When I turned to look at the clock, I noted, with some astonishment, that it was 4:00 am. I did not feel sleepy, but considered the situation and with mild anxiety decided I should try to get that additional two hours of sleep. Despite my dread, I soon drifted off. The dream resumed, apparently having moved forward by a scene or two in my absence. Vivian and I were in a darkened theater. I was aware that the skater-rabbit was also in the audience, but not sitting with us. I do not recall what was on the stage or screen, whichever it was.

As the entertainment moved toward a conclusion, I noted that I appeared to be experiencing an annoying drip, striking my head occasionally. At first I ignored it, but as the frequency increased I became aggravated. As I brusquely rubbed the damp away, I became aware that others in the audience were growing restive as well. In fact, an increasing number of the audience were also experiencing intermittent drips.

Puzzled, I looked about just as the drips turned into a constant rain. I recall looking up at the ceiling of the theater in time to be dazzled by the crack and flash of a lighning bolt amid lowering clouds. Puzzled, I was pleased to note that I had not neglected to bring my travel umbrella with me into the theater, and as Viv and I made our way out, we huddled under the umbrella until I snagged an apparently forgotten umbrella of my own.

We made our way out into the hall of that same old building I had hurried though earlier and realized that the rain was apparently confined to the cavernous spaces of the theater. Curious, we made our way out of the building and onto what I took for a wrought iron balcony, clinging to the side of a curving wall of old, but quite tall, buildings. Far below us, a narrow street filled with human traffic of all kinds – pedestrians, cabs, carts, all josting.

Up the sides of this picturesque urban canyon, a system of openwork iron walkways webbed the surface of each building. Together they created a multilevel sidewalk system several stories high, using the technology of late nineteenth-century fire escapes. Everywhere, people hurried about their business.

Viv and I climbed the one or two levels up from our first location to reach the roofline. As we stood and looked, we saw that this warren of interconnected and quite old buildings stretched away into the distance, no building being particularly taller than other. The effect was of looking across a large, flat surface made up of hardback books of varying thicknesses, all laying flat and densely fitted to form a sort of mosaic.

As we looked across this plane of roofs, we noticed a small cascade of water pop out and arc down into the hurrying throngs from a roof to our right. As we turned to observe it, more lines of water arced out. We reversed the direction of our gaze, to look behind us. The surging water from the previous dreamfragment had reached the level of the roofs on our side of the street. It roiled toward us even as the leading edge of the water crumbled the rooflines to our left and right.

As we looked out, we didn’t see the tops of the buildings we’d hurried through. Only the swelling surface of the water fronted by the surge of debris was visible. Below the new sea buildings collapsed in cinematic grace, bricks spiraling away from centuries of mortar in slow motion. Eruptions at the surface marked the final escape of pockets of air, furniture and bodies popping into the daylight before drifting toward our new, temporary Niagara.

The water thundered over the roof in a stampede, charging out into space to curve gracefully down upon the city. Holding each other by the edge of the cataract, we felt the building give.

Last night was largely occupied with an epic nightmare which took place in two discrete parts. I awakened at 4:00 am, miserable from the experiences in my head, before fearfully drifting into another sleep which contained a direct continuation of the original dream.
It being several hours later, I only retain fragments of the dreams. Here is what I recall.

With a coworker, I am looking out the window of a nineteenth-century building at a curving section of lowland riverbed. on a bank above the river, closest to our perch, an old, narrow highway runs directly beneath the front of this brick building. The building is warped with age and gives one the sensation of drunkenness as one navigates its’ tilted floors.

On the highway below is an inching mass of cars, all heading upriver but not making any progress. Vendors hawk wares to the miserable inhabitants. Curiously, all the cars are from the mid-seventies or earlier, great land-yachts in which families anxiously bounce like racquetballs in an empty court.

The riverbed is a mass of glistening mud, with no running water to be seen. As we watch, a flake-green Grand Torino comes roaring around the bend upriver, roostertailing mud at seventy, madly slewing in the semiliquid gumbo of the vacated river’s home. It’s clear the driver is about to lose control of the car, and I turn to my companion and note this, saying “Watch, he’s gonna lose it at the bend.”

Sure enough, in slow motion,the car slews up the banked side of the river, spins madly, and rolls goopily several times before coming to rest in a cloud of steam, upside down, just at the edge of our sight lines upriver. The population of the traffic jam appears not to have noticed.

Then, in quick sequence, the river is suddenly host to a parade of huge American cars, barrelling upriver in a manner similar to the unfortunate Grand Torino. They bounce off one another but most avoid losing control as spectacularly as the first car. Lincoln Continentals and 1948 Dodge hearses and long, low Cadillacs jostle through the mud at seventy miles an hour. Suddenly, before the turn, a Coupe De Ville goes into a long, lazy slide that slams the vehicle against the rootball of an overhanging tree, catapulting the car, in pieces, into the stream of cars. Chaos ensues.

Cars spin into each other and roll over one another, somersaulting as they shed axles, wheels, windshields, body parts. A sequence of three crushed cars spins lazily downriver under our window, maple leaves in a summer eddy. As we gaze down into them, we can see trapped families struggling to claw their way through the dismembered remains of their beloved, pounding on rear windows and windshields in desperation.

We recoil in horror, and when we turn back to the the window it is in response to an horrific sound, a grinding and pounding much louder than the current of autos had provided moments before. We rush to the window to observe that the water of the river has returned with great speed and force, wiping away the mass of cars in an irresistible onrush. The cars in the riverbed were escapees from the downstream traffic jam who had gambled on beating the incoming wall of water. As we look out, the water rises rapidly until it laps the sill of our second-story window, and we turn to flee, slamming rickety wooden doors behind us in a futile attempt to stem the tide.

As we flee into the interior of the warren-like building, retreating from windows and doors, it grows dark, and we appear to have entered sections of the building long forgotten. We stumble over the detritus of the past one-hundred-and-fifty years of American life, from cowboy-themed table lamps and defunct, dusty console televisions to rotted, weatherbeaten wagon wheels and rusted muskets.

Behind us, a door slams open and a young man of the most peculiar appearance comes uncertainly into the junk-cluttered hall. He carries a skateboard and wears a green hoodie, unzipped. At first glance he appears to have a skinny frame topped by long unkempt hair, but as he half-hops forward, it becomes apparent that he is some sort of human-rabbit hybrid, his lop-ears and long fur fooling the eyes into seeing the mane of a seventeen-year-old pot-smoking skateboard dude.

The water bursts through the door behind him, and I awaken.

(I hope to detail part two in a separate entry.)