What might this represent?
I was at work, in a three-storey office building. Not where I work now, or with the same people. In my dream I enjoyed my work a great deal but also enjoyed my free time.
My office was maybe a half mile from the beach. It was a small but busy town called Monica Beach, where I had just moved a few weeks prior. No, not Santa Monica. I don’t even know if this was California. Maybe; it felt further north than LA yet at the same time, looked a bit Hawaiian. Come to think of it, it almost seemed like a much smaller version of Monterey Bay. It was lovely, with old buildings and houses right alongside modern structures. Nothing in the town was over three floors high… it was a rule to keep the view of the ocean from the hillsides intact for all people to enjoy.
I took my lunch break, eating from a small vending cart streetside, listening to a couple of brightly scrubbed teenagers with battered guitars and shiny voices busk for small bills and change. Everything in this town was clean. No trash in the gutters. No dust on windows. No stains on the sidewalks. All clothes pressed and no hair out of place. It looked perfect from the outside. A living breathing 60s sitcom set, moved into a modern world.
Mid-bite into my second street taco I heard a thundering crash come from the direction of the beach. I choked, dropped the taco and whirled to find the source. I saw a spray of ocean water 60 feet high. I threw a dollar at the teens and another at the taco guy and screamed for them to RUN. They looked at me like I was utterly strange and stayed where they were. Fine.
I started running away from the beach, looking for high ground, when I heard another crash. This time, the spray fell like rain on me within moments of the wave breaking. I did not look back to see how high. As I was running, people were walking around and talking like it was no big deal that huge walls of water were bearing down on their town. WTF. Was I hallucinating?
For some reason, the doors to every building I tried to enter were locked. I found one house cut into a hill too steep to climb, but it had emergency ladders bolted to its side. Rung by rung I climbed until I got to the top. There was a door to another house and through the window I saw a woman and her baby. Several more waves had crashed, each higher than the last, so I beat on her door to warn her. She saw me through the window and clutched her baby tighter, asking me what I wanted. I begged her to please let me in. She looked very frightened, and refused. I screamed that there were waves coming. She still refused, and retreated into another room. I broke open the door and followed her.
Another wave crashed down, this one much higher, at least 80 feet. It was over half a mile away but level with my current elevation. I dragged her to the window to see. She laughed and said in 100 years the water had never hurt this town. They were protected. As the words left her mouth, a torrent tore through the street below us. Her mouth fell open in shock. The baby started to cry. I grabbed them and tried to get them to leave for even higher ground, but they would not.
I ran around the back of her house which was also built on a hill, and found another ladder. I took it to the top of that structure and found myself on a gorgeous rooftop deck. The view to the ocean was perfect. I could see the unending train of waves bearing down one by one. Each was higher than the next.
There were maybe 50 people on the deck. BBQ. Beer. Kids laughing. Adults with binoculars. I asked wtf was going on and was told by a woman dressed in her Sunday best that this was the annual Water Tower party, commemorating 100 years of safety from the waves because of the magic Water Tower built by the town’s founder. I screamed at her that they were NOT safe, that water was scouring the streets below them if they would only turn and look. She laughed. Ridiculous, they said. They would not see.
I turned to watch the next wave break. This one was over 100 feet tall when it hit the beach, and went inland for 1000 feet before breaking. The screams of the people below were louder than the roar of the water. Not here. Glasses of wine clinked. Soft laughter punctuated the sizzling grill. The meat smelled so bloody and salty like seawater. No one had any awareness of the destruction happening below. Every building at street level was underwater. In and out like a Fundy tide it rolled, every wave scouring the city clean. Pieces of mortar and trees and bodies like so much flotsam were sucked out to sea, never to be seen again. One bright red bit looked a lot like the dress the woman with the baby had been wearing… It swirled and went under. I shifted my eyes up from the destruction to see another wave.
As it approached I knew it was at least 300 feet tall. I did a quick calculation and realized it would inundate the top of even this hill. Behind me was one more hill with a tall water tower on it. I ran for it.
Reaching the base, I grabbed for the ladder. Gilbert Grape had nothing on me. I shot up the side of the base like an ant up a wall. At the bottom of the bulb was a hatch; I open it, scrambled inside, and made my way down a low narrow corridor to a door. Outside was the ladder up to the top of the tower. My arms were burning. As I pulled myself to the top, I could feel a strange pulsing sensation coming from the slick steel of the tank. I didn’t stop to think about it. I got to the top, now 1000 feet above the beach. The 300 foot waves had breached the line of hills from whence I had just come. Nothing moved below me. Aside from the water, and the strange hum below my feet, it was quiet. No wind. No birds. No breath. I gasped.
