A delightful dream I had on 23 September 2022.
I’m on anti-anxiety medication (Setraline 50mg daily, not much but it keeps me from sliding into non-functionality), and I don’t know if it’s the meds or a healthy imagination but I have amazing dreams! Complete plots, like a movie, start to finish, mostly hanging together and mostly just really nice, not confusing or scary. They’re so cool I thought I should try document some of them, so here goes.
I was in York (or New York, I dunno, some York-ish place), which was an island and the promenade around the island was about 5km so just right for a parkrun. I was walking along the promenade thinking this will work well for a parkrun and really I should run it every morning (but also knowing full well I won’t).
There are other islands close by, I guess much like in Lake Maggiore, or Stockholm or something and massive ships, steamers, as well as smaller yachts and tugboats and little fishing boats and whatever cruising past in this channel. It’s really busy. I know that the open ocean is off to the right.
Then it seems as if the current or something is shaking things up, some of the smaller boats run aground. Now York has changed to some old town, wild west style. Maybe like how Kommetjie looked two hundred years ago. Big dresses and such.
So the people on the shore help with buffering the boats and stabilising things and whatnot, and then there’s this massive, like three times my height, green-oxidised copper donkey slowly ambling past in the channel, in the water, with difficulty, like it’s not used to walking. I mean it’s a fucking statue why is it walking. It seems a bit distressed, but everything about it moves slowly, like it’s not used to being able to be in motion yet.
I comfort the donkey and help him turn around away from shore and off he goes towards the ocean.
I look up and there an even bigger copper horse. Same story. It seems more adept at walking and follows the donkey.
There’s a woman, clearly focused on and following the two walking equine statues. But her boat is becoming unstable and she heads to shore. We help to stabilise it.
Now the current seems to really suck out back to the ocean and some people are in trouble. All the people help pull people to shore. At this point we’re not bothered about saving boats, we just help the people. There’s a raft with a man and 4 dogs on it and two of the puppies, big fluffy Labrador types, say hell no and keep wanting to bail. I wade in and take them to shore. The woman asks why and I shrug and say, they needed help.
The woman’s boat breaks loose and gets sucked out among the big boats that are now bobbing out of control. The fool goes in after it. I’m wading again, probably wanting to save more puppies, and now we’re at risk of being squashed between all the boats slamming into each other. I decide well, she needs help, so I try to go out after her but this is a bad idea. Both of us are now just struggling to gain height and out of the squash zone. Now I’m on a bus that somehow ended up in the channel and I’m just trying to grab what I can.
The bus floats along, and the current is now pushing in from the sea. We are being swept into the harbour promenade off to the left, there’s parallel lanes and cute little hotels and shops and things, but now this means a lot of pointy bits and flotsam. The bus snags on something and turns sideways, getting stuck in the lane and there’s a huge boat coming from behind. I panic. I reach up to grab something higher up as the boat behind rams into the bus. It bumps me up and fortunately I grab hold of something and pull myself up. I look around and see the woman bouncing around quite comfortably on all this wreckage and mayhem. She mountain goats over to me and says, let’s go get your puppies! and helps me to shore.
As we navigate the chaos, we see a massive rockslab emerging from the sea and understand that this is what is causing the currents. In the back of my mind I start making the connection with the walking statues, and that the woman is probably a treasure hunter. but we go off to save the puppies.
I wake up.