| By Sorabji on Saturday, April 11, 1998 - 09:40 pm: |
i don't know where the plane is going except that it's headed toward some destination in Asia. there is some question about whether the plane will be able to take off, and about how long it will stay in the air. but i'm assured that even if it craps out it will be able to land safely. i don't know who the pilot is but i sit next to the pilot during the flight. the runway is actually a ramp. it rises gradually as we drive toward take-off, then rises abruptly right at the point of take-off; it makes me think we're on a roller coaster. this is when i learn that the runway is several thousand feet above sea level. we leave the runway and are instantly several thousand feet above the pacific ocean. i know that it is the Pacific, and not the Gulf of Siam, and in the dream it seems that Cambodia somehow does touch the Pacific. before long the plane slows down and it can not stay high in the air. so the pilot flies the plane a few feet above the ocean. i see that we are flying beside ocean liners and steamships, and they are moving as fast as we. i'm assured by the pilot that this is all normal for this airplane, but i also know we're going to die, and that the plane will soon be in the ocean. |
I reach into my bag and pull out a cold bottle of Finlandia, and pass it forward, motioning it onward until it reaches the open cockpit bulkhead and mark nods approvingly while taking the bottle into his hands. I look at the others in the belly of the plane. Wisper, Spider, Heather, SaraH, Antigone, and the Dr pulling up the rear with a stuffed animal next to him, something like a large stiff armed big bird, blue and green, with czarina sitting next to the bird, calming him. She has a crown on, and the bird nuzzles it softly as if to rub out one or two of the jewels, but noe fall. Beneath me, through the open door, sits the QueenMary at dock in Long beach, and I marvel at how short a time it took to cross the Pacific, and we are not in Asia anymore. I wonder if we dreamt we were. Mark has not even had time to open the bottle. The cord above me tugs me to the drop and out I go, thinking, will the chute open and will I feel the tug if the line snarls, and suddenly there is Droop dangling from a colorful silk balloon as big as Texas, and moving slowly over the trees. I can't see the water quickly rising up beneath me. |
balloon. it was on a night when i had read a quirky poe story called "the angel of the odd", which ends with a guy dangling from a hot air balloon. the balloon in my dream wasn't particularly large or colorful, as far as i can remember. what i remember was the feeling of being high up and watching the landscape change. i think i tried to make it too a cloud. when i was a kid, there were times of the year when the clouds would be so big and solid-looking i imagined houses on them, or planes flying into them and getting stuck. i used to try to will myself to dream that again, but i never did. |