to there, but we find that it is blocked by thick shrubs. the woman remarks she hopes to get into that area someday. the ground slopes softly to the right and we walk down there, but as we continue down the slope we gain momentum and lose control. the woman slips and accidentally touches a snake. there are 3 snakes here: one with yellow and black stripes, which she touched; one tawny brown coloured; and one whose pattern i don't remember. the woman is afraid the snake is venomous and she wants to get medical attention. i follow her to a building that resembles my school; it is night now. i have brought the snake corpses with me. at some point they turn to globs of pink flesh. i enter the school and the woman is gone. there are two boys at the top of a stairway with a metal bucket. they instruct me to put the flesh in the bucket and i do so.

then i am outside the school again with a girl. we see a dead man's body and i remove another glob of flesh from it. this one is lighter pink and fat-streaked. as we reenter the school the girl remarks that i should hide it, so they don't know i'm adding human flesh to the bucket. i try to throw it into the bucket when the boys aren't looking, but i miss. they don't seem put off by the fact that it's human flesh, however.

i wake up with severe abdominal pain.
------
short analysis:
in the dream i considered the snowy landscape to be part of the dominican republic. this explains the presence of snakes and is attributable to the fact that a friend who had visited gave me a ring from there the day previous.

the brown snake looked and moved exactly like a large snake i saw in a forest a year or so ago (i live in ontario-- generally the only snakes you encounter here are tiny green garter snakes - this one was brown, 5 or 6 inches around and quite long... unusual sight to see on a walk in the forest. it didn't scare me at all, in fact i was curious -- and in this dream i adopted the same attitude towards the snakes, although the woman was terrified).

the dead body and the globs of flesh didn't disturb me in the dream; it was all very matter-of-fact. i wonder, upon waking, if these images of bodily mutilation can be explained by the severe pain i was experiencing. although i did not feel any pain in the dream, the body-horror type images could have been a sort of alternate perception of it -- a symbol of pain, so to speak.

i dreamt that i was in the bathroom at my old townhouse. i was sitting on the toilet drawing on my laptop while pouring a bath. suddenly i heard a loud beeping sound. i wasn't sure whether it was coming from outside or whether it was in my head. i plugged my ears to check. i could still hear it with my ears plugged. i became afraid that i was going crazy.

then i woke up... it was my alarm.

dreams tonight were very mundane, can't recall much of them

i had a very long dream about being in a public outdoor swimming pool. there was a girl there who was making sexual advances on me, and later an autistic boy who was trying to show me pictures of a tv show or something? also a blonde guy who i think was antagonizing me. at one point i sustained an injury to my leg and i was afraid that the pool water would infect my open wounds.

then i was at school. the entirety of this dream took place in one room, with grey floors, white walls and harsh fluorescent lighting. a tall middle-aged woman with red hair, ostensibly a teacher, was berating me for not finishing an assignment.

finally i was walking through a distorted version of downtown with two rappers. they were talking about their lives and i found it very inspiring although i can no longer remember what they said. the weather was dreary: overcast & slushy. we walked together for a long time; at one point i became separated from them and was attacked by a group of kids who threw rocks at me from across the street. it was painful. one rock was very large and hit me on the head; in the dream i could feel my consciousness slipping away and my body collapsing. i came close to fainting but i recovered. after that they left me alone and i regrouped with the rappers.

then we parted and i was sitting in deep, fresh snow on the side of the street. i was with some other people & we were telling jokes and laughing with each other.

fitful sleep tonight. various fragmented dreams. not well recalled. content is quite shallow except for the last fragment.

------------

my father and i are driving in the country at night. in a recessed area on the side of the road sits a dollhouse & a wicker shelf that was in my childhood bedroom. the shelf is full of stuffed animals -- i remember one was a dragon. i take some of them with me because i understand i will be going to the hospital soon.

i am then at "the hospital"; it's a distorted version of the townhouse i lived in most of my life. the lights are off. the stuffed animals aren't with me. there's nothing hospital-like about the surroundings; it's just the main floor of the townhouse. there are 2 bro kind of guys visiting a middle aged woman who has tuberculosis. they talk about how she is defecating blood.

