Dream: The Key Society

Dream 20030225, 10:00 AM:

I am with a group of people; it seems like we are jogging or walking down the side of a road. It is hilly. I have a rolling chair with me, and I consider rolling down the hill on it, but I just walk and push it along. Then, I’m jogging backward; I feel like I’m bored, and doing it to keep things a little more interesting. I trip and fall on my butt; one of my friends thinks that I was sitting in the chair and rolling down the hill and that is why I fell, but I explain that I was just jogging backward.

We pass a fenced-in area that looks like the back yard of a house; there is a vegetable garden here, with lots of big lush vegetables. But as I look closer, I realize that they’re not really plants, they’re just vegetables on a shaped thing of burlap. I remember talking to Joanna, and telling her about it, and that someone had tried to make it look like a garden with the burlap. I am cleaning the vegetables in a sink, like I’m preparing them to cook.

Then, I’m standing in an area that resembles a courtyard of a college campus. The building is a pretty sandy-colored brick, and the bottom edge of the building slopes in a curve, sort of like a squared arched ceiling in reverse. I am edging my way around the corners of the building, standing on this curved part, like it’s some kind of game. It reminds me of the “don’t step on the carpet, it’s full of alligators!” games we play as kids. I scoot down the side of the building, then around a corner, then around another. I go around this little area, then it opens out into a big area that seems to be below the ground floor of a building.

I realize that this area isn’t really suited to my wall-walking game, and then I realize that there are some really neat sculptures in this area. It’s set up like a large courtyard, but there is a roof above. The sculptures are up on pedestals, and are multi-colored. They remind me somewhat of Indian ritual art. I decide that I need to do a special ritual with them, and I start walking in a circle around one, bowing and genuflecting toward it. Then, I am moving toward another one, when I see a group of people who are on a tour through the building; there is a man in a suit leading them, like they are visiting the University on behalf of some company.

I move to the next one of the sculptures; there are several of them, arranged in a large pattern like a circle or polygon. This one has some kind of sign in front of the image, and the image is almost like a cartoon. I remember it being purple. The sign obscures most of the image, and someone comes up while I’m looking at it, and I say something about how it would be better if you could see the image.

Then, I walk around a corner, and I’m in a large open auditorium. There is a group here having some kind of awards ceremony. After I listen for a little bit, I learn that the group is called the Key Society; they also refer to Greek letters, I think Kappa Alpha or Kappa Beta. There is someone who is getting an award; her voice sounds like Lisa Simpson, although she is a real person and not a cartoon. She gets up to the microphone, and recites an elaborate poem asking for the current award holder to give her the award. There is a woman in a dress made of layers of thin black silky fabric, and she is pulling up a flounce to unpin or unclasp the award to give it to the girl.

One of the people in the audience, a woman holding a lute or a mandolin, asks me if I saw the pictures of the Venezuelan birds in here the other day. I tell her that I didn’t. She explains that they are the most amazingly beautiful pictures; they are on big paper sheets that come out of the walls and stretch across the room like a false ceiling. Someone says that if I were (a name – some Italian Renaissance artist) and I worked for a lifetime, I might be able to save up enough paper for this.

Now, they have all gotten fascinated talking about the paper murals. It seems like they’re trying to figure out how to get the sheets to roll out so that I can see them. One woman says something about how they come out from a hawk’s-eye in the ceiling; she points upward, and there is a metal bar running along the ceiling. It is painted gloss off-white, and it is pieced together with little round metal joints. It has something to do with the system that reels out the paper murals. Another woman takes hold of the bar, and slides along it holding something like a piece of rope in her two hands to slide along. The bar goes over the people seated in the audience, and she sort of drags over them; it doesn’t seem like she hurts anyone, it’s more funny than anything else. *end*