Flood Dream

Gosh, I'm glad this dream didn't turn out to be just another subconscious allegory for me pissing the bed. Granted, it's been a while since I've had one of those, but hey, you never know.

I dreamed that it rained hard for several days, until Moraga and Lafayette started to flood. I was driving home through the windy, narrow part of the main road between the two cities, and began to encounter large puddles in the middle of the street which had accumulated from water that was flowing down the hillside. Conditions became continually worse as I went along, and eventually I was driving through moving streams of water, which cascaded down the hill to my right and then flowed over the ridge on the left.

Every stream became more dangerous. My car hydroplaned a couple times, and I nearly lost control. Then I noticed that the water reached up to my fender, and I was practically fording some of the rivers. Finally, the current got the best of my car and it lost contact with the pavement for good, beginning to drift towards the steep downward slope on the opposite side of the road.

I opened the sunroof and climbed out on top of my car, where I managed to catch on to an overhanging tree branch and climb up. From there, I watched in dismay as the deadly current tumbled my car over the hill and out of sight.

The tree that had saved me was rooted in the upward sloping hill on the right side of the street. I shimmied over to the base of the tree, made contact with a relatively dry portion of the ground, and somehow managed to climb the rocks leading up to the top.

When I got there, I found that the valley on the other side had turned into a lake, and was feeding the stream that had carried my car away. Even more amazing was that people had already managed to set up lake-oriented businesses in the area. For example, a stereotypically scruffy old bearded sailor dude in a yellow rain jacket had opened up a ferry service, for which a long line of people had accumulated.

I noticed that my family was already in line, and nearing the front. It wasn’t just my mom and dad and my brother and sister, but my grandparents from both sides and the dog. My brother had even managed to salvage his girlfriend. Lucky bastard. Here I am, eternally damned to be alone, minus one beloved automobile, minus one life and one home, and my brother gets to keep his girlfriend. Gee, good thing this is just a dream.

“Oliver! We thought we’d never see you again!” They believed that surely I’d perished on whatever mundane errand I was running.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“The whole bay area is uninhabitable. So anywhere but here.” Someone tells me. “This guy is renting out ferries to take people to higher ground.” Where higher ground was exactly, I never found out.

We were next to board. The last ferry to leave was a sturdy looking barge. Some people who paid the old sailor enough had even loaded their cars on board.

“Well, that’s it for the barges.” said the old man. “Who’s next?” Our group stepped forward. “I’m running out of vessels, but methinks I’ve got something that can accommodate the lot of ya.” He lead us over the dock to a long inflatable kayak type affair. It looked really old and dilapidated, and a patchwork of different fabrics sealed the many holes it had acquired throughout the ages. “All aboard!” he said.

My family reluctantly climbed in. The dog stood on the bow, looking surprisingly at home. I hesitated and asked the sailor rather bluntly, “Is this thing really going to stay afloat?”

He looked at me for a moment, then abruptly produced a pistol from somewhere and held it against my temple. “Is she seaworthy, yee ask? Well, let’s find out!”

I knew that meant he was going to shoot me, though how that would determine if the boat would float I don’t quite understand. I guess it’s just a testament to the logical bankruptcy of my dreams. At any rate, he pulled the trigger and instead of a bang I heard a turbine whirring while feeling a strong insistent sucking against my forehead.

“I just be kiddin’ with ya,” he said, “I just use this to deflate me boats quickly. Of course she be seaworthy, ya landluberous trout!” What? “Now I don’t got all day. In with yeh!”

I climbed into the one remaining seat, which was at the very front. As I sat down I noticed that there were at least a couple of inches of water flooding the bottom. “Arrrrgh, that be a part of her wondrous functionality!” he said. “Don’t ferget yer paddles!” He passed each of us a wooden oar, my 70+ year old grandparents included. “Now, off with yeh!” He cast off the rope holding our “sea fairing vessel” to the dock, and then pushed us out onto the lake unceremoniously with his foot before turning away to light his incredibly predictable corncob pipe.

And so we began paddling “out of the bay area,” whatever that means. Eventually we found San Francisco and began to follow the bay bridge away from it. None of this makes any sense geographically, regardless of how flooded anything was, but hey, logically bankrupt, remember?

Oh, and somewhere along the way, we met a group of business men leaving the financial district. Somehow they were still complaining about how shitty the Nasdaq was doing, and I remember something about how they thought PG&E was going to stop powering their high rise office building. “Yup, those bastards are gonna rip the wire right out.” one said, looking back at his place of work. Apparently, there was one single wire running into the entire sixty story skyscraper, and the assholes at PG&E were going to send someone out to take it away. Bummer.

The other thing of note was that the city skyline, while partially submerged, was ridiculously futuristic. The buildings were all shiny and even more monolithic than usual. Then I woke up.

DREAM ANALYSIS:

Beats the shit out of me!