Suddenly the water tower started to shake. Earthquake? No… more like a vibration. It got stronger and stronger and the hum became a sonic wall of pain. The ocean below started to ripple like a shaken bowl of jello, frothy peaks of water topping it like whipped cream. Another wave was coming. The final wave. The tower started screaming. 1000 feet of water rushed toward me. 1000 feet of water aimed straight at the tower. I started screaming with the tower.
The scream woke me up.
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Some possible interpretations:
ReplyDelete"But tidal waves are also symbolic of our feelings. They may show that we are overcome with strong feelings on an issue. The sea in dreams symbolises the feelings we have and the land the facts about some issue. For the sea to sweep over the land shows that we are making very emotional decisions, possibly based on insufficient evidence."
Wow. yup. Let's be truthful... I am making assumptions about someone right now that might be based more on my habitual expectation of being disappointed by love than on cold hard fact. My bad.... maybe.
Another insight:
ReplyDelete"...To dream that you are caught in a tidal wave, represents an overwhelming emotional issue that demands your attention. You may have been keeping your feelings and negative emotions bottled up inside for too long. You may be holding back tears that you are afraid to express in your waking life. On a positive note, the tidal wave symbolizes the clearing away of old habits. If you are carried away by the tidal wave, then it means that you are ready to make a brand new start in a new place. "
Well I am running from the wave. I am screaming defiance in the face of it. Am I really that afraid of letting go and loving? Damn.
Another really great one: PART ONE
ReplyDelete"Dreaming of a tidal wave, or any massive wave, is usually experienced from the viewpoint of watching it approach, either on shore, from a hill or some other near-by vantage point. This dream may often be accompainied by a sense of fear or panic. To understand dreams of this nature, it can help to start by understanding what water and the sea mean to us in dreams (see “Dream Meanings: Water” post.) If we look at water in our dreams as a symbol of our emotions and feelings, part of our inner world, then tidal waves can be like our emotions welling up and getting a little out of control. One of the advantages of being on shore or nearby watching the wave approach in the dream, is that it gives us an opportunity to step outside ourselves and look at what we we are feeling. This is usually a helpful thing to do when our emotions get so strong that they well up into a massive wave!
Tidal waves often appear in our dreams when are under a lot of pressure or when significant change is occurring. They may be a an indication that we feel a little overwhelmed, that maybe we fear we won’t be able to cope or adjust with what we see in our own future. They may occur as recurring dreams, with the wave getting bigger or closer over subsequent nights. This may correspond to our increasing anxiety, or the looming date we fear getting closer. It is worth recognising that when we have these dreams there is often an area of our life that we are not looking at clearly, or that we are avoiding. Tidal wave dreams remind us that if we don’t confront and deal with things that are out of balance in our life, then they will confront us first! There are few clearer signs of confrontation than standing right before a towering body of surging water!"
PART TWO:
ReplyDelete"The things that we aren’t confronting may be as easy to identify as a test we are afraid of failing, a deadline we feel we won’t be able to meet, or a location or job move we don’t feel ready for. Tidal wave dreams may come because we are procrastinating, or simply don’t feel prepared. Or as water relates to our emotions, tidal wave dreams can come at the beginning of new relationships. We may even feel overwhelmed at how much we feel for someone! But tidal wave dreams, like most dreams, often work on many levels. Whether external pressures are dominant in our life or not, tidal wave dreams will often indicate a period of internal change. Remember that the sea is often a symbol for our own subconscious, so a giant wave in the sea can be like our subconscious rising up, making sure its power is felt through-out our waking and conscious life.
The sea can be a symbol for our own subconscious mind
This need not be such a scary or intimidating thing. By working with our dreams, we can come to feel comfortable in the realm of the subconscious. Those big, powerful, unknown forces that exist inside us and drive us and sometimes feel like they are going to overwhelm us, become far less terrifying when we are familiar with them. When we realise they simply a part of us and can be managed, tidal wave dreams no longer seem so urgent. To deal with tidal waves in dreams we can apply the same technique that we use when fleeing anything that scares us, and that is to confront it. You may think, how on earth do I confront a a tidal wave? It is so big, it can’t be killed or negotiated with, so how can it be beaten? But just as all things in our dreams are part of us, so too are tidal waves. And if tidal waves are a symbol for our subconscious, this is not something i would suggest we should want to beat into submission or seek to tame. The approach then is to merge with it. Tidal wave dreams invite us to dive into our subconscious, the learn to swim or surf and enjoy the experience of being at one with our-self, of exploring our emotions. If we are lucky, we may even learn to breathe under water. Some people are able to use diving into tidal waves as a trigger for lucid dreaming. Like flying then, swimming underwater or surfing a tidal wave can become one of the most exhilarating dream experiences, rather than one of anxiety or fear. Just one of the may rewards of working on our dreams and coming to know our own subconscious mind better!"
This one pretty much speaks for itself.
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