Marble & Water.

Jan. 12, 2011: The dreams last night began with me, alone, walking through a wide alleyway in a foreign city. Everything was covered in white, aged marble: the walls of every building, the floors, the statues and stairs. I was wearing a flashy white dress with large black dabs on the material and a pair of fluorescent pumps, and was headed toward a museum (though it looked like every other building). I made my way up a set of narrow, enclosed stairs, my heels echoing loudly in the empty square. I stepped into a small, windowed room and some scuffle happened, I can't quite remember. I was forced against one of the windowed walls, which showed out into a separate room, but the window was covered with long, white blinds and I couldn't see much of what was happening inside. Two or three people were moving around inside, and whoever pushed me up against the window told me not to move and joined the others in the connecting room.

A fellow captor, crouched nervously on the other side of the door, was looking up at me and breathing hard. He was unshaven and ragged. He whispered for me to get down on my knees and crawl over to him, and then we could both escape. I leaned my forehead against the window, feeling too terrified to move, but as I stood there listening to the man's heavy breathing, I decided to kneel down. I quietly crawled past the door and the old man immediately pushed my hand into a small white cube perched near him. It was open only in the front, and was covered with a white fabric that, despite the lack of wind, swayed gently. I grabbed the only thing inside, a small, porcelain bottle that broke as I squeezed it. Looking down into my hand, I saw that the glass from the bottle had disappeared, and a few dozen small, T-shaped glass objects were there instead. They were milky pink and smaller than a fleck of oat. I closed my hand carefully over them, knowing they would help aid a very sick person (I don't know if the sick person was somebody I knew or somebody the man knew; I think we both had somebody to help). I leaped down into a recessed part of the hall. Noise from the other room told us that our actions hadn't gone unnoticed, and we ran for it.

We wove our way through tightly-fitted buildings and up and down more marble stairs. I lost my shoes somewhere along the way, but we continued running through the labyrinth of a city. Every now and then, we would hide behind some large, white statue or outcropping and turn back another direction. As we found ourselves in a large town square, rushing with people, we decided we'd have to get more serious, and slid down a vast staircase that lead to the sea, which was busy with boats. The old man I was running with morphed into two women, and we continued on in haste. We landed on a small, stone sidewalk that bordered the vivid water, and jumped onto a marble port. The cold from the sea was apparent in the air here, and we jumped from one port to another, knowing we wouldn't make it and dreading the cold. One of the women with me chattering about the chills and pneumonia, and as I looked around in mid-jump, I saw that all of the people around were dressed in old-fashioned clothing. We were somewhere in the mid 1800's. Half of my body landed on the hard port, and, though I was hurt, I was glad to have escaped most of the frigid waters. We scuttled back to the mainland. (Although, still, everything was clad in the same white marble, and there was no single glimpse of Earth anywhere. The cloudy marble unnaturally lipped right against the cold sea.) As we continued running, we came to a series of fountains, patterned at about ten feet of pool and five feet of marble. Sighing, I began jumping over the waters.

Amazed at my own powers, I looked over and saw a family gasp and clap as I bounded fifteen feet in the air and landed safely on the other side. I smiled and did it again, this time with a small, midair curtsey (I was now dressed like a Gibson girl: Brown, heeled, buckled boots, a gray skirt that came to my calf, a long-sleeved, ruffled shirt in a faded blue, and even my hair was pulled in a thick, practical bun). After jumping over a few more pools, we were nearing a large hole in a wall, with the roof built outward, inviting those outside in. We made our way inside, no longer running or worried about being chased, and noticed that the sunlight didn't reach in here. The mood had suddenly changed, and greatly.

The walls were a dark, Earthen brown and dripping with natural condensation. We wound our way through what seemed to be a tunnel, and quickly found ourselves underground. We passed a number of small rooms, which each housed different disabled children. After a while, we ended up in the last room, where a young girl with obvious disfigurements was smiling at us. She was speaking with her nanny, a rounded, older lady, but was trying to get our attention. She began pointing at photos on the wall, all of her, and began pouting her lips theatrically and batting her eyelashes. It was clear that she felt very beautiful and enjoyed having somebody to pose for. As I began looking around the room, I knew there was a secret passageway that would lead us where we needed to go. While I looked elsewhere, the little girl began blowing up balloons and popping them against her chest, looking wide-eyed to see if I had noticed.

This somehow morphed into a completely different dream, where my mother and I were part of a resistance against foreign rulers. This dream is far too messy to unravel, but I don't want to completely forget about it (so any other readers can stop reading now). After racism, showers, and scarlet velvet curtains, she went to speak with one of the men in charge. We demanded latrines (this seemed very significant, and I remember in the dream, I was even shocked at our living conditions) and that they would be the ones to service them. She continued with a list of demands, and I was amazed at her strength and lack of fear. She spoke to these minions of our dictator with so much nerve, and her face was harder than I'd ever seen it in real life.

The dream this morning is equally blurry, but I'll write some of it out for myself, as well. Gabriel, Amara, and I were hiking through the forest and came to a large lake. The lake was full of people on boats, inflatables, jet-skis, and floating tents. We began walking on the very edge of the lake, a narrow, dropped-down muddy path with the mountains and forest on our left side, and the water on our right. Though the area was swarming with people, nobody spoke to us. They were busy covering themselves with bug repellent, eating food off skewers, napping, or slapping flies away. We almost seemed invisible on our small path, threaded between worlds.