Dream: End of Days

Dream log, April 13, 2002, Lansing, MI.

It is early evening and I am somewhere tropical.. beach resort.. blue skies dissolving into a setting sun, powdery sands, smell the salty sea air.. watching people splash around in a meat-market mentality, scoping each other out, picking each other up, laughing, eating, drinking, lounging in and around the pool. I was bored by it. Found myself walking past it all, alone, towards the pier. Suddenly, someone shouts and points to the sky. The firmament changes from blue to a beige and two halves of sky come together to become one. The two halves are rimmed, like the trim on a bed-sheet, and those edges are colored by three stripes; a bright crimson red on the outer edges, white in the center, and lastly midnight blue. As the sheets of sky collide, the stripes mixed with the fluidity of paint and become one set; red, white and blue. As they begin to mix slightly, a greater disturbance rippled across the stripe, like raindrops hitting a puddle, and for a brief second one can see the silhouettes of men on horseback galloping through the sky. (The stippling of the stripes had been caused by the hooves.)

The silhouettes disappeared again, though the air still rippled with their presence as they came closer. By now, the crowd was screaming in panic, fleeing here and there. I knew there was no escaping power like this, so I found a place to hole up and wait. I remembered the Book of Revelations, and though it wasn’t as I imagined; I recognized the horsemen and their intent. I felt a sense of déjà vu as I walked on the pier and found a square cut out of the wooden planks (about 4′ x 4′), right before a step up which led further down the pier. There was a ladder that led into the water below.

Whatever possessed me to lay myself across that weird doorway into the sea, I have no idea, but I suspended myself across it, t-boning myself with my arms and feet holding me up and with the water supporting my back. As the mayhem continued and people ran around me, I completed the illusion of being crucified by placing one bare foot on top of the other and then I closed my eyes, relaxed my body and prepared to stay there for a long, long time.

At one point, a presence stood over me, I know.. I saw it in my mind’s eye (third-person now, standing behind me on the shore).. the air curving around a tall, transparent warrior, easily 10-12 feet tall.. the massive sword with a blade shaped like a diamond or a long, thin kite, also transparent but visible. I did not look up, I did not open my eyes, I did not say a word. The presence finally left to assist in the slaughter, leaving me as I was.

As the horsemen worked their way inland, the screams began to become more distant and silence ebbed in with the tide. In my mind’s eye, I saw the landscape, the tropical paradise it once was, with its tiki torches, thatch-roofed bars, crystal-clear pools and swank hotels, now polluted with corpses and the gore of the slaughtered. Still, I did not open my eyes nor climb up from my place.

Instead I slept, and awoke in a house after what seemed to be 30 years of slumber. As I emerged from one of the bedrooms in that dimly lit home, a man of early fifties (possibly early fifties) walked past. He smiled and said something. It might have been ‘so you finally decided to join us’ or something of the like, I don’t recall exactly. He was dressed in olive drab, almost as if he was a soldier, but there were no identifying marks on his uniform, no medals, no patches, no embroidery of any kind. He wore black wing-tips instead of combat boots. He was white-haired (one to two inches long and standing straight out), well-built, barrel-chested, and stronger and more vital with life than most men half his age. (This was definitely not my grandfather, however.) I had a feeling people referred to him as “The General”. There was a glow about him that was nothing you saw, but something you felt.

He was on a mission to grab some extra silverware or some other dining effect and led me back into the living room, where a large table had been set up with candles and a (Christmas?) feast. The TV was on and some of the 20 to 30 people in that room looked at me as I entered, some watched the TV, but all were standing with their hands clasped and singing the popular New Years song, Auld Lang Syne:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and days of auld lang syne?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,

We’ll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne

I met some of their glances and then hurried out of the room, finally realizing that I had been spared. I ran into one of the side bedrooms, fell to one knee and began praying. A woman came in to check on me and tell me that they all came to be there in the same way. She said that there was a list of names on the Internet where I would go and look for the name of my wife, to see if she had survived, same as I. (Note: I was not married at the time of this dream.)

I awoke, astonished, with a deep sense of, “What just happened there?” As I relived the dream and tried to crystallize the details, I remembered that I had, just this week, given a speech on abortion. I was overwhelmed by the dream, and to my surprise, I cried. I cried because I had been spared in the dream (relief) and I cried because we are killing ourselves and when destruction comes, we will have no one to blame but ourselves (guilt, remorse). As the tears quickly subsided, I said, “We are our own cancer.” I thought about calling my mother (she has a gift for dream interpretation,) but instead, tried to get the details of this dream into print ASAP.

Called Mum. A few things to notice:

– There were no children in the dream. ‘Paradise’ was without children. Hedonistic.
– The water-filled square may symbolize the womb. The ladder only had one aluminum rail as opposed to the usual two = umbilical cord.