Dream: Back in Time at Sammons

Dream 20030417, 7:00 AM:

The dream begins in an old-fashioned house. The setting is some time in the late nineteenth century, and I am a woman in dress from the time. Two men have come and are trying to take me away from my home for some sort of journey across the frontier. I don’t understand, or don’t remember, the actual mission of their journey. I remember struggling with them, and finally giving in. I have a very clear image of the front of the house as we walk away from it, it is Italianate, with pale rose-colored stucco and a widow’s walk porch. There is a sign on the front, and I forget the name on it, but it starts with a G. I know that it’s my name, and it’s like a combination of my home and a hotel or boarding house.

We walk a long way. I get frustrated with the two men, and fight with them. I remember pushing one of them and making him fall down the edge of a bluff. I was holding on to him by a strap or belt, and said something about how if he didn’t back off, I was going to let him drop next time. At another point, I remember holding some sharp stick, like a pencil, at the belly of one of the men, and telling him that if he pushed me any further, I was going to stab him with it. It seemed like a serious threat at the time.

Then, we’re looking over the edge of a huge cliff or bluff, and laid out before us are the lights of a big city. I make a remark that it’s amazing to see Manhattan like this for the first time. It’s massive, and seems to kind of fade in and out of existence, like Tintagel in the mists.

Then, we are at a surreal version of the Sammons Center where I work. I see a newspaper, one of those flip-page sized ones like the Observer, and as I look through it at the clothes and such, I realize that we’re somehow back in time. The images are all from the seventies, and I look through them and chuckle at the fashions and the styles of things. I’m not a woman any more, I’m myself now. I go through the building, which has turned into an ordinary office building. I walk around, trying to figure out who everyone is. I don’t exactly come out and tell the people that I’m from the future, but I try to figure out who everyone is based on the records I’ve seen, and I make some mental notes to myself based on what I know is going to happen to some of the staff. I ask if Tim is here, and they say that he is, he’s still dealing with his divorce. I don’t know if I’m trying to convince them that I’m from the future, or if I’m just trying to pinpoint what year it is.