There are a handful of
elements which commonly turn up in my dreams:
- Apocalypse: The world
is destroyed, or has been destroyed, by some sort of cataclysm.
The dream's activities take place in a wasted landscape, usually
desert-like, of ruined buildings and scattered debris.
- Flooding: A region has
been flooded. It's usually The City, but not always. I also dream
a lot about tidal waves-- but rarely about earthquakes or
volcanoes.
- Camps: Sometimes they
are a positive location, a place where good things are happening.
Other times they are definitely not.
- Imprisonment: Probably
a not-uncommon theme in many people's dream imagery.
- My old house in
Merced: Unsurprising. I think most people dream, from time to
time, of the places they lived in as a child.
- The City: I dream of
the City frequently. It's supposed to be the Bay Area, but it's
not really. It's usually cold, but never really wintery. It's been
built up because it's slowly sinking into the sea; many of the
streets and buildings are several floors underwater, and roads are
all built on enormous trestles. On a couple of occasions, I have
SCUBA-dived for treasure in the submerged buildings. Much of it
remains unrepaired and abandoned. It sits low and level for a
fairly good-sized sprawl, but then a steep hill rises behind it,
to the east, on which are hundreds of residential homes (my
grandparents who used to live in Bakersfield apparently live in
these homes), well above the water. At the south end of the city
is a terrifying web of interconnecting highways, freeways, subways
(the only really good way to escape the City-- the subways will
even take you to foreign countries), and train rails. Half lead
into the City, the other half into the untamed wilderness to the
far south-- or at least, they try to go there. Most don't make it.
Only one or two narrow roads actually get out of the City. There
are lots of mountains to the south of the city, stretching for
hundreds of miles, crossable via small foot paths and narrow (but
straight) highways. If you cross the mountains entirely, you will
reach Monterey. I have only done this once, and we wanted to
return immediately. To the north of the city... actually, I'm not
sure what's there. I should go that way sometime.