Dream: Two Tornadoes

4:45 dream:
Two Tornadoes
I’m walking along a shopping strip mall, and look up to the horizon, and see two huge tornadoes – they look very strange, though, like they are tiny, tight cores inside of a much larger, diffuse cloud. They don’t look dangerous or like they’re moving quickly. They look as if they’re made out of smoke; like some of the swirling smoke shapes that incense makes. Then I realize that they’re headed toward where I am, and I need to take shelter. I step inside of one of the shops, and Laura L. is here, from the soapmaker’s association. It’s her shop. I tell her about the tornadoes, and we go to the window and look, and then we start trying to find the best place to hide; it’s not a very big storefront, and there doesn’t seem to be any real secure area that is separated from the big glass windows. I think that she and the other person who was with her go to the bathroom; I open a little door and see a steel spiral staircase, and decide that the stairwell looks like the most secure area. I crawl in, close the door, and hug the staircase. I’m sort of wrapped around it, hoping that will keep me from being pulled off. It reminds me of the stairs in the Studio.

Then I feel a tugging at the roof above me; it feels like the top of the staircase is pulling up gently, I can feel it where I’m wrapped around it. Then, I feel a sense of movement, and I realize that the whole building must be moving – I call out, and ask if we’re flying through the air, and Laura calls back and confirms that we are.

We land, without the building being totally crushed or destroyed. As we’re getting ourselves out of the building, which now looks saggy and slightly smooshed, like a wet cardboard box, I learn that it somehow landed on somebody’s antique round table; we’re watching them try to put this thing back together. It looks like it’s made of ceramic or very brittle wood, and it’s broken into 4 not-quite-even sections. It seems like we’ve landed somewhere far out in the country; all the buildings around are made entirely of wood.