i decide to escape. i am suddenly in bright, sunny, warm-hued "downtown toronto" -- nothing like downtown toronto really, just big glass buildings and an immense urban atmosphere -- adrenaline rush, i'm running through beautiful streets, i crest a hill on a cobblestone road and i yell "santa maria! santa maria!"

i am back in the "hospital", i don't remember how this happens. i'm in the darkened townhouse kitchen. there are two nondescript tall men watching me -- the guards. i understand i am here for mental reasons. i think i am fine, but i accept my hospitalization with equanimity. i open the fridge and eat some kind of pastry with a raspberry on top. i hear a voice narrating lil wayne's current medical situation. i wake up.

later: something about a girl at school, i don't quite recall what she looked like - generic teenage girl, probably around 13? she's very bubbly and excitable, a little obnoxious, but she takes an interest in me and i'm glad that someone finds me nice to be around. we are rehearsing something and she starts rubbing her body against mine. i am a little uncomfortable. i point out that it seems dirty; she laughs. next we are talking to each other on a bus. i remember that her backpack is very focal in these scenes. it's a jansport style backpack, mainly white with yellow, lilac and blue thunderbolt designs. we get off the bus with some of her friends and we are in a dark city area. one of her friends is wearing - hard to describe this - platform shoes with the platform made of hard black plastic; they are hollowed out in increasingly smaller concentric circles, like the pattern of a mining pit - goes clear through to the other side. i remember thinking this is really cool, actually i still do. we walk through a bridge-tunnel. we realize that the bridge has no railing and is thus illegal to walk on. the girl comments that she should have removed her shoes (they have a specific name -- it's very german -- i understand that its named after the guy who invented the pattern) and now the people on the adjacent, legal bridge would know she walked on the illegal bridge, because the opening of the tunnel has the same pattern as her shoes. i find this remarkable. a boy with us comments that he's seen the same pattern in greece and i understand that i'm in some kind of european country. the atmosphere in this scene is very nice, everything's lit by soft incandescent streetlamps.

then i am in a distorted version of a thrift store i frequent. my stepmother is getting married, today, and she wants a pink themed wedding. she gives me 5 dollars to buy a dress and she also wants me to look after a young girl (age 3-5, black hair, olive skin). i notice that the girl is wearing lipstick and eye shadow and i think to myself that her father is awful for making her look like a slut. i ask her if she likes wearing eye makeup and she says yes. i can't find a pink dress at the thrift store so i go to a version of the victoria's secret pink store. i find something and i try to steal it but i fail somehow. then an employee asks us to leave. i am frightened for a moment but then i realize it is just because the store is closing.

then i am inside of a south park video game (??) it looks terrible, like some awful game you'd see on newgrounds in 2005 or sth. top-down view, white background (snow) with a grey line representing the road and brown blocks representing buildings. i understand that it was made to be terrible on purpose. i have to go somewhere in the game but every time i try to go there i am transported back. this goes on for a very long time.

finally i return to real life. i am in a different store. this one has bright wooden floors, white walls; it is very open and spacious. the girl and i are standing in front of a white shelf which houses a scattered assortment of strange toys. she takes interest in a toy which seems to be some kind of japanese thing based on jersey shore?? i realize i have spent a very long time in the video game and i should have returned the girl by now; my stepmother must be wondering where she is. the girl's face has changed - her eyes are very dark and there is a swollen red area under her eyes (similar to the famous picture of omayra sanchez -- if you're going to look this up be warned that it is disturbing).

the room has darkened. my stepmother appears. the girl is lying on the ground. stepmother is angry. she tells me that the "death squad" has been informed and people from all over the world are searching for her. i break down crying. i understand that the police will be coming to talk to me.

i walk over to the edge of the room and beyond a short banister is a beautiful landscape. it is hard to describe its beauty in words. i am high above the ground; i can see the peaks of mountains and clouds moving through the deep & light blues of the sky. below me, miles below me, are vast rolling hills and lush greenery. rivers flow through the land. the immense scale is very very difficult to describe. i understand, somehow, that this is Iceland. i want to get closer. there is a very thin wooden tree trunk that i jump over the banister onto. the landscape more beautiful now and I understand that this is not only iceland but Heaven. i almost cry.

i know the police are coming for me soon and my life will be awful. i debate whether to let go of the tree and fall into heaven, or face real life. heaven is so beautiful. i let myself slip a little but then i grip the tree again.

i wake up.