While awake...

Oil of Oregano

I am on a journey. I have lost my purse. I never lose my purse. AG also notices she has lost her purse. We are worried we might not be able to return home. Someone is showing me a map of the island we are on. It is located southeast of Australia and north of Antarctica. It is not New Zealand... it is a continent noone has ever seen before. It is split in half and thus has been claimed by two different countries. It is cold here but there is vegetation and population. I find some personal belongings in a wallet that I carry - but not my passport. AG finds her purse. I still cannot believe I have lost my papers! I continue to listen to descriptions about the island continent. It looks about half the size of Australia. The west side of the island is greener. I see it as a map, and I am looking at it upsidedown.

While awake...

OK then...

While awake...

There?
There!

I see T. in a swimming pool. He is all smiles and exclaims that he is now a registered life-guard. So he has changed careers, I think to myself. He seems so happy now. I never knew he was interested in swimming or being a life-guard.

While awake...

Taliesin also dreams.

I see S! She is talking to me as if nothing ever happened. We are my current age. I do not even flinch or feel surprised to have her among us. We are talking about everyday things.

AG is also present. Are we in a shop of some kind? Things look dark and there is a restless and worrysome atmosphere wherever I go.

While awake...

"Wren, M. K. A Gift Upon the Shore. New York: Ballantine, 1990. New York: Ballantine, 1991. London: Penguin, 1991.
Two women struggle to keep knowledge alive in Oregon in the wake of a general collapse climaxed by a nuclear war ("the End") and an ensuing nuclear winter and plague. Electromagnetic pulse effects destroy electronics, and damage to the ozone layer leads to widespread blindness in both humans and animals. After a period during which roving bandits pose the main threat, the greatest obstacle to the survival of civilization is the flourishing of bigoted Christian fundamentalism among the few survivors left. More sensitive and intelligent than most such stories. A list of the books chosen by the main characters to perpetuate human culture is printed on the inside of the dust jacket."


"Jersild, P[er] C. After the Flood. Originally Efter Floden. Albert Bonniers, 1982. Translated from the Swedish by Lö ne Thygesen Blecher and George Blecher. New York: Morrow, 1986.
The thirty-three year-old narrator was born after the holocaust into a depopulated, brutalized world. His harelip is his only deformity in a world in which most of the few surviving women are either infertile or give birth only to terribly deformed babies. He escapes from the gang of pirates where he was forced to have sex with the captain, seeking a better life, but is pursued by them relentlessly. He takes a fertile nun as his lover, but she dies in childbirth. There is a glimmer of hope as a seemingly well-adapted tribe of dark-skinned reindeer herders appear, but they succumb to disease. It seems at the end of the novel that all humans and most other life forms are doomed to extinction. Damage to the ozone layer is described. The author is a physician who says he was deeply impressed by the instructions given him in medical school for dealing with the more serious victims of a nuclear attack: put them out of their misery with an injection. At the Seventh World Congress of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (1987), Jersild spoke movingly of the responsibility of authors to depict accurately the consequences of nuclear war. The novel was an international best-seller, translated into many languages."

Paul Brians

A group of half-dead people are trying to hide. They crawl under a flap of earth and cover themselves with the organic sheet so that they become invisible. One single eye can be seen if you look really close - the face is painted green like the ground, and it stares in fear of what is after them. They are lying on dead people, but that is nothing compared to what might happen if they are found.

While awake...

The Quiet Earth

While awake...

So There
The City Stories Project

(Evidence that dreams can be pretty sick... Read at own risk!)

I am standing in the entry hall to my grandmother's house. I see something wrapped in white fabric on the ground. I walk around it - it is outside near the mainroad. I lightly touch it with my foot and realize there is a body wrapped inside! Now I am back inside grandmother's house and the wrapped up body wakes up. It is my father. He has just been rolled up in a ball while sleeping on the floor in the foyer. He points to a spot on the wooden floor and says that that was always his favorite spot to sleep and can I see that little groove in the floor? Yes, I tell him. Well, that is where I slept. I am a little puzzled by the fact that he slept on the floor all those years, but he does almost seem fond of this memory.

Grandma and I are watching the cows from afar. Three of them are about to give birth and I see the newborn calves as they begin their struggle to stand upright. We stand on the irregular stonehedge far below the meadow under the hill where the farmhouse is. I don't think I have ever stood there before. Now I see how the three little calves trod along towards a group of cows and they are able to walk independently. So soon! It is a very beautiful moment and we have tears in our eyes.

Now we look at the barbed wire around the cow pasture and we need to tighten it. Grandma points to a low part of the wire, where the bulls probably could jump over. We grab it and tense it while wrapping around a wooden pole. I see a bull to my right. It doesn't come closer. We step under the barbed wire and now there is snow on the ground. It is winter. We need to hide. Grandma is no longer with me and I know someone is coming. I am standing high up on a snowbank together with three or four other people. We hear them coming and jump into the snow to hide. It is not cold but I sink down far so that I cannot get up. I use my heels to step up backwards and manage to free myself. The sky is yellow. I help someone, a woman, to get free from a mass of snow that is on top of her. There are now many more people here. We are all uncertain of what to do. We know there is some nuclear disaster danger and someone calls is The Moby. "The Moby is coming soon." It has something to do with the yellowing sky and we know that the end might be near.

I am joining a group of people to a several storey house, where they have set up a compound. Everything looks old and worn out - the colors are mostly brown, moss green and beige and everything takes place in twilight. They are trying to figure out what is happening. I stand on a small balcony overlooking a grey, narrow and quiet alley or street. I see a large bird attacking a pigeon. Feathers fly and the pigeon is being massacred within seconds, all taking place in the air. The instant the dead parts of the pigeon are about to land on the asphalt a sparrow appears in its place. The pigeon no longer exists but the sparrow is now its new life shape. Before I go back inside a man who is with me shouts to a bird who flies by to tell us what is happening over there. I think he means overe there where The Moby is happening. The bird somehow gives a sarcastic impression as we see its cold dark eyes meet our, almost as if it doesn't enjoy this but it has resorted to this as a last chance?

Back inside the compound I find out that the animals here communicate with the people. I see small scraps of paper - letters - with childish and sometimes incomprehensible writing in short sentences sprawled over the paper. Letters from the birds. I try to read a couple of letters and find that the birds have a very bizarre sense of humor using plenty of sarcasm and unimportant phrases to relay small pieces of information. I can not find anything useful in the letters but do notice that many letters or words have been circled or underlined by the birds.

The call someone in here Cousin Brent. They refer to him as my cousin, but I do not remember him or know him. He is the leader of this place, a scientist and writer. He has the money to keep this up. I walk from room to room and try to figure out who is who here, because few has time to explain anything to me. I have to sponge up whatever I want to find out. Cousin Brent's friend is talking to me and we go to see Brent. He is nice and I find out more things about him. He had a quite interesting life before all of this happened. He was a sci-fi writer, and an actor. All of a sudden I realize something about the letters from the birds, and I ask Brent if I can suggest this idea to his friend. He nods and I run over to the man. I am so excited over my finding but am afraid everyone/he will think I am crazy. He insists I tell him what I have found out. I explain to him quietly that I believe the letters may contain a code and that if we can find a way to break it we might find an answer to what we are looking for.

Cousin Brent shows us another place he owns. It looks very modern. I think he is building something. Something that will help us.