the unbearable oddness of dreaming

[arethinn]

Really odd dream last night (well, this morning... aren't they always "this morning"? The longest period of REM sleep is the last one before waking, after all) which involved a kind of tunnel-hacking underneath the campus of Stanford University. It seemed that, like New New York in Futurama, there were entire levels of ruins buried under the site - ten levels, to be precise, though in the dream I myself only went down to the ninth. (Insert Dante reference here, I suppose.)

This started by entering a small hole in the floor of a classroom, which was cut through the carpet and hardwood to reveal darkness underneath, and one dropped down into a hallway on a sort of basement level. Then it was mostly going through various passages and rooms and going down stairs to get down to the next levels. I recall enotsola going down the hole, and when he didn't come back I called after him. Then there was a part where he was above ground again but had been possessed by a malicious ghost or spirit (which, amusingly, was calling itself Leonardo Di Caprio, even though it bore no relation to the actual person) because he had come in close proximity of a certain herb or plant that was growing down there somewhere. Then there was also a part where he had returned ok and said that I didn't want to go there because of [something] and that it smelled like death down there. So I went, but I was going after him to rescue him from the possession.

I think that this part of the dream may have been repeated once or twice with different details which I am mushing together in the recall, because there seems to be a "enotsola goes and returns possessed" thread/version, a "enotsola goes, comes back ok, reports that I don't want to go down there" version, and a "enotsola goes, doesn't come back, and I go after him and find him possessed" version, which ends up in contradictions like him coming back and then my going after him because he didn't come back.

Anyways, I recall that while I did think it smelled musty and maybe a little... tangy? something... that it wasn't the putrescent odor of decaying flesh that I had been led to expect. The hallways and such that we went through were mostly just that, rather than dirt tunnels, though I think there were some places where the way was lined in stone or bricks. (How ten layers of civilization got under Stanford I have no idea.) We emerged into a large room, something like a gymnasium. There was light, but I don't think it was electric; in fact I think in this case there was light coming through windows, despite the fact that we were seven levels underground at this point. Now that I mention it, I think there had been ambient light all along which hadn't had any particular source. In this room, enotsola was in some kind of trance, fighting in almost slow motion, using some sort of weaponless martial arts form. Even though things were moving slowly, it was clear that he and the people he was fighting were actually moving quickly and I was just seeing it slowly. The plant which had caused him to be in this mental state in the first place was growing out of cracks in the stone-block walls, and waving gently as if underwater. It basically just looked like a large-bladed, overgrown clump of grass.

I did manage to break him out of it, which was part calling on the whole love-bond thing to remember who he was, and part sheer Will that I would repel whatever thing was taking him over and that I would not fall under the plant's spell nor succumb to the spirit's power flowing through enotsola. I don't remember what led to us going down to the ninth level after that, nor why we didn't descend to the tenth.

After all of this there was something that almost qualifies as a second dream, because I was now by myself, or I should say, the people I had been with were no longer there (including enotsola) and I was watching a crowd of people. They were gathered around a part-tent, part-concrete (?) kind of small building or enclosed space, where there were lots of clothes and such hanging around. Some of these were being sold like it was some kind of flea market. There was also one set of an antique hat and dress on display, and this was being made offerings to as a representation of the collective ancestor spirits of all assembled. There was another small part with finding a flattish stone about a foot or a foot and a half across, which was as light as if it were made of styrene foam, but was still actually stone (wasn't pumice or anything either, it was just unnaturally light).

I see some Underworld themes in this dream (the entrance through a hole into the ground, the sourceless light, the confrontation with a male guardian or antagonist), but I think they're just being laid into an otherwise ordinary psychological/"junk drawer" kind of dream because they are things that I have been focusing attention on a lot lately.

Edit: Oh, you know what, now that I think about it, I think the setting may also have been influenced by the description of Goblin Town in Freeholds and Hidden Glens (the Changeling supplement). I say it was "ruins", and it was, but it wasn't abandoned; there were a number of people roaming around and all in all it gave the impression of being used, if not inhabited.