Dream: Flash Flood and the Piano

Dream 20030701, 6:00 AM:

I’m in my house, although it seems very different from the Avenel house. Mom and Dad are here; I think they’re visiting. It begins to rain violently, and the water is flooding the back yard so fast that it is coming in breaking waves, like a beach. Little breakers curl and crash across the back yard. I am a little startled, because it is so sudden.

I know that since there’s going to be flooding, I have to go get the piano from storage. I go to a huge, tall building; it must be forty or fifty stories. I know that the place where the piano is stored is someone’s dorm room; it’s in this building, but on one of the lower floors. I look around out the windows, and I can see these humongous storm clouds all around us. From this height, I can see the different storm cells pouring down dark columns of rain. I watch, and one of the rain columns is twisting like a tornado; I know that tornadoes aren’t usually in rain clouds, but this one apparently is. I point it out to someone standing next to me.

I go downstairs, I think that the room I’m looking for is 11-1N. The part of the tower that I’m in now is all dorm rooms, and I try several wrong ones before finding the right one. The numbers are stencilled on the doors in red paint; it looks kind of industrial but artsy. Once I get to the right room, I’m looking for a young woman who was storing the piano for me. I don’t remember her name now, but in the dreamtime, I do… I remember asking for her when I was looking for the room. It seems like there’s somebody with me, but I don’t remember who.

Inside the woman’s room, I find the piano where it was stored; it’s beneath a table, and it is very small. It seems like the width and depth of an upright piano, but only about a foot and a half tall. It has no legs, and I know they were removed for storage. I lift the piano up easily, and carry it with me. There’s something else of similar shape that I pick up along with the piano, but I don’t remember what it is. I talk to the woman who stored it for me for a while, and then walk out.