I’ve been consistently sweating in my sleep.
Dreams in the same neighborhood as the swaying structures
Only now we are not pedestrians.
Nor roof top runners.
The vans return.
Mass panic.
Drunk, drunk rednecks.
And, disenfranchised swarming points of public services.
No one seems rich.
Or perhaps the rich are unseen.
Alee and safe from our strife.
The previous night, the riots/disaster broke out.
Some truth revealed of which I discovered myself involved in
Through familial inheritance. clandestine.
Unaware until that moment.
Strange feeling of alienation.
Now that I know my involvement, my allegiance, must change.
My family has implicitly caused the suffering of many. With at least a bit of awareness.
<With too much intoxication?>
We leave a keg party in the woods.
A young man, Hunter
I went to high school with this blonde
Son of a politician [in the dream].
We were not friends.
He was in a higher clique, multiple levels.
That said. he was always kind.
I am by far the sober one.
But have the deepest of dread about driving the
Super drunken party.
As in, if we get pulled over by the cops (sic. American cops midst a crisis….DANGEROUS) it is more important for me to ditch the carload and make for this public center. That looks like the Tuscaloosa Library
(ed. note: before ‘tuscaloosa’, it was called Druid City. Point in case, the biggest hospital is known formally as DCH- Druid City Hospital. Quite magical considering the Magic City is only 45 min. NE.)
Hunter offers, kindly yet foolishly to drive us in his huge red truck.
Within two minutes we are clearly going to crash and hit a metal solid post. I think:
1. Hunter’s father has the sway and motive to save his son and the party to the crime. That is if we/they ever make it to trial. Which is questionable. The state of AL is in shoot first question later mode.2. I will bail from the truck before impact IF impact is inevitable. I have great confidence in my ability to time and gauge this.3. Amy is the only one in the truck I feel loyal obligation to. I fill with dread. We have not spoken in years, and she feels like dead weight that I am responsible for. And I intuit she may feel the same way about my own prescence.
People begin to reach up and try to snatch the wheel. This is ok by me.
Somehow we avoid crashing.
Amy bails.
I bail.
We freeze
And look at each other. We did not plan to bail together.
We apparently were just similar minded in how to handle the problem.
I indicate with eyes: I’m going my way. Do you want to come or go?
She crosses the road towards me.
Before she finishes, I’ve started running toward my destination.
She cannot keep up.
She arrives later and is pivotal in assisting me help the people my family
tacitly, indirectly, hurt.
(Ed. Note: she loves her family. They have never truly hurt her or even let her down in waking life).
We save the day after a protracted dance of:
She distracts and alludes the vanmen outside through camp.
I evade them inside while finding and sneaking people.
From this multiple story structure that winds horizontally.
It seems to grow ampersand sprawl.
The people often resent my help.
Some refuse it.
An armed faction of the people I’m trying to get outside decide me a hostile enemy.
Complicating my evasive action.
They change forms. An elite force.
At one point, í beat a crow to death, over and over it came at me, with a tennis racquet. When I looked on its lifeless body, felled upon the second step of a staircase, I fill with dread.
I killed it in fear it was a transformed enemy. In retrospect, I cannot be sure that I had not just beaten a confused, agitated bird to deæth. Maybe it was just a bird. Then the whole question stops making sense. I feel confused but on the run. Time, survival.
end: successful but incomplete.
Cut to last night.
Same place, same time.
Only, I embrace the role of driver.
My car.
Interstates flooded with water and cars.0
I dodge and weave impeccably.
But, I feel exhausted and stressed.
Then, I know when/that I should/ to
pull over and rest.
The panic inside me ceases.
The disarray outside continues.
I drive people in and out of the city all night
(I would not describe it as a nightmare. Not even as a bad dream.
Just a tiring, surprisingly self re-affirming dream)
*
WrittenCasey 