Dream: Climbing Down the Tower

Dream 20031130, 10:00 AM:

In this dream, Chris and I live in a huge, spacious condo. Police come, and they’re looking for “the Nash residence” – Mom is here with us, and tries to give them some line about how the Nashes are just staying with us temporarily, but I explain that they are our roommates, and live up on the second floor. [In real life, B. Nash, who has since married K., lived with Chris in his condo when I met him.] I point to the ceiling above my head, and explain that their bedroom is up there, and the second floor master bath is theirs. They have some kind of search warrant, and I tell them it’s OK to go up and look around. They all go up, three or four of them, and I follow them.

Up in B. and K’s bedroom, everything is carefully laid out in patterns on the floor. Clothing is out of the drawers and spread out in neat rows, as if they knew the police were going to come and search it and they wanted it to be easily viewed. The patterns make stripes and such across the floor, a geometrically pleasing design. I look at it with some amusement, because I know the police weren’t expecting this level of cooperation. One policeman asks me what is under the bed; I explain that it’s not my bedroom, that he’s welcome to look, but I have no idea what would be under the bed. He pulls up the coverlet and looks, but doesn’t appear to find anything.

Then, without any resolution of this situation that I can remember, I am up on the roof of the building. This is some development of the building where I work in real life. It is *huge* – at least the size of a city block, and landscaped like a park. There are four huge balconies with stairs up to them, one on each side of the building. There are quite a number of people up here. I am walking around, trying to determine which would be the best of the four balconies to arrange a special dinner with Chris; I consider the views of the city from each side, as well as which parts of the landscaped gardens are most attractive. It is fall, and so few things are blooming at present.

I am kind of down because of the bleak fall weather, and decide to fly around a little bit to lift my spirits. I think I narrowly missed becoming lucid. As I fly around, I think to myself that if I get caught flying, they’ll try to put me in a lab and figure out how I do it; I just decide that I won’t worry about it, because I want to fly. I fly over the rooftop area, where there are a large number of people, and see some men talking and taking off their shirts. They are lying down to tan on the roof deck, and I watch them for a little bit because they’re very attractive. A security guard comes over and makes them move, which annoys me. I realize that what he’s doing is moving all the men out of the sunshine, and putting women out there, and making the men go lie in the shade.

I walk up to a little kiosk office in the center of the roof. There are three or four women here, and I explain that a security guard is bothering our guests, and that he shouldn’t be making the men lie in the shade when they are trying to tan. One of the women asks who I am, and I introduce myself and dig out my card [the same business card as I use in real life, with the picture of the building on it.] She is startled when she realizes who I am, and asks what I do for the company since she hasn’t seen me here before. I explain that I’m the Assistant Director, and tell her that I book the large rooms downstairs, arrange events, manage affairs for the tenants, etc. [all the stuff I do in real life, as well as my real title.] They go out and stop the annoying guard, and also start to rearrange things – apparently, some people were playing loud music, and one of the women stops them, explaining that it’s against a rule. I walk by the kiosk again, which is now on an edge of the building, and I get each woman’s name twice (I keep forgetting) and shake their hands.

As I am standing there looking over the rooftop, a wind begins to blow. It blows stronger and stronger, becoming like a raging gale. There are several large window-like panes of glass suspended up in big frames; they don’t separate any interior from exterior, they are just decorative. The wind blows harder and harder until they finally shatter. Other windows on the building begin to shatter as well. I realize that a huge storm is coming, and we have to evacuate. The elevators are thronged with people trying to get down, so I take the stairs. There are a couple of people who come along with me; they don’t seem like friends or even acquaintances, but we seem to get to know each other as we’re going downward.

The building is hugely tall. Sixty or seventy stories. We walk down flight after flight of stairs. After a while, I begin to climb, sort of Spiderman-style, down the inside of the square staircase; it is faster than taking the stairs. At one point, I climb down a wall where letters stick out, making company names on the side of the wall. I keep going swiftly downward. A couple of times, I tell people in the building that they need to evacuate, the storm is coming. As I go down, different sections of it seem like retail shops, then fancy offices, then like a spa. My friends and I take an elevator through part of the building, once it is clear – we go from something like the 50th story to the 20th. We can see through one wall of the elevator how much the style of the interior changes. Signs along one side say “Tower Two” and then “Tower One” as we get lower. At one point, the building has an inset atrium-like area that opens to the outside. The light is oddly pink, and it seems like the storm has passed. People are walking out on the balcony area. I yell at them, telling them it’s just a lull, it will get bad again, and I continue going downward. This area is all dark lush woods and rich upholstery. There is a woman here who catches my eye and tries to whisper something to me, but I can’t hear her. She looks over at her supervisor, who shrugs and says that she doesn’t care what the girl says; the girl then tells me that she’s not going to be able to leave, she has to stay here. I shrug and go on downward.

I get into an area that has a sign on the stairwell door that says “Spiral.” All the stairs are curved, and I begin zooming down them a whole flight at a time, catching the pole at the end of each round and slinging myself around it. It seems unnaturally fast, but I just feel like I’m hurrying, not like time is accelerated. I get to the bottom, and I realize that there should be some basement or something for me to get into. I am at the lowest floor of the building, so I have to go outside. There is a huge group of statues, massive heroic stone sculptures, each thirty or forty feet tall against a canyon-like wall of rock. They are some russet-colored stone, like a granite. I see what I’m looking for, the top edge of a stair rail leading down into a stairwell at the base of the wall. It is old looking, either iron or bronze, and I begin to climb down the stairs. The stairwell is very narrow, and I have to go down backwards to fit in. My shoulders begin to wedge against the walls, and I am trying to figure out how to twist to get down, like crawling through a very small tunnel. Then I wake up. *end*