Dreams

I dreamt last night about a girl - woman, really - who was attractive, in a pinched, harsh sort of way. She had short dark hair and opaque brown eyes and I thought she was trying to seduce me, but no.

She implied I should do everything myself, with no contact from her.

I told M, in the dream, and M said, "that's what they do," meaning she was a dominatrix. But that wasn't right either.

I went to her place - a posh manhattan brownstone, with marble floors and ascending staircases - and was guided onto a small open platform just inside the entry, where most of my clothing was removed and I was chained, symbolically, to the guardrail of the platform.

The platform was mounted on a giant hydraulic lift, like a mechanic's, and when she gave the signal, it started to rise.

It quickly grew darker as we ascended and the gleaming marble interior fell away to reveal the skeleton of a vast, dark, industrial structure - all rusted beams and hanging, gently swaying lights.

As we continued to rise, however, it seemed as if things were somehow flipped around - as if we were going down into the earth. At the same time, things around me were regressing or falling apart - decomposing, even - but not in a disturbing way - more like in continuation of the organic process, a return to the soil.

Rusted beams became cracked concrete floors then dusty old attics and then straw-laden, oak-beamed barns, until finally the lift broke through the earth itself and clods of dirt rolled aside to reveal an open farmer's field in the early evening of late autumn.

As I emerged from the earth I noticed something at the field's end, what looked like two toll booths, only no pavement, just dirt, and there were peasants hurrying through and amassing on the other side.

I walked over to the gate and felt it - a tingling sensation, a call to action...

The peasants were being called, like salmon swimming upstream, to the imminent clash between old and new.

This was the gateway to revolution.

I walked